[indent]Her breath rattled out from her lungs, her gaze heavenward.

When was the last time she drowned so deeply in that fathomless blue? Her cabin had no window when she laid down to rest. Her back had been too bent when she was out and about. Summer memories, like snowmelt stained by tar pitch, recalled with fond nostalgia those golden days fabricated through the moving picture and the songs of the proletariat. And yet, those false memories paled still to the brilliance before her gaze. So far she could fall without end. So close she could touch it if she reached out. Her vision, fading.

Not from tears of joy. Not from tears of grief. Just from the blood she was losing with every bite. A pitiful wolf, as starved as she, as desperate as she. Gnawing away at her withered flesh, gnawing away at her toothstick bones, gnawing away at her shrivelled organs. The pain chased away the dark, that pain of being consumed alive, and the old woman could only let out a whisper of a laugh.

A pitiful beast. It’d get more out of her if it knew how to boil a soup.

Her hand reached out, unsteadily. Grasped the coarse fur, felt its ends prickle her skin. Felt the cold seep in from the tundra beneath. Felt the wind scar her exposed flesh. Felt the loss numb everything that she was. Felt it all, as she lost it all.

And, in the end, once everything was lost, the thing that remained had to be her soul: spiteful and blackened, a piece of coal the size of a fist clenched in anger.

Esfir could rest, knowing that there was never the promise of Heaven that awaited her, that the cauldrons of flame could drown out the howling of her mind.

She closed her eyes. She let it go.

And found out that even the God she believed in was a lie.[/indent][hr]
She was still Esfir, even now.

Shunted into the body of a half-beast, cast into a brood of ugly little monstrosities, inheritor of a lineage of violence and servitude. Those in power remained in power, but she could appreciate that 'Auguz' figure's honesty. It was clear where he stood. It was clear where she stood. And it was clear that there would be no hard feelings if she smashed his skull open and turned his sinew into glue. Theirs' was a brutal lot, a brutality that she could understand all too well.

To work, or to die. Whether capitalism or communism, that remained the same here.

She watched. She listened.

She enjoyed, even, this scrawny body of hers that had not yet become broken from decades of abuse.

Two runts who sang. One who showed greater purpose and thought. Another with an unnatural composure. A child that practiced movements too controlled to be of instinct, and the other who approached them. That was enough. She knew she was [i]ordinary[/i] enough that it would not be her alone who was cast into this world beyond her world, this Dark Age bereft of the fruits of revolution, the corruption of inflated capital. She knew, so she approached.

When had her steps become so light, her fingers so comfortable with curling and uncurling? It had taken her far too little time to catch up to the one that had approached the Head Warrior and with far too much ease, her fingers wrapped around the runt's wrist, pulling her back. Pulling her to the couple, that martial artist and the one drawn to such movements.

[b]"We were human, once."[/b]

A statement of fact. Firm as winter wastes.

[b]"We work together, to hunt more than we need, so we can eat for ourselves before our return. That brute spoke only of what we had to do, not what we could. And we can do far more."[/b]

[sub][@Kazemitsu][@King Cosmos][@Crusader Lord][/sub]