violence
All Violence has ever wanted is to be a monster.
She is the one thing in her odd family that resembles a horse. Her father and sister are alien creatures, beautiful in their horror, with beaks and a strange, birdlike language that she cannot decipher. Even her mother has used magic to sharpen her features until her bones could cut glass until her body is almost something abstract and strange.
And then there is Violence – a black mare whose body is all too boring.
Of course, the things she can do are far from boring, and she hones them.
The necromancy came easy, like breathing. Within days she could draw forth bones, make them walk and dance and set upon her mother’s head until mother would sigh and shatter them. She can bring forth the freshly dead as well, drippling corpses, but she prefers bones. She makes creatures, a bone menagerie that walks alongside her like a friend. Her current – her favorite – one wears a wolf’s skull with a pair of antlers affixed to it, a crown of rabbit’s skulls on its head, snarling along on the body of a bobcat. It’s sleek and strange and she’s practiced so it moves almost like it’s alive itself.
She loves it, her puppet, her pet, her creation.
The possession did not come as easy. She finds their minds odd and fitful, is often kicked out as quick as she enters with naught but the faintly salty taste of their memories on her tongue. That’s changed with the birth of her sister, who is pliant and open and stupid, so Violence practices on her, pilots her like a machine, enjoys the feel of the alien body, its heightened senses and the way the world spirals down to simple things, like hunt and meat and feast.
All Violence has ever wanted is to be a monster, so imagine her delight when she comes across a thing entirely different, a creature of ink-jet blackness with queer eyes. A creature who stares at her while a grin curls like smoke on Violence’s lips.
“Hello,” she coos, “who are you?”
I’d stay the hand of god, but war is on your lips
