Every one of the portraits was a world that could have happened. A life that might have been, in another time, another place, another world. She lifted her fingers and brushed them lightly across the canvas. Once, when she had first come to this curious fortress, the paintings had haunted her, given her nightmares and pain. Now, they were simply other variables in a grand equation she couldn't imagine or comprehend.
A pair of women, laughing, and a bottle on the table between them. Old allies, friends from a long time past, in a city called Nocturne. They had met in the same way she had met her own version of the woman, oh so long ago, in a housefire, working a case. In those days, flame had terrified her, but now, it offered her no more fear than death. As a harbinger of it herself, she no longer feared it, and having been thrown into the fire when the Witch had turned, her fear of the flames was gone. Beneath the painting, like with the others, was a pedestal... artifacts of these other lives. Here was a crystal shard, even now with the screaming face of Cian trapped inside it. Those two had, through their friendship, conquered a great demon, brought about by five powerful mages. To her knowledge, they still fought together, the fae girl haunted by her feelings for the other.
The second painting was farther down the hall, and showed two women standing beside a man with white hair, posing amidst the center of a small hall with the number 16 behind them. Allies in a confederacy against an unfair warlord, the affections reversed as the human pined for a fae girl who would never see her the same way. Word was that she finally embraced the seperation and joined with a mortal man... The woman snorted. So easily swayed, and so weak to the wiles of those who are no good. That was the universal factor, she supposed. Beneath this painting was a rapier, held by the woman who so ardently followed the fae girl before their battle and split.
The third painting was incomplete, and its quality far inferior to that of those before it. When completed, it would show an assembly; a knight, an inquisitor, a false priest, a skeletal warrior, and the two detectives, but as of now, it showed only the one of them, with her long, black hair and single white lock. It was no surprise to The Woman now that looking upon this painting no longer evoked the emotion it once did, after all that had transpired, but it bothered her it was incomplete. Now that she was no longer so biased, she would have to finish the painting. She couldn't commission this one, after all, having been her actual life. A part of her wondered if any of them survived yet, and she shook her head. It had been two centuries... the mortals would long since have passed. Underneath it, on the pedestal, was a simple chalice, wrought of brass with a gemstone studded on its neck. The Grail they all sought. The Grail she had told them she couldn't find.
She continued forward, into her gallery. Once, she had taken quests for money, and glory, and the hope of a happy life somewhere. But everything she had once fought for was gone. The King she had fought to protect? Dead, at the hands of his insidious advisor. The Friends she had sought to lead? Fallen, to the last man, to the whims of darkness. The Woman she had loved, for so long? A faded memory of a time that could have been. Now she fought and commissioned out only for the sake of the curiousity her beloved had held so dear. To see the few horizons she still had yet to see. Looking on the blade, the centerpiece of her gallery, she smiled faintly, but there was no soul behind her emerald eyes, no feeling under her copper-red locks. Only the same death that had haunted her for so long.
Cyrus's Last Breath was one of the four great weapons of the war, along with The Spider, The Crystal Spear, and Zozma-Deus. It was priceless, and her most recent trophy. A part of her wondered what Lenmana would think, and then was silenced. What did it matter? The past was the past, and an assassin couldn't afford to have a past.
After all, what can you take from someone who has nothing left?
mephisto_907 Community Member 
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