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For what? We all know how that contest would end...
That was very nice.
So where exactly did the idea of Alice come from?
I'm completely lost while reading this... @_@
Help?
Not bad, not bad at all. Is there a chance for you to rewrite her fight against Remus?
Two years had passed since then.
Alice, with nothing to her name but her knives and the pocketwatch, had to take up odd jobs to earn enough money to eat. She slept in inns, in fields or, if she was lucky, people would give her rest as a form of renumeration for her tasks. It was a drudgerous life. Had she been allowed to remember excitement, she would be aware that this was precisely what was missing. Within those two years, she had become more and more bitter and cynical; she had seen the world for what it was, and it was nothing like her books. Her hopes had been dashed out long ago.
She had trained for six long, hard years, and had absolutely nothing to show for it. She tried becoming a prize-fighter, hoping she could at least put her skills to good use to earn a living; she was turned down for being female, something the patrons felt the crowds wouldn't take too kindly to.
It was menial tasks for her, it seemed, and all over Europe she travelled to do earn a meager living - just enough to keep bread on the table and herself alive, that was all she needed.
It was precisely seven months after he had passed away that that all changed. She was given a job she had never taken on before - an assassination task. At first she was unsure; she had never used her skills in so long, and she wondered if she still possessed those same skills. She somewhat doubted it. Her patron assured her, though, that she would be just perfect for the job.
He had heard of her, it seemed, from one of the many men she had triumped over during her six years of training. A girl who was as swift as the wind and sharp as her own knives.
Hesitantly, Alice agreed to take the job. At the very least, she reasoned, she would get a chance to hone her skills once more and perhaps even get a decent pay at the end of it all.
Count Dracula.
That was how she, Alice, found herself in the darkest recesses of Transylvania, standing on a moor not five miles from the Count's vast castle. With little idea of what lay inside - besides a host of malevolent demons and a vampiric aristocrat she had been sent to slay - the girl took a deep breath and made her way towards the castle.
The rest, as they say, is history.
Six years.
"I will take this girl, the worst you have, and turn her into a model servant."
Six long, long years.
"It will be difficult, yes, but she will learn to enoy it."
Day in, day out.
"I guarantee that within six years of her life, she will have transformed."
She had clothes, yes.
"She will no longer complain or cause mischief."
And a home.
"She will be the perfect servant - loyal, obedient and skilled."
And books to read.
"She will learn to fight and fend for herself."
Just as she wanted.
"I promise you this: by the time I am done with her, she will be changed."
But this wasn't what she wanted.
Alice had indeed changed. In the orphanage, that damned orphanage, she knew what it meant to feel despair; now she felt nothing.
Despair and hope no longer existed to her. She had been trained to ignore any sense of distinction between tragedy and excellence. When she was sad, she was told to stand up straight and stop moping to herself. When she was happy, she was told to act like a proper lady and stop feeling so smug about everything. Her feelings were gradually worn away, deprived from her, until she became numb to such feelings.
And her fighting skills? The envy of other men ten, twenty, thirty years older than her. She became so adept with the knives, she had almost forgotten what life was like without them. She could slice though a fly in mid-air, hit a speck of paint on a wall fifteen feet away, carve up a carrot in less than two seconds, and she could do all these with her eyes blindfolded.
He brought her challengers, and one by one she overcame them. When she didn't beat them the first time, she was sent to train more. When she defeated them at last, she was told to train more anyway, for the next one would be much more skilled and stronger. When she failed, he was not admonished; when she succeeded, she was not praised. Some were impressed, others disgraced that a young girl had defeated them. She, of course, felt nothing. There was no shame in loss, there was no pride in victory. It was incidental to her training, that was all.
"Go, Alice, train more. Become better than you are now."
Finally, there were no more left to defeat. She had taken on every challenger he had to offer, had learned their strengths and weaknesses and bested them. At last, it seemed, her six years of numbing, soul-wearing training and lessons on fighting and obedience had come to an end.
And then he died.
"I have taught you all I know, Alice," he told her on his deathbed, "Now you must prove to yourself that you are the best. Never forget what I have taught you."
Before he passed away, he left her a memento mori: the golden pocketwatch, the one she had never been able to look away from whenever it appeared. The pocketwatch was now hers. And yet, somehow, she didn't feel like she needed or wanted it.
It was by sheer accident that she discovered the powers it held. She was idly playing with the little device, flipping it open and closing it, just concentrating on the watch - the ticking of the internal gears, the rhythmic movements of the hands, lost in its subtle magnificence.
As she concentrated, totally innocent and oblivious, she could feel a strange sensation pour its way through her body. As though her senses were being heightened bit by bit, and the world around her was slowing itself down. In that brief moment, everything became clearer, and yet at the same time more dull and cold - though the words on the books on the shelves became sharper, the colours faded ever so slightly, as though washed with the faintest grey tint. The sensation lasted for about two seconds, but to her it felt like so much longer.
Over the next few days, she tried to replicate that sensation, the strange experience of time slowing to a crawl. The first few times, nothing happened. The next time, she felt nauseous and was sick. Then, slowly but surely, she managed to get a better grip on its mechanics. Gradually she came to realise how it was done, how she could conjure its powers. Not at will, though; it seemed to work when it wanted to. So far, she had only learned how to make it happen, but wasn't able to do so whenever she pleased. It would take much, much longer before she fully mastered it.
The next day, she left the mansion to find her place in the world. In the month or so after he, her surrogate father and mentor, had passed away, she stayed in the house. It was more out of convenience than any sense of nostalgia or sentimentality. She had forgotten how to feel such things.
She left after six years a changed woman. Whether she changed for the better was something she never allowed herself to ask.
"Get in there, ye bauld little thing, ye, and don't come out 'til ye've been down on yeer knees and praised Our Lord for even givin' ye the clothes on yeer back!"
Slam. Lock. Footsteps departing.
Alice fell back against the wall of the closet and started to cry. Ye bauld little thing, ye. The head nun's voice lingered in her head, gnawing at the bac of her mind like an aural infection. She'd sit here for an hour or so, crying, and then she'd be dragged off to the chapel to beg forgiveness. Say a word and she'd get the cane. You said nothing, and you got nothing in return. This was she all she had known all her life. It sickened her.
The clothes on yeer back. A grey dress handed down from one of the older girls. She didn't even have shoes, just a pair of white stockings, long since muddied by the dusty floors.
Our Lord. What lord? She didn't believe in any Lord. What was the point? Where was the Lord when her mother had gone, coughing and spluttering from the consumption? Where was the Lord when her father dragged her out here and left her to be raised like a filthy young urchin?
She'd be getting no soup now. All she had said was that her soup was cold, and she was thrown in here. "There's people starvin' in the world and ye can't even eat yeer soup, ye bauld little thing, ye?" She was always the bauld one, it seemed.
No, she couldn't enjoy her soup. No, she wouldn't give praise to Our Lord. She would sit here and cry, cry until no more tears would come out, then get hauled off to pray to a wooden altar and then sent to bed with the other girls.
At least the other girls were nice enough to her. They'd share books and stories and stay up half the night giggling, and then the nuns would come in and tell them to shut up, there's people tryin' to sleep in here and would ye get to sleep yeerselves, ye mangey little gurriers?
Then again, they were all in the same situation, all these girls; what would they achieve by being cruel to their own kind?
Alice sniffled and wiped her eyes with her sleeve. Nine years old and already she held contempt for her caretakers, such that they were. Nine years old and already she knew what it was like to lose hope. Hope that she would ever get out of this place, hope that someday she'd have a mother who wouldn't die on her and leave her with her father to throw her to the mercy of the church.
It was a terrible feeling. The world held so much wonders in it, or so the books told her, and she would never get to see any of it for herself.
"Alice?"
Alice looked up from her book.
"Ye've a visitor."
"A visitor?"
"What d'ye think I said? C'man, don't keep 'im waitin'."
The girl climbed off of her bed, tucked the book underneath the covers and followed the nun down the hallway. Twelve years old and at last she had a visitor. Her first visitor since she could even remember. She was so excited. Maybe he would even take her home with him?
She hoped he would have books. A huge library full of books, where she could sit and read all day and just lose herself in her fantasy worlds. She hoped, she hoped. She hoped she would go home with him to his wonderful house in the countryside and be his beloved daughter, and he would buy her cake and ice-cream and sit her on his knee and tell her stories and pick her up when she fell and kiss her goodnight and take her to a real school with real teachers and other children to play with and talk to and read books with. She hoped, she hoped. For the first time in years, she hoped.
"Well, here she is," said the nun with a hint of sourness in her voice, "The worst one we have."
"Are you sure she is the worst?"
"Aye, that I am. The little urchin's been nothin' but trouble since she came here, with her books and her reading and her complaining about the food and the beds. Ungrateful little wretch."
Alice desperately wanted to shout at her, tell her she got nothing but dog's abuse from her and the other sisters, but she kept her mouth closed. She didn't want the nun barking in her ear and giving her the cane. Besides, she had to look good for the stranger.
Tall. That was what Alice first thought when she saw him. Tall and fancy, with his black suit and his bow tie and his little hat and his big white moustache.
And the pocketwatch. He was holding a golden pocketwatch in his hand, and Alice couldn't keep her eyes off of it.
"Say hello," hissed the nun. Alice swallowed and put on her nicest smile.
"H-Hello...sir."
The man smiled under his bushy moustache and crouched down to the girl's level. "So, you must be Alice."
"Yes...sir."
"Well, aren't you the polite little girl?" When he stood back to his full height - taller than anyone Alice had ever seen - he threw a sideways glance to the Mother Superior and nodded. "I'll take her."
"Ye will?" The head nun looked like she would nearly collapse there and then from the shock. "Ah, by the sanctifyin' grace of Holy God! There's so much better ye could be havin'! Why would ye be wantin' this little gurrier?"
"Because you told me she is the worst you have," replied the stranger in a sharp, authorative tone. Alice shrank a little, not wanting to irk him any more.
"But why should ye be wantin' her to--"
"I said I'll take her. I understand that is how it works, yes?"
The head nun coughed and cleared her throat. "Well, yes, but...ye still have to be fillin' out the papers and what have ye."
"It shall be done," said the stranger with a dismissive wave of his hand. The nun shot Alice a bitter glare and scuttled off to fetch the paperwork.
Alice was afraid to look up at the strange old man, but she risked it anyway. He must have seen the anxiety in her eyes, because he just smiled and her and took her by the hand.
"Come along, Alice," he said amicably.
And as he led her out of the orphanage forever, she couldn't help but stare at that watch.
Also, when people say "I have OCD" because of some quirk they divulge to you, I want to run them over with the Woodbury Common Premium Outlets.
Taylor Lyn looked over her shoulder. One approached her from behind. Quick as a flash, she swung her sword around and took its head off. Another came to replace it, and once again she decapitated it. They were slow to come at first, but soon they began to come in greater numbers, and faster.
A horde of the undead rose from the ground in front of her. She swiftly sliced straight through them, then twirled around and did the same for the slobbering creatures behind her.
She could hear their groans becoming louder now. They were coming closer and closer.
From all around her they closed in, but she did not panic. Panic would only lead to fear, and fear would destroy her. Instead she focused everything on this battle and the sword in her hands; she blocked out everything else, told herself there was nothing but the battle. This battle was all that mattered.
As the undead monsters fell one by one, or more if she was quick enough with her hands, stronger ones clawed their way out of the earth to replace them. As she was busy cleaving through a number in front of her, a couple shambled up behind her and grabbed her by the shoulders.
A spark of shock surged through her body.
Don't panic, she reminded herself. With a loud cry, she gripped one of the hands and tore it clean off - the flesh and bone being rotten and weak - and proceeded to slide around and drive her blade through the other one's face.
As the bodies fell to the floor with a wet thud, Taylor could feel the air around her become thick and musty with the foul scent of decayed flesh. She shook her head and urged herself to press onwards.
Now the hordes were becoming ravenous and determined. They came in greater numbers, hungrier and stronger, each one lurching ahead to feast on the young woman's tender flesh. Taylor vowed she would not let that happen.
It was time now. Time to use it.
As the famished corpses charged ahead brutally to earn their meal, Taylor shut her eyes and traced a symbol in the air.
Closer now, and hungrier.
Now was the time.
Taylor opened her eyes and slammed her hands against the dry valley ground. She could hear the undead advancing on her, and she knew she had to hurry. The same symbol she traced through the air carved itself along the ground, a sort of stylised pentacle, and the lines in the dirt began to glow a deep orange-red.
Three words:
"Sigil of Hellish Flames!"
With those three words, the ground cracked open. The floor split apart and flames, great towering waves and pillars of fire, shot upwards. The undead hordes were scorched, vanquished by the arcane flames that Taylor had summoned.
When at last the flames died down and the ground sealed itself back again, Taylor looked around her. No more; they had all been slain.
With a triumphant smile, Taylor sheathed her sword. She had won this battle, but there would be many more.
She would be ready.
