the sight of blood to this day does not bother ragna pyke. she had seen it splattered against enough walls, smeared along the razor edge of her axe, to feel no fear. when the sight of blood so often meant victory, it was difficult for her not to associate it with the thrill of triumph. how funny, then, that the first and last time it had bothered her, there had been no blood at all. only the imaginings of it. in the weeks after her mothers passing ( after she had held the figure who, for so long, had been no more than just a figment of a lonely girls imagination. held her as she had died brokenhearted in her arms. ) her dreams had been tormented by a hauntingly beautiful figure, with the same indigo eyes of her own. a younger version of her mother, she had known it on sight, covered in her own blood as she lay dying in a birthing bed. illness might have claimed her mother in the end, but she had been slowly dying for years since the day her sole child had been ripped from her arms. it had been her birth in the end, that had sealed her fate. a tragedy that could have been avoided had she not been born at all.