The Book of Dead Gods

CHAPTER V: Angels and Witnesses

Throughout the existence of the earth, it is said that many people have borne witness to history. Those who would stand at the precipice of a time, teetering before the great change of their age. There have been events which can only be described as so integral to the course of history that they have shaken the very future that they have carved out. These events have been influenced, whether by beings or the shifting of the universe, they have all had causation and they were not without purpose. All of history's past events had been leading; to this.

Anna sat silently dwelling on these thoughts. Rain fell in sheets over the streets of the city below her. She clenched and unclenched her fist, watching the muscles move in her, heavily scarred, forearm. She looked at the people hustling under their umbrellas, scurrying about; like vermin. It was night, but New York never slept. She had learned this from her brief time in the cesspool that people often called the center of the world. She watched them, wrapped up in self importance and delusion, completely unaware of the realities of the world. Their selfishness made her sick, made her angry.

She stood, leaving the wetness of the glassless window behind her. She faced the room of the abandoned apartment she had been staying in since she had ransacked the hunter's library. Showed them how weak they really were. How powerless. She strode over to the broken mirror, powerful legs crossing the room in two easy steps. She looked at herself, slouching slightly so her massive frame could fit in the mirror.

She wore bandages around her chest that stopped just above her stomach, cargo pants that used to be black but had faded more to a dark grey. On her face was her mask, its blood red circles where her eyes stared out seemed even darker in the candle light. Her body had scars crisscrossing it all over. Each a lesson, each a testament to her willpower. She sighed, a rough and angry noise, as she looked at her shattered reflection in the mirror for a moment longer. Then she turned, grabbing her jacket from the bedroll she had been sleeping on and threw it over her broad shoulders. It was black and buttoned up to her collarbone. She strapped her knife, a large blade, to her thigh and glanced at her crossbow leaning against the wall. She didn't need it now, it would stay here.

She grabbed the darkened leather rucksack from the bedroll as well and peered inside. Sitting in it was her prize. Her purpose. The Book of Dead Gods. The key to everything. Its eerie green glow shone from inside the backpack and whispered to her, filling her head with images of power and vengeance. Soon. She thought to herself, shutting the bag and pulling it around her shoulders.

She had someone to meet, someone who could get her out of this wretched city and on to where she needed to be next. They had better hope that they got what she needed. She pushed open the door to the decrepit apartment, blowing the candle out as she passed it. Descending the stairs she made it to the door where she exited the building. She pulled her jacket's hood up over her small bun to conceal herself further. In the alley that she stood in she could easily make out the shape of a man in the darkness. He was sleeping on his side, a tarp over him to keep the rain from his skin. Beside him was a dog, its matted fur clung, soaking wet, to its skinny frame. It lifted its head as she approached.

She knelt down and scratched it under its chin and it whined happily. The man beneath the tarp stirred. He said weakly, in a gruff voice filled with sleep, "'er name's Joanna. She's a good girl, won't trouble you none I swear." He didn't seem to notice, or care, about the mask that hid Anna's face.

Anna petted the soaking wet dog behind her ear and pulled a piece of the man's tarp over her. She stood then and kept walking, leaving the mutt and his dog behind. She trudged through the alleyway, rain funnelled through gutters, falling like tiny waterfalls. The water didn't bother her. Besides, her jacket was heavy enough that she didn't feel the cold and the water rolled off the point of her hood keeping the wetness from her mask.