I was once told I was pretty. Woody brown tresses, bronzed skin from my treks through the forest, and an expression full with the joy of life. Now, looking at me, you can no longer picture the girl I once was.

In the light of the moon, I had peered at my reflection in lakes and ponds. Now, my skin was pale, much like that of the stranger that had brought me into this half life, and my eyes were now flat and expressionless. Waiting for death. My hair was matted with dirt, grime and gore, and was no longer the lustrous locks they once were. I haven't gotten a clear look at my reflection in the past years...But perhaps that was for the best, because every dawn, I would undergo a hideous transformation into a monster whose visage struck terror into all who saw me.

Imagine a werewolf. Now imagine that it got stuck halfway between its forms, such that it had the head, the ears, the claws and the tail of a wolf, but the bone structure of a human. Clumps of fur stuck to human skin, but it was a patchwork piece of art. Then, take that image, replace what human skin was left with the greenish-grey bark of a dying shrub, and intersperse poisonous thorns throughout its hide. Finally, replace the claws and teeth with more thorns.

That was what I looked like in the day. A monster incarnate. The stuff nightmares were made of.

The Mistress - she who made me what I am - had fashioned me into her weapon. Her Thorn. A Rose that cannot be killed, because every time I died, I came back to this life via her dark arts, my soul and body both paying a price for that costly reweaving of my thread in the loom of life.

I became her army. Her assassin. Her weapon, in her bid to rule over the Shifters of this land. All who did not submit to her will were annihilated by me, single-handedly. I was the tool in which the Mistress' reign of terror spread.

There were times where I couldn't stomach what I was forced to do. I wanted to die, to kill myself, except I couldn't. The Mistress tethered me to this twilight life, and I could not escape from it.

~

"Why won' ye die?!" Screamed one of the Wolf Shifters. His village burning around him; his pack, broken and bloody, scattered like chaff. He hunched protectively in front of a female and a wailing child, but still he defied the beast ruling my mornings, just like he and his brave pack had defied the Mistress.

This was the penalty for rebellion. This was the price they paid.

Please flee, I begged him silently with my eyes, but I knew that there was no escape for either of us. With the Mistress driving my actions in this form, and with the gross enhancements she had made to my body, there was no way the family of three could evade me for long.

Weeping now, he made a last ditch effort, striking out at me, his hand turning into a heavy paw at the last moment. Instinctively, my arm came up.

Thud. A howl of pain, the severed paw rolling on the blood soaked earth.

The child cried all the harder. I stared listlessly at it. I have long since forgotten what it was like to cry. In the years the Mistress spent honing me, she had beat the tears from me. You are MY weapon, she had said. And weapons. Do not. Cry.

The female Wolf Shifter whimpered. I closed my eyes, shoving my conscience as far away as possible. I did not want the Mistress killing me again for my weakness. I was already too far gone, with no hope of redemption.

In that moment, all I could hear was the crackling of flames on the thatched roofs of the huts the Shifters lived in, the screams of those dying a slow death from the poison I excreted, the howling of the Alpha before me, and the wailing of the young child. You have to do it, I told myself. You have no choice.

Inhaling a breath, time seemed to pause. I was acutely aware of the changes in my body the Mistress had wrought over time. Then I exhaled.

Like high speed bullets, several thorns on my body were ejected, and they pierced the trio before me. Their bodies jerked, as the last of their life faded away.

A sudden surge of guilt overtook me.

I had murdered again. Taken lives that were not mine to take. How long more before my conscience finally gives way, and I know I have gone over the edge? How long more before I became wholly the extension of the Mistress' will, like the others?

Forcing those thoughts away from me, lest the Mistress punished me for them, I felt an icy emotional numbness overtake me again.

I turned and left the burning village behind me, along with the groans of the dying.

I am the Thorn. I am the Mistress' weapon. And weapons. Do not. Cry.

~

Word count: 864

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Thank you continuing to read my story! I shall be trying to post a chapter each day, for all of you amazing readers. If you liked this chapter, please click the star above and turn it yellow to vote for A Clash of Thorns and Feathers! Do continue to support me throughout the course of the 13 weeks of the Open Novella Contest, and do also go check out the other amazing entries contestants are submitting. :D

BTW, if you noticed, I used a whooole bunch of prompts here. Let's see, in order of appearance: 
  - Prompt 50! [From dusk until dawn you're human. During daylight hours, you are a creature straight out of even the most hardened individual's worst nightmares.]
  - Prompt 66! [When you die, you come back. But you never come back the same, there's always a price to pay for resurrection.]
  - Prompt 6! (Well, partially) [Your job is to track down vigilantes and infiltrate their groups, with the aim of gathering information and turning them into the authorities. You're successful at your job, until one day, a group of vigilantes changes everything.]
  - And Prompt 4! [You're a weapon, and weapons don't weep.] (My personal favourite)

TYSM, Kiawah.

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