Six kills that were significant in Rhiannon’s life
Her parents
The first significant kill in Rhiannon’s life came before she even was transformed. The power that tempted her, that was being dangled before her was too much to resist. The people who had taught her that power mattered the most, that no one and nothing mattered more than her position, her ability to show other kingdoms that she was strong and a capable ruler were the first to suffer from the skewed way that Rhiannon saw it. She saw herself as more powerful if she took the power for herself, instead of waiting for her dad to die naturally. Waiting that long would have meant that she would become older than she might like before she could take control of the kingdom.
Either that, or she would be married off, and her filthy husband would be the one who would get what her father and their kingdom offered. No, she would not take a husband until it was clearly established who was actually the one in charge. And that was Rhiannon. The killing of her parents, and particularly her mother was a brutal shift, but it nailed the hammer in as to what kind of person Rhiannon would become. She poisoned her father, and she had plans to have her mother have an accident while out riding. But in the end, she didn’t even fully need to do that. Her mother was grief stricken with the death of her husband, and died shortly after him. For Rhiannon, this was her first taste of freedom, the first chance that she would have a say in what she wanted…and of course, it paved the way for her to become the queen of her kingdom.
First Execution of a subject
Another that is quite important in the long life of Rhiannon’s was actually the very first execution she ordered as queen. She was young, she was power hungry, and she wanted to set the terms of her rule. Rhiannon would not have anyone questioning her move or what it was that she planned on doing. No, her word would be law. And if anyone had a problem with it, they would see how that worked out. The subject in question was in fact one of the counselors to the queen. He had had the nerve to question her as to her methods in establishing rule. His suggestions were to get the people to love her, to learn to adore the queen, rather than fear her. In Rhiannon’s mind, it seemed as if he thought that she wasn’t strong enough or capable enough to instill enough fear for her subjects to heed her rule properly. In her mind, her strength was one of the most important factors to her rule. If her own counselors were unwary about what they said to her…then what would the rest of her subjects believe? They would believe that she didn’t have the strength of will to display her power properly.
In the end, it was the simplest order she had given, though it was the first sign of the madness within. She had been in the middle of a meeting with the counselors when she gestured with one hand and the guards stepped forward and surrounded one of the men. “Take him to the dungeon and prepare him. Set up the execution block so the people may watch. And then, off with his head! Simple, isn’t it?” Rhiannon spoke with perhaps the warmest smile she had ever given anyone. It gave all the men in the room chills at the sight. In Rhiannon’s mind, it’s one of her happier memories, as it was the moment she really felt like a queen. Where she felt like her orders would finally be obeyed without question. That the men and women would have reason to fear her.
Murdering a Rival King
Nothing in her previous life gave Rhiannon more pleasure than taking her army and going to war with other kingdoms. Her soldiers had been trained carefully, and without the vulgar sexism that seemed to be stuck with the other kingdoms. Rhiannon was the only one in the area who had proudly had men and women fighting in her army. In her mind, it was why she won far more than she lost a battle. Because she had no qualms about allowing women to fight, and they fought in a style that other men seemed to be thrown off by. It frequently made Rhiannon cackle when she herself rode out onto the battlefield to take on a good group of soldiers. They were so befuddled they never seemed to see their deaths coming. It was her best strategy, and eventually it ended up with her capturing a neighboring king, and annexing that kingdom as her own.
The king? Well he was a threat to her own power. She couldn’t just allow him to continue to exist. Then there would always be a push from his people to save him, that there might be hope for them to get out of the situation. There was nothing more dangerous in Rhiannon’s mind than hope. Hope gave people a drive more than most things, and it was the worst thing to encourage. So she made sure that her people and her new subjects could see as their king was led to the slaughter. Rhiannon herself made her way onto the stage there, taking the axe from the usual executioner, a cold smile spreading across her face as the man was pushed into position. ‘you will suffer for this! You won’t get away with your monstrous acts!’ the man cried, before Rhiannon swung down her axe and removed his head from his shoulders. But that wasn’t all. She grabbed hold of the dead man’s head by the hair, holding it up so her audience could see. “Here lies your former king who couldn’t strategize with his military. From here on, you are my subjects. The king’s children are being drowned as I speak. So know that there is no other living relative that you may rally behind.” Rhiannon thinks of that day with pride, as it was her first real war victory, the first time she executed someone personally, and a single moment that encouraged the fear with her new people.
Bram Stoker
Now it might sound odd that the first significant vampire killing of Rhiannon’s would be Bram Stoker. But, Rhiannon’s view on most deaths at this point had already come to the idea that most kills weren’t significant. They were just another day in a life. Another moment in which she had come out on top with her superior knowledge, skills, speed. Honestly, as a vampire she just became that much more overconfident in her abilities. So why would the small deaths matter? The answer is to Rhiannon, they don’t. Once she became a vampire, she bloodied everything up, she left a trail of bodies in her wake whenever she moved. She had no regard for human life, and only ever picked up pets from time to time to humor her, and to have someone she could show off to. It was that simple.
Now, in her travels, Rhiannon had heard a rumor that a man was out there writing a book about vampires. Now, whether or not the man believed it to be fact or fiction, Rhiannon couldn’t allow such a book to come into being. If even a fictional idea of vampires was put in place with a population, she would find there would be areas that would be much more of a hassle. Someone might catch on, and it would put her in greater danger. And Rhiannon never liked to be the hunted one. She was the hunter. A man like Bram Stoker would not be allowed to create a lore for vampires. Now, Rhiannon made her way to his place, she let him realize the irony of what he had been doing, and why he would end up dying before his time. She killed him without any mercy, tearing into his neck and draining him completely of blood. Then she burned what she saw as his one copy of his novel. Unfortunately for her, it turned out that he had already sent a version of the novel to someone, and the novel Dracula was born. Hearing about the book, or any of the movies still sends her into such a rage, because she had thought she had destroyed all of it.
Cassandra of Greece
When Rhiannon had made her way to Greece, taking up space in Athens, she had met a beautiful and incredibly intelligent woman named Cassandra. Cassandra captivated Rhiannon with her darker skin, with her gorgeous locks. She had been a vision, and had instantly tempted the vampire to her. Despite her beauty, Cassandra was brutally mistreated by her husband, a fact that filled Rhiannon with so much rage, she had made it somewhat of a mission to take any woman from a husband that didn’t see his woman’s worth. This was the case with Cassandra, who had suffered at the hands of her husband until Rhiannon killed him and took Cassandra under her wing. It was the first time that she had really been interested in creating a vampire family for herself, and she ended up turning Cassandra and working to show Cassandra the ways of a vampire. In this particular case, Rhiannon hadn’t taken enough time to truly get to know the motivations of Cassandra, to figure out whether or not keeping this woman at her side would work well for her.
They lived such a short time together in Rhiannon’s terms. Just twenty years of sex and romance, and the occasional daring adventure before Cassandra started to change. She became more and more aware of the brutality of her damstr, and she began to speak up about it. She would ask why Rhiannon felt the need to go after those weaker than her. She was already aware of her own power. She knew that she was stronger than others. Why then, asked Cassandra, do you feel the need to slaughter so many? She blamed it on Rhiannon’s strong bloodlust. The thing that had utterly confused Rhiannon back then, and still did now, was how quickly Cassandra had been able to handle the bloodlust. She seemed to genuinely lack a desire to harm anyone. In any case, she had quickly disappointed Rhiannon with her disinterest, and shortly after Rhiannon had darted at the woman, her age and experiencing working in her favor, and she tore Cassandra’s head from her shoulders.
townspeople who “killed” Eva
The last significant kill is more in a group of killings that surrounded a circumstance that had devastated Rhiannon more than anything ever had up to that point. It had been so long since she had experienced any sort of grief…in fact, she couldn’t remember a time where she had been so gravely wounded, so destroyed as when she had come to believe that her beloved damza Eva had been killed. It had sparked a fury in her so large that no one who encountered her from that point until her rage eased was safe. She killed everyone in sight. Child, adult, elderly? It didn’t matter. Her fury and despair was so great that she would have wiped out the entire continent if she could. How did anyone else deserve to live when the world had been so cruel as to take away Rhiannon’s special person in her life.
In the years that had followed, Rhiannon found out who had been present for the attack, and she hunted them down individually, killing them brutally and leaving their decapitated bodies out for discovery. Most humans assumed it was a particularly cruel serial killer. But those who had been present, who must have been aware of what they had done (in Rhiannon’s mind at least), they fled, and each one cowered before her as she ripped them apart. It did nothing to take away her grief, but it allowed her to believe that she had at least in some way avenged her beloved.
No video; just listen. Mark Smith’s “The Fall”; hypnotic, frustrating at times, incoherent, intense, and some of the most max-volume-worthy tracks there are. Crank up “Pacifying Joint”. You will thank me later.
