#i managed to chop it down to 4ish pages

[necrctic]

super special announcement:

I’ve FINALLY posted Alex’s full bio. You can read it here, or under the cut:

Alex Reed has had a long-standing relationship with Death. It claimed her father in a factory fire when she was four and took her mother a few years later. Some say her mother died of a broken heart, but more likely it was the pills. She was the one who found her mom’s body, glassy-eyed and cold on the bathroom floor.

Foster care shipped her off to Oklahoma when she was seven to live with her aunt and uncle, Vivian and Trevor Peterson. They had a too-small mobile home and didn’t care for Alex much, but they did like the monthly check that came with her. Aunt Viv was skinny and vicious, too fond of corporal punishment and always smelled like menthols. Uncle Trevor worked most of the time, and when he was home, he drank deep and scowled from his La-Z-Boy.

Alex shared a room with her cousin Hannah; Michael and Evan shared another. The cousins said she was a W E I R D kid. Said she talked to herself. Said she made up stories to scare them. Alex said she was only talking to her new friends: the nice old man from the car accident, the lady with the cuts on her arms, the drowning boy. She said they found her; they were lonely and sad and sometimes angry, and they loved her because she could SEE, see them, see that they were still real, still here.

Aunt Viv switched her and told her to stop lying. She learned quick to shut up about the things she knew.

                                    ☠

Seven years later, and Alex was a regular delinquent. Always making trouble at school, always fighting, always sneaking out. She was got a first-name basis with the sheriff for skipping class. And for stealing. And for vandalism. Uncle Trevor left them a couple years back, and ever since Aunt Viv had been even meaner; she drank then, too, and took it out on Alex when she was in the bottle. They were always screaming. Aunt Viv liked to throw things, but Alex got better at dodging.

The dead found her more often then. Most times, they were her only company, and most times, they were good. She learned how to keep the other ones from noticing her much. The angry ones. The ugly ones. The ones who couldn’t see beyond their hurt anymore. (What a shame, what a tragedy, to become so torn up and twisted like that.)

She ran away that summer, when it started feeling like she’d suffocate in Oklahoma, like one day that ground would just open up and swallow her whole. Just took fifty bucks from Aunt Viv’s purse and hopped on the first bus out of town, leaving memories and ghosts in the dust.

                                    ☠

She was sixteen in New York, and she had tricks up her sleeves. Her only friend was a dead girl called Cherry, and that day they were earning some money. Game plan:

Go buy a hot dog

“Forget” the bag with the dead crow in it next to the vendor

Wait for the hot dog guy to open the bag

Chaos!!

Steal the cash box

Alex had just finished her lunch when Cherry pointed. The vendor picked the bag up and peeled it open with greasy fingers. All it took was a little focus and the dead bird suddenly F L E W out of the bag, crazy, peck-peck-pecking at the vendor, at the people in line. (Alex had figured out this little trick last year; if she concentrated hard enough, she could make things come alive again for a minute or two.) It wasn’t hard to slip behind the counter and make off with the money while the corpsebird had everyone distracted. Easy as pie. Easy as sin.

She was counting her loot when HE appeared, gliding into the alleyway like a shadow in the fading light. He made Cherry disappear with a wave and offered her a cigarette. He smiled like a shark and had hair as black as spilled ink and sharp eyes full of knowing. Of understanding. Of camaraderie. Eyes that said, We’re just alike, you and I.

He showed her a tattoo on his chest: a three-headed dragon eating its tail. That means home, he said in his milk-and-honey voice. Come away with me.

                                    ☠

Emilian Vadovescu was the head of a strange family of lost people. They lived in the wilds, in the dark places of the Carpathian mountains, in an ancient hideaway. The Solomonanţă, the Scholomance, a long-forgotten place of learning, where the walls whispered secrets if you were wise enough to listen.

When he brought Alex there, she finally felt as though she’d found a home. A place she fit in. Among other creeps, other freaks, other outcasts: she belonged. No, more than that: she flourished. Emilian was a wealth of knowledge. Life is chaos, he said. Life is entropy. Death is the order of the universe. Don’t fear it―embrace it. He taught her the ways of dead things. How to read the bones, how to dream herself free of her body and walk the in-between places, how call spirits and command them, to echo WILL into her voice and see how the dead bend to it. Her teacher demanded much of her, and she gave all. The lessons, the practice, the long hours and the merciless pursuit of perfection.

(The first time he kissed her, she thought: ‘Yes. Teach me this, too. Teach me everything there is to know.’ He called her Star Pupil. He called her Gifted. Magnificent. Beautiful. He called her Lover.)

Her teacher demanded much of her, and she gave all―but he demanded more. Then came the secrets. The research. The hidden tomes, the whispers from the oldest stones among the keep. DARK THINGS, voidtalk of nightmares and paradise, of power from beyond the Veil, of change and revolution. Death is the order of the universe, he said. Control death and be as God. And Gods demand ritual. Gods demand sacrifice. Become the rock on which I build my church. Become my flaming sword, my harbinger.

The transformation was costly. Old powers take their pound of flesh, wash it down with a few pints of blood. It left her with empty spots inside. In her guts. Maybe in her soul. It made her something new, something not-quite-right, something a little in-between. Half-dead but more alive than ever.

(When she rose from the altar, he looked on with pride. The others called them Power Couple. He called her Right Hand. Emilian: wolfish shepherd to the flock. Alexandra: wielder of the cattle prod.)

And then, unsurprisingly, came the demands for more and more. Emilian was a hungry God, and he had voracious ambitions. He wanted to take a bite out of reality. To the faithful, he spoke of Redemption and Salvation; no more hiding in the shadows, no more being outcasts. New World Order shit. He had the knowledge. He had the means. He had a host of devoted soldiers and a pretty blonde weapon by his side.

But he should have asked Jehovah: What’s the downside of free will? It’s not always pride that goeth before the fall; sometimes it’s conscience. Sometimes it’s looking in the mirror and no longer recognizing the thing looking back.

                                    ☠

The final straw was William Allen.

In a place where the walls whisper secrets, it stands to reason that one day they’d start to whisper your own. And Alex knew how to listen. She found a new book. A new old book. A new old book belonging to one William Allen: Solomonari, Apprentice, The One Who Came Before.

And the walls said, Silly girl, did you think you were the only one?

The book was full of notes and self-reflection. Details on lessons, spells, and daily life in the Scholomance, under the tutelage of Emilian Vadovescu. The final chapter of the book was about a ritual, a sacrifice, a pound of flesh for a hungry god. William had been scared―scared out of his mind. Alex knew that fear, had felt it clawing up her throat on the altar when her teacher sliced her wrists and her lifeblood ran like rivers down the stone; when the dark stretched out its awful maw and started taking chunks out of her; when Death reached inside and gripped her soul in a vice. That’s the trick: you can’t fear it; you have to embrace it. The moment she stopped being afraid, when she welcomed in the cold and dark, that’s when the P O W E R flooded in; when her blood turned to black ichor and flowed back into her veins and she opened her eyes, wide and terrible, to the cosmos.

Maybe William kept being afraid. Maybe he hadn’t known to let the dark in. She flipped through the pages of the book, idle, until something caught her eye. A date: 1907. She paused.

And the walls said, Dumb girl, how do you think He knows so much?

‘That would make him over a hundred years old.’

Older, older.

                                    And older still.

‘How is that possible?’

                                                    How else?

              He eats. Grows stronger.                             Lives longer.

‘Eats what?’

What do you think happened     to the ones who didn’t pass the test?               No use for a sword with a dull edge.      No use for an apprentice full of fear, an animal that can’t adapt:

                                                except  o n e…

She tried to summon this William, this lost, scared boy, but when she drew herself up and commanded his spirit appear… nada. Zip, zilch, zero. It should have been easy, there in the place he’d lived, with one of his own belongings in her hands; his spirit should have left traces there, should have jumped to obey her call. And yet: nothing.

The walls showed her the names of the others: Dietrich, Ekaterina, Alim, Francisco, Beatrix, Gorvenal, Cassius, and on and on. She called on each, so many times, and got more of the same: NOTHING. Not a stir, not a whisper, not a sigh.

                         Yes. He is ravenous.

                                    ☠

What do you do when you realize God’s got an M.O.? What do you do when you start to wonder: Could I have been next? When you start to wonder: Why? And: What have I done?

If you’re Alex, you have a crisis of faith. You deconvert. You plan your Fall. You make off in the night with nothing but the clothes on your back and a bag full of pilfered holy relics, the temple in chaos behind you, your brothers and sisters screaming: TRAITOR, TRAITOR, TRAITOR….