A Girl Called Apokalypsis, Part 2 - A D&D Backstory

Image credit: Blue by GG-arts: https://gg-arts.deviantart.com/art/Blue-478012666

---

You can read Part 1 here.

---

Part 2: The Burning Darkness

---

Once, while Sir Johann was away tending to matters with a town they had passed through on multiple occasions, and Nadira was left at their camp in the outskirts, crushing boredom and loneliness drove her into the town proper.

She walked among the cobbled streets, head bowed and covered by her cloak, barely daring to look up in case she saw in the eyes of the townsfolk their usual disgust and uneasiness. The soft yellow glow of the late afternoon sun bathed the scene as Nadira padded through the town as unobtrusively as possible, a single bright spark nestled in her heart as she hoped that today was the day she would find a friend.

As she walked, concentrating on the uneven roundness of the cobbles beneath her feet, she was surprised when she felt the unfamiliar sensation of a small hand take hold of her own.

Glancing sideways, Nadira saw a young boy, only a few years younger than her, judging from his round and dirty face. Beneath a brownish-red mop of hair—that only worked to accentuate his freckled face’s innate roundness—she saw a beaming smile. Her heart swam with delight, yet she feared to say anything in case she scared him away.

As they walked on in silence, one by one, other boys and girls walked joined the pair, dancing and frolicking, surrounding her. As they laughed and giggled, she couldn’t help but risk a slight smile on her black lips.

A few more joined the group, older kids now, and as the parade moved through streets, her contentment at their acceptance propelling her onwards. As the group turned a corner, she was blind to where she was going for sheer joy clouded her vision.

She beamed with happiness, as they led her down an alley, praising Lathander for his Mercy. She was laughing with her new friends, so lost in the moment that she didn’t notice the sharp lull in jovial sound and mood, as the atmosphere turned into one of anticipation. She walked on.

When the first stone hit her in the back of her shoulder, Nadira didn’t realise what had happened.

She whirled around to apologise, her hood falling back in the swiftness of the motion, for she worried she had accidentally knocked into one of her new friends. And that’s when she saw in their eyes a look she knew very well: a look of fear and disgust, that had been hiding there beneath the surface the whole time.

All the strength left her knees as she dropped to the ground, realising what was about to happen. As despair clutched coldly and tightly at her deflated heart, she just knelt there limply, unable to even brings up her hands to defend her face.

The second stone hit her right temple.

As she felt the dark red sludge of blood trickle down her forehead, she looked dully at the the round-faced boy that had thrown it, with his ruddy brown hair obscuring his eyes.

Naidra felt numb as she collapsed to the floor, pebbles and rocks thudding into and all around her cowering figure. Her mind was completely blank, she could not even summon the will to pray for help. She turned her eyes upwards,towards the sky, but the sun was now obscured by dark rainclouds—Lathander’s Light could not reach her.

She felt wretched and deserving of the all the evils in the world. She was merely a stain that had to be cleansed. As Nadira lay in the alley motionless, the stones biting and gnawing into the terrorized heap on the ground, her breath became far too fast and shallow, as panic and misery grabbed hold of her.

She clenched her eyes shut, trying to blot out the relentless torrent of torment that world unfairly wished upon her, trying to calm herself down and let the mob’s anger die-down.

Nadira wanted to recede into the darkness, the void, where nothing could hurt her. That fimiliar place where she could feel nothing and detach herself from the torment. She sunk deeper and deeper the cold blackness fill her up. The darkness enveloped her like a familiar blanket.

The earth was cold and hard, like the stone floor of her dark tormented womb, and she could feel something deep inside her spark like flint.

She could taste the thick faintly-metallic blood streaming from her temple, smell it too—its scent filled her nostrils, flooding them with despair, and a deep fury began to well up deep within a bottomless pit of pure darkness. She felt as if we was trapped by metal, chained down to smooth black stone, she could not move no matter how she wanted to, as the anger slowly grew from yellow embers to a searing emerald.

The mob’s childish name-calling slowed and stretched, deepened and echoed, as it morphed into the guttural hiss of a corrupted language, getting louder and louder with every throb of her heartbeat in her ears.

As Nadira drew within herself, into a dark place she had not been since she was a little child, she could feel something feeding off of her anger, devouring it, receiving nourishment from her pure hate.

The rage overpowered her senses, she could feel it emanating from her in fiery heat and pain, she could not control it—she did not want to either.
She wanted to punish her mothers and fathers for tormenting her, for destroying her innocence, for ripping it away from her so mercilessly.

She laughed, cackling as the dark hooded figures around her burned amidst her scorn, writhed in pain, danced for her entertainment as she rebuked them all.

She felt the power coursing through her body, it felt good, she felt alive in spite of them and their evilness.

And within her reverie, from an unknown source, there was a blind flash of golden light, shattering the darkness.

Nadia blinked as her anger suddenly subsided; as her vision cleared, her heart broke. As the darkness fell away in globules of sludge, turning to ash and smashing on the floor like china, she found herself standing in the centre of a scorched circle.

The children were lying in smouldering heaps around her, crying and whimpering in pain, the pungent smell of burned flesh clinging to the alleyway. Nadira looked down at her evil hands that, instead of showing compassion and understanding, chose, as if on their own, fury and pain against innocent belligerence.

No, not on their own: she wanted it, she enjoyed it.

O Lathander, what had she done?

The trails of tears glinted in the light as she looked up into the sky, just as the deep grey clouds parted for a moment, revealing Lathander’s gaze, deep red on the horizon, passing judgment upon her. Condemning her.

At that moment she knew what she was: a monster, a creature of pure darkness undeserving of the Lord’s love. She buried her face in her hands, turned her back to the Sun and fled.

Behind her retreating figure, a raindrop hissed and turned to steam as it landed on a shallowly breathing boy with a round face; slowly, small tufts of steam briefly rose from all around him as the rain began to fall, large swollen drops, upon the scorched ground.

---

On that rainy night, when Sir Johann Baptiste burst through the barred door of a villager’s workshop atop the hill, he found Nadira huddled in a corner, sobbing, taking shelter in the occasional long shadows cast by the flash of lightning in the night sky.

Her slender limbs were curled up around her like the defensive pose of a pathetic spider. Her slim legs were pulled up in front of her, her skinny arms hugging her knobbly knees, with her head was buried resting between them. She did not look up as his boots stomped towards her, kicking something curved and cylindrical out the way and sending it skittering into a discarded corner of the shed.

As those heavy, familiar boots stopped their slow trudge in front of her, one nudged a discarded wood saw that lay beside her with its toe questioningly. Nadira did not respond, burying her head deeper into her knees, nor did she say anything as Sir Johann knelt down in front of her, saying nothing. She dared to look up into the scornful look of hatred and disgust he must be giving her for her irredeemable actions—she certainly deserved it.

They stayed that way in dense silence for a time, interrupted every so often by a quivering sob and an electric-blue flash of lightning, and the gentle roll of thunder from far away.

Eventually, Nadira looked up, wanting desperately to feel Sir Johann’s scorn, wanting to confirm her own self-loathing. Her luminescent jade-green irises looked into Sir Johann’s deep stormy-blue eyes, but they wearing the same expression of compassion and love on his stubble-strewn face she saw the day he saved her.

Nadira buried her head into her only friend’s shoulder and cried and cried, wondering aloud why Lathander would choose to redeem such a demon as her. Lamenting as to why He spared her only for her to turn her back on his gentle Grace and bring so much hatred and suffering to the world.

She did not deserve His Love.

Sir Johann hugged her like a father, carefully caressing the uneven stumps of her horns where she had shorn them off with the saw.

He consoled her with gentle words, told her that she was not evil, that even the brightest light will cast a shadow; that neither can exist without the other.

He said that only the light can keep the darkness at bay, that in one’s hour of need Lathander’s Light will shine down and give those in need the strength to press on.

He confided in her that everyone has a bead of darkness buried deep in their hearts—for that is the burden of mortality—and that fear feeds that darkness and allows it to grow.

He told her not to lose faith, that Lathander’s path would one day illuminate itself to her. That if she stayed devoted to His Light, spreading its warm comforting glow wherever she could, she would never be lead astray.

He said that whenever the she felt the darkness well up inside of her, she should count the beads on her rosary and recite the hymns, for Lathander would shine down His holy Light and burn that darkness away.

And with those comforting words wrapped around her like the softest and warmest blanket Nadira had ever experienced in her life, she slept, head nestled upon Sir Johann’s knees...

---

At dawn, Nadira, careful not to wake the somnolent figure of her only friend, padded towards the shed door and stepped outside, closing the door behind her gently.

The sky was a dark navy, but she could just make out in the distance, the faint a silver twine of dawn slowly extending across the horizon. She kneeled beneath the brightening sky, clutching her rosary tightly and facing eastward.

She prayed with every fibre of her being to Lathander for forgiveness, for the well-being of the children she so mercilessly hurt. She wished for his radiance to outshine her darkness. The sky brightened as she prayed, turning from blue to grey, from salmon pink to a rich burgundy, the intensity of her prayer deepening with it. She pledged to devote her life to spreading the Light of Lathander as a means to stem the tide of darkness both within and without.
As a miniscule magenta sliver of sun peeked over horizon, she heard Sir Johann kneel beside her, and she prayed on, silently.

Nadira glanced to her side, wanting to ask Sir Johann of forgiveness one last time, but what greeted her was the shining countenance of an impossibly beautiful young man instead.

He glowed radiantly in plate armour, his golden eyes shining bright like stars. He smiled gently and warmly right at her, his gaze felt like the gentle caress of the rising sun in front of her, growing more intense with every moment, as the sun made its slow crawl upwards from crimson to a warm orange.

Slowly, he lifted a hand bathed in golden light, and reached out, placing a delicate finger on her forehead—it weighed of nothing but felt like soft dawn sunlight upon her dark skin.

She could feel love and forgiveness radiating from him, passing into her, warming her from the inside out, like air rushing into her lungs after too long a time underwater. Nadira felt a sense of warm forgiveness rush into her, filling her to the brim.

In an instant, though it felt like aeons, the image was gone, leaving white blotches in her vision and her eyes watering.

Behind her, the shed door creaked open and she heard the familiar sound of Sir Johann stretching and yawning the sleep from his body.

Nadira looked back into the erubescent glow of the dawn, and sang a hymn of redemption in the Morninglord’s Divine Name as the sun softly warmed her face.