Alexia gasped for breath as she ran down blindly through the trees, her only thought to run. Run faster, run farther, never look back. The blood covering her hands, beginning to dry into a sticky film, went unheeded in the desperate need to flee. Moonlight flickered through the leaves in the trees, allowing her to see glimpses of the ground she ran over, allowing her to narrowly dodge the trees in her path.
Suddenly a dark figure rose up in front of her and Alexia cried out in fear, struggling to stop her forward momentum which was dragging her closer to the very thing that she was fleeing.
"Running into my arms, are we?" the dark figure chuckled evilly before raising a hand and beckoning her forward.
"No!" Alexia scream as she felt her body rebel against her and begin to move towards the man.
When she was standing but a scant few inches from him, she watched in terror as he raised his hand to caress her cheek, the feel of his skin on hers sending chills down her spine.
"I swore to your father that I would take everything of his is he defied me. Now you will suffer for his mistakes." The man hissed, his hand whipping out to pull her by her hair forward, his lips roughed slammed into hers, his tongue invading her mouth and ruthlessly plundering it.
"Submit to me and I will spare your worthless life, my dear." he whispered seductively to her as he broke the kiss.
"I would rather die." Alexia spat back at her fathers killer.
The man, Merrick, smiled at her response, "I was hoping you'd say that."
Merrick pulled out a curved dagger and slowly cut a line through cloth and skin from her collar bone to just above her navel, the dagger so sharp that even as it parted skin, she never felt it until the chill night air hit the red line of her flowing blood. But her body was still under another's control and all efforts she made to escape his control were in vain.
"I think you and I shall have some fun first, before you death." Merrick whispered, slowly licking her blood off of the dagger while staring straight into her eyes.
* * * * *
Alex awoke with a gasp, her gold eyes madly flickering around, trying madly to see where the danger was coming from in the dark that surrounded her. Finally her heart slowed down and her brain began to function normally as she realized it had just been a dream. Or rather, a memory, relived in full detail.
Laying back down, she held her hand up to study her black nails. They were a result of that night's encounter, along with her silver and black hair and numerous scars all along her back. She had managed to escape that night after Merrick's "fun" when he had been distracted. She had never really believed that she would escape. At the time, she never even realized he was allowing her to. But she had. And it wasn't till the next morning that she realized why she had been allowed to run.
As the sun came up, the first rays breaking over the top of the distant trees, Alexia had collapsed to the ground in horrible pain. Her body was slowly twisting and contorting itself and when the pain finally subsided, she merely lay there on the ground, gasping. And that was when that bastard had come to her again. He had laughed as she had tried to futile stand up.
"I was thinking last night, my pet. You were right. Death would be preferable. So I will let you live. Like this. Until the day you come crawling to me on your hands and knees and beg me to make it all better. And you will. Because until you do, you will always be thus. Even death will be denied you." And with a final laugh, he had left.
Bastard.
She was a snow leopard. That is what the horrible pain had been. Her body twisting into a strange form. But the true evil was that every night she was forced to endure the pain again as she changed back into her human form. She had no control over that. Twice a day her body was twisted and remolded. And the pain never lessened. In the fifty years that she had lived since that night, the pain had never lessened one little bit.
And even as a human, she was no longer herself. It was almost as if bits and pieces of the leopard stayed with her even during the night. Her nails were all the obsidian black of the cat's claws and her hair was now silver with stray, random strands of black. And her eyes. They were gold, a color only given to cats of all sizes. Gold shot through in their depths with a deep forest green. These things guaranteed that any human beings who ever saw her would now instantly that she was now other, there for making her dangerous, and they would either flee or try to kill her unless she went to great pains to hide these things.
There had been days when she had actually turned her steps toward where Merrick was, desperate to finally end the never ending pain, but she had never actually gone through with it. Never committed that last final act of surrender to her enemy. It had been fifty years and she was still alive, still free, still enduring all that life had thrown at her with her head held high.
With a sigh, Alex stood up and grabbed her huge black cloak up from off the ground where she had been sleeping, dusting it off before throwing it about her shoulders. It settled into it's place immediately, long familiarity with it's long folds having formed invisible groves in her shoulders where it always lay about her. She loved this cloak and had owned it since she had started her wanderings. It had been a gift.
At the time, she had been on the road for a several days and had been cold and starving. She had sill been in mourning for her father, her home and her innocence. If it hadn't been for the curse on her she would have surely died of starvation and exposure to the elements during her aimless wanderings along the roads. On one such road she had stumbled past an old man who had taken one look at her and had reached into his own pack and pulled out this cloak. He was the first human to see her and not shun her since her curse.
"This is for you." he had said had said gruffly, shoving it into her hands before she could say a thing, and continuing on down the road.
The cloak was a solid black with a hood that, should she choose to pull it down, covered her eyes and nose while still allowing her to see the road in front of her. The hem brushed the ground lightly as she walked in it and, all in all, it seemed as if the thing had been custom made just for her. I even hid all of the things that made her appear less human to people, the long sleeve covering her hands completely. And in all the time that she had owned it, it had never once gotten ripped or stained.
Now she knew who the cloak had come from. But it had taken him almost ten years to come to her himself. It had taken him ten years before he had come before her and revealed himself as her benefactor.
Who would have ever thought that her benefactor would be a thief?
Actually, he was the Thief. Taro, the god that the sneakiest, most unethical people in the world prayed to.
And my own personal hero.
It had been one of those nights when she had sat huddled in her cloak contemplating ending it all and throwing herself at Merrick's feet. Anything just to end the never ending flood of pain filled days. And there was nothing in her life to distract her from her own existence.
But then, suddenly, there had been someone hunkering down across from her, building up Alex's meager fire that she had built and then allowed to almost die. He was handsome in a, if this isn't redundant, roguish way and had grinned over at her with a look that was full of humor and challenge.
And she was ready to accept a challenge if it would just give her some relief from her own constant drifting.
"So I see you still have my present." He stated once the fire was built up, "Sorry it took me so long to get around to ya, but it's not like time matters anymore to ya."
Alex had started and she was almost sure that her mouth must have been hanging wide open.
"Who the hell are you?"
He jumped up and bowed gallantly to her. "Taro, at you service milady." he said before settling back down.
"Taro? Try another one." I knew the name Taro. And there was only one being in the world with that name. No one would dare name their child after a god, especially not the god of thieves. It was just asking for all sorts of unwanted attention.
"A disbeliever? I'm hurt." the man had said, bringing his hand to his heart in mock hurt, "But you wouldn't be of any help to me if you were easily convinced of anything, now would you. So how to convince you? Hmm...well, I can tell you that the cloak you are wearing was a gift from me to you through the intermediary of an elderly thief name Likos. What else? Hmm...I can tell you things you already know such as it was a man named Marrick who had your family massacred and cursed you to be both immortal and a shape-shifter."
She had sat, stunned. While still not sure if he really was Taro, she was convinced that he knew too much about her for her comfort. As she had already learned, there were much worse things in life than death and she had become very wary of those who knew more than they should.
"What do you want?"
"Oh don't look so suspicious. I am here to help. Trust me." He had said, trying to look innocent. And that was what made her laugh.
"Trust the god of thieves?!?" she had managed to gasp out, struggling for breath after laughing so hard.
And Taro had just grinned at her, shaking his head, "Alright, alright. Enough. You'll make me think that you don't trust me. But seriously girl, I do have a business proposition for ya."
That sobered her up.
"You have certain talents that I could utilize here on earth In return, I will make sure that you are well provided for and that you gain some measure of control over that curse of yours. Now just give me a second here to explain everything I want."
And so it had begun. She had listened to the god and had finally been convinced of everything he had said. Mostly because it made sense. He had wanted an agent of sorts, someone who he could send to help out or deal with people under his jurisdiction. Thieves occasionally needed to be reminded of just who was the god and that was where she came in. She would be that reminder.
And so she had learned about the thieves trade from the master thief himself. She had learned to walk silently, to fight with a dagger and to fight dirty, to appraise something's worth and to tell originals from mere forgeries. But he best thing that she had learned was how to shift into a leopard at night.
The curse demanded that she be a leopard during the day but Taro had managed to work around it so that she was able to control whether she was human or cat during the night. She still was forced into the change at sunset but she could shift back after that. Though still not perfect by any means, it gave her more control than she had had in a long time.
But it was still horribly painful.
And despite all her general misgivings about Taro, he and she had become almost friends. She learned just how far she could push the generally easy-going god and never crossed that line and Taro always treated her with a certain rough respect and kindness.
It had been Taro who had started calling her Alex. It was how he introduced her at first to a few of his "loyal subjects" and in time it became how she thought of herself. Alexia was the young girl who had lived a happy life as the daughter of a feudal lord. Alex was the mysterious emissary of the god of thieves. They were as different as night and day. As different as a leopard and a woman.
And it was Alex who was now walking down the road toward the city of Caunith.
