Sequestered ((Solo))

((Contains adult content, situations, and course language))

Part 1

Lithe fingers brushed her throat, outlining the rectangular sides of a red book crisscrossed in chains. The artwork was somewhere between iconism and the baroque art of old masters one might find plastered on domed chapel ceilings with oil paint. Something with red hands reaches for the tome but its face and form are sequestered in a tumble of hair so black it could have been made of shadow-stuff. The owner of the red hands lived on her collarbone and beyond, and perhaps she knew why it lusted after that red tome chained to her neck, perhaps not. It could have been that the long, thin lines of jagged and jarring script that ran the course of her arms from slight shoulders to the very fingers that explored the markings, told the story. Her fingers crept from the book, down the contour of her neck, and dove into the tangle of night, in a secret meeting with the obscured seeker of knowledge. She held her hand there, pressed firmly against the soft skin of her chest, thumbing her clavicle while she felt her heartbeat quicken through her palm.

The other hand trembled as it felt its way along the porcelain edge of a the sink, fumbling ever so slightly without the aid of her eyes, busy elsewhere. The black characters of archaic markings seemed to swim as her smallest finger found the cold metal of the desired object.

“I answer the call of Yvain, Maiden of Deceit,” shapely, dark lips painted violet formed the words and she chewed every syllable, hammering every consonant, and she bared her teeth as she hissed the word 'deceit.' Striking emerald eyes met green orbs, every bit as brilliant. Her reflection formed every juicy word of the dark prayer that she herself did. Her reflection had the same faint lines running from the corners of her eyes from sleepless nights and a life spent on the cusp of terror.

Schlik.

With a deft flick of her hand, a steel razor edge sprung from the black textured handle, outstretched like the arm of a mantis. She dragged the razor gently over her breast, drawing only a single droplet of crimson liquid. The blade of the razor paid its respects to the scarlet book, and passed, drawing more blood as it crested her pointed chin. The droplets pattered on the crisp white edge of the sink, and some making it to pale skin of her delicate feet. She balled her toes on the shaggy bathroom carpet at the sensation. She focused, scowling, her mirror-self scowling back.

“FLAYER OF SAINTS!”

She pressed the razor into her cheek and sliced. A spurt of blood made it to the dirty mirror and rivulets dripped. The wound was grave and the sickly pink of bared flesh showed through.

“Cenobite Whore!”

She dragged the razor over her forehead violently which gave the mirror a second coat.

“Give me your blessing, give it to me!” she pleaded, her eyes desperate, but the emerald eyes in the mirror were cool and collected.

“I like it when you beg,” her reflection drawled.

“I know, my lady, we've done this for more than one-thousand nights,” she spoke hoarsely, and she sliced deep the bridge of her nose. “Please! Your blessing please, it hurts too much!”

“Pathetic. Did you know there are six-hundred-and-sixty-six cold iron hooks in my lungs, and when I breathe, they pull in six-hundred-and-sixty-six different directions? What is your pain compared to mine, you mewling caterpillar? BEG,” her exact likeness demanded.

“Rending Slut of the Abyss, I plead! PLEASE! Your... blessing,” the servant begged of her likeness. The razor tumbled from her shaking hand and clattered into the sink which was itself crimson now. She felt faint. Her knees shook violently.

“Fine pig, your duress is pleasing. You shall have it. Awaken tomorrow and your majesty shall be a pale shadow of my own. My blessing be unto you, my only faithful,” her reflection spoke, smiling, satisfied, bleeding. It lowered its head and raven tresses to the slick, warm, rim of the sink, and rested a moment.

It took a long moment to steady herself, but the petite, raven-haired woman, covered from head to toe in an encyclopedia of infernal markings, stumbled out of the bathroom, catching the wooden door frame for support on the way. She face-planted her soft, white bed in exhaustion, and immediately regretted it. As peaceful, utter unconsciousness began to take precedence over the jarring ache of her wounds, she muttered sweetly into her now blood-stained pillow.

“That was one of the top ten best orgasms I've ever had.”

***

This is the only place I can go to be alone with my thoughts. I come here often, although it takes a toll on you, getting to that point of exhaustion where there are no dreams to interrupt your rest. Sometimes it takes extraordinary measures, and there has to be a degree of farce to it, or they would suspect something is amiss. They thought that there was nothing here, in this place of deepest unconsciousness, and it was nothing for me to just... slip away for a while because I lost too much blood, or suffered a head injury or, drank my weight in 'shine.

The sleeper, human and small, draped over the small island of jagged jet, horizontal in repose. She sat up, propped on one hand while the other languidly outstretched slim fingers one by one as if testing the stability of their reality. The black markings and images that caged her mortal flesh were gone, and the sheer whiteness of her skin could not be overstated even against the cold black rock. She rose to her feet on the solitary island, and all that she was beneath the Woman in Black was bared for an audience of no-one.

She dove with perfect form into the still green water that surrounded the the ebony stone formation, and her figure was distorted below the surface of the subterranean spring, but made all the more shapely beneath the wake of her dive. She did not come up for air until she reached the far side. Clear water dripped from her black hair which, when drenched, reached to the merry 'Y' shape at the top of her behind. Though she barely crested five-feet in height, her proportions were otherwise generous. She wrung out the excess water and it sparkled in mid-drip, then became one with the cavernous darkness of the chamber's floor. Light seemed subject to fancy, both absent and present, depending on the focus of the Witch, but with no discernible source.

The cavern was laid out in the shape of a pentagon of indeterminate size, sometimes colossal with the freedom to move and stretch and dance, and other times quite small, like the intimacy of one's bedroom when the door is closed and the night is quiet. On the rough face of each of the five walls, a perfect semicircle of ghost-lights illuminated an archway, each passage with a different colour; the lavender of pressed flowers, mint green of favoured bon-bons, the teal of a gemstone, set in a silver brooch, the orange of jack'o'lanterns near All-Hallow's. Pure white like rabbit's fur.

Everything I know is here. I've been chronicling, and recording, and squirrelling, and stashing, and writing and carving for what seems like longer than I can remember. I don't think I'm so old though, am I? A quarter of the way through my first century shouldn't feel like its taken this long to reach it, but it does. Oh my darling, it's been ages and ages and that doesn't even begin to properly express. Maybe you understand, and maybe you don't, how time seems to slow down when the world around you is burning. How a scream can be measured in moments or eons. Has it really only been twenty-five years? Or has it been twenty-five lifetimes? And if a lifetime is measured by the time it takes to live and die, then, well my pet, I must have lived almost 10,000 lifetimes, because every night my soul is betrayed to the Nether-Five by some abusive happenstance, and I die again, and again, and again.

No, I can't go down that path. The futility will awaken me and I don't have much time as it is. Minutes, or hours at most.

Her flesh bobbed, responsive and fit as she padded barefoot across the cavern floor. She stopped before the arch wreathed in flame that was the pale purple of a cherished memory, and although that memory had long ago decomposed, the colour gave her strength like a grandmother's last words.

The Woman lit an ebon torch with the purple light though she did not need it to see. The soft padding of little feet was the only sound that accompanied the tiny white figure wreathed in protective purple light as it disappeared down the vaulted hall.

The obstacle completely overran the hall, and the Witch was forced to pick her steps with the tips of her toes. The coils of razor wire bunched in the path like briers, and even in serenity, her pulse quickened as her bare leg glanced one of the million small blades. It wouldn't cut her. It had no power over her there, and it was a matter of respect that she avoided touching the edged wire – as if with the tremorsense of a spider in its web, She would sense its vibration and know the Witch was about. Her lean, pale legs moved in slow-motion and exaggerated strides, making steady progress over the razor wire, until she cleared the last few feet of the tunnel, and into the Chamber of Knives and Vanity.

Yvain is dearest to me of the five, though my love is not true nor one-fold. Her native land is the Pit, where all smells of brimstone and the wind blows in screams. The punisher as she was punished, stray souls of hell were hers to torment, and through cursed looking-glasses, she twisted mankind for as long as they have aware of their own reflections.

Clear of the tunnel's yawning mouth, the Woman was free to move about the veritable museum of blades, instruments of torture, and queerer things. Her hands brushed the levers that slackened or pulled taught lengths of iron chain that ended in hooks. The winches were well used, and well oiled. She laughed softly, and a corner of her dark lips lifted in smirk. She parted rows of dangling manacles and bashfully approached a relic that sat upon a plush red velvet pillow, like a sultan's prize. It was small, the size of a necklace. Two leather straps, joined by steel rings, fused to a glistening black ball – a toy meant to stifle the cries of the submissive. She touched the smooth, black orb fondly, and thought how yielding it would be with her teeth pressed over it, how it would hold but not harm.

Oh, but it makes your jaw ache...

She passed pristine glass display cases which boasted an array of dark delights: surgeon's scalpels, taxidermied childhood pets with their pelts removed, a heart within a cold-iron birdcage that beat stubbornly in a steadily supplied pool of red ichor. A collection of disembodied eyes, jarred in formaldehyde, blinked wide with horror as she passed. A gimp suit of human skin with a zipper made of teeth...

The witch passed suits of spiked full-plate. Had she stopped to examine them, she would have noted that the hollow armour was barbed on the inside as well.

The resonance of trickling liquid came crisply through the maze of malevolent artifact. She rounded some war machine she didn't recognize, but could imagine how it would cut down legions of warriors in violent fashion as it rolled through them. There, in a glaring spotlight of unholy brilliance, beyond the gallery of suffering, was a porcelain fountain of shimmering crimson liquid. The trickle of the arching streams was as music and the air smelled deliciously of copper. Something within the fountain beat steady and rhythmically like a drum. The Witch leaned in low, pressing her hip against the sill of the fountain which challenged the ivory of her skin, as she traced her index finger through the surface of the pooled blood in lazy circles.

Maybe tonight, just tonight, I don't need to visit those other places. Maybe I'll just sit by the fountain for a bit. Yes, and then I shall return to the sanctuary, and sit with my feet in the water, and await daybreak's tickling of my eyes. I'll go no further tonight. Just this one time.

***

The Witch raised her ebon torch, extinguished once more, to the ghost-lit archway that boasted a glittering teal often associated with the gemstones that monarchs or people of great import wear. She struck the light and disappeared down another of her sanctuary's five tunnels, bathed in a rich bluish-green.

Unlike the previous tunnel, non-descript and choked with barbed wire, the passage beyond the teal archway was painted in beautiful murals and patterned mosaics of intricately laid, colourful clay tiles. A repetitive figure dominated almost all the scenes, armoured for war, and standing atop a hill of corpses, or lurking in the dark while drunken revellers passed by, mere feet away from their ultimate demise. In a particular mural, the figure was clad in golden plate, with dead-yellow eyes, and it was he who turned his back to a hunter in the dark. The certain expression on the warrior's stoic, if evil, face seemed to say “I know you're there. I knew you would be there.”

Bhaal, the Lord of Murder.

She reached the end of the tunnel, not really paying much attention to the timeless works of art on the walls and pitched ceilings. The Woman knew them even with her eyes closed. She had created them, pieced together from stories and whispers, and dreams. She stepped into a veritable temple, brazers lit with blue-green flame, and a simple sandstone altar on which sat a sun-bleached skull, and a trio of new, unlit candles.

On the domed chapel ceiling, walls, and even the floor, the entirety of the Dead God's tale was recorded. She knew it by heart now. The temple floor was a mosaic of a man, almost human, and was the only image of Bhaal not depicting him in his customary doom-plate. In the mosaic he was a giant, proportions made clear by abstract scenery and objects vaguely resembling city structures. He was nude, boasted muscles not found on traditional male anatomy, and his mammoth hands clutched the hilt of a black two-handed sword.

She knelt on the hilt of the black sword, and clasped her hands at the center of her chest.

I would have found you in my own time, without the creeping influence that pervaded me since I was a babe. Over time and space, I would have heard your call and sought you out, even without the sound of your sweet voice. I was destined to bring offerings to your black temple, through both belief and temperament, though I may not have had a name on my lips to offer up a prayer. Bhaal, Lord of Murder. Black-Blade of Disaster. Claimer of Kings. Dead-God-Dreaming.

It brings me comfort to know that he too felt the impassive embrace of victimhood. Bhaal, pawn of fate's cruel ironies, was himself too, murdered. I don't think he bear's a grudge, even now. I truly believe he looks at the greater forces of the universe and utters: “Well played!” in that bass, rumbling voice I know too well. Mentor. Father. Lover. My modus operandi.

Retrieving the ebon torch, she stood, and radiated the only heat to ever grace the temple of murder, and drew near the altar of the skull with the aire of a cleric. She tapped the three candles in succession and they sprang to light, the skull glowing aquamarine in acquiescence. She dared to speak, though even as she did, it was soft, barely higher than a whisper so not to wake Him.

“Three candles I have lit for you, one for every time I've paid tithe. You demand more, and I hear you. I wish you could understand that even without the heavy hand bearing over me, I would align. Even without the demanding shout I would obey of my own accord. Even without your wrath, I would fear. The bladed-crown of Yvain is my heart, but you, Black-Sword, are my life.”

***

The Woman tittered as her toes traced elaborate and nonsensical patterns in the green waters of her sanctum. “How long till dawn?” she wondered. Sometimes it felt like mere moments. On occasion, it felt like the true sum of eight-or-so hours of complete rest. She hoped for the latter.

She contemplated her belly-button.

How delightfully curious!

In real life, she didn't have one. There was no trace anymore. Not to say, there was nothing there.

In real life, her ears were pierced, for better or for worse. Her skin vandalized. She had three eyes. Four, if you buy into chakras.

In real life, her chalky bones broke when the wind blew, and had a strange texture she could faintly make out through her skin.

In that one fictitious room, she was whole for as long as she could will herself to death. Summarized in that short moment, was the closest thing that the Woman in Black could describe as “an acceptable way to spend eternity.”

She contemplated her belly-button some more.

In real life, the remnants of an umbilicus marked a human's rough center of gravity. The midst of the Witch's taught stomach, was an 'X' of red yarn, sewn slightly too tightly. The string twitched as if alive when pestered. If cut, the frayed ends of yarn burrowed aggressively into the flesh of her belly and sewed themselves anew. It was an agonizing process made all the worse for the yarn's tendancy to get caught on practically everything. The Witch wasn't entirely sure where, if anywhere, the yarn actually anchored inside her body, but she had her suspicions.

Yes! How nice it must be, to have a belly-button.

And with a swish of her toes and a splash of green water, she put the matter to rest.

***

With a dexterous flourish of her arm, the ebon torch burst with light the colour associated with the autumnal equinox, and the heralding of harvest season. An eerie orange illumination danced on the Witch as she pressed on through the third of her sanctum's five pathways of wisdom.

Apple pie, and cow's cream.

The Woman fortified herself and her first steps were much more ginger than the first she had taken on her previous wanderings.

I made this place. It's all just symbols and memories and dreamweave. This is my place, I don't share it with anyone.

Things crawled, always just out of sight, unable to breach the sanctity of her realm. The boundaries of the tunnel were unlit, and seemed as if they could simply be starless space. At the end of the tunnel though, a twin archway opened to the ethereal light of sunset. The woman carried her torch to it, and stepped out of the cavernous blackness onto roughly cut green grass that tickled her feet. She was in a small glade in the forest, surrounded by lawn which wreathed a house with dark windows.

There was no dirt road that ran to the front porch of that dilapidated house, so she crossed the grass that her subconscious had the foresight to mow. The old stairs creaked, but inflicted no splinters on her bare soles. There was no need to knock. It seemed somehow blasphemous to pass beyond the cracked and peeling paint of the front door completely naked. Even sure-footed, she took special care to avoid touching the walls with her skin, as if the taint would cling like mould spores.

Further into the labyrinthian maze of rooms and hallways, something enormous stomped up some stairs with so much force dust unsettled from the crossbeams of the ceiling. The Witch paused and held her breath, and waited for it to pass.

Henwa, Mother of Abberations...

She flowed into a gallery, trailing her torch behind her carelessly, like a child at play, but stopped inside the small studio, and gazed at the only thing occupying the space. Once, sailboats, bridges, parks, animals, stunning vista views, and other imagery decorated the walls as the subjects of paintings. Only slightly less-grimy rectangles of wallspace was evidence that anything had ever hung there. In the farthest corner of the room, a slimy, green egg sac pulsed and squelched. Hundreds of transparent, opalescent pods with dark inner pits that seemed to move in spasms, hung in a smear of glowing olive slime. The eggs vibrated one or two at a time. The slime crept from a crack in the mid point of the wall and dribbled down in tendrils, but there seemed no end to the stuff.

One of the eggs burst without warning like a pustule, casting white ooze out a few feet. A black tadpole rolled down the slime bouncing off other eggs, and flopped onto the dusty wooden floor with a few slimy bounces. It formed a fanged mouth, screeched once, spasmed, then died.

Further down the hallway which would terminate at a set of stairs where the stomping earlier came, was another room, larger than the first, and seemingly unchanged by time. A black piano glistened in the light of the setting sun that filtered in from the western window. She took a seat so that her bare back was to the sunset, and played a few notes on the ivory keys.

“Haaail to thee Ra-da-saaaanth,
Spires tall and vistas wiiiide.”

She sang and her words were as honey and well rehearsed. Then she unceremoniously slammed all ten fingers onto different keys with a raucous crash. She picked a few choice notes with her index finger, and then rose from the polished black bench.

Deeper still another room opened all the wider.

The dining room? Clinking tea-cups?

The room remained featureless, save a curtained window.

A parlor? The smell of whiskey? Cigars?

The room remained featureless.

The ceiling shook suddenly with a great “bang!” Somewhere on the second story, a woman's moan rose in volume steadily. The moan ended in a crescendo wail, and from on the floor directly above the Witch's head, there came a great squelching noise like a bucket of slurry being overturned, followed by the dull patter of many small objects falling into the slush. The moan began to rise again from quiet, and once more a piercing shriek tore through the house, and another wave of mush hit the floor upstairs. There was the sound of many fingernails scrabbling at the floor. The scrabble became a scurry, like hundreds of rats, leading away from there.

Time to go.

The Witch made her way to the entrance of the house, but did not run. Her movements were controlled and sure. On the way, she spied an arch into a room that wasn't present on her previous examination of that particular hallway. Drawn in by a familiar scent, she peeked her head into the dusty room, her hand on the antique door frame, ignoring her personal rule of not touching anything. The room was high to the ceiling on all walls with shelves of books that bore spines of all colours.

I definitely got this room right.

With a reaffirming nod, the Witch made her way outside where the last wisps of sunlight were beginning to play on the encircling pines. She crossed the radius of the emerald circle with the orange light of the ebon torch held aloft, and heard again the agonized wail of a woman from the second story of the house with dark windows.

***

She carried no torch as she approached the half ring of mint-green ghost-light. One hand was cupped with a handful of oval candies that matched the lights in hue. The other hand raised them to her mouth a few at a time, and she sucked on them noisily for minutes at a time.

Just staring through the archway.

My feelings towards Ist are complicated. I hate It the most. I resent Its presence in my dreams and I would cast It out in a flutter of my heart if I knew how. But the great-surging-thing is sealed away, one of the Nether-Five, and so I do my best to endure. I have no other choice. Yet, I confess, that from Ist I draw a wealth of artistic creativity and any talent I could possibly boast, I probably owe to Its alien inspiration.

Quiet as a mouse, the Witch padded down the tunnel, comprised entirely - walls, ceiling, and floor - of living tissue that pulsed meekly and emitted a barely audible gurgle. She made no sound, save the obnoxious sucking of the candies. Their mild sweetness alone was not enough of a charm to keep her grounded in that corner of her mind, and the savoury sucking sound produced a comforting and shielding obliviousness that allowed her nerve to steel.

I'll tell you a secret. Its been almost a year since the last time Ist visited me in dream. The last time it happened, when I woke up, I found I had wet my bed. I'm not ashamed to admit that the prospect of the world being assimilated by the Envoy-of-Madness chills me to my very core. But I obey without question when Its summons come. If you experienced that depth of unbridled rage bearing down on your prostrate soul, you'd probably obey too. Come, I'll give you a taste.

A single one of the mint candies spilled over from her cupped hand, and fell to the membranous ground. A sphincter with needle-like teeth opened just wide enough to use its inch-long teeth to draw the candy into itself. It gave a minty burp, and melded back into the organic walkway.

Like the previous paths, the tunnel ended with a great shift of setting and time, but unlike the others, there was no level ground to continue. A ledge of the fleshy material that comprised the tunnel overlooked an alien landscape of barren cosmic rock, cratered with impacts from asteroids and debris. The great void of space opened for an eternity.

The stars are wrong here. The constellations are different. I made sure to make note of that. But look, the moons!

Four identical white moons shone a disorienting radiation on the landscape, orbitting in concentric rings. The heavenly bodies seemed to be nearing alignment, the farthest just peaking out from the one before it. The white glow was nauseating, and seemed to penetrate the skin and vibrate the innards. The Witch lowered to one knee on the flesh-ledge, and locked her sparkling green eyes on a single crater the size of one of the mountains of Salvar. The impact that created it must have been immense.

Like tiny ants at that distance, small, white bipedal forms, climbed over the lip of the enormous crater, and broke into a run down the slope. Some made good distance, others seemed to struggle with the oppressive gravity of the place. The forerunners had no sooner made it near the bottom of the slope when something else began to stir in the crater. As if the mountain were some sort of lunar volcano, it belched forth rivers of glittering black, in which if one looked close enough, they could see every colour of the spectrum.

All things that creep and crawl are in great-surging-thing's domain.

The avalanches of skittering myriapods; centipedes, millipedes, and other more bizarre multi-legged creatures, more poured than crawled, clearing distance between the straggling humanoids.

The poor, wretched souls that were assimilated by Ist's madness before It was sealed away. Their consciousness is broken down and mixed in a great melting-pot of chaos, twisted and sculpted into something rotten. Then, over time, as the bits of soul come into contact with their familiar parts, they gather, until they once again form enough of a consciousness to bubble to the surface and escape while the thing is sleeping. It takes moments for flesh to be stripped back down to bone in the wave of things that crawl. They're the lucky ones. Their bones will remain on the slopes of the Great Crater until the next cycle. It is but a reprieve.

The river of vermin stymied, and there came a sound somewhere between an air-raid siren, and a fog horn. It defied the laws of space, and pervaded out into the silent cosmos itself. The reverberation knocked those midway down the mountain off their feet, and wide fissures marred the face of the crater. Long, ropy pseudopods, sickly pinks and purples, snatched the prone creatures in the blink of an eye, and vanished back into the fissures with their prey. The maddening drone came again, and the cosmic volcano vomited a globular mass of organic tissue which hovered in mid space, the same diameter of the crater mouth. It hovered there and emit its alien song, but did not cease this time. The drone went on and on, and the four moons of the alien world were blotted out by the cosmic horror. Impossibly long tentacles of the flesh orb reached from the sky, plucking up any remaining humanoids, then disappearing with them inside of folds in its form. The sphere of flesh, formless in the vacuum of space, had a halo of sickening white radiation like the moon during an eclipse, and all on that bleak landscape was, for a moment, both living and dead at the same time.

The Woman popped another handful of mints into her mouth, then hurled the remaining handful into the void, where they were swept up and drawn away into the infinite abyss. She wiped her sticky hand on her bare hip and watched them go, refusing to look even for a moment longer at the Envoy-of-Madness. She was certain it would open its one-thousand eyes, and meet her gaze. She looked at her small, delicate hand, and it flickered for a moment, out of reality. She sucked noisily on the last of her candies and closed her eyes to the horror.

***

I remember when the carnival came to Radasanth. There was a parade. Dancers in jester's motley...

The Witch's hands flickered in and out of reality several times before stabilizing, as if the signal was coming in weakly.

She smiled softly, eyes closed, her swooping black lashes still.

Elephants and monkeys. Silly things. Vendors and popcorn.

Her hands flickered again.

Kaiden Lear, he was an elf, and he looked my age. His eyes were blue. Oh, and Lana Oliviar, we were like twins. She always smelled good.

She could smell her.

Her hands flickered some more. So did the rest of her form. She could feel the disconnection.

The Witch headed for a distant semi-circle of white ghost-light. The end. Abaddon.

She flickered again, and clutched her skull in the grip of a migraine.

“NoOoo!” she whined pitifully.

The Woman scrambled on all fours, searching for the ebon torch, but it was nowhere to be found.

The soothing white light, with a touch as soft as downy fur.

She clutched her skull which burned and constricted and clouded her senses with the black smoke of burning rubber.

The-Utter-End. Just out of reach...

Grating metal shrieked as jagged shards forced their way past each other inside her brain. Great objects, green tanks, atomic bombs, and fighter jets without wings, all torn to shreds in a tornado of savage grinding wind. Ballistae and catapults splintered effortlessly.

The Witch surrendered in child's pose, as the images of war across all of time whirled in her mind, out of place. The end of all things. Armageddon.

Stop.

The Citadel of the monks of Ai'Brone crumbled into the dust of ages.

She curled, brought her knees to her chest, sobbing as her sanctum began to melt away. When her form was manifest, it boasted the infernal markings written in Black Speech, and the tattoos foretelling of the end of times, her virgin skin wrecked. Then she disappeared altogether.

((End of Part 1))

Part 2

The Duchy of Aeric, 42 Miles South-East of Stonevale

The glittering waves breached on the wave breakers in the main harbour of the Duchy of Aeric. Several Galleys bobbed lazily, anchored further out to sea, their crews ready to do battle with pirates at the sound of a bell. Secretly, they all hoped it would be another lazy day in the bustling port town.

Tiers of roads ran parallel to the waterfront, and wagons clattered and horses clopped as merchants purchased and sold wares at the harbour and carted them to their shops or stalls in the market. Fishwives and gentlemen exchanged pleasantries in passing, and whispered in hushed gossip when a stranger disembarking one of the many ferries walked the street. The Dutchy's geographical importance to greater Scara Brae afforded it a great degree of prosperity and it was fast becoming a bustling hub with more and more ships chartering courses to Aeric and back directly than ever before. It was exactly those transitory properties of the region that had brought the Witch to Aeric in the first place.

The sun had just crested the Eastern side of the island, and filtered rays shone through the muslin drapes of the hotel room facing the bay. The Siren's Song Inn on Walleye St. was taller than it was wide, nearly five stories, but only a pair of narrow glass windows framing a bright blue door with a faded wooden sign atop it as a store front. The Witch had taken the attic room on the fifth floor that had a bay window hanging over the busy street below, and a private watercloset.

A lush jungle of black eyelashes parted, and watery emerald irises widened as her pupils contracted to ward off the morning sun.

There came a metallic “click” as a key slid into the lock in the room door at the summit of the Siren's Song. The Woman in Black sat up from her white sheets and stretched as tumblers slipped into alignment and the door opened a crack.

“Good morning Miss, I'm starting my cleaning rounds. The day's getting away from you, you know. I've already put away breakfast, but I saved you a plate,” a squat woman in a powder-pink smock and with a mop of brown and grey hair said cheerfully with a heavy accent. Althea Perkins was the sole proprietor, executive chef, bartender, and friendly face of the Siren. The matron prided herself on the individual attention she provided her guests, which the Witch surmised, included a wake-up call at sun-up. The elderly innkeeper methodically began to place cleaning supplies at the mouth of the room, then did a double take and screamed, staring at the Witch in disbelief, her hands covering her mouth.

The Woman in Black stared back, not quite understanding.

“Your face!” Althea began, her hands parting from her mouth, exposing an exaggerated look astonishment. “I've had hundreds of guests in my day, but I've never had one wake-up looking like they've put in a full morning of routine! My goodness, you're a beauty. Could you tell Auntie Althy your secret dear?” she concluded with a chuckle.

The Witch shrugged, taking in for the first time, that she was fully dressed, face highlighted and contoured, and her raven hair fell in a tumble over her left eye like a starlet.

“A pagan blood sacrifice to a Cenobite Hell-Dutchess, involving a steel straight razor,” she mumbled offhandedly, as she stepped out of bed already clad in fine, low-cut stiletto boots. The innkeeper's jaw slackened at the Witch's half-joke. The Woman in Black picked some sleep out of the corner of her eye with her manicured pinky fingernail that was painted the colour of the night sky. She looked at the elderly woman and smiled fakely. “I woke up early and went for a run, then I went back to sleep for a bit,” she lied.

The innkeeper eyed her heeled boots skeptically, and her brown eyes followed vertically as her patron rose from the crisp white bed. Her legs were bare from calf to thigh, where they met the neat, black hem of a pencil skirt. The curve of her hips were accentuated greatly by the constrictive boning of a tightly laced black corset, made from some cheap, silky material. By some miracle of fashion, with the blessing of illusionary magic, she managed to remain stuffed into the garment that came to an abrupt end in the middle of her chest. An obsidian cameo hung low on a thin steel chain, resting on her cleavage, and her shoulders and collarbones were bare. The tattoos that covered her like a second skin were nowhere to be seen, save for the book and chains on her throat that she wore unaccentuated and openly, as she envisioned when she beseeched the blessing the evening prior. Her one visible gleaming emerald orb was framed in a wave of angular inky liner that contrasted darkly with her porcelain skin, and her lips were as her nails, midnight black.

“You went for a run, dressed like that,” Althea reiterated flatly.

“Yes, I went for a run, dressed like this. My, you're awefully inquisitive for a person inexplicably standing in my bedroom first thing in the morning. ...Did you say something about breakfast?”