{ "submission_id": "235341", "keywords": [ { "keyword_id": "811", "keyword_name": "and", "contributed": "f", "submissions_count": "7349" }, { "keyword_id": "92498", "keyword_name": "ferret.", "contributed": "f", "submissions_count": "2" }, { "keyword_id": "33", "keyword_name": "fox", "contributed": "f", "submissions_count": "248694" }, { "keyword_id": "9251", "keyword_name": "intense", "contributed": "f", "submissions_count": "291" }, { "keyword_id": "11507", "keyword_name": "male/female", "contributed": "f", "submissions_count": "96613" }, { "keyword_id": "326", "keyword_name": "panther", "contributed": "f", "submissions_count": "8331" }, { "keyword_id": "1972", "keyword_name": "play", "contributed": "f", "submissions_count": "4477" }, { "keyword_id": "5186", "keyword_name": "rhino", "contributed": "f", "submissions_count": "2127" }, { "keyword_id": "3470", "keyword_name": "stoat", "contributed": "f", "submissions_count": "2344" }, { "keyword_id": "20", "keyword_name": "sword", "contributed": "f", "submissions_count": "10184" }, { "keyword_id": "268", "keyword_name": "tiger", "contributed": "f", "submissions_count": "39089" }, { "keyword_id": "92499", "keyword_name": "violence.", "contributed": "f", "submissions_count": "3" }, { "keyword_id": "164", "keyword_name": "wolf", "contributed": "f", "submissions_count": "194039" } ], "hidden": "f", "scraps": "f", "favorite": "f", "favorites_count": "0", "create_datetime": "2012-04-26 19:18:13.29356+00", "create_datetime_usertime": "26 Apr 2012 21:18 CEST", "last_file_update_datetime": "2012-04-26 19:08:35.874728+00", "last_file_update_datetime_usertime": "26 Apr 2012 21:08 CEST", "username": "Arious", "user_id": "22275", "user_icon_file_name": null, "user_icon_url_large": null, "user_icon_url_medium": null, "user_icon_url_small": null, "file_name": "302035_Arious_shadow_sword.rtf", "file_url_full": "https://nl1.ib.metapix.net/files/full/302/302035_Arious_shadow_sword.rtf", "file_url_screen": "https://nl1.ib.metapix.net/files/screen/302/302035_Arious_shadow_sword.rtf", "file_url_preview": "https://nl1.ib.metapix.net/files/preview/302/302035_Arious_shadow_sword.rtf", "files": [ { "file_id": "302035", "file_name": "302035_Arious_shadow_sword.rtf", "file_url_full": "https://nl1.ib.metapix.net/files/full/302/302035_Arious_shadow_sword.rtf", "file_url_screen": "https://nl1.ib.metapix.net/files/screen/302/302035_Arious_shadow_sword.rtf", "file_url_preview": "https://nl1.ib.metapix.net/files/preview/302/302035_Arious_shadow_sword.rtf", "mimetype": "text/rtf", "submission_id": "235341", "user_id": "22275", "submission_file_order": "0", "full_size_x": null, "full_size_y": null, "screen_size_x": null, "screen_size_y": null, "preview_size_x": null, "preview_size_y": null, "initial_file_md5": "40c8fccdfc78b1dde989631967ca2e31", "full_file_md5": "40c8fccdfc78b1dde989631967ca2e31", "large_file_md5": "", "small_file_md5": "", "thumbnail_md5": "", "deleted": "f", "create_datetime": "2012-04-26 19:08:35.874728+00", "create_datetime_usertime": "26 Apr 2012 21:08 CEST" } ], "pools": [ { "pool_id": "7220", "name": "Short Stories", "description": "This is going to be an area for short stories, written, not picture based.", "count": "5", "submission_left_submission_id": "174139", "submission_left_file_name": "223918_Arious_rimshot.rtf" } ], "description": "A story of assassins, and something much more....", "description_bbcode_parsed": "A story of assassins, and something much more....", "writing": "[u][center]Shadow Sword[/center][/u]\n\n The swiftly moving blade was dark as midnight without a moon. The wielder was a shadow herself. Her fur was pristine and clean. No matter how clean it was both it and her clothing were of the same midnight shade as her dark blade. The ebony blade bit swiftly into the back of the patrolling guard. Not a sound escaped the his lips as her other hand brought the second black blade up, around and over the guards throat ending any chance of him calling for help. The lithe panther twitched her ears and listened to the silence as she pulled the red furred fox into the shadows after sheathing the dagger her sword still positioned deeply into the guard she now laid face first behind the boxes she had been using for cover. She placed her foot firmly against his back and jerked her blade free of his corpse. Beside his body laid those of the other three sentries. Each had been killed in nearly the identical fashion. The lethally sharp dagger had swiftly sliced through their throats. The deadly blade of the sword had entered through their backs and sliced through the center of their hearts. The Panther held her shaking breath as she cleaned the blade on the tunic of her latest victim. She sheathed the sword from below, the handle locking in place even with her waist as the dark blade slid upward into the scarab. Her ears listened to the darkness as her startling scarlet eyes closed and those dainty ears twitched to the sounds of possible movement. The blade increased her senses as she ran her fingers along the handle. Each sound was magnified by the blood lust it produced in her. The magnified sounds told her this had been the last guard walking the yard. This left only the guard standing in the darkened doorway.\n\n Felicia opened her Scarlet eyes to the darkness around her. Her whiskers twitched as her eyes moved back and forth adjusting to the darkness. In the back of her mind replayed the event that led to her becoming a stone cold killing machine. Before the sword she had been an angel. Before the sword she had been a victim as her village burned around her and the monsters had savaged her young body. The sword, the dagger, they were both a legacy from her father. In some ways they had been his best creation, in other ways his very worst. Felicia took them after she had been raped, grasping their handles from the forge fires and plunging deeply into the body of her rapist. She now loathed killing, but at the same time the souls of her victims fed and nourished her through the power of the dark blades. Her father was never an evil man, he had been an honest mage smith doing his job earnestly and his work helped the village to thrive because his weapons and the power they held gave the village prosperity. In wielding the blades she had bonded with the special commission. After the blood flowed freely with her wounds healing swiftly Felicia dropped the blood soaked blades in horror. The cloud of villains had ridden away; bodies filled the street, friends, loved ones, parents, and neighbors. The bodies of many, some unknown in strange armor hacked and slashed by one of their own victims. Her mind cleared and she sat on her knees next to the man she knew as father. The blades were on the ground next to the forge, the handles shaped but unattached. The streets were beginning to stink of the blood and carnage.\n\n Felicia didn’t recall how long she sat there in the fetid stink of the dead. When next her mind had cleared the woman was there. Unlike members of the village, the tribe she had known all her days. This woman white furred, spotted in her coat. She too was feline in nature, her cross slit eyes silver in tint. It had been the second time she had seen this silent ghost cat. The silver eyed feline looked behind the young Felicia seeing the ebony blades blood drenched on the ground then looked to the dead eyed child sitting by their maker before her.\n\n “Did they work well for you little one?” Her eyes were direct, open, but blunt as her words.\n\n “Well enough since I’m living mum.” She looked away as she continued, “I know we weren’t meant to use them, but I weren’t given much of a choice. Couldn’t reach anything else and we had a might trouble.”\n\n “You did indeed little one, but those were never meant for me anyway lass. Their owner hadn’t been chosen yet until now. They won’t answer another’s call so you’re in my service it seems.” Her silvered eyes never left Felicia as the two talked in the stink and death of the mass grave that had once been her home.\n\n “What service do you need of a young girl like me my lady?” She still couldn’t look up. The rotted smell of those she knew and didn’t know still filled her senses, the sensations of almost orgasmic pleasure brought forth by the power of the blade still echoed off of the walls of her mind mixing with the sounds of the ghost white tigress before her.\n\n “Why the service of the shadows, their weapons have called to you, a debt is owed and it cannot be released until the balance is evened.” The ghost feline, no, the tigress finally looked away from her and at all the bodies lying around them. Some houses of the village were shambles or burned out wrecks. “This is the reason my kind exist little one.” She looked directly into Felicia’s eyes again, those silver eyes burning into her skin with that steady glance. “We shadows are avengers and the blades have chosen you to be the deliverer of that hidden justice. Before you can be allowed to part from their power you must first avenge your loss”\n\n The words still echoed in her mind as she returned to the present. That was the first day of the horror her life had become. After a while Felicia had finally lost count of how many she had killed for the revenge of her village. Each step on that cycle of revenge had been a step down further and further into the decrepit darkness she might never raise from. Ghost, for that was the only name the tigress ever seemed to have, trained her to use the weapons and their power from that day. Her hands were soiled in the blood of her enemies. Her soul soiled in the rape and murder she was the only one to survive. Ghost trained her for 7 years before she had finally died after passing on all she knew. During that time she had met other shadows in service as she was other avengers of different wrongs who each traded information on different searches others were doing; she even came across more information on her own search. One day Ghost sat before her smiling as she woke up from that night’s sleep. She sat and smiled sweetly never leaving her position.\n\n Felicia looked into Ghost’s eyes that morning and got out of her bed. The moment Felicia left the bed Ghost simply collapsed backward. Her breathing ragged but soft. “The others who committed your crime are gone now little one. Only one remains, but others guard his steps lass. Others guard his steps. I’ve taught you all I know and now the choice is before you. Use the shadows, know the night, be the moon deep in the sky. My daughter we are not meant to live in the bright daylight; our world is the night. Otter’s Mill is four day’s ride from here. Outside that small town is the castle of a rich noble who is nothing of the kind. Kendar Orlask, may his ferret heart rot, is the one who took your innocence. Kendar employed the raiders that took your family simply to remove your father from business. All of those dead just to kill your bloodline. The blades will guide your path, but, it is your choice in the end to follow it.” She breathed deeply a final time then the breath slowly left as her lungs exhaled and kept emptying till nothing was left. Her body burned on a pyre later that same day and after preparing her few things Felicia continued on to Otter’s Mill alone.\n\n Felicia looked at the dead bodies of the four guards before her on the ground and sighed. She was tired of all the killing that had led up to this moment. One guard was left just in front of the doors to the keep. His ears were moving independently as they listened to the sounds of the night. Unlike the others he was a wolf instead of a fox. None of this really mattered. The dagger flying toward him was missed entirely as he yawned with exhaustion. The ebony dagger buried itself deep into his throat. The end of the blade struck deep into the bones of his spine after sinking in sideways slashing across both jugulars. His well muscled body dropped like a sack of stones tumbling and clattering with the weight of his armor. Felicia came forward out of the darkness and collected her dagger. She remembered his face, the beast that killed her father before she had been raped. This was definitely and without a doubt the place. She cleared her throat collecting gooey slime at the back of her throat, swirled it in her mouth and spit the mess on his dead body. She looked at the door closely, shook her head then grabbed the body and moved it over to where the other four were. There she opened her pack and pulled out a small oil container, a smoke bulb, and wire cutters. Heading silently back to the door Felicia began going over the entrance step by step. She greased the dry joints in the door, ran smoke along the edges then snipped the tripwires and alarms around the entrance. She steadily worked the oil into the joints then checked to see if the door was actually locked. It’s never that easy; the door was locked, looking into the key mechanism to see what she would need to pick it open she could see the gleam of magic.\n\n Shaking her head Felicia went back to the body of the wolf that had guarded the door. Looking over his things Felicia used her sight to find the key to the locks. She looked over the spell in her vision looking for key words to the spell and found nothing. Just the one item, it was a single key that couldn’t be duplicated or bypassed to open a door. She then opened her pack near the bodies again and looked deep into it, her eyes adjusted to the darkness she picked out a series of dark bundles that each was a small ball. With these she took out other items as well. Plastic wads and fuses of a strange shape/smell. With the putty she also took out a mage spelled sparker. With the new items she headed back to the door. First she opened the lock but kept the door closed. She placed the plastic at six different locations and set the fuses in place. She prepped the darkness bulbs then stopped thinking. She checked over her weapons and pulled out the throwing stars dipped in nightshade. Looking inside the lock again she could see shadows moving inside the room. There was no way she could enter the house as silently as she had killed the outside guards. No reason this had to be silent at this point. It was finally down to the final moments and there was no way this was going to end quietly. Did Felicia really have any choice at this point? The loud noise of the dying wolf hitting the ground, clattering armor thumping against the stone porch had alerted those inside waiting. Felicia had no doubts. She lit the fuses and swiftly ran away from the entrance. As the double doors exploded, splinters were flying, the door shredding into the house and impaling several of the waiting guards she turned and cast the first bulb from her left hand. Darkness spread, tainting the room in shadows. She followed the bulb with a backhand flung throwing star that pierced the veil of shadows taking a guard in the night. As she rolled forward two more throwing stars materialized in her paws as she threw them into the darkened space before her. Felicia pulled out and threw two more stars as she moved left, another pair as she moved right. A singular star and another darkness bulb went flying into the hallway as she moved closer and threw another pair of stars into the blinding, all consuming shadows. The pitch blackness swallowed each flying weapon and she drew ever closer. Her eyes remained wide open, scarlet pits of pumping blood looking into the mage marked emptiness and throwing toward the sounds only she could hearing, the infinitesimal movements of the living and dying in her personal storm of eternal night. The last heartbeat in the hallway silenced. Words left her mouth in an unknown tongue and she was surrounded, her body simply part of a background now unseen, invisible to all around as she allowed the darkness to lift. Blood soaked the hallway.\n\n Sixteen Lemming warriors lay dead in their own blood as it pooled around them. It was the bounty of a life in murder lying before her eyes. How many more would die this night? She stood there looking at the bodies and waited for several minutes. The moment she moved the veil would lift and she would be visible again. She focused her hearing near the entrance to that door; the smell of all the fresh blood tainted the air with a copper tang that tickled the back of her throat. The adrenalin pumped swiftly through her veins making her heart beat ever so faster. The pressure of her swiftly beating heart racing in her chest increased her hearing. She could hear the few occupants near the entrance inside the building. In her mind Felicia built a picture of the heartbeats in the house, the rooms echoing around them gave her the dimensions and locations as she drew her ebony blades and began moving into the house at last. As she entered the hall her sword aimed downward slashing off the head of a lemming guard playing possum. His body jerked and spasmmed as she flipped in mid air the dagger launching from her hand across into a side passage. Her body followed after it, her well sculpted figure moved as if with a mind all its own. Her hand shot out yanking her dagger from the figure pinned to the wall. The weasel dropped as the blood oozed from his throat. \n\n Before her was a darkened set of stairs. She lithely slipped into the shadows and continued moving ever upward. She sheathed the dagger again as she kept the sword free in her hand. With the other hand she pulled out another Shuriken flinging it into the back of another rodent guard. She pulled another star throwing it into the shadows on the second floor. The shuriken bounced off the armored form of a massive Rhino warrior. As he came into the main hallway swinging his massive battleaxe Felicia dodged aside aiming the blade of her sword for the weak points in his natural armor. Her blade bit into his throat, her sword sticking into the armor joints. Her dagger came free almost of its own will flying across the hall and into the body of the stoat coming out of the other hall of the intersection. Holding onto the handle with both hands Felicia levered her entire body upward kicking firmly against his jaw with both feet and using the pressure of the kick to yank her blade free. She hit the ground shoulder first, bunching and rolling across to the stoat as the hyena guard opened a door and went on the attack. She swung her legs in an arc along the floor taking his legs out from under him and plunging the newly reacquired dagger hilt deep into his furred chest. Pulling the dagger free Felicia scanned the area with her senses. She could only hear one last final heart beating in the rooms around her. Closing her eyes Felicia traced that last sound. The racing heart was frantic, beating irregularly at an increased rate and full of fear. It was the heart of a ferret, the only ferret this festering pit had in it, Kendar Orlask. \n\n Fear was like a solid cloak worn by Kendar. There was no sound coming from the other side of the door, Jacobs; his personal hyena guard had left the room only moments before. What sort of monster had been unleashed in his home? Had one of the many members of the people he had wronged in his long criminal life finally caught up to him in this new life he had created? The fear was so bad Kendar was actually wetting himself, the stink mixed with the stench of fear making it all the more palpable. Outside the door he heard a scraping sound, a scritch, a scratch, a slight scrape, then silence, that horrid fearful silence that filled the room since the explosion at the front of the keep.\n\n Listening at the door the hyena had come bursting out of Felicia could hear the beating heart beyond the door. She had gone through the rest of the keep checking it room by room and no other sounds or fighters had drawn her attention. By the power of the blades she knew her final enemy lay in this last room. Felicia dropped a darkness bulb outside the door, opened it, and slipped in closing the door behind her. She quickly whispered the invisibility incantation and stood expectantly some feet to the left of the door. \n\n She spoke in the smallest whisper of a voice, “Death has come for you.”\n\n He jerked like he had been stabbed and nearly fell over backward, “What was that, who are you?” He back peddled away from the door, away from the voice in the dark.\n\n “I am your past, crimes committed by your hands, evils done in the darkness of your soul. Now is the time of payment for your deeds.” She looked at this monster that had murdered her life. The sword gripped tightly in her hand, the dagger gripped tightly in the other. This was the moment of her last revenge and even though this had to be done her heart was no longer fully in it. The constant bloodletting had soiled her hands, her heart, and her soul. This was the final killing in a long line of revenge that had spawned death several years now. \n\n “Is, is my daughter still alive then?” The words were like a stab to her heart as they passed his trembling lips.\n\n “She isn’t part of this; I am from your past, not hers.” Felicia almost sighed the words as her eyes kept a constant watch on every move the ferret made.\n\n “Then do it, I only ask that you keep her safe. I’ve tried so hard to come to grips with the horrors I committed, the things I’ve had done over the years. I earned this death, but Tracy is an innocent. Please care for her and make sure she never becomes like me.” He lowered his head waiting for the final blow.\n\n Stepping out of the spell of shadows Felicia looked at the tormentor of her youth and felt only pity. The anger and revenge wasn’t in her anymore but duty was. She approached the crouched ferret looking at the sadness in his eyes. “I’ll take care of your young one and give her all that was taken from me. You had my family murdered Kendar, you had me raped. I’ll do all I can to keep her from being like you.”\n\n Kendar looked up into her scarlet eyes in understanding, the fear gone at last, resignation and acceptance taking its place. “Your father, I remember, the mage smith. Those were dark days, stupid days. If any had to find me I’d rather it was you if no others. I did you the greatest wrong and your revenge is just. I only ask you keep your word, Tracy will never remember me, her mother died in her birth just a month ago. Raise her and warn her from my path that is all I ask.” A nod came from those startling blood filled eyes. He watched as the dark goddess before him placed the tip of the dagger gently against his chest. Timidly he placed his hands over hers and pulled the blade into himself as she pushed. \nHis fingers clinched around her wrist as the blade seemed to pull something out of her.\n\n The shadows condensed becoming darker as the light coalesced around her. The black of her fur seemed to pull out of her moving along the dagger into the brown fur of his body removing and replacing the brown with the black of his heart until this last minute of his life. The black drained from her fur as it became a silver/white color. Her eyes shifted in color changing from the crimson filled scarlet she had been born with and draining into a sky blue tinged in gold specs. He looked up into the wonder before him as life seeped out of him, as the darkness filled his vision and the silver panther tenderly laid him down he whispered two simple words, “Thank you.”\n\n Behind Felicia light gathered, she turned feeling some familiar behind her. “Well daughter, you chose a path, will you keep your word?” The form of Ghost stood behind her slightly off the ground, her body ethereal. The wall behind her form visible behind her, that sad smile crossed her lips as she looked at her old friend.\n\n “His daughter isn’t my enemy, he was. I’ll try to keep her an innocent; I’ll make sure she knows what he was, and how he accepted the terms of what he had created. I choose life, but I will protect the innocent with death, much as you have done.” Ghost finally smiled at her.\n\n “Then your name is not Felicia anymore. You are Ghost my child, live as an avenger, die in honor when that day finally comes and be the protector and teacher you have grown into being.” The old Ghost slowly vanished as her young daughter slowly rose cleaning the dagger blade on the dead body before her.\n\n Her ears twitched responding to the sound of the living child in the side room lying in her crib. She tenderly wrapped the ferret child in her warm blankets and prepared a pack of belongings to care for her with. She wore her ebony blades in pride as she gathered her pack from its hiding place out in the yard. Felicia, no, Ghost now, took up their belongings and carried the poor orphan ferret away with her into the night. She would keep her promise and protect Tracy until she too could become an avenger. She would keep her word and make sure the lass would never be like her father.\n", "writing_bbcode_parsed": "
Shadow Sword


     The swiftly moving blade was dark as midnight without a moon.  The wielder was a shadow herself.  Her fur was pristine and clean.  No matter how clean it was both it and her clothing were of the same midnight shade as her dark blade.  The ebony blade bit swiftly into the back of the patrolling guard.  Not a sound escaped the his lips as her other hand brought the second black blade up, around and over the guards throat ending any chance of him calling for help.  The lithe panther twitched her ears and listened to the silence as she pulled the red furred fox into the shadows after sheathing the dagger her sword still positioned deeply into the guard she now laid face first behind the boxes she had been using for cover.  She placed her foot firmly against his back and jerked her blade free of his corpse.  Beside his body laid those of the other three sentries.  Each had been killed in nearly the identical fashion.  The lethally sharp dagger had swiftly sliced through their throats.  The deadly blade of the sword had entered through their backs and sliced through the center of their hearts.  The Panther held her shaking breath as she cleaned the blade on the tunic of her latest victim.  She sheathed the sword from below, the handle locking in place even with her waist as the dark blade slid upward into the scarab.  Her ears listened to the darkness as her startling scarlet eyes closed and those dainty ears twitched to the sounds of possible movement.  The blade increased her senses as she ran her fingers along the handle.  Each sound was magnified by the blood lust it produced in her.  The magnified sounds told her this had been the last guard walking the yard.  This left only the guard standing in the darkened doorway.

     Felicia opened her Scarlet eyes to the darkness around her.  Her whiskers twitched as her eyes moved back and forth adjusting to the darkness.  In the back of her mind replayed the event that led to her becoming a stone cold killing machine.  Before the sword she had been an angel.  Before the sword she had been a victim as her village burned around her and the monsters had savaged her young body.  The sword, the dagger, they were both a legacy from her father.  In some ways they had been his best creation, in other ways his very worst.  Felicia took them after she had been raped, grasping their handles from the forge fires and plunging deeply into the body of her rapist.  She now loathed killing, but at the same time the souls of her victims fed and nourished her through the power of the dark blades.  Her father was never an evil man, he had been an honest mage smith doing his job earnestly and his work helped the village to thrive because his weapons and the power they held gave the village prosperity.  In wielding the blades she had bonded with the special commission.  After the blood flowed freely with her wounds healing swiftly Felicia dropped the blood soaked blades in horror.  The cloud of villains had ridden away; bodies filled the street, friends, loved ones, parents, and neighbors.  The bodies of many, some unknown in strange armor hacked and slashed by one of their own victims.  Her mind cleared and she sat on her knees next to the man she knew as father.  The blades were on the ground next to the forge, the handles shaped but unattached.  The streets were beginning to stink of the blood and carnage.

     Felicia didn’t recall how long she sat there in the fetid stink of the dead.  When next her mind had cleared the woman was there.  Unlike members of the village, the tribe she had known all her days.  This woman white furred, spotted in her coat.  She too was feline in nature, her cross slit eyes silver in tint.  It had been the second time she had seen this silent ghost cat.  The silver eyed feline looked behind the young Felicia seeing the ebony blades blood drenched on the ground then looked to the dead eyed child sitting by their maker before her.

     “Did they work well for you little one?”  Her eyes were direct, open, but blunt as her words.

     “Well enough since I’m living mum.”  She looked away as she continued, “I know we weren’t meant to use them, but I weren’t given much of a choice.  Couldn’t reach anything else and we had a might trouble.”

     “You did indeed little one, but those were never meant for me anyway lass.  Their owner hadn’t been chosen yet until now.  They won’t answer another’s call so you’re in my service it seems.”  Her silvered eyes never left Felicia as the two talked in the stink and death of the mass grave that had once been her home.

     “What service do you need of a young girl like me my lady?”  She still couldn’t look up.  The rotted smell of those she knew and didn’t know still filled her senses, the sensations of almost orgasmic pleasure brought forth by the power of the blade still echoed off of the walls of her mind mixing with the sounds of the ghost white tigress before her.

     “Why the service of the shadows, their weapons have called to you, a debt is owed and it cannot be released until the balance is evened.”  The ghost feline, no, the tigress finally looked away from her and at all the bodies lying around them.  Some houses of the village were shambles or burned out wrecks.  “This is the reason my kind exist little one.”  She looked directly into Felicia’s eyes again, those silver eyes burning into her skin with that steady glance.  “We shadows are avengers and the blades have chosen you to be the deliverer of that hidden justice.  Before you can be allowed to part from their power you must first avenge your loss”

     The words still echoed in her mind as she returned to the present.  That was the first day of the horror her life had become.  After a while Felicia had finally lost count of how many she had killed for the revenge of her village.  Each step on that cycle of revenge had been a step down further and further into the decrepit darkness she might never raise from.  Ghost, for that was the only name the tigress ever seemed to have, trained her to use the weapons and their power from that day.  Her hands were soiled in the blood of her enemies.  Her soul soiled in the rape and murder she was the only one to survive.  Ghost trained her for 7 years before she had finally died after passing on all she knew.  During that time she had met other shadows in service as she was other avengers of different wrongs who each traded information on different searches others were doing; she even came across more information on her own search.  One day Ghost sat before her smiling as she woke up from that night’s sleep.  She sat and smiled sweetly never leaving her position.

     Felicia looked into Ghost’s eyes that morning and got out of her bed.  The moment Felicia left the bed Ghost simply collapsed backward.  Her breathing ragged but soft.  “The others who committed your crime are gone now little one.  Only one remains, but others guard his steps lass.  Others guard his steps.  I’ve taught you all I know and now the choice is before you.  Use the shadows, know the night, be the moon deep in the sky.  My daughter we are not meant to live in the bright daylight; our world is the night.  Otter’s Mill is four day’s ride from here.  Outside that small town is the castle of a rich noble who is nothing of the kind.  Kendar Orlask, may his ferret heart rot, is the one who took your innocence.  Kendar employed the raiders that took your family simply to remove your father from business.  All of those dead just to kill your bloodline.  The blades will guide your path, but, it is your choice in the end to follow it.”  She breathed deeply a final time then the breath slowly left as her lungs exhaled and kept emptying till nothing was left.  Her body burned on a pyre later that same day and after preparing her few things Felicia continued on to Otter’s Mill alone.

     Felicia looked at the dead bodies of the four guards before her on the ground and sighed.  She was tired of all the killing that had led up to this moment.  One guard was left just in front of the doors to the keep.  His ears were moving independently as they listened to the sounds of the night.  Unlike the others he was a wolf instead of a fox.  None of this really mattered.  The dagger flying toward him was missed entirely as he yawned with exhaustion.  The ebony dagger buried itself deep into his throat.  The end of the blade struck deep into the bones of his spine after sinking in sideways slashing across both jugulars.  His well muscled body dropped like a sack of stones tumbling and clattering with the weight of his armor.  Felicia came forward out of the darkness and collected her dagger.  She remembered his face, the beast that killed her father before she had been raped.  This was definitely and without a doubt the place.  She cleared her throat collecting gooey slime at the back of her throat, swirled it in her mouth and spit the mess on his dead body.  She looked at the door closely, shook her head then grabbed the body and moved it over to where the other four were.  There she opened her pack and pulled out a small oil container, a smoke bulb, and wire cutters.  Heading silently back to the door Felicia began going over the entrance step by step.  She greased the dry joints in the door, ran smoke along the edges then snipped the tripwires and alarms around the entrance.  She steadily worked the oil into the joints then checked to see if the door was actually locked.  It’s never that easy; the door was locked, looking into the key mechanism to see what she would need to pick it open she could see the gleam of magic.

     Shaking her head Felicia went back to the body of the wolf that had guarded the door.  Looking over his things Felicia used her sight to find the key to the locks.  She looked over the spell in her vision looking for key words to the spell and found nothing.  Just the one item, it was a single key that couldn’t be duplicated or bypassed to open a door.  She then opened her pack near the bodies again and looked deep into it, her eyes adjusted to the darkness she picked out a series of dark bundles that each was a small ball.  With these she took out other items as well.  Plastic wads and fuses of a strange shape/smell.  With the putty she also took out a mage spelled sparker.  With the new items she headed back to the door.  First she opened the lock but kept the door closed.  She placed the plastic at six different locations and set the fuses in place.  She prepped the darkness bulbs then stopped thinking.  She checked over her weapons and pulled out the throwing stars dipped in nightshade.  Looking inside the lock again she could see shadows moving inside the room.  There was no way she could enter the house as silently as she had killed the outside guards.  No reason this had to be silent at this point.  It was finally down to the final moments and there was no way this was going to end quietly.  Did Felicia really have any choice at this point?  The loud noise of the dying wolf hitting the ground, clattering armor thumping against the stone porch had alerted those inside waiting.  Felicia had no doubts.  She lit the fuses and swiftly ran away from the entrance.  As the double doors exploded, splinters were flying, the door shredding into the house and impaling several of the waiting guards she turned and cast the first bulb from her left hand.  Darkness spread, tainting the room in shadows.  She followed the bulb with a backhand flung throwing star that pierced the veil of shadows taking a guard in the night.  As she rolled forward two more throwing stars materialized in her paws as she threw them into the darkened space before her.  Felicia pulled out and threw two more stars as she moved left, another pair as she moved right.  A singular star and another darkness bulb went flying into the hallway as she moved closer and threw another pair of stars into the blinding, all consuming shadows.  The pitch blackness swallowed each flying weapon and she drew ever closer.  Her eyes remained wide open, scarlet pits of pumping blood looking into the mage marked emptiness and throwing toward the sounds only she could hearing, the infinitesimal movements of the living and dying in her personal storm of eternal night.  The last heartbeat in the hallway silenced.  Words left her mouth in an unknown tongue and she was surrounded, her body simply part of a background now unseen, invisible to all around as she allowed the darkness to lift.  Blood soaked the hallway.

     Sixteen Lemming warriors lay dead in their own blood as it pooled around them.  It was the bounty of a life in murder lying before her eyes.  How many more would die this night?  She stood there looking at the bodies and waited for several minutes.  The moment she moved the veil would lift and she would be visible again.  She focused her hearing near the entrance to that door; the smell of all the fresh blood tainted the air with a copper tang that tickled the back of her throat.  The adrenalin pumped swiftly through her veins making her heart beat ever so faster.  The pressure of her swiftly beating heart racing in her chest increased her hearing.  She could hear the few occupants near the entrance inside the building.  In her mind Felicia built a picture of the heartbeats in the house, the rooms echoing around them gave her the dimensions and locations as she drew her ebony blades and began moving into the house at last.  As she entered the hall her sword aimed downward slashing off the head of a lemming guard playing possum.  His body jerked and spasmmed as she flipped in mid air the dagger launching from her hand across into a side passage.  Her body followed after it, her well sculpted figure moved as if with a mind all its own.  Her hand shot out yanking her dagger from the figure pinned to the wall.  The weasel dropped as the blood oozed from his throat.  

     Before her was a darkened set of stairs.  She lithely slipped into the shadows and continued moving ever upward.  She sheathed the dagger again as she kept the sword free in her hand.  With the other hand she pulled out another Shuriken flinging it into the back of another rodent guard.  She pulled another star throwing it into the shadows on the second floor.  The shuriken bounced off the armored form of a massive Rhino warrior.  As he came into the main hallway swinging his massive battleaxe Felicia dodged aside aiming the blade of her sword for the weak points in his natural armor.  Her blade bit into his throat, her sword sticking into the armor joints.  Her dagger came free almost of its own will flying across the hall and into the body of the stoat coming out of the other hall of the intersection.  Holding onto the handle with both hands Felicia levered her entire body upward kicking firmly against his jaw with both feet and using the pressure of the kick to yank her blade free.  She hit the ground shoulder first, bunching and rolling across to the stoat as the hyena guard opened a door and went on the attack.  She swung her legs in an arc along the floor taking his legs out from under him and plunging the newly reacquired dagger hilt deep into his furred chest.  Pulling the dagger free Felicia scanned the area with her senses.  She could only hear one last final heart beating in the rooms around her.  Closing her eyes Felicia traced that last sound.  The racing heart was frantic, beating irregularly at an increased rate and full of fear.  It was the heart of a ferret, the only ferret this festering pit had in it, Kendar Orlask.  

     Fear was like a solid cloak worn by Kendar.  There was no sound coming from the other side of the door, Jacobs; his personal hyena guard had left the room only moments before.  What sort of monster had been unleashed in his home?  Had one of the many members of the people he had wronged in his long criminal life finally caught up to him in this new life he had created?  The fear was so bad Kendar was actually wetting himself, the stink mixed with the stench of fear making it all the more palpable.  Outside the door he heard a scraping sound, a scritch, a scratch, a slight scrape, then silence, that horrid fearful silence that filled the room since the explosion at the front of the keep.

     Listening at the door the hyena had come bursting out of Felicia could hear the beating heart beyond the door.  She had gone through the rest of the keep checking it room by room and no other sounds or fighters had drawn her attention.  By the power of the blades she knew her final enemy lay in this last room.  Felicia dropped a darkness bulb outside the door, opened it, and slipped in closing the door behind her.  She quickly whispered the invisibility incantation and stood expectantly some feet to the left of the door.  

     She spoke in the smallest whisper of a voice, “Death has come for you.”

     He jerked like he had been stabbed and nearly fell over backward, “What was that, who are you?”  He back peddled away from the door, away from the voice in the dark.

     “I am your past, crimes committed by your hands, evils done in the darkness of your soul.  Now is the time of payment for your deeds.”  She looked at this monster that had murdered her life.  The sword gripped tightly in her hand, the dagger gripped tightly in the other.  This was the moment of her last revenge and even though this had to be done her heart was no longer fully in it.  The constant bloodletting had soiled her hands, her heart, and her soul.  This was the final killing in a long line of revenge that had spawned death several years now.  

     “Is, is my daughter still alive then?”  The words were like a stab to her heart as they passed his trembling lips.

     “She isn’t part of this; I am from your past, not hers.”  Felicia almost sighed the words as her eyes kept a constant watch on every move the ferret made.

     “Then do it, I only ask that you keep her safe.  I’ve tried so hard to come to grips with the horrors I committed, the things I’ve had done over the years.  I earned this death, but Tracy is an innocent.  Please care for her and make sure she never becomes like me.”  He lowered his head waiting for the final blow.

     Stepping out of the spell of shadows Felicia looked at the tormentor of her youth and felt only pity.  The anger and revenge wasn’t in her anymore but duty was.  She approached the crouched ferret looking at the sadness in his eyes. “I’ll take care of your young one and give her all that was taken from me.  You had my family murdered Kendar, you had me raped.  I’ll do all I can to keep her from being like you.”

     Kendar looked up into her scarlet eyes in understanding, the fear gone at last, resignation and acceptance taking its place.  “Your father, I remember, the mage smith.  Those were dark days, stupid days.  If any had to find me I’d rather it was you if no others.  I did you the greatest wrong and your revenge is just.  I only ask you keep your word, Tracy will never remember me, her mother died in her birth just a month ago.  Raise her and warn her from my path that is all I ask.”  A nod came from those startling blood filled eyes.  He watched as the dark goddess before him placed the tip of the dagger gently against his chest.  Timidly he placed his hands over hers and pulled the blade into himself as she pushed.  
His fingers clinched around her wrist as the blade seemed to pull something out of her.

     The shadows condensed becoming darker as the light coalesced around her.  The black of her fur seemed to pull out of her moving along the dagger into the brown fur of his body removing and replacing the brown with the black of his heart until this last minute of his life.  The black drained from her fur as it became a silver/white color.  Her eyes shifted in color changing from the crimson filled scarlet she had been born with and draining into a sky blue tinged in gold specs.  He looked up into the wonder before him as life seeped out of him, as the darkness filled his vision and the silver panther tenderly laid him down he whispered two simple words, “Thank you.”

     Behind Felicia light gathered, she turned feeling some familiar behind her.  “Well daughter, you chose a path, will you keep your word?”  The form of Ghost stood behind her slightly off the ground, her body ethereal.  The wall behind her form visible behind her, that sad smile crossed her lips as she looked at her old friend.

     “His daughter isn’t my enemy, he was.  I’ll try to keep her an innocent; I’ll make sure she knows what he was, and how he accepted the terms of what he had created.  I choose life, but I will protect the innocent with death, much as you have done.”  Ghost finally smiled at her.

     “Then your name is not Felicia anymore.  You are Ghost my child, live as an avenger, die in honor when that day finally comes and be the protector and teacher you have grown into being.”  The old Ghost slowly vanished as her young daughter slowly rose cleaning the dagger blade on the dead body before her.

     Her ears twitched responding to the sound of the living child in the side room lying in her crib. She tenderly wrapped the ferret child in her warm blankets and prepared a pack of belongings to care for her with.  She wore her ebony blades in pride as she gathered her pack from its hiding place out in the yard.  Felicia, no, Ghost now, took up their belongings and carried the poor orphan ferret away with her into the night.  She would keep her promise and protect Tracy until she too could become an avenger.  She would keep her word and make sure the lass would never be like her father.
", "pools_count": 1, "title": "Shadow Sword", "deleted": "f", "public": "t", "mimetype": "text/rtf", "pagecount": "1", "rating_id": "2", "rating_name": "Adult", "ratings": [ { "content_tag_id": "5", "name": "Strong Violence", "description": "Strong violence, blood, serious injury or death", "rating_id": "2" } ], "submission_type_id": "12", "type_name": "Writing - Document", "guest_block": "t", "friends_only": "f", "comments_count": "0", "views": "82" }