*
Fire as far as the eye could see, a vision of the past before the past. She was still small and feeble. Fires could wrestle her life away from her at any moment, but she crawled. Or was it he? It wasn't quite clear.
His strength dedicate to his well being, what could have been a foregone conclusion. As if the fire parted for him, the embers lick and torment his flesh. His nerves were long burnt and his remaining instinct told him to crawl forward. It was both dark and bright. The fires were blinding, a dazzling array that represented the passion of life. Who could have noticed it during the festival?
Before he noticed, he no longer felt the ground below his scarred beaten body. He fell. Wind rushes past his ears and the cool night air caused his skin to sting. Swirling bubbles escape his throat and ears, his surroundings were muffled under all that water as splashing obscured any semblance of ambient sound. The big splash barely registers before he struggles to swim. However he was too hurt to do much, eventually even his mind darken and his consciousness slumbers.
***
How many vampires has she killed? She devoured all there was in her path, losing herself too soon to count. Then some missiles dropped, followed by an ear busting reverberation and lung burning heat. Fortunately for her, she wasn't near any particular schools at that time. She was still border hopping, looking for the next prey. Right, if she counted the number of zones then she's passed 5. How many has she eaten? How much blood has she drank? Too much, too much, too much, too much, too much, too much, too much, too much, too much, too much.
If not from the searing heat radiating from those missiles, she might never have regained consciousness again. She had lost herself in gorging her prey, unable to seize a grip on reality. Her head hurts from the overactivity, her mind is catching up to her body. Even so, she felt the same hunger from back then. One different from the living need for satiety, entirely none physical. Destiny? Fate? Too grandiose. It's much simpler than that. Her gut feeling, her survival instincts, something everyone has. It's telling her that the only way to survive is to keep moving forward.
The world is cruel just like back then. A fire of unknown cause could take away everyone she loved. Her previous family was likely lost in that fire. The immense grief that lay deposited in the centre of that fire, stewed and pronounced even more vividly, a deep despair that only burnt ruins could instill in a person's psyche. Her legs stagger, a faint feeling of weightlessness takes grasp of her hips. Forward, one step, two step, she doesn't stop moving. That's all that matters, as long as she reaches the lake at the end, she'll survive.
The lake fairies will bless her once more, she will pick up the hero's mantle and draw the arbiter's rapier. Vampires rise from the shadows, lining the city's centre, a massive crater full of sulfur, ash and destruction. A black rapier materialises in her hands, drawing on the power of vibrations from {Anxiety}, it begins to cleave at the air and particles as it exists. Her magic burns, she has hunted many, she has plenty. This is a small investment for a big profit. Prey coming to her means she can save a lot of energy that would have been expended to approach the prey.
Black Light soars from the edges of her blade, her singular ogre horn burns with a black fire. Her dirty cloak drapes over and conceals her figure. Over here. Is she broadcasting her own existence? Or is it that! The thing that everyone has felt once in their life! When a person sees a super popular idol on television and starts fantasising how it would be like to live their life. Right... It all comes down to Lastia. She doesn't want to be outdone by that damn tree. That's why she too, will evolve at the very centre of a residential zone, 57E.
A black light explodes out of her body, rising rapidly like a pillar from the heavens, piercing the clouds with a heavy low reverberation. The surrounding air trembles and the sky rumbles loudly for all to hear. It sounded like the sky was about to fall with how intense it grew, her body was refining itself in that high energy environment. Impurities are disintegrated, her vital body parts are being reconfigured and forged by the magic.
Vampires swarm the pillar like vultures lunging at prey from the skies. The pillar of black light flashes for a moment like an impedance over a projector, before erupting outwards. The energy crashes into her enemies, before pulling their melted bodies in, absorbing them. The pillar flashes white, the new flood of intake had decimated the remaining vampires leaving roughly 200 in the entire zone.
The zones she left in her wake share similar numbers. She slaughtered a few thousand vampires in total, roughly 5 000. A new Heavenly King is born out of natural evolution. When the pillar let's up, she had not one but two horns on her forehead. Pristine red eyes like glimmering rubies, stock black hair murky as ink. Looking from afar, the blaze of electrical fires illuminate her silhouette, casting a pair of ominous rubies in the dark sea of the abyss.
Black dress with translucent gauze like a mourning bride, but a hiked up skirt with layers of frills like an idol's dress. A jett black rapier is planted in the ground with one palm over the pommel. Search and destroy, {Anxiety}. Using the currently existing vibrations in the air that we call sound, and her monumental increase in magical energy, she receives the location of every vampire Trace in this zone before decapitating them with an air blade. Their magic is sucked our, transmitted by vibrations and brought back, acting as her sustenance.
S grade Aster Keliuvinia, Heavenly King, Fragment. The Usurper of carnage and violence.