| Sonja, Rafiq of Alamut |
| How did I become an Assamite, you might ask. What brought me to the attention of my sire, Kharma, the Vizier of Alamut, you might wonder. Well, though it will pain me, I will tell you, since my heart has long since turned to dust, and from my eyes tears no longer flow. I was born the daughter of a peasant woman, the victim of rape by a drunken dock worker. As she carried me in her womb, my father stayed with her in her home, or rather slept in her home when he was not at the local tavern, or working at the docks during the day, unloading cargo from merchant ships. The day of my arrival into the world finally came, almost killing my mother, her friends helping deliver me as my father slept through her sobs of both pain and joy. As I grew, my mother taught me how to both read and write in Arabic, as well as a small amount of a language called English, which she sometimes heard local shopkeepers speak in. When I reached the age of thirteen, my father began to eye me strangely. He licked his kips when he looked at me, or winked, reaching into his pockets and fidgeting in his chair. I went to sleep one night, my slumber slowly spiraling into a drugged nightmare of screams and blood. My father had given me a clay cup of liquid earlier in the night, urging me to drink it, which I did, not wanting to anger him after his trip to the pub. I climbed onto my canvas mat and went to sleep, slightly stirred by a muffled scream and sobs of pain. I saw in my nightmare blood on the walls, heard my mother's hideous screams as he beat her and cut her, leaving her dead on our table. He picked me up, putting a wad of cloth in my mouth and a bag over my head, throwing me onto the back of a horse he stole, tied up in front of an inn. He moved into another city, using me for both entertainment and income. Men paid him for nights spent in my company, relishing in my cries, caressing my scars and bruises with obscene pleasure. They ravaged me, tore at my clothes, raped me, beat me, never seeming to have their fill, and my father didn't care, as long as he was paid. I saw girls walking on the street, young, beautiful, well-fed, and wondered why that couldn't be me. One night, after a horrible show of savagery my one of my father's �clients,� I sloughed off my submission to them. I made a plan in my head, waiting for my father to fall asleep, his eyelids weighed upon by pint upon pint of ale, purchased at my expense. The time came for my action. I picked up a small cheese knife, of which he had a set. They were used five or six at a time along with a mallet to split wedges of hard cheeses, such as Parmesan, which my father had a wheel of in our cart. I took the mallet in my other hand and crept over to the man who'd forced me into slavery, and placed the tip of the dull, rounded blade to the back of his neck. I moved it up and down a bit, making sure it was between two of the bones in the spine, then brought the mallet down upon it, instantly lodging the steel wedge between two sections of his spine, his face not having time to contort in death. His breathing continued (though I later learned breathing didn't stop until a few minutes after death,) and I quietly slit his throat with a small dagger he owned, to make sure of my successful escape. A bowl was placed under the cut to collect any blood that drained out, though that heartless bastard had nothing to pump it out with. I wiped the knife on his collar and cut his coin pouch from his belt, tying it around my bruised wrist. I thought I saw a red glint in the night off to my right, but dismissed it. I'd just murdered my father after being raped nightly for three years, a hallucination would not be unexpected. I shook my head to clear it, then removed the cart from the horse and put some food into one of the saddlebags, untying him and riding west to the nearest city possible. As I rode, I felt a stinging sensation on my neck, and black serpents began to seep into my field of vision. My body began to feel very heavy, as did my eyelids. I urged the horse to slow down, but fell away into unconsciousness before I could dismount. I woke up in inky blackness, hearing only the sound of a blade on stone. I let out a small grunt as I sat up, my muscles stiff, my bruises painfully announcing their presence. I heard a rustle and a soft crack, seeing a spark to my right. A candle's flame began to burn, and I saw a person, slowly revealed as my eyes got used to the light. The man put down his stone and sword, inhaled deeply, and spoke, �Do not be alarmed. My name is Kharma, and I have been observing your tragedy for years. You are able to control your emotions, you are able to be patient, and you are able to kill silently. I'm going to offer you a choice. And that is: Do you wish to forget that you met me, and continue your life as it is, or do you want to be trained as a warrior?� �I...� was not used to choices. 'My life as it is'? I didn't have a life. I'd been a toy for all I can remember. And what the Hell did he mean by 'warrior?' Anything is better than my past, I figured. �... 'll go with the warrior.� He smiled and nodded barely. �You should go back to sleep. You're going to need it.� I decided that if he meant me harm he would've done it already, as so many other men had. He pinched the flame, and I once again heard the rhythmic scrape of metal on stone. I laid back down on the mat and drifted back to sleep. I was taken to a huge fortress, which I later learned was called Alamut, and as trained as an assassin for seven years, also working as a guard and doing menial labor. The man, whose name I learned was Kharma, converted me into a ghoul, and trained me to use the powers which the clan's blood gave me. When my 7 years of training was complete, I was killed at the age of twenty-three. But I did not die. I stayed at Alamut and continued to learn, studying the Path of Blood, learning about other clans of Cainites, and perfecting my skills of stealth. I am now a Rafiq, rank and file soldier, of the Assamite. I continue to study in the great library of Alamut, and hone my skills in combat constantly. What will happen to me, I don't know, but I refuse to be once more be a slave. My life is now mine, and the Clan's. Since I will live forever, all that's left is to learn, serve, and see what the future brings. |
 |
|