From the church’s hill, Lyvina gazed over all of Carnifex and the surrounding countryside. Many times, she had found herself here, watching over her prison with envious resignation.
Things were supposed to be different now. She was granted a second chance, given power beyond her imagination, like the entire village was ready to bend to her will, if only she could just reach out and grasp it. And yet…
“Why…?” Lyvina muttered to herself, looking over the village bathed in blue from her great star in the sky. Everyone should have been dead. She KNEW they were dead. The only survivors should have been the people in the church and that elf, whose black flames had merged with the orange in an inferno endlessly consuming a small section of the village.
“Why?!” But now, everyone was coming back, from the villagers slaughtered in their homes to the goblins dangling from her nooses. Their movements were unnatural, their vocabulary reduced to a single, inane descriptor, but they were alive again. It was so insulting!
Lyvina had begged for eternity to be given another chance, yet she was ignored, spending untold decades isolated and forgotten. Then, at long last, she was granted a miracle beyond comprehension, only to discover barely an hour later that the same underserving drights that didn’t understand even an ounce of her suffering were resurrected. Simply brought back to life like death was a mere cold to be burned away by the First’s blessing.
Lyvina couldn’t stomach such a brazen, disgusting, vindictive act committed by god just to spite her.
It didn’t take long to reach the village, where she spotted an all too familiar face stumbling around. Mrs Overdale, the woman who served as her neighbour in her last delusion. She was an older lady, but always held a smile that could brighten up anyone’s day. Looking at her now, however, that smile was missing, replaced by a strange grin that didn’t seem entirely natural. It was clear she had died during the raid, the multiple stab wounds and blood stains in her chest more than enough evidence to that fact. Now, after all these years, Mrs Overdale finally saw her.
“Beautiful,” she spoke, just like the rest of the resurrected in the village. A tiny trickle of blood fell from her lips as she finished speaking.
“Stop saying that!” Lyvina snapped at her. “You should be dead, you should all be dead! Why are you still here?!” Lyvina waved her arms in frustration, her piercing gaze locked onto her. Mrs Overdale never blinked, only moving closer to Lyvina.
“Beautiful.”
“SHUT! UP!” Lyvina stomped her foot into the ground, cracking the pavement under the pressure. “Shut up shut up shut up shut up! You have no idea how long I’ve waited to come back to life, what I’ve been through! You don’t deserve to come back, not for a hundred thousand years! Why don’t you all just die and let me have this?!” Lyvina clenched her fists, trembling in pure rage, her eye’s blazing crimson. Sparks flew from her steaming body, scarring the flagstone below, “I deserve this. I deserve this! You horrid, bloodfallen people aren’t even worth the dirt I’m going to bury you in.”
Mrs Overdale’s grin twisted into a sickening smile. Suddenly, the stumbling woman broke into a sprint, charging straight at Lyvina like some sort of madden animal, her arms outstretched to grab the little girl. Just as she was about to reach her, however, she was violently swept off the ground by a noose. Instinctively, her arms grabbed at the rope, her legs kicking furiously in the air in a futile effort to escape, but to no avail. Even during her struggle, her eyes were locked with Lyvina’s, each refusing to back down.
“B-beautiful,” She reiterated.
“Die,” Lyvina ordered, as the noose tightened around her neck, cutting off her airway. Her head twitched, frothing at the mouth, yet Mrs Overdale refused to look away.
“Die,” Lyvina repeated, the noose around her neck constricting beyond human endurance, until there was a sickening SNAP, breaking the villager’s neck. Her head hung at an unnatural angle, a fatal injury to anyone’s eyes, yet her gaze refused to move, that same sickening smile plastered on her face, even now, as if she was having the time of her life. “Die, Die, Die, Die!”
“B-beau-ti-ful,” Somehow, even with her throat completely caved in and broken, those same words left her mouth. However, something was different. The words no longer sounded entirely like Mrs Overdales, as though someone, or something else was mixed in, providing a deeper, darker echo to her responses.
Irrelevant.
Lyvina growled like an animal, as more sparks flew from her body, her frustration reaching new heights. Responding rapidly to their master’s mental commands, five new nooses spawned into existence and raced towards their target. Four targeted her still struggling limbs while the fifth coiled around her body like a snake.
“DIE ALREADY!” Lyvina bellowed her command, as her nooses began to pull. The flesh, muscle and bone were stretched beyond their limits, straining furiously against the ropes, even as Mrs Overdale refused to change her expression. Then, in a glorious shower of crimson, her limbs were ripped from her torso. The sight of such a brutal dismemberment was enough to finally bring a joyous grin to Lyvina’s face.
Dropping what remained to the floor, Lyvina strode over, confident in her victory.
“What do you think? Personally, I think you’ve never looked better,” she told her, a toothy grin sharp on her face.
“Beautiful.”
“…?!” She couldn’t believe it. Even after being torn apart, she still wouldn’t stop saying that one goddamned word. Her rage had long since reached its boiling point. Without a second thought, Lyvina stomped on that once smiling face until it became nothing more than mush.
Before long, Mrs Overdale was unrecognisable, no longer able to say that same damned word any longer. It was bliss.
For a few seconds.
“Beautiful.” “Beautiful.” “Beautiful.”
“Beautiful.” “Beautiful.”
As more villagers streamed towards her, speaking in a disjointed symphony, Lyvina’s red eyes shone with a burning fury. Blazing blue sparks flew from her, striking the ground and running along the nearby buildings. There was far more work to do before this issue had been corrected.
A second wave of nooses rained down from the sphere, spreading out across the village. In all corners where the resurrected walked, a noose or three quickly followed. Since hanging them had failed to put them down, as if in direct defiance of her existence, her hangmen instead took to tearing their targets to pieces, dragging them through the streets or slamming them into anything they could find.
Some of the villagers heading towards Lyvina were swept up by this new wave, removing them from her sight, leaving only a few for her to deal with personally. With deliberate precision, she raised her hand into the air. A moment later, a chipped butcher’s knife was dropped into her palm by a passing noose, one she happily wrapped her fingers around.
Mr Delicore was the first man to reach her, his grasping hand losing most of their fingers as they were sliced clean off by the sharp butcher’s tool. The man persisted, though his near digitless hands could never hope to restrain her. With another clean slice, Mr Delicore was cleaved in two, straight through his midsection, his two halves falling apart shortly after.
“Bea—” Lyvina’s foot crushed his skull like a twig, preventing any more of that nonsense.
Only cold, quiet rage remained on her face now, even as both goblins and humans continued to pursue her. To Lyvina, there was only the task at hand, and her unwavering commitment to see it through to its bloody conclusion.
---
Once more, blood soaked Carnifex’s streets. None of the resurrected were spared her wrath. Whether their souls were destined for the Heavens, the void, the underworld, or to simply fade away into nothing, Lyvina didn’t care. All that mattered was her promise.
Villagers, newly arisen from death, were rapidly scooped up and used as impact dolls by her nooses. Many were grabbed by the legs and taken high into the air, before being slammed onto the pavement in a meaty splat. However, despite all the punishment she was putting them through, the resurrected kept coming.
It was among this unbridled chaos that Lyvina discovered something. When her noose grabbed a newly revived goblin, it dragged the creature along the pavement right to the edge of the village until both were stopped by some sort of… wall. It was only then that she realised that something had encased her prison.
This discovery gave her pause, if only for a moment. Up until now, she had been efficiently cutting down all that stood in her path, her single-minded bloodlust clouding her mind to all outside influences. In fact, she had just finished crushing the skull of Mr Diller, a local farmer that must have stayed to celebrate with the villagers after the megabear’s defeat.
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“A wall…” she muttered, looking up towards the sky. “The walls of my prison…” There was a moment of contemplation, as all the possibilities ran through her mind. Finally, she spoke aloud, a wide grin appears on her face. “I can touch them!” Lyvina’s eyes turned wild and lustful. For all the years she’d been trapped in Carnifex, never had her restraints been something so physical. Any time she’d attempt to leave the village, regardless of time, place or conditions, her body would simply freeze up, preventing her from moving again until the idea of escape disappeared from thought.
Once, she remembered hitching a ride on a wagon, hoping to be carried so far away that her curse would have no choice but to release her. Once again, her body froze, but the cart continued to move her away. That’s when she felt something tugging at her, trying to drag her back to her prison, before she blacked out. She wasn’t sure how much time passed back then, but she eventually woke up inside the village.
This, however, this was something she could work with. With her new abilities, with her new strength, it would be child’s play to smash through whatever pitiful walls were preventing her from escaping. All she had to do was deal with all these pests, and she’d be free.
“Beautiful,” Lyvina was snapped out of her musing as, from above, another resurrected called out to her. Shooting her eyes upwards, she saw the children of the village, their smiles bright as they leant over the rooftops like a murder of crows.
How have they been escaping my nooses? Lyvina thought, perplexed. Her nooses should be targeting everyone, so how were the village’s children able to avoid them?
In that moment, the hands of the headless Mr Diller locked around Lyvina’s ankles.
“W-what?!” she yelled in surprise. Even when villagers and invaders came back to life, smashing their heads in had always appeared to put a stop to them, until now.
A noise stirred from above as Lyvina returned her gaze to the children. Without any care for their own wellbeing, they all dove down on her from above, wide grins plastered on their faces.
There was no time to free herself. Thinking fast, she sent out a mental command to her nearby hangmen, as a noose rapidly changed course, wrapping around her arm and yanked her back at speed, dragging her through the streets of Carnifex just in time to avoid the dogpile. Even now, the headless man refused to release her, his lower half dragging along the floor. Gritting her teeth, she attempted to kick him off. Then, she saw it. Mr Diller’s flesh and bone bubbled and morph together, forming an abominable reconstruction of his regenerating face. The flesh appeared more like leather, tight in some areas, loose in others as horrid growths formed across the once rugged man like a cancer across his body, his hands burning hot as if overcome by fever. From this, the makings of a jawline managed to regrow, at least in part.
“What a beautiful world,” Mr Diller spoke, a deeper echo within his voice like that of hundreds repeating those same words all at once.
For an instant, she was shocked, perhaps even unsettled by the sentence, the first one spoken by the reviving horde inside her village. Her rage rapidly took control once more, however, using her free hand to throw her butchers knife straight at the abomination. With ease, it imbedded into his freshly growing skull, breaking his grip on her ankles and sending him tumbling to the ground.
Unburdened, she was dragged to the roof of a nearby house for a brief respite, something she didn’t even realise she needed. The steam pouring from her body had steadily increased, the stress on her new form only ever growing as time marched onward.
This body still doesn’t feel right, something is still missing, Lyvina complained. Like before, there was a growing sense of thinness overcoming her very existence, as if she was slowly melting into the wind.
There wasn’t time for that now, however. Not while such injustice was rampant in front of her. Gazing out over the village, using both her eyes and her sight beyond, she witnessed the brutality of her hangmen at work. The resurrected were being ripped apart, smashed to pieces and dragged through the ever-burning fires to put an end to them once and for all. Yet, those efforts were yielding fewer returns by the second. The resurrected were recovering from their injuries, mutating in the process as Mr Diller had. Not only that, but they only grew more agile as time went on.
“What is this?” Lyvina spoke to the world around her. This was far removed from her miracle. Every injury, cut, tear and broken bone turned them more monstrous than before. Whatever had brought both Lyvina and the villagers back to life were clearly not the same.
The children were still hunting her, leaping from roof to roof like trained professionals. Lyvina’s body sparked once more, preparing to unleash her nooses on these pests before they could reach her. They may have evaded her hangmen before, but that ended now.
However, before the order could be issued, she spotted something out the corner of her eye. Looking up, she saw the goblins hanging from her gallows, the hideous invaders that dared to enter her world, now climbing their ropes towards the orb in the air. She had been aware they had returned to life but had ignored them in favour of ridding Carnifex of the resurrected on the ground. Now, they had climb so high as to almost reach the sphere, their filthy mouths chanting the word “beautiful,” like all the rest.
Sending a new mental command, she ordered her inactive nooses to slam the hanging goblins into the ground, putting an end to whatever they might have been concocting.
A spike of pain pierced her skull, creating such agony that she almost lost her footing. Moaning in pain, she held her head as a fresh jet of steam poured from her body. Across the village, all the nooses acted erratically, some freezing while others spiralled out of control, no longer targeting the resurrected.
“C-control limit…” Lyvina muttered to herself. The answer was as instinctual as her initial knowledge of the nooses. She may have possessed great powers beyond her wildest dreams, but she was far from all powerful.
The first wave of nooses were spawned easily, after she learned she could control the orb in the sky. After they had fulfilled their purpose, they remained idle, displaying the bodies of their prey for the world to see. The second wave of hangmen materialised with ease as well, killing the resurrected as soon as they showed signs of life. The problem only emerged when she attempted to control both groups, hundreds of nooses, at the same time. If it were only a few, she might have had a warning, some strain in the back of her mind telling her she was going too far. Instead, she unknowingly bulldozed past her limits, compromising her control.
It was during this moment of weakness, when her nooses became unresponsive to her commands, that a goblin reached the top of his rope and penetrated the floating sphere with his boney limb.
Lyvina’s scream pierced the eardrums of all around her. Her headache flared in ferocity, as if the goblin was clawing at her very mind with its nasty appendage. Cracks materialised across her body, pouring with steam as it attempted to recuperate.
The world on the outside of the village, beyond the invisible wall, began to shift and wabble, like an illusion losing its stability. The blue star itself began to grow unstable; its perfectly spherical form warping before everyone’s eyes. The goblin that caused this even had its body consumed by an unstable pattern of blue lines, it’s dying gasp expressing the orbs beauty before shattering into dozens of bloodless, meaty chunks that fell from the sky.
Many nooses began to evaporate into blue particles of light while others simply continued their uncontrolled rampage, smashing through the structures of Carnifex.
There was no time to recover, as the children finally caught up to her. Before they could grab her, Lyvina phased through the roof, falling straight into Jason’s bedroom. Knowing they’d be on her soon, she grabbed the first thing that looked like a weapon and raised the wooden sword. The first of the children, Becca, came through the window, an eager smile on her face. Though she appeared healthy, Lyvina noted the obvious bloodstains visible on her clothes from whatever fatal wound had claimed her. For some reason, seeing Becca like this made something pang in her heart. Was this… Regret?
Shoving whatever dright had bubbled up inside her down as far as she could, Lyvina clutched the handle in both hands, and struck her with enough force to snap the wooden blade apart, launching Becca into the opposing house. The sudden, highspeed projectile slammed through the load bearing pillars and walls, bringing the whole building down on top of her.
The broken handle bounced off the floor, just as an erratic noose plunged through the ceiling, a portion of the roof above Lyvina falling on top of her. Fresh jets of steam sprayed as she began the recovery process from under the debris, just as two more of the children, Isacc and Timothy, entered the room. Choosing not to wait for them, she phased through the world again, landing atop the family dining table below whose legs snapped under her weight.
Her legs trembled as she got to her feet, her head still pounding, only to be tackled and pinned to the ground by Katlin, the village bully. She was bigger and stronger than the other kids, something she was happily taking advantage of now. Her once quick-tempered personality was all gone, replaced by a set of wide eyes and those same, bloodfallen words.
“Beautiful. Beautiful. Beautiful! You’re beautiful!” Katlin managed to deviate from the script slightly, as she choked the life from Lyvina.
Despite it only being the hands of a child, granted, one more brawny than normal, the constriction around her neck sent Lyvina into a panic. For a moment, her mind went blank, wondering if this would be her end. She looked into the girl’s eyes, so joyous at the prospect of choking her to death while calling her beautiful.
“L-y-v-i-n-a?... Lyvina… Is that your name?” An intrusive memory appeared in her mind, with a voice that, though devoid of passion, felt calming to her, even in this moment. “Lyvina… that’s a nice name.” “… I look forward… to traveling with you, Lyvina.”
There’s something I’m forgetting, something important to me. I spoke to someone before, before I made my promise… Lyvina’s mind searched for the answer. It was strange, her mind had been numb for so long that she had gotten used to it, consumed by bloodlust with only brief moments of clarity. Now, the darkness clouding her mind had withdrawn, if only slightly, allowing Lyvina to finally remember her name.
…Vine!
Finding the strength within herself again, Lyvina grabbed a hold of Katlin’s wrists and, with little effort, pried her hands from her neck. Even now, her strength was unmatched, as she rose to her feet.
“Sorry,” Lyvina told the girl, before kicking her into a wall. Despite the reckless pursuit of her, their strength wasn’t very different from normal. With that in mind, she came up with a plan.
Isacc and Timothy arrived at the dining room and instantly tried to grapple with Lyvina, but even in her weakened state she easily avoided them. Katlin soon pried herself out of the wall and joined in the chase, as Lyvina maneuvered around the room and phase through the wall, entering the adjacent hallway. The others pursued, quickly catching up.
Unfortunately for them, she was exactly where she wanted them to be. To the smiling children of the village, she returned a victorious grin of her own as she held the father’s axe in her hands, clearly too large for her small stature. Before the children could try anything, she took her new weapon and smashed it through a large portion of the load bearing wall of the house. The structure trembled; the remaining parts of the home unable to bear the increased strain. In seconds, it all came crashing down.
Moments later, Lyvina emerged from the rubble unharmed, her body phasing through the wreckage, axe in hand. Now on the streets once more, she looked towards her star. It was smaller than she remembered, and she didn’t feel the level of control she once did. At the same time, her bloodlust had been reduced significantly. Enough for a new goal to enter her mind.
“Vine, where are you?” Lyvina muttered, as the search for her saviour began.
