Igraine — Roleplayer Guild

Vladivostok, Russia - May 1900

The flames of the many votive candles flickered in the darkness, dancing along the painted plaster walls, were merely the tiniest reflection of the inferno raging within the still, silent form of the woman kneeling in prayer at the altar. The long, leather-gloved fingers intertwined before her did not shake, and her ivory face remained as beatific as the nearby statue of the Virgin, holding her beloved Holy Son so tenderly. Her head bowed, full, shell pink lips moved silently, mouthing ancient prayers with a seeming serenity so profound, none might ever guess the white hot rage seething just beneath the woman's flawless alabaster visage.

Galina had risen an orphan, from what was meant to be her death bed.

Yury did not tell her this while she languished in bed for some three weeks. By the time her brother managed to deliver her to the Japanese physician with the bad gambling habit he befriended, Galina had been no more than a hair’s breadth from the grave. Yet when she was finally stabilized, Yury did as Daisuke had bade and left Tokyo straight away, traveling as far as he dared toward the western coast and the home she had so desperately wished to see again.

Two weeks passed though, before Yury dared take Galina aboard a ship to the Russian port town of Vladivostok, where brother and sister had been anxiously expected for many days. And it was here that Yury suffered in silence, alone with his grief for a week longer until he could be sure the only living family he had left, would not leave him in this mortal world alone.

Until he could be sure, that this news would not finish her off entirely.

The ancestral Demidov home had been razed, no less ruthlessly or thoroughly than the Takahiro compound. Yury was no fool. The near simultaneous attacks in Japan and Russia, the devastation, the coordination: coincidence would beggar credulity.

Eight days ago, Galina finally stood to her own two feet without assistance. And six days ago, she discovered there would never be a chance in this lifetime to tell her Papa how very sorry she was for all she had failed him. She would never tell him with her own lips, how very much she loved him. There would be no grand Christmas and Easter dinners with her elder brothers and their gentle, beautiful wives. There would be no more sparkling laughter during all the wild games of hide-and-seek and tag throughout the keep, trailing and tracking and fleeing from all her precious nieces and nephews. Klara would never again sit before the grand marble fireplace, holding court before all those precious, upturned faces, turned to the loving woman who raised generations of their family, as she wove all the old tales of Baba Yaga and her terrible house, clever princesses saved and noble knights battling impossible odds to their rescue...

’Even Klara, and all the little babes… ‘ Galina moaned deep in the back of her throat, her head falling back for a moment, shutting her eyes tightly against the coming tears. She would not allow them. Not now. Not until the whole world was painted crimson with the blood of those who murdered the innocents…

Two days ago, Baron Yury Demidov boarded the TransSiberian, to return to what remained of their ancestral home. He would rally the support of his Don Cossack brothers, supervise the reconstruction of the Keep, and then mourn the brutal, untimely death of his beloved sister, the very last of his family, who had finally succumb to her mortal injuries.

Today, Galina Demidova – far less dead than would be purported – would board a ship and return to Japan, and make her way once more to Tokyo. She would find what had become of the Takahiro clan, of Raiga and Ai. Of Souma... Somewhere in this world, they had a mutual and deadly enemy, no matter her own deceptions past, intertwined with the machinations of the honored son. Galina would gladly wade through rivers of blood for her vengeance, yet if a single member of the Takahiro family still lived? She did not doubt she would do so alone.

She unfolded herself from where she knelt at the altar, lifting the crucifix from the silver chain about her neck, kissing the cross reverently before allowing it to fall back beneath the lengths of her long, charcoal grey coat. Its ends whirled in a swift, sharp circle as she turned on her booted heel, one hand resting lightly on the hilt of the shashka sheathed on her belt alongside her kindjal, the other wrapped about the strap of the Winchester rifle she shouldered easily.

Galina emerged from the ancient church into a grey, rainy morning. The sound of her boot heels resounded on the stone, echoing along the street as she pulled the black fur shapka over her tightly plaited hair. Only the welcoming nicker of the chestnut stallion tethered beneath a nearby lean-to cracked, even just a little, her stone visage with the merest whisper of a smile.

She bent to kiss the horse’s velvety soft muzzle, her gloved fingers scratching beneath his forelock, just above the near perfect white star. ”It is only a short trip on the water Anatoly, my dear friend. Only a short while before ground is beneath your hooves once more… “

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