BEEP... BEEP... BEEP... SMACK...CRASH...shatter... skitter...bump.
        Pause.
        A halfway conscious groan.
        She sat bolt upright, eyes wide.  "No."
        Tearing the sheets from her body, she leapt to the closet and tore it open, paying no mind to the doorknob as it snapped off with the sheer force of her grasp as she realized... there was no light.  No blue light, no mist, no stars... just a closet.
        Without being aware of it, tears had started coursing down her cheeks.  She couldn't feel them--she couldn't feel much at all.  The word "No" kept echoing repeatedly, filling her mind.  Even as she turned from the closet to stare blindly at the room, her room, she couldn't really see it.  Her legs trembled, her stomach constricted as though it would fling itself out of her body--
        There was no chance.  The fullness of memory, the power of the shock rendering all of her defenses completely meaningless... Shadow was forgotten.  Murdered.  Throat slit, beaten and raped and left for dead.  Memory became reality again; any indication of a breaking point was faded out before it had the chance to occur to the girl left in its absence.
        The door burst open--of course it had, but she was no longer able to understand that much.  Her father.  Mad, raging, insane, and headed straight for her.  He already had a belt wrapped around his fist.  Even before the door was fully open, one of the hinges finally tearing from the splintered wood, he made clear as any fact: "The gun cabinet. Your fingerprints."
        Had Shadow been there, had Shadow only fucking been there--but she wasn't.  Hadn't been created yet, and there was no memory.  Only reality.  Only fact and solid, earthly reality.  The girl that stood there, already almost hollow, could only put an arm up defensively as the first strike came down without warning.
        She turned as the thunderbolt of pain tore through her shoulder, trying to get away--with nowhere to run.  The bed was there, slamming into her knees as another strike--the buckle, this time--found her lower back right through the nightshirt.  She cried out, closed her eyes against the onslaught and the tears shed who knew how any times, and relented early.  Another bright, white hot crash of pain lit her senses and she screamed in hurt, anger, fear, disgust--
        Take it.
        Had... had that been... a voice?  Something speaking to her?
        There wasn't time to work it all out in her already clouded mind before another collision with the belt buckle drew a steady stream from her other shoulder. Take it.  The voice whispered again.
        The girl listened.  Fast learner.  The deep gashes were only aiding this shedding of skin.  She had so little left to lose.  Turning as another strike tore a manageably agonizing chunk, she grasped the belt on the downstroke.  With animalistic reflexes, relying on the instinct that the voice offered, she tugged.  Her father was indeed surprised, even the insanity in his eyes ceasing to glisten for that sparse, shocked moment in time--she used her hold effectively.  The belt left his fist at the same time she wrapped it around her own, and struck with everything she had in her.
        He roared, grasping desperately at the side of his face.  His hand came back bloody--his ear was covered in the redness, a thick scent of tainted blood in the air.  The rage and the madness flooded back in like a tsunami, bigger and more destructive than ever before.
        There was no knowledge that she had incited her own initiation, her own sacrifice and resurrection.  There was just the fist across her face, the belt suddenly wringing her wrists together and forming chafed bloodlines, the sound of his breath, the sound of her heartbeat in her ears, the sound of his zipper, and the unimaginable pain.  Physical, mental, spiritual--oh god, the pain...
        She lost it all.  The skin was abandoned.  The girl was dead. 

        His eyes opened wearily, clumsily, as though he had overslept.  Upon the attempt to focus his vision, however, his head began to pound.  It was all very strange.  Surreal.  Not understood.
        Until he tried to lift a hand to rub the sleep from his eyes.  He cried out sharply with the instant blinding pain that ground through his entire arm.  A sense of fear and frustration washed over him, but he wasn't certain why--
        The footsteps.  They were far away, but he heard them.  And the smell... so much blood...  Blood and metal.  And the footsteps... the pattern, the sound...
        Oh fuck.  Fuck.  No.  NO!  He tried again to raise himself, getting only another debilitating shockwave of pure and total agony through his limbs.  It was only when the dark figure began to approach from the shadows that the full situation grasped him--and then immediately left him stranded and alone.  In a sparking instant, the understanding that this was memory abandoned him to fend for himself.  Memory turned into sheer, brutal reality.
        He whimpered quietly without meaning to, giving the figure before him a slightly more upturned smile of mutated compassion.  His muscles were sore and he could smell his own blood, feel it crusted over himself.  The feeling was so godawful, so intense that he had to turn his head to see why--
        His stomach clenched painfully.  Glistening thin metal, strong and specialized wire, ran in and out of his flesh and into the stone table beneath him.  Not only were his arms pierced randomly every inch or so with the material, but his legs from ankles to thighs suffered the same fate.  Every fucking muscle affected cried out in agony--the stone beneath him was heating up from his own body, no longer keeping the pain cooled and slightly at bay.  Only his torso had been spared the grasp of the metal--a fact that meant nothing as the figure loomed before him with what was clearly an instrument of torture in his hand.  Of what kind...
        "You brought this upon yourself, boy."  The all too kind voice of his Lord, his Master, gently echoed from the stone walls.  "You must never question my decision again."
        He didn't even get the chance to nod, to respond, to promise upon his own flesh, before the promise was ripped from him with the first strike of Aunger's chosen tool.  It was a favorite of his; a whip of twenty-one tails, each tail ending in a metal hook.  A storm of devastating hurt rushed over his chest at each strike, blood only adding to the heat as blow after blow found him.  Regardless of the pain it brought, he couldn't stop his body from trying to pull itself from the stone, pulling already aching muscle against the wire that restrained him, shrieking with the building agony.
        At long last, after an eternity at least, the rain of strikes stopped.  The boy opened his mouth to gasp, to beg for forgiveness, but received only the other end of the whip across his face for his effort.
        "Do not apologize."  The man spoke ever so softly.  "You have paid for your mistake.  And now I shall redeem you."  The whip clattered to the ground.
        His mind so clouded with pain, so programmed with a lifetime of the misery, he only let his head fall back limply.  Eyes closed, gasping, he had only a distant idea of what awaited him.  The pain was not over yet, not by far.  But after that much, what was to come... after that he would be free.  To heal, to learn, to serve his Master again, without fail.  No more failing.  Even when he heard his own voice break from screaming, he promised it--no more failing. 

        "They've used so much energy..."
        "Their minds could be gone."
        "No.  They are not gone.  I can still feel them."
        "Aliyn..."
        "She's right.  It's more than worth the try."
        "Marqueh, I know the two of you have much invested personally in these--"
        "The rest of you should, as well!"
        "Calm down, Aliyn."
        "I will not!  What is wrong with you?  They sacrificed themselves to save us!  All of us!  They were the ones who took on Aunger, knowing what it may come to!  And they're not dead, they're still alive!  Still breathing!  Just trapped in their own minds!  We can draw them out!  We can get them back if we just try.  Certainly there is some way to wake them."
        "...Alright.  You are right.  And, despite my better judgment, I tend to agree with you."
        "They won't disappoint you.  Or any of us."
        "If they wake up--"
        "No.  They must wake up." 

        Stillness.  Pain, and bleeding.  Bleeding from black to red.  From red to tongues of fire.  And from that...
        Oh, fuck.  It hurt.  It hurt so fucking much...  There was blood everywhere.  Almost literally.  She was covered in it, laying in it, smelling of it--her own, mostly.  Sadly.  Baptism by blood, maybe.
        The awakening was slow--not for the girl, but for the entity within.  Almost as a hollow vessel, she sat there, feeling the cold of her own blood, the reeking ache of every strike, and certainly the deathblow...  Shivers.  Shudders.  Stomach convulsions; she just couldn't help it.  So the carpet would need cleaning.  Whatever.  So would her blankets.  Her sheets.  The boxspring, too, probably.
        It was... odd, how there were no tears.  The word "trigger" came to mind, but... that was just weird.  Oh, hell, all of this was weird.
        She grasped her head with the sudden onslaught that hit her mentally--fire.  Burning.  Burning in the brain, burning in the body, in the eyes...  It was as if the hollow shell was being filled with molten soul.
        And then there was this... sound.  "A gentle sound/ Where love breaks down/ It's alright..." flashed unrecognized lyrics across her understanding.  But the sound, the sound itself was... beyond just a hum.  It was a song, radiating in her head, in her consciousness...
        Consciousness?  No, not... quite...  That molten soul was beginning to shift.  A drumbeat slowly came out from under the hum as it happened, rough and dramatic, warm and compelling--and it was rock and roll, all the way.
        She opened her mouth to scream, closing her eyes tightly against another onslaught of distressed memory, incomprehensible, unnatural--awakening.
        "Shadow."
        Oh, god.  What was that?
        "Shadow."
        Sh-shallow?  Sallow?  Sh--
        "Shadow."  She whispered, her eyes opening on their own accord.
        Another race of mental anguish took her--but shattered part way through.  Her eyes opened wider, her senses reawoken.  This was not real.  Thank whatever power of good and right existed; this was not real.  As for what it was...  She listened again, but there were no more voices.  The hum, the drumbeat, were gone.
        But that... that was okay, somehow.  Her fingertips tingled with renewed life, that tingle moving slowly through her whole body like a slow burning blue fire.  The pain was still clear, still as fresh as the day it had actually happened--but she was not there anymore, not really.  And how was she to get out of this situation?
        She stared at the door to her closet.  No, that wasn't right; that wouldn't happen for years, yet.  Her attention turned very slowly to her bedroom door, closed and locked from the outside.  A gentle wave of understanding rushed her from a distant place, a distant time...  "Bingo."  The way to escape was to end this, whatever this was.  And the only way to do that... was to overcome.  It sure as hell wouldn't be like before, though. 

        The stone table had been permanently scarred by his struggles.  As had he--and by other things.  Among a sea of glittering wire fragments, curled up into himself, shivering, shaking, against the wall if only to feel something solid against his back so no one could sneak up behind him...  He knew he had done wrong.  And he knew he deserved the punishment, the pain... but why was he still crying?  They weren't hoarse sobs any longer, just bitter tears.  Maybe that, too, had been part of the punishment.
        It just... it hurt so much.  He was cold and aching, trembling in a puddle of his own blood.  Things like this had happened before; but never quite like it had just then.  He still had some metal piercing his arms, but his stomach just couldn't handle pulling them out.  Not yet.  He'd already lost the contents of his stomach from removing what was left of the metal in his legs--but that didn't seem to stop his body from trying again.  That had been bad enough.  It'd just have to wait, pain or no.
        He curled into himself even tighter to keep all but the silence outside.  That silence, save the occasional dripping of blood from the table to the floor.  Just silence.  Just breath and ache and twilight quiet... and a hum.
        He shivered with that unfamiliar sound.  A... hum?  It was... foreign.  Odd.  And... invading him.  He listened closely for where it was coming from, but understood only that it seemed not to come from any direction in particular.  There was a thought, an odd and unusual one that he had never suffered from before; something almost like "trigger", but... the concept was a little off.  Everything seemed a good deal askew...
        He grunted in a high-pitched whirl of pain as his mind seemed to tear itself apart for a distant moment--here, now, gone, no, memory, illusion, break it, break it, break it--all of his muscles tightened.
        What wa--?  What was to be broken?
        Eyes of fire flooded the vision of his mind's eye.  Another bolt of mental agony rushed in, making him murmur a curse that he never dared speak out loud, even without the presence of his Master.  "Fuck!"
        "Fuck."  One of her favorite words.
        Who?  What?  This... this voice is..?
        The realization of what this was, what he was in, struck him harder than the whip; leaving even deeper of an impression.  This wasn't even real.  Not in the present; it was a searing memory, brought back to life somehow... and how didn't matter.  Why didn't function on any level as important.  He had to get out of it.
        Wincing with the hot and cold pain that sitting up brought him, he tried to control his breathing.  No reason to start whimpering again, now.  He'd have to pull the rest of the wire out, just as he did once before.  And it would be hard.  But there was some... bit of satisfaction underneath it.  This was only memory.  He could follow it out as he remembered--until that moment.  This time... oh yeah.  This time would end very differently. 

        "Are they... is it working?"
        "I don't know, Taerlyn.  The Dragon's Song is only so powerful with the amount of energy we have.  So many have died to protect it before they were captured..."
        "It'll be okay, Ter.  It... it will.  We woke up.  They will, too." 

        So she didn't quite have the ensemble she'd have preferred.  She had enough, though..  The black form-fitting t-shirt worked well, as did the older pair of black jeans worn to gray.  The boots were alright, even if they were a touch large for her.  No matter.  Steel toes would come in useful.
        Feeling a touch on the theatrical side all of a sudden, she drew her katana from its wide-open hiding place, pulling the blade and staring lovingly into its depths.  "I'm pretty sure you don't exist anymore."  She whispered lightheartedly.  But this was not the weapon she needed to end this nightmare.  No, she just couldn't picture it done that way.
        Little matter.  With a deep breath and a supreme readiness that knowing her own name, her real name, could bring... she planted a powerful kick just a little to the side of her doorknob.  At this point, that's all it took to splinter the wood away from all of the locks and off the other hinges. 

        He walked with an almost patient stroll down the hallway to Aunger's chamber.  There was no hurry, he knew the man would be there with a conquest or two.  Granted at this point he actually felt sorry for those girls, but it had already happened.  This was mere memory.  He'd make it an enjoyable one, this time around.
        Turning into the bedchamber, the sight that met him was exact to the reality; Aunger sat in his plush royal couch, a freshly dead young girl laid across his lap.  Another, long since his victim, lay on the edge of the bed, her head hanging over to reveal the black and purple bruises circling her throat.  The dead eyes peered out for help that had never come.
        Even knowing it was no longer real, knowing it was so far into the past and buried under an entirely new life, it chilled him.  He couldn't afford to let it, though.  No, there were things to be done, here and now.
        "Just in time."  Aunger's calm voice beckoned.  "Let me show you what will come most important to you at some later time, boy." 

        "Please.  Let them keep going."
        "Aliyn..."
        "I saw her fingers move.  I know what I saw--look!  You can't say you didn't see his fingers twitch as well!"
        "Maybe so, but..."
        "Uh, S-Sir...  Look.  They're our family, okay?  I know you can relate."
        "Young man, I do not think you should be talking to a member of the Council like--"
        "Oh fuck you, Arunguin."
        "Wh-?!  Aliyn, that was--"
        "Completely called for."
        "Young lady, this is not a human business in the first place--"
        "Cram it, Arun.  I'm a member of the Council, too."
        "Marqu-- I can't believe that you'd be defending something of such a short life span as these--"
        "We'll fight later, Arunguin.  You mustn't interrupt the weavers.  The song will crescendo at any moment.  That will tell the tale.  Not your opinions."
        "Stupid--yeah!"
        "Easy there, Ter." 

        The gun cabinet was just down the hall.  It seemed like forever since she'd been in this house.  It might as well have been, but she still remembered every last crevice.  She'd simply used the key the first time through, but... well, how boring.  The other boot hadn't gotten a chance to kick anything, anyway.  Glass shattered all around her ankle--but she calmly waited until all of the shards had fallen, carefully pulling her foot back without a scratch.  At least she felt a little better.
        Now... pistol or rifle?  Shotgun?  Hm.  Too bad he didn't have an uzi, she'd have liked that.  Well, it had been the pistol then.  May as well be the pistol again.  It was a shitty little thing, but it would suffice.  Ripping a box of bullets open, she loaded it like an expert; she'd only used it once.  Back then.  When memory really was reality.
        Snapping the weapon shut, spinning the barrel... well well.  Had this been real, her father would already be on her again with all the noise she was making.  She supposed the advantage really was hers.  With a patience only halfway sick anticipation could bring, she walked back past her room and down the stairs.  He'd be watching TV, as he had been.  Probably with a beer.  Or hell, maybe with a bit of heroin.  She barely remembered how insane the vices got back then; too much back and forth between substances.  Anything to kill the pain.  She understood that, now; laughable.  Understood, but would never condone.  Clearly.
        He looked up at her, almost surprised.  Yeah, she remembered that, too.  She was true to her memory, shooting him in the right foot.  He yelped, spilling shit all over himself, grasping at the wound.
        This time she was calm.  Collected.  Knowing.  She'd kind of preferred to take him down with a blade, but she'd not dirty even the memory of her katana on his tainted blood.  Memory broke away into a dream reality--she shot him in the other foot.
        A stream of curses broke and flowed along with the crimson.  It was everywhere; couch, carpet, wall, even some on the TV.  Oh he'd have been far more pissed back then if she'd really gotten blood on the TV.
        She waited, staying in place, exactly where she was.  It didn't take long for the adrenaline to overcome the pain as the hulking, albeit scrawny, mass of her father stumbled toward her.
        Two clean shots.  Easy automatic.  One for the right eye, one for the left.  The mass simply fell in front of her, splattering her with taint, with blood, with falseness.
        It wasn't over yet.  She knew that.  One demon destroyed--the second was a dream-step away.  She turned, taking a deep breath of the whole situation.  Gunsmoke, blood, hot metal.  How interesting.  Not halfway as romantic as media made it.  Though this, for what it really was... was satisfying.  Killing the beasts, killing the demons; letting herself live.
        Ah yes, her mother.  When not at work to stay away from the family, she was always in the kitchen... but she never did anything.  She'd just stand there in her drug induced haze and wait for things to do themselves.  Maybe quite literally.
        It didn't seem like she was a cruel woman just to look at her.  In fact, she did stop to take a good look at the memory of her mother before acting.  She was cruel in other ways, though; letting her husband do as he wanted to their daughter.  Lacking support at every angle.  Eating all sorts of mentally suppressive drugs like candy just to get away, because she thought she was crazy.  Wasn't that fucking hilarious?  Her mother thought she was crazy even before she went utterly, thoughtlessly insane.  It was her father that had the bloodline of the fabled hero, that went off he deep end because of it--and her mother that went insane by default.
        Sometimes evil carried.  Spoiled.  Preserved.  The last two bullets found their marks just as quickly in each eye through the back of her head.  The demons were dead, but not forgotten.