“Stories don’t really begin. Sure, they start, but there’s always backgrounds and history and all the little things that happened before the first words were written up.”
Nivena was the star of any social conversation. She was the life of the party, wherever she went. She could keep an entire room in stitches. Except, even she couldn’t make this situation less awkward. She was chained to dungeon walls and the other participant in the room was lying face down on the stone. The other woman, christened 'Ball of Hate and Authority Issues', had been thrown in a few minutes after her, and had not moved from that position in the entire time she had been there. Instead, she had spewed a frankly impressive range of swears, in at least three different languages, all in a deadpan, semi-irritated tone.
She was still going.
Very impressive.
Ciardah’s escape chances sucked. For one, the only other person in the room was an underworlder- Asura, probably, judging from the four extra arms. It had taken three sets of handcuffs and chains to keep her tied down, but she knew that meant pretty much nothing. Underworlders barely had any magic going for them, and were physically inferior to humans and overworlders. She was wearing a fancy but tattered long coat, and a simple white t-shirt and sweatpants under it. Also, the Asura’s horns, shiny and black, marked it as a ‘she’, if the slightly smeared makeup hadn’t already done so.
The Asura actually looked surprisingly similar to Ciardah. She was probably even the same age. While Ciardah’s mother was an underworlder, a Xa-Mul, she tended to take more after her human father. Only the green tint to her sclera, scales, and slightly sharper teeth, marked her as a non-human. The Asura (or Asuri, she supposed), on the other hand, was a completely different story. Besides the six sets of arms, she had dark blue skin, horns, and a ridges in her face where there should be cheekbones. Her completely black eyes were so dark Ciardah could probably see herself in them if she had bothered to look up. The dank smell of the chamber they were held in didn’t really discourage Ciardah from picking her face up from off the floor, or moving from her prone position. She was aware that the scales on her back were showing through her torn-up tank top, but she doubted the Asuri cared.
The tense silence was broken when the door was thrown open to admit an underworlder.
Or, Ciardah mused, a part-human underworlder. The purely black winged figure had human eyes, but that was it. When the second person walked in, she understood even less.
The woman looked mostly normal, despite the bared midriff and the strange tattoos circling her stomach. But that wasn’t what drew Ciardah’s attention.
The woman had the eyes of an underworlder.
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Nivena quietly observed the two new creatures, grinning to herself. She knew the woman, Anahera Henare. Completely human in every way, except her soul. She shared a half of it with a Po-Tangotango, a Maori underworlder of the night. Which, Nivena thought, looks more like a dignified slug with wings, but she wasn’t going to say that out loud. She had manners. The only way you could tell that something was weird with them was the fact that they had swapped eyes. Eyes were windows to the soul and all that cliche, sappy shit. The markings around Henare’s eyes looked strange on her human face, doubly so for the vertical pupils. Atarangi, the Po-tangotango looked even stranger. Her eyes were very human, and very creepy, set in that leathery black skin.
“It’s nice to meet the two greatest criminals of the underworlder, face to face.” Atarangi spoke.
Across from her, the rage-ball snorted. “Greatest criminals?” She asked, raising a single eyebrow primly. “I’m a thief.”
“A very good one.” Anahera spoke suddenly, turning to look at the other human.
Nivena turned to scrutinize the girl, who couldn’t possibly be older than she was. She seemed some sort of mix between human and underworlder, retaining human shape, but scaly and more green. Her features weren’t considered classically beautiful, a large nose dominating her face, and eyes set to close together. Canines poked slightly out from her fat lips, sharpened almost to a point. Either she had freaky fashion sense, or she was at least part-bloodsucker.
“Ciardah,” Anahera inclined her head at the rage-ball, “meet Nivena. She’s a serial killer, who’s beaten Jack the Ripper in terms of a body count and- stop smiling that’s not a good thing.”
She had to give props to the woman. Anahera wasn’t even looking at her, still focused on ‘Ciardah’ but Atarangi was glaring in her direction.
“Aww, ‘Hera, but it is impressive.” She whined.
“For the hundredth time, it’s Anahera.”
“Hera.”
“Anahera.”
“He-”
“This is getting nowhere.” Atarangi interrupted, irritable. The giant Po-Tangotango grumpily curled up around Anahera, whose dark skin was somehow still turning red with anger. Nivena counted that as a win.
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Ciardah had, by now, learned that the other occupant of the cell, Nivena, obviously had history with their assumed captor, “Anahera”. The woman’s... ‘pet’, for a lack of a better word, seemed to be Anahera’s security blanket, comforting her when the Asuri got a rise out of her.
Grudgingly, she had to admit that the Asuri had style. Amidst the (decidedly not very witty) banter, the underworlder had succeeded in keeping Anahera off balance. Anahera was revealing certain things that she probably didn’t mean to say, and not even noticing it.
“Favoritism!” The Asuri crowed. “You’re getting on my case ‘cause I’m an underworlder, but you’re the one who bound her soul to a Po-tangotango!”
That made Anahera snap. She lunged for the Asuri, grabbing her by the neck and slamming her up against the wall, holding a knife she pulled out of her belt to the underworlder’s throat. “Do not,” she hissed, “compare yourself to Atarangi.”
“Aww, didn’t your mother ever tell you not to hit a girl?” The Asuri grinned nastily, and then brought two of her somehow-freed arms out from behind her back- one of which held a laser-knife. “Especially one who has access to a deadly weapon.”
In a few seconds, their captor was stripped of her knife and keys, the Asuri’s remaining arms were freed, and Anahera was knocked unconscious and held at laser-point.
Ciardah was almost impressed.
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Nivena maneuvering Anahera so that her laser-knife wouldn’t accidentally slice the woman’s throat. It would be a waste of a hostage, and besides, Nivena kind of liked the bounty-hunter/cop. She calmly met Atarangi’s eyes, and spoke softly, confident that the underworlder could hear her.
“I can slit your soulmate’s throat faster than you can turn out the lights, night demon.” She promised, twirling Anahera’s own knife with another hand. “Give us back our weapons, and I’ll let her go free. Come on, you know the drill.”
Nivena’d held one or the other hostage enough times to know the way it would go. The one under her weapon of the day- usually Anahera, got to love her temper- would give a token protest.
“I’m sorry, Ana.” Atarangi slithered out the door, and Nivena smirked.
“Hey, Sardah, was it?”
“It’s pronounced ‘See-ahr-DAH’” The girl corrected flatly.
“Want to be partners?”
“Sure.” Ciardah shrugged, still not breaking her expression. “After all, I doubt you have a plan, but I do.”
“You won’t get away with this.” Atarangi hissed, walking back in. The underworlder held her scythe in one hand, and a weird stick (the handle of a sword?) that probably belonged to Ciardah in the other.
“Didn’t think I would.” She snapped back, circling him until she and Anahera were closest to Ciardah, and therefore, the door. Suddenly, she threw the bounty hunter at Atarangi, at the same time as she cut Ciardah’s chains with her laser knife. Pocketing Anahera’s own knife, the Asuri grabbed her own weapon and threw the thing (probably an enchanted weapon) at her new partner.
“Thank you.” The girl nodded, sticking the handle in one of the gauntlets on her sleeve. Ciardah could have sworn that the stick was much too long to fit so snugly, but she didn’t have time to wonder. They ran out the door, and into a completely bare hallway. Nivena’s black blood stained the white carpets, dripping off her still-chained wrists. She didn’t have time to deal with that, however.
Ciardah pointed to a hatch and built in ladder at the end of the hall. “Let’s get to the roof first.”
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As soon as the two girls made their way to the roof, they immediately froze. Neither of them had ever been to the overworld, but they could still recognize what was below them. They’d spent their entire lives looking up at the clouds.
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