Vicky

[Victoria]

Name: Victoria Valentino
Alias: Vicky, HeatBurn, Ms. Valentino, the MageSlayer
Birthplace: Venice, Italy
Age: 20 (Birthday - 21st March)
Profession: College Student at Paragon University, Croatoa Campus, majoring in Ancient Languages.
Height: 1,61 m
Weight: 53 kg
Eyes: Grey
Hair: Red

Bio:
Victoria Valentino is the sole living daughter of Archmagus David Valentino, an italian master of the arcane and Brighid Tamwood, a British woman. Despite her youth, she has trained long to begin mastering the arts of magic, a fate dictated by her 283-year old father.

She was initiated at the Warrior House of her order, the Collegium Hermeticarum. She, like her brethen, had a taste for solving problems by setting them on fire, and an explosive temperament to boot - reasons why the group was often fondly (or not) called pitbulls,Nukes or Tac-Nukes. Eventually, she was called to serve the Guardians, the House that handled the Order's internal policing, an inquisition of sorts, and sent to London, where the main Tribunal of the Collegium was located.

Her relationship with her father was never calm, and the fact that he had lost most of his humanity in the pursue for power, did not help to improve their emotional bonding, something that worsened since the recent death of her mother. The 17-year old Victoria, often sought for confort and guidance with her mentor, Eric Lehenhaun, and also her father's only true friend -- until recently, when Eric declared war on the order and their Code which dictated that mages are not to interfere on the affairs of mudanes, and decided that is was time that mankind was guided to a golden age - if not willing, then by force.

To complicate matters, during the next few months Victoria also lost her mother, nearly lost her own life twice, uncovered a plot to destroy the legacy and lineage of her father and that wiped out almost entirely her Coven, and was forced to kill her best friend in self-defense, she was near collapse, so her father had her reassigned to Paragon City, from where the Order received several reports of marauding covens and attempts to summon unspeakable things. Since said reports were few and not very detailed, she was though pretty capable of performing a simple mission that would both remove her from the stage of the horrible past months, and give her something to entertain herself with to put her mind away from her troubles

She was registred as a hero, and sent to America.

However, the magus is still coming to grips with her new existence -- seeing that she is desperately trying to blend in, but not being very sucessful at it, as she still doesn't know too well how one goes about being a hero -- tights and spandex might have something to do with it, but not entirely.

But there is no rest for the wicked, and a Mage War started in American soil - pitting the Traditionalists who upheld the code, defending that Mages should not interfere with mankind, against the rebels who believed man to be just stupid and should be guided by their betters, demanding that she took up her old ways, and became once again a battlemage, the MageSlayer, the Sword of the Council of the Five Dragonwes, cutting a bloody swath thought those who dared to oppose the will of the Order.

Nonetheless, she will not show weakness ever, despite her feelings of loss and confusion, and will defend herself behind her brilliant mind, her quick wit, her razor-sharp tongue and her dark, dark humour.

[Victoria]

Wolves...

Again I dream of wolves....

They hunt me as I run. I slip in the snow, tripping and falling as I feel them coming closer. They run soundlessly, but I can tell they are coming.

There is no hatred in this hunt.

No mercy.

I fall one last time, and they are upon me. I cannot cry out my pain as their teeth begin to bury into my body. They devour me, and all I can do is lie still and feel them stripping the flesh out of my bones.

There is pain, but it's faint and subdued -- as if my nerves were dulled by the sheer imensity of it and my brain refused to compreend it.

I hear my bones snap and my skin tear. For the first time, I find voice in me to cry out in pain -- but my voice is irrecognizable to me. I cry again and again and all I faintly hear in the distance is the howling of wolves.

I try to fight the wolves off me, but my movements are clumsy and alien. I look around in a daze and I see the blood and what seem to be my skin and clothes. I should be dead.

Why am I not dead?

I struggle to get my feet. And to my feet I get... but to the four of them. I can no longer stand as a human.

Gray fur and yellow fangs.

Sharp ears and padded feet.

I begin to cry out in horror -- but there is something inside me that rejoices, and my cry is soon a howl, deep and feral, a primal shout that reverbates throught my elongated throat, more eloquent than any word I ever spoke as a human.

I run, and at my side, move the forms of my companions. As we dash along the moon-lit forest, many other forms joins us. We are a perfect machine, moving not in unisson but in an elegant form of organized chaos. Each of us knows perfectly what our place is -- it's a knowledge deeply buried into our bones, into our very soul.

And it feels oh so right.

Suddenly, I feel a familiar tinge lingering in the air. It's sweet and sour and it promises pain and pleasure and fear and anger.

I can't remember when I last was aware of it, but now I am. I know what it is as surely as if I had seen it or been told.

There is blood in the air.

It's been far too long since I last tasted blood in the wind.

Tonight, we hunt once more.

I let out another howl, and the hunt begins...

I wake up, startled. I am weeping, but I don't know wether it's from horror or longing.

It takes me hours to calm down and go to sleep again.

And again, I dream of wolves...

[Victoria]

I was a listener in the woods,
I was a gazer at the stars,
I was not blind where secrets were concerned,
I was silent in a wilderness,
I was talkative among many,
I was mild in the mead-hall,
I was stern in battle,
I was gentle towards allies,
I was a physician of the sick,
I was weak towards the feeble,
I was strong towards the powerful,
I was not parsimonious lest I should be burdensome,
I was not arrogant though I was wise,
I was not given to vain promises though I was strong,
I was not unsafe though I was swift,
I did not deride the old though I was young,
I was not boastful though I was a good fighter,
I would not speak about any one in their absence,
I would not reproach, but I would praise,
I would not ask, but I would give.

~Cormac Mac Cuileannain
King and Poet , AD 836-908

[Victoria]

I was wondering about a silly riddle I heard (no idea where, but it stuck to my mind) "How many sides does a sphere have?"

Answer: Two. The inside and the outside.

Whoever came up with this answer indicates a surprising ability for creative and non-linear though which is a real fun trait to have, but unfortunately can make you be hard to undestand by others.

So I started to think... by that line of though a cube has eight sides and not six. I must start looking beyond the surface to appreciate all the dimentions: and this applies to a situation, people, problems and so on. As much as we want to be PC, the truth is we care too much about appearances. It's all about the looks and the sex and the lack of love. Or maybe it's just the hormones.
And maybe it's the drugs.
And maybe it's the videos.
And maybe it's the movies.
And maybe it's the poverty.
And maybe it's the wealth.
And maybe it's the rock and roll.

Or maybe, God doesn't play dice with the universe and that's for Him to know and for you to find out.

"I've been looking for so long at these pictures of you that I almost believe that they're real."

- The Cure

What you see is what you get , or maybe not. You don't see the sides of a sphere, but they are still there. Okay, so you might see PART of the outside, but not all at the same time unless you destroy the sphere and then, well, it defeats the purpouse for it won't be a sphere any more but an evolution (or devolution) of a sphere.

Just because you can't see things, doesn't mean they're not there.

It's not that farstretched to think of the proverbial two sides of a coin: what you can see and what you can't see. They both exist, independently of your perception of them. I mean, it's as if a blind man claimed that because he couldn't see the sky, it didn't existed.

The duality of visible\invisible, was in some places stretched to good and evil. Male and female. Day and night. Light and dark. Yin and yang. Right and wrong.

Righ and left.

We have two hands, two feet, two eyes, two lungs, two kidneys and two ovaries. And we're not the only ones, even the simplest vertebrate show bilateral biogeometry. For some reason, however, we only have one heart and it's not geometrically placed in the center of the chest, but rather to the left side.

That's because appearances are deceptive.

Our organs are placed in a reflective position towards their counterparts... as if one was the reflection of the other, as in a mirror, by their aspect and position. I don't like mirrors. Not because they reflect what you are, but because they fool you into believing that ,while in truth they reflect the opposite of what you are. The problem is when the mirrors are in your own perceptions -- and instead of seeing things for what they are, you see them for what you think they are. One might fancies oneself to be the hunter -- only to very suddenly find out one is the prey, and instead of being a mighty conqueror, you wake up one morning to find out that you were actually only part of the loot.

You don't have to be Sun Tzu to realize that being mislead by your perceptions is a very big mistake from a strategic POV. Rule number one of all confrontations: be aware of your surroundings at all times.

Of course, our passion and obcession for what we can see comes, as Goethe, very well put it "Thinking is more interesting than knowing but less interesting than seeing." Gotta see it to believe it, baby!

Paradoxes lie in our faulty perceptions. Common sense is wrong. Even a reflection is relative. Alice does well in wondering if the milk she finds when she travels through the looking glass is good to drink. It most certainly isn't for subatopmic particles have their opposite anti-particles.

And when the two meet -- they anihilate each other.

Most mages and witches will feel unconfortable around mirrors -- because they are seeing that which can utterly destroy them. It's a belief deeply ingratiated in several cultures of magic users, and it might be truer than most people would think.

Of course, all cultures respect and fear magic users, while at the same time considering them utterly insane. While some might argue that insanity is a logic reaction to an illogical situation, the truth is that, yes, we're all insane. We don't play with a full deck, and all our cards are blanks.

Now stop and ponder on what Dracula says through the pen of Bram Stoker: "I may gain more knowledge out of the folly of this madman than I shall from the teaching of the most wise"

Some say that there is a thin line between genius and insanity. I'm not that sure there is a line at all. The question is, can we separate genius from madness or are they inseparable? Two sides of a same coin (see the duality even here?)? Can we have one without the other?

In the end is ridiculous to try to sepparate the two. The borderlines overlap. Either the lines are blurred or they don't exist. The truth is, we WANT to retain that spark of madness.

We just want to focus it.

Control it.