A Big Shiny Blue Marble

***Meet Randi Farber. She's a young woman who's having a hard life and still manages to smile now and then in spite of the things which have happened to her. 0_o

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Book of the Forsaken Part 1

In the ruins of Palmyra, another servant awoke in darkness.

Taken from an almost dead world by the same malefic race which had taught -- and used Dakhete, this servant had been bound by ties placed on her soul and brought here, kept in slumber as insurance -- a weapon to be used if necessary to hopefully destroy their half-Djinn servant, who was a weapon that they had chosen for their purposes.

She'd never been needed and had been largely forgotten. By the time that the last of the masters had thought that he needed her, it was already too late as Dakhete ended his existence.

With the passing of the last one who kept her in her sleep, she'd slowly found herself rising and working her way toward consciousness and it had taken a long time. Even for one such as her.

Most of the building where she'd been kept had fallen in. It took a little effort in her weakness, but she broke the seals which held her and just walked out, a little surprised to be able to do it. She guessed that the seals had been damaged or, ... perhaps they'd faded somehow.

It didn't matter much, she thought, she was free.

But she'd never been a willing servant. Her servitude had been forced upon her and now, standing as weakly as she felt, there were things to do. The first thing was to find some kind of sustenance, and the next thing after that was to try to even begin to remember.

When she had those things in order, then it would be time for her vengeance against those who had imprisoned her.

Her family had been among the last, but that gave no one any right to pluck her out of her life and force her to do the things that she'd done in the name of another race of beings. She didn't know it, but by taking her out of the life that she'd known of scratching to find enough to get her through another day, they'd saved her. She would likely have chosen her death instead, but that choice had never been hers to make from the instant that she'd been taken.

As she walked, half-stumbling, but regaining more of the use of her limbs with each movement, the first thing which came to her was her name and who she'd been.

Rudhi Natheah, she remembered with a little satisfaction as she looked around. Her kind had once ruled their small world and she sought to find the others -- the warm memories helping her to seek, but as she walked further, she felt nothing returned to her. When she'd been brought here, she'd been able to feel them, even as far from her was they were. Now...

Nothing.

Pushing the thought from her, she spotted a few small creatures, rodents of a sort, she guessed, but she was hungry now and so they'd do. She sat down a little heavily in her weakness, leaning against a broken piece of masonry and the activity of the creatures stopped instantly. After a moment where they stood frozen in confusion, they began to approach her slowly. As each one came into the range of her reach, she picked them up and consumed them.

It was only the cruelest turn of capricious fate that had seen her people -- a world of them -- decimate their own numbers in the wars of their world. Because of that, she'd been forced into her servitude, when really, her kind would have easily ruled over the beings which had taken her away had her family been only a little more numerous. After all, her captors had been only blood-drinkers.

Rudhi's kind could do that and sometimes did, but to them, it was only sustenance and it had been rarely done. With nothing in her to sustain her for much longer, she didn't stop at only that, she consumed the creatures completely. After millennia with nothing in her gut, there was pain, but now it was only a way marker on the road to her recovery.

With a little food in her, she sat back for a time, remembering. She didn't know what had happened to cause her to be set free, but she wanted revenge now. When she thought of herself again, she looked at herself from outside of her body and decided that she'd weathered this rather well, considering. She'd never spent any time in the company of humans, barely knowing that they were here and she certainly knew nothing of their lives and how things were measured when one looked at them.

She didn't know it, but to them, she'd appear as a very beautiful female of at most, twenty-one of their years old. Her hair was long and coal black with the barest hint of waviness to it. The eyes which looked out from under her thin eyebrows were pale blue and her skin was a slightly warm alabaster tone in color. The only items of clothing that she wore were the small rings as piercings, one through each nipple and one through her navel to mark her among her kind as belonging to the house of the last rulers.

She decided that nudity wouldn't do for the moment, and so she thought back to the ruin that she'd walked out of not far off and tried to summon her few possessions to her. Nothing came and it confused her for a moment until she remembered that they all lay in her mind where she'd put them so long before to protect them from the passage of time.

With a thought, she wore the thin jeweled black leather collar of her family once more, and there were the thin leather thongs hanging from her nipple rings to indicate that she would one day be the ascendant queen. The thought pained her slightly, now that she knew that she was all that there was, and she wasn't on the world where she'd now have ruled over no one and nothing.

She looked down, feeling the high solid boots which added to her height now and her eye caught the gleaming blades which adorned them. It caused her to remember that she was first and foremost a warrior of the highest house.

She stood up and the thought of her cloak filled her mind for an instant until she felt it billowing around her, dark as night and silently crinkly against her perfect skin. She felt the thin covering over her sex and if she'd known that to many women on this world hundreds of years ago, what she wore as a piece of clothing was nothing more than a piece of underwear which they'd called a thong at the time, she might have laughed a little and nodded.

But she wasn't in the mood for that now.

The small bodice of soft leather hugged and cradled her breasts once more, but it hid nothing -- as was proper where she was from and her eye was drawn to her familial markings, noticing that they'd faded.

Easily repaired, she thought and a moment later, they looked like the honors which they'd been once and a look from outside of herself again pleased her. Rudhi knew nothing of the one on the far side of this world -- a stranger here herself called Ksyusha, but they shared some abilities, and by pure coincidence, they also wore markings on their faces which resembled fangs that ended far down their cheeks, though the style of the markings were very different.

Rudhi knew nothing of this and likely wouldn't have cared a whit if she did. She looked at the back of her right hand.

The jewel was still there, gleaming softly from where it sat embedded into her flesh. With a thought and a movement, her left hand wore her war gauntlet, and she held her long, thin and cruel sword in her right hand. For the first time in a length of time that she was not even cognizant of, Rudhi smiled.

It caused her to look around after a moment as she came to the realization of what must have lain behind her awakening. The ones who'd kept her here were gone -- dead and gone -- and she was left here. She wanted to rage when she'd made the only possible deduction, but found that she couldn't.

What she really had to do was find her way in this place somehow until she'd either found a way to exist here which allowed her to forget or she had to find a way to die. One or the other, and either one would require both time and strength for one choice, weakness for the other. It had taken however long she'd lain here to weaken her. Her own death was out of the question like this, now that she'd eaten even a little.

So she walked for a time in the moonless darkness, stopping when she heard the sounds of a little music. It was strange to her, but she knew what it was and looking around, she saw the wagons of a small group of migrants, pulled around their fires as they ate and drank and sang.

Rudhi wasn't evil -- well not what she would have considered the meaning of the word to mean as it applied to her, but she had begun to remember that she'd had lovers on her world -- two of them, promised to her when they'd all been infants. They'd discovered each other in the wars and had begun between them a little early. Those two males had meant everything to her, but that was long ago and far away now.

She needed something to push the memory back -- something or someone to make her forget that pain for a time. She saw the humans and decided that they were enough like her for what she wanted now.

Rudhi's lovely mouth pulled into a smile again as she looked. She didn't know it right away, but the smile revealed the fangs in her mouth a little. When she caught it, she decided that she ought to hide it for the moment, not knowing anything at all about these creatures.

She now felt several hungers at the same time.

Her gauntlet faded and her blade disappeared as she walked down the slope in the direction of the caravan, a beautiful and barely dressed young woman who approached a little hopefully.

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In the morning, she lay sated -- for the most part, anyway. The humans either stood nearby, those who still could, saying nothing in their nakedness and only waiting to see if they'd be required once again, man or woman - or they lay dead.

She moaned loudly as her orgasm overtook her and a few moments later she decided that it was enough at last so she pushed the last male that she'd decided to use off her and rose to stand. They watched her, thinking little and feeling nothing. She stepped to one young woman and kissed her slowly, with care and a lot of feeling. "Can you understand my thoughts to you?" she asked with her mind so that no particular language was needed.

"Y-yes," she heard in careful reply.

"Good," Rudhi sighed, "For the good of all, you will lead and no one here will interfere. I have made it so. My gift to you all for sharing yourselves with a traveler such as me for a night. With you leading, the right decisions will be made when they are needed. I have given you this for what you have done for me."

She looked around, "These dead ones will need to be seen to. They were either very old or very stupid -- a hindrance to you in any case, and that is why I chose them to feed upon, blood and flesh, since I needed it. With these gifts from you all, I will not need this again for a long time."

"I ask one thing," the young woman said in her thoughts, "Are we to become wampyri now?"

Rudhi looked into her worried eyes, and she saw the fear of things which came in the night and had troubled the sleep of these simple people for generations.

She shook her head, "I see what it is that you fear. I am not like this. There is the dawn and we stand in the full light of it already. I am not dead, my beauty. I was only hungry, and taking my fill this way sates me the fastest."

She walked away then along the pathway, not really thinking about anything and it was her mistake as she was swept up in a cloud of dust and blood and bodies, crazed demonic bodies. For a time, she had to fight to stay clear so that she could see what this was.

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Colorado

He was hunting, but not with any desperation to it or anything. They still had some meat left, but she'd told him that he ought to go and hunt for them, since she was feeling miserable and throwing up more than if she'd consumed something poisonous. He wasn't crazy about the idea, but he could take a hint, so he went.

At the moment, he was working his way along about the mid-slope of a large draw, wondering why he hadn't seen much in the way of wildlife for a little while. He knew that he wasn't the quietest creature in the woods, but he was quiet enough when he was hunting. There was no breeze, so it couldn't be that his scent was warning any of the creatures that he'd normally be looking for.

But then he heard it; something crashing through the trees a little, as though they weren't concerned about disturbing the wildlife or drawing attention to themselves. He stopped to listen and after a moment, he could hear that it was a someone, and that she was crying at least a little. He listened carefully and after a few moments, he saw the motion down the slope from him and a ways ahead.

He stood in some confusion and amazement then. It was a young woman crashing through on her way to the stream which meandered along the bottom of the draw. He didn't want to intrude, but ...

As he eased a little closer, wanting to know a little more and a little hopeful that the reason that she was upset wasn't too bad, he saw it as she came to the edge of the stream and his eyes almost left his head as he watched her. She threw off her coat and then her heavy boots went next as she sobbed, and it came to him then that she was more than upset. The young woman was angry as well.

When she had her pants off and the bottom half of her was bare, she began to hiss from the discomfort and the cold as she washed herself furiously. He'd never seen anything like it. So upset, he thought and he wondered about the cause as he noticed that she was even speaking to no one in particular as she muttered angrily.

He realised that he was intruding and he turned then to be on his way quietly when he heard her cry out and before he'd even turned back to look, he knew that she'd fallen into the stream. He made certain that the safety on his rifle was on and he ran down the slope as fast as he could. As he got to the edge, she was already working her way out, but the freezing cold was sapping her strength severely.

She looked up and he could see that she was in a hell of a bind; in pain from the cold and already upset and whatever reason that she might have had to want to wash herself here had now become a situation which was life-threatening. For all of that, she wasn't happy to see a strange man here with her.

She couldn't even speak, she was so cold, but if she could have managed the words, he had no doubt that she'd tell him to stay the fuck away from her. He reached and grabbed an arm to get her onto the bank. She just began to cry again. He could see that she'd been doing quite a bit of that and that her lip was swollen.

"Stand here," he said as he leaned his rifle against a boulder. He turned back and he had her pants and her boots. "Lean on me," he said as he knelt before her, "You'll get your pants wet, but you need to have something on." She didn't move - other than her now-violent shuddering.

"Lean on me, so I can get your pants on you," he said and it was no request. After a moment, he felt her weight and he helped to get her legs into her pants. Her boots were next and she almost fell, but he stopped her more than once. "Can you stand while I get you your coat?" he asked looking up. The woman nodded, but it was a little hard to tell, she was shaking so much.

He was gone and then back in a flash, helping her into her coat. When he stepped back, she looked so forlorn, small and wet and freezing to death as she shivered. He held up his hand, "I can warm you," he said, "but you'll have to have a little trust because I'm going to hug you then. I promise that I won't harm you or anything. Miss, I don't know where you live, but unless it's even closer than a two minute walk from here, you're dead. This is serious here, do you understand?"

She nodded, or it looked as though she tried to, and she tried to speak as well, but that would have taken more than the life that she had left to say, so he shook his head. "Don't try to speak. I won't hurt you in any way. Just come here and hold onto me for a minute."

She couldn't even do that, so he stepped forward slowly and he took her into his arms. They stood like that for a couple of minutes and then he said, "I need you to close your eyes and if you can do that, I can promise you that you'll feel a lot warmer really quickly and I still won't harm you in any way, but it's going to need your trust, ok?"

He couldn't tell if she was agreeing or not so he just shrugged, "I hope that you can bear this. I really do want to help you."

She noticed that his coat disappeared, along with the rest of his clothing. The young woman was horrified at what she was looking at as the man that she'd thought had found her turned into something which almost made her bladder let go. The only thing which prevented it was the look on his face.

The whole time, whenever she'd looked at him, she'd seen a young and rather handsome man. Considering what she'd been through just over an hour before, any man was about the last person that she wanted to see. But she did see the concern on his face.

That look didn't change, though the face sure did. She'd managed to reach her frozen hands up to hold onto him, but now it wasn't what she wanted. She couldn't feel much with her fingers and hands, but she did notice that the leather of the coat was gone, replaced by fur - warm fur. When he moved a little, she felt the muscles underneath the fur.

She looked up, and the rather longish soft brown hair was now really long and black. The nose was longer because his face was longer and there was a bit of a snout. The mouth that she saw before her was filled with rather long and cruel-looking teeth. She wanted to push herself away, and as she began the motion, she looked a little higher and she saw his ears, long and a little pointed near the tips. His skin had gone from a normal skin tone for a Caucasian to a dark and mottled sort of striped gray, and ... She almost moaned in terror.

He had horns as well.

But the eyes had changed then, and now the ones that she looked into were an incredibly light gray -- nearing white. All of that, she saw, but he still wore the same look of concern for her somehow.

"I'm sorry," he whispered, "I know that you've got to be terrified. That's why I wanted to you close your eyes, but I guess it was too much to ask. I won't hurt you. Just try to hold still."

Her terror was almost complete and she felt her knees want to buckle as she saw and felt his wings move, but an instant later, they were around her and she could feel the beginnings of a great deal of warmth from him as she sheltered inside of them.

She looked up from his large shoulder into his face and he smiled a little weakly.

It took her a few tries, but he knew what she was trying to ask.

"I'm a demon, obviously," he said, "Anyway, if you can manage to believe me a little, I meant what I said. Are you beginning to feel a little warmer now?"

She nodded very slowly, surprised at herself. She didn't know how this was possible, but she was losing her fear of him to a degree. "How far away do you live?" he asked, "If you can have just a little more faith here, I promise to take you there and I won't come back. I just don't want to see you die of cold -- especially knowing that I can prevent it."

To her surprise, she told him in her stuttering, shivering way, wondering why it was that she felt so much better and how something that ripped people up could speak so well and smell so good.

When she'd told him, he nodded, and, slinging his rifle over his shoulder, he picked her up and carried her to her home still as covered by his wings as he could manage it for her. It was only over the top of the rise and about a half a mile after that. When he set her down on her feet, he told her to make certain that she light the stove hot and live next to it for a few days, and to have a really hot bath if she could. He told her to take care of herself and he turned to walk back the way that he'd come.