Dark Baptism

They were all gone. That much, Lily knew. The city was hers. And she was alone.

Everything seemed to blur together. Memories and moments sewn together, imperfectly and tattered, but bound together by a needle laced by isolation. Once, Lily could have sworn she saw one of the city’s many bakers standing outside his door, offering sweets to passerbys. The next, dust and cobwebs blanketed the store, and she realized with a twinge of sadness that this particular baker was among the more memorable victims of the Ghost.

She hated the word. The Ghost. It was both accurate and a contradiction that controlled her identity even now.

Lily wasn’t one to regret her choices very often. But killing the baker was probably one of them. Just him though, all the other bakers in this dreadful city were horrified by her appearance. It was only now, as she lamented his food and presence, did Lily realize she never bothered to learn his name. She knew he was larger, both in height and girth – something her own mother had instilled in her of the quality of the baker’s skill – as well as his doughy face and curly mustache, but his name continually eluded her. Was it Clover? No… Garland?

“What are you?!” The baker had cried upon seeing her true form. It had only been hours earlier that he had given her food, even though she had no money to pay him. She had decided to repay his generosity with a quick death once she had seen the lithe beauty that was his wife.

The monster grinned as her tail cracked towards his neck, the spikes on its end gouging straight through and exposing his spinal cord. Blood splashed from the wound as he gurgled weakly, falling to the ground. The Baker’s wife screamed in horror as the life left her husband, and as The Ghost strode towards her, determined to take the woman as her own.

The Baker hadn’t deserved Cassia. That much, Lilith knew. For the briefest of moments that night, Lilith felt like her powers were a gift. But…that notion was quickly shattered in the morning. As the sun rose, Lily woke to find that Cassia had succumbed to the same madness as everyone else, and took her life sometime during the night.

Lily paused to look at herself in the bakery’s window. Time still had no grasp on her since the change. Her skin was as pale as ever – a gift from her ancestors who roamed the Caucus Mountains – while her silky raven hair shone as the day the War of the Roses ended… How long was it now? Ten years? Twenty? Had her body been ravaged by aging, she’d be maybe forty-five years old now. Or perhaps older. But here and now… she still looked as if she had just turned twenty-four and still at the prime of her life. In fact, the only indication of change… was the part of her face and left arm that refused to turn back to normal. Instead, they remained the dark gray mottled flesh and deformed skin that belonged to the monster she could turn into, as if the Ghost didn’t want to go, and left a constant reminder it was always going to be with her.

Was it ironic, that the powers she once was exhilarated by had now become mundane? Lily vaguely recalled something that her mother said, that a thing wasn’t special because it was permanent, but because it came and went. Was her mother still alive? She had last seen her mother maybe a year before the War of the Roses ended. Things had not ended well the last time they were together. Though Gardenia’s vile husband was long gone, his influence had left an insurmountable wedge between the mother and daughter. Gardenia wanted Lily to become a clerk for the family of nobles they served, and to find a dashing man of wealth to settle down with so that she could live in luxury for the rest of her days.

Lily did find someone dashing, but it was the noble’s sister that had caught Lily’s eye. So, she led the brother on again and again, putting things off and promising nothing while sneaking away to sensual trysts with Rosa, who really was the one who had started all this nonsense. Lily was absolutely convinced they were falling in love. But mother found them wrapped around each other and exploded, infuriated that her carefully laid plans and capital with the nobility was thrown away by a daughter that was more interested in short-lived excitement than marriage. Perhaps something could have been salvaged of the mess had the brother not been discovered abusing the family’s treasury. Somehow, mother blamed Lily for that too, as if she had any actual control over the nobility. The funny thing was that despite leaving on bitter terms, Lily actually did miss her mother.

Had she been capable of leaving, Lily would consider finding her. But then… She might abhor how her daughter now appears. And Lily felt like she couldn’t handle that if it came from family. Strangers and the lover of the day, she could understand, maybe even empathize with… but her own mother?

A curse escaped her lips as Lily realized she now found herself in Atlanta’s shopping district. The city was too far out of the way to have anything worthwhile to take for herself. And even if it did, she had been here long enough that either her or any of the survivors grabbed everything of value beforehand. All that remained were reflections of the past, indelibly inscribed within the windows with haunted screams as the Ghost first began its rampage when it first came to this forsaken city.

Lilith had awoken stuffed inside a wooden crate. As the grogginess faded, she realized two things. First, the voices she heard weren’t the remnants of some lingering dream, but people. Second, the conversations of the people weren’t of the vile kind of subjects that her peers in the Altif Empire would ramble on and on about. Wherever she is now, it wasn’t anywhere near where she was before.

A level of excitement invigorated Lilith, banishing all notion of sleep from her body. With her newfound energy, the Ghost splintered the box she was confined in to find herself surrounded by even more boxes. A confused yelp came from behind her and a sudden jolt nearly pitched her backwards – she was in a postman’s carriage! Lilith pulled herself back to her feet just as the postman peeked into the carriage at the commotion to scream in terror at the sight of her. Flicking her tail in annoyance, The Ghost swiped his face off to expose his grinning skull, silencing him forevermore.

Exiting the carriage, Lilith was surprised to find herself in a modest district, surrounded by people who all shivered in revulsion at the sight of her. Lilith spied a particularly rich looking vixen frozen in shock and grinned seductively. Within a blink of an eye, she pulled the woman into an embrace, her tail wrapping up the woman’s shivering leg.

“Hello beautiful,” Lilith crooned like a lover into the woman’s ear. “I have two questions for you, which I’d very much appreciate if you could answer for me.”

Her name, Lilith learned, was Aiyana, and the city they were in was called Atlanta, a city that was still relatively new but far enough out of the way that no one went out of their way to come to it. Had they been undisturbed, Lilith probably would have just taken Aiyana to her home for a night of passion, but the crowd taxed her patience with their screams and horror that was ordinarily so delicious to Lilith.

“Stay,” she told Aiyana, putting just a bit of her magyk into the command. “I’m going to have a snack before our love can envelop each other.”

Aiyana froze, already a victim to her seductive voice.

Untangling her tail from the human’s leg, Lilith pounced into the crowd, ripping men and women apart piece by piece. Every part of her was a weapon. Her tail ripped apart limbs as her claws tore throats. Children fell to the ground as Lilith gored them with her horns, as their parents would fall upon their bodies as if to protect them from her rampage, only to join their progeny moments later in eternal sleep.

When the crowd finally dispersed, Lilith gorged herself on the meat attached to a child’s femur, then ordered Aiyana to grab some of the bodies and together, they walked towards the human’s home.

Tears welled in Aiyana’s eyes as the Ghost once again embraced her. That night, Lilith experienced a feeling she hadn’t enjoyed since joining the Altif Empire.

“Love me,” Lilith breathed, and Aiyana found herself victim to the Reaper’s spell.

Lilith felt had chosen her lover well.

Most everyone could hardly believe that a monster had arrived in Atlanta. Despite the witnesses that survived her massacre in the shopping district, the people were confident in their isolation and in their weapons and magic to prevail against any kind of disturbance that fell their way. They hadn’t dealt with someone, with something like her before.The reasonable ones fled the city the following day. Lilith watched scores of them leave the next day as she reclined in one of Aiyana’s nightgowns. She resolved to figure out just where she was before officially beginning her reign of terror here. And it just so happened that Aiyana was the best resource for that, as chairwoman of Atlanta’s Historical Society, Lilith was able to learn everything about her surroundings as they would enjoy many a private rendezvous with one another.

Lilith never particularly got along well with the other Reapers in the Altif Empire so it came to no surprise that Atlanta was her punishment. It made sense that they would have gotten tired of her antics and gotten rid of her by throwing her in some humdrum town in the middle of nowhere. According to Aiyana, Atlanta had been established by traders from the Chang province some fifty odd years ago while marking a trade route from their capital city of Chun Hon to the capital in the Orodin province. Shortly after its colonization however, a precious cache of Mythril was discovered up north, closer to the mountain ranges they had worked so hard to travel around, and had decided to incorporate the town they had set up there instead of Atlanta, leaving the city to slowly fade away into the forgotten dreams of travelers passing by.

Once she grew bored of the city, Lilith intended to sail back towards the Altif and find who was responsible for her unexpected exile. And make them pay.

A demonic plague began that day in Atlanta, one that had no known cure. Aiyana played her part bringing Lilith many fresh victims, but for the most part, life in the city seemed to ignore her, as if the city was determined to pretend nothing was wrong.

It was Aiyana, Lily reflected, who had christened her as the Ghost of Atlanta on account of her pale skin. At the time, Lily thought it was cute. After Aiyana finally succumbed as all the others to her magyk, however, she realized it was also an indictment: She would be the death of the city, until there were nobody left but ghosts. That probably made it so fitting. Because that’s all she was, now that she remained as the city’s sole occupant. Doomed to remain within Atlanta for the foreseeable future.

Despite her best efforts, the monotony of her life forced Lily to the outskirts of the city. She knew what was going to happen even though she’s played this game hundreds, if not thousands, of times before. As she reached thirty paces from the cobblestone roads that marked the boundary of Atlanta, her body began to ache, and her vision began to blur. A fire ignited inside her stomach, burning her in panicked desperation, as if she was now entering water that would douse its blazing embers. A few times, she had soldiered on against the pain that would rack the entirety of her being, perhaps in some vain wish that the spell was only trying to cow her into submission only for the agony to increase exponentially. Just as before, the pain became too much for her to handle, and Lily reluctantly turned back towards the city. As she drew closer, the pain began to subside, till the fire within her sizzled amicably into hibernation, until the next time she would inevitably try again.

Lily grimaced. Despite her limited understanding of the concept, the Reapers who had exiled her here had found a way to bind her very life force into the foundations of the city. The first time she had discovered this, she had been stalking a furry-eared man with a tail, and had nearly entrapped her prey when the painful sensations assailed her. Caught off guard by the onslaught of torment, she had fallen unconscious for almost an entire day. Since then she had probed the perimeter of the city from every angle in some foolish hope against hope that there was a weakness in the spell that would let her go free.

Only for death ready to receive her at every junction with open arms.

“Damn it.”

Finally free from her daily ritual, though sadly not yet free from the city, Lily returned to the confines and safety of Atlanta. How long have I been here? She grumbled to herself. It was what, the seventeenth of Elphas when I first arrived? Did they change the calendar when that blasted elf war ended and the world got so much more magical and weirder?

Magyk was something almost alien to Lily, before her transformation. Unlike her friends and neighbors growing up, she had been an oddity, unable to conjure flames or throw rocks with her mind. Gardenia had been devastated to learn the truth about her daughter -- that her gifts with the wind meant nothing as she was magically impotent. Even Peregrine, Gardenia’s estranged husband, could manipulate water into various shapes and sizes, and sometimes colors if he was feeling generous – which he hardly ever was, to take advantage of their village’s goodwill.

Of course, Gardenia never admitted that she was disappointed in her daughter. And Lily never confessed to her mother how many times she tried to displace the air, summon fire, or any of the wonderful things she saw her peers perform. She never showed her mother her tears or blood she spilt while straining to lift boulders, to be powerless in a world where almost everyone had powers. How often she would scream and beg to the skies and what gods who might be listening to please just let her be like everyone else? She just wanted to make Gardenia proud. And was rewarded with resentments that would erupt into the frequent arguments that ultimately drove her father away. He hadn’t even left a note; Peregrine just left one day, never to return.

How long has it been since I saw Mother? I… I hope she’s doing okay. Lily sat beside the fountain statue in the park, her favorite place to hide herself away since realizing she was trapped. Life got harder for us when Father… when Peregrine left. Did it get easier when I did? Does she even know that I’m gone?

Is she even still alive?

Her powers, ordinarily a blessing, now felt like chains. What use were they, if she couldn’t even leave this godforsaken city? Sex and wanton destruction could only entertain her for so long, and neither have appealed to her for ages. Not since she was left the sole inhabitant of Atlanta. For a brief month, Lily did consider trying to cultivate her own food, only for lack of experience and a black thumb to desiccate every drop of moisture from the crops she had planted in the park. To add insult to injury, nature itself seemed insulted by her attempts to live off the land, and had created a drought that had scorched any and all seeds that had been left behind. Had Lily actually depended on food to survive, she would have died long ago.

Freedom from boredom it seemed, was the common denominator that motivated Lily throughout her life once she had left Gardenia. She had tried her hand at anything that caught her attention, or allowed her a greater range of freedom that Lily had previously. Her first job after striking out on her own had been as a barkeep for a generous tavern owner. The drinks had been fine and the women even finer. Until the tavern owner found Lily drunk and seducing his own mother. He had chased her out of town himself, Lily recalled fondly. She really should have visited Elphaba more often. Perhaps the most entertaining and damning thing in her life came when she had been recruited by a gang of thieves to steal a noble’s champion steed. By that time, Lily had acquired some notoriety of her own as an impulsive daredevil and heartbreaker, and had eagerly agreed to aid the thieves in their heist. Unbeknownst to Lily however, she had also been selected to take the fall for their crimes, and sold into slavery to pay off the debt.

What I would give to ride a horse, or get some thrills, she bemoaned. How long… just how long have I been stuck here in this…this absolute shit city in the middle of GODDAMN NOWHERE!?!

Looking back, Lily felt a wave of boredom envelop her again. This time, she eagerly jumped back into the memories she so often tried to push away.

Dahlia was ordinarily a strict, but fair master. She had a hand in almost every shady organization within the region of Oro-Apa’s influence, from drugs to contract killing to even carnal pleasure. With just one look, Dahlia had declared that Lily would be added to the brothels, and much to her own surprise, agreed to only allow women to enjoy her newest acquisition. As long as Lily ensured that sixty-five percent of her transactions ended up in Dahlia’s pockets, she enjoyed absolute protection from men and lived in hedonistic luxury. As stigmatized as her profession was, for a while her life had never been better.

She should have known it was too good to be true.

Perhaps Lily didn’t pay as much attention during a payment, or perhaps the client was a skilled purse snatcher, but whatever the reason, Lily lacked the funds needed to stay under Dahlia’s protection. Despite her pleading and protests, Lily was appalled to find that Dahlia seemed resigned to what was about to happen.Without a word, a pair of guards forcibly escorted her to an empty room for one last appointment for the night.

No, not an empty room. She was alone with a man.

A familiar man.

“Hello, my sweet water Lily,” he said with a hint of malice. “It's been so long, wouldn’t you agree?”

It was the Noble her mother wanted her to marry.

Was this a set up? Did he make Dahlia an offer she couldn’t refuse when he discovered that Lily now worked here? She didn’t know, but at this moment, how he got here didn’t matter. What did was that he wanted her. She could see it in his eyes and with the confidence he held himself. He was forcefully going to know her as she knew his sister Rosa. Intimately.

“What’s the matter, Lily?” He jeered. “Don’t remember my name? If that wasn’t on brand for you, I think I’d be insulted. It’s Rhodes.”

“Rhodes, you don’t have to do this.”

“Like how you didn’t have to fornicate with my sister, Lily?” Rhodes seethed. “Like how you’ve whored yourself to every woman you’ve ever spoken to?”
She didn’t want to hear this. His anger was palpable, and Lily felt herself withering before the storm. Now, a recompense she never thought would come or knew of developed inside her. For the first time in a long time, Lily felt afraid, the feeling vaguely unfamiliar to her. She wasn’t in control. Unless…

“Hel-!” Lily started to shout as Rhodes gestured strangely, only for the words to catch in her throat. She choked on empty air, trying desperately to finish the sentence, but finding no sound willing.

“Let’s not have any of that,” Rhodes whispered. “No one will interrupt us. No one.”

Rhodes closed the distance between them, and roughly tore at her clothes. Despite her efforts of trying to shove him back, the ripping of fabric was deafening in the empty room. Lily felt tears in the corners of her eyes as her modesty was harshly revealed, hissing through gritted teeth as the cold air touched her bare skin. He leered at her body, admiring her with lust-filled eyes, his lips twisting into an ugly sneer as she futilely continued to slap his hands away. Had he always been like this? Or had her dalliances with Rosa prompted such evil behavior?

“You hurt me, and this is your punishment,” He warned her. “We were to be wed. You were my prize. I would have treated you like a queen, but now I’m going to treat you like the whore you are.”

Lily felt sick to her stomach. She was angry. Angry at herself. Angry at Rhodes. Angry at Dahlia. Angry at her situation. She had always managed to get away from pain and consequence , and now, a reckoning was finally being paid. “This is for your own good,” he hissed. A draft wafted from his very presence, threatening to become a gale in the small quarters. Rhodes grabbed Lily and threw her onto the bed in the corner. “And I’ll make sure you enjoy this as much as I will.”

I should be dead, Lily found herself repeating the phrase over and over in her head, still overwhelmed and confused by what had happened. I should be dead. I should be dead. I should be dead.

Something beautiful and deadly had saved her from Rhodes. A veil had fallen over her, and images raced by too fast for her to realize. A collage of agony, death, and horror she could barely understand, much less process, had been dealt to her aggressor and those who aided him. Rhodes, Dhalia, everyone complicit with the Shadows of Oro, were dead.

And somehow… she had killed them all.

Her body was no longer her own. She had been transformed. Her skin was now ashy, gray and slick, as if she had been submerged in water. She felt a weight atop her head that hadn’t been there before, and her hands found a pair of horns now protruding from her skull. A long, glistening tail twitched behind her, and her hands had sprouted claw-like talons.

She was beautiful. And she was a monster.

While Lily hadn’t intended to hurt anyone before, her placid behavior prior to had now become the exception to her new norm. That night, she hadn’t stopped at killing Rhodes, but also enacted what she could have only seen as divine retribution against Dahlia and her entire organization, the Shadows of Oro. A woman with Dahlia’s power and influence kept records, and once her head had been severed from the rest of her body, it had been relatively easy for Lily to find her former employer’s notekeeping. With her new abilities, hunting down everyone affiliated was child’s play. Although her crusade seemed heroic, her dark beauty terrified any who saw her true form, and her bloodthirst revealed to any who saw that her methods were anything but. In the span of three months, she had single-handedly destroyed every trace of the Shadows of Oro.

Over the course of her dark cause, she also learned of others who had also been transformed into fiends and monsters. Lily had not been the only one to receive such drastic changes. Though it took some time to locate them, she eventually did. They were just as monstrous and powerful as Lily was, and after some checking, found out that while the exact times were varied, the common through line was that they all had been affected following the end of that Elvish civil war, what was being called The War of Roses. And after some additional digging, she had learned her own transformation occurred roughly three years after parting ways with her mother.

Rather than risk witnessing Gardenia’s horror at what her daughter had become, Lily had joined a pair of others who had been changed as they made their way NorthEast. Something about creating a center for all the freaks that had been exiled by their own people. Somewhere along the line, they started calling themselves Reapers; none of them knew any reason why, but it felt right. Briar and Ash, a pair of brothers who resembled the fat tusked monsters she had heard of in hushed whispers around campfires, seemed just as bloodthirsty as she was, and the three of them paved a path of destruction towards the nearest port to steal a boat. Chaos seemed to reign everywhere, as the world was adjusting to the fact that a whole new land had been discovered on the other side of Axis – a land that had been ground zero for the Elves’ war, and had been virtually abandoned for rebuilding. Perfect for a new civilization to establish themselves, Briar reasoned.

It had been the brothers' idea for Lily to adopt a new name in her Reaper form. The change was a rebirth so to speak, so it made sense to leave their old lives behind as they reasoned. Thusly, the brothers’ wanted to call themselves Thorn and Lupin, and wondered what Lily would call herself. The only issue was that Lily didn’t know what to call herself.

I still feel like Lily, She thought to herself. My body may have been changed, but I can turn it on and off for some reason, well mostly, unlike these ogres. Do I even want to stop being Lily?

Having had time to think about it, Lily did feel some remorse taking all those lives. Rhodes and Dahlia, not so much, but all the faceless and regular men and women of the Shadows of Oro... did she really have the right to kill them simply for the actions of their boss? Oddly enough, she was of two minds about it: While in her Reaper form, it not only felt justified, but also wholly unsatisfied with how it had turned out. They likely deserved worse.

She needed more blood to spill. More bodies to devour. More fear to produce. More… more. It was all so intoxicating, that she couldn’t help but feel a bit afraid of that rationalization while in her human form. Whereas, whenever she dwelt on her execution of the organization as Lily… she went too far, did too much. It would have sufficed to simply deal with those who had a direct hand in her… what? In her assault? Disfigurement? Change felt too mundane for what happened to her. Maybe…metamorphosis?

That night was the most helpless, yet most powerful, she had ever felt in her entire life. From the depths of her despair, a dark and deadly beauty bloomed, a terrible beacon heralding the rebirth of something new. But at the same time, Lily wanted to remain who she used to be, though she has now changed…perhaps irrevocably. From this conundrum, she finally found an answer. Lily had died that day, but not completely. Now, she was joined with an intensification that allowed her the freedom and power she always dreamed of. She would always be Lily. But when there were times something more was required, there was Lilith ready to tackle the challenge head on.