Chapter 1
Barren red sands. When one thought of the badlands and all the torturous implications one couldn't help but think of its barren red sands.
Silly as it was, this place, the badlands, they weren't always so red, at least not until it became a warzone, a battleground, the graveyard of hundreds of thousands of souls whose entrails still decorate the grains.
Simply put going into the badlands is as good as a suicide attempt as there is no water, no viable soil for food, a blistering hot sun for a total of nearly fifteen hours a day, and no shade to protect the skin from harshness. Truly, what a place it is; however, I was not like other creatures and people that traversed the land in hopes of reaching the other side, no, I came here solely to rip, maim, and tear apart the criminals, thieves, traffickers, and soldiers who crossed my path.
Why have I become this way? What a long story. A story which to this day is still being written, yet I dare not turn back and look in the eyes of the people who abandoned me for the tricks of a whore. No, I dare not turn to them after the scars they've left as decorations upon once flawless skin. Their decisions have left me in pieces and as such, I only find it fair to return the agony, torture, and emotionless actions in whichever way I choose fit to do so.
Still, it isn't all fun and games. It's been nearly a decade of time since the day I left, and they only seem to try harder in locating me. It's not a pleasant thing to have to hear from traveling caravans or wandering traders. Why could they not understand that this bed they have dug and filled with nails is one they must lie in for eternity? Forgiveness is not something I easily give anymore after all.
What a silly thought that family has. Trying to bring back what they broke after realizing how fucked up they were in their choices. It cost them a lot less than it cost me. You could ask any ghostly soul who met their fate at my hands, after all, it got me my name. I wasn't called Scarlet Storm for no reason, and no it wasn't because of any physical feature so much as the liters of blood that decorated the skin.
How many have died at my hands? Tens? Maybe hundreds? Perhaps even a couple thousand? Who knows. My instincts don't discriminate on which evil creatures I maul, although being a similar creature myself you'd think I'd have some sort of pity on them. I suppose it's just hard to find pity for fools who rape, murder, torture, and desecrate innocence wherever they see fit.
Still, I can't help but wonder what became of them all. Of those, I called family, those I called friends, and the one I called love or at least used to call love. A shame all those ships with relationships once so tightly bound sailed the seas and crashed, leaving all connections long dead.
Oh, what a fickle heart the innocent girl I used to be had. Just like any other I worried about trends and looking the part of the future Luna of the Jonalias pack; however, that was before they trampled upon me as one can guess. I doubt they'd even recognize me now.
You see, that girl, the one who went by the name of Lilianna, died. Her soul was destroyed by those she wished she could have trusted and in her place rose the phoenix born from her ashes who goes by Scarlet, both for the red she decorates the battlefield with, as well as the color of the hair she once fervently dyed in hopes to fit in with others. I've come to love that hair now. The hair that the pack hated.
It was about noon on a particularly hot day, and I had just finished my hunt for one of the serial killers that had been dumped in my territory when I saw one of the few who I wished never to see.
Unlike the one I loved and the fake friends, unlike the two-faced family, he was the only one I truly felt regret for leaving. He'd grown for sure. When I had left he was merely a boy the age of ten and I a girl of seventeen. Hard to imagine he's twenty now and myself twenty-seven.
How I hated that he could recognize me even through a dust storm and bloodied fur. How I hated how he knew the form of the wolf in me better than I knew myself. What a fool they had been thinking that sending him here would help anything, and I knew they wouldn't let him go into the badlands alone.
It was then, after taking a deep long whiff of the air that I let out a snarl so loud and violent that his eyes widened. He'd probably thought it'd go differently with it being him. Liam was always a bit of a fool that way, thinking that because I babysat him when he was young I'd always succumb to his wishes.
He'd brought trouble. He'd brought the twin whom I loathe and the best friend of the one who I once called love with him as backup. They'd be in for a world of trouble when they realized just what they've gotten into. In the storm, they wouldn't be able to see it.
The countless skeletons laying about the grounds of my territory, the splattered blood across rock, guts hanging from dead wood, and limbs gnawed to pieces by sharp teeth. They had not seen the red of my coat which has become permanent in nature.
Liam, what a fool you are to come here and try to do the work of others, of those who harmed me. Have they even told you what was done to me? Told you the scars your brother left upon me? All for the sake of the whore who stole everything from me out of jealousy. A witch who reaped havoc upon us all, waiting until I was far gone before leaving everyone to wake from the trance.
How I wish it hadn't been you who had come to see this, to see the monster I've become, but I suppose no good dream of a soul once known to a child can ever be as pure once they age.
