Living Dead
Canon: Negima
For: Wondrous Winter Writing Project / Secret Santa fic for WizardOne.
All characters are property of their respective owners.
Forgive it being short and crappy, written on research, hope you're happy.
--
For much of her young life, Eva had never really thought about the earth beneath her (or above her head). The sunlight on her face, or the rain dripping onto her frock from the garden trees, those were much more important, and immediate, than something she had to look down at her feet even to notice. When she came to live in her uncle's estate, she noticed the tiny room all for herself before she ever saw the stone walls, ceiling, floors and steps. The irony of living in a very complicated, dressed-up mausoleum escaped her then. Looking back, it seemed so obvious. Every step echoed ominously in that miserable grey maze, filled in vain with bright flowers every summer day. Like a crypt decorated with mourning bouquets, the color and soft scent could never totally erase the sense of sadness and gloom-- not that it had ever caused her any major distress. The morning she woke up as a ten-year-old, forever after, was the first time in fact that she noticed just how cold and dank the castle really was, a beautiful charnel house full of blind living beings.
She couldn't control it.
No one could have... like a burn or a wound, her bloodlust took over every thought and action. She couldn't think without wanting to kill. Couldn't take a breath, but she tasted them, so full of everything she'd ever needed, would ever need again. It physically hurt her to be without blood, the desire was so strong. She quivered, like a peasant in the snow. When a servant came in to wake her, innocently stepping into the room, she pounced, killing her prey within feet of her warm bed.
That first kill was magic. Not exactly in a good way--the way her other memories of being a child were magic. It was different... when she hit the woman, time seemed to slow to a crawl. It took them seconds to fall to the floor and less than half a minute for her to pin and bite her faithful servant. This was how people falling and fighting worked. Everything moved fast, too fast for the keenest eyes to follow.
But to her, tangled in homespun and fragrant skin, pressing down against balsa-wood bones and wet-towel flesh, eternities passed between her leap from the counterpane and that first full, choking rush of blood. It filled her mouth and throat with raw heat, even spilled out her nose at first, as the woman's beating heart pumped lifeblood into Evangeline's body with no coaxing at all. She stayed forever there, many more eons, whole lifetimes, crouched over her prey at first, and swallowed the bitter blood again and again. Her mind became so focused on that primal satisfaction and heat that she came to her senses lying down, curled tightly around her kill as if she had been nursing at the woman's... er, jugular.
The castle was moving around her. Sensitive ears picked up footsteps and voices; some were coming closer to her room by the moment. Fear chilled the blood in Eva's veins and slowed it to a crawl. The stone beneath her feet struck her as unsteady, despite the castle's being a strong and sturdy fortress.
Looking around, she felt as if the world was closing in, terrified and confused. Only a few hours ago, her dreams had been hazy, discombobulated episodes of laughing and rolling in the warm heather and pungent gorse when winter finally left, frolicking in the sunny moor all day. Now, looking out at the snow, she would have begun to cry over the turn of events, if her superior instincts hadn't driven her through the heavy glass window.
Clear, cold shards brushed her skin and cut deep, but strangely this didn't slow her down. She hit the ground running, snow blooming around her impact and flying into the air, scattering red-laced coldness into the blank winter sky. Icy wind, so cold it seemed to claw right through her body, and the darkness of the forest shadows, were her first clear memories of life after being turned. For a long time--months and months until the snow and ice melted away--ice and black winter nights were all she knew, aside from the bloodlust, aching in her belly like a sickness, tingling in her veins like a drug. At first it was never truly sated. She wanted to kill everything and drink the oceans and rivers and rainstorms of blood. And each kill felt like regaining a piece of herself, besides. Killing, she learned, was essential.
Cruelty, and evil, went hand in hand and both of them helped her get that burning, throbbing elixir, the metallic bitterness coating her tongue from the first bite. The soft, nourishing blood helped to drive back her other near-constant companion, those frigid ice-slick shadows, the two opposing ends of her life's spectrum. For a time, the swing between those two ends was Evangeline's entire life. The music she'd loved as a child was only heard if she woke up in the wee hours of the day. The laughter of her playmates-- of any other children-- was never heard to echo over the night-drenched snow, and why would it? Such an idea was ludicrous, no matter how much she missed the sounds.
It would be many long and winding lifetimes before Eva could meet sunlit heather and gorse again.
The sunlight on her skin came back so long after she was turned that she had learned to live without it. Ice, darkness and murder became her staples and slowly, they became all she really needed. All a vampire really needs, after all, is blood and their own powers. All a mage needs is practice, patience... time... the occasional target for her spells; and Eva had all of those things. Violence served her well, first in the form of her powers, and that first magical murder, then as a mage in her own right, and finally, later, as a talented aikido practitioner. Her first clear memories, ice and darkness, would later form the basis of her most powerful spells.
And all because one night, in the dead of winter, a living child lay down in a stone crypt......
Canon: Negima
For: Wondrous Winter Writing Project / Secret Santa fic for WizardOne.
All characters are property of their respective owners.
Forgive it being short and crappy, written on research, hope you're happy.
--
For much of her young life, Eva had never really thought about the earth beneath her (or above her head). The sunlight on her face, or the rain dripping onto her frock from the garden trees, those were much more important, and immediate, than something she had to look down at her feet even to notice. When she came to live in her uncle's estate, she noticed the tiny room all for herself before she ever saw the stone walls, ceiling, floors and steps. The irony of living in a very complicated, dressed-up mausoleum escaped her then. Looking back, it seemed so obvious. Every step echoed ominously in that miserable grey maze, filled in vain with bright flowers every summer day. Like a crypt decorated with mourning bouquets, the color and soft scent could never totally erase the sense of sadness and gloom-- not that it had ever caused her any major distress. The morning she woke up as a ten-year-old, forever after, was the first time in fact that she noticed just how cold and dank the castle really was, a beautiful charnel house full of blind living beings.
She couldn't control it.
No one could have... like a burn or a wound, her bloodlust took over every thought and action. She couldn't think without wanting to kill. Couldn't take a breath, but she tasted them, so full of everything she'd ever needed, would ever need again. It physically hurt her to be without blood, the desire was so strong. She quivered, like a peasant in the snow. When a servant came in to wake her, innocently stepping into the room, she pounced, killing her prey within feet of her warm bed.
That first kill was magic. Not exactly in a good way--the way her other memories of being a child were magic. It was different... when she hit the woman, time seemed to slow to a crawl. It took them seconds to fall to the floor and less than half a minute for her to pin and bite her faithful servant. This was how people falling and fighting worked. Everything moved fast, too fast for the keenest eyes to follow.
But to her, tangled in homespun and fragrant skin, pressing down against balsa-wood bones and wet-towel flesh, eternities passed between her leap from the counterpane and that first full, choking rush of blood. It filled her mouth and throat with raw heat, even spilled out her nose at first, as the woman's beating heart pumped lifeblood into Evangeline's body with no coaxing at all. She stayed forever there, many more eons, whole lifetimes, crouched over her prey at first, and swallowed the bitter blood again and again. Her mind became so focused on that primal satisfaction and heat that she came to her senses lying down, curled tightly around her kill as if she had been nursing at the woman's... er, jugular.
The castle was moving around her. Sensitive ears picked up footsteps and voices; some were coming closer to her room by the moment. Fear chilled the blood in Eva's veins and slowed it to a crawl. The stone beneath her feet struck her as unsteady, despite the castle's being a strong and sturdy fortress.
Looking around, she felt as if the world was closing in, terrified and confused. Only a few hours ago, her dreams had been hazy, discombobulated episodes of laughing and rolling in the warm heather and pungent gorse when winter finally left, frolicking in the sunny moor all day. Now, looking out at the snow, she would have begun to cry over the turn of events, if her superior instincts hadn't driven her through the heavy glass window.
Clear, cold shards brushed her skin and cut deep, but strangely this didn't slow her down. She hit the ground running, snow blooming around her impact and flying into the air, scattering red-laced coldness into the blank winter sky. Icy wind, so cold it seemed to claw right through her body, and the darkness of the forest shadows, were her first clear memories of life after being turned. For a long time--months and months until the snow and ice melted away--ice and black winter nights were all she knew, aside from the bloodlust, aching in her belly like a sickness, tingling in her veins like a drug. At first it was never truly sated. She wanted to kill everything and drink the oceans and rivers and rainstorms of blood. And each kill felt like regaining a piece of herself, besides. Killing, she learned, was essential.
Cruelty, and evil, went hand in hand and both of them helped her get that burning, throbbing elixir, the metallic bitterness coating her tongue from the first bite. The soft, nourishing blood helped to drive back her other near-constant companion, those frigid ice-slick shadows, the two opposing ends of her life's spectrum. For a time, the swing between those two ends was Evangeline's entire life. The music she'd loved as a child was only heard if she woke up in the wee hours of the day. The laughter of her playmates-- of any other children-- was never heard to echo over the night-drenched snow, and why would it? Such an idea was ludicrous, no matter how much she missed the sounds.
It would be many long and winding lifetimes before Eva could meet sunlit heather and gorse again.
The sunlight on her skin came back so long after she was turned that she had learned to live without it. Ice, darkness and murder became her staples and slowly, they became all she really needed. All a vampire really needs, after all, is blood and their own powers. All a mage needs is practice, patience... time... the occasional target for her spells; and Eva had all of those things. Violence served her well, first in the form of her powers, and that first magical murder, then as a mage in her own right, and finally, later, as a talented aikido practitioner. Her first clear memories, ice and darkness, would later form the basis of her most powerful spells.
And all because one night, in the dead of winter, a living child lay down in a stone crypt......