Guinevere of the Silent Glade
Crimson gushed from his belly and painted his alabaster skin in the stunning colours of dusk while his choked cries caressed my ears like an intimate, whispered invitation. Raw, taut muscles twitched under my light touch and I felt the corners of my mouth rise in a gentle smile as delicious drops of the most marvellous wine sprinkled my face. My pink tongue darted out from behind my luscious lips and the taste of life, rich and coppery, filled my throat. His blonde, almost silver hair was streaked with dirt and blood, but there was still a spark of defiance left within his sapphire eyes. Extinguishing it… I already shivered in anticipation. Who had ever claimed that death couldn't be beautiful? This world had different rules and I had begun to savour some of them.
"Watch," I breathed, my fervent, ecstatic gaze searching for his petrified soldiers. "Watch as your duke reaps his just rewards. After mercy follows carnage." My fingers, hidden inside his belly, danced along his liver underneath his skin. He tried to howl, but he didn't have the strength left. His scream ended in a rattling cough, accompanied by another mouthful of blood. "After carnage comes silence." I tore past his lungs until I felt the frantic, desperate beat of his heart against my skin. My thumb caressed the pulsing, swollen veins around it and then I squeezed.
A final contortion, a last, desperate convulsion and he became still, his life dripping from my blood red hand. I raised my head, my gaze travelling over the desperate, bloodied crowd. Eyes filled with tears, either born from helpless rage or unbridled fear, were cast downwards, unable to answer my unspoken taunt. "Your turn," I promised into the stunned silence. "Bring me the boy. And the girl. Let their mother watch."
The backdrop of a massive, almost black castle, its walls adorned with the sadly swinging corpses of its soldiers we had hanged there under a growing plume of smoke fuelled by the roaring, green flames that still consumed the keep, seemed to be taken from a dream of power and violence. The erstwhile lush, green fields, verdant despite the biting cold, were trampled, the irrigation channels marred with steaks of crimson, blue and green blood. The life of my people and the life of the defenders was nourishing the earth, washing away the lingering shadows of our deeds. Nothing ever truly vanished. We just thought so because we were being left behind. Death brings life and life always ends in death and the ones we had slain only paved the way.
"Your will, milady," a faun, clad in green, living, bark like armour replied diligently, the hooked spear in his hand pointing. A small scuffle ensued as my soldiers tore the two children away from the heaving chest of their mother, her heart wrenching wails another note in the hymn of defeat. They had fought valiantly, but after I had arrived the castle had been breached within minutes. Unfortunately I couldn't thoroughly enjoy the spoils of my victory, my mind constantly returning to how Lancelot had ordered me here, as if I was one of his playthings, existing only for him to do with as he pleased. No matter, at least I had a whole bouquet of volunteers, lining up for me to vent. Elves truly were delectable, especially their pain. It was almost intoxicating.
"Hold them down, I'll start with the girl," I purred as my gaze roamed over her innocent, trembling figure. She was going to look so much more beautiful once I'd have painted her in red. With a choked cry that couldn't get past the coarse gag in her mouth she was pinned down and with the sound of ripping silk my soldiers tore away her upper garments. Pristine, alabaster white skin shimmered under the weak winter sun, her costal arch clearly visible above her flat, quivering stomach. With an almost longing sigh I lowered myself to my haunches, the sharp, bloodied tip of my finger slowly circling around her navel, leaving a dripping, blood red rune in its wake. She tried to resist but she couldn't break my servants' hold and her smell of milk and honey clouded my mind.
"So young," I murmured, "so full of life. Don't fret, child, it'll be over…" I didn't get any further. From one second to the next darkness had fallen, a mighty, pitch black cloud, brimming with lighting, had covered the sun and the temperature was plummeting. The breath of the girl and my own mixed in a ghostly display of swirling mists while I already reached for the seat of my power, ready to meet whatever nonsense the elves had come up with. Except… there was no ritual, no spell. The earth trembled, the sky shivered, strangled cries echoed in the twilight and with a mighty thunderclap the cloud was torn apart, revealing something terrifyingly alien.
A… towering monster was hovering high above us, his myriad of deep red eyes staring down ravenously. "Shields," I hollered, my voice laced with fear. What in the name of the sacred waters was that thing? My question was answered a second later. A nightmare made real, that had come to remind us of the futility of our deeds. Before death we were all the same and that thing had come to make sure we wouldn't forget.
A paltry dome of scintillating energy rose around us, a pathetic bastion against the madness, but with an almost lazy movement one of its grey, bulbous tentacles struck out, brushing away the barrier cast by over a hundred fey in the blink of an eye. Only sparks remained, which petered out as quickly as they had formed and then there was nothing between us and the behemoth from another world. Its stench finally reached me, a suffocating blanket of death and decay that fanned the flames of fear in my chest until I felt them clouding my mind. Within a single heartbeat I had gone from a conqueror to a morsel on a silver platter, petrified under the looming shadow of death. "Run," I breathed with the last bit of clarity and chaos devoured my world.
Flailing limbs obscured my vision, the voices of my people, distorted by panic, and their ragged breaths assaulted my ears as the sweet smell of blood was drowned out by the reeking scent of something vile. Fey and elves alike, erstwhile enemies now united by the existential dread that no atrocity I was capable of could rival, fled. Comrades pushed each other to the ground in a desperate bid to get as far away as possible, families were torn apart as siblings fought, eager to put another breathing distraction in the way of hell's retribution. Only the few parents amongst the castle's inhabitants didn't flinch, their dedication to buy their offspring just another second to get to safety as unwavering as it had been when my people had breached the gate. Out of nowhere cherry petals appeared and danced around them like living armour. But it was still in vain.
A foul, rancid wind blew back my hair and I gagged when a gargantuan, salivating maw opened in the mass of twitching flesh above us. Teeth, as large as barns, glowed with a destructive, unrivalled power, a long, dark blue tongue darted out from behind them and tasted the sweet nectar of desperation on the wind. Then the creature struck. Its eyes were aglow with an eerie, malevolent light, venomous, deadly slobber rained down like an avalanche, eating through flesh, stone and metal, and a thunderstorm of undiluted, evil might grew around its shapeless body. Black light, as thick and heavy as ink, dripped from the sky and I barely managed to blindly grip one of my soldiers by the scruff of his bony neck, only to hoist him like a shield.
Wails of anguish and cries of panic rose like a choir heralding the end of the world and then the cresting tides of power surged. My living armour stilled and crumbled into dust, its essence withering within the fraction of a second. A cover of fine dust wreathed itself around me and the petrified girl at whose side I was still cowering. I coughed, my throat blistering wherever the sparks of the behemoth's deadly intent burned my flesh, and without thinking I threw myself forward, trying to hide from the suffocating presence.
Inadvertently I had turned myself into a living piece of armour, protecting the soft body underneath me. Her scent somehow calmed me down and with a defiant growl I pushed back the excruciating waves of fear. "Evanesce," I commanded and my magic answered. Torrents of sparkling green light flowed around us, isolating me from the unleashed mayhem as if I was on an island of quiet in the midst of a storm tossed sea. A sigh of relief escaped me and I took a deep breath of sweet, fresh air, but the respite didn't last long.
Faintly I heard the echos of rushed incantations, felt the vibrations in the earth as fey and elves alike ran for the hills and then silence. Disoriented I blinked past the swaths of magic I had conjured, but the blurry shapes on the other side were much too hazy to figure out what was going on. I cursed under my breath and tried to flip myself around, but at that very moment two slim, fragile hands closed around my neck. "You're not leaving, murderer," a velvety but hoarse voice whispered in my ear and then I felt silky skin slide along my cheeks and chipped, broken nails dig into my eyes.
A strangled cried erupted from my throat as hot blood dripped down my face. My eyes felt like someone had shoved a burning piece of coal into their sockets and the last thing I saw was a snow white knuckle, bent to drive the finger deep into my face. I lashed out blindly, relying on her screams to figure out where it'd hurt the most, but no matter how hard I fought, she didn't let go.
We turned into a writhing mass of limbs, tumbling across the cold, hard earth, my magic long forgotten. She gouged my eyes out and in return I sank my pointy teeth deep into her wrist, the crimson river pouring form the wound an invigorating present that allowed me to reflexively keep my spell alive. "You'll kill us both," I rasped through bloody lips as I wrapped my thighs around her arm and pulled it from its socket. The scent of blood mixed with her alluring smell and I trembled.
Despite the pain her voice remained steady, content even. "All the better," she grunted, her warm breath tickling the nape of my neck before she bit down. Her teeth scraped over my spine, the wounded bones sent waves of liquid agony through my body and the tumult, the wanton destruction around us faded away until the world, once again, consisted only of me and her, locked in a sensual dance that only one would survive.
"Immolare," I croaked and directed my power towards her, disregarding the looming shadow of doom I knew to be hovering above us. In my mind's eye she was already gone, reduced to a charred piece of flesh on the frozen ground, but then my magic faltered. Like a spring breeze something else thundered through my darkened world and my energy withered and vanished, as if it had been devoured. A bone deep lethargy crept through me and I lost track of time and my surroundings, my mind filled with a soft, ethereal voice I had never heard before. "Stand down," it whispered in a foreign, melodious language, the strength behind the simple command enough to shake the very bedrock of reality. Time passed. Seconds, minutes, hours, I couldn't tell, but neither did I care. I was… content, until the veil was suddenly torn away, spewing me back out into a world of pain and chaos that seemed frozen in an instant.
The towering beast and the fleeing ants at its feet had stilled as if cast in ember. My eyes had regenerated partly and while I still couldn't make out much details, I knew that the battle was over before it had even begone. My fey, the elves, even the monster in the sky had been subdued with two simple words, spoken by a descending star.
Two creatures hovered between heaven and earth, their silhouettes aglow with otherworldly light. One was wreathed in silver, the other in the colours of the sun, a glare so bright it even pierced the receding veil over my eyes. My sluggish mind couldn't muster the strength to look around, to even care, but I still realised that they were communicating. A moment later their outlines blurred and a flash of silver streaked south. Then the shackles around my thoughts shattered.
Groggily I blinked, the small movement enough to send tendrils of agony through my nerves from the scabby pits my eyes had become. With a quiet but rumbling groan I flipped over and buried the tips of my fingers in the warm flesh underneath me. She spasm weakly, but her glazed over eyes couldn't focus on me. No wonder, if I was struggling to remember my name I could only guess how scrambled up her mind must have been. "Today is your lucky day, honey. You're more useful to me alive than dead, after all." My magic stirred clumsily, but it was enough for me to change my shape. The fraction of a heartbeat later a crimson larva wriggled her way through the wound I had just opened on her stomach.
As soon as the warm, welcoming darkness embraced me I felt much more at ease. Those two things hadn't been fey and since everything else, from plants to animals, on this cursed piece of rock was trying to kill us, it stood to reason they were just the same. Slightly more powerful and with a flair for dramatic entrances that could rival my brothers', but some form of pointy eared traitor none the less. Consequentially I didn't expect them to dissect their duke's daughter only because she had been the last one to see me alive. As for the deep cut on her stomach, it had closed as soon as I had boarded my carriage. Now I only had to get somewhere with a view and that meant upstairs. The ears, maybe. She had long, flowing locks, perfect to hide my tiny head.
As I was I would have been forced to claw my way upward, which probably would have had my host scratching at her skin until the both of us would have kicked the bucket, so I decided to change again. My body became much more fluid, almost like a gel, and my senses morphed into a weird amalgamation of touch and taste. Confusing as it was, I still felt better, the aura of the girl a useful shield that protected and isolated me from the strange powers that were running rampage on the outside. The only downside was, that I wouldn't know if she had been eaten until it'd have been much too late. I didn't expect the strange, flying behemoth to still pose a threat, though. Hulking as it was, it couldn't challenge the sheer strength that had locked down my mind a few moments ago.
I tried to move and my formless blob of a body elongated. Like a tiny worm I slowly wiggled my way toward the closest large vein and diffused through the wall, courtesy of another spell. The hot, smooth stream carried me along and I only had to make sure that I wouldn't be flushed into an organ. Luckily navigation wasn't too hard. I simply had to avoid getting lost in the smaller tributaries. Whenever there was a choice to make, I opted for the larger branches.
For a few minutes I glided peacefully through a pitch black world of heat and copper, my thoughts slowly returning to the chaotic madness I had just escaped from. I didn't have the foggiest idea what might have happened, but I was fairly certain that the two apparitions weren't linked. The monstrous behemoth had appeared and that had called the two flying beasts to arms. Which meant that we had underestimated out opponents, for one, and that we obviously had some competition when it came to bleeding the elves dry. Large, monstrous, nightmarish competition. As much as it stung, I didn't fancy our chances. That writhing mass of tentacles and eyes would have been enough to challenge a small army and somehow I was decently convinced that there would be more waiting where this one had come from. And then my musing were cut short by a peculiar feeling and a flash of white yellow light.
An agonisingly beautiful woman was smiling down on me with just a hint of pearly white, sharp teeth showing behind her sensual lips. If I had had a throat I would have swallowed dryly. "Oh my," she purred, "what have we here? The missing guest of honour has finally decided to appear."