Out of the Darkness

Introduction to Anna Last, aka Seraph and her first try at crime-busting. Getting the SERIOUS BUSINESS stuff out of the way before I take a shot at writing something team-based.

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Anna sat crouched on the catwalk high above the abandoned warehouse floor, waiting. She watched the cultists in their deep crimson robes as they gathered the materials for their dark ceremony, candles, bones, arcane sigils and words chalked out on the flat, smooth concrete. A bowl of dark, viscous fluid was placed in one corner of the arrangement, and Anna involuntarily shuddered as she smelled the coppery odor that betrayed it as blood. She had a good idea of where it came from too, if the dozens of missing children reports that had cropped up over the last few weeks were any indication. Disgust quickly rising in her throat, Anna forced it back with a few deep breaths, only to feel something else rising inside of her. Righteous anger flaring in her chest and her arm as another presence pushed its way into her mind.

The time is now the darkness comes the wicked shall perish in the fires of retribution STRIKE THEM DOWN NOW STRIKE WITH LIGHT AND FLAME –

She shook her head, steadying herself against the sudden barrage of emotion and voice. To anyone else this would be cause enough to seek psychiatric help, but Anna knew where it came from. Sliding the sleeve of her jacket up just a fraction of an inch, she saw a glimpse of the runic tattoos that marked her right arm, going all the way to the shoulder and down to her fingertips, now glowing with a golden light. Although covered by a black track jacket and gloves now, she still felt those markings that sealed her as a conduit of divine justice, channeling holy vengeance through her body for the sole purpose of punishing those whom seek to cause pain and suffering.

The God Hand sensed the evil deeds that were going on in this place and Anna could feel its impatience honing the razor’s edge of her own unease. She knew what the cultists were preparing to do, what kind of evil they wanted to unleash into the world; her research and books told her that much. She had memorized the signs and words, knew the incantations, the names of the demons that the robed and hooded figures below her now invoked. But now that she was here witnessing it in person, the impersonal, academic confidence that she had upon entering was quickly being shoved aside by a combined sense of dread, urgency, and holy fury that roiled inside her.

And still she had to wait. If she leapt down now and unleashed all that pent up fury against the child-murdering bastards, they would scatter to the deepest recesses of the city and merely wait until the stars aligned again, and she might not be so lucky in tracking them down a second time. No, here they would be gathered into one place, and the ceremony would draw out their leader.

Cut off the head and the rest of the snake dies with it. Now all she had to do was bide her time until the head revealed itself.

Thankfully, she didn't have to wait much longer.

A few minutes - that felt like hours - later, the murmuring of the cultists below ceased. A tall figure in a robe bedecked with black symbols and gold thread embroidery strode into the circle of candlelight, with two attendants behind him. They carried a smaller figure in white robes, laid down the limp, sleeping body in the center of the chalk markings, and pulled back its hood to reveal the face of one of the missing children. Anna’s vision went white as the Hand’s thirst for justice burst to the surface again.

This time, however, she did not force it back down. This time, she and the hand were in complete agreement.

Letting the wave of righteous anger sweep over her and drive out the fear and the doubt in her mind, Anna slung herself over the railing and out of the darkness.

It's a good scene, try adding more description (for the drawfags).

The_Template wrote:It's a good scene, try adding more description (for the drawfags).

Heh, yeah, re-reading it I realized I didn't do much visual description. I have a hard time finding a good balance between suitably vivid and just outright purple prose, so I erred on the side of caution this time.

Gonna keep posting more of my stuff in this thread.

Now I'm working on an actual origin story for Anna. So here's a little preview of the remix.

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Anna frowned as she swirled the last dregs of coffee in her thermos. How long had she been cooped up in this stuffy university archive again? Without any sort of window to see outside, and only the harsh, unnatural banks of fluorescent lights to illuminate the room, it felt like days had gone by. Days of staring at books, scribbling down notes, shelving them, staring at more books, ad infinitum. She rubbed her eyes blearily and glanced at the clock ticking softly on the wall behind her. “Half past midnight, damn it,” she muttered aloud. “Figures I need a fresh cup of joe when the café’s closed up for the night.” Not relishing the thought of walking half a mile for the cheap, watery brew at the local McDonald’s, she instead turned her attention to the stack of books that she was attempting to sort and categorize. “Well… maybe I can get just one more done tonight.” She sighed, pushed a stray strand of curly brown hair back into its place behind her ear, and picked up the next tome from the pile.

Despite its smaller size and simple leather cover and bindings, it was deceptively heavy, and Anna winced as it dropped with a loud “THUMPH” onto the heavy oaken table she had commandeered for the night. She was already risking another upbraiding from the professor sponsoring her research by bringing in a thermos of coffee (although she failed to understand how that could NOT be considered “necessary materials” as per the archive’s rules), and she hated to think what would happen if she broke a spine or cracked embossed lettering on one of these old, one-of-a-kind texts. Hurriedly looking over the book to make sure that it was unharmed, she noticed that there was writing along the cover, although it wasn’t in any kind of language that she had ever seen. The spidery scrawl of the runes ran along the spine of the book and across the front of its cover, etched into the hard leather with black ink. Ink that had not seemed to fade or flake after undoubtedly hundreds of years of existence.

Her curiosity piqued, she gently pried open the covers and liftedthe thick, vellum pages up one by one to reveal that the inside of the book contained row after row of the same unknown sigils, framed by beautiful illuminated bordering that almost glowed with colors as bright as the day it was scribed. Anna racked her brain trying to figure out what kind of script filled the strange book. It wasn’t Old English, Latin, Greek, Hebrew, or Aramaic. Maybe Norse runes? Although admittedly not her area of expertise, dealing with ancient texts in her research over the past few years had given her enough knowledge to know that these weren’t a fit either. Anna’s confusion grew as more pages flipped past, each with the enigmatic writing and illustrations of landscapes, angelic figures, kings, queens, demons and monsters. Despite the beauty and intricacy of the manuscript’s pictures, they only added to the questions darting around Anna’s mind; the art style was nothing like she had never seen before either.

She stopped and pulled out the register of books assigned to her custody for the night, a thick stack of papers clumsily stapled together, and double checked it again, talking aloud to herself, “There’s nothing on here about an indecipherable book, you think they would’ve mentioned something about that to me.” Leaning back in the hard, straight-backed wooden chair and rubbing her eyes again, she was starting to think that even the swill McDonald’s passed off as ‘coffee’ was looking better and better now. “This has to be a joke, some kind of fake book that they put in my pile just to watch me think I’ve discovered some new language, right?” she said exasperatedly to the empty library, her unease shifting into anger. “Yeah, let’s all make fun of Anna again, with all the time and work I’ve put into the department and I’m still nothing more than a FUCKING GLORIFIED GOPHER!” the last words she punctuated by throwing down the register onto the polished wooden table.

Pain lanced through her right index finger as the papers flew out of her hand and a sharp crimson line appeared and grew along its length. “And a paper cut too! Oh that’s just PERFECT, this night can not POSSIBLY get any worse-“

The blood from the cut beaded, coalesced into a single drop, and slid off of the tip of her finger.

It was then that Anna realized that she still had the unknown book open.

And her hand above it.

"Oh sh-"

Read it all. Wished I had read it sooner!

My interest is peaked, I'd like to see what happens next. It's good, so far.

Hey guys, so I said that I would have more time to get writing done, but between working on my senior thesis and other classes, looks like I'm going to have to take a hiatus for now! I'll still be checking around the forum if you want to use my character in anything else, or have some new ideas to throw around, but I'm not going to be actively writing anything on my own for awhile.

Sorry about this, we had something really neat going and I hope that some people try and keep it up, I'd hate to see all those good ideas go to waste!