Jack waited in her seat. Well, to be fair, her name was Jackylin Everbright, and the seat was a poor attempt at a real thing. But her mother never called her anything but Jack, so Jack it was. She looked around from her vaulted perch, princess high on a mountain examining her subjects.

  Broken nail here, dirty mud floor... everywhere..., and the sole shuttered window. A rough pile of furs and linens a mistake for a bed, denied the comfort of light from the closed off blinds. A sensation long foreign to it and Jack alike. The space often barely enough to hold both her and mom whenever that rare occasion happens now. Most nights spent alone and cold while her mother went to work...

  But none of that mattered! Because today was her birthday! She knew it because her mother always talked about it, how when Jack turned 8 things would change! Pay no mind that the same speech happened st year, and the year before!

  And thank goodness are they going to change this time! No more dust, no more bugs in the bed, no more brown water to cook with or drink! Jack was going to see her and her mom to the peak of all that could be~! Use her birthday wish to get them out of this shack and somewhere safe~. Jack giggles as she takes it in, her mind saying that none of it mattered so long as she was with her momma~!

  Fresh carrots, soft towels, hot water. The world was their cm thingy~! A rack of her body coincides with a violent sound, rasp and harsh after the brief showing of mirth. Too bad this cough stuck around for it.

  A wet, jarring rupture ripples through the child once more. Specks of dampness and red spshing her hand that comes to cover her mouth. Yeah. Too bad...

  Mom's been gone for days now, she thinks. After first night without her return, she thought she went away forever like dad did but now... now Jack knows she was just... trying to throw me a surprise party!!

  The dust ridden, flea-soaked child eagerly opens her arms towards the shabby st door marking her room from the outside. Curly red hair matted and unkempt. Green eyes doing everything in their power to keep any spark of hope alive against her small, withered frame.

  Yes~! That's it! She had to go get all the supplies! The candles, the cake! Even if we couldn't ever afford a cake, but you only turn 8 once right?! Streamers and ribbons!! Oh, for sure. mom definitely had a busy week getting this together~.

  Jack goes back to pying among the stacks of broken branches that she calls friends. Twigs strewn to figures in the amber twilight of rising night. Their soft wooden plinks against the ground helping to keep her theory alive and the doubt of its passing at bay.

  Until...

  *Creak* Screams the wooden door hinge. All hopes pinned on its sounding lighting her in a fire of anticipation and joy. "Mom~!"

  She rushes, knocking over hand woven toys and scattered clumps of bugs as she rounds the corner. Only to be met with a ghastly figure that she once knew.

  "Mom!!!" Jack's voice shifts from jubince to arm, crawling forth as the weary and spindly shadow drops to the floor, just inside the threshold. Her breath weak, lips chapped, raven bck hair clumped and dripping in crimson. Simple tunic stained in the same ichor that clings to her thin frame.

  Sunken, blue eyes flit to her daughter as she weakly pulls out a pouch. "M-my love. Take this. Drink it. I..." Wet splotches coat the ground as Jack shakily holds the bag aloft from her grip. Her usual melodic voice now nothing but rumbles of damp stone on damp stone. An audible gurgle of pain between breaths.

  "I could not escape the apothecary without notice. H-he called the guard. Do *Wheeze* do you recall what your daddy taught you? About the forest and how to live there?"

  Tears stung their painful passing down her cheeks, even though she was trying to be a brave girl. Too confused, too shocked by seeing her one person lying in the dirt floor of their home. "Y-yes momma, I remember."

  A faint smile crosses the corpse's lips, "Good girl~. You're so smart, my Jackylin. Take that medicine and then run. Run to the forest and live. Live for mommy."

  "NO!!" Jack screams, her bundle dropping to the floor as her mother's eyes whimper at its passing. Her small hands instead coming to shove and jostle the wire thin body beneath her.

  "Don't say that!! It's my birthday, you can't act like this!! Get up!! Please, stop joking!!" Denial. Anger. Rage. All exhumed in a childlike attention at the broken woman who she's always known. Always loved. Always been her shelter.

  The frowning smile of her mother as the red drips onto the floor. Shattered and stilted words filled with sorrow. "I'm s-sorry, little l-light. But you have to be a big girl now. I l-love you with all my h-heart. Be b-better... t-than... m..."

  Stillness.

  Sobs.

  Racks of body upon body. Living and now dead. Worlds shattered and remade in the cries and screams of the living as a child grieves. All the while, the bundle of medicine listens.

  Twilight falls onto the hovel. Blue and heavy. The sounds of life long gone from their lingering branches and perches. A deathly pallor to match the interior.

  There, the small child finally fumbles the bag her mother died to give. Tear-streaked cheeks and broken eyes taking in a clear vial with colorless liquid. The now cold body of her mother offering no advice, so she drinks. Down the gullet, to her stomach. Praying it will kill her now too so she can be with her again.

  Unfortunately though, it only heralds more pain.

  The remnants of the door, the one she shut after her mother stumbled in, get bashed in. Iron cd knights with suns on their metal move past her as they shout, "Clear!" "Bedroom, clear!"

  None of them paying attention to the dead person who gave her life.

  "Found the vial." One says with metallic echo, aggravation on his masculine tone. "Empty."

  Jack ys over her mother's body and silently cries, accepting her fate.

  "Fuck."

  Boots collide upon dirt for a few more moments before an icy cold grip of iron grasps Jack's neck.

  Small hands grasp weakly at the iron gauntlet, the small form writhing in its grip as the knight asks, "What happened to the vial, worm?"

  Lifeless eyes find his response, body automatically kicking in defense.

  A moment. Two. Three as vision begins to fade to bck.

  "Enough."

  A release on her throat then gasp of air as Jack cups her neck in chocked sobs.

  Another heavy set of boots follow her freedom, clinking as they lean down. Immacute armor, sun bzoned in every weld. Heavy and pure.

  A studying gaze, even behind the full helm adorning light. Piercing, white eyes that puncture the soul. Breath of death, now that she knows what it is.

  "She is tainted, but does not have the vessel. leave her at the woods." He says as he stands, turning back toward the door and out of the hovel.

  "At once." The rest comply, a metaled hand coming to csp Jack's waist. "You got lucky~. Usually we'd have our fun with things like this. Guess the goblins and monsters will have you instead."

  Jack says nothing, her eyes fixed on her mother's corpse before it fades from view. The st image of her world broken and shattered into sprawling pieces.

  Then, to the stone ground beneath her as she is carried. As they cross the 15-foot walls sheltering Saint Angles from the world at rge, the knight tossing her into the woods. A resounding thunk of flesh to stone and dirt rolling before the small body comes to a stop.

  "Good luck~. I hear monsters come out at night these days~." Are the st words Jack hears before she is cut off from society. From home. From everything she's known.

  Fragile. Hollow. Broken. A primal thought singing through the bck ichor thoughts from the faint memories of training and exploring with a much kinder man. "Shelter."

  So, with haunted eyes and broken step, Jack delves deeper into the forest. Eventually finding a far enough spot, to her mind, to make a ramshackle lean to. Large leaves and all.

  The second day sees her set traps like her father taught. Robotic, alien. Not herself in the slightest. Just a body making sure it doesn't die...

  And it succeeds. The fourth night of no patrols garner Jack not just trapping experience, but time. Time to think. To process. The body's drive for living making her come to terms with some of the trauma she has witnessed.

  As she ruminates on some thoughts, tears streaming down her face again, a trap goes off. Signaled by a fke of a leaf some 20 feet out. Dashing over with a crude stone knife, she sees something that stills her. An unkempt girl just like her, just with pointed ears and a lot more malice in her eyes.