Before the girl hacked Rav's arm off and made him eat it, you wouldn't have thought much of her. Mildred was her name. She was a small, quiet, thing with an unremarkable set of features: mousy brown hair that hung limp around her round face as if even it was disinterested in being in her company; dull brown eyes that were more often than not held dumbly on her own two feet; a cleft lip; a raspy voice that hardly sounded, and when it did, it was only to spew some dumb thing that she'd conjured up in her little, dumb, head.

That's not to say old Rav maybe didn't have it comin', of course. Rav was a bastard, sure, but he was also the kitchen master, and that title sort of gave you the right to be a bastard, at least in the kitchen, and Rav exercised that right often. When the girl was sent up to us from Astora, Rav took a disliking to her immediately. He was like that. Quick to judge sort of fella. S'ppose that doesn't matter now, though, because Rav ain't never going to judge someone again. What's left of his corpse is rotting out back under the well. Mildred saw to that.

The little orphan bitch got sent to us as most orphan bitches often do. Them fancy royal bastards down in Astora certainly weren't going to put her to work and tarnish the good names of their obnoxiously good families, so it's us who gets their unwanted little secrets. We find good use for 'em of course, but something always lives in a child that's been denied a proper childhood. A sort of darkness, I guess. S'ppose that's the best way to say it. I saw that darkness in Mildred's dull, uneven, eyes the day I met her, and if Rav had listened to me and heeded my warning, he'd still be alive.

She walked right up to us in the kitchen and tugged at Rav's apron. That was her first mistake. Rav didn't like his apron touched, and especially by the filthy hands of some orphan bitch with a cleft lip. He spun on her and didn't bother so much as saying a word before thrashing the back of his hand against her face. The girl was tough. She stumbled but did not fall, and I think that maybe pissed old Rav off even more.

"Who the bloody hell are you!?" Rav shouted.

"Mildred." It was the first time I heard that raspy, strange, voice, and I'm fairly certain the sound of it grating in your eardrums would put a grimace on any man's face unlucky enough to hear it. And the last time I heard that voice… well, I'll get to that in time, I suppose.

She tugged at the hem of her dirty little dress and stared at her feet. "I'm s'pposed to work for you."

"Yeah?" Rav looked her over and a contemptuous sneer rose on his face. "Well I don't need no little bitch gettin' in my way down here. What do you say to that, little bitch?"

Mildred only shrugged.

For whatever reason, thatpissed off Rav too. He took hold of her shoulder and shook her hard enough to send her little head rocking on her shoulders. "What say you, bitch? What say you, little orphan bitch? Huh!?" Mildred, well, she just stood there and took it without making a sound. Rav didn't like that. He hit her again, and that time, it wasn't with no open-hand slap. It was a fist.

Mildred was tough, but a little thing like her against Rav's big old fist, well, tough only goes so far, I s'ppose. She went down hard and slapped her head off the kitchen floor, and when she lifted it, you could already see the big welt swelling up around her eye that would leave it purple and bruised for at least a week or two. But Mildred, well, she just got back up to her feet, lowered her head again, and stood there as if nothin' had happened at all.

Rav barked laughter in the girl's face and turned on me. "Simple mind in that ugly little bitch's head, eh?" He scratched at his chin and when I saw the grin surfacing on his face, I figured I knew what he was going to say next. The one word that sealed the little thing's fate in an awful hurry: "Butcher."

"She's just a child, Rav," I told him.

Rav didn't like being told. He picked up a fork and took aim at my eye. "I says butcher for the bitch. I don't give no damn how old she is. She's simple minded. We got no use for her up here. Now take her down to the Beauties." His eyes floated back to the little thing standing quietly beside us and filled with the cruel delight that Rav's eyes often did. "Simple mind like hers will do just fine with the Beauties. Just fine."

He laughed and his breath came hard against my face. It was stale and foul and I snatched up Mildred's wrist quick I think just to get the hell away from it, but, then again, maybe that was Rav's intentions all along. I yanked the girl along behind me and into the stairwell that was set off the kitchen's side. The stairs were long and dark and at the end of them, the basement and the Beauties would be waiting behind the barred and padlocked door. Even from up there, you could smell the stench of flesh and blood and sweat, and if I had to pick between that and Rav's breath? Well, I'd take Rav's foul old breath any day. The Beauties' domain didn't just stink, it reeked, and the fellas in the kitchen liked to make the jest that if ya stood bathing in that stench long enough, you're balls would rot and fall off.

Kitchen fellas make them sort of rude jests from time to time.

When I turned back on Mildred, her uneven eyes were narrowed down into the dark chasm of the stairs and, for the first time, she lifted them to me. "What are Beauties?"

Beauties, if ya don't know, are Lordran's butchers. Most people, if they're unlucky enough to see 'em at all, mistake them as men, but that ain't the right of it. Lordran's butchers are women. Every last one of 'em. As big and stocky and strong and foul-smelling as they are, they were proper ladies - at least once. Why are they women? Izalith-be-damned if I know, but that's the way of things. It was like that long before a fool like me started working the kitchens and I imagine it'll be that way long after a fool like me departs 'em. The ladies are good at what they do. And the name 'Beauties'? Well, that's just a cruel joke. Beautiful is the furthest thing from what them stocky bitches are. They're big and broad-shouldered and their tits have all but recessed back into their chest to leave a plate of pure muscle in their wake. If one of 'em heard you usin' the word 'Beauties', I'd imagine they'd squash yer head till yer eyeballs popped out of their sockets and yer brains leaked from yer ears. They could do it, too. Strong bitches they are.

I told Mildred as much and she listened. Little thing was always listening. S'ppose that was a strength of hers. When I finished, the only raspy thing that leaked out of her raspy throat was, "Okay."

Okay. Just like that. There I was tellin' the little orphan bitch that she was being sent to the dungeon of the most hideous, deformed, butchers that had ever stalked Lordran, and her response was 'Okay'. That was Mildred, though. She never seemed very concerned about things, but I don't believe Rav had the right of it by callin' her 'simple'. Girl wasn't no simpleton. She was strange, sure, but… there was something else lurking beneath them lopsided eyes of hers. I wouldn't call it 'smart' neither, 'course, but maybe 'thoughtful'.

Either way, I took her down them steps, and every damned one I descended, I could feel my balls creeping up higher and higher into my stomach. Maybe all that 'fallin' off' talk the kitchen boys joked about had gotten the best of me. I don't know. I do know I was afraid of that dungeon and them Beauties then and to this day still am. Women are meant to be small and soft and pleasant to look at and the Beauties weren't none of them things. And them giant, blood-drenched, knives of theirs… well, if you haven't see one, you couldn't know. They'll make you think twice about why it is the soldiers and knights of Lordran's kingdoms are trained with swords instead of butcher knives. Things could kill as easy as they could cut.

At the big, padlocked, door, I fished my keyring out and plugged the lock with the corresponding key. When the bolt snapped loose, I glanced back at Mildred. The little girl didn't look half as afraid as I felt, and somehow that made me even more uneasy. I shoved the door back on its hinges. Flesh, blood, sweat. Their odor increased ten fold. I grimaced and pointed the way in. No way in Izalith I was going any further than that.

"Go on, girl," I told her. "Tell 'em Rav said you're to be a butcher. They won't give you no problems." She stared at me then with her dull eyes and her cleft lip and for whatever reason, in that moment a bit of pity came over me. I said the words that—just maybe—ended up saving my skin. "Listen, girl, life ain't fair. I don't know who yer parents were or why they died, but they did, and the world don't care. The world is only looking for the use in you, and your use… well, it's in there. The Beauties are about the ugliest things you'll ever look upon, but they're good at what they do, and if you keep yer mouth shut and yer ears open, you'll be alright."

Mildred stared; nothing more.

"Go on now," I said, stepping aside so she could pass. "Can't nothing be done about it now. Get on with it, girl."

She shuffled past me and into the dungeon. I turned and watched her go and thought that she was such a little thing for such a big, nasty, place. She walked in between the haggard pillars of crumbling stone and past the rotted bars that housed the living prisoners whose living flesh still had purpose. An old man with no teeth and liver-spotted hands came crawling up to the bars of his cell and reached for her. Mildred stepped out of his grasp and went right on walking, indifferent to the prisoner. He cursed her and slapped his head off the bars till blood squirted from his brow. Madness was never far in the Beauties' dungeon.

She disappeared around a turn and I listened to the cutting and hacking and screams that faintly sounded from further within; from her very destination. The sounds put a fear in me and I left in a hurry.

I didn't see Mildred for three days after that, and when I finally did, the change in her was already apparent. She was still skinny, the Beauties didn't have much spare food down in them dungeons, but her little arms were already starting to tone up. They must have been working her hard, because her hands were calloused and scraped up, too, and there was the indistinguishable stains of dry blood on her fingers. Butchers' hands: the ugliest things in Lordran -other than the Beauties themselves of course.

Mildred came walking into the kitchen—the little dirty dress she'd arrived in gone; a pair of filthy rags wrapping her waist and chest instead—and marched right up to Rav the same as she had the first day. She tugged at his apron again, too, but when Rav spun on her, sneered, and made to hit her, that time, well, Mildred stepped away from the attack and stared up at Rav defiantly. "I'm hungry." The raspy, coarse, voice of the girl had at least remained the same.

"There's meat down there, orphan bitch," Rav growled. "I don't want to hear you're lies."

"They won't give me none," Mildred said.

"Then that's 'cause you haven't earned none," Rav snapped. "You have to work if you want to eat, orphan bitch. Didn't your dead mummy and daddy teach you that?"

Mildred stared as Mildred did, and for a moment Rav looked like he was going to strike the girl. Then the anger fled his face and a smile took it instead that was so foreign to Rav, my mouth came agape. "You want to eat, little girl? Hm? Alright… can't work on an empty stomach, I s'ppose. Wait here. I'll git ya something to eat."

Rav left and Mildred and I were alone again. I couldn't look at her. It was too hard. Also, my thoughts were on just what exactly Rav had in store for the poor thing. I didn't think there was any way in Izalith he was going to just going to feed her, and I was right.

Rav came back with a plate full of meat, and when I saw it I knew at once what it was. I opened my mouth, and Rav sent a look my way that shut it back up quick. His smile widened and he tossed the plate before Mildred atop the kitchen table. "There ya go, girl. Eat up now. Eat up so you can grow strong and big like the Beauties."

Mildred eyed the plate with that thoughtful but dumb look of hers and for a moment, I thought the thoughtfulness was going to win out, but it didn't. In the end, it was her hunger that was victorious. Hunger often is. She grabbed the meat with her bare hands, brought it to her mouth, and bit. The stuff was cooked, but just barely, so when her little teeth sunk in, blood oozed around them and joined her stained fingers with a new shade of red. She chewed, swallowed, and bit again immediately.

"Lookit her," Rav said with a laugh. "She loves it. You love it, don't you, girl?"

Mildred did not answer. She was too busy devouring the only meal she'd likely had since being sent to us. Maybe even longer than that.

Rav, the bastard, waited until the plate was clean until he spoke again, and when he did it was through fits of hysterical laughter. "You sick bitch!" He cackled. "Do you know what that was, orphan girl? That was human flesh! That's what we give the dogs!" Rav doubled over laughing.

Mildred wiped fresh blood from her chin and stared at him. If she was perturbed by the revelation, it did not show.

Rav went on laughing. "You sick little orphan bitch! You're disgusting! A shameless, greedy, pig! A filthy little cannibal! A maneater! That's what you are, girl! Nothing but a sick, dirty, little maneater!"

Mildred looked at the plate before her. There was still blood pooled around its rim. She lifted her dull, mismatched, eyes back to Rav and stared.

Maybe the only reason Rav really did it was to get a stir out of the girl. Maybe that's what he wanted all along. Just an excuse to prove he could mess with her. When, clearly, it hadn't worked, Rav's anger reached new heights. His laughter faded and the sneer returned. "I'm sick of that stare of yours, orphan bitch. You want me to dig one of your little eyes out with a fork? You only need one to work with the Beauties." He held her gaze for a moment before turning on me. "Why isn't she wearing a bag on her head like the rest of those bitches down there?"

I shrugged. "They're probably all too big, Rav. She's little. Her head won't fit."

Rav cackled mirthless laughter. "Piss on that." He moved to the pantry, flung the doors open, and fished out a small sack of rice. He upturned it, spilling the grains out in a stream to pile on the floor, and slapped the empty sack down on the kitchen table. He pulled his knife from his apron and sliced two holes at the midway point. Finished, he flipped the thing before Mildred to land atop her bloody plate.

"Stick that over your ugly face," he commanded, and when Mildred did not move, he smirked and said, "Girl… do you know why the Gods give children cleft lips?"

Mildred stared.

"They give 'em cleft lips to mark the simpletons for the world to take advantage of. You don't want that, do you? Put that sack over your face and no one will know about the simple mind that sits in your ugly head."

Mildred's stare moved from Rav to the sack and held on the thing for a long, long, time. That was Mildred's way. She wasn't very smart, but the gears turned in her head just the same as any man, and Mildred turned 'em longer than most. She reached for it delicately, almost reverently, and lifted it from the table. Her dull eyes studied the bag a moment, then she simply ducked her head and pulled it over her mousy brown hair.

I never saw her face again, and I don't think any man ever has either. The sack fit her just right, and when she looked back up at Rav and I, only her dark, uneven, eyes could be seen watching from within.

Rav laughed. "There you go, orphan bitch. Now no one has to see your ugly cleft lip and your stupid face no more. Isn't that nice? Now get back to work before my kindness reaches its limit and I pluck one of your eyeballs out of its socket anyway. Go."

Mildred went.

I did not see her for over a month.

It was raining the night she came for her vengeance. Maybe she was waitin' for the rain to fall before extracting it. I don't know. Mildred was Mildred, and Mildred was a walking, talking, enigma from the day she came to us to the day she left us. That day was the night of the rain, and of Rav's death.

The kitchen's had a little room off to the side where Rav, myself, and two of the other cooks and workers slept. It was small and cozy and the beds were practically sitting on top of one another, so when Rav screamed, we all heard it.

I woke in a panic, my hand fumbling blindly in the darkness of night for my dagger. By the time I gripped its hilt though, there wasn't no point. One of the cooks had gotten a torch lit, and we all saw the horror then that had joined in our bedrooms to turn our dreams to nightmares: Mildred was standing on Rav's bed, hovering over him in her bare feet and scant rags and her sack; of course her sack.

In her hands: Rav's severed, bloody, arm.

Rav screamed a scream that made every one of us in that room wince, but Mildred only stared as Mildred did; dangling the severed arm over Rav's face so that his blood dripped into his own, gaping, mouth. We didn't do nothin'. What were we s'pposed to do? The sight was so maddening, I figure most of us hardly believed it was even truly happening. It wasn't until Mildred hopped off Rav's bed and took a fistful of his hair to drag him into the kitchen that the reality of it all hit home for me. It hit home because Mildred's dark eyes moved beneath her sack and landed on mine. She pointed with her free hand, and gestured for me to follow.

I pissed myself then. I'll admit it. If you think I'm a coward, then you ain't never crossed Mildred.

I clambered out of bed, helpless but to obey the girl and follow along behind her and Rav into the kitchen; Rav screaming like a loon the whole way. When we got there, she shoved her one-armed victim down onto the table so he was all sprawled out atop it. I saw then that Rav was crying, and remember thinking that I'd never believed in a millions years I'd see a man as callous as Rav spill a tear.

Mildred fished some leather straps from the pantry and bound Rav all up so he couldn't move none, then she carried his severed arm to the burning hearth at the kitchen's front, pierced it with a poker, and dangled it over the fires. I watched the flesh that had once belonged to Rav cook and burn to a black, disgusting, husk of a limb before the girl pulled it back out and returned to the table.

"You little bitch!" Rav screamed through clenched teeth and a torrent of tears. "You did this to me you little orphan bitch! You deformed me! You ugly little simple-minded orphan bitch!"

He might've screamed more, but Mildred filled his mouth up then. She jabbed the poker into his face till his teeth were forced to clamp down on the blackened flesh of his own severed arm, and Rav's screams were muffled beneath it. Mildred didn't make a sound. She only shoved and shoved until Rav had no choice but to chew to save himself from choking. His yellow teeth tore strips of flesh from his arm as he sobbed and chewed and swallowed and sobbed some more.

Mildred stared as Mildred did.

When Rav was reduced to a weeping, hysterical, mess—his mouth filled up with his own charred flesh—the girl released the hearth's poker and reached to the kitchen floor for something else. I couldn't see what it was till she stood erect again, but when I did, I believe I pissed myself just a bit more.

She held one of the Beautie's knives. It was a long, bloody, butcher knife that stretched longer than her and probably weighed damn near as much too. Mildred, though, seemed indifferent to the burden of the weapon. She hoisted it up over her head and took aim at the kitchen table.

Rav's eyes widened. He shook his head and sent a stream of mumbled pleads from his filled mouth.

It didn't do much good. Mildred brought the massive butcher knife down across his neck and from that moment forth, Rav would be forever in three pieces: Body, arm, and head.

Her work done, the girl turned on me. I whimpered and shook and dropped to my knees and pleaded like the coward I suppose I am. Mildred walked right up to me and cocked her sack-covered head on its side as she stared. I blubbered like a fool. She reached for my hand, took it, and tugged. I was afraid. I followed at once.

She had me scoop Rav's bloody corpse into my arms before gesturing me up the long flight of stairs that spilled into the courtyard. When the door was open and the cold night air was in my lungs, a fresh wave of terror came over me and I was helpless but to plead, "Please don't kill me, girl."

Mildred did not seem interested in my pleads. She led me around back of the kitchens, the rains beating down upon us, her bare feet tracking through the muds, and pointed out the well. I didn't need further instruction. I carried what was left of Rav to the thing, leaned forth, and dumped it in. It landed with a plop at the bottom, and to this day I don't believe anyone's bothered removing it. Rav got no proper burial, but perhaps that's just what Mildred wanted all along.

When I spun back on the little thing, her lopsided eyes were boring into mine from within the sack across the courtyard. For a moment neither of us spoke, only the rains beating on the muddy ground and roofs to fill the quiet between us. Then Mildred pointed across the courtyard to the stables. They were locked up behind a gate and I knew at once what she wanted of me. I stumbled forth, nearly tripping over my own feet that had turned to rubber, and fished out my keychain. I singled out the key that would open the stable gate and held my trembling arm out across the gap to offer it.

Mildred took it and turned to leave, but for some mad reason, I had one last thing to say to her. It was a thought that had maybe been with me since I first laid eyes on her, and It came pouring from my lips before I could stop it: "What are you?"

Mildred halted in the mud. The rain slapped against her sack-covered head. Then, after a pause, I heard that raspy voice of hers croak the last thing I ever heard it croak: "A maneater. Nothing more. Just a maneater."

She hurried off to the stables. There were three horses lined within. She hoisted up that big bastard of a knife of hers and hacked two of their heads clean off their bodies before mounting up on the third. Clearly, she didn't want to be followed. She dug her heels into the horse's ribs and got the beast moving. They cleared the stables, trampled through the muddy grounds that was the courtyard, and raced atop the finger of stone that was the forest path South.

The last image I have of Mildred was a woman—not a girl—riding horseback into the dark and stormy night, a sack on her head, a butcher's knife raised to her shoulder. I have never seen her since.

There was no search party sent after her. Rav was replaced rather quickly, and in truth, the kitchens were a lot kinder after he'd 'departed'. As for me? Well, I'm just another nobody amongst a sea of nobodies. My only claim to fame is having been there at the conception of perhaps Lordran's most notorious killer. I knew her—briefly—and I don't think the day will ever come when I forget her.

She was an orphan. She was a girl with mousy brown hair and a cleft lip. She was quiet. She was thoughtful. She was patient and violent and vengeful and brutal and above all, she was a maneater.

Just a maneater.

Nothing more.