The Memory of Pain

My name is Yarrick Dell. I was a cook at a small restaurant in Oregon. I am currently holding a young man named John Newman. I feel pain.

His name was Hiroto, and he was a bastard of the Fujiwara daimyo. The ungrateful patriarch executed his mother when he was twelve by sending two armed men. Hiroto killed the first man in his sleep at the local inn when he found out, and broke the man's spear to kill his companion. Hiroto was just a boy, but he stared at the collected weapons in his bloodied home, where his mother's corpse remained uncared for on the straw mats. Hiroto began to form a plot.

No. My name is Yarrick Dell. I was a cook at a small rest... I feel... pain...

Ewan was as proud a Highlander as they came. He was a warrior, a collector of heads known for his dark moods and bloodthirsty sense of justice. But even warriors slept, and even a starving peasant could kill a man so , with bodyguards so disgusted with him that they'd abandon their posts to enjoy drinks and women in the caravan followers' tent. His face was twisted with hate and fear as the dagger dug into his throat, and he whimpered softly through the blood welling within and bubbling up around the dagger. Ewan is not the warrior of this story, however: it is his murderer, Albion, a girl of 19 years, who would live on to kill a hundred more Highlanders in her mad quest.

My name is Albion. I was by a Highlander. I will kill all of them. My name is Hiroto. I am a bastard without a mother, and I'll tear down the daimyo's palace or I will die unfulfilled. My name is Aadit, and I will expel the pale-skinned rapists who have stolen my homeland. My name is Christopher. I won my first duel of pistols at seventeen, and I reveled in the way his face transmuted before me-

No. My name is Yarrick Dell... I was a cook at a small restaurant in Oregon. I awoke in the Abyss, covered in blood... holding a sword that dares me to wield it. I wielded a second sword, melted by the men I killed. It's really a piece of trash, but it's all that keeps me from ruining anything I fight. So I use it... so I can still feel terror. So I can revel in the havoc. So I can show off. My name is Yarrick Dell, and I feel pain.

His fingers flew off of John's wrist, but by the time he leapt away his fingers were no longer whole. Green energy spewed up from cracks in the flesh of his hand until the entire appendage ruptured and cracked like porcelain from the wrist to the fingertips, coming apart in chunks of bloody bone and viscera that was sprayed, by Yarrick's movement, across the far classroom's wall and floor. The swordsman cried out with voices that could not have been his, and he slashed with his off-hand, the only one left, to cut a wave of at the one who wounded him.

John blinked right as he finished with ruin, and didn't appreciate the pop-up until he was already at the mouth of the staircase and out of sight.

Ruin casting complete! Ruin deals 2,500 damage!

Achievement unlocked! "Danger! Danger! High Voltage"!
Deal over 2,000 damage in a single attack or spell!
+2 stat points
+1,000XP

John's heart sank at that. Impressive in any other context he knew, he had spent a full 500 mana on the damn thing, had given it round after round of nurturing... and while it proved ruin wasn't a useless spell, it also meant he had to blink right now if he didn't want to-

John vanished, and the staircase collapsed under the rippling blade that cut trenches into the opposing remains of upright walls on either side. Yarrick stood at the mouth of the hallway, rage dancing in his eyes, wrinkled his furrowed brow, painted across his screaming face. The end of the right sleeve of his kimono had been tied off roughly, as well as a single hand as fast as his could manage, and was slowly soaking through with blood. That surviving hand, also stained despite rubbing some of it off on his beautiful kimono, no longer teased with unsheathing and sheathing his weapon after attacks, and now his enemies could see his weapon in all its glory: the misshapen grip that ended in what may well have been a lump of lead. The blade, if it was ever a blade, was only six inches in length, dulled on its edge as if it had been allowed to melt upright and slowly drip towards the back of the steel, and leaned slightly to the left. It was a misshapen, awful thing, probably a pain to get into any real sheathe... and now it was gripped viciously, bared vulgarly, by a man of men and women. He didn't feel like showing off anymore. He was going to kill that boy.

John landed daintily behind Fairy and Tricia, the latter who stirred. Fairy stared around, terrified. He still needed to get her out of here. <Fairy!> he started to order. It would be fine to take the moment for a mental command. It was only a moment, and he'd get right back to blinking ahead of Yarrick's-

SCHULT.

Ten years ago...

Wet slush was what remained of the snow being disturbed by child-sized boots, each one hot-pink and bedazzled with plastic gemstones. The petite figure ran as fast as she could manage in-between houses and while marching through this slop, but the small horde of boys on her tail was gaining all the same. They had asked the impossible of an eight-year-old girl in the warmer winter days of a Wisconsin town: to take off all her clothes if they agreed to do the same, just under the cover of the woods by the trailer park. The boys all agreed to do the same; they always did, curious little perverts that they were. The girl didn't even want to play with them in the first place, but her parents, sweet and progressive, had insisted. It was normal, they decided, and their little girl, even if she was a genius who might qualify to skip middle school altogether, was their normal Wisconsin girl. It was their insistence that their sole daughter, one Tricia Wood, go out and play every chance she got.

She was certainly normal enough to refuse the ugly plans of ill-monitored youngsters of her neighborhood, ranging from six to nine, and almost all of them bigger than her. She was also normal enough to not be trained to outrun a mob of boys who thought she was being unreasonable in refusing, and then found their merriment in chasing her until her lungs burned. She was just beyond her backyard when Daniel Jackwood roved into view. He was ten years old, a little slow and alot of trouble; he was the bully of their elementary school, the only school left in their dying town, and the other boys feared him as the hierarchy demanded. He had a swollen face, always red and topped with curly blonde hair, the same color as the locks of Tricia's that poked out of the cowl of her gray hoodie. He was a little butterball, but he was strong, and he could take a hit; his father gave him all of these attributes, though none would recognize it in a quiet little American town like this.

"Hey Tricia," he breathed through crooked teeth. Tricia thought to scream; Danny was already familiar with the expression on her face, and cut her off with a fat row of fingers over her face. "If you scream I'm going to kick you in your pee-hole. Got it?" His words were still being breathed, and the boys that now surrounded and trapped her giggled and laughed. They weren't the victims today, and they'd get to see a naked girl. It was a raw, merciless joy that went through them, and already their manifold hands clutched and pulled at her layers, and her tiny, balled up fists gripped the hem of her sweaters to keep them on. Among them were the boys she had considered friends: Melvin and Dallas. She would remember their faces forever: unsure, pitying, but paralyzed by fear of the mob they had inadvertently joined in what had been an innocent game of chase to only them. She would remember each of their faces, forever, because she started to kick and scream despite the bully's warnings, and sure enough he gave her inner-thighs and legs a few clumsy kicks until he became more interested in pulling off the layers that protected her. It was a vicious, ugly sight; Melvin and Dallas started to back away, perhaps to get an adult, perhaps to just pretend this wasn't happening. Tricia would never know. The other boys started to hesitate too, but not enough to not join in the teasing and the touching, curiosity and a burgeoning sexual identity guiding them to want to see more, to touch more. Tricia screamed into those thick, suffocating fingers, and her lungs burned as Daniel, who clumsily pulled her pants down with his free hand, began to suffocate her in earnest.

She was going to die... and she didn't care. More than anything else at that moment, she just hated them. She hated her so-called friends, the boys of the town, and the biggest "boy" of them all. She hated in ways that no child could naturally hate; her hate transcended the moment, and went to lineages, to timelines, to entire fact patterns. Her hate benefited from more than her advanced learning, and her secret learning using her dad's computer; her fury boiled the blood, and slowly called forth a heritage that her parents had never expressed, what had never been triggered in some three generations of her mother's bloodline. Emotions were important for people like Tricia... and emotions, most of all.

Daniel had half-laughed, half-moaned some surprised satisfaction in what he had found by violating the privacy of Tricia Wood... and it was the last classmate he would ever . Daniel looked up, confused at the odd drawing on Tricia's head... except the drawing, of a black, third eye upon her forehead, flickered with a bit of light. There was no fighting back, no screams, no attempt to defend themselves. Wherever each of them looked, horror silenced their tongues, stilled their greedy fingers and palms, and kept them frozen until it was there turn. One by one, and then in twos, and finally threes until they were all quiet, and the Eyes finally stopped opening on the half-undressed child standing in the white and red slush of February. It was Valentines Day. Tricia eventually calmed down to just her two eyes, and with them took in the carnage there in the alley of a simple wooden fence and the wall of her neighbor's house. Child limbs, burst-open layers of clothes, the frozen expressions of Melvin and Dallas, the decapitated, massive body of Daniel... Tricia took them each in turn, dazed by her perfect memory of what had come. Her anger was spent... and it was used to kill them all.

Jacob Gorbachev manifested shortly after. With a long face, a short bowl-cut of black hair, and a mustache large enough to cover his lips, Jacob seemed a man out of
a different era; his trenchcoat and the glinting of armor underneath only deepened this impression. His wife was already at the child's home, ready to try and discuss matters with her real parents... but Jacob had the unsavory task of trying to save the impossible child, an awakened Gorbachev from blood so thin that this should have been impossible. They barely monitored offspring such as her, and only did so now because of her unusual intellect. In Jacob's eyes, his superiors had effectively killed nine children with that mismanagement.

He would later tell Tricia that it fell entirely on their laps in terms of responsibility: of all the emotions a young Gorbachev descendent can experience, anger and disgust were simple ones... but also dangerous ones, ones that escalated easily. They could've kept her from letting it become so pure as to open the Eye of Hate before all the others. Jacob would confess to wiping his eyes before trying to console the girl kneeling and shell-shocked in the messy puddles of ice and children she had made. Tricia didn't respond to the consoling, when it finally came... she memorized every body part, every frozen face, every glossy, ice-flecked eyeball that could no longer see. The world was probably a better place without Daniel Jackwood growing into an adult, but she could never tell herself that. She had killed friends, however poor a set of examples they had proven to be; they were her only friends... and as every year made her older and wiser, she realized moreover how monstrous, how inhuman, how merciless she could be without control.

She needed control, she finally concluded three months later, moreso than even Jacob's training meditations were providing. She was in a new home somewhere south, away from parents who could no longer look on their daughter with those same trusting, proud eyes she had begun to miss. Jacob was a Gorbachev of advanced years who mastered his Eyes early, as most did; like her, he had an old family name, Popov, but no longer bore it except on false (or, to the British government, true) identifications. He had been taught discipline as a true Gorbachev heir; she had not, and no matter how often Jacob reminded her that she was not to blame, that a Gorbachev's emotions simply ran deeper than for others, she could not be consoled save by her own oath to never lose control again. Every emotion she felt could open an Eye, she learned; he taught her to stifle those emotions, to soften them before they risked manifesting more "Eyes", but every faltering annihilated any trust she had in herself. It was Jacob who introduced the training suit and magical constructs that helped a Gorbachev maintain control... and it was those tools that would guide the genius girl to make her own prison of carbon and quantum computing.

She had lost so many she had cared for, thanks to her curse... and she promised herself to never let it happen again.

Present day...

Tricia's eyes drifted open... and she blinked away the confusion of an overwhelming world. She was without her suit, a sensation that was enough to cause anxiety unto itself. It was only worsened by the horrified scream of a child-sized demon fairy squatting near her face. "MASTER!"

Tricia blinked past the pain in her eyes and followed the new Fairy's gaze... and at the back of the swordsman. The enemy. The man who had come to hurt and kidnap her... who had come for her gift, for whatever his intentions might've been. He withdrew his left hand from someone pinned to the wall, revealing a blunt, broken, and melted sword in his grip... and the blood that tipped it. Yarrick turned to regard the rest of the room, raising an eyebrow and a smile at Tricia. "Oh good," he sighed. He was missing his right hand, and blood dripped from the knotted sleeve... but his side-step to reveal all this also showed her John Newman.

John Newman, the interesting classmate, the unusual specimen... the unintentional lover, stood there. He was the meddling boy in her life that she did her best to not involve in anything beyond her scientific pursuits. His eyes seemed vacant, and his hand drifted to the gash in his fancy new vest, just over his heart... and they could not stifle the explosion of blood that followed being stabbed by a blunt rod of steel. John's knees buckled, and he collapsed face-down onto a pile of rubble as Yarrick grinned. "I was getting tired of waiting for the real challenge."