She woke up with a start, as if someone had yelled in her ear. She was all alone. As her eyes adjusted to the almost palpable darkness, she realized that she was not where she had been when she had lain down to rest. Fear welled inside her. Where was she? She had not an inkling of what was going on. How long had she been here? Did someone do this to her? Who?

  She tried to stand, but to no avail. Her hands and feet had been bound to a semi-vertical surface. Beads of sweat formed on her forehead. Who would do this to her?

  A chilly breeze caressed her and she realized that she had been stripped of everything she had once been wearing – everything – except a skull-shaped pendant which hung around her neck. It shone with all the colors of the rainbow – and more, if that was possible – when in sunlight, and radiated a pleasant warmth. But, now, it was stone cold and felt like an icy knife where it touched her skin.

The darkness seemed to lessen, somehow and she yelped in recognition of the place she was in. It was a laboratory. Scientific apparatus of all sorts littered the many desks in the lab. Most were filled with dark-colored liquids with bubbled noisily. It was all too familiar.

She was not far from home.

And she wasn’t alone. For in the diminishing darkness, she could see a figure standing there, watching her. It was wearing a black hooded robe, which she would recognize anywhere.

In front of her was an Apprentice of Power; one of the many protégés of Ansem the Wise, who chose to carry out unauthorized researches and experiments and to gain knowledge Ansem chose not to grace them with.

‘Allira,’ said the voice. It was cold and devoid of all emotion except hatred and arrogance and a lust for power. She could hear him sneering at her. ‘How nice it is to finally see you.’

  Allira said nothing.

  ‘As you may have already seen,’ said the malicious Apprentice. ‘We have been undertaking some research and have successfully conducted several experiments. However, to fully understand the working of the heart, we must use these new…techniques, shall we say, on a strong-willed human being.’

  ‘Ha!’ spat Allira in defiance.

  This time it was the Apprentice’s turn to remain silent.

  ‘Do you not know that Ansem already knows of this? Do you not think that he will not put an end to this? I – ’

  ‘Foolish girl,’ said the Apprentice, a cold fury blazing in his voice. ‘Ansem the Foolish – as we now call him – is too old and too weak to put and end to anything. Indeed we have come so far, now, that it is impossible for anything to put a stop to what we are aiming to achieve.’

The hooded figure walked around the laboratory before continuing.

‘I see now…’ he murmured. ‘We have, indeed, found our strong-willed human being.

  From within the dark depth of the Apprentices’ hood, she could feel his eyes as they glared at her with hatred. She knew that this had nothing to do with being strong-willed. It was the Apprentices’ hate for her. They despised the way Ansem showered her with his affection and allowed only her to carry out experiments the others would drool even to think of. They hated her, even more so, for not joining them when she was offered acceptance into their organization. It was due to their hatred that Allira was where she was.

  ‘Let me tell you about what we’ve been doing lately,’ Allira’s captor began again. ‘We’ve worked out a way to separate the heart from the body. Of course, this has only been tested on unwitting creatures, such as this.’ He pointed towards a large black thing Allira had taken to be a cupboard of some sort. Now, in the dim light, she could make out that it was actually a cage although she could not perceive what it imprisoned.

  The Apprentice snapped his fingers and the cage sprang open. ‘This,’ he said, pointing at the open cage, ‘is Spyke.’

  With a growl, a dark shape leapt out of its enclosure. It was a dog. Or at least, it seemed to be. The black four-legged creature was deformed to the point of horrifying. Its eyes were large and burned red like white-hot embers. Saliva dripped from its gaping mouth which, lined with oddly shaped crooked teeth, hung open at an impossible angle. Its muscles bulged in the most inappropriate of places and its fur gleamed menacingly.

  ‘This is what happens to a dog when its heart is separated and corrupted by Darkness,’ said the Apprentice, causing Allira to tear her gaze away from the terrible creature. ‘Spyke is the heart, or as we say, “Heartless”. This is what happens to the remainder of the creature.’ He snapped his fingers again.

  Another creature erupted out of nowhere. It bore no resemblance to the dog-thing. It was white and stood on two legs. Its head was flat and eyeless and instead of hands and feet it had sharp knife-life protrusions. It moved in a strange fluid manner.

  ‘This is a “Nobody,”’ said the Apprentice. ‘The husk left behind once the heart has been separated.’

  ‘You – you monster,’ said Allira, anger quickly replacing panic. ‘How could you do something like this?’

  The Apprentice said nothing. He merely laughed.

  ‘Oh Allira,’ he said, mocking cheeriness. ‘What would we do without your witty remarks? Well, anyway, now we will experiment on a larger scale. You see, we’re curious. If our experiments cause witless beings to become witless Heartlesses and witless Nobodies, we want to know what they’ll do to sentient beings. Being like you and me. Most importantly, beings like you. Now, Allira, there are two ways to do this. Either accept the process or be forced to. What will it be? Will you willingly accept this? I assure you, it will not be very painful.’

  ‘Never!’ spat Allira, her teeth bared. She tried to release herself but to no avail. She was bound too well.

  ‘Well, then, you’ll be forced to,’ said Allira’s captor. ‘Ah, but first. Don’t you want to know who is behind this hood? Aren’t you curious? I’ll show you.’

  The Apprentice took off his hood and his face shone distinctly in the dim light.

  ‘YOU!’ yelled Allira. Anger welled within her. ‘How could you!? I – ’

  But it was too late. The Apprentice snapped his fingers and Spyke, the Heartless, leapt onto her, its mouth open hungrily…

  Then, everything went black.



  Every night, she had been haunted by the same nightmares. Nightmares of how she had become what she now was. A monster. She had never wanted any of this.

  The Separation process was quite crude when the Apprentices of Power had first started using it, especially on humans. And since Allira had been the first to be subjected to the process, she had suffered the most. The Separation of the heart and body weren’t, in her case, immediate. Instead seeds of darkness were sown into her heart which became something of a parasite. It thrived on dark thoughts and grew painfully, until it was ready for life on its own.

  She sighed. She didn’t approve of pondering over the past. The girl named Allira was long dead now. Now she was Ralxila.

  After the process had been carried out on her, she had gone straight to Ansem, who she though of as a father. But Ansem the Coward, as she now thought of him, had betrayed her. Instead of helping her, he had cowered away, hastily ending his project.

  ‘Little good that did,’ mumbled Ralxila to herself.

  And when Separation came, it came hard and fast. The Apprentices of Power paid dearly for what they had done to her. Out of twenty-five Apprentices, ten had been hunted down by her Heartless before they knew it. Fifteen has survived, though. Out of those fifteen, all save one performed the process on themselves. Thirteen of them established Organization XIII. Of the remaining two - the one who had Separated himself - had gone into hiding, perhaps. No one was sure what the man who called himself Ansem behind the real Ansem’s back was doing after he had left the Apprentices. The last of the Apprentices was David.

  Ralxila snarled at the very thought of his very name. She could still not believe how her best friend could have betrayed her so badly. It was he who had administered the process to her. And he was the only one who hadn’t done it to himself.

  Although Ralxila had always had a caring disposition and although she was a Nobody, a creature whose emotions were only echoes of what they would’ve been had she still a heart, she was filled with rage whenever she thought of David. It was his fault she was…inhuman. It was his fault she was haunted by the same nightmare. It was his fault she – like all other Nobodies who were strong enough to keep the likeness of their previous form – was imbued with strange powers which made everyone cower from her. Everything was his fault.

  And now she had him. Months of tireless tracking had led her to his hideout. And now she would have her sweet, sweet revenge. She smiled as she slipped into the warehouse.

  Inside, she saw a man sitting at a desk, muttering to himself.

‘Why hello, David,’ said Ralxila mocking cheerfulness.

  David froze and then swiveled around. His bloodshot eyes rested on hers. He gasped. ‘Allira!?’

  ‘No,’ half-whispered Ralxila. Anger and scorn seeped into her voice with every word. ‘No Allira. It’s Ralxila, now. No thanks to you.’

  David stood up. ‘What are you doing here?’

  Ralxila rolled her eyes. David was being stupid. ‘I came here,’ she said. ‘For revenge.’

  ‘Allira,’ David pleaded. ‘Allira, I can explain. I – Even forced me – ’

  ‘I don’t care. And it’s Vexen now. Anyways, I assure you this will be painful.’

  Ralxila unsheathed her double-edged sword, christened Bloody Mary and leapt at her traitor.