Emma Ward

The Black Lamb

Avoid easy prey, night child

Beware the lamb most dark

A maiden helpless in an alley

A girl passed out in the park

She'll drink your roofies eagerly

She'll let you take a bite

feast upon the black sheep

and she'll be carving out your heart

Manhattan's art galleries are home to more than just aesthetics. There exists a sect of Wizards, The Order of the Sacred Lamb, so named after their drugged prisoner - The ever-reincarnating oracle only known as The Sacred Lamb. The order consider themselves the true elite of Manhattan, the curators of refined taste and the keepers of balance in the city. New York draws too many of the children of the nights who seek to sate their appetites and the order thinks a little culling is always in order.

Thus, every twenty five years the order asks their oracle to name three newborn girls that would grow to be the greatest swordswomen of their generation. They then travel across the world to kidnap these three girls and hand them off to a veteran hunter to train. While the three girls are rarely visited by the order they're ordered to remain pure champions of light, virgins until their deaths. Not because it is truely required, but because the order thinks it would make for a poetic story. The girls are tought they're the order's sacrificial lambs. That is what they're called. Their duty is two fold - They kill enough vampires, werewolves and demons to keep their populations in check is the first. The second is to die a beautiful death. The Order's greatest art collection is composed of paintings of the deaths of their sacrificial lambs, beautiful virgin girls with a sword in hand, half dressed and bloodied as some vampire or werewolf sinks their teeth into them. This exclusive art collection was named The Balance. The souls of the girls are trapped in the paintings of their deaths, fulfilling the order's vain promise to them to remain forever beautiful.

Emma Ward was one such sacrificial lamb, a protégé. She hunted the creatures of the night since she was ten. And yet she proved to be nothing but trouble for the order. You should never send children on a mission to kill, even if they're talented. They might end up liking it too much, like Emma did. Emma outdid her quota, she hunted more night creatures than she was ordered to. She upset the order's meticulous balance and made powerful vampires knock on the order's doors and have a stern exchange of words. Emma was grounded, and still itching to stab. No... Itching to fight, to prove her mastery of the blade of death to herself. On her eighteenth birthday Emma ran away. She visited a huge underground gladiatoral arena ran by a demon, where any and all supernatural creatures are invited to gamble their lives away, fighting each other in the nude to the death in front of a roaring crowd of drunks and gamblers. After she won her first fight in the arena Emma felt elation like never before. She lived only for the arena, only for the crowd, risking her life week after week. But she kept winning - The sort to gamble on their lives are often in desperate need of currency. They proved easy pickings for her.

After a year no one wanted to fight her. She felt depression creeping in. Then one day a fellow sacrificial lamb called Lyra challenged her in the arena. Lyra was ordered to subdue Emma and bring her back. The fight did not go in her favor. Emma stabbed her through the gut and sent her back to the order with her verbal resignation. Severing her social ties only made matters worse for Emma, though. Having no one to fight, her depression turned to desperation. It was then that the demon owner of the underground arena came to her with a proposition, a purpose, a promise to wield her blade again. In his service. At that point Emma would do anything to feel alive, and so she sold her soul for cheap. The demon, a lover of the fine arts, was all too eager to have the missing piece in the exclusive 'The Balance' set. He drew a painting of Emma himself, of the moment she stabbed Lyra through the gut and severed her ties with the order. He called the painting The Black Sheep and imprisoned Emma's soul within it. And so was burn the urban legend of the huntress that consorted with demons. The urban legend of The Black Sheep.