The Path of Thorns

The first rays of sunlight slashed across the rose-black stalks in the garden.

Day one of the new path I walked. The day I was instructed in the true meaning of pain.

It was said that this path was the easiest to master, and the bloodletting protocol, etiquette and rites were the real challenge. I laughed. I wish I had believed them.

How to kneel upon a bed of thorns from dusk till dawn was easy.

How to smile while being bitten, bled and broken when you wanted nothing more than to end them was the worst form of punishment I endured. Then, asked to serve silently. Protect the life of the vampire I would rather see dead.

It galled me to know that to survive, I would become a subservient creature like some of the acolytes I witnessed at the events we attended.

I slept little and trained well past my physical limits with him every single time I was

returned to the pit. I would escape before I would ever become a servant.

I wondered how long I would last battling them and my cancer. My body bruised, my muscles afire. Still, every breath I took outside was freedom, and the longing for it kept me focused. Grounded.

“Initiate.”

“Yes,” I answered curtly. My sass long quelled. In its place, a silent request for the night's instruction to be brief was the sole focal point of my thoughts.

"Today, we begin your stillness trial. It will not be brief. May it teach you well," the Mistress said.

I was led beyond the manse and made to kneel in the garden of thorns from dusk until dawn.

"You will kneel here in the garden until you understand the very core of the tenet. To do so, you will not take one breath too loud. Nor twitch, or move to relieve the pain. After the first hour of kneeling. Death no longer looked like an enemy to fear, but a welcome friend.

“It hurts. I can’t stop shaking," I whimpered to attendant they had left behind to switch me when I moved.

"Then you have failed."

After the first full day, I lay curled in a fetal position, every muscle afire. They had all but carried me to the pit. My legs would not work. There in the darkness, the vampire I was imprisoned with became my mentor. His words covered me like a soothing balm. “Focus. Stillness is not peace, little flame. You begin exacting your vengeance today. You’re preparing for war without movement.”

“I cannot see how stillness can further my vengeance. Or how my suffering will be their downfall.” I whispered. His face appeared above mine as he tooth my head into his lap and soothed the knots out of the muscles that never seemed to cease to cry out. "

“They want to see you flinch so they can name it weakness. Bury the tremor in your shoulders. Let it live in your teeth if it must. But never. Never let it reach your eyes. Don’t give them satisfaction,” he replied with such force I thought he might do something rash the next time I was taken.

Another dusk came. Into the garden I went again. This time, armed with conviction and my mentor's words ringing in my ears. My suffering would be their downfall. When the wind stirred the thistle thorns and they began to press against my skin, I held my breath, knowing any movement invited correction. I passed out.

They revived me with a blade to the ribs and judgment from behind the veil.

They stood in a circle, watching for tremors beneath my skin like seers reading omens in entrails.

After some time, I actually began to seek to learn. What morsel of knowledge could I glean.

On day three hundred and four, I learned stillness is not the absence of pain but the mastery of it.

My mentor's words found me at the hour when I was about to give up. "Take courage, little flame."

The Mistress swept into the clearing, the blade I had tasted against my throat many times in her hand.

"You lasted until dawn," she observed. "Most crack beneath the night's weight, until their mind is no more."

I rose without trembling, bloodied knees straightening into a stance carved by will alone. The air smelled of cold promise. I met her gaze. No pain behind my eyes, only quiet fire.

"I am stillness." I said. "Now I choose when to move."

She blinked, just once, but it was enough to know she would challenge. "Fine. Show me."

Her blade arced, slicing where my face had been mere seconds before. I shifted so subtly she barely saw it.

Foot brushing thistle, in one singular motion, I caught her wrist, the blade by its grip, and twisted until her elbow nearly tore from its tendons.

She hissed, blade clattering to the earth.

I took no pleasure in her pain. I had become her consequence.

"Impudent." She lashed out.

I held her gaze.

Not proud.

Satisfied and ready.

"Strength," I stated, as though I were the one delivering the lesson, my body moving so fluidly that even I marvelled. "is forged where they think you'll break. Whether I kneel upon a bed of thorns, am tied with my face to my knees, or my arms are in stocks. My spirit remains free."

She nodded, her lips a thin line. She would not be instructing me anymore.

I was led from the garden and back to the cell where I collapsed in grief.

My mentor was missing.

I moved in the darkness, through the steps he had shown me. I may have passed their test, but I knew another would soon be upon me.

The next dusk, they added another trial.

Once a week, I was content to be offered as a vessel.

It was the least of the worst training, but the most draining. Literally.

The clan believed that suffering revealed the soul's core. Mine, it seemed, had threads which they did not understand. When they bled me, their rituals went wrong.

At my lowest point, they acknowledged that they may not have the answer, and I recalled my cellmate's words.

They did not like questions they could not answer.

To fail meant isolation, starvation, and ritual cleansing, which left me feeling filled with a filth not easily shaken.

To succeed, though, was far worse.

Favour drew the frenzy of the fledglings.

Their thirst was primal, minds fractured and full of dreams not yet their own.

I was placed among them. What should have been my peers, the most dangerous of all - those not yet fully turned, barely restrained.

They would bite. I would bleed, but in my earlier sufferings, I learned to control it in the stillness of the garden.

I became a den mother.

Learned how to whisper soothing phrases in forgotten tongues and bind their madness in lullaby and illusion.

I sang the songs my mother sang, knowing full well the power they held. It wasn't unlike the enthrallment of the higher vampires.

Not all were mad. Being here is what made one mad.

I came to understand my cellmate's desire to remain in prison. In many ways, it was a sanctuary, rather than the illusion the palace-like setting offered.

At night, I longed for the silence of the pit. There I slept without worry.

I began to understand their dialects. High and low tongue, the blood speech, and the song sung between those blood bound for life. The talk that passed between their highest and lowest. I kept the knowledge hidden – I knew it was a dagger to draw when required.

I refused their oaths in my heart. Though forced from my mouth, I never swore myself to their gods. Their ancestors. Their demons. I would bow to no idol.

Instead, I learned to manipulate them as they manipulated me.

I read the oaths of the Broken Veil and could quote them at will. They were the tenets of their Dark Master, the treaties of blood and betrayal.

But in their vast libraries, hidden in the shadow margins of forbidden texts, I found stories older than their order.

I found the truth of those who ascended without sacrifice.

Who rose not by blood but by not bending the knee to their false gods.

The ladder to immortality was within their grasp. They had sidestepped it in their greed for blood.

But I had not.