"Darkness Redeemed" by Travis W. Herring

"My heritage is my own," she says. "What I do with myself NOW is what matters to me, as it should to you. Yes, I know Ba'ator, but that is mostly because I have traveled the planes extensively, rather than spent a lot of time in that place. The planes are what draw me, not some pointless war that neither side shall ever win. I have spent more time than you have even existed travelling, trading, and procuring items for my shop in Sigil. If I am aware of a place, it is because I am a traveller. Not any other reason."
Apparently satisfied with her mea culpa, she looks around. "I could not tell you where this place is, though it does not appear to be Ba'ator. Were it so, there would be the sounds of screams in the air, and there are none. You can smell the blood on the breeze in Ba'ator," she says, frowning and sniffing as if to clean the very thought out of her nose. "I have not been there for a VERY long time..."



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“I know not why you ask me to tell you such things,” the attractive blue-skinned, black-winged beauty says softly. “You know not the pain a story brings me.”

She shrugs. “But I know that, should I not answer this, you will but plague me into the interminable future with such requests and that I only delay the inevitable.” Her green cat’s eyes focus sharply, a hint of the fire and darkness that were the forces responsible for the creation of such a woman. “Thus, I tell you this, but only once.”

“I know nothing of my creation or when that may have been. I only know that I have been in existence from a time prior to that of even your race. At one time, I was the incarnation of what I represent, and I gloried in it. Seduction, bringing mortals low by the powers I innately held, destruction of dreams, goals and hopes; such were my life’s blood. Literally. I existed to fulfill such things, and I did them willingly, putting the whole of my being into accomplishing what was set before me by my mere existence.”

She raises an elegant eyebrow, smiling faintly – dangerously. “You seem surprised. You know me as I am now – since my emancipation from my created bonds. You know NOTHING of the true me. That, I keep locked away, having chosen to turn against my own inner nature. But I get ahead of myself.

“You see, eventually, while I reveled in accomplishing that which the lords above me commanded me to do, I inwardly wondered at the lesser races I tempted with such abandon and with such success. How was it that creatures who could die with a mere prick or fall to the least of my seductions could build such impressive nations and create such amazing structures? How was it that they strove to organize themselves against the very forces of darkness and seemed to win, despite every advance my kind made? How could it be that, no matter how many I tempted, there were literally tens of thousands ready to take their place? What was it about these creatures that we strove so for them?

“You see, while I comprehended that we battled for thoughts and minds, I had no understanding of the soul, as it were. I was not merely fighting to steal minds from those Powers in the Upper planes or from our enemies. I was stealing souls. Those who fell to my ministrations were thrown into the flaming pits, to reform as dretches – the formless living shields our generals used in the permanent war between us and the Tanar’ri.”

She stops, listening for a moment. What she is hearing is unknown and then she continues, smiling. “What changed? I understood then, the nature of this war. This Blood War that we of Ba’ator had been fighting since I could remember. That there was no end. There was no beginning. There could NOT be. It was the age old saying that ‘Evil defeats Evil every time.’”

She snorts, a soft feminine sound that holds both disgust and awe in it. “No amount of effort I personally applied to win this war would ever put it even a single iota toward ending it. I was merely another cog in the wheels of a plot probably put into place by those of Mechanus to keep us busy. It held all the dark plotting and planning and coordination of those soulless creatures, yet smacked of an evil of our own darkest pits – of Lucifer himself in his brilliance. How best to keep the forces of Manifested Evil from overrunning the universe than to pit them against one another in a pointless war that sapped most of our energy!?”

She pauses for a moment and then shakes her head. “I decided then and there, upon making that realization, that I would have no part of it any longer. I decided that I would be more than just a toy for the fates to move about on the planes-wide battlefields. I would begin my OWN existence, and in doing so, I would learn what powers were at work, and find out WHY.

“Why had I been created? To take part in a pointless war? To seduce and destroy the brightest and the best of the mortal world simply so that they could become mindless dretches for the battle lines on some distant plane that had nothing to do with them?”

She raises a perfectly shaped palm and rests her cheek on it, eyes staring into a past only she can truly see. The nails on that hand are perfect as well, as if every effort was put into creating absolute beauty when she was… made… as she puts it.

“I turned to the planes themselves, rather than to those who lived in them and fought over them. The Ba’atorian generals were but playthings to this fate, no matter how much temporal power they held over others. Yes, they sent others after me, but I had learned an insight into things, and was able suddenly to do things no other of my kind could even consider. The planes answered my call, my questions, my… prayers…” She trails off once more, troubled perhaps by the idea of an inherently evil creature praying to a higher power – as if she weren’t the physical manifestation of a greater power already.

“I evaded my pursuers, engulfed those I could not in a pillar of white flame, called upon abilities I had never known before, and grew further and further in my understanding that the planes themselves are responsible for what is happening. And where do the planes come from?”

She smiles, and this time it is dark and full of promise. “Why, from the minds of mortals!” She looks down at herself before looking up once more. “This body, this shape… these eyes, these hands… Everything is but an extension of what mortals believe the ultimate evil seductress should appear as! That explains why I can change my appearance at will, but only in such a manner that the viewer will find my appearance undeniably beautiful. And that undeniable part is what I preyed on!”

Fury edges her voice. “I had been fulfilling exactly that which I was imagined to be! Was I, too, a plaything of the planes? Was my fate to only do that which I was created for? Or was I an individual? I had a name, but do you name a tool? And if you do, does that give it individuality?”

She shakes her head. “No. It is but a tool, as was I. I had no name that mattered.”

Her eyes slit once more and her gaze is intense. “I decided to earn a name. To make myself more than a pawn of fate. I found my way to Sigil, found something that I could do, that would earn a shadow, as they say here – a reputation. I focused on fetching things for others for a time, until I learned the ways and means and made the contacts required. I became more than another Erinyes, set to destroy and debase heroes of light. I became Vrischika. I became… an individual.

“And still, with my understanding… nay… my BELIEF that the planes themselves were responsible, my abilities grew. I ran my shop, sold what I had, found more when others showed interest in things I did not currently have, found ways of replacing my basic stock, lived a life of wealth and comfort here in Sigil. I became a power myself, recognized, feared, but TRUSTED. After all, a Ba’atorian can be trusted if you can hammer out the details properly.”

Her grin darkens again. “The devil is in the details…”

Her hair flies suddenly as she flips it back, strands having fallen into her face. “Until I found myself here, with you and your kind. Traveling together, seeing new things I could not have seen on my own – coming to understand the planes further, as I see it.”

Her eyes focus again. “Mayhap I am still only fulfilling the role I was given upon my creation. Mayhap I am only moving to the orchestra that is the planes – doing as I am fated to. But if that is so, then I accept it, as I could not before. Besides, there was only so much I could come to understand sitting in my shop and fetching things for others.”

Finally, she falls silent, the smile that has grown on her face fading into a faint scowl. “There. You know my story. Never ask me again, for, if you should, I shall rip your soul from your body and send it screaming to the realms I once served, simply as a reminder that you have offended something older than you can comprehend and not willing to answer questions just because you are ‘curious.’”