FFXVI verse starter for @ifritmade
She could not take it anymore.
Cyra was tired of hiding. She was tired of running. She was tired of all of the people who kept trying to use her in an effort to obtain their false idea of immortality through her unique abilities. She was tired of all of the experiments, and the people poking and prodding at her to understand the differences in her body. Her unique figure was a credit to human cruelty and their lack of understanding. Even after she had heard the call of the otherworldly darkness, their whispers torturing her with every hurt repeated over and over again in an endless loop every night was driving her mad.
In her sleep she could not have peace. Not since she had accepted an offer for the power to defend herself against the malice of humanity. Yet, ever since the nightmares that once labored her sleep had spilled over into her waking hours. For a time, it had left her nearly comatose. It left her vulnerable.
Seated in a caravan set to transport branded from one corner of Storm to another, the other slaves that had the misfortune of being in the same wagon as herself were terrified. The hushed whispers, the maddening phrases she had spoken in her sleep had kept them silent for the initial stretch of the journey.
They hurt you. We must hurt them back. Make it hurt, make them suffer. Make it hurt, make them suffer. Make it hURt, MaKE THeM SuFFER.
The eerie voices that hissed in her head had not stopped repeating the same phrases in days. Not even in sleep could she have peace. The chant continued, and she just snapped.
She would return the malice to their pitiful and weak forms tenfold.
The girl did not hear the commands of the soldier at the door to the slaver's wagon shouting for her to exit. She barely remembered how he had died, but yet she stood there with his eviscerated corpse lying a gurling and bloodied mess at her feet. The sounds of screams around her, and angry shouts only added to the pandemonium in her head.
"You little shit-!" A soldier had charged at her, sword drawn and ready to strike. Her hands twitched, already slick with the dark essence of life that dripped from her dangerous fingertips. She felt the wind shift around her as the blade whistled through the air, her body reacting before she had even told it to, and the metal met nothing but dirt.
In her silence, her slitted eyes stared into the face of the taller man. The fear in his face told her that he was not yet ready to meet his doom, but she would be his reaper all the same. Her lips curled into a wicked snarl, every pointed tooth glistened in the light of the campfires. Such pitiful lamps would be swallowed in nothingness once she was done.
Another blink, and the second soldier had been gutted, and kneeling at her feet. Even in his clearly written fate, he begged her for mercy with pathetic wails. As her hair fell over her face in dark curtains, she focused on the agony writ in his face.
Feel as I feel. Suffer as I have suffered. You will see no mercy from me, worm.
Blackened tears leaked from her eyes as she permitted the void to guide her hand. Feeding on her anger, her rage, her despair...She gave it to them willingly. Cyra had spent her whole life in servitude. She had spent her whole life praying and hoping for a kinder placement. But the Gods never answered, and her body continued to be broken. She was a thing, to humans. And to even think that she had looked like them at some point in her life made her feel sick.
The things they had done to her, the violations of her body, her mind, her soul, they had built up within her. Unchecked rage, and a wrath she dared not even try to understand until the pressure had the emotions pouring out of her in a thick black ichor as viscous as the blood that boiled in her veins...and the blood that stained her hands.
She left the screaming man to his fate as she sought out her next target. She had truly become the hunter. Her vision blurred as the whites of her eyes flooded with the ichor of the Void, its malice pouring out of her eyes, streaking her grey skin with black. Her shaking hands clenched in violent, gory fists at her side as she hunched over.
This...this anger... This is not who I am! But... they deserve this.
"They deserve this." The words rolled off of her tongue as an ominous growl. "You did this to me! You made me do this!" She screeched out into the night.
"I am the suffering. I am the hate. I am the rage of human malice. And I will clean your stain from the land."
It wasn't only her voice that rang out through the fearful cries, but an inhuman chorus of whispers. As she stalked towards an armored man who had fallen trying to flee the demon that walked the field before him, she smiled. Her head had been tilted to the side, knuckles cracking as her fingers itched to be bathed in that warm flesh that stumbled as she approached.
"P-Please! H-have mercy! Gods have mercy!" His voice was a pathetic wail.
"You beg for mercy? Oh, how your sins sing to me in the guise of faith.." The wicked voice answered. She scowled as she shot forward, her body a blackened blur as deadly hands found their mark. In a crimson flurry, her talons bit into armored leather, and then into the softer flesh that lie beneath. She cackled as the man shrieked beneath her.
"Look what you've done! You, humanity, have created a monster." She sang out as the meat of the man's chest laid bare, open, and brutally gored. Yet it still wasn't enough. When would it be enough? The thought had given her prey's breath beneath her came to a gurgling stop.
"When will it be enough?" Cyra cried. She liked how the blood slicked her hands, how it glistened in the fire-light. She liked hearing their howls of suffering, just as she had heard it so many times before through her own voice, or through the cries of another. Her hands traveled from the body beneath her to run over her face, leaving black and red trails up to the wicked horns that curved up and back from her forehead. A devil she had been called, and that night a devil she would be.
