OCs For Whoever's Bored Enough to Read

Character 2: Reed Atonal

TW: this story is darker with hints of violence and sexual assault.
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- Often sarcastic and blunt
- She can speak from her unopened mouth, her voice smooth despite her tactless words
- Honey brown hair, short but styled
- Her left arm is diseased with a cruel affliction
- Her torso is similarly afflicted with the same curse
- 28 years old

* Wears a leather chest harness with a wide belt
* Wears a white shirt underneath
* Wears a long slit dress with a leather pouch that has a metallic chain belt
* Holds an afflicted cane
* Wears a vanilla white face mask to cover her stitched mouth
* Wears metal-tipped, leather knee-high boots

• Left arm can elongate and open to expose five dexterous tentacles with a corrosive slime:
1. Two 2m long
2. Two 5m long
3. One 7m long

• Stomach opens likes a mouth and exposes teeth and Reed's spine:
1. Digests anything she eats
2. Can crush anything she consumes
3. Things eaten are not used as nutrition for her body

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Born a baker's daughter, Reed was brought up in a quiet town, far removed from city life.

She got to know the townsfolk who came to her father's bakery, and grew to be a pleasant and warm lady, but on the day of her 17th birthday, Reed left her home to travel to the metropolitan city of Horen'oren to find a job.

She had only reached Horen'oren by train after sundown, and only then did she understand why she was in what's nicknamed the Downside Up city.

Once the sun had set, it was as if a new life was breathed into the bustling city, now ridden with gangs and shady businesses around every corner.

Policemen who were smart never tried to be involved with anything that would happen at night. It was the hostility of this new environment that had taken the lives of countless, be it city folk or travellers, who were too naive.

Reed was accosted by a band of ruffians, and had her meagre belongings snatched, her life hanging on barely by a thread when they were done with her.

Left to rot in her tattered clothing on her very first day in Horen'oren, broken and penniless, Reed wallowed in her shame and misery.

With her innocence robbed, her left arm snapped from her rough tackle... Reed huddled against a grimy trashcan, just another delusional soul taken advantage of, a mere speck of colour amongst the victims already piled up in the city's records.

The next morning, Reed was at a complete loss, and found herself on the city borders, facing the pitch dark forest of Lak'Har where no life could live.

She was going to die here anyways, why not seize what little control she still had over her life...?

And stumbling toward the forest, toward her demise... Reed was eventually met with a creature like nothing she had ever seen before.

A million human hands that stuck out like legs on a millipede across its winding body, the faceless monstrosity coiled and twisted, dangling from a rotten tree.

With its tubular body as wide as Reed was tall, her horrorstruck state froze her in place, demented eyes watching the opening in the creature's ivory white plate of a face.

The thing spoke with a voice echoing from all around her, but the buzzing in her mind drowned out any words that came out...

The opening in the creature's vanilla white mask stretched open, revealing a crimson eye that looked deep into Reed's soul... and saw what she truly was under the kindness she had learnt from birth...

Behind her smiling face and caring words, what her nature truly was...

The parasite within the afflicted monster smiled, and Reed was taken...

...

Waking up the with the darkened sky overhead, Reed found herself sitting by the same trashcan she had spent the previous night with.

Except that a pulsing pain emanated from her lips, grown together as if stitched with a network of veins and skin and sinews of muscle...

And that her on her once broken arm, through the slashed-open clothing across her stomach...

Slimy crimson stained the thin fabrics, and the sight of her mauled flesh only drove her mind further into insanity...

It reached deep into her mind, shattering the learned facade over her animalistic desires...

"Your deepest wish...
Your most carnal desires...
Your monstrous wants..."

It came from a voice her mind...

"It shall take hold..."

Reed wandered the grimy alleyways as barrel fires illuminated face after face, each a soul tormented by the Downside Up metropolis...

Reed walked and walked, following the scent that guided her.

Scent...?

The pull in her mind, leading her toward her greatest want...?

Leading her... to the same ruffians that stole her life away.

There was a piercing cry, and a flash of crimson.

Reed didn't use a knife or shard of broken glass.

She had no need for it.

Her mind screamed for her to stop, that she was a murderer, that she couldn't do something oh so cruel...

But despite her thrashing thoughts... no tears ran down her face...

Her arm didn't even tremble as her mauled flesh, strung back together, and ripped open once more.

Flailing tendrils with a corrosive slime flung out at her past assailants.

Her inhuman strength would seize them by the throats, drawing closer to her growling stomach.

Her jaws could slice flesh like a hot knife through butter, a fact proven over and over that fateful night.

Reed was born a baker's daughter, and raised in a peaceful town...

She was taught a charming smile and learnt the importance of compassion...

But it wasn't until that night, did Reed finally discover the creature under her ivory, faceless mask...

What lurked behind her dead eyes...

Was a monster of no return...

A bestial thirst for slaughter...

A vengeful grudge that would never loosen like a clenched fist...

Reed gathered a following in the slums of Horen'oren whom she promised a life without discrimination and injustice, a world of misfits and monsters, where the misdeeds inflicted upon them only deserved rightful vengeance for...

Like debts that had to be repaid, what was taken, will always come at a cost...

Reed's ideology and her secret society grew like wildfire in the night of the Downside Up city...

Where every soul in this tormenting metropolis now knows of her name...

Where she now sits upon a throne of bodies...

Where her influence would reach even the very top echelons of Horen'oren...

Reed stands tall in a world built by her own two hands, and will remain so, forever...

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Published: 14 June 2022