Phoebe winced, “Great. So we’re off to check out some prophecy, aren’t we?”
“Atur was the one who predicted that a Fourth would rise. The Child of Destiny, to be anointed by the dragons, even beyond their own deaths. She would walk through death, with death by her side.” He hesitated, “I am afraid that is about all I know. I did not exactly listen to my religious tutors in my youth. I serve no god, but my own blade.”
She cocked her head, “Wait. An agnostic when the gods are literally all up in your faces? Go’ruuk sent me home. I’ll worship him for that. He cracked open the worlds, for me, for Gruna. Well, not cracked. It was actually kinda peaceful. Not like me or Vivibitch.”
“I acknowledge the existence of the gods, certainly. However I just simply see no need to dedicate my soul to any. I am quite happy for this life, to be my only life.”
She shrugged, “You do you. Speaking of, I’m Phoebe, but uh…”
“Captain John of the Town Guard.” The man stated without emotion.
“Little John, eh?” Phoebe chuckled to herself.
“I am hardly little. My height is beyond the average.” John immediately took offence.
She grinned, “Yeah. It’s a story, where I’m from. Little John was a bear-sized man who fought by the side of Robert of Loxley, who we also call Robin Hood for some random reason. Man was a psycho with a pole. A hero.”
“How… Strange.” John was unimpressed.
The Temple of the Three was not an imposing building. The rest of the city buildings dwarfed it in height, and the stonework was chipped, cracked and old. The thing almost seemed like it was about to collapse. Aged and forgotten, apart from some random librarian who was obsessed with the story it could tell.
Phoebe smiled sadly as she stepped inside, right before she saw the purple-eyed bitch. The woman smiled at her sweetly, standing up and closing the book she had been reading. “Oh, hello pet.”
“Viviane.” She snarled.
The captain stepped between them quickly, “You are mistaken, m’lady. This is our Keeper of the Scrolls, the Lady Miranda -”
“She’s fuckin’ Viviane.” Phoebe snapped her fingers, summoning an orange fireball, “So, we gonna do this?”
“Not yet. Though, you’re quite right.” The witch replied and shrugged, “Sorry, John. I did lie about who I am. I needed to. I had to be here, for this moment. To show Phoebe, precious Phoebe, exactly what we’ve all been doing. Drektanion. Elion. Even Marcy. There’s a role to play in all of it, and the play has already been written.”
“Libraries burn pretty well.”
Viviane smiled at her, “Oh, pet. I know you’re angry. But… Don’t you want to know why? It hasn’t been like I’ve been trying to kill you. Only to hurt you.”
“Blah blah, something psycho, blah.” Phoebe rolled her eyes, “You’ve been making me master my magic or some shit. Probably to try and strip it from me, so you can break Myrrdin’s curse on you, right? Fuck off.”
“No, pet.” Viviane shook her head, “You know the stories. You’re from a world where it’s just myth. I lived it, but you heard it through your childhood. The great fairytales of Merlin the Wizard, and the boy who became king, Arthur. King of England! Chosen to wield the sword, Excalibur.”
“Which he got tossed in a pond.” Phoebe shrugged, “So… Fuck off?”
The witch sighed, “Oh, so very angry. I was just trying… To help you pass the veil of death. To step just the other side, before coming back to us.”
John swallowed nervously, beginning to inch towards the door. Which also made Phoebe realise that Ghost hadn’t followed them inside. The wolf was terrified of the witch. He knew precisely what she was capable of, and that there wasn’t a single fragment of empathy in her fractured psyche.
“Cross over… Why?” She humoured the woman.
Viviane picked up another book, running her fingers over the covers sadly, “Reincarnation, of course. To see your previous lives, to know what you have done before… That is a gift that only death can give us. Peace is only given, in the success of all your lives. The choice to be reborn, when you’re not yet satisfied. Not ready to move beyond these worlds.”
“I just hauled Drektanion out of purgatory. Not sure I believe in reincarnation.”
The witch shrugged, “You did though, once. A very long time ago. I can still remember the words you whispered, as you lay dying…”
“So what, you’re like Morgana, and I’m… You seriously think I’m king fucking Arthur, bitch?” Phoebe stared.
The woman chuckled, “No pet, no. History has always had a way of… Distorting the truth. The stories are written by the victors. The survivors. I was neither of those, not in that war.”
Phoebe yawned, “Getting bored. Wanna burn you.”
“I am Viviane. Myrrdin is still hiding his lying sack of shit in the dark, but Atur…” The witch smiled sadly, “She was your wife, pet. Your name, in one of your last lives, was Gwenhwyfar.”
She blinked, “Wait, I’m Guinevere? That’s… Can you stop being weird? Kinda hard to wanna kill you, when you’re trying to sound all motherly. Morgana killed Gwen.”
The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.
“Yes. I did.” Viviane nodded, “Just as Atur killed me. And I killed her, before she could remember who she was. Sent her to go play with Go’ruuk, before she could remember that this world belonged to her.”
Phoebe’s stomach rumbled as she put it together. “Fuck me.”
The witch nodded sadly, “Truly. Now, I tried to do this nicely. To make you remember. Because I still need you to remember. Because there is something I want, and you’re the only one who knows where it is.”
“Excalibur. You’re after a magic fuckin’ sword.” Phoebe snarled, and dropped the fireball onto the tiles, exploding it outwards into the shelves.
Viviane snapped her fingers and extinguished the flames into a puff of black smoke, “Not just a sword. The Sword in the Stone, and the Sword from the Lady of the Lake, are different things. The second one, pet, is what I’m after. I gave my sword, my soul, to Atur, and the fucker used it to conquer the world, and she never gave it back!”
Phoebe blinked, “Oh. So that’s why you’re such a bitch.”
Viviane clenched her fists, her purple eyes bursting into flames, “So… Pet… Tell me. Where is my soul?”
“Yeah, no visions of another life. Sorry.” Phoebe shrugged, “Guess I just don’t believe hard enough in that kind of shit.”
“You could bring Gruna back.” Viviane snarled, “You have the power. She would know. She has been dwelling at the table of Go’ruuk. She knows who she was, and what she has done. For you, she would hold her hand instead of striking at me wildly.”
Phoebe frowned, “Huh. Can’t do it, eh, bitch? No. I don’t think so. Gruna has paid her price. She’s earned her paradise. So why don’t I just go ahead and murder your ass.”
The witch snickered, “Pet. I just told you, that I have no soul. So what exactly is it, that you’ll be killing?”
Phoebe winced.
Viviane spread her hands, “I haven’t been trying to end you, pet. Yes to hurt. But only so that you can help me. To lead you here, to this moment.”
“Still haven’t told me the prophecy or whatever.”
The woman sighed, “Fine. That was Atur, mind. She said that you’d be reborn, time and time again, until the day that I die. That you’d walk around, and everyone around you would die. That you’d bed death itself, and you have, haven’t you, pet?”
“You’re the one who ripped her soul from her body, you cunt.”
Viviane shrugged, “She did it to me, first. I just took to it better.”
Phoebe got sick of talking. She wasn’t a witch. And she wasn’t Guenivere. Gruna was Gruna, not some ghost of King Arthur. Whatever messed up insanity that Viviane used to justify her crusade of magic and darkness, was not enough to make up for her crimes.
The flames burst out of her in every direction. Even as Viviane tiredly waved them from her face, they hit the bookcases. The words that claimed that Viviane was a god before the gods. The words that said Phoebe was a witch. The ones that said she’d end the world. She took every passion that went into every syllable to further fuel the flames.
Phoebe took the hope in them, twisting it into the rage that it should have been. A single woman, hate in her soulless heart, abusing and controlling a world, stealing lives from others, just seeking for anything that might crack the worlds apart in pursuit of madness.
The flames boiled out, and the concrete and tiles around them cracked. Phoebe raised an eyebrow to the witch. Viviane yawned and shrugged. Waiting for what might come next.
The roof cracked, and then crumbled. It caved down with almighty crash, but Phoebe was swept off her feet, laughing, as Ghost plunged through that chaos. Snagging the back of her shirt in his mouth, before she swung around and landed on his back. Hugging onto the wolf as they came skittering out onto the street.
Phoebe sat up, spotting the guards coming from one direction, dragging Leo in chains, whilst in the other direction Viviane was casually throwing aside the blocks of stone that should have smacked her in the head.
Soulless monster.
Death is the doorway, not the end.
Phoebe rolled her eyes, “Why do dragons have to say everything in friggin’ subtext? Sonuvabitch.”
She swung down off the wolf, landing on the ground heavily and patted his side. “I’ve got this. You go get the chains off Leo. You owe him, for being a brat.”
Ghost whined and planted his feet, growling at the witch.
Phoebe rolled her eyes, “You save Leo, I save Marcy, and then we both kill Viv. Sound good to you?”
He reluctantly turned, before sprinting off to play with some more ragdolls in armour. Phoebe, on the other hand, knew she was at a disadvantage. She might be able to trap Viviane, she even had a clue as to how to kill the bitch if she needed to, but she didn’t know where Marcy was.
She couldn’t sense her, like she could Ghost. Viviane tossed off her own vibes as well. However, Marcy… Marcy felt like a small laugh in a crowded room. There was no way to spot something like that in the teeming masses. Not without a lot more experience with whatever the heck Phoebe was turning into, the more time she spent in this place.
“Pet, I’m waiting. What is that you were going to do next?”
Fire wasn’t what Phoebe controlled. It was the expression of herself. The hopeful candle in the deep dark cave. The angry ball of fire that crushed the attacker. The hopeless wrath that could tear into the nature of the world, and rip it apart. She controlled the world. Made it a reflection of her own emotions, a construct of her own will.
Phoebe flicked her hands to either side, grunting as the flaming talons appeared. If there was one creature in this entire world that Viviane had feared, then it was the one that had been screwing with Phoebe since the beginning. A thing she knew well enough to shove into her own self-image, distort it, break it. If they were going to screw with her, then she was going to steal something back.
The cape split in two spiralling before expanding into two enormous wings. They snapped out wide, blowing a back wind that shattered windows somewhere nearby. Must have been a rich person’s house. That very nearly distracted her and made her giggle, before Viviane saw an opening and delivered a sphere of burning purple hatred into her face.
Phoebe flipped as she fell backwards, lightly landing on three limbs before punching both fists down into the ground. Her spine screeched audibly, and screamed internally, before just about ripping free from her skin. Morphing her along the length of it as she expanded to a size that made Drektanion the lesser, and no longer the last of his kind.
Her flames wafted up slowly, the fangs of her new jaw itching for their first bite, as Phoebe glared down at the little witch.
Viviane gave a polite little cough, “Uh… You appear to have gained some weight, there, pet. I… I did not see this coming, I must admit.”
The implication that everything so far had been the plan, and that Gruna was nothing but the necessary sacrifice, set Phoebe off. Marcy slipped from her mind and she shot forward, toppling the buildings on either side of the street. Viviane tossed up a hemisphere of shadow, before Phoebe hit it.
Her tongue tasted the most vile thing she’d ever experienced in her life. Twisted and shattered remnants of bones in the shadow, letting her know she was eating the long dead, as Phoebe ripped the shadow apart. Fragments of the dark magic flung everywhere, only to melt into the ground and kill everything that was there. A gaping circle, a foot deep, into the ground below.
Bitch portalled.
Which meant that she was actually afraid. Soulless or not, something about a dragon had twisted the rules. Broken free the realm of possibility. Phoebe snarled and spun around, tail knocking an enterprising guard flying. She gave a nod to Ghost, trusting the wolf to do what needed to be done, before planting her feet and taking to the sky for the first time.