The Dark Tome - Journal of Katerina Winters

[unholywinter]

Entry One

Death, why do you transfix me? Shar, why do you not reveal the secrets within the power over death to me? Questions without answers, sleepless nights spent squeezing the life from beastly creatures. I watch them squirm as their life leaves them. The light in their eyes go dim, bodies go limp, as their last breath escapes into the dark. I pray for answers, I pray for guidance, but mosty I prey for things to extinguish their life essence.

[unholywinter]

//As you can see, entries are just that current thoughts and feelings of Katerina Winters, but interspersed throughout, there will be posts like this. History, story, the whos, whys and whats, wheres, even whens. These posts are not actually in any journal, but are for the entertainment of the reader.

Katerina was not always the way that she is now. Born to moderately wealthy travelling merchants, her life on the road with her parents and brother, was never dull.

Day to day efforts to put food on the table, built into the back of their caravan, brought new and interesting places and people into her life's story. Damien, her father, was a honest good man. Her mother, Elena, as beautiful of a person as her looks. Stephen, her brother was five years her elder, and paid as little attention to his "annoying" sister.

Life on the road, was good. Sometimes hard, yes, but always a happy and nurturing family, working together to make a living for themselves.

By the time of Katerina's tenth nameday, she was taught the stories of the gods, to read them herself and write them from memory. A child on the road, her time was spent, acting out the stories and playing the roles as needed. She had learned to wield a sword and shield, as her father did. She had learned to be a lady from her mother. From her brother, she learned of death.

Stephen, was the opposite of his father. Honesty, virtue, hard working, any values worth a lick, just were not engrained in him. Skewering mice and toads, on sharpened stakes, he would set them on fire. He enjoyed causing problems, and was beaten on more than a handful of occasions for his mischief.

Katerina, changed forever on her twelfth nameday. She became as cold, calculating, and cutthroat as her last name (Winters) could mean. Winters were always the hardest time for the family, and were regarded as terrible and frightening.

Damien, decided it was finally time to allow his son, being of seventeen winters, to travel from the caravan with a small ammount of goods to be delivered to a rather busy city.

From Katerina's point of view, all she knew was her brother screwed the wrong people, and those people came. They brought with them, violence never seen before to her young eyes and her brother already captive.

Stephen, tied and forced to watch. Damien, killed on the spot trying to defend his family as the evil men came. Elena, was their play thing, until they decided to move on to Katerina herself. They used some sort of poison to drug Elena, before litterally draining her life essence from her battered body. All that was left was a husk of the former beauty.

The decided that Stephen should go next and cut him from throat to groin, as he died holding his own innards.

Katerina was taken, and made their slave. Though slave is not the word for it, and abuse is not the word for what horrors she was put through.