longer.blue

Path of Empty Sky: Prologue I A frozen tundra overtaken by a blizzard, the howl of the wind and snow enough to dampen any voice, any cry for help within the storm. In the midst of it all walked a figure comprised of two, both wearing long white pajamas that seemed to blend in to the piercing snowfall. The only way to mistake their pale forms from the blanket of white were the faint scrapes of dust and dried blood tattering them. The two managed to keep themselves warm by leaning against one another, at the very least warm enough to not surrender to the frost that covered ears, nose, and mouth. They were twins, young girls, trudging forward with eyes heavy as they tried to stay off the lull that the freeze would put them into, beckoning them into death. Both were singleminded in the purpose to trudge forward with feet that were stiff and heavy from the chill. Every breath felt like a sting in their lungs, forcing them to question why they even chose to inhale that cruel icy air. Despite it all, they persisted. The coordinated footsteps they left in the thick snow trailed back past where the curtain of blizzard would allow them to see, towards a place that would become unknown to all but them...and him. It's funny, when they had departed the fire was still tall and bright. The warmth of their burning home could have sustained them long enough to outlast this hellish blizzard. Despite that, they had no sense of staying there for long, even as the fire that enveloped their house was unlike any they had felt before, more than the logs of wood stacked on the fireplace could ever give. It would be clearer to say that there was no home to go back to. Not just the manor, there was nothing, no one there waiting for them. Well, nothing save for that man. They had once called him brother, but now that word didn't seem to be the right descriptor for him. What they had last seen of him was some perverse truth that had laid underneath the man they called brother, something completely alien. The pair could still recall the way he looked at them, some incomprehensible mixture of guilt and anger in those eyes that glowed a frosted blue, piercing through the blizzard and directly into their souls. He had shown them mercy, the only ones he had deemed to grant it. They were certain of that fact, they had seen the bodies. Now all they had was one another, trudging towards to some unknown destination. Anywhere but home. -- The twins were known as Anya and Katya. Anya, the older twin who assumed the role as if she had several years on her younger sibling. Katya, the more reserved of the two, she usually followed along with what Anya did out of habit. The pair were the children of the Leopard Clan, a Beast Family that had fallen in their grandparents time due to the changing landscape of the world. Their mother had grown up to inherit an empire of dirt, nothing but empty homes and robbed fortunes. She was determined to change their fate, however. To that end, she found herself a partner with likeminded ideals and in similar straits, the heir of the Panther clan. She, from northern tundras and he from southern tropics, yet oddly compatible. Together they had their first child, a miracle hybrid that had retained both the bestial traits of the Leopard and Panther clans. An heir to surpass even the Tiger and Dragon clans in terms of prodigious might. His name was Andre, Anya and Katya's older brother by six years. He was raised strictly, bearing the expectations of two Clans on his shoulders. Despite the rigid training, Andre excelled in every challenge his parents placed in front of him. His radiant excellence made him the unquestionable heir, so much that the twins never had to experience the same hardships as him. Anya and Katya went about their childhood with minimal supervision and a whole manor's worth of fun and trouble to get into. It helped that they lacked the same hybrid state as their older brother, harboring only their mother's Leopard traits. The estate was far from just about everything, but the pair had one another to keep themselves company. They lived that way until age twelve, learning the ways of their clan meant becoming knowledgable in everything from fencing to arithmetic, but all with a far more leisurely pace than their brother. The twins would only occassionally catch glimpses of their brother, sometimes not seeing him for weeks at a time. They would come across each other in the halls of the manor, his eyes always looking forward as if visualizing whatever bit of training came next. Those times that he noticed his younger sisters, Andre would stop and smile his endearingly lopsided smile at them. It would crack his otherwise permanently set scowl, revealing that he was not the gruff Beast that he seemed on the surface. There was no resentment there for his younger sisters, no teasing or resentment of their leisurely life. Andre had been drilled the importance of family from early on and it sat at the core of his nature. Both Panther and Leopard Clans shared that nature in common, the parents of these children had witnessed firsthand the struggles that their own parents had endured in order to leave them what meager inheritence they had been given. However, it didn't mean that they were soft when it came to Andre. Even as he stacked success after success, surpassed expectations and proved to be every bit the combined clan's savior as he had been made out to be since the age of six, his parents would not praise him. If he succeeded, then it would simply mean that he could move onto the next step in their grand plan for him. A hundred accolades, a hundred new tasks. It dug into him, hollowed him out, allowed something ugly to fester inside. That was how Andre died and Ombre came to be. It wasn't a particularly special day, no big argument preceded it. The whole affair was sudden and cold, yet acted upon with such precision as to make it seem that Ombre had run through the scenario in his head plenty of times, he just needed that last push to act on his worst impulses. A fire consumed the manor, Ombre went straight for his parents as he let the flames take care of the servants. It came from the fireplace on the lower east side of the home, on the opposite end of Anya and Katya's bedroom on the second floor. They had plenty of time to escape, and yet their legs struggled to move. Confusion, fear, yet still they carried themselves out the front door and where their brother stood observing it all. He spared them that day. A brother's kindness. He had always been kind.