A/N - I wrote this for my English work and I wondered why I didn't write straight for 5 hours normally. After reading it back, I realised I just ramble after the first 5 pages! Title's a bit unoriginal, but at that time last night I couldn't really think of a better one. Don't personally like the ending either, but I'm never happy, so don't listen to me.

Legacy

The young urchin girl awoke to the sound of a piercing scream in the near distance. As she rose from the cold slab of a doorstep where she had been spending the night, her eyes caught the running, panic stricken shapes of the village folk. The scream had also woken them from their slumbers and, as she brushed the unruly hair from her eyes, she saw the smoke.

An orphan from a young age, the girl had grown up on the streets and knew danger when she saw it. The approaching smoke was followed closely by specks of luminosity, tinged with reds, yellows and oranges. There was more screaming but the fire’s harsh voice was growing louder with every passing second. More people were running past her temporary shelter, paying little or no attention to a scruffy street girl such as herself. They were interested in escaping, from the fire and whatever had made someone scream in such an ungodly way.

The door behind her suddenly opened, pushing her over into the dirt of the street. The inhabitant of the house, a gruff middle aged man, paid her little heed as he too started running away from the approaching fire. Looking up, she could see the source of his distress – the thatch on the roof of the mainly wooden house was flickering as the sparks set in. Soon the whole building would be consumed.

Standing quickly, brushing herself off hastily, she again surveyed the area. There were less people running past her now; most had run by long before. The street was clear except for a few abandoned carts. As she looked up, she felt the heat of the fire on her face and through the thickening smoke the stars of the once clear summer sky were barely visible.

Turning to face the closest buildings, the girl spotted the alley she had spent most of the previous day in. The flames were rapidly consuming the buildings on both sides of the passage, so she made sure her hair was securely tied and her ragged dress was held tightly as she pelted full speed into the corridor. The heat she had gingerly felt in the street was multiplied tenfold and the fire was beating ever closer as she ran on. With each footfall of her bare feet, the blaze seemed to be chasing her. She hadn’t remembered it being this long an alley. A stray spark fluttered down and landed on her skirts, quickly setting into the coarse fabric. She beat it out as she ran, focusing on getting away from the imminent danger of the fire and stopping her clothes bursting into flames.

It was because of this she didn’t realise there was something lying across the mouth of the alley until she was too close. She couldn’t swerve in the confined space and tripped over the shape, slipping as her foot landed on the far side of the obstacle. Her head hit the ground painfully hard, narrowly missing the cobbled street at the exit to the corridor. Everything was tainted red as her eyes readjusted themselves and she felt bile rise in her throat. She was lying next to the body of a boy, not much older than herself, sharing the pool of blood he occupied. Standing quickly, she clasped her hand to her mouth as she realised the blood had only a few minutes ago been gushing from his throat, now a bloody mess under a pained face. Turning to the wall of the alley, she emptied her stomach of its meagre contents and looked over her shoulder at the body. The throat had been torn, not a clean cut like that of a knife, but more like how claws or teeth would rip an unprotected target.

Shocked and disgusted, she started to run down the sides of the street she had just appeared on. With blood still on her feet she slipped on the smoothed cobbles of the road and had to hold onto the wall as she ran. From the flickering light of the fire ahead she could see more lifeless shapes lying in the street. Not doubting what the darker hues around them were, she averted her eyes and spotted another alley, untouched by the fire, slightly farther on along the other side of the road. Breaking from the wall the girl ran into the open to reach the safety of the passage. She momentarily lost her balance on the uneven surface and tumbled to the floor with a crack as her knee collided with the solid ground. Cradling it to her body, tears ran down her grimy face and she looked down at the boy’s blood, now soaked into her own clothes and skin.

With a quiet scream of agony, she stood up straight and put weight on the knee. It was weak and painful, but it would hold for a while. She limped quickly over to the alley, keeping her balance and focusing solely on the ground in front of her. In the distance she could still hear the shouts and screams but they were slowly dying down as she left them behind; the high walls of the new alley almost blocked them out completely. Leaning heavily on the whitewashed wall, she started on again leaving behind her a handprint in fresh blood.

Wincing against the pain, she hurried along the passage and soon the heat of the fire was also left behind. She knew from the years of living in the village that soon she’d reach the outskirts and the safety of the woods. It was only early summer so the trees themselves were not dry enough to be consumed by the fire; and it was the only refuge she knew of. There were things there that she could live on until the village was rebuilt, until her estranged home was back to normal.

After many twists and turns, her knee growing ever weaker, the buildings around her started to become smaller and the tops of trees could be seen in the near distance. She sped up, the sound of the fire again pursuing her through the warren of buildings that made up the small village. Almost suddenly, the houses dropped away and the dirt of the track became mingled with the shoots of grass abundant this close to the edge of the wood. Here the line of trees was nearly unbroken, with only a few lumberjacks’ houses dotting the outskirts. The fields were farther to the south and such an open place couldn’t offer much protection from the elements.

Limping to the tree line, she glanced a look at the house closest to her. Like most of the others she had caught glimpses of the door was wide open. From the distance the girl was at, she could tell it was open but not that the door itself had been ripped from its hinges. Turning back to the village, she saw how her fear that the fire was catching up on her was well founded – now the alley she had only seconds ago departed was being consumed by the flames. If she had been a few seconds slower at any point, she’d had been trapped and right now would be burning with the boy’s body.

As her mind turned again to the boy’s lifeless form slumped across the alley, the bile rose in her throat and she turned to the trees, tears stinging her eyes. She shambled on, holding onto branches to keep her steady on the unkempt trail that had been long forgotten. Minutes of pained walking slowly left the roar of the fire behind and the horrors it was consuming. As she pushed another branch out of her way, she came to a small crystal shimmering stream running across the trail.

Hopping to a large boulder not far from the water, she sat down and looked at her knee. It was cut, but not badly, and she couldn’t be sure if the blood it was caked in was hers. Reaching down to the fast flowing stream, she rubbed her hands of the grime and cupped some of the water to her knee to clean it. After minutes of laboriously cleaning the cut she found it was more a matter of the leg being jarred and badly bruised than anything.

The girl slid down the boulder onto the moss of the wood floor, resting her head against the rock as she thought of the terrors that had overwhelmed the village she called home – now, over the gentle gargling of the stream, not even the blood curdling screams or the crackling of the ever growing fire could be heard. Fresh tears of sadness welled up in her eyes as she fell into an uneasy sleep, plagued with the images of destruction and death…

--

With a scream of rage, the dark clad figure kicked in another door to the southern point of the village. Through the slit in the cloths worn over his face, he quickly surveyed the darkened hallway of the house. The flickering of the fire behind him was growing stronger and as he peered around he thought he saw something move. No; not thought. He knew.

Lunging forward, he unsheathed the dagger at his waist in a split second and bought it down on the young woman before she could scream. Her mouth was moving but no sound was escaping as he ripped the jagged dagger out with such force her neck made a dull crack and she fell to the floor in a crumpled heap.

“Not many left,” the harsh, cracked voice whispered from behind the dark facemask.

Wiping the bloodied dagger on the woman’s dress, he walked back out the door and looked down the street. There was one more house with its door still intact. From his earlier surveillance, he knew it was the home of a young family with a crippled elder. They were safe from the fire, for now, and would have stayed in the house with the old man until the last possible moment.

“Easy pickings,” he commented, laughing cruelly under his breath, “I’m sure a slow death is what they deserve.”

Cracking his knuckles ominously, he stayed to the shadows and pulled his black oiled jacket around himself. The fire was burning itself out too quickly, perhaps before it reached the end of the village and could clear up this final mess. He’d picked off the ones who had ran at first, cutting them off by climbing over the roofs. Dropping down in front of them one by one, quickly smashing their head off a wall or snapping their necks wasn’t hard – he preferred it over using his daggers or his nails.

That was how everyone had come to be so panicked. His dagger had veered off a woman’s neck just as she turned to look at the intruder, leaving her time to scream and wake up the rest of the neighbourhood. Her husband had tried to pull his own knife on him before he could silence the woman, but a quick thrust with his dagger into his stomach kept him occupied. He had finished them both off quickly, but already his task was made harder as the rest of the village started to wake.

He sidled up to the door of the young family’s house, the last set of people he hadn’t dealt with. Reaching up, he knocked lightly on the door and sensed from the echo that a blockade that had been arranged behind it.

“Hello? Is there anyone in there?” he enquired with a false air of innocence and despair, “I’m trying to find some people to help me, my house was broken in to and my wife is injured. I doubt she’ll survive much longer if I can’t find aid, please can you help me? Please?”

After a few seconds there was no reply, but he could hear breathing on the other side of the door. Someone was close, perhaps trying to see through the slight crack in the doorframe. Guessing their position, he started to turn away from the door.

“I’ll have to see if there is anyone else still alive, I fear I’m alone now,” he carried on, lowering his voice as his sentence faded out.

With a sudden reflex, he spun around and punched the door with such force the wood splintered and his hand went straight through the heavy planks. He felt something reel away from him, the warmth of a body, perhaps a torso. He pushed his arm through the hole and grasped at the person, finally finding hold on a throat. He could feel it was the young man, the Adam’s apple pressing hard against his palm as the man tried to shout. There was the sensation of hands clawing at his wrist, trying to pull his grip away from the throat. He quickly crushed it, feeling the bones crack and the hands fall away as the body became lifeless.

Throwing it to the side of the doorway, he heard a muffled sob and smiled sadistically as he removed his arm from the hole. Peering in, he could vaguely make out a woman cradling a babe in her arms and an old man propped up against a wall. In the light of the fire that had now leapt to the thatch of the house opposite, he could see the fear and anger in their eyes. Their own barricade meant they were trapped inside, at his mercy if he so chose to kill them that minute.

Instead he backed away and surveyed the building. He knew there was only one entrance; the other door had been blocked off with boards after it had been broken by a stray animal a few days ago. The windows were all shuttered from the outside and inside, obviously to try and keep whatever was plaguing the village out. Looking up, the first embers from the fire were alighting on the roof. Soon the whole house would be on fire like the rest of the village.

He looked back into the hole, smiled at the now crying woman and walked off down the street. Between the rows of houses, he could see the devastation he had caused. Bodies were lying in the streets; some charred while others were not yet touched. Houses were alight, their doors and windows smashed or broken. For the immorality the village folk had committed he thought this was simply not enough.

“They should all burn in hell for it,” he said half to himself, half to the destroyed world around him, “burning for eternity like those wretches in that house. They deserve it; I hope they enjoy what they got.”

--

The urchin girl’s eyes fluttered open for a second time that night. Instead of the piercing scream that had awoken her before, she could now hear nothing but the stream and her own gentle breathing. Something had stirred her from sleep, but she couldn’t pinpoint it.

The hairs on her neck suddenly stood up as she sensed something again, getting closer. She climbed awkwardly to her feet, the knee she fell on before even more painful than before but more from stiffness than anything else. Leaning heavily on the boulder, she heard something again. This time it was clear; the snapping of a twig in the distance. It was close, but far enough away to only just be audible.

Struggling faster, she shuffled along the stream farther away from the trail she had come along. It would be obvious to anyone following the track that someone else had traversed it not long before, but she could put at least some distance between herself and the new arrival. She had no doubt that whatever was walking up the path was what had killed those people and started the fire. If it was anyone else, they would be walking with much more care instead of the arrogant steps currently approaching.

Coming to a thick holly bush next to another large boulder, she squeezed between the two and crouched painfully, watching the vaguely visible trail. It seemed she had got to the safety of the hiding place just in time, as almost immediately a large figure came out of the trees.

It was tall, around the height of a large man, dressed in black. A black mask made of some sort of cloth was covering most of his face and only his eyes could be seen. A black oilskin jacket was covered in something; something that was slowly dripping onto the crushed grass as he stopped next to the stream. The most obvious thing was the daggers he was adorned with. On a belt he wore at least four, with others attached to black leather vambraces and some strapped to his knee length boots. He looked set for a war, and as he turned to survey the stream the girl saw the liquid on his jacket had also stained his hands a crimson red.

With a slight gasp, she realised it was by his hands the boy’s throat had been ripped out. In that instant, he turned to face her hiding place. She cowered down between the rock and prickly leaves, trying to hide herself from his piercing stare. Now he was looking directly at her, she could see his eyes beyond the mask – they were a violent blue, swimming with things she couldn’t understand. He conveyed a sense of pity in his stare, which swiftly changed to anger and then to wonder. She could hardly keep up with the emotions that she sensed in the eyes and she began to feel faint, knowing that if he took just one step towards her she would be dead within seconds.

He stared at her for slightly longer, never once making a move to draw a dagger or lunge. After what seemed like an eternity, he turned away and stepped deftly over the stream before disappearing into the woods on the opposite side of the trail. The girl was speechless; he had undoubtedly killed most if not all the inhabitants of the village, but he had spared a young urchin girl.

She realised she wasn’t breathing and took a deep breath, rustling the leaves of the holly. She sat there for a few minutes more, regaining her composure and trying to understand why death hadn’t just welcomed her with open arms. She had thought she was lucky, escaping the fire and not seriously damaging her knee when falling, but the destroyer of the village just walking by was more than just luck.

With another deep breath, the girl stood up and straightened out her leg. Grabbing some leaves, she dipped them in the ice cold stream and applied them to her knee. Walking hunched over would be awkward, but she could do nothing else if she wanted to go back and look for other survivors; if there were any.

Hunched over and shuffling, she walked close to the stream back to the trail. Still not sure that the man had departed, she frequently glanced over at the other side of the bank, expecting a dark shape to suddenly loom over her and draw a dagger at any point. This fear pushed her on and as she reached the trail she bent down to touch the substance that had dripped from the man’s coat.

It was sticky on her fingers, thicker than water and it was slowly drying even as she touched it. She could tell it was the dark red hue of blood by a new light appearing over the tops of the trees. The morning was arriving, a welcome brightness from the night lit purely by the flames of a ravaging fire. Rays of sunlight broke through the canopy making the water glitter and dance as she reached to clean the blood from her fingers. It was not quite so repulsive now, mainly because she hadn’t seen from what horror it had come from.

Ripping off part of her bloodstained dress, she dipped it in the stream to absorb even more of the cool water. She tied it around her knee, securing the makeshift plaster of leaves, and realised she could now walk upright. Looking back to the opposite bank, she could barely see where the killer had entered the woods. With a sigh hiding the fear she now felt, she turned to go back to the village. She knew what she would find, but still she couldn’t prepare herself.

Hobbling along the trail, she pushed the branches out the way and walked back to the clear daylight. The sun’s rays were becoming brighter with each passing minute, and it gave her new hope and strength as she walked. Ever since she was small she had believed that the light of morning, the brightness of the sun, could drive away evil and fears. Now this belief came back as she walked on.

As she left the shelter of the trees, she could see that the fire had burnt itself out in the hours she had been in the wood. The alley she had seen earlier consumed by flames literally seconds after she had left it was no more – the buildings on either side were piles of ash and charcoal. The lumberjacks’ houses hadn’t been reached by the fire; they were too well protected by the damp wood to be at risk. Walking forward towards the ruins she saw the extent of the damage. All of the buildings in the village had been hit by the fire, their bare bones the only reminder that they were once houses. The charred wooden supports pointed to the sky like accusing fingers. Looking over the devastation, the girl could see that even the stone church had been reduced to rubble. Even the faith of the village wasn’t spared.

She limped through the streets she had once walked along, ran through, when they were full of people. Every so often she came across the blackened pile that was once a cart or another blackened shape much too awkwardly shaped to be anything but human. She hurried past these, the image of the boy’s body still embedded in her mind, intermingled with the pictures of the man’s hands and nails. She knew now what had done that damage.

Reaching the village’s blacksmiths, she saw various tools poking up from between the debris. She gingerly walked up to the edge of what was once the workshop and pushed a lump of ash with her toe. The powder crumbled away from an almost entirely intact sword. It had been the blacksmith’s speciality but not many people in a farming village required such a noble weapon so he had only made a few – but with each of them he made, the quality and care he put into each blade made them much stronger than anything else. The girl reached down and tried to pick the sword up, but its weight was too heavy for her to lift. She dropped it with a resounding clatter and looked down at it in curiosity.

With a look of determination on her face, she reached down and grabbed the hilt with both of her hands. They could both fit snugly on the grip and she used all her strength to raise it up. Her muscles strained as she lifted it from the ground and away from the ash of the fallen building. The powder fell from it to reveal a bright blade etched with the patterns of leaves and a hilt encrusted with onyx gems. This had been the blacksmith’s prize possession; the detail had meant it had taken him months to complete it. She could remember standing outside the window, looking in at the same sword hanging from the wall with the other children.

Now she was holding it, studying it with intense interest. Her arms were aching from lifting it to her face and she was unconsciously lowering it to an attack position. Suddenly, she swung it as if at an invisible foe and smiled as it made a satisfying slicing noise through the air.

Putting it carefully down on the ground, she moved forward with new resolve and started to sift through the barren ash. Soon enough she came across the sword’s scabbard; a simple leather and metal affair, with a sturdy strap and the same pattern as the blade in silver leaf on both the front and back. More searching revealed two curved short swords and a dagger, all with the same leaf designs and onyx gems. She found straps to secure these onto your person made out of metal too, the only material to survive the fire other than the sturdy metal and leather combinations of the scabbards.

Fixing these around her waist and over her shoulders, the weight was immense but she assured herself she’d get used to it. Ripping her dress down to a more practical size, she walked down the street picking up anything she thought she could use to help her; metal pokers, knife blades, cloth.

As she paced through the streets, her mind was distracted from the destruction and devastation around her but only for a moment. She wouldn’t forget what happened here, or who did it, and she promised to fight it with whatever strength she could find within herself…

--

The man sat in the cave he had called home for the years he had lived in the woods. His arms were heavy, the night’s events taking its toll. He lay back on the makeshift bed of dried leaves and rags, staring at the ceiling and thinking of the flames that had consumed the village not far from the cave.

“They deserved it,” he reminded himself, turning over to face the entrance to his hovel.

The wind was starting to howl on the hill and as he looked over the canopy of trees he saw the sun begin to rise. His life had meant he had lived as an owl, hunting by night where he could be more alert and others were lethargic. Even when equally matched, his reactions were much faster than those of a normal man, but by night his opponents didn’t stand a chance.

He sighed heavily, closing his eyes against the rays of light that had started to enter the cave. The sun could hardly penetrate beyond his facemask, so he didn’t bother with any way to stop the light entering during the day. Stretching and rolling over to look at the ceiling again, he began to talk to himself.

“They all deserved it; they shouldn’t have done what they did. No-one should be allowed to do that. They should burn like their beloved village burnt. I hope they do burn…”

He slowly drifted off to sleep as the sun’s light fell on his slowly rising and falling chest. Unbeknownst to the sleeping killer, he had a something that someone else wanted. An adder slowly slithered up and rested on the man’s chest, settling itself down in the warmth of the sunlight. As he went to instinctively swat it away, it lunged at a spot of bare skin on his neck. With a scream of pain and surprise, the man threw the snake across the room where it hit the wall with a thump and fell to the floor. Immobile for a second, it slid out the cave to the leave the killer in agony.

His neck started to swell as he collapsed on the floor, writhing in pain. As his vision clouded and he lost consciousness, he mouthed words to the bare rock around him.

“I deserved it too,”

--

The woman stood on an outcrop over a village. Her left hand rested on the hilt of a sword, the scabbard covered in a leaf design in silver and the hilt encrusted with onyx gems. Her clothes were dark, mostly leather, and there were other weapons attached by straps to her shoulders and waist including a rare pistol at her right hip.

She was looking down between the streets at the people milling about, going about their everyday business. It was almost nightfall and they looked happy, normal, almost as if they didn’t know what they had done. She sighed with disdain at their ignorance and turned back to the woods she had been hiding in for the last few weeks of her surveillance.

In a few hours she’d go down into the village itself and start the purge of the immoral, as she knew she had to do. Until then, she decided to make sure all was in order. Sitting on a fallen log, she deftly started to remove and clean her weapons. The blades were all gleaming with oil, expertly polished and kept sparkling for a fresh kill. The pistol had been taken from a highwayman she had come across, relieving him of his items and his life. That was her first kill.

As the dark enclosed the woods and lands around it, she reattached her weapons and stood up. It would take her a good hour to get to the other end of the village and if she worked from the north to south any stray individuals could be rounded up in the bottle neck the valley created. She planned to kill them all quickly and quietly, but plans weren’t always guaranteed to work.

Standing up quickly, she winced in pain as an old knee injury flared up again. Limping for a few steps, she got back into a normal stride and as the ground went down steeply towards the nearer buildings. She would go as far forward as she could, trying to keep to the shadows and out of sight of the houses and then cut through the trees to go around the village. It would take longer than just walking through the outskirts but it ensured no-one would see her and it meant she didn’t waste time until the right hour for the task.

Living in woods since the night many years ago, the woman knew how to navigate through a build up of trees as dense as the wood that enveloped the village she was working towards. The trees were of a different sort to that she was used to; pines instead of the oaks of the other woods. Still, he dodged and walked confidently through the wilderness, every so often surveying the village as she went. It was all still in the same condition as it was yesterday, the date of her last full observation.

She had been keeping a watch on the village and its coming and goings for weeks, finding proof of their immorality and working out the best plans for the situation it was in. she had decided upon just working through the villagers, taking them one by one to reduce danger to herself and to ensure that the job was done correctly. She would have preferred to do it quickly, but when it came to speed and accuracy, the latter was the best for such a situation.

After a few hours of careful traipsing, she reached the northern tip of the village. The house right at the end of the main street was silent, the door not locked and all the candles extinguished. It was a home owned by someone who had a good job, but it was only the family who lived there. A man and his wife, a simple task. The entire village would be fairly simple; it was all a matter of timing and precision.

The night was almost over. Her job had gone mostly well, getting through over half the village before something went wrong. She had entered a house and been confronted by a man who was stoking the fire. Turning on her with a poker, she had run him through easily with her sword but when she threw the red hot iron back into the fire, a spark leapt onto a bare thread rug. An unusually hot summer meant the house was alight in minutes. She had left a woman and two children to the flames, she couldn’t risk being caught in the inferno herself.

People had started to run as the fire took hold. She picked most of them off in the streets, using the two blades to kill them quickly. When she had weapons she had enough strength to kill a fully grown man. Some people she had simply barricaded in their houses, the ones she knew from her surveillance that didn’t have any other exits. The fire would get to them soon after.

At the last few houses, people had barricaded themselves inside. One man had pushed a rifle through a broken window pane and was waiting to shoot at anyone who posed a threat. She easily grabbed the gun, took it from him and shot him with it. The rest of the clean up was easy, mostly once she killed the men the women went down without a fight. She just let the children burn with the bodies.

As she was walking back up the main street, the fire was setting in on both sides of the village. All the houses had been touched by the blaze and all were being burnt to ash within minutes. Such a hot season had worked in her favour, considering the fire was an accident. When she considered it, it would also help clear up the bodies. It would be harder for people to realise they had been stabbed if there was only a charred mess left.

She smiled sadistically as she walked on, the heat from the fire beating down on both sides but it wasn’t wholly uncomfortable. As she reached the northern tip of the village, she glanced over at the only stone building in the vicinity. The foundations were still standing, but the rest of the inn had collapsed in on itself. As she looked, she sensed there was something moving in the rubble. Walking closer, she stopped as she saw a young girl peeking out from between a pile of stones and the still standing outer wall.

A look of recognition passed over her face, only obscured by a mask over her nose and mouth from the ash of the fire. There was a young urchin girl, like she once was, terrified with the prospect of death at the hands of this merciless killer; her. She had a sudden feeling of pity of the girl, knowing what she had been through, but it suddenly changed into anger at how she could have missed this one girl. She had planned to kill everyone, had made sure of it, and yet she missed this one?

As she stared at the girl, she made a decision. She looked away from the young wretch and started walking back towards the woods. As she reached the perimeter of the village, she turned back to get one last look of her work. The buildings were still smouldering, the girl was still staring at her and in the distance the screams had died down. She faced the woods again and took a step forward.

Then, in a split second, she turned back, pulled out her pistol from it’s holster, cocked it and pulled the trigger whilst aimed at the girl’s forehead. Even from a distance the bullet flew true and the girl dropped dead in an instant. Smiling with satisfaction, the woman went over to check the bullet had done its job. To finish her job, she pushed the stone wall onto the body creating a crude tomb for it where the other bodies of the village burnt.

She turned back to the wood and started to walk, sighing with relief at the realisation her job was done. Suddenly and without warning, there was the sound of a gunshot and she felt a stinging sensation in her back. Dropping to her knees with shock, she felt the blood gush down her back from a bullet wound. Looking over her shoulder in her final moments, she saw a young urchin boy holding the rifle she had dropped unwittingly earlier. As she felt the last inch of life edging away and death opening his arms to her, she whispered to herself.

“I deserved it too,”