The Witch of Autumn blew in from beyond the icy waters of the Sundered Abyss far to the northeast of Bastion, heralding the beginning of a long, unforgiving winter to follow. Snow drifted from swollen skies onto the huddled buildings and narrow streets of the River District. Frozen blasts of howling wind raced among the walls of stone and wood, swirling, and moaning as it went. Fishing boats bumped and groaned against each other on the docks on the riverfront and people bustled to and fro, hurrying about on their business before the bitter night fell over the city. Amidst the din of the capital city of Azadora, Emma Dryden shivered beneath a threadbare cloak. She was dying.

Hunger had sapped her strength and the cold had drained her will. Memories flitted through her mind like ephemeral moths drawn to the flicking flame of her consciousness. Days of joy long since gone as the mist upon the northern moors under the midday sun. Memories of her father coming home from the mines with gifts, until the day he never came home at all. The smell of the cakes and cookies her mother sold for extra money filling the house from the kitchen. Her mother’s smile and laughter as the sun filtered through the garden window on warm summer days, only to fade along with her life beneath the wheels of a noble’s Allicereum carriage.

Years of misery and fear and hunger and desperation all bled together like a watercolor in the rain to form the murky, disjointed life which was now slowly draining from her with the falling temperatures. A life ending amidst a garbage-strewn alley with neither a whimper nor a shout. Only faint, gasping breaths appearing like wraiths in the cold before vanishing.

She huddled as deep into the cloak as she could. Her fingers were numb, her body ached from her violent shivering and her stomach growled incessantly. It was a fitting end, she thought miserably. An ignominious final act for the tragic and worthless play she’d spent the majority of her nineteen years starring in. She didn’t want to die. That much was true. But she imagined death to be no worse than her life and, in a strange sort of way, welcomed the yawning void stretching before her teetering form.

No more pain? No more hunger? Would she, as the priestesses of the Gemini claimed loudly and often, cavort among the Goddesses lunar homes in eternal bliss? Were there tables laden with food and friends and family long since gone to laugh and dine and talk with? Or would there be, as the philosophers posited, nothing at all? Would the vastness of oblivion swallow her whole, leaving nothing but a lifeless husk? Either way, she didn’t mind that her brief journey had come to this end. She had fought against the cruelty of her fate for years and was so very tired. Her misery would be over in a few short hours. When the slate gray sky washed to the sullen, inky night and the temperatures dropped even further, she could sleep.

“Hey! Look what I found!” A voice echoed along the stone walls of the alley, rising above the crying wind, and seeming to come from every direction at once. “Trash among the trash!” Her verdant eyes fluttered open, and she stirred weakly. Blinking away the bleariness and growing weight of her demise to focus on the outline of several figures standing silhouetted at the end of the alley, she stared with growing fear as the silhouettes drew closer until they took solid form.

Five of them, fishing apprentices, judging by their clothes and the stench surrounding them. Rough and tumble miscreants who excelled at fighting and drinking and not much else. Crass and cruel men who knew nothing but how to take what they wanted until someone stronger than they stopped them.

She had been rousted out of many places in her months living on the streets of the River District. This, though; this was different. The look in their dead eyes and the smiles on their broad, bland faces was dangerous. Fear washed over her like a squall and settled in the pit of her empty stomach. They were not here to make her move on. They had other motives.

“It’s a gutter rat,” one of the boys, not much older than her sneered, moving to form a semicircle with the others in front of her, trapping her where she huddled against the stone wall. Her eyes leapt from form to form in a panic, searching for a way to escape, her legs weakly trying to gather beneath her. She would be dead soon. Hypothermia would rise up with the moons and claim her in its false warmth. She’d accepted this fact. Welcomed it, even. But she didn’t want to die like this. Not at the hands of these dead-eyed sadists.

“It looks weak,” another boy kicked her leg, eliciting a groan of pain from Emma’s throat. “I wonder how much fun it’ll be to play with?”

“Not as much fun as that whore we caught on Gallows Street the other night, but I bet the rat’ll still be worth a roll or two,” the first one responded, kicking her other leg.

“P-Please, sirs,” Emma croaked weakly, her throat dry and tight from panic. “Please leave me alone! I have nothing of value, I promise you!”

“Oh-ho! Ain’t she the polite one!” a third boy crowed, laughing like a hyena. “’Please leave me alone!’” His voice pitched upward in a cruel mockery of hers.

“Well, she asked polite and all,” the first boy drew his face closer to hers, his thin lips pulled taut over his rotting teeth, breath stinking of cheap beer and Synthesia. “Maybe we should leave her alone, then. Whatcha all think?”

“Sure, sure,” a boy nodded. “We can do that. Right after we has our fun! Right, lads?”

“Yeah!” They all shouted gleefully, closing in on her. Their rough hands were all over her, pawing at her hair and tattered clothes. Fingers groped her belly and legs and the small mounds of her breasts as she struggled to defend herself.

“She’s a damn skeleton! Disgustin’!”

“Means she’ll be tighter, though!” The boy who seemed to be the leader chuckled. “We’ll just have to do her from behind!”

“H-Help!” Emma cried weakly, trying to push their hands away from her. Emma saw several people stop outside the entrance to the alley. They looked toward her before shaking their heads and walking quickly away. Tears welled in her eyes, tracking down her cheeks as she was thrown onto her belly.

The scraps of her blouse and rough skirt were torn away as she lay, struggling weakly on the snowy ground. One boy held her arms over her head while two more spread her legs, one holding each. Her mostly bare belly was pressed into the snow. Emma tried to kick and writhe to escape from their grasp, but she was far too weak and there were way too many.

“She may be a skeleton, but she’s still got a nice ass,” the leader of the boys giggled, flipping up her tattered skirt to expose her frayed panties. “It was my idea, so I get to go first.”

"We gots t' be quick," one of the other shook his head. "I ain't about t' fuck a corpse. I likes 'em alive an' kickin', still. This'n's abou' done, I'd say." He fumbled at his belt for a moment before letting his trousers fall about his ankles.

Emma’s panic rose as their rough fingers hooked in the waistband of her underwear and began to yank them down, exposing the globes of her buttocks. Her panic rose higher by the second until she was drowning in it. Her chest grew tight, and it became hard to breathe. A tornado of fear, anger and despair rose inside her. Emma’s eyes closed and her body grew warm to the point of burning.

She didn’t notice the surprised yelps of the boys as they stopped touching her and stepped back. Something coursed through her, roiling and crashing, uncoiling like a blood viper ready to strike. A long dormant beast awoke somewhere deep within. For the first time in her miserable life Emma felt powerful. The boys stepped back again as Emma’s body rose into the air until she hovered two meters above the snowy ground. Panic set in and the boys turned to run. It was, however, far too late.

A chorus of voices cried out in Emma’s mind. Each speaking with words she did not understand. One voice quickly rose above them all. A disjointed voice filled with anger, pain, and confusion. A voice filled with power. As Emma struggled to understand what the voice was saying, she felt rage and strength flow through her.

Emma’s eyes shot open, glowing emerald coals in the dark alley. What appeared to be jade lightning danced on her skin, flicking out from her fingertips like serpents’ tongues. Something frightening and terrible writhed inside her. Something she was powerless to contain even if she'd wanted. She stared at the boys gaping at her with terrified faces.

“They need to be taught a lesson,” the voice became clearer. Distinct. A monster had awakened within her body, its voice hissing within her mind. “They need to be punished.”

Lightning lanced from Emma’s fingertips, ripping through their bodies like tissue paper. Lurid emerald mist surrounded them, escaping from every pore in their bodies as their very souls were torn away. There was no time for the boys to run. Their mouths opened in unspeakable agony, but no sound emerged from their tortured throats. Something dark and mighty hiding within Emma Dryden had awoken and there would be no mercy.