PLEASE FULLVIEW

This is my entry in 's story contest.

(Prelude to Descent is the name of one of my favorite Paradise Lost songs; I thought it made an appropriate title)

It is a scene from In the Forests of the Night by Amelia Atwater-Rhodes.....more specifically, the flashback upon which the entire story is based: when Ather gives Rachel the gift of vampirism, notably against her [Rachel's] will.

Rachel Weatre[age 18-ish, year 1701] awoke in the middle of the night to find her twin brother Alexander sneaking out with a queer look in his eye as if he's had another of his visions. She follows him, keeping to the shadows, and finds him arguing heatedly with a woman that Rachel's Puritan mind tells her is a "witch." This woman is Ather, an ancient vampire that is decently high on the food chain. She is dressed all in black with black eyes and black hair, her skin pale as death, and she is wearing a lot of silver jewelry. [Note the snake bracelet that I painted on the beautiful model. ]

Ather senses Rachel's presence, in the midst of telling Alexander that she will take Rachel simply to spite him for being foolish enough to attack her, and beckons her forward. Rachel, being very outspoken for a girl of her time period, strides up to Ather and begins to argue with her over her own fate and Alexander's.

[note that the twins' mother had been a hereditary witch of the immortal variety, but her...."tendencies" were only passed on to Alexander, who thought he was damned until another witch overheard him praying on his mother's grave and took him under her wing. Also note that in this world, "hereditary witch" is synonymous with "vampire hunter."]

Meanwhile Aubrey Karew, Rachel's darkly handsome suitor, steps out of the shadows and draws a blade in response to Ather's order to "get rid of that distraction," presumably Alexander. Ather forces Rachel to look at her while Aubrey cuts someone down on the sidelines. Rachel assumes it is her brother and continues to think so for the rest of the book, this being the basis of her eternal hatred of Aubrey. However, he really kills Pandora, the witch that Alexander had become a disciple of.

Ather proceeds to seize Rachel and fix her fangs on her throat. Rachel fights for the immortal soul that she never quite believed in, despite the burning pain that wracks her body; despite the knowledge that that pain would vanish completely if she would only relax in the vampire's grip.

Rachel, later renamed Risika by her vampire mother, ends up a very powerful immortal solely because she fought the change so desperately and was conscious for every minute of her excruciatingly painful death.

A few notes on the colors/symbolism

~Aubrey was wearing a red silk shirt when he appeared on Rachel's doorstep and proposed to her, nevermind the fact that she had never met him before. This was notably flamboyant for Puritan New England, not to mention the high cost of such vibrant dyed fabrics.

~It was a huge thing throughout the story, call it a symbol if you will, that Rachel and Alexander both had hair and eyes the color of tarnished gold. Rachel's eyes became black as an adverse effect of vampirism, but Alexander stayed exactly the same. [Rachel later changed her hair color so that it had tiger stripes for reasons that are irrelevant to this picture]
The biggest theme in this story was the contrast of darkness and light, Rachel constantly repeating to herself that her warm, golden brother does not belong in this world of darkness. [later, Her world of darkness]

~I put the angel in the corner because of the whole "Am I damned?" thing. First Alexander thought he was damned for his witch-powers, then Rachel, who was much less religious than her brother and fairly atheistic, began to fear desperately for her soul when she found out what Ather was and what she was going to do to her--despite Rachel's confused lack of belief in the preacher's words.

Sorry for the length of my description, but it was kind of necessary to get the mood across and give enough background for this to make sense......
......but by all means, go read the book!!
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Permission to be reposted by and
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I am very sorry for painting over the female models' striking red hair, but ahar was very particular about the coloring of her characters....and being an author myself, I realize the importance of keeping them intact.
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Credits
Ather: *kime-stock
Rachel Weatre: =liam-stock
Aubrey Karew: ~SpiteStock
Stone angel: [the late] ~Mortifer-Stock
Backyard image: ~SummerTime-Stock
tar/rocks texture: ~Artemisia-stock
brick texture: ~Artemisia-stock

(~Artemisia-stock is me, by the way)
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Layers: 10
Completion time: 4.5 hrs
Software: GIMP 2.4.2