Toughset: Jacqueline's Return

Here is the first of many in a flood of pics that have been done for me through gifts, commissions and other means. The first pic deals with the early origins of the dark lioness Darquebane and her origin from seamstress to the most powerful demon around.

Art (c)

Colors (c)

= = = = =

Jacqueline's Return

by Xenny Diemes

A thick and heavy night looms over the shoreline as an approaching storm rolls over the Spanish town. A tavern was celebrating with heavy libations and young, sultry wrenches serving them gently. A good time was clearly had by all, especially to the group who had no remorse over the loss of their beloved friend and secretly rival Jacqueline DeAteneu. As they tipped their glasses and shamelessly chugged down their booze. Blissfully ignorant of what is to befall them and the people of the town, fore they have sealed their fate in the hands... and bust of a vengeful woman, out for blood.

It has all started over a decade ago with a young, golden lioness named Jacqueline DeAteneu. Most of the townspeople see her as one of the fairer locals. She is one of the local seamstresses who takes her time working on making select cloths and clothing for many of her customers. Jacqueline does it out of the love of the skill and to make a suitable profit to fund her art. That is her greatest skill, which is making tapestries. Long, intricate weavings showing stories of days old and is in progress in working on her best one. A tapestry of the history of the town she calls home. She already has made past the point of the present after ten years of hard work but what will happen next will permanently put an end to it. A group of not-so-good troublemakers were in town and wanted to make someone's life miserable. They saw it in poor Jacqueline.

The view Jacqueline as the goody-goody girl with the great figure, a staple to the town and not made anyone miserable to anyone. To them, they made it a challenge to see how long it would take for them to turn this woman into the greatest pariah this town has ever seen. The group is led by Vallera and Pietro, Pietro knows a thing about this village and its long history of dealing with witches and other apparitions but they haven't dealt with one since the hay-days of the witch's hammer. Pietro took charge in playing into Jacqueline's desires and even dreams to let him see her collection of tapestries. At first Jacqueline and Pietro have hit it off very well leaving the young but naive lioness open to his charms and even his attack.

On that day while the two were together, a young woman ran into the town square screaming in a panic, tearing off her clothes and talking irrationally. She was stopped by authorities, but before she was subdued, the woman did aim the finger at the person responsible for her hysteria: Jacqueline. Soon the rumors of that day were spreading fast, the lioness was loosing business, friends and even her own interest in her talent due to the mounting pressure put on her. Pietro staved off her worries for a while but Jacqueline needed to take a walk by herself to clear her head. On her return however, the truth came out as she discovered that Pietro is with the very woman who earlier accused her of being a witch. Even worse to find out that they aren't just two schemers but actually a husband-wife duo. Jacqueline came into the house and attacked both the woman and Pietro for his betrayal until Vallera knocks her out cold with a cooking pan.

Coming to, she finds herself in a cell with a desperate Pietro holding that woman in her arms as they were both being manipulated by her. Pietro was just a victim minding his own business until Jacqueline has used her magic to become her slave. His beloved wife tried to save him but she was too powerful and ended up in the state she was before. The town didn't forget its old witch-destroying roots and took in more in favor of the couple rather than the town's most well-known members. A speedy trial was all that it takes to destroy the reputation of the golden-pelted seamstress. As the authorities dragged her away, she had to stop and run to her shop/home where the townspeople raided and destroyed all the cloths that she has made for them including her tapestry collection. The punishment for her has been the method for hundreds of years, they take her out into the sea and tie her to a giant weight. Should she escape, she will be deemed a witch and be executed, if she drowns, it will absolve her innocence and will be one with god.

With a hard push, the weight pulls hard on Jacqueline's leg and pulls her off the ship and into the waters below. It didn't take too long for her pointless struggles and the pressure of the water to kill her soon enough. The last memories she had been all the people she once loved, bound by an old law she herself had no idea they still held onto. But now it has been her fall as she let out the last bubble of breath into the waters below. Her soul did leave her body as the ship leaves for shore but it didn't go to heaven but instead went straight to hell where she was left to endure the tortures that fiery realm had readied for her. For the first few years, she had to endure the worst tortures, any soul had experienced. Over and over and over again. No explanation of why she was condemned. But all the horrors of the dark and suffering can have on a once delicate soul such as hers.

When her time has come to face the devil, she was already broken, wasted away to nearly a skeleton and her once beautiful golden coat became dingy, singed and ragged. As the devil berates her for her ignorance and so-called “crimes” that got her here in the first place, Something has sparked in Jacqueline's soul. Something that made her regain the strength of how it all came to be, from the betrayal of her former “friend” to the turning of an entire town for something she done nothing wrong. It was their condemnation that sent her to hell, not herself. Jacqueline regains the strength and does something that no soul since the beginning of time has ever done: she attacks the devil head on. With claws unsheathed, Jacqueline slashes across the beast's face. Shocked from the initial attack, the devil had struck Jacqueline down hard. But her madness quickly overcame the cruel blow and attacked him again.

The devil didn't see such rage in such a damaged soul before but he will not tolerate such ungrateful behavior and freezes the lioness in her place. However the devil made an error that will transform this dainty soul into the very thing that the devil even has grown the fear. Summoning his minions, he ordered them to send her to endure a more extreme punishment to help put her in her place for her eternal life. However while transporting the soul, a collision with a fellow demon had lost their grip on her and dropped her. After searching high and low for the soul and found her, teetering on the edge of one of Hell's most powerful sources, “The Heart of Demons”. This was the actual birthing place of demons who have served the devil since his fall from grace eons ago. The two minions race to grab Jacqueline but it was too late and she fell into the heart. The minions can't go through themselves for they are not 'worthy' to be immersed. But a soul can't either, fearing punishment for their incompetence, the minions left her, hoping the energies of the heart would just wipe her away since they know no soul has ever survived ether.

The thing with the Heart of Demons is that it does not discriminate on who is “worthy” or not without the dark lord's say-so. It takes one not fully corrupt but not pure either. The heart had taken an interest in her and makes it attempt to turn her. Seeking for any fragments of her soul that they can amplify and the heart has found something. Something that it can work on and build her up. Jacqueline has felt energies never felt before. Her body got tenser, bigger and way stronger than before, and the unexpected growth of her busts. Her beautiful blond hair turned dark gray and her once golden pelt became black as night. The Heart mastered this soul as a masterpiece among all the other demons it created in the past. A lone voice entered in her mind. “Arise!” it called out to her and opens her new blood red eyes. From out of the heart, a tight muscular forearm clawed out of the surface followed by a deep growl.

When the devil learns of what his minions have done, he became furious and was on the verge of punishing them but was immediately halted as Jacqueline walked into the the scene. He doesn't see her as the weak pathetic soul anymore but now anything even he can handle. Try as they might, waves of his stronger minions can't survive her sudden onslaught of her wrath. She only growled, roared and slashed her way to him. She was a unleashed monster. The devil's powers were basically useless against her and was nearly pulverized. With his last bit of strength, the devil did manage to cast Jacqueline far away to the nearest portal, as much as it goes against anything, he is left with no choice but to send her back and leave it to the mortal world to deal with. From the shores, a storm brew below where a innocent seamstress was once sent to drown to prove her innocence now emerging as a titanic monster wearing the ruins of her former attire.

Walking across the surface towards the shore, all the sea life surrounding her died instantly, a foolish shark that wants to attack her, explodes in the glow of her stare, the blood did signal to the other sharks to attack her but they too didn't survive and she fed on their meat for sustenance. Over at the town, Vallera who was mourning the loss of their so-called “friend” in their sick game also celebrated by getting really drunk. Pietro was singing songs with the rest o the group about the woman who was really a witch and dragging her once good name through the mud. It all stopped when Jacqueline came in. Everyone in the tavern moved back in fear of her while Vallera was unaware of the monster she created is behind her. Vallera dies instantly by having her head crushed between Jacqueline's massive bust. The people of the tavern screamed and ran out, to get away as the dark lioness began her rampage. None of the authorities could stop her and neither could the priests. Jacqueline laid waste to everything that got in her way, she didn't seek remorse for none of the townspeople were worth it. A once beautiful town is decimated by a single woman, she didn't care for that was a home of a dead woman. Jacqueline left the scene into the darkness.

Fighting the devil and destroying a town was her outlet to lessen her savage behavior. As she started to come around, she finds a nearby stream to wash the blood off her hands and take a drink. As the clouds cleared and the light of the moon shined down on the stream. Jacqueline can now see herself for what she really is. Her true self came through and she can only remember what she has been through and now for what she has become. There were no tears, no shock or a scream, only laughter. She never felt this alive after spending years in the domain of hell and now came back as a force no one would dare not reckon with. She was no longer the nice girl from a quiet, Spanish town but now the black beast who will soon rule the seas.