Desdemona Heliakos

Lady Chess is rarely seen, except by her clients and her victims. Posting a sizable enough bounty will get her attention, but expect to talk business right off the bat, and get to the point or find another, lesser bounty hunter.

She moves about cloaked in blood red, the impressions of wicked, spiked plate armor clearly visible beneath. She towers over most men at 6'3", and wields a massive, runed blade almost as long. Her eyes glow blue from beneath her hood; but when angered, they glow red-hot, and death surely awaits you.

Her roots are evident in her accent; western Chess (i.e. from Chessenta), a scholarly ear might divine. But those roots are as nothing to her darker secret, one very few know, one none of her marks ever sees and lives to tell the tale.

Devoid of her hood and cloak, her heritage is plain: her prominent horns curl backward and to the side. Her fingers and toes sport large claws, usually hidden by plate armor. Her tail swishes back and forth, with a mind of its own; if it isn't moving, you're in trouble.

Her skin is bronze, almost red, and glistens with tiny scales. Her hair is golden blonde, and naturally curls. If not for the horns, tail, and claws, she'd be quite comely; but only when she isn't angered.

When her demon heart begins to fill with rage, she changes, gaining in stature. Her horns and claws lengthen, her fangs enlarge; her skin darkens to devilish red, and her hair grows long and black, blown by the winds of Hell.

And, of course, there's the wings. The transition certainly looks painful, as they tear themselves from her shoulder blades. Fully outstretched, red membrane between black spines, her wingspan is three times her length; not quite enough to take flight, but more than enough to catch an updraft after a superhuman jump.

Though none ever see such a sight coming toward them and later live to speak of it, many have divined that she has such powers. That and more; rumors abound, most of them false, but none unwelcome. She is shunned and feared, but it works in her favor, given her line of work. Those who believe she eats babies, feeds on the souls of the damned, and bathes in lava aren't exactly hurting her street cred.

Many know Lady Chess, bounty hunter, but few know Desdemona Heliakos, who once though she would be some lucky, rich man's beautiful bride.

Her childhood was charmed; the daughter of a prosperous nobleman, owner of a thousand lands, so they said. She was raised in the usual way: brought from infancy by nurses, and presented a finished little girl to her proud parents.

In childhood, she learned all things a proper girl should, and cared little for the harsh moral lessons taught her by her wicked, ugly grandmother in winters when her parents would move to their northern summer home. She hated having to stay behind with the old witch, constantly engaging in degrading manual labor and having to do things outside where her pearly skin would be marred by sun.

Her powers manifested in her teenage years, well after her beauty bloomed. At first, it came as a monthly wave of rage and ill-temper; her parents would remove her from the manor to her grandmother's plot in the back country. She assumed they just couldn't abide her, and grew to resent them for it.

But she heard the whispered conversations they would have with her grandmother; she saw the troubled and terrified looks from her mother, who would never say from where her sorrow ebbed.

On her sixteenth birthday, she felt she had mastered her darker side. She'd come to peace with her parents, who had come to treat her with a distant, diplomatic respect. She was to debut in a grand ceremony, and meet the man to whom she was betrothed.

It was a bloody night.

It was not Lord Corinth, whose rakish charms had not been exaggerated by the housemaids; it was not her so-called friends, whose jealousy thinly veiled their every fake compliment with venom; it was nothing in particular, nothing she could put her foot on.

As her mood soured, as her heart race, she felt herself lose control. That night, she met the demon for the first time. That night, she became her true self.

Upon her first shift into her fully demonic form, Desdemona gave herself fully to the rage. She didn't regain her senses until she awoke with the dawn, cold and nude, covered in dew and blood, in the forests of her father's manor lands.

Terrified, she scrambled to remember what had happened; her memories were too horrific to contemplate--she just couldn't accept them. She staggered through the woods, seeking the comfort of her home, seeking some sort of answers to quiet the unanswerable questions screaming in her head.

As she tentatively approached the threshold of the forest, she could see the manor in the distance. Hundreds of people were about, including a sizable contingent of city guards. She steeled herself for the awkwardness of her return, and moved to exit the sanctuary of the forest.

A cold, withered hand held her back. The crone, her grandmother, sneaky as a bat and ten times uglier...somehow, she wasn't surprised enough to scream. "You can't go back, child. You can never go back."

Screaming through tears, she demanded to know why.

"You're dead, my daughter. They killed you."

Her eyes widened in horror; she looked upon the blood covering her body, trying to make sense of it all. Her hands shook as her strength left her.

"Come with me, dear."

Wordlessly, the crone led her through the woods to her private plot. Desdemona was too stunned to take note of the oddity that no guards or visitors would come to the old woman on such an auspicious day. Her humble house of wood and stone sat comfortably in a flowery glen; the pungent smells emanating from within somehow brought comfort to her, not the usual retching disdain and memories of an unpleasant youth. The warmth of the house reminded her of the stinging cold of the winter snow on her bare feet.

"Am I...dead?" she asked, entering the home and wondering if, somehow, her eternal rest would take the form of her grandmother's smelly hut.

"Don't be stupid. You can't be killed. Not that easily." She sat the girl down by the fire; Desdemona wrapped the bearskin rug around her reflexively, as she did on the coldest nights of her youth. Soon, the crone brought bitter, black tea; she almost forgot how horrid it was until half of it was down. The crone forced her head back and the cup against her mouth; she had no choice but the finish the foul brew.

"Ugh! I hate your tea!" She spewed what little hadn't made it down on the floor, not noticing how it steamed away into nothing, yet her throat felt none of its scalding heat.

"I hate your penmanship. And your harpsichord stinks. But you don't hear me complaining."

The old lady sat in her rocking chair and picked up her yarn, as if nothing out of the ordinary was going on.

"What happened? What happened to me?"

The crone guffawed. "Nothing. You just became who you always were. It had to be, and so it was."

"You don't make any sense!" Desdemona rose, seeking something not too foul from the kitchen, as a terrible hunger rose up in her belly.

"Your body is much stronger than it looks. They must have speared you a dozen times. Then they burned you. I'm sure they said a prayer or two."

The girl looked down at her blood-stained form, flawless, with not a hint of such things. "Don't be ridiculous."

"Flames cannot hurt you. Their spears have felt the heat of the forge; they, too, are worthless against our ilk."

She shot her grandmother an accusing, yet terrified look. "What do you mean our ilk?"

"Oh, you're so young, so pretty...so stupid. We, my child, are the Sacrifice."

Desdemona could only cower in awe and terror as she beheld the woman rise, and rise, and grow, and loom; where once was a withered crone now stood a massive titan of a woman, her skin black as obsidian, her six arms stronger than any man's, her hair turned to a fan of blades.

Her voice thundered with terrible gravity. "Did you think the fortunes of Heliakos were a blessing from the gods? Did you think your father an innocent man? Unto the sixth generation, his blood is cursed, his soul bound to the promise of Xenophon. The wage of his gold is our blood, our lives, and our very souls."

The quivering, dumbstruck girl shivered on the floor. The black face before her, twice the size of her own, seemed somehow warm, somehow motherly; with a kiss, and a soft caress, she was calmed. "There there, sweetheart. Do not fear your true nature. Mother Jocasta will guide you."

Jocasta took her leave of the manor, and her son Stavro was all too happy to be rid of her. She shared her magic with Desdemona, allowing her to see her own funeral. Her parents, her siblings and friends, even her betrothed; they were all so willing to disbelieve what they had seen, to trust to their symbols and prayers, to believe she was dead. The alternative must have been too horrible to face.

She learned that she had not killed anyone, though many were permanently marred, most notably the handsome Lord Corinth. Though quieted by the knowledge she was not a murderer, she felt horrible for him; he had been so charming, so eloquent, and now he was too scarred even to show his face in public. Like his grieving mother-in-law-betrothed, he wore a veil. She could only imagine the horror.

Officially, the house declared that she had been cursed by a Red Wizard, hired by the enemies of the house to punish Stavro for his recent gains in the Sembian spice trade. They made a grand show of hiring wizards and mercenaries to protect the family and lands, and surely paid a fortune to silence the many flapping tongues of the party guests.

By the new year, they seemed to have already moved on; Desdemona needed to see no more.

Jocasta led her south and east, to the Adder Swamp. There, she began to teach what she truly knew; the Art, in its blackest form. She taught her scion of the powers of blood; she trained her to embrace the cold winter, to rise above her corporeal weakness; and she prepared her to face the true face of death, to conquer the Shadow and become its child.

Many times, the crone pushed her to her limit, bringing forth the demon, and besting her handily. Soon, she learned to soothe her burning rage to a simmer, to keep her mind while her blood surged with fire. She learned to bring forth her true form at will.

The price, she learned, was never again to be Lady Heliakos, pretty and budding young woman. With her womanhood came the horns, tail, and claws of her true form, diminished in her quiet times, but ever present. Until she learned to disguise herself with magic, as Jocasta long had, she would live in exile.

For a year, she trained under the crone's harsh guidance, mastering her budding powers. When the time came, the Ritual of Night began, the most challenging spell she'd ever tried. Even Jocasta strained to handle the immense energies that filled them both; though it pained her, Desdemona was overcome with ecstasy, channeling such massive magicks.

Their spell ripped through the fabric of the world, bringing forth Xenophon, General of the Underworld, Right Hand of Death. The massive demon lord towered over them both; the mere sight of him overwhelmed their hearts with terror, awe, and desire.

"Come to me, child," his voice boomed. The earth shook with his words. Desdemona, weak at the knees, took a few tentative steps toward his massive form, standing fifty feet erect above the landscape. "You are even more beautiful than I had foreseen."

"What...what do you wish of me...my master?" He grasped her whole body, lifting her to his face. Terrified, her body diminished to almost human stature.

"Do not be afraid child. You will bear many young. You will take an honored place by my side." Shaking in terror, Desdemona contemplated her fate. Oddly, her mind found itself in the memories of her betrothal ceremony; she remembered what it was that had shaken her so severely as to unleash her demonic curse. The fear, the sheer terror, as if she stood on the edge of an abyss, knowing her whole life was about to be given away, her will would not be her own, and her innocence would forever be lost...she could not face her fear, so she turned to her stronger self to escape it.

"Great Xenophon! See how she trembles with fear! She is unworthy of you, my master! Take me! My soul is yours! Your pleasures shall be my eternal honor! My womb shall ever-" she was silenced by a shockwave from his mighty hoof.

"Silence, crone! You are useless to me. I need none of your withered charms. The girl shall by my Sacrifice."

Facing away, as she was being lowered to his legacy, Desdemona could see only the furious crone, rising from her prone position, burning with rage. She was changed, somehow; she had lost what little humanity she had left. In her eyes, she saw only desire, jealousy, and soulless fury.

"I am the true Sacrifice!" she shouted, leaping to assault the master. She clung to him almost comically, like an insect trying to bring down a mammoth. The distraction was enough for him to drop Desdemona. She scrambled away, finding a fragment of courage amidst the blind terror that gripped her heart.

As she watched Jocasta flail foolishly at the Master, she came to the edge of the circle, so painstakingly carved into the stone. With a cold iron dagger, whose handle burned her skin like no flame could do, she cut across the runes, speaking the words of banishment, speaking His true name.

Xenophon screamed in pain as he felt the weight of the universe tearing him from the world he so longed to conquer. His agony mirrored in all living things for miles, slaying the mightiest of creatures who so much as heard the echo of his cry.

And there was silence.

The circle had swallowed her master and guide, her only light in the darkness. Though Jocasta betrayed her in the end, she felt her loss more acutely then either of her parents. Suddenly she longed for those unpleasant lessons, the rap of a ruler across her knuckles, the bitter stab of her awful tea. Her soul was now the Masters', and surely she would know eternal torment for her treachery.

Alone in the swamp, strangely silent in the wake of a million tiny deaths, Desdemona had no idea what to do with herself. She simply stood, numbing in the frigid cold, her mind empty as she tried to even begin to contemplate her life ahead.

Then, the sky started with a tiny spark, which soon grew to a blaze, as the sun cut through the low mists of the swamp, to bring rays of warmth and hope to her enervated form. Its warmth could not burn her eyes; she saw as none can ever see, the true sight of the sun, and was taken by its power. Its warmth filled her, its light gave her purpose, gave her meaning. She knew what she had to do.

She went east, toward the domain of the Sun, forsaking all that had come before. She lived off the land, and sought what riches she could in the wild. She had only a few weeks before the blood would again surge within her.

To a small, peaceful town, she came with a winter storm. None would see her, none would meet her gaze, but she moved with purpose to the smithy. For a sack of gold worth ten times his house, she bade the dwarven smith:

"Cover me in this."

The load thud of iron ore striking the stone floor penetrated the silence. Dumbstruck, the old smith could only wonder at this strange and monstrous woman.

"I'll take your money, lass...but I won't look you in the eye."

She seized his shoulder with a surprising grip as he reached for his tongs.

"Let not a lick of flame touch the ore. Put out every flame. Do not ruin the magic."

"You're mad, woman," he insisted, but doubted himself even as he saw her produce flasks of acid and rare potions.

"It can be done, and you know how."

He nodded in silent assent.

"And one more thing..." she gazed levelly at him. With a perfectly straight face, she added, "make it spiky."

Clad in cold iron, she ruthlessly suppressed her nature. She moved from town to town, city to city, ever seeking the truth the Sun had revealed. It seemed the only task to which she was suited was hunting down those who society despised more than she. She lived outside the world, doing their dirty work, but receiving nothing but gold for it.

Soon, she would find herself working for a man whose ego nearly rivaled that of her previous master. Soon, she would learn what she was capable of.