The Monsters We Are

[BlackAndBlueEyes]

I slammed the front door behind me, putting the heavy slab of iron-reinforced oak between me and the carnage that was taking place outside. I could hear the unearthly screams of Nell, Diggs, and Hedge as they fought against the four wolves as they teared through flesh and blood, muscle and bone. Sounds that I could not bear to hear any longer. I jammed my briar-knit hands against my ears to block out the horrible, faint noises and began crying again.

I was hurt. Honestly, seriously, legitimately hurt. I've suffered plenty of loss, been despised and kicked around by many people who claimed to be ally, friend, and family. I've grown used to it. Betrayal was in my daily schedule, usually somewhere between my morning bath and lunch.

But to hear that abominable word coming out of the mouth of the one person I cared about the most in this world...

Monster. Nell was going to call me a monster. It was on the tip of her tongue, and she was saying it. That horrible, wretched, spiteful word.

I felt like I had my heart ripped from me when she uttered that first hateful syllable. She had torn my chest open, reached in with her chubby little fingers, grabbed hold of my heart, and gave it a good yank. And what did I do in return? I sent a pack of wild animals to feast on her by now assuredly dead again corpse.

I sent those animals after her and my two mercenary friends from the Crimson Hand--Diggs and Hedge, who survived a hellish war by my side, who trusted my every word with their lives--without a second thought. I did not hesitate one second to utter the command that damned them once more to death as soon as my assistant pursed her lips to call me that name. The three of them are now lying in piles of shredded clothing and body parts while wolves feast on their remains all because of one word--one simple, stupid little fucking word.

Maybe they're right. Maybe I am a monster.

A small voice in the back of my head cried out, pushing through all the sorrow, trying to scream at me that this was all just a dream; that none of this was real. That Diggs and Hedge were still within the Seventh Sanctum, polishing their blades and spellcraft, preparing for their next assignment as Blades. That Nell was still holed up safely in her apartment in Tirel, continuing to tinker away on small little artifacts and alchemy mixtures.

I wanted desperately to believe that this little voice was right. I wanted so hard for none of this to be real. But if it were nothing more a dream, why hadn't I woken up by now? Why hadn't I woken up covered in a cold sweat the moment that the wolf had its jaws around my throat--or when I encountered the reanimated corpses of my three best friends? Why has this dream lasted what feels like an eternity? Why did seeing the shard in Nell's face and her words that followed hurt me so fucking much?

I curled up into a ball against the front door to my childhood home and wept. I could not tell you how long I was there.

[BlackAndBlueEyes]

Eventually, I had run myself dry. My eyes and chest ached, and I felt hollow. Empty inside. I slowly rose to my feet, wiping away the remaining tears that stained my cheek. I was mildly thankful that I opted not to wear any makeup today, otherwise I would've made a horrible sight indeed.

I found myself in the dimly-lit foyer of my family's manor. Everything was as I remembered it; the plain floral print wallpaper, the dark hardwood floors, the red carpeting leading from the entryway towards the staircase at the end of the hall that split left and right as you would walk up to the second floor. Everything was as I remembered it, but everything was wrong. Thick, dead lengths of vines had grown from cracks in the walls. The carpet was torn up in places, and the floors were covered in a thick layer of dust. Errant mushrooms had grown inside the manor as well, casting off their eerie blue glow and providing a modicum of light. The family portraits that hung off to the right were cracked and warped, and everyone in them seemed a little off.

The paintings in particular called out to me. Drawing closer to one of the pictures in the hallway, I reached into the drawer of a nearby table. As I always did when I was a kid, I found a book of matches. I fumbled around in the near-darkness until I found the oil lamp that usually rest on top of that very table. I struck a match and lit the lamp. The scent of burning oil immediately filled my nostrils as the lamp cast off its warm glow. I brought the lamp up to the painting to get a closer look, and my breath was stolen by what I saw.

Sitting in front of a dark backdrop on a short couch were the three Freebird children. You had, from left to right, myself, Justin, and Trevor. But, it wasn't the young versions of ourselves from the picture I remembered. Across Trevor's throat was a thick cut that was oozing copious amounts of blood that stained his brown outfit a darker shade. Memories of the double-cross that lead to Trevor's death flashed in my mind, which I quickly pushed out. My eyes drifted to the center of the picture, where Justin sat. His face was absolutely mangled. His nose was smeared halfway across his skull, there was a severe laceration adorning climbing up his forehead into his hairline that exposed cracked bone, and both of his eyes were closed with bruises and swelling--changes to his visage that were in line with the fatal beating I gave him in Lorinus after he hunted me down during the LCC.

I noted the hands on his shoulders and followed the arms up to see the horrifying visages of my parents. Everything about them was right; but at the same time everything was wrong. Their bird-like features were sharper than I remembered, their normally pursed lips twisted into disapproving snarls, and their jaw and cheekbones more defined. It was like a twisted parody of their normal selves. They looked in that painting as I had always imagined them being: Horrifying, malevolent beings that didn't deserve the sweet release of death that I so often wanted to give them.

Lastly, my eyes drifted down to the last figure in the painting--myself. In the portrait, I was not depicted as the sullen-faced teenager that I was when it was commissioned. It was my current, true form. Dark purple circles filled with poison surrounded my eyes, my skin was an ashen shade of pale, and I could see that underneath my dress, my shoulders were made of vines that were woven into my torso...

I briefly looked away from the portrait, unable to take in any more of it. But after a few seconds, something else occurred to me that was a little off with the painting. I leaned in closer to the part of it that had me in it, and I raised the oil lamp up to cast more light upon it. Was that... Was that a ghostly, faded hand on my right shoulder? I rubbed at that section with the tip of a briar-knit finger, trying to decide if my eyes were playing tricks on me or if it was just a crack in the painting. Whatever I thought I had seen, it disappeared.

I took a step back from the painting, offering it nothing more than a blank stare. The pose was right from what I remembered of the thing that hung in my old home, but everything was wrong. It was a twisted parody of itself that reflected the horrible thoughts I held as truth in my mind. I clicked my tongue at it, because I honestly had no other reaction ready for it. I was drained of any other emotion that wasn't mild disapproval.

As I took another step away from the wall, I heard it echoing through the air. At first I thought it was the creaking of the floorboards that sighed under my weight, but then I realized it was something else--something far more horrible. It sounded like nails on a chalkboard, like breaking glass, like a boiling kettle sitting ignored on the stove. It was a long string of crazed laughter, a familiar laughter... The laughter that belonged to the voice that tormented me ever since I came to in the dark depths of the forest outside.

My grip tightened around the handle of the oil lamp and a scowl etched itself on my lips. Whoever had dragged me through this hell was inside this house. With a resolve fuelled by a simmering anger, I began searching for its source.

[BlackAndBlueEyes]

The crazed laughter continued to echo through the dark crumbling halls of the Freebird manor as I walked through it. I threw open every door hoping to find the asshole who had been causing me so many fucking problems, but found nothing but the vine-choked ruins of my childhood.

"Come to me, Madison," the mysterious voice teased from somewhere deep in the house.

Believe me, I'm fucking trying to.

I had no plan as to what I would do once I found the source of all my troubles. Would I immediately go on the attack with a storm of vines and acid? Would I calmly stand there and let them speak? Would I just break down in tears as the weight of this horrible nightmare crushed me? I had no idea. I honestly was at a lost.

Minutes ticked by as I continued my search. I tore through bedrooms, guest rooms, bathrooms, the kitchen, the training room, the alchemy lab, and even the storerooms where my mother kept her extensive collection of wines and spirits. I found nothing but dust, artifacts, and memories of the shitty years I spent here. The soft blue glow of the strange fungus mixed with the warm orange light from my oil lamp to lead me from room to room.

And then in front of one door in particular, I came to sudden pause as I reached for the door. This was the door that led into my room. This was the room I spent most of my life in, my own safe haven from the horrors that I lived with. My own little plane of existence where I felt perfectly safe among my books and stuffed animals, away from my family and the life they were forcing me to live.

Everything else in this nightmare manifest was twisted with the venom of my memories. Would I be able to open the door and face down the darkness that would inevitably greet me? How would all of the hatred that boiled inside me greet me in my old bedroom? What would I even find inside?

My hand hovered over the doorknob for several uncertain seconds. I hesitated, took a deep breath, and gripped the handle.

The voice in the house interrupted me, making me jump. "Behind you, dear."

I spun around, expecting... well, I wasn't sure what I was expecting. But I was greeted by one of the last doors I had yet to open within the old house. If my memory served me correctly, this was the door that lead to the reading room. From behind the door came some light, feminine giggling. It was the same voice that had taunted me with laughter ever since I came to and called me monster. I had finally found the stupid bitch. My resolve renewed with a shot of venomous anger, I tightly gripped the metal handle and pushed the door open.

[BlackAndBlueEyes]

The reading room was exactly as I remember it after almost a decade.

Three of the walls were lined from floor to ceiling with bookshelves packed with all sorts of tomes. Fiction, biographies, spellbooks, alchemy guides, manuals on some of the darker arts that my family dabbled in from time to time... Each shelf was packed full of dusty books that looked like they hadn't been touched in ages--and for all I know given how often I remember my parents ever using this room when I was younger, it was possible that it might have been the case. Halfway across the wall opposite of where I stood, the shelves were broken up by a wide window with the curtains pulled shut to hide me from the dark forest outside.

Along the fourth wall, to my left, sat a fireplace deep within the stonework. A small blaze burned from within, casting its light out and illuminating the room softly. The fire flickered, cracked, and popped as ominous shadows danced along the far wall. As there always had been, four pieces of furniture were arranged in a circle. There were two padded red leather chairs, a matching lounger sofa that could just barely fit the three of us Freebird children on it when we were kids, and a round wooden table with a three legs that combined to form a single column to support it. On the table sat a square glass decanter with a glass stopper, filled with my father's favorite whiskey as it always had been. Next to that sat a trio of glass tumblers waiting to have thirsty lips pressed up against their rims.

I noticed three figures in the room as well, but my eyes were drawn to the two on the sofa first. From what I could tell from the soft light from the fireplace, the two were wrapped up in red-stained vines like presents. They struggled and squirmed, trying their damnedest to escape from their binds. The briars had sprouted directly from the couch itself and had wrapped themselves around the black-robed couple, trapping their arms against their chests and keeping them from standing up. More vines were pulled tight across their opened mouths, preventing anything more than muffled grunts and cries from coming out of their throats.

I took me several seconds to actually recognize the two. One was an older man, his cropped black hair giving way to shades of gray around the sideburns. A large scar crossed his tall forehead. Cold steel eyes betrayed a sort of anger mixed with fear--the latter of which was a feeling obviously foreign to him. The woman, who was on the right side of the sofa, had her own salt-and-pepper hair pulled back into a tight ponytail, strands of which had managed to free themselves in her struggle and were waving about in the air. Her features were porcelain, sharp like a bird's and unblemished. Eyes as blue as the glow of the fungus out in the hallway were fixated upon me, oozing a sheer hatred that I've only witnessed once or twice before.

There was a long silence that threatened to choke us all before I could find the energy to speak. "...Mom? ...Dad?"

The sound of creaking furniture snapped me out of my daze. Rising from the leather chair next to the lounger was a woman roughly as tall as myself. She had pale skin that betrayed the thick, purple veins that traveled up her arms and neck, but stopped at her jawline to curve out and up towards her piercing green eyes. She wore a sleeved gown that was as red as blood. A piece of the chest was cut out, revealing her cleavage, and a tight red bodice was strapped around her waist that accentuated the curves of her hips. A head of ginger hair spilled out in waves, going down to the small of her back.

"Beautiful, isn't it?" A thin smile curled her lips as she spoke. "All of this... The decrepit nature of this pitiful home, the vines that choke the life from it, the memories and hatred you have of this place suffocating it with darkness... The... helplessness of those of you who twisted you into what you are now..." She gestured with a vein-choked hand towards my parents next to us.

My voice was measured and calm, considering all that has transpired within the past few hours. "Who are you?"

The woman continued to smile, her head cocked to the side as if I has just asked the stupidest question in the world. "Why, Madison dear, I'm everything you've ever wanted. I'm the ultimate power you've craved for so long. The respect that you've yearned for since you were little. Everything that your blackened little heart desires."

The red vines. The mutated wolves in the forest. The darkness that has suffocated me since my arrival. "Podë," I whispered.

The Forgotten One simply nodded.

[BlackAndBlueEyes]

My head was swimming with a swarm of emotions and thoughts. One of the five monsters from antiquity, whose dark deeds were forever canonized in The War of the Tap and manifested through The Red Forest, a blight upon the beauty that was Raiaera (before another Forgotten One, Xem'Zund, tore the place up with an unstoppable army of the undead). A sorceress of unimaginable power with the ability to control nature. She could sink countries into the earth, crush all living beings, and warp the world around her into a feral parody of itself.

The Red Witch. And she was here. In the remains of my house. She had been the one who beckoned to me, the one who summoned me before her. The one who brought me into this darkness, who sent wolves after me, ambushed me with the murdered, animated remains of my dearest friends.

Here I was, her little monster. Her words echoed inside my head.

I was struck dumb for once in my life. Why had she led me here? What use could I possibly be to her? It was true that her power was what I craved, but... Thankfully, Podë sensed my vast unease and indecision, and motioned for me to have a seat. I fell back into the padded red chair behind me, and waited for her to speak.

"It's pleases me that you recognize who I am. That means I can skip the tedious introductions." She made her way over to the decanter on the round table between myself and the couch my parents were on. The sorceress took the stopper off the glass and set it aside. Picking one of the tumblers up, she poured a couple shots of whiskey into it and held it out in front of me.

I took the drink in my briar-knit hands. It seemed awfully rude to refuse the kindness of a Forgotten One.

"It also means we can skip the introductions for you, my dear," Podë said as she turned back towards the decanter and poured herself a glass as well, the red fabric of her dress flowing behind her like the waves of an ocean. She took a long sip of the bitter amber liquid before continuing. "I've been keeping my eyes on your for a long time. There are forces that you cannot even begin to comprehend in this world of ours, Madison. They are always lurking in the shadows, waiting in the dark areas just beyond your sight. They are always watching, always waiting. They know everything, they see everything. Some of these forces, they tell me about people. They tell me about events. They tell me about stuff that I may be interested in."

The sorceress slowly walked back over towards the other leather chair. My gaze fluttered over to my parents, bound in vines like chains, and back over to my host. "They've told me about you, Madison Freebird. They've told me about the simply awful things you've done in your life. All of those sacrifices, both personal and of others, you've made to amass whatever scraps of power and knowledge you could. All of those innocent lives you've claimed with that wonderful little plague you've been spreading around."

A lump formed in my throat. She knows about Eiskalt, I thought to myself.

Podë's eyes narrowed at me over the rim of her glass. "Of course I know about Eiskalt, my dear." I gulped hard. Of course she can read my thoughts.

[BlackAndBlueEyes]

The Forgotten one rested her nearly-empty tumbler on the right arm of her chair. "The minute you stepped into my domain, the very second you crossed the threshold into my forest with Duffy Bracken and that elf Alistair, I picked through your brain like an open book. I know everything you've ever known. I've seen everything you've ever desired. I've felt every ounce of pain, fury, sadness, joy, and utter hatred you've ever felt. And I've tasted your ambition." Podë smiled as she brought the glass up to her thin lips and took another drink.

Welp, there goes any sort of subtle planning and trickery in order to find out what the hell was going on. I swirled my own whiskey around as I spoke plainly. "So then you ultimately know why I agreed to accompany Duffy and Alistair on their little journey."

"Of course I do," The Red Witch said dismissively. "And that's what I find the most intriguing about you. You've spent your years searching out the means to grow more and more powerful than those around you, while denying anyone you see as a personal threat anything their own little hearts desire. Like Lichensith Ulrokë."

My thoughts briefly flashed to the afternoon that I laughed in his face and stole from him the one thing he truly desired to keep his tenuous grip on the Crimson Hands intact--the death of Kyla Orlouge. "That is true," I replied flatly.

Podë reclined in her seat and crossed her left leg over her right. My eyes flickered momentarily over to my parents, who continued to fight the blood red vines that had wrapped them up tightly. They were in such a weakened state, like I have never seen them in before--let alone even imagined them being in. The two horrible excuses for life forms were absolutely vulnerable right now. I could stand up, walk over to them, and jam shards of crystallized acid into their hearts and watch them as their life slowly drained from their gasping mouths--

No. I violently shook my head. This is all a dream. This is all just a dream.

"Is it, though? Is it really?" The Forgotten One smirked. My attention snapped back to the woman who had tormented me all this time as she sat there, taunting me. "Is this all really a dream?"

I looked up at her, my expression unreadable. "How do I know it isn't?"

"You would've waken up a long time ago if it were. No, Madison, you're here because I desire you to be." She leaned forward in her chair, clasping her whiskey between her vein-marked hands. "You see, my dear, that I already haven't murdered your pathetic little traveling party deep within my woods and scattered your bloodied remains to the four corners of the world already is because I know that it will fail. For all of the power that Duffy Bracken has coursing through his ancient bones, he cannot even begin to hope to cure Lindequalmë of its horrible affliction. He will fail, he will fall, and it will break his spirit."

The red-haired, red-clad woman looked into her glass for a few seconds. She then looked up, her piercing emerald gaze locking into my own. There was a certain fire, a certain desire in her eyes. "And I want you to be the vessel of my retribution for his foolhardy, misguided attempts to do so."

[BlackAndBlueEyes]

I sat there silent, the sorceress' last words echoing in my head. The vessel of her retribution.

Podë's face turned sour, her voice dripping with venom. "For too long I have suffered; living a tortured, atrophied existence between life and death. Slowly, my work comes undone with every simple creature that walks the realm, trying to immortalize themselves by undoing my work--trying to validate their pitiful, miserable existences in order to make their lives mean something." Her grip tightened on the arms of the leather chair. Dark red vines that cast horrifying dancing shadows on the bookshelf-lined walls began to sprout from behind her. She paused for a brief second, and the vines receded as she regained her composure.

"But you and I... We won't let that happen, now will we?" The smile returned to The Red Witch's face, all traces of her fury melting away into the night. "No... We won't. We mustn't. For that would be a tragic thing to let happen."

I sat there, silent as ever, as the Forgotten One spoke to me. My mind remained empty--not out of fear, but out of necessity. I tried my hardest not to feel anything. By the gods, I wanted to feel something, but I quickly extinguished any thoughts I might have had the moment they flickered to life. I was simply biding my time, waiting for my twisted, terrible host to show her entire hand.

She pointed a finger at me. "While I may not be able to fully return to the land of the living right now, for I am too weak... I have a means to spread my message throughout world." Her smile widened, revealing a set of perfectly-white teeth. "I have you. My little monster Madison."

"I am not a monster," I whispered involuntarily. It doesn't matter who said the word; it still hurt me to hear it. My eyes flashed over once more to my parents once more. Two people wholly deserving of the label.

"Ah, but that's where you are horribly wrong, my dear." Podë's voice dropped, becoming far more menacing in tone. "You are a monster. I want you to look deep inside your soul, Madison. I want you to bask in the dark glory of everything that you've fought for in your life... Everything that you've scraped, betrayed, and murdered for. All of the power that you've accumulated on the backs of others--those you call allies, enemies, and... friends."

Memories of my life as an assassin flooded my mind. I saw flashes of the faces of each of my targets, their features contorted in abject horror in the moments before my blade met their throats and hearts. I thought of the old man in the Eiskalt refugee camp, and clearly heard his screams once more as I jammed my thumbs into his eye sockets and melted his face with acid. I heard the pained moans of every one of the thousands I infected with my plague. I re-lived the entire events of the coup within the Order of the Crimson Hands, and the horrors that came with it"

I thought of Diggs and Hedge, and the horrible things I've ordered them to do in my name.

I thought of poor, sweet Nell, locked away in her apartment in Tirel, innocently working on improving her artificing and alchemy skills by following instructions for nasty little concoctions and devices that I kept sending to her.

I clenched my eyes shut and grit my teeth. I tightly gripped the sides of my head. Tears began to well up in my eyes once more. I tried to scream, but it came out more as a whimper. "No! No! I am not a monster! I am not!"

[BlackAndBlueEyes]

Podë climbed of out of her chair and knelt before me. With the tenderness I would never expect from one of the most vile, wretched beings in history, she grabbed my hands and held them in her own. My eyes were blurry with a fresh round of tears as she pursed her lips together in a slight frown.

"It's okay, Madison," she said in a motherly way. "I can understand what you're feeling and what you're going through. I know you don't want to admit it, because that word has such a negative connotation to it for you. But I want you to understand something, okay? I want you to understand that I know you in ways that you'll never know yourself. You're in denial about your true nature. You're in denial because you know that by admitting you're a monster, you're admitting that you're just like them." The Forgotten One's eyes flickered over to my parents, and my own gaze followed.

It was true. What Podë said was absolutely correct. Deep down, my hatred of the word "monster" is all because of those fuckers on the couch over there. I have met a lot of rotten souls in my life, and they're the worst of them. They truly are monsters. Not once ever was I shown even the tiniest scraps of love and care by them. They beat me, they worked me hard, they forced me to follow in their footsteps. And I hated them for it. I despised them with every fiber of my being. And, I was utterly terrified of ever becoming like them.

The smile returned to Podë's face as she read the flood of emotions and memories that filled my mind. "Your fears are entirely unfounded, my dear. You are nothing like your parents. They're not monsters at all; they are cowards. They act out of fear, sulking in the shadows, acting on opportunity. No; they are entirely different from you.

"You see, Madison, you're the perfect kind of monster for my needs. You take a perverse joy in the chaos you sow throughout the world. No matter how much try to deny it, you enjoy your work. You enjoy creating the horrors you do in your laboratory. You enjoy snuffing out the lives of others in order to achieve your goals. You have a certain steel about you that has gotten you this far in life. It is a steel that will take you even further." A long pause filled the space between the sorceress and myself. "Now, I want you to think long and hard about this before you answer me--do you understand what you truly are? Can you admit it?"

I did indeed understand. I had always been in denial about everything I am as I walked my path in life. But The Forgotten One's words illuminated my way once more. Slowly, I nodded. "Yes, I do. I can."

Podë stood before me and clapped her hands together. "Good. That's exactly what I wanted to hear. That's exactly what you needed to say. Come, stand up, my dear."

I stood. The sorceress moved towards the couch, beckoning me to follow her with a gesture. The fire roared off to my left, casting our shadows against the bookshelves as we slowly walked across the room. We stopped in front of the red leather couch where my parents sat, bound by red vines.

The Forgotten One turned to me and smiled. "I will grant you three gifts tonight, Madison. The first is the truth about yourself, which I have already given to you."

"What are the others?"

My mother cried out in fear, her words muffled by the briars that gagged her while my father tried to fight against the tight grip of his bindings.

[BlackAndBlueEyes]

"Why, just the only two things you've ever wanted in life," Podë said matter-of-factly as she turned towards the defenseless couple. "Do me a favor, and place your hands on their faces, will you?"

I hesitated for a brief moment. My fingers twitched with anticipation. Mother and Father were at their most vulnerable. They were sitting there, unable to speak, unable to move.

A twinge of doubt entered my mind. "No," I said, shaking my head. "This isn't real. I'm dreaming..." It wasn't so much of a protest as it was an involuntary statement.

"But they are, Madison. They are real, and this much is real. They are here for the same reason you are here--because I simply desired that they see what monsters we are."

I took a step closer to them. I raised my briar-knit hands up, and lightly touched their faces. The both tried their hardest to worm their way out of my grasp. My mom squeaked in fear, her voice choked by the vines wrapped tightly around her open mouth. I said not a word to either of them. I just looked deep into their eyes. I saw fear; I saw hatred. I saw their blackened hearts and souls as they silently pleaded for their release. They saw only an emotionless child; my eyes blank, my face expressionless.

My movements almost felt as if they weren't my own. Both of them winced in pain as I tightened my grip. I dug my vine-woven thumbs and pinkie fingers into their temples and drove my fore and middle fingers into the softer spots on top of their heads--universal pressure points that they taught me when I was younger. I hope that they remember that moment. I hope it's playing back in their minds right now, the day Father latched on to my own skull in those same spots to offer a personal demonstration of its effectiveness, and the searing pain that would linger long after he released me.

It felt... it felt good, you know? To have a complete and total advantage over those who have caused you a lifetime of suffering, pain, and fear for once...

The Forgotten One stepped behind me and laid her soft hands on my exposed biceps. I flinched slightly, not use to contact as intimate as this. The woman in the red dress squeezed my arms lightly, reassuring me that everything was going to be alright. She leaned in close. The sorceress was only an inch or two taller than me, but she felt far more oppressive and imposing than her stature implied.

Her voice was a soft whisper as it entered my ear, her breath causing goosebumps on my pale skin. "Let me show you first-hand the power you crave so much, Madison my dear."

A small humming filled my ears and a dark, chaotic energy flowed through my arms where her fingers touched me. I clenched my jaw and grit my teeth, fighting every impulse to close my eyes and shut out the intense sensation that was wracking my body. Inch by inch, the vines that made up my limbs turned a deep crimson hue--the same blood coloring of the plant life that managed to thrive within The Red Forest. This was it--this was Podë's Curse!

There was a small popping sound, and then another, and another. Popping, cracking, ripping, and tearing mixed with the muffled screams of my parents as The Red Witch's vile energies filled them. Muscle and bone snapped and broke and then reformed as the Curse took hold of them. Their bodies were swiftly mutated and mutilated under my touch. Mother and Father shook in unknowable agony, struggling to free themselves from the red vines that were holding them fast to the leather couch as they grew tighter and tighter against them.

I could not take my eyes off the two as their physical forms changed before their very eyes. Father's sleeves were beginning to rip along their seams as his chest and arms expanded with newly-created muscle. His hair had grown several inches, making him look like a cave-dweller from ages long-gone. His near perfect teeth grew sharp and yellow, slowly tearing against the vines that suffocated him as his jaw wrenched back and forth.

Mother... Mother had been similarly affected by my touch. Bits of her already tight dress had burst apart as her body expanded with new muscle and bone structures. Her chest heaved with each new breath she took, shaking her half of the couch and scraping it against the dusty hardwood floors of the reading room as she too tried to wrestle herself free from the grip of the vines. I could see her right eye peeking out from between my thumb and forefinger. There was this... look... that I'll never forget until my dying day. It wasn't a look of simmering anger, which was her standard go-to mood.

No... It was the look of a feral beast. A creature fueled by instinct and need--and that need was to tear me from limb to limb.

It was a look that went past vile, venomous, burning hatred and went straight towards primal hunger. And for a brief second, it scared me.

Podë sensed my unease, and pressed herself up against me. Pouring more of her limitless power into my body, the mutations my parents were suffering quickened. The sound of growing and expanding muscle and snapping and reforming of bones... I'll never forget it. Their painful screams that soon evolved into primal howls... I'll never forget them either.

I kept pouring more and more of the Curse into them. For all that they've done to me, for what they've turned me into... No, they hadn't suffered enough. Not yet.

Not ever.

[BlackAndBlueEyes]

And just like that--after moments or minutes, I couldn't quite tell--it was over.

Mother and Father stopped their unnatural twitching. They stopped screaming, they stopped moving, they stopped breathing.

It was over. It was finally all over. The nightmare of their continued existence, the fears I had that they would find me and burn down everything that I've worked so hard for, and all for a simple misunderstanding and a bruised ego...

It was over.

My vine arms returned to their natural shades of green as Podë's Curse settled into a dormant state inside me. I could feel its presence, its power... Feel it resting deep within the core of my very being. My soul.

There were no words I could say. I just simply stared at the mutilated, destroyed corpses of my parents. Their skin had darkened with countless popped blood vessels, and even cracked in some placed--just completely split apart from the twisting and pressure it underwent. Their bodies were bleeding from several places where these splits happened, their crimson blood staining their black garments. Mother's neck was wrenched at an impossible angle, her vacant stare still managing to look incredibly angry and disappointed even in death. Father's jaw was broken and turned halfway across his face, his teeth chipped and stained with blood while his eyes were rolled up in the back of his head.

Slowly, the vines slithered out from around them and receded into the depths of the red leather sofa. Their corpses collapsed onto one another in a heap of mutilation.

I simply watched them slump down, feeling nothing but a dull ache from it finally being over with. I couldn't find the words to say anywhere... I just stood there, arms at my sides, a powerful sorceress at my back, and said nothing.

Podë's hands let go of my vine-knit biceps, the tips of her fingers tickling my skin as her hands traveled elsewhere. "Tell me, Madison Freebird. Did that feel... good? Was that enjoyable for you?"

"Yes," I said, a hollow whisper.

My body tingled as the Forgotten One's hands traveled across my body. Her left hand lightly brushed against my chest, sending a chill down my spine. I craned my head upwards, exposing my neck to her as cold fingers drew themselves around my throat lightly as a lover would. With a practiced skill, she undid my makeshift pant leg bandage and allowed the gore-soaked scrap to flutter to the floor. The sorceress' other hand found its way around my waist. She pulled me in tighter against her own body. My breathing became heavy, my heart beating faster and faster. I could feel her breath on my ear.

"My other gifts to you, my little monster. My Curse at your very disposal, and a little something special to ensure your eternal cooperation..." Her emerald eyes flickered at the bloodied, mutated bodies before us.

She leaned in even closer, her fingernails playfully digging into the skin of my throat, her thumb tracing the edges of my jaw. I breathed in sharply and closed my eyes as she whispered into my ear, "Let us work wonders together..."

And then, everything went red.