Just an announcement before I start -- as you may or may not know, I've been trying to release chapters of this at least weekly when I can, but given that school will be starting soon, I likely won't have a whole lot of time to work on this. I'll still do my best to try and release a chapter a week, but please just be patient with me if it takes me a little longer. Thanks! Also, I've got the whole ending planned out (have since the beginning of this, honestly), and I am /so/ excited to write the epilogue. ~ First: https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/854964808/ Previous: https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/878603600 Next: https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/882466437/ ~ Age rating: 11+ (basically just as long as you're a mature reader) ~ The ravens followed me when I had left for training the next day. It had still been early, the sun not even up yet. But Mother wanted this, wanted me to do this. Ravynne Caldwell, daughter of Astraia Caldwell. Wouldn’t it be funny if she was a disappointment? Mother had already left by the time I had come to the training center. Villains wait for no one. They have an agenda of their own and will smile in glee upon seeing you try to keep up but fail miserably. I had been happier that she had left either way, because with the pressure that comes from having her in the doorway, staring with narrowed eyes, watching my every move, her gaze boring down into my skin until I can’t breathe. That way, at least, I had been alone, only with the ghosts and whispers of her to pull me down to the floor. Here is what people think they know about my mother, about the hero of the villains: She is powerful. Ruthless. Cruel. And she is a winner, through and through, for all of eternity. They think they know her. They think they want to be her. Of course they do, every one of those perfect villains. She is exactly the kind of inhuman monster that we are meant to be raised as. And they’re right, but they haven’t got everything. Here is what I have learned about my mother, about the hero of the villains: No matter how far away she may be, she hides in every shadow, every footstep, every thought that you have. She is a plague that creeps up on you, overcoming you, springs on you when you would least expect it. She wears you down, bit by bit by bit. She takes over your mind, steals it and every heartbeat, killing you as she takes hold. If only I had learned so sooner. The ravens had come at my call, flocking to my feet, my arms, all around me. They had been my companions. In their caws, I could hear their own stories, but underneath them, I could hear their cries for understanding. I had wondered if maybe they were like me, forced into the position of a villain, but perhaps not so threatening as one would think. When I had told them to attack the figure farthest from me, they did even more than that. They tore it to pieces. I had heard Mother’s whisper in my head, the phantom of her that stayed with me, the shard of her that had been embedded in my heart. With a menacing smile, it told me /“Little girl, don’t stop now. You will have to do much, much better than that to win.”/ So I did. I made them go further, do more damage. /Are you pleased with me now, Mother?/ But of course she was not. And all I could hear was the pounding of blood in my ears and the voices that drowned out everything else, until each one of the figures had been utterly destroyed. Looking back, that was the first time that I realized the kind of villain that I was. The kind of villain that I always had been. And I was /just like her./
