15-Feb-2019
Girl power isn’t always a good thing.
Long ago, in the kingdom of Bratol, in the province of Vuntis there lived a beautiful girl named Ayesha. Her green eyes sparkled like the sea and her red curls cascaded down her back like a waterfall. Lithe in form and great in spirit, she won many hearts but chose none.
Many suitors came from far and wide hoping to win her hand in marriage. For not only was she beautiful, but she was very rich. Her father had died a few years before, leaving her the sole heir to his great fortune and expansive lands.
She gladly welcomed all of the suitors to her estate, and dined and talked to them as if they were all old friends. Yet, after a few days, each man would leave without a obtaining her heart or a promise of marriage. They would speak to no one to give an explanation.
Charlotte, a maid at the estate, did her best to stay out of Ayesha’s way. Still, when the sixth suitor left without anything more than a wave from her mistress, Charlotte began to get curious.
She dared not approach Ayesha, but instead observed from afar. She would sit in a nook in the hall as Ayesha walked her suitors into the manor. Charlotte begged cook to allow her to bring them dinner. She hid behind a plant in the drawing room, where Ayesha and her suitors would go after dinner.
Their conversation consisted of mundane things like the weather, the state of the empire and the wealth of the suitors. They never inquired after her wealth, after all, that was why they were here.
Most of the suitors were handsome. Some were as handsome as they were rich, but money made up the difference in the other cases.
Still, after suitor number eleven, Charlotte wondered if there was something more going on. Her curiosity got the better of her—again—and one night she crept into the room next to Ayesha’s. Charlotte kept a candle burning very low, and had almost fallen asleep on the dusty floor, when she heard a strange noise, like that of the milstones being ground.
Charlotte shot to her feet and ran to the wall to listen.
She heard nothing.
After a few minutes of this, Charlotte drew her courage and went into the hall and knocked lightly on Ayesha’s door.
No one answered.
Charlotte pushed the door open and found the room empty, save for a secret door in the wall that had been left open. Heart pounding she took her candle and crept down the stairs beyond. A faint murmur filled the cool air. Charlotte followed it to a partially closed door.
Heart pounding, Charlotte peered inside.
Ayesha stood over the suitor, who lay unconscious or dead on a stone slab. Charlotte pressed her hand to her lips to keep from screaming. She wanted to run, but her feet had become rooted in place by fear.
Charlotte watched as Ayesha chanted words in a language she didn’t understand. Ayesha then pulled a thick, red ribbon from her bodice and tied it around the man’s stomach. A faint red glow began around the end of the ribbon that then sunk into his body.
The man arched his back and his mouth spread in a silent plea for relief from the pain.
The red light reappeared, like a piece of wood that had been cast into the water and then resurfaced. It ran up the ribbon, then Ayesha’s arm and into her body. She convulsed and slumped over the man, who appeared to be sleeping again.
“Thank you,” Ayesha said. “You’ll never miss that piece of your soul.”
His soul? Charlotte backed away and ran. She ran so fast that her candle went out, but she didn’t care. She made it back to the stairs, through Ayesha’s room and to her own.
A soul eater. Her mistress was a soul eater? They were legends. Myths. Not real things!
Charlotte could hardly think past the pounding of her heart. With shaking hands she packed a bag and silently slipped out of the estate.
She had to find the sisterhood.
It took her a whole day to get into town, and each time she heard horses on the road behind her, Charlotte dove into the bushes and waited for them to pass. By the time she got into the town, the sun was already down. She stumbled to the house of the sisterhood and banged on the door.
No one answered except for a man across the street who told her to be quiet.
Charlotte tried again with the same result. So she pushed open the door and went inside. It was dark, and smelled of rot. When her eyes adjusted, she found a candle and lit it.
The sisterhood should have been six women who worshiped here. Instead, all she found was six skeletons dressed in the sisterhoods ceremonial robes around an alter.
They were dead. Charlotte shook her head. It couldn’t be true.
Then she saw the burn on the altar. Ayesha’s crest.
Ayesha had done this. To keep herself safe.
A loud clatter sounded from outside. Charlotte began filling her bag with things. The weapons on the corpses. The magic books under the altar. Anything she could find. If the sisterhood couldn’t save them, then Charlotte would assemble a group of all women and they would trap the soul eater and put her on the Isle of the Damned.
There was no other way.
