She knelt down, moving her hand softly on the blood caked floor of the decimated old citidal. Memories of the Hymns of Pain came flooding back to her in vivid detail. The indoctrination of her childhood before liberation. The horrors she witnessed back then under the thrall of her vile teachers merely angered rather that repulsed her. Anger at the cold, empty empathy she felt for the victims. A void where sympathy and compassion should have been. Anger at herself for feeling nothing for what happened here but the corruption of her own innocence.
She couldn’t remember when it all started. Only that she was spared for “greater things”. To live as slave initiate for the Blood Raiders, and she knew back then as she embraced the indoctrination as any child would to please her masters. How could she not? She knew no other life before her liberation. Found at the age of 13, a willing participant to a blood cult who’s life she only knew until they came. The angels of a culture then alien to her. A culture dedicated to freedom, compassion and enlightenment. How much of her days were wasted in the service of such vile atrocities she could never cleanse herself of.
She was never innocent, she thought. She could never be so again, despite what the tribe taught her. Her adopted father in the Vherokior had struggled with her patiently. Always angry, rebellious, and she found an odd appreciation for his patience and persistence. The change was hard. She would always be the outsider, the vampire to the other children. Never open to friends, always comfortable alone with her festering bloodlust. An appetite even her father could not quell with his love and patience.
“In this world, death is currency,” he would say. “Perhaps even for you, there is a place in New Eden.”
The hymns grew louder in her skull. The cacophony of screams and suffering. It was like a calling to her. One thing she truly understood. Fear.
That she could provide with abundance. Willingly. She could never rewrite the past. A history of the blood of innocents, but she could use those teachings to bring freedom and sucor to the innocents. Not to quell her nature to embrace it. If she were to be the monster, the vampire, she would use her damnation to bring redemption to the downtrodden, the enslaved, the indoctrinated.
She walked further and deeper into the citidal. The hymns no longer an vivid nightmare, but a welcome reminder of who it was she truly was. She approached the window of the hanger and looked down on the relics of ancient plunder. The beast with which she would ride caught her eye.
The blood caked relic of an old Rupture.
The beast with which she would sow terror in the Amarr, their sympathizers and the Blood Raiders who corrupted her.
Beast she was born, beast she would remain.
“Death is currency,” she said as if mantra. “It is time to pay my due.”