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The door slammed shut behind her, and the eerie voices were silenced and forgotten as Gin was plunged into sudden and suffocating darkness. It left her frozen, chest rising and falling progressively faster as anxiety and unease twisted and grew into something bordering panic.

Thud.. thud.. thud..

Rapid breathing ceased immediately with a high, frightened gasp, and small fingers curled almost painfully within the fabric of the empty bag and the hard, cold handles of the scissors. She stood there in the darkness, straining to hear, to pinpoint where the sound had come from and what it could have been.

Thud. Thud


Simply standing would yield no results, good or bad, so with a nervous press of her lips she began to pick her way forward, hands out before her to feel for any wall she could follow, or any obstacle that may block her path. Soon enough one presented itself. The crate was large, solid, and impassible, and left with no other choice the petite figure climbed on top of it.

Thud

It was open, and here alone there shown a light. A deep, sickly red that cast shadows upon the inside of the box and outlined the long, delicate form of an arm and hand, curved half hazardously over the lip. Automatically she reached for that pale hand, and as her fingers closed around it the persistent thumping ceased.

The sudden silence was almost deafening, and Gin let out a small, involuntary whimper as she released the hand and turned her attention down into the back and the source of that sickly glow. When she reached downward her hands met something soft and plaint, and as fingertips slide along the skin a sound thump echos up from within, flesh jumping beneath her touch.

It was a body, the heart was a literal heart, and it was still alive and beating within a body.

That logic played through her mind, repeating over and over as she leaned away from the thing within the box, and pulled in long, shallow breaths.

In the darkness, with the beat and pulse of the heart her only company, Gin lingered, weighing her options, little though they were. It was impossible to tell how much time passed. Minutes, hours, longer? She didn't know, but heart beat on, firm and steady, and the scissors weighed heavy in her hand.

The Goddesses needed heart.

Leaning forward again she brought the blades of the scissors down until the pointed tips met flesh. That still arm snapped to life, clutching at her nails digging at her arms as she pushed the blades deeper. The thumbing was almost deafening in her ears, but even above that persistent, frantic pounding she could hear the thing beneath her shrieking.

"Nergui! NERGUI!"

She stopped, scissors forgetten, hands within the hole she had made, slick with some warm, almost viscous substance. She frozen, with her fingers around the heart and let that name sink in.

"You're nothing but a blight!"

The words stung, and Nergui, still terribly young, tried in vain not to let the tall, pale figure before her see just how much they effected her. How muchshe effected her. She was flawless, untouchable, and unrivaled. Tall, pale, breathtakingly beautiful.

Anya..

Once upon a time they had gotten along. Once Anya had a little dark shadow following her around wherever she went.

Until Nergui had begun to grow, powers manifesting, intelligence expanding rapidly as she soaked up the knowledge of their past and the history of the sisterhood she now knew she was born to enter. A priestess. A threat.

It was resentment that severed the bond, and it was rejection that turned the girl's heart as dark as her skin. Cold and untouchable.

The memory was a bitter shock, and with it came the gentle, coaxing murmur of the voices. Comforting and torturous all in one.

Take it. It's your's. You need it.

She tore at the cavity she had created, ripping flesh, tearing ligaments and connective tissue as she yanked on the heart. Lips half parted, the corners twitched, oh so subtly upwards as the warm rush of blood flowed over her arms, her legs, anything that touched the body crammed in the box.

Finally, with one last, fierce jerk she tore it free. The thumping, so frantic mere seconds before, faltered. One last, feeble beat before nothing. Silence.

Someone was laughing. Low, mournful, and unhinged. It was Gin.

No, not Gin."

"Nergui.."

She placed the heart in the bag.

Everything was going dark. Grey blobs were starting to obscure her vision and her fingers tingled, numb. She flexed them, and in her right hand she felt the curved handle of the scissors.

Instinct propelled her, and she stabbed at the thing that was her sister, frantic and panicked. It didn't matter that it was Anya. The only thing that mattered in that moment was getting away, surviving.

Besides.. Anya was already dead...

The blades of the scissors plunged into the grey, glassy eye of the thing that held her, and it shrieked at her, hands falling away.

Suddenly she was laying on the ground, coughing, chocking on the water that still burned her lungs, but breathing!

And there was light. Dim at first, or perhaps she simply did not notice in those first few seconds. A door, an exit. An escape. She got to her feet, hands clutching at the bag and the scissors she would have sworn she'd left behind in the box, and she moved towards the light.

Out of the corner of her eye, just before she went through, she swore, just for a second, that she saw something. A tall, pale, resentful something.

"You are a blight, and you are nothing to me. Take yourself away from me and darken my door no longer."

"Goodbye, Anya."

The bond had been severed, the sister had died. There was nothing left of the story.