Prologue: Define 'Nor-mal'

A Chapter by RedRozeNinja13

The world is divided into only two things, and after time, you will see that what I am saying is true; The world is divided into what we can see, and what we cannot.

On the side of what we can see- there is light, life, nature, sun- day. Day is what people see. Day is the realm where everything is seen, and everything is done. That is what we call Vietellam. ‘The realm of life.’ the realm of day and of sight, where the sun rises every day without ever failing. But, as one of the scientists from the realm of light once said, “For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction”.

I wonder if that little man knew just how right he was?

Where I am from, the clouds are our ground, and death is but a casual occurrence. An occurrence we fight everyday. The things the humans of Vietellam never wanted to believe existed, they exist here. We exist here. And sometimes…..sometimes those things they never wanted to believe in….. sometimes they slip out of our world, and into theirs.

Things like demons. And plague. And the horrible monsters that hide under children’s beds.

That is where you have hunters and slayers- people from the realm where Death reigns supreme, who have the courage to delve into the world of light and exterminate the ones that slipped through their fingers. Before the world of light, also sinks into an inevitable darkness…..

Nobody wants a second world of night.

Our world is more than enough-

To give the earth children bountiful nightmares for centuries to come.

Vietellam children are quite a peculiar occurrence. They “dream”, and sometimes these dreams are horrifying to them, so they are called “nightmares” (I do like the sound of that, “Nightmares”) they hate these “bad dreams”. But they fail to realize what they are actually seeing. Those dreams of corpses coming to life, of werewolves howling and searching for flesh, of vampires waking and pursuing their hunt for blood, of witches cackling and monsters snarling under their beds- they are very real. They are visions from our world. Visions from Muortum. The realm of Death.

A world where every day you wake in night, because the sun is too painful. Where you try to make the best of each day, even though you know that you too are becoming more and more a part of the nightmares that haunt earth children. A world where everything that is not completely human, is banished and forced to stay. A world full of good people, who fight to make sure that the painful sun will still rise in the morning for the humans down below. We walk on clouds, but we are not angels. We are far from it. What would humans say if they knew their angels were really monsters in disguise? We protect them, and yet, if we expose ourselves to them, they want to destroy us. There have been very few exceptions to that. The humans always seek to destroy things they do not understand. Lord Death himself says so. Lord Death- our supreme ruler, who lives alone in his castle, on the highest cloud above us. He sees everything, and he knows everything. He is like our god. He is the only thing that is absolute. He is the one that all humans ultimately fear. All humans fear death, what other horror could there be at the end of one’s life….except to die?

But some of us, In the face of our own apocalyptic world, refuse to die. The same ones that put themselves in the face of danger every day. Hunters and Slayers, nobody seems to realize how big a role they play. Hunters, most have learned by parents or some small institution- a formidable foe for demons surely, but never for a Slayer. A Slayer has been bred since childhood to be a killing machine, through inhumane methods that prove just how nightmarish our world really is. A Slayer has attended one of the international Slayer academies, sponsored by Death himself, though it is a certainty that even he does not know what truly goes on behind those closed doors. Children being turned into killing machines. Most slayers wind up being female. It is some odd phenomena we cannot yet explain, there are male slayers, but they aren’t very common. Slayers tend to not have family, or any attachments to the world. So nobody really cares nor notices when they go missing, or never return. You go in a child, and you come out changed forever.

But it is a good change. At least, in my mind it is. You have a certain respect, and a strength that is certainly enviable. Naysayers will tell you that slayers are soul-less monsters. This isn’t true. They feel like any normal person would. At least, I assume they would. If they were really monsters, would they devote their lives to destroying other monsters? And why would society seek to make more monsters in a world where they are already abundant? In the end, Slayers are just people. And eventually, all people die. Even in the realm of Death…..

But I’m not here because I’m a normal slayer.

I’m not here because I feel like a normal person. Or even because I am one.

I’m here because I’m not. Or at least, I didn’t.

This is a tale of what happens when two extraordinary people,

Come together in a world that is dead-set (No pun intended) on tearing them apart.

Despite what history books say, this is my account of what really happened in those years that led up to the fall of Muortum.

I would know after all. I was there. And I caused it.

Chapter One: An Aura of Darkness.....

Nobody could really tell you when Muortum was created, or when it’s existence began. It’s a bit difficult to put a date on something like that, isn’t it? Could you tell me the exact date earth was created? Of course not, because time in itself did not exist then. A difficult concept to grasp, but a necessary one. If you are to survive in Muortum, you have to have a habit of making sense out of what is senseless.

Even though nobody can tell when it’s existence began, it has a history of it’s own. Just like any world. Just as any creation would. But, in our world, many of it’s citizens are ‘immortal’, as humans would say. We aren’t truly immortal, nothing ever is, but we do have very prolonged life spans. Hence our history is more ‘stretched out’, in a simpler way of putting it. While long, it is short in comparison to the complicated human history, our ruler has not changed nearly as many times, and there are only five districts. Five districts that, at times, can seem very adverse and pig-headed. Stubborn to the very core definition of that word, but the five districts still remain as one, and still function as one, living in our anarchy in a sort of balance.

Let me clarify something right now, there is darkness, and then there is evil. People don’t like darkness, it makes them uncomfortable and blind, and often ignites a primal fear deep inside that humans can not describe or reason with. Darkness is absolute and is only held at bay by the light- But darkness is not evil. Darkness will never be the correct way to describe evil. We live in a world that feeds off of and lives in eternal darkness. Does that make us evil? I should think not. Evil is what sends that mind-numbing chill up your spine, the soulless existence that makes you tremble from head to toe, Evil is unforgivable. We live in eternal darkness, but we are not evil. Have we done some unforgivable things in the past? Yes. But so does every person, and perhaps before you judge you should consider what you would do trapped in an existence where the light of day hurts you, where pleasures in your life are far and few between, where you are easily dismissed as ‘things of fairy tales’, as ‘evil’ and ‘hideous’. Can you imagine how it feels to protect people who are so cruel to you? Well, It’s a chore. To say the least.

Just to be sure you’ve ‘caught my drift’ as they say, Darkness is not necessarily Evil.

In Muortum, there are people, just as there would be in any realm. And people, no matter where you go, will always have the same needs, desires, and emotions. (Except me, I struggle with the concept of ‘Emotions’, but we’ll cover that at a later date.) My ‘friend’, if I am permitted to call her that, is Megan Azalea. Her hair is red like blood, and she’s quite the hot head. Her emotions often run rampant, and sometimes blind her to what is right in front of her. She is a slayer, as am I, and indeed that was how we met. In Slayer Academy. District 3 to be exact. Originally, Megan was from District 5, but she moved, relocated, was transferred, take your pick. District 5 is often called the “Irish district” Because, to put it in simple terms, it rests above the Vietellam country of Ireland. District 4 is the “UK district”, District 3 the “French district”, District 2 the “Arctic district” and District 1 the “American district”. I never said we were creative with naming our districts. We call it as we see it.

I met Megan when I was a girl, a girl years younger than I am now. Not a ‘little girl’ persay in the name of years, but little in other ways. Little, and very, very angry, very, very hurt……..

I was around 7 ½ years young when I met Megan Azalea. I remember her, because she had hair the color of blood- and such a bright and seductive color seemed to whisper my name, it seemed to call me and beckon me to go and pull it, or chop it off. I was a very troubled child, most Slayers were. In a world where all we see are hues of black, white, and grey, a little color goes a long way. Especially towards captivating the interest of sadistic little children. Megan was new, strange, and her hair was such a brilliant color- I would have been a fool not to at least try and talk to her. And so I did. From that day forth, We have been ‘Friends’. Or at least what I imagine something of that sort would be.

The color of blood, is a very powerful color, especially when being taken in by a half-vampiric child. As far as children in the Slayer Academy system go, I was particularly odd. Particularly scary. Particularly dark. I was upset, hurt, angry- but not in the ‘watch me scream and yell at the world’ sort of way. It was in a silent way. I never said a word against my teachers, my mentors, and yet even in such a painful and sinister system, they were afraid of me. The damaged little girl with only one eye. But that eye, oh that one eye, it was enough to frighten even the most foolish of souls, even the bravest of hearts. I didn’t laugh. I didn’t smile. I hardly ever talked at all, unless it was to answer a question. I stared with that one eye, and it would send shivers up the spine of anyone who had a soul, it would chill the blood of anything that had it running through it’s veins. I never meant them harm...but they were scared of me. I never fully understood why. It wasn’t them I was upset with, and I was hurt in a way I couldn’t blame any of them for- and yet they, even the ones supposed to make me afraid, they were scared of me. Only a child.

Megan called me “Aura”. A nickname, my first nickname. Megan was the only one that I believe never truly feared me, other than my Mistress Kay. She was my teacher, and, after my dark and horrifying past (From what I remember) was the only person to take me in, to take me under her wing.

My past is still blurry to me, and yet it defines me. I cannot remember much of it, but what I do remember- I do not like. I do not like it at all…..

A beautiful woman’s corpse, drenched in blood, her head in my lap, my small lap, probably only two or three years old- I couldn’t have understood what was happening. Even now, from what I know, I probably would not have understood what was happening. There was the terrible color of blood on white, turning everything red…..red lace, seeping darker and darker, staining the front of an absolutely darling dress…… There was blinding pain, as an eye was shredded and torn from it’s socket. Claws. Teeth. Raking down the side of a flawless innocent face. There were screams, and the sound of my own little heart pounding in my ears, of sobs working up my chest. The mortification as you realize that you will never be able to see half of the world again. The light, that hurts you in large doses, and yet you strive to see, you yearn to see- even the little that there was, you will only see half of now. The screaming of a little boy, somewhere beyond my vision. “Who is he?” I have often wondered, “What is he?”, but I have never been able to answer my own questions. If I can’t- then it is likely that nobody can. There is the pain and agony of waiting, the woman’s head in my lap, as someone, something, beat the door down. And then- there is the blurry silhouette of a man’s face just before it all fades to black.

I assume I am an orphan. That my parents died that night, that nightmarish night that I only ever see glimpses of. Even in a world where we tell Edgar Allen Poe as bedtime stories- my story is one that will never dare pass a mother’s lips to her child. Perhaps out of fear, that if she does say, if she does recount the truths of my life, the same will happen to her, and her children. I hear them, the children, “Why does that lady wear an eyepatch?”, or “Why won’t she smile, papa?”. I turn to look at them, but before I can say a word the protective parents have ushered their children away, tossing me worried, dirty glances. Even among the odd, the outcasts, the world of death- I am an outcast. I will never belong. My eye will never see light, and I will never be able to regain what has been lost. It is a fact of life, that one cannot regain what has been so completely and utterly destroyed.

My name is Aurora Nightingale.

And I will always be surrounded by an Aura of Darkness…….