Post by Rowan MacDonnough on Jun 6, 2017 23:19:08 GMT
"Let me tell you a fairy tale."
As Rowan's voice echoes through the video package, flashing images appear on screen to match what she describes.
"Once upon a time, there was a Celtic Princess who fought to rid her kingdom of a great and terrible madness. She took up the blade and went to war... but underestimated the strength of the mad queen she sought to dethrone, and was defeated and left broken of flesh and bone. In exile did the princess live, training and preparing to strike down the evil queen, and she found allies along the way. A grizzled veteran who had likewise been injured by the mad queen, who took the princess under her wing to help her prepare. A bard with a checkered past and a voice like a siren, who would turn from her darkness to become a steadfast ally. A fun-loving rogue laughing through her life, herself destined to take a crown from a different foe. A noble would-be hero, grasping for glory in a world she was not truly prepared for, but loyal and honorable to a fault. With these friends in tow, the princess charged for the Mad Queen's castle, valiantly fighting all in her way and defeating many foes with the strength of the friends at her side.
Along the way, the Princess and her friends battled against a Demon. They fought the creature from the Abyss, and together with her friends she managed to push it back into the shadows, injuring the demon in a way it had never been before... but the princess and her friends did not kill it. After they battled the demon, they forgot about her as they pursued their tale... but the demon did not forget them.
At last, one fateful night, the Princess reached her dream - standing in the Mad Queen's Castle, she fought and defeated her old enemy, freeing her kingdom and taking her crown. And the people rejoiced, for their long torment at the hands of the Mad Queen was long at an end. With her victory in hand, the Princess' friends journeyed to other battles throughout the realm - the Veteran and the Noble Warrior journeyed together, with the Warrior seeking to prove her worth. The Siren faded into memory, hoping to find her destiny another day. The Rogue ventured to her own fate, winning a battle with an enemy of her own to claim the crown of her own kingdom while the Princess celebrated her long-sought victory.
But little did they know that as the princess took her crown, the demon watched and waited. As the princess' friends scattered to the winds, chasing their own journeys without her, the demon waited. And at last, when the princess stood alone, with none of her friends to fight it alongside her... the demon struck.
And with no noble warrior and no laughing rogue to fight beside her... what hope did the princess have against such darkness?"
The package sharply cuts to black as Rowan whispers with menace...
"You didn't really expect that you would get away with it, did you, Shea O'Hara?"
Lights come up on Rowan sitting in what appears to be Charity Crowne's bedroom, but it appears gutted and warped, transformed from the lavish thing it was before into a ruined den of horrors. Rowan sits with her fingers latticed upon a blackened chair, eyes burning gold through her black bangs.
"When you forced me into unconsciousness on the First of May, I had other targets that demanded my attention. My hunt for Charity Crowne had not yet been finished, and my thirst for her blood on my hands had not been satisfied. For a month I continued my pursuit of her and her alone, until I finally forced her to submit to my dominance at Night of the Immortals, breaking her for all to see and making her regret ever crossing my path. It was a road to retribution that even you, in your pathetic road to a fairy-tale ending, could not interrupt or distract me from. But I never forgot, Shea O'Hara. I never forgot what you did to me that night, and I promised myself that as soon as I had finished my pursuit of Charity's destruction that you... you would be my next victim.
You should have seen it coming through your little story, Shea. You said a dozen times that you felt as though your victories, your chase, and your conquest of Eternity at Night of the Immortals felt like a Fairy Tale. You crowed it to all who would give you the time to listen, blinding yourself to the realities and the history of that which you invoked. We both hail from the Old Country, O'Hara. You should know as well as I, that where we come from... Fairy Tales do not have Happy Endings."
She was sitting at the fire again.
Every evening since Night of the Immortals, Rowan had sat by the flames with her arms bare before the heat and the smoke. The flames would scar her flesh, the smoke staining her fingers black... but she never seemed to notice. Since victory over Charity Crowne - an event that Dean had thought would leave Rowan elated and practically joyful - her mood had turned... distant. Contemplative. None of her followers had left her, of course, their loyalty was unparalelled... but some were beginning to worry that Rowan had lost her edge in the days following Night of the Immortals. For some reason that Dean couldn't identify, she was obsessed with whatever it was that called to her from within the flame.
She would speak to it, on occasion. He would hear her whispering in the depths of night, though he didn't dare get close enough to hear the words. It seemed as though she could hear something in the fire responding to her when she spoke, though he didn't care to know what she could be hearing from the blaze. While he was drawn to Rowan in ways he had long since stopped even trying to resist, he didn't want to fall so deep into the Abyss that he began to understand how she thought... whatever horrors she heard coming from that fire, he wanted nothing to do with them. In that pursuit, he let her whisper in peace, haunted by the twisting sounds just beyond his ability to comprehend... only jolted from his reverie when she spoke aloud for the first time in a week.
"Yes. She will suffer. I know how to hurt her... and how to break her."
Dean snapped to attention, whirling around to see that Rowan was standing now, hands no longer engulfed in the flames, her eyes glowing brighter than they had ever done before. "What are we doing?" he asked, eager to serve the Wolf of the Abyss. "You aren't booked tonight... is something happening anyway?"
Rowan gazed at him appraisingly, the way a scientist would examine a rat before dissecting it live. "We've broken Crowne. It is time to hunt more prestigious prey. I may not be booked in a match tonight, but I will make my message clear. A week from tonight I will taste blood again... but we have much work to do to soak it with fear. I have a goal tonight, and it will not be just to make a statement... or even just to deliver a challenge."
Rowan returned to the compound after the event, and her arrival was met with the cheers of all of her followers. They had watched the show, of course, and had borne witness to Rowan's brutalization of Shea O'Hara on live TV. She gestured for Dean alone to follow her as she strode through the compound, back to the flame that she had instructed them to keep burning.
"Is it official?" Dean asked excitedly. "Are you fighting Shea O'Hara for the Shieldmaiden title?"
Rowan nodded sharply, and though her expression was unreadable through the mask he knew her well enough to know that she was satisfied, yet full of purpose. It was exactly how Rowan had been as they tormented the psyche of Charity Crowne. "Yes. A challenge for Open Fight Night. Exactly as it was predicted."
Rowan sat by the fire, opening a clenched fist to reveal a few strands of reddish-orange hair that had been clasped within. Dean tilted his head to the side in confusion. "Is that... did you rip some of her hair out?"
"Yes."
"But... why?"
Rowan glanced at him as she placed her hands in the flames, filling the room quickly with the sickly smell of sizzling flesh as the strands of hair burned in her hands. "Because we don't have time to crush her spirit the same way we did with Charity, nurturing and tending her terror as a gardener would his flowers. We must resort to other methods... and through the flames I have found a way."
Dean didn't respond - he wasn't about to verbally question Rowan's sanity for believing that something was truly communicating with her through the fire. Instead he simply watched as Rowan hunched by the fire, whispering into the smoke.
"It is a blunt approach..." she mused quietly, her voice hissing with malice. "But effective. Through this, I have a link... a link that will make her fear me in nights to come, as every evening sees all she loves turn to that which she fears the most. The mind is such an easy thing to twist and corrupt, when you know the keys. Sleep will offer her no rest... and she will remember why I am called the Irish Nightmare."
She tilted her head and leaned yet closer to the flames as the hair vanished into foul-smelling smoke. "Sleep well, little princess... sleep knowing that I am watching over you now."
"Open Fight Night will see the end of your short Shieldmaiden Reign, Shae O'Hara. Fitting, really, as it will mean that this title run will last just as long as the first time you stumbled your way into holding it. In six short days, you will see me in the ring, and nobody will be able to rescue you. You may have managed, barely, to knock me into unconsciousness when we stood against one another a month ago - but that was when you had your little pet would-be hero to stand alongside you. This time you will be all alone, trapped in a cage of your own bravado as surely as Charity Crowne was trapped by one of steel. You will be all alone, helpless before the nightmares as they close around you, and I will remind the world just how fragile you are.
Thrice have we clashed. Once you escaped only by being rescued by your partner, before which you were unable to resist my onslaught - only able to defeat me through the help of your friend. The second time we clashed you won only by pinning the weak and prideful sack of flesh who I was again forced to partner with. The third time we clashed was just last night... and I suspect that the pain still lingers on your body and on your soul, bruised skin from the blows and bruised pride from the humiliation. Where I? I have never been pinned. I have never yielded. I have never lost a singles match in my entire career - you cannot say the same.
You are outmatched, Shea O'Hara. Out of your depth, alone against a force that is greater than anything that you can imagine. You wanted your Fairy Tale ending, Shea? It is my pleasure to give you exactly that which you were foolish enough to wish for."
Rowan leans close to the camera, close enough that it is filled with little else beyond her eyes. "And like all the best Fairy Tales, this one has a moral - Do not focus so much on your goal that you stir yet darker threats in its pursuit. There are monsters in the darkness, and when they catch your scent they will stop at nothing to hunt you... and the darkness always takes its due.
The. End."
As Rowan's voice echoes through the video package, flashing images appear on screen to match what she describes.
"Once upon a time, there was a Celtic Princess who fought to rid her kingdom of a great and terrible madness. She took up the blade and went to war... but underestimated the strength of the mad queen she sought to dethrone, and was defeated and left broken of flesh and bone. In exile did the princess live, training and preparing to strike down the evil queen, and she found allies along the way. A grizzled veteran who had likewise been injured by the mad queen, who took the princess under her wing to help her prepare. A bard with a checkered past and a voice like a siren, who would turn from her darkness to become a steadfast ally. A fun-loving rogue laughing through her life, herself destined to take a crown from a different foe. A noble would-be hero, grasping for glory in a world she was not truly prepared for, but loyal and honorable to a fault. With these friends in tow, the princess charged for the Mad Queen's castle, valiantly fighting all in her way and defeating many foes with the strength of the friends at her side.
Along the way, the Princess and her friends battled against a Demon. They fought the creature from the Abyss, and together with her friends she managed to push it back into the shadows, injuring the demon in a way it had never been before... but the princess and her friends did not kill it. After they battled the demon, they forgot about her as they pursued their tale... but the demon did not forget them.
At last, one fateful night, the Princess reached her dream - standing in the Mad Queen's Castle, she fought and defeated her old enemy, freeing her kingdom and taking her crown. And the people rejoiced, for their long torment at the hands of the Mad Queen was long at an end. With her victory in hand, the Princess' friends journeyed to other battles throughout the realm - the Veteran and the Noble Warrior journeyed together, with the Warrior seeking to prove her worth. The Siren faded into memory, hoping to find her destiny another day. The Rogue ventured to her own fate, winning a battle with an enemy of her own to claim the crown of her own kingdom while the Princess celebrated her long-sought victory.
But little did they know that as the princess took her crown, the demon watched and waited. As the princess' friends scattered to the winds, chasing their own journeys without her, the demon waited. And at last, when the princess stood alone, with none of her friends to fight it alongside her... the demon struck.
And with no noble warrior and no laughing rogue to fight beside her... what hope did the princess have against such darkness?"
The package sharply cuts to black as Rowan whispers with menace...
"You didn't really expect that you would get away with it, did you, Shea O'Hara?"
Lights come up on Rowan sitting in what appears to be Charity Crowne's bedroom, but it appears gutted and warped, transformed from the lavish thing it was before into a ruined den of horrors. Rowan sits with her fingers latticed upon a blackened chair, eyes burning gold through her black bangs.
"When you forced me into unconsciousness on the First of May, I had other targets that demanded my attention. My hunt for Charity Crowne had not yet been finished, and my thirst for her blood on my hands had not been satisfied. For a month I continued my pursuit of her and her alone, until I finally forced her to submit to my dominance at Night of the Immortals, breaking her for all to see and making her regret ever crossing my path. It was a road to retribution that even you, in your pathetic road to a fairy-tale ending, could not interrupt or distract me from. But I never forgot, Shea O'Hara. I never forgot what you did to me that night, and I promised myself that as soon as I had finished my pursuit of Charity's destruction that you... you would be my next victim.
You should have seen it coming through your little story, Shea. You said a dozen times that you felt as though your victories, your chase, and your conquest of Eternity at Night of the Immortals felt like a Fairy Tale. You crowed it to all who would give you the time to listen, blinding yourself to the realities and the history of that which you invoked. We both hail from the Old Country, O'Hara. You should know as well as I, that where we come from... Fairy Tales do not have Happy Endings."
June 5th
She was sitting at the fire again.
Every evening since Night of the Immortals, Rowan had sat by the flames with her arms bare before the heat and the smoke. The flames would scar her flesh, the smoke staining her fingers black... but she never seemed to notice. Since victory over Charity Crowne - an event that Dean had thought would leave Rowan elated and practically joyful - her mood had turned... distant. Contemplative. None of her followers had left her, of course, their loyalty was unparalelled... but some were beginning to worry that Rowan had lost her edge in the days following Night of the Immortals. For some reason that Dean couldn't identify, she was obsessed with whatever it was that called to her from within the flame.
She would speak to it, on occasion. He would hear her whispering in the depths of night, though he didn't dare get close enough to hear the words. It seemed as though she could hear something in the fire responding to her when she spoke, though he didn't care to know what she could be hearing from the blaze. While he was drawn to Rowan in ways he had long since stopped even trying to resist, he didn't want to fall so deep into the Abyss that he began to understand how she thought... whatever horrors she heard coming from that fire, he wanted nothing to do with them. In that pursuit, he let her whisper in peace, haunted by the twisting sounds just beyond his ability to comprehend... only jolted from his reverie when she spoke aloud for the first time in a week.
"Yes. She will suffer. I know how to hurt her... and how to break her."
Dean snapped to attention, whirling around to see that Rowan was standing now, hands no longer engulfed in the flames, her eyes glowing brighter than they had ever done before. "What are we doing?" he asked, eager to serve the Wolf of the Abyss. "You aren't booked tonight... is something happening anyway?"
Rowan gazed at him appraisingly, the way a scientist would examine a rat before dissecting it live. "We've broken Crowne. It is time to hunt more prestigious prey. I may not be booked in a match tonight, but I will make my message clear. A week from tonight I will taste blood again... but we have much work to do to soak it with fear. I have a goal tonight, and it will not be just to make a statement... or even just to deliver a challenge."
Later that Night
Rowan returned to the compound after the event, and her arrival was met with the cheers of all of her followers. They had watched the show, of course, and had borne witness to Rowan's brutalization of Shea O'Hara on live TV. She gestured for Dean alone to follow her as she strode through the compound, back to the flame that she had instructed them to keep burning.
"Is it official?" Dean asked excitedly. "Are you fighting Shea O'Hara for the Shieldmaiden title?"
Rowan nodded sharply, and though her expression was unreadable through the mask he knew her well enough to know that she was satisfied, yet full of purpose. It was exactly how Rowan had been as they tormented the psyche of Charity Crowne. "Yes. A challenge for Open Fight Night. Exactly as it was predicted."
Rowan sat by the fire, opening a clenched fist to reveal a few strands of reddish-orange hair that had been clasped within. Dean tilted his head to the side in confusion. "Is that... did you rip some of her hair out?"
"Yes."
"But... why?"
Rowan glanced at him as she placed her hands in the flames, filling the room quickly with the sickly smell of sizzling flesh as the strands of hair burned in her hands. "Because we don't have time to crush her spirit the same way we did with Charity, nurturing and tending her terror as a gardener would his flowers. We must resort to other methods... and through the flames I have found a way."
Dean didn't respond - he wasn't about to verbally question Rowan's sanity for believing that something was truly communicating with her through the fire. Instead he simply watched as Rowan hunched by the fire, whispering into the smoke.
"It is a blunt approach..." she mused quietly, her voice hissing with malice. "But effective. Through this, I have a link... a link that will make her fear me in nights to come, as every evening sees all she loves turn to that which she fears the most. The mind is such an easy thing to twist and corrupt, when you know the keys. Sleep will offer her no rest... and she will remember why I am called the Irish Nightmare."
She tilted her head and leaned yet closer to the flames as the hair vanished into foul-smelling smoke. "Sleep well, little princess... sleep knowing that I am watching over you now."
"Open Fight Night will see the end of your short Shieldmaiden Reign, Shae O'Hara. Fitting, really, as it will mean that this title run will last just as long as the first time you stumbled your way into holding it. In six short days, you will see me in the ring, and nobody will be able to rescue you. You may have managed, barely, to knock me into unconsciousness when we stood against one another a month ago - but that was when you had your little pet would-be hero to stand alongside you. This time you will be all alone, trapped in a cage of your own bravado as surely as Charity Crowne was trapped by one of steel. You will be all alone, helpless before the nightmares as they close around you, and I will remind the world just how fragile you are.
Thrice have we clashed. Once you escaped only by being rescued by your partner, before which you were unable to resist my onslaught - only able to defeat me through the help of your friend. The second time we clashed you won only by pinning the weak and prideful sack of flesh who I was again forced to partner with. The third time we clashed was just last night... and I suspect that the pain still lingers on your body and on your soul, bruised skin from the blows and bruised pride from the humiliation. Where I? I have never been pinned. I have never yielded. I have never lost a singles match in my entire career - you cannot say the same.
You are outmatched, Shea O'Hara. Out of your depth, alone against a force that is greater than anything that you can imagine. You wanted your Fairy Tale ending, Shea? It is my pleasure to give you exactly that which you were foolish enough to wish for."
Rowan leans close to the camera, close enough that it is filled with little else beyond her eyes. "And like all the best Fairy Tales, this one has a moral - Do not focus so much on your goal that you stir yet darker threats in its pursuit. There are monsters in the darkness, and when they catch your scent they will stop at nothing to hunt you... and the darkness always takes its due.
The. End."