[center][img]https://i.imgur.com/Xpb1VAn.png[/img][/center]
Darkness, heavy and suffocating, crawling down her throat and emptying out her lungs. She sucked in a breath, only to hack out more phlegm, her eyes squeezed shut from the stinging sweat. What comfort a damp cloth offered was meaningless; the maid’s platitudes fell upon deaf ears, and the chanting of the priest did nothing for her either. What she would give for relief. What she would give to be normal. What she would give for a cup of water.

She burned, even as she shuddered, arms ineffectually wrapping around herself. Silk sheets clung to her body, translucent from the secretions from her skin. Rancid odors, of medicine and her own filth, seeped into her wrinkled nose and colored her fragmenting imagination. She felt like she was dying. She knew she was dying.

She was dead.

And in that moment of mortal clarity, she opened her eyes and found herself elsewhere.

The fever had broken, and her throat was no longer dry. The sweat that stung her eyes had disappeared, and her silken clothing no longer clung to her. Around her, strange individuals stood, the movement of their mouths not matching the words they spoke. It was unnerving, seeing blue-eyed, pale-skinned men speaking her own language, but it became more unnerving when a voice resounded within her mind. A new life? Kairelith? A second chance?

It wasn’t Heaven then, which she had found herself in. Like so many, she failed to escape the cycle of death and rebirth, condemned once more to live out what years she had in this depraved world.

The lady looked at her hands, as unmarked as always, before blinking. A red, braided cord was wrapped around her forearm, forming eight loops. Faith in man’s progress worked inversely to faith in superstition, didn’t it? She brought it to her face, breathing in the scent of incense as she smiled bitterly. Reborn not as a baby bereft of memories, but rather as herself, granted the freedom she dreamed of. Her gaze settled onto the others once more. A circus performer, a grimy peasant-child, a freckled white devil-

Light burst around her, steel-bound warriors of both genders surrounding her. A reception fitting of the eldest daughter of Geng. She paid them no mind as she took in her first companions.

-an unfreckled white devil, a strangely pale and pathetic-looking islander, and a woman who exuded a sense of privilege similar to herself. No, not just that. A woman who could speak up with authority too, judging by the way she addressed their reception. Good. It would be a waste of breath to speak to such a motley crew either. Accusations of espionage, really? That was grounds of twenty lashes, back in her first life. And threatening them at sword point too…this withered man seemed to be inviting death!

She furrowed her brow.

Threatened, unarmed, and outnumbered as she was, and yet, she failed to feel any sense of urgency or danger? And this sensation only persisted, when from behind them, the sounds of battle and the howling of wolves rang out, evil spirits surging out with a hunger for the living. They were dogmen, bearing scythe-like claws that competed with the ringing steel of the knights, while the madman levied further insults towards them, his words like water scattered against stone. Incoherent and without value, the last words of a headless chicken. The man’s time will come. Not now, but soon.

She turned instead, towards the crashing tides of evil spirits. This was a battle, wasn’t it? This was the precursor of a war. Blood was being shed, and the grassy field would be drenched red. This was the world outside her estate, the world that her desire for freedom granted.

This…this was a chance.

The evil spirits, the armored men, all looked so slow. And she had her own strange enlightenment too, when she had first touched the cord coiled around her arm. The most curious of thoughts, the most novel of ideas.

The lady stepped past the perimeter as she unwrapped the red cord. It was five feet in length, trailing against the ground. The dead man shouted words, but she didn’t acknowledge them when she turned her mahogany gaze upon him. A small, secretive smile formed.

[color=FF7F50][b]“Don’t blink, lest you miss the misery of their deaths.”[/b][/color]

Air cracked, and an instant later, the kobold that leapt for her back had its head snapped off by an unseen force. Three more lunged from the mob, three more cracks sounded, and three more heads were sent skywards, droplets of blood scattering like autumn leaves on the eve of winter. She looked at her hand, gripping onto the cord.

A flick of the wrist, and the cord cracked out at supersonic speeds, striking the dogmen with a preternatural force that popped their heads right off.

That most curious of thoughts was correct, wasn’t it?

[color=FF7F50][i]I can kill with this.[/i][/color]

And, striding with the grace and poise of a lady on a walk through her betrothed’s garden, she continued her path deeper into the monstrous hordes, heralded by the crackling of air and accompanied by the percussion of heads striking the ground.

On that battlefield, a bloody butterfly floated, her ten-foot domain promising a peaceful demise to all who encroached upon it.

[quote][i]All Weapon Mastery, activated.[/i][/quote]