She remembered to perfection her first death in this dark limbo that was her current existence. The death that had changed everything. That proved to her beyond any doubt that what those men said before she died were not the ravings of madmen, but nothing but the truth.
The cruel, cold truth.
It's not as if she only couldn't die. Besides that, time had stopped for her. She didn't flow against the current of time like some beings of legend, long extinct if they had ever really existed, like vampires.
She existed outside of time.
That is why she couldn't be considered a living being. Something that couldn't die was not alive. Life and death always went hand in hand.
But she was digressing. What she was getting at is that of course, some would think she should have seen the signs even before that. Because she was and always would be a girl in her early twenties, and she wasn't normal.
As she had said, though, she had been very young when this curse was thrust upon her. And young people, especially seen through the eyes of an older person, already in and of themselves seemed to be immune to the passage of time. So she didn't notice anything unusual. Nor even suspect it.
Naturally, how could she suspect that something was happening to her that was so far out of common sense?
That's why she did nothing.
That's why she blithely, like a fool, continued immersed in the dream of a normal life.
Until those she had called neighbors and friends opened her eyes.
Until that day.
She could still feel the flames on her skin. It was as if she was burning, as if she would always burn. This existence was her own personal hell. Of course it burned. And the flames of hell tormented her especially in situations like the one she was in now.
Up to her elbows in the blood of her enemies. As she had said she would, she was continuing the killing. To protect Desmond and, above all, herself. She was a woman of her word.
The first time she had found herself with only three men in a dirty alley.
This time, however, they kept coming. One after another. They came for her, seeking peace, glory or whatever, and only received the embrace of death. In other words, what they deserved.
They deserved no more than this. To drown in their own blood. To die cursing her, cursing even the heavens. To burn, as she was burning.
She had lived a long time. At first, she had harbored a thirst for vengeance against the world, certainly. As the saying went, misery loves company. For the first few years, she had devoted herself solely to spreading her misery. She had been a mass of flesh that lived only to hurt others.
But those feelings, once so intense, had proved to be transient, like so many others.
Yes, it's not as if the flame of her hatred still burned. It's not as if the bonfire of that day had never been extinguished in her heart. But, she couldn't let it go. She couldn't get it out of her mind, nor would she want to.
How could she?
Both those she knew and those she didn't gathered to rain abuse upon her. The daily life she had grown accustomed to changed literally overnight.
When they laid into her, she felt no fear. What she felt at first, no, before the beginning, was confusion.
As expected.
She couldn't understand it.
How things had changed so easily, how they could be doing this to her.
It was crazy.
The town she had lived in all her life had apparently been transformed into a den of bloodthirsty monsters. Even after seeing that they had no explanation to give, or that they didn't want to give it to someone like her perhaps, she continued to insist as if knowing the answer would change the inevitable.
That's what she did during the night she spent in a cell, waiting for the moment of her execution.
Crying and asking for explanations.
Back then she had been what humans consider an adult woman. Yet she had behaved like a child. She didn't hate herself for it or blame herself. It was only natural that the weak could do nothing but cry. Prey was devoured by larger and stronger animals. In that they did not differ at all from the animals.
If I had been as strong as I am now....
If I had known what I knew now....
No, there was no point in thinking like that, in asking such questions.
Even if she'd had the will to fight and the weapons to do so, she wouldn't have been able to. She knew that. The others had turned on her with ease. But she... Cut the throats of her friends? Just acquaintances, even though she saw them practically every day because it was a small town?
No.
Back then, she wouldn't have been capable of something like that. Even if it would have been to save her life, she would not have moved. The inevitable tragedy would have taken place anyway.
Without explanations, without spitting anything but hatred, they took her to the square where she would be executed for the crime of existing.
They ignored, as from the beginning, her screams and the tears that ran down her cheeks, so hot that they gave the impression that they were burning her skin.
Abigail screamed wildly and brandished the knife in her hand.
Thus, as if she were Death himself, she cut down another life.
In her voice there was only fury.
She was on fire. From head to toe, all her skin burned, and the flames of hell would eventually consume her.
But not yet.
Not yet.
They chose to burn her alive to make sure she would die. She was not lucky enough to die choking to death from the thick smoke, like most people who were executed that way.
She was a "thing" for which no time passed, after all.
They didn't think such a death would be enough, and they thought right. What escaped them all, especially herself, who thought she was normal, was that even flames wouldn't be enough.
She screamed, of course.
She had never felt such pain in her life. Her life had been that of any normal girl you could find anywhere. She hadn't gotten into trouble, and she had a kind and loving family who had never raised a hand to her.
She had been completely unprepared for what she perceived at the time as a complete change.
For such hatred, and such pain.
Her mind went blank with fear and pain. As she burned, she ceased to exist as a human being. She was reduced to an animal that felt her own death approaching. It smelled something burning, and knew it was its own flesh. Even its bones.
It screamed, yes, and a lot. But eventually it ran out of strength to scream, let alone try to undo its bonds.
In any case, even if it had been able to untie itself, it would not have been able to escape in any way.
Even with divine luck on its side, it wouldn't have been able to get out of the confines of the village, much less find help.
At first, the spectators enjoyed her execution as if it were the most fun that had happened to them in years. They had all come together for someone's suffering, after all. There was no sweeter nectar than the suffering of others.
People only cared about others insofar as they affected them, after all.
But this was not mere suffering, excessive and aimless. No. Those gathered there, she now understood, had sought to confirm their own happiness. What possible way was better than to see someone going through the most extreme suffering they could imagine?
But the fun went beyond that. Perhaps because of her special nature, it simply took too long for her to die. When they stopped hearing her scream. That's when they took a good look at what they were really doing.
There was nothing left except a burnt husk.
Her skin had turned pitch black, speckled with fiery red dots that stood out.
It was not blood.
It was about the muscles that her burnt skin showed, that is, in the spots that had not been so badly burnt that only her bones could be seen.
It was something grotesque. She would say it was like the remains of an animal on display in a butcher's shop, but the difference was that with her no one had to strain to see the shape she had originally had. Even though they were looking at a sight so horrible that it made them wish she wasn't human, they couldn't forget that she was.
And that they were the ones who had done this to her.
But their guilt wouldn't last.
It certainly wouldn't. As soon as this was over, they would undoubtedly go back to their normal lives as if nothing had happened.
Telling themselves things like this couldn't have been avoided, at best.
But, at that moment, they became her prisoners.
She was still alive, even in that state. Her breathing was like the wind passing through a cavern. Her ribs stuck out like the petals of a blooming flower. But she was clinging to life. And the flames had already died down. The amount of wood they had gathered at the bonfire was no longer enough.
Time stretched into eternity.
With all the spectators becoming her mute prisoners.
The powerful illusion that time had stopped, that everything was frozen, was easily broken, with one step. And a sound like glass bursting.
The one who had stepped forward was a person in monk's robes. He crouched down and looked into her eyes. At her, who had been reduced to a mass of flesh that could not even recognize herself as a human being.
The monk had that problem too.
His eyes were as cold as ice. He didn't seem to be seeing the same as the others, who were suddenly stupefied, terrified.
As if bewitched.
As if she were truly a witch.
Those cold eyes did not leave hers as he plunged the knife into her forehead, putting an end to her suffering almost instantly. Or so the monk thought, of course. But evidently her suffering had only just begun then. There began an eternity of suffering.
This she did not witness directly, since she was shrouded in the darkness of death in the meantime.
But, after the monk stabbed her, they threw more wood on the bonfire, made sure that it burned, that nothing was left of it but ashes.
She found that out later.
After opening her eyes in the middle of the night, alone in the middle of that square and as good as new.
The first target of her burning desire for revenge was that monk, for striking the final blow. Then she took care of those who condemned her.
She didn't mean it in a legal sense. She hadn't even had anything resembling a trial in the first place. Of course, she took care of those who presided over her execution. But she didn't stop there.
She killed many of the people who had laughed at her and spat on her, enjoying her suffering.
What she really wanted at that moment, mad with rage, was to kill each and every one of them. To wipe those filthy creatures off the face of the earth, along with the village they inhabited. No one could have blamed her for that desire. Even if someone did, she wouldn't give a shit, what she felt was enough for her.
It wasn't a bad wish. After going through something like that, it was the only thing anyone sane could wish for.
And, despite everything...
As she was saying, she hadn't. She would have been able to, but only physically. Mentally...
She collapsed.
She bathed in the blood of those who had condemned her, of those demons who had dragged her into the flames of hell. But she collapsed as soon as she had to face the fear-filled eyes of a child. What she did, in the end, was to run away. Disappear into the night.
Even after suffering like that, she wasn't able to give it back to her enemies... No, that wasn't the point. She wasn't able to return it to the children, who were not to blame for anything. She was entitled to kill them all, to fulfill her revenge. That was undoubtedly true.
But not that.
She hadn't been able to allow herself to trample on those lives for the sake of her own.
Even if she had killed all the adults, leaving the children, who knew nothing, alone, she would have condemned them anyway. They would have starved to death. Sooner or later.
And, of course, it had been a mistake from the most practical point of view.
She would have saved herself a lot of trouble if she had completed her killing spree. If she had prevented the town authorities from reporting it. With the town full of dead souls, she could have gone elsewhere and started a new life instead of being hunted down as a witch, an abomination.
Still, even so, she didn't believe she had been wrong. The mistake had been the right decision for her as a human being.
But, even today, she was burning at that stake.
The smell of her burning flesh still filled her nostrils. She had died that day. Her spirit, pulling at her corpse like a puppet, wouldn't stop burning until she was finally allowed to rest in peace. There was not a shred of peace within her.
Killing the soldiers of what she designated simply as the Organization because there had been too many like it before, and she didn't care what name it might have, she barely differentiated them in her memories, Abigail screamed like a fierce beast.
She vented her rage on them every time she swung the knife.
With every stab, every scream, every blow.
Even the sound of the guns going off all around her seemed to be nothing more than an expression of her rage.
She was experiencing one of those moments of ecstasy where she seemed to be connected to the world she was so far removed from.
And she was feeling like this killing relentlessly. Mercilessly.
She told herself that she must have taken a bad turn at some point, to have ended up like this. She couldn't say when it had been, though. Or if she had, in the first place, because this could simply be the inevitable result of being what she was.
In any case, the battle was coming to an end. They were far enough away from civilization that the continuous gunfire and the occasional explosion (oh, and the sounds of the wounded or dying, of course) didn't attract attention. So it's not as if she was in a hurry.
It was simply that this fact had caught her by surprise, immersed in her thoughts as she had been. Even now that thoughts of the past were gone, she couldn't be said to be concentrating, however. The fire that was devouring her inside prevented any rational thought.
She was a mass of impulses, like a wild animal. Reacting on instinct alone. Killing because she had to kill.
Luckily, that was enough.
It had been enough so far and would continue to do so.
But that was tempting fate. Shortly after that thought crossed her mind, there was a gunshot. One more among dozens. But this one was different, she distinguished it instantly. Because this one rocked her world.
Abigail fell to the ground, letting out a startled voice.
Lying on the ground, she coldly observed that a good portion of her legs had been blown off by the shot. However, she felt no pain. She perceived it as something that was in a different world from hers. Now especially, the only thing she felt was the flames burning her skin.
The only thing that propelled her forward.
Mouth full of blood, teeth painted red and clenched, showing them all, Abigail looked at the enemy that had managed to reach her. Hit her good.
This wasn't the first time she had bled in this battle, but it was the first time she had suffered a wound of such severity. Of course, calling this a wound was like a bad joke. For normal people, wizards or not, in most cases this would be a death sentence.
No more, no less.
To her this would only slow her down.
It was just a small obstacle.
Her defiant gaze was loaded with that message, burning it upon the enemy holding the shotgun that would force her body to produce a new pair of legs.