Cold Blood

[cannon]

Cold blood. That’s all there was. Just lying in a puddle of my own blood. Unable to move. Arms as stiff as boards and unable to stand. I followed the current as I went down the river. A river of blood.

I yelled as I woke out of my dream state. That was the forth time I had that dream this week. I hissed at the pain in my back when I sat up. The scar burned again.

Slowly and carefully I stood out of my bed and looked at my back in my full-length mirror. A white scar stood above my tanned skin. It started at the nape of my neck and ended at my waist. It was exactly in line with my spine.

The river of blood flashed through my mind again.

”No… forget that day…”

”Brotha… wh’… do ta… do thi’? I’va neva… harm’d ya in any… wa’…” My younger brother Briar, his golden-green eyes dull and clouded, asked me.

”’Cause ‘brotha,’” I sneered at him, “Ya kno’ as wel’ as I do I’va long’d ta be in teh gan’ Blood Sacrif’ce fer so lon’. The firs’ init’tion tes’ is tah kil’ a blood fami’y memba!” I smirked as I said those words and looked over the damage I did. His entire torso was covered in wounds. He would never be able to survive this.

He looked up at me weakly. “I kno’ wha’ ya thinkin’ brotha… ya think I’ma gonna die… I refus’…” He lunged at me unexpectedly changing into his half human – half dragon form as he did so.

I was too slow, and barely dodged the attack. I screamed as his claw raked my right eye, blood flowing into my vision. I was about to lunge at him for payback, but he then did something extremely unexpected.

”Brotha… I pity ya…” He looked at me and I looked back. “If we eva me’t agin… ya’ll regrit it…” He then jumped off the cliff we were fighting on top of. And that was the last I ever saw of him.

I shuddered. That was one of my worst memories. Having to fight my own brother to join a gang that was slowly being wiped out everywhere around the world was an extremely stupid thing to do. He didn’t die, of course. He was found at the bottom of the cliff by some healers and lived. He only had the scars and memories I gave him to remember what happened.

“Ah, fin’lly, Sadath’rac, though’ ya neva woulda kil’d ya brotha. Quit’ a perf’rmance, real’y.” Said the leader of the Blood Sacrifice gang as I walked through the door, my eye bleeding like crazy. “Now… time fer yeh second initi’tion test…”

I almost yelled out. What did he mean a SECOND initiation test?! Wasn’t killing my brother enough?!

The leader grinned evilly at my expression. “Ya do wanna enter the gang… don’ ya?”

I calmed down. Of course I wanted to be in the gang, it was what I wanted my entire life and would do anything to do it. “O course I do…”

”Go’d… now stay stil’…” Before I knew it, he was behind me and slashed at my back, making a huge rip showing my spinal cord. I fell to the floor with a loud thump, unable to move. My nerves ripped to shreds.

He smirked at me. “We al’ gotta go through tis initi’tion to ya kno’. Now her’s tih deal. We pu’ ya at tih top o tih riva an’ let ya float tih da bot’om… if ya alive… t’en ya in… Is it a deal?”

I barely nodded my head, unable to do anything at the moment. He caught my drift and motioned for a couple others of the gang and they picked me up and flew to a river, which, at the time, was called the ‘Red River.’ It was called that because it was rumored that is where the gods bathed after they got into a fight, and it healed their wounds.

When we finally got there, the ones that were carrying me set me down in the river face up so I could breath. I relaxed as the cool water touched my aching wound on my back. I started floating downriver.

The leader called out to me as I got farther from sight. “Now ‘member Sadath’rac! Ya’d betta be alive when we pick ya up at the base of tih riva in thre’ days time!”

Not after a while, the water turned dark red from my wound, and then I truly understood why it was called the Red River. The river was always a faded red color instead of it being clear. But as the rumor said, the gods bathed in it, washing the blood from their wounds, and letting it dye the river.

On the second day, the wound my ‘brother’ gave me on my eye finally stopped bleeding. I would never be able to see out of it again, but at least the pain was gone from it. I couldn’t say the same about my spine.

Even though the water was cool, it only lasted for only a short while. The wound kept burning, and I couldn’t do anything about it except take the pain.

On the third day, I started to lose consciousness. I fought it, trying to stay awake as long as I could. But suddenly, I saw, out of the corner of my eye, a woman, her long black hair covering her naked body as she bathed.

I quickly averted my eyes feeling my cheeks get hot, but not as hot as my wound on my back.

I then heard a quiet chuckling as the woman waded over to me in the shallow river. She spoke to me in a quiet, gentle voice. “’Tis ok fair and mighty dragon. Thy shall live with the help of thyne gracious gift.” She placed her slender hand and fingers onto my chest and I felt numb. “Thy shall live, even thou have done great misdeeds. Thy must reverse those misdeeds into deeds. Please, be well.” She waded away and started bathing again, and I blacked out as she started to fade.

Several days later, I found myself on a comfortable bed, unable to sit up or to move at all. The leader came over to me, frowning.

”I don’ kno’ how yeh liv’d Sadath’rac… tha’ wound shoulda kil’d ya… but congrat’s.. ya in tih gang Blood Sacrifice.”

My heart leaped with joy that day, but it wasn’t as good as I thought it was. The gang was largely populated, but all poorly trained; only surviving the initiation tests through pure willpower.

The scar on my back burned again, and a trickle of blood started to find its way down my back. It has been doing that ever since I survived. My mind repeated the words the bathing woman said: “’Tis ok fair and mighty dragon. Thy shall live with the help of thyne gracious gift. Thy shall live, even thou have done great misdeeds. Thy must reverse those misdeeds into deeds.”

I sighed and shook my head, my black hair falling into my good red eye slightly. The scarred one turned white after it fully healed, and I can no longer see out of it. The woman never said what kind of gift she gave me, good or bad, but she was definitely a powerful sorceress of some kind.

I had no idea how she knew I was a dragon, though. I was in my human form at the time, but when I looked into her eyes… all I saw was wisdom and kindness.

I gasped as I doubled over as the pain from my scar erupted into full power. This was always the worse part.

The pain finally faded entirely as the sun peeked over the horizon.

I sighed. “’Thy must reverse those misdeeds into deeds.’”

I knew I had to fix what I have done in order to get rid of the pain that I myself caused.

[Asuka Was Here]

Major coding issues with this - did you perchance copy and paste it from Word?

Overlooking that, though, I think it's a good concept for a fantasy novel ^.^ You might want to delve deeper into why your character would be so interested in joining a gang that she(?) would attempt to murder her own brother.

Also, you should probably take a look at the first paragraph - short sentences can be an effective diffuser for a group of lengthy ones, but in a long sequence like that, they just sound choppy. See if you can combine a few of them together to vary the complexity of your phrases.

And if you did copy and paste this from Word or an email document or something of the sort, try reopening it in MS Notepad and copying it from there - it might paste better.

[cannon]

heh.... yes, I did copy and paste from word. And, it's a he. His name is Sadatherac, but we call him Sadath usually. ^^ It's a short story though.. I don't know if I'd be able to delve deeper into it. But I can try. I'll have to try and conbine the first two sentences.

[Asuka Was Here]

Ah. Yeah, that's probably why the coding went awry. I don't know why, but for some reason it messes up in the translation of Word text to HTML text 0.o.

Come on, you should write more! That's not the kind of plot you can just call a short story; it raises so many questions!

If I were you, I wouldn't combine the first two, though. I'd write it more like this:

"Cold blood. That's all there was. Just lying in a puddle of my own blood, unable to move; arms as stiff as boards and unable to stand, I followed the current as I went down the river - the river of blood."

Or something to that extent. Basically the same, but a little more eloquent to read.

ALso, in the second paragraph, "forth" should be "fourth"

[cannon]

omg, I know! My friend pointed out the 'forth' and 'fourth' thing to me and he was teasing me about it!! -_-' Hmph.