So. Here's the kick.
The Shroud's origin is unclear, right? So I'm going to leave it that way at the beginning. Let's start with her in full mysterious attire, balancing/levitating on a sword's hilt (refer to picture). All around her are other swords, stuck in the ground the same way. There's a dark mist hanging around everything; there is no vegetation, just rocky crags and formations here and there. This is basically her "home" or hideout or whatever.
These swords are not regular blades - they're rune blades. They channel magic through them and adapt to the identity of the weilder - basically becoming one with them.
Some people have a unique special element they can control - and it's not the four boring ones that everyone always sees in the Last Airbender. I mean, they include those, but they're separated out into something more like this (suggest more if you have a good idea):
Light, Darkness, Electricity, Fire, Water, Ice, Earth, Air, Alchemy (it sounds weird but it's basically just poison and some other scientific stuff.), Cosmic (sun and stars? Yep, their blades become literally starfire), and the plain old mormal. And the Shroud is one of the normal people who don't have an element.
But it's not really that sad... for the Shroud, anyway. Half of the non-elemental majority have some sort of special gift, whether it's good fighting skills or light telekinesis or telepathy, whatever. About 25% have a stronger gift, and 24% have two to three gifts. Less than 1% of non-elemental people are blessed with a large variety of extremely strong gifts - which basically makes them prodigies and almost (well, okay. WAAAAAAAAAAAY) better than elemental people. The Shroud is one of these - a rare specimen, I guess you could say.
So, seeing as I wrote this little Shakespearean sonnet for an English assignment (I was out of ideas, okay?!)...
Running a hand along the sharp edge,
The warrior’s eyes glow blue with wrath.
From the past came the echoes of a pledge,
Long forgotten but carving her life’s path.
Before her lay the agent of her pain,
His life and memory spilled on the ground.
Yet what was there profitable to gain
From revenge won implacable and unbound?
Through perhaps she was now free of her oath,
A price weighed heavily on her young head:
Guilt or repentance; she could choose both,
But she rejected each notion and fled.
Instead, in her heart a new pledge was vowed;
She would be known as a hero: The Shroud.
You can kinda draw a conclusion on what her past was by the beginning of the sonnet - something about she swore an oath to some guy to work for him - I'm just gonna make something up right now: an Assassin or something. And the reason she did this was because he took her family hostage? Her mom somehow got away but her father, brother and sister were taken. I am literally ad-libbing right now XD okay, so the guy (his element is Alchemy, btw) doesn't really like her that much, but she's really good, and she really wants him to set her family free. Then blah blah blah happens and he kills her family so she kills him and flees. Let's forget the hero part of the sonnet and just go straight to a different version of my TLA bio.
So the Shroud goes into a rage and dresses the way I have it written (go to the TLA bios page) and starts hiring out as a mercenary or assassin or whatever. At first she uses a normal sword, but the money she gets lets her start to forge her own: the ultimate runeblade, one that absorbs whatever element she is attacked with and lets her use it as she wishes. In addition to her gifts of telekinesis, telepathy, some sort of sixth sense (she can sense anything, almost like seeing the future)? and strong warrior abilities, this makes her pretty much invincible.
So after a while she sets up the runeblade graveyard - all the rune blades of the elemental people she has killed stuck in the ground all around her like a garden. She is in the exact center of the over 8,000 blades of the people she has killed, balancing on the hilt of her sword like shown in the picture.
So this story is pretty much a rough draft. I'm gonna put a spoiler right here: Onyx was the mom who got away. I'm thinking this could be like the 4th, 5th, or 6th Onyx in line. The way the Onyx reincarnations know when they've been reincarnated is by their newborns' glowing green eyes - and this Onyx hasn't had her reincarnation child yet. So her two daughters are Rain and Lightning, and her son is Thunder. The Shroud is Rain. ...And I'm pretty much outta ideas. O.o let's see where I go with this. | BlazeHeart, this was one of your Fanart Friday pictures that helped with that "Runeblade Graveyard" inspiration. It's this one, to the left. That Runeblade Graveyard was also inspired in part by the Keyblade Graveyard in Kingdom Hearts Birth by Sleep - which is why I want a more original name. Suggestions, anyone? These two videos are basically the same thing, but the one above is from the gameplay and has dialogue, while the one below just has way better graphics. And no, Ventus is not Terra and Aqua's son XD it sometimes seems like it though. But they're a trio of friends. Kingdom Hearts likes to put friends in trios. |