Content Warnings:

Physical assault and dehumanizing of another (not Lyra). Dead bodies. Hallucinations.

It wasn’t until I woke up to purring rumbles that I realized that I hadn’t seen Awnya in… well this was the third day since she left me here? I think?

Last night I just decided to walk down and collapse into one of the big fluffy chairs in the entry room. It was a small one, and in the corner so it didn’t smell too badly of Reavers. But I was jolted to a sudden awareness as a couple of the flesh eaters moved through the room. I’d slept on my side facing out, so the moment I opened my eyes I could watch them pause halfway to the food room. Watching me… Considering if I am prey or…

Even when I let my Amwella sight fade, I can still feel my new tendril flitting about. Like a new unseen limb it just wriggles and casts about in reflection to my mood. Right now it’s… well I guess the rippling of tooth and talon signal… annoyance and… and hopefully a warning.

Twital isn’t with these two, but I don’t fight down the anger as I remember their feedings. How one seemed to aim for more… gentle motions before carving her chunk off and leaving me bleeding and sobbing. The other was rough and almost… well not angry but… well she didn’t care if I got hurt. Nails and teeth and bruises.

As they stare at me, I glare back. Their eyes glimmer with hunger and Amwella sight, then go wide and can’t help but track the obvious threat of my new… well I guess it is more of a tail than a limb or tendril.

I let out a soft hissing sound, a wordless warning to just… go away.

It takes them a few seconds, but as the echo of it fades they move. Gather food from the side room and leave me. Only once a few more minutes have passed since their exit do I feel safe enough to pass back into sleep.

“Little Fae.” A voice calls.

I just hiss at this one, flit my tail about in annoyance and threat. Let me sleep.

A sigh, a weird sound, then the space above my head pops and cracks so loudly I nearly fall off the couch. Hissing and spitting and new tail wreathed in sharp talons ready to–

I bump into something, a weird thick rod of wood sticking out from… An arrow. Thick as my arm. One of Bulderii’s.

Turning, I spot the Reaver approaching, bow being slung over one shoulder. She ignores my hiss and scrambling back. Simply pulls the arrow from the couch and peers down at me.

“Come.”

I glare up at her. She never fed upon me, but I can’t shake the images of her breaking my hand and shoving fingers down my throat when she decided I was trying to sing.

She glares back, all hard authority and focus. Then, only a little slower than Thendra, she has an elbow against my neck and is pressing me down onto the couch. My tail jerks and whirls toward her soul, but something cold and hard swacks it aside before pinning it too.

Before I can think, her lips are at my ear. “When I tell you to do something. You move as if it is Thendra’s voice.”

A pause.

Then, much much more quietly. “I am not Twital. I do not seek to feed on you.”

I take a deep breath as that fear bleeds away. Nod.

She releases me with the same easy grace and speed, steps back. Quirks an eyebrow.

I rub at my neck as I push off the couch, then follow her. Wordlessly she takes me up the stairs, down the hallways, past Thendra’s empty chambers, to Voe’s room. Before we even reach the room, I can’t help but pause as I hear a horrid voice.

“Yes, yes… Matron’s crafted–” Voe hisses, “I can stand on my own. Just… give me a moment.”

Deep breaths.

Then I follow Bulderii into the room, and I find myself instinctively using my Amwella sight. The other four Reavers stand about, mostly just… bored and waiting as Thendra looms over their captive. A few little sharp tendrils curl about. Even from Twital’s core. It’s small and pretty wretched, but growing. She spares me… well it’s a side-long look of something, fear or anger or… a mix of them and other things. All eyes seem to glow with Amwella sight, save the watcher’s.

Voe’s soul is still a mess of wounds, some newer than others, but it seems to be trying very hard to recover. Only one face eye is open along with a single eyestalk. The rest droop about her head as if dead as she steadies herself against the wall.

Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

“So, How may I serve?” She smirks at Thendra with so much pain and anger and many many other things I couldn’t hope to absorb. Don’t want to think about it. “Hopefully not as another meal for this lot.”

She coughs, spits bile.

“Information.” Thendra purrs gently. “We begin our plundering of your old home, you will assist in this task.”

Voe nods, like she was waiting for this exact conversation. “Of course. I’ll do better if you…”

She’s cut off as Thendra steps forward, takes her chin and forces Voe to meet her eyes. “Red moonstone. Tell me what you are.”

It’s… that’s… I stare at the scene. The gesture, the positions, the… well it’s just like when Thendra talks to me sometimes…

Voe purses her lips. “Whatever you need me to be, Thendra. The curse is–”

Thendra cuts her off with a soft growl. “You are not a mercenary. Not an ally, and certainly not one of the Reavers. So tell me, watcher, what are you. Right now.”

Voe grinds her teeth. And… and I see the cruelty pierce into her like a knife. Understanding that familiar cracking of something deep inside her as my curse begins to awaken and nibble at her to answer.

“Yours. Of course.”

“My… what?” Thendra presses. Voice full of such a cold threat.

“You’re…” Crack, snap, and a piece of Voe falls to shatter soundlessly at Thendra’s feet. She tries to recover that piece of herself, begins to speak quickly and with a frantic tone as my Lament starts to bite. “Thendra I can be more than that. You know what I can do. Know how much I… I… despite everything you’ve done to my family. I still–”

Thendra moves so gracefully the adjustment in positions seem instant. One second she is simply cradling the watcher’s chin and waiting patiently, the next Voe is hanging a foot in the air. One of Thendra’s hands holds her jaw and neck while the other grips the back of her head.

Voe chokes, writhes as she weakly grasps at Thendra’s wrists.

“Answer me Voe. Simply and honestly.” She growls, “What are you now?”

A hiss of pain, then Voe wheezes out. “S– Slave.”

Thendra drops her, content to let the watcher fall into a slump on the floor.

As the room echoes with Voe’s choking attempts to recover her breath… I almost vomit. Remember my first days and weeks here. See a mirror of myself in this choking horrible monster at Thendra’s feet. We’re… we’re both…

Thendra nods, voice takes on an aura of command. “You will leave this room with myself and Bulderii, you will assist in mapping out the estate in my chambers with us.”

Voe attempts to stand. Fails and stumbles back into the floor, and then she fights with everything in her soul to rise. Thendra does not move to help.

Only as the room begins to clear does Voe notice me. One open eye meets my wide staring ones and she just… glares. Such hatred and malice and promises within that I can’t help but jerk back. Not… not in fear. I know she can’t hurt me now. Even without the Reavers, Thendra, and my curse, She is so weak and wounded that even my little Fae body could resist her.

My finch is in guilt, shame, and horror.

She’s… she’s a monster, she probably did this and worse to others, but… but… As she passes me by and I can’t help but shudder as I see the horrible curse I’ve birthed into the world. My Beloved Sibling’s words roll through my mind harder than any curses sting.

Agony and despair will curse your songs.

I look down to my blackened hands. Just… stare down at the rot that gathers as all others leave. Tail flits and dips about in motions I can’t even begin to understand or interpret.

* * *

*

I can’t help but vomit as the smell hits. Rot and decay and memories flood through me. Flashes of pain and death and the birthing of little writhing horrors that bite and crunch down on the dream. Screams amidst a song of spite and the melody of the end.

Tendrils of rot weaving through me, dragging me down and down and down. Away from warmth and light and life and love and desire and–

“Sing what healing you need.” Thendra growls.

A half-remembered whistling melody chokes its way through my lips, barely… barely helps. But it does keep my mind afloat.

We’d all stood about as Voe drew out and explained all the little nooks and passages and possible magical traps in the Matron’s estate. It was boring, and I would have slept if I’d had a soft pillow or corner or a room empty of hungry Reavers. But… no. Within a few hours Thendra was satisfied with the blueprints to do a cursory walk about the place to begin gathering her plunder.

I’m still on my knees, talons digging into the cold stone floor, now stained with my own bile.

The Rorliras sings their own harmony to the horrid tune of this place of death. And I can’t help but begin to shake and shudder as my song is buried beneath its resonating call.

Just… just as I seem to steady, Thendra commands an end to my remedy. I gag, but stifle it down to a choke.

Thendra looms as we stand in the entrance to the chamber with the Rorliras with two Reavers at our rear. Voe, Bulderii, Twital and the one other Reaver have gone to begin recovering books and scrolls from the library. Voe had, and I’m a little too annoyed and worried to ask why, been given a thin robe to wear. Not the… the weird scant clothing I was always given.

“I… I’m sorry.” I wheeze, trying to cover my face and mouth. “I… I don’t think I can…”

“The Fae said this was her other task in Theradas.” Thendra purrs.

I jerk at the mention of Awnya, glance up and stifle another heave as I flit on my Amwella sight to… to look around. To make sure none of the bodies are…

But she’s not here. And the dark room ahead’s only source of light now is the rift within the mouth of the unnatural shell. I fight to rise, take a deep breath.

“M– May I sing?” I whisper.

“For?”

“I… I want to call out to them. Just in case she’s here. Let… let them know we’re friends and…”

She nods and gives the command, and as we move forward I’m carefully weaving a lilting call of friendship and welcome and pleading to answer washes through the room and winds into the twisting rift into the Rorliras.

There is no reply but the cold death and decay that drenches this horrible room. But… why? Thendra had her Reavers drag all the bodies out of here very soon after the fight? How is this room so filled with…

Then I see her, and the rotting dream scar left deep within the corpse.

The Matron’s slumped form has not simply slurped into a mess of blood and ichor and decay. It… it’s solidified and… and begun to become a host to a dozen or more little weird growths that stretch and wave about. Stalks tipped with little numbs that…

Every part of me jerks to a halt, soulfire and physical. All sound seems to shrivel into itself, leaving only… only a single little lilting tune. Then those horrid little eyestalks pop open, one after another. Little things growing from the Matron’s rotting corpse. And they’re all looking directly at me.

My song shifts, and begins to whine of terror and fury and escape. I back away, begin to draw up my Amwella through pain and torment. Need to get away. A Reaver’s riftwalking song dances at my fingertips, begins to–

A hand is at the back of my head, fingers just this side of digging into flesh. “Stop.”

I jerk around to stare up at Thendra, lips clamp around my horror song on reflex. Her glare is careful, a warning.

“B… But the–” I turn back, and before me is just a rotting corpse. No eyestalks, no horrid tune, just… dead flesh. The room still stinks of its decay, but… nothing else. I can’t even see the dream scar weeping within.

Wh… Where did they go?

Then the Rorliras is singing a reply to my greeting. A wonderful whistling tune of welcome and safety. A call to enter and meet with allies. It helps to dull and mask this room's stench. I almost weep in relief at the Fae song before turning to Thendra to explain its meaning. She nods, and leads us past the mess to stand about fifteen feet back from its entrance.

“Sing for them to come to us.” Thendra purrs.

I sigh and obey. I hate this room but… the Rorliras tunnels are a horrid twisting nightmare that brings a sudden anxious twitching to my tail just hearing its unsettling tune. Much less entering it again.

Then my song is over at Thendra’s command, and only the echoes of it flit about.

A few moments pass, then I see a glimmer of a song. Subtle hint of someone approaching beneath a hidden veil. I still… I wonder how they do that? There are no shadows inside the Rorliras, nothing to draw up around their form to shield it. The tune is the same as mine, just…

Then a Fae I do not recognize shudders into perspective. About my size, deep green hair filled with forest gunk and four twisting brown horns, strangely wrinkled features sitting between curiosity and annoyance. Outfit similar to Awnya’s with thick muscled arms bare. Each covered with little hairy scales of maroon and charcoal. He also has a long beard that is currently twisted into a single complex braid that is so long that he’s had to wrap the thing around his shoulders like a scarf.

He looks between us. “Who’re you lot supposed to be?”