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tothefairestAnd yes, she earned that title.
Once upon a time, there was a girl named Lee Hyun, and she didn't have a soul.
She wasn't sure if she'd lost it somewhere or if she'd never had one in the first place—though, really, she wasn't sure if she believed in souls, per se, but if there was, she didn't have one. It wasn't so much that she was a bad person, but just had a general lack of goodness. Other people seemed to feel things so vividly where she felt nothing at all.
She thought that maybe if she tried really hard, she could be good. So she worked at it. She worked and worked and worked. She did all her chores; she did beautiful embroidery, she was polite and graceful and did everything well that a girl ought to do well, and didn't get caught by her mother cutting open small animals she'd caught. Except it wasn't quite good enough. Even when she was doing everything right there was still something wrong with her.
Her marriage prospects quietly moved onto other girls, and she knew that there wasn't much left ahead of her. It was what we now think of as the 500s, she was a girl, and she was, somehow, innately defective. Taking pity on her, and wanting to see his daughter well-settled in life, her merchant father decided to take her with him on one of his trips west, in hopes that he might be able to have her married to a well-to-do foreigner as well as that travel might lift her spirits.
The trip did, in a way, settle Hyun's future, but not in the way her father had hoped. One night, she slipped out of the caravan, intending to disappear, maybe drown herself to unburden her family with such a failure of a daughter. Instead, she ran into a vampire that called herself Aphrodite, and found herself drafted into the staging of the Trojan War in the role of Iphiginea.
If there is one thing that will make you look at your life! LOOK AT YOUR CHOICES! it is being sacrificed for an audience eight times a week, every week, with no respite in sight.
While she started out keeping to herself, rarely speaking (no one else spoke her language, anyway), spending a lot of time on her own gave her time to think. And perhaps something about a vampire changed her, or maybe she just came to terms with who (and what) she was, but somewhere along the way she stopped feeling ashamed of herself. And, realizing that she now had eternity ahead of her, started thinking about what she wanted to do with it.
For one thing, as soon as she could, she was going to blow this popsicle stand. Not only did she hate her role and hate life here in general--the ones cowed by the so-called "gods" were merely pitiful and the ones who enjoyed this spectacle laughable—but what was with inspiring some "new age of heroism," anyway? What was the fun in pretending at being old heroes who might never have actually existed? Why not create new stories, rather than just playing at it?
She wasn't particularly impressed with her fellow actors and actresses, either. They were just so... simple, so easy to read. The ones who had volunteered or enjoyed being in the show were stupid, followers even as they pretended to be historic leaders; the ones who moped were ineffectual. There were, of course, enough of them to maybe overtake the so-called gods, but no one wanted to be the instigator.
In her off hours (few though they were) she wandered around the theater, getting a sense of her surroundings—the people, the area. It didn't take her long to figure out what times of day she could slip out without being noticed. She couldn't leave for long; others had tried to escape and been dragged back within a few hours, but at the very least she could pretend at freedom for a few hours every now and again.
And she knew there were other vampires out there that frowned on the show--even as a new vampire she knew that one of the cardinal rules was Don't Let Them Know We're Supernatural—and clearly her best ticket out of here was leading them straight to the next show. Screw the rest of the cast; she was getting out of there. She left some messages in the area, hoping that someone would pick up on her meaning, and get in touch. And they did.
She was already miles away when the raid hit the theater, and starting her new life.
Re-integration into mortal society was easy. She started a new life—er, unlife—and sought out interesting, exciting things. She had forever! She might as well enjoy it. And where things were boring, she made them interesting, adding in her own dramatic touches and plot twists to the stories of everyday life. A word here, a word there; friends turned against each other, jealousies arisen, suspicious aroused, rage justified. Good life choices never made for very interesting events, after all.
And mortals were so interesting. Vampires, yes, well--maybe they were supernatural, but in a lot of ways they stagnated. Mortals were always so much more passionate, so living in the moment since they knew their time was relatively short. Tragically short, in some cases. Really, she didn't really know anymore why she thought ending her own life would have been a good idea. Life was already so short and there was just so much fun to be had! And some of her players, who she thought had contributed particularly well, she granted eternal life so that she could enjoy things just as she was.
For a while she mostly didn't run into a whole lot of other vampires; she started out on the small stages and decided to work her way up while figuring out what kind of person she wanted to be, now that she got to choose. She moved around a lot, as she didn't age and tended to bring trouble in her wake, but it was an enjoyable life. She got to see lots of new things. Occasionally she disguised herself as a boy; occasionally she got herself into a convent. If she encountered other single vampires, she'd either befriend them (HIIII!!!!) or weave them into her plans. (Which, uh, generally involved death for them. But dramatic death!)
Populations were spread out in those times, and therefore she could really only make small things happen. It got a little boring, so occasionally she would find a safe place and sleep for a bit, hoping for new exciting things when she woke up.
One awakening, she found that the world had changed considerably, in ways that she quite liked. People were moving into cities more, populations more clustered together. She moved into population centers and began to work on her art.
However, cities had brought more than humans together: vampires also began to cluster and form power structures. It was in there that she ran into some of her former castmates from the Iliad—and panicked. She'd made a clean break with her old life! There couldn't have been any survivors--but here they were, and they recongized her. They wanted to be friends, just like in the old times.
Clearly, they had to die. So she made it happen. In fact, the man killed the woman and was then executed for murder by the Prince, never suspecting that the quiet girl they'd known at the theater was playing them both for fools.
Time moved on, and so did Kallie. She sailed over to the New World with English pilgrims (it's New! It must be exciting!!!) and wreaked her own special brand of havoc there. (The Salem Witch Trials? Guess who. In fact, basically any witch trial. She was even executed as a witch once. By drowning. Joke's on them!) She flitted about the cities of the United States as they grew. She spent some time among high society for the parties, but found them a bit dull; too rule-bound. But they were awfully fun to manipulate, considering the amount of gossip that went around.
She bounced from persona to persona, from identity to identity, in those days when it was easier to make up a new name for yourself and then be that person; the modern age, though, was when she truly came into who she really felt like she was meant to be. (And to think, she never would have found it, if she'd died in the 500s! She could thank Aphrodite, really. Except not.) She had more freedom of movement; there were much more exciting parties and music and diversions. She was one of the early adopters of the internet, having the foresight to know that it was going to be a big deal.
Facebook became her new best friend. She moved to LA (her self-decided natural habitat: warm weather, all the new cutting edge things, famous people, pop culture), dyed her hair pink, and was basically the happiest vampire ever.
And she hadn't forgotten that some of her castmates still walked the earth. In fact... some of them were even on Facebook. She did a little information-gathering and social engineering, and it was easy enough to find out who still kept in contact and who was still up and about.
And, of course, they all still had to die. It was a bit silly, maybe, but she felt she just couldn't make a break with her old self until all the people who'd known her were dead, and why would she deny herself closure?
So she convinced a young Mekhet with a command of Obfuscate and a penchant for acting to do a little bit of acting for her—to go to Pacifica, where she knew some of her castmates were living, and got him to dress up as "Zeus" and make sure he was seen by some people who would know the significance of that figure. Soon the network channels were buzzing about the event, and Kallie would have her chance: they'd all gather together, and then she'd pick them off one by one.
Easy as pie.
Of course, the universe works in funny ways sometimes. The bombs fell, and society collapsed. Hopefully some of the others had gotten killed. Kallie herself survived, being (of course) immune to radiation sickness and having been out in the suburbs of Cali at the time, rather than the big city. She tripped around for a while, more or less just doing survivalist things, but it wasn't really satisfying—she was, after all, a people person.
So she decided--why not see if any of them actually did go to Pacifica?
And she found that there was, in fact, a thriving city grown up in its place, now called Greenhaven, and yes, some of her castmates had made it there. The powers that be had smiled. Her plans were still in place. And, hey. Post-apocalyptic scenario? Awesome.
In Greenhaven, she quickly made a name for herself as a social butterfly and the best party-thrower in the world (so much easier to be recognized when most people are dead!). Things were relatively quiet until the local Prince became concerned with the growing population of vampires and started holding regular Court to keep closer tabs on everything. The Prince's Harpy* that had been chosen at an earlier point was unsatisfactory to most of the city, so they formed a Priscus Council** to put Kallie to the post of Priscus Harpy.
Meanwhile, other forces were interested in Greenhaven and its unnatural good fortune; a group of supposed government agents got in touch with some vampires and offered assistance while they were in the area, looking for some kind of "Tree of Life." Meanwhile, the local spirits were acting up, and sent a representative to the vampires, who said that the agents were their enemies and that they had to protect the Tree.
The city quickly split into two factions—those that sided with the "government agents", who were a kind of quasi-vampire called Kuei-jin, to destroy the Tree and end the universe in preparation for the birth of a new one, and those that sided with the spirits to try and preserve it. Kallie, of course, chose the faction that wanted change, because duh!! When the party's over, you should go the fuck home instead of sticking around until it's no fun anymore, right? Her philosophy was that all things come to an end, even good things, and you should get while the getting's good rather than sticking around and getting boring, like most vampires. She became BFFs with one of the Kuei-jin leaders, Xenobia, who she found to be a kindred spirit. Xenobia kind of wanted to adopt her.
Events eventuated, and soon enough things came to a head when the Kuei-jin were ready to make their move. The two sides fought at the clearing containing the Tree of Life, but those loyal to the spirits didn't stop the Kuei-jin in time, and the tree was destroyed. The end.
...or is it?
* Vampire social organizer and arbitrator of status
** Council of the leaders of the Clans
Once upon a time, there was a girl named Lee Hyun, and she didn't have a soul.
She wasn't sure if she'd lost it somewhere or if she'd never had one in the first place—though, really, she wasn't sure if she believed in souls, per se, but if there was, she didn't have one. It wasn't so much that she was a bad person, but just had a general lack of goodness. Other people seemed to feel things so vividly where she felt nothing at all.
She thought that maybe if she tried really hard, she could be good. So she worked at it. She worked and worked and worked. She did all her chores; she did beautiful embroidery, she was polite and graceful and did everything well that a girl ought to do well, and didn't get caught by her mother cutting open small animals she'd caught. Except it wasn't quite good enough. Even when she was doing everything right there was still something wrong with her.
Her marriage prospects quietly moved onto other girls, and she knew that there wasn't much left ahead of her. It was what we now think of as the 500s, she was a girl, and she was, somehow, innately defective. Taking pity on her, and wanting to see his daughter well-settled in life, her merchant father decided to take her with him on one of his trips west, in hopes that he might be able to have her married to a well-to-do foreigner as well as that travel might lift her spirits.
The trip did, in a way, settle Hyun's future, but not in the way her father had hoped. One night, she slipped out of the caravan, intending to disappear, maybe drown herself to unburden her family with such a failure of a daughter. Instead, she ran into a vampire that called herself Aphrodite, and found herself drafted into the staging of the Trojan War in the role of Iphiginea.
If there is one thing that will make you look at your life! LOOK AT YOUR CHOICES! it is being sacrificed for an audience eight times a week, every week, with no respite in sight.
While she started out keeping to herself, rarely speaking (no one else spoke her language, anyway), spending a lot of time on her own gave her time to think. And perhaps something about a vampire changed her, or maybe she just came to terms with who (and what) she was, but somewhere along the way she stopped feeling ashamed of herself. And, realizing that she now had eternity ahead of her, started thinking about what she wanted to do with it.
For one thing, as soon as she could, she was going to blow this popsicle stand. Not only did she hate her role and hate life here in general--the ones cowed by the so-called "gods" were merely pitiful and the ones who enjoyed this spectacle laughable—but what was with inspiring some "new age of heroism," anyway? What was the fun in pretending at being old heroes who might never have actually existed? Why not create new stories, rather than just playing at it?
She wasn't particularly impressed with her fellow actors and actresses, either. They were just so... simple, so easy to read. The ones who had volunteered or enjoyed being in the show were stupid, followers even as they pretended to be historic leaders; the ones who moped were ineffectual. There were, of course, enough of them to maybe overtake the so-called gods, but no one wanted to be the instigator.
In her off hours (few though they were) she wandered around the theater, getting a sense of her surroundings—the people, the area. It didn't take her long to figure out what times of day she could slip out without being noticed. She couldn't leave for long; others had tried to escape and been dragged back within a few hours, but at the very least she could pretend at freedom for a few hours every now and again.
And she knew there were other vampires out there that frowned on the show--even as a new vampire she knew that one of the cardinal rules was Don't Let Them Know We're Supernatural—and clearly her best ticket out of here was leading them straight to the next show. Screw the rest of the cast; she was getting out of there. She left some messages in the area, hoping that someone would pick up on her meaning, and get in touch. And they did.
She was already miles away when the raid hit the theater, and starting her new life.
Re-integration into mortal society was easy. She started a new life—er, unlife—and sought out interesting, exciting things. She had forever! She might as well enjoy it. And where things were boring, she made them interesting, adding in her own dramatic touches and plot twists to the stories of everyday life. A word here, a word there; friends turned against each other, jealousies arisen, suspicious aroused, rage justified. Good life choices never made for very interesting events, after all.
And mortals were so interesting. Vampires, yes, well--maybe they were supernatural, but in a lot of ways they stagnated. Mortals were always so much more passionate, so living in the moment since they knew their time was relatively short. Tragically short, in some cases. Really, she didn't really know anymore why she thought ending her own life would have been a good idea. Life was already so short and there was just so much fun to be had! And some of her players, who she thought had contributed particularly well, she granted eternal life so that she could enjoy things just as she was.
For a while she mostly didn't run into a whole lot of other vampires; she started out on the small stages and decided to work her way up while figuring out what kind of person she wanted to be, now that she got to choose. She moved around a lot, as she didn't age and tended to bring trouble in her wake, but it was an enjoyable life. She got to see lots of new things. Occasionally she disguised herself as a boy; occasionally she got herself into a convent. If she encountered other single vampires, she'd either befriend them (HIIII!!!!) or weave them into her plans. (Which, uh, generally involved death for them. But dramatic death!)
Populations were spread out in those times, and therefore she could really only make small things happen. It got a little boring, so occasionally she would find a safe place and sleep for a bit, hoping for new exciting things when she woke up.
One awakening, she found that the world had changed considerably, in ways that she quite liked. People were moving into cities more, populations more clustered together. She moved into population centers and began to work on her art.
However, cities had brought more than humans together: vampires also began to cluster and form power structures. It was in there that she ran into some of her former castmates from the Iliad—and panicked. She'd made a clean break with her old life! There couldn't have been any survivors--but here they were, and they recongized her. They wanted to be friends, just like in the old times.
Clearly, they had to die. So she made it happen. In fact, the man killed the woman and was then executed for murder by the Prince, never suspecting that the quiet girl they'd known at the theater was playing them both for fools.
Time moved on, and so did Kallie. She sailed over to the New World with English pilgrims (it's New! It must be exciting!!!) and wreaked her own special brand of havoc there. (The Salem Witch Trials? Guess who. In fact, basically any witch trial. She was even executed as a witch once. By drowning. Joke's on them!) She flitted about the cities of the United States as they grew. She spent some time among high society for the parties, but found them a bit dull; too rule-bound. But they were awfully fun to manipulate, considering the amount of gossip that went around.
She bounced from persona to persona, from identity to identity, in those days when it was easier to make up a new name for yourself and then be that person; the modern age, though, was when she truly came into who she really felt like she was meant to be. (And to think, she never would have found it, if she'd died in the 500s! She could thank Aphrodite, really. Except not.) She had more freedom of movement; there were much more exciting parties and music and diversions. She was one of the early adopters of the internet, having the foresight to know that it was going to be a big deal.
Facebook became her new best friend. She moved to LA (her self-decided natural habitat: warm weather, all the new cutting edge things, famous people, pop culture), dyed her hair pink, and was basically the happiest vampire ever.
And she hadn't forgotten that some of her castmates still walked the earth. In fact... some of them were even on Facebook. She did a little information-gathering and social engineering, and it was easy enough to find out who still kept in contact and who was still up and about.
And, of course, they all still had to die. It was a bit silly, maybe, but she felt she just couldn't make a break with her old self until all the people who'd known her were dead, and why would she deny herself closure?
So she convinced a young Mekhet with a command of Obfuscate and a penchant for acting to do a little bit of acting for her—to go to Pacifica, where she knew some of her castmates were living, and got him to dress up as "Zeus" and make sure he was seen by some people who would know the significance of that figure. Soon the network channels were buzzing about the event, and Kallie would have her chance: they'd all gather together, and then she'd pick them off one by one.
Easy as pie.
Of course, the universe works in funny ways sometimes. The bombs fell, and society collapsed. Hopefully some of the others had gotten killed. Kallie herself survived, being (of course) immune to radiation sickness and having been out in the suburbs of Cali at the time, rather than the big city. She tripped around for a while, more or less just doing survivalist things, but it wasn't really satisfying—she was, after all, a people person.
So she decided--why not see if any of them actually did go to Pacifica?
And she found that there was, in fact, a thriving city grown up in its place, now called Greenhaven, and yes, some of her castmates had made it there. The powers that be had smiled. Her plans were still in place. And, hey. Post-apocalyptic scenario? Awesome.
In Greenhaven, she quickly made a name for herself as a social butterfly and the best party-thrower in the world (so much easier to be recognized when most people are dead!). Things were relatively quiet until the local Prince became concerned with the growing population of vampires and started holding regular Court to keep closer tabs on everything. The Prince's Harpy* that had been chosen at an earlier point was unsatisfactory to most of the city, so they formed a Priscus Council** to put Kallie to the post of Priscus Harpy.
Meanwhile, other forces were interested in Greenhaven and its unnatural good fortune; a group of supposed government agents got in touch with some vampires and offered assistance while they were in the area, looking for some kind of "Tree of Life." Meanwhile, the local spirits were acting up, and sent a representative to the vampires, who said that the agents were their enemies and that they had to protect the Tree.
The city quickly split into two factions—those that sided with the "government agents", who were a kind of quasi-vampire called Kuei-jin, to destroy the Tree and end the universe in preparation for the birth of a new one, and those that sided with the spirits to try and preserve it. Kallie, of course, chose the faction that wanted change, because duh!! When the party's over, you should go the fuck home instead of sticking around until it's no fun anymore, right? Her philosophy was that all things come to an end, even good things, and you should get while the getting's good rather than sticking around and getting boring, like most vampires. She became BFFs with one of the Kuei-jin leaders, Xenobia, who she found to be a kindred spirit. Xenobia kind of wanted to adopt her.
Events eventuated, and soon enough things came to a head when the Kuei-jin were ready to make their move. The two sides fought at the clearing containing the Tree of Life, but those loyal to the spirits didn't stop the Kuei-jin in time, and the tree was destroyed. The end.
...or is it?
* Vampire social organizer and arbitrator of status
** Council of the leaders of the Clans
