The Killing of Insects
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The silence, that silence of quietness in an emerald forest with only the soothing winds and trees that makes slight noise when the air current pushes them in one direction, and the uncountable flakes of whiteness are raining down slowly onto the land, where a woman of the blackest of skins lies imprinted onto the snow. Her gown of purple material displays her terrifyingly bold body.
It is Xe’Harin, the Empress of the Alters. She’s currently unconscious as the snow slowly begins to cover her whole blackened body that has protruding amethyst horns sticking out of her.
Her body twitches slightly as she begins to wake up from her slumbering while she lies there on her bed of whiteness. She opens her amethyst slit eyes as she flickers with them in bafflement, then she sees the snow in front of her which makes her eyes become wide in astonishment because this is the first time she actually witnesses the frozen water flakes, called snow.
“Cough, cough,” her hand goes to her throat, she touches it as the cold air seeps into her mouth, making her breathe out smoke.
She feels the icy ground beneath her as she tries to stand up by supporting herself with her arms, but Xe’Harin’s strength doesn’t let her, her arms buckles and she falls face first into the snowdrift beside her. She coughs again to get out the snow from her mouth while she tries yet again with all her might and glory to stand up.
She succeeds while feeling her endurance come back to her, slowly.
“Where are we?” Xe’Harin asked as she squints to look around the area.
It’s a thick forest with different kinds of trees which she have never seen before. One of the trees has branches with small deep green needles sticking out in the thousands, covering it like leaves, but yet, still not like leaves, and some strange brown fruit that hangs on the green covered branches.
The needle tree is in the majority so Xe’Harin doesn’t even pay attention to the other ones.
As Xe’Harin stands there in the middle of the snow-covered dale of open wilderness, her eyes becomes wide in concern. She looks at her hands, then quickly around her. She begins to shake with her whole body as she desperately looks around the area to find what she’s searching for, though no matter where she looks, Xe’Harin doesn’t find her target of affection.
Her son isn’t here.
She covers her face with her hands while she begins to breathe heavily as all her memories comes flooding back to her. She falls to the ground where she had laid slumbering and begins to furiously search the ground for any sign of her son, but she doesn’t find anything.
Then as if a blow suddenly struck her face of utter despair, she begins to use her boundless magic which she has inside of her. Her amethyst eyes flickered slightly as her pupils grows slightly bigger, and her hearing becomes that of a royal Alter owl.
She hears a baby’s cry for help.
“Brother, should you really be holding the animal by its tail?” a man’s voice resounded inside Xe’Harin’s ears and she quickly begins to dash with new life put into her legs, not even feeling the fatigue anymore.
“What does it matter? Though… doesn’t it look like a human baby? I mean, except the two tails and its skin colour, it kind of looks like an infant baby, doesn’t it?” the other man said with one hand on his chin while the other hand is holding onto Xerzher’s tail, making him dangle in the air as he cries loudly.
“For crying out loud brother, please quiet that monstrosity, I am trying to focus on skinning this deer,” another man said with a bloody knife in his hands.
“Yes honey, please quiet that… thing. It is making us very uncomfortable, dear,” a women said while cringing with her eyebrows. The woman is sitting inside a carriage with an opened door. She can scarcely see the creature in her husband’s hand, but the baby’s cry she can her loud and clear.
A little girl is also sitting next to the woman inside the carriage, gazing out nervously at Xerzher as he cries.
All of the people outside by the carriage is wearing thick leather clothes of fur, though the females inside the carriage is wearing fabric-like dresses with caps on their heads. The men are very burly men, thick with muscles and beards to help fight the coldness of the snow.
A pair of horses neighs in intervals in front of the carriage as they await obediently to begin to move again. The deer that the man is currently skinning had jumped straight out onto the road, so the skinning man couldn’t help himself than to shoot it with his shortbow, to take it as a trophy.
That’s why they stopped moving, but they had never expected that a creature of darkness would come climbing up from the ditch beside the road, all nonchalantly while gurgling in happiness as it filled Xerzher’s face.
But now, only tears are running down his forehead to drip onto the snow, like a flood. The man who’s holding Xerzher by one tail just looks at him with such a frown imbedded onto his face.
“What should we do with this, this… thing?” the bearded man asked as he lifts Xerzher to stare squinting into his dark moistened amethyst eyes.
“Mama, I want it as a pet, please?” the cute little girl said with slight red cheeks that the cold air has given her.
“Better be done with it, no need to keep such a creature, here, catch,” the skinner said while tossing the bloody knife to his brother. As he holds Xerzher he catches the knife, but it slips off of his hand and hit the ground.
Everyone feels a sudden growing chill. It is more chilling than the cold air that’s currently circulating here in this forest. It is as if the air is trying to escape to another direction.
A deafening roar sounds out in the nearby trees.
“What in the…” the man’s mouth is stuck open upon seeing a distant silhouette coming towards them in fast speed. “Oh, my glass Goddess, give me strength.”
“Quick, grab your weapons! A monster is—,” he gasped with an open mouth while his wide eyes almost pops out of his head in utter terror upon seeing the horror in front of them.
Xe’Harin sees the bearded man who holds her son, but Xerzher has stopped crying because he sees his mother which he naturally feels a bond to. He gurgles happily as he swings back and forth while being held by the… human… A human? A human is touching her son with their tainted hands?
Like a beast, she begins to growl in a deep terrifying tone that sends shivers down the men who now has their weapons at hand, but this beast of a woman stands taller than anyone here, while her two tails shakes violently side to side like a rattling snake’s, getting ready for slaughter.
The two females stare in complete silence, their eyes doesn’t even blink as they see the monster watching the now giggling baby boy with such affectionate eyes, though that happiness is short lived.
The men looks nervously at each other while they signal with their eyes to get ready for the worst which they’ve done many times before, because they’re hunters, the slayers of beasts. How can this monst—.
*Slash*
Xe’Harin just smiles sinisterly as one tail goes to catch the baby that’ll fall in about one second. Then as she swirls her one tail around her baby which has surprisingly grown into a disturbing length, she jerks him to her own side. And as she jerked him, the husband of the woman in the carriage split in two, right in the middle.
Blood comes pouring out as intestines spills onto the drenched snowy ground.
“What…” one of his brother said with a gaping mouth as he stares in disbelief at the pile of his mutilated big brother’s corpse. The blood starts to seep outwards slowly in the snow, making a beautiful cherry coloured ground.
The two brothers can’t even move, they just stand with a dumbfounded expression on them. That gaping mouth, those wide-eyed balls of more white than brown. But one of the brothers manages to turn his head to stare at the now widowed woman.
With all his courage he gets out one single loud word, “RUN!”
The woman, without thinking, grabs a hold of her daughter and opens the other door that leads away from the monster. Her eyes only now realizes what happened, they begin to form tears as she drags her daughter into the snow-covered forest.
A loud gurgling scream shot through the mother like an arrow, then moments later another cry of pain comes from the direction where her husband and his two brothers are. She doesn’t stop dragging her daughter through the snow, she can’t stop, because otherwise they too will die a horrible death.
Her daughter has a stunned face of confusion, her little mind can’t even comprehend what just happened to her father… he just sank to the ground in a large pile. Her scarlet cheeks displays brilliantly, though no tears has started to run down from her eyes yet.
As the mother and daughter stumbles through the snow-covered forest with all their running power, they just can’t keep going. They stop running as they reach an opening in the forest, farm fields the mother noticed with relief as she puffs air in and out rather heavily, so does her small daughter.
She moves her daughter in front of her and grabs a hold of her shoulders as she kneels down on one knee, she says with such a damaged voice, “M-my dear Celina, run towards the other side of the field, go now, and don’t turn back, run with haste, run now.”
The little girl obeyed with a blank face as she pulls up her dress to make it easier to run through the thick snow. She doesn’t even know why she runs, but as she suddenly remembers the animals that her father had come home with from his hunting journeys, she begins to snivel as she breathes heavily.
She remembered the dead animals that lied there motionless, to never move again. Her father lay on the ground just like those animals, but her father was cut in two… Her cry didn’t come out right away, it gradually starts as she runs across the field towards the farm houses that has snow covering the roofs, making it hard to see them, but her mother saw and directed her towards the smoke chimneys which she now notices in front of her.
As the mother sees her daughter becoming smaller and smaller, she smiles as she sighs in relief, though her whole body is shaking nervously, because she began to feel that something was breathing on her neck right after her daughter started to run, and that breath is still breathing behind her. But she has been too scared to turn around until her daughter was beyond the field.
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
As the mother’s tears flows down her face, she turns around while she closes her eyes in fear of what she’ll see. Her body shrieks in fear as she feels the air from the breath which’s hitting her face. Her hands shakes in such fright, but she clenches them hard.
She gathers up her last will and strength.
The mother opens her eyes…
She actually sees herself, no, more of a younger version of herself in front of her.
But… coming out from behind her younger self, are two black tails of terror rattling upwards into the air. Then with a last look upon the image of herself, the younger self smiles sinisterly with every intent to mock her upcoming demise.
“If… If you can understand me… Please spare my daughter… Please… P-Please,” she pleaded as she looks down at the dark baby boy that her other self is holding ever so casually. “As a mother… to… a mother.”
“No witnesses… human, but, I will not slay your child. I’ll let her live as an orphan, as punishment for treating my son like an animal,” Xe’Harin said with a different voice, sounding exactly like the mother.
Without even reacting, the tails shot downwards and stabbed mother, making her go limp while hanging on the tails. She didn’t even see them coming, because Xe’Harin’s tails stretched so long into the air that they went up, then forward and stabbed her back first, right into her heart, while her other tail went straight into the mother’s spine, which made her lose the capability to move.
With a ripping sound, Xe’Harin teared her into two parts. The mother’s upper body and lower body falls to the ground separately while it begins to spew out the blood and entrails, only leaving a ghastly look of surprise upon the mother’s face.
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Xe’Harin is by the carriage while she holds her son in her embrace, she has changed her appearance yet again into a fair skinned human woman that has long dark brown hair and purple eyes. She herself feels disgusting being in the shell of a human, but she doesn’t want to fall into her rage again.
Why she changed into her human form is because she wants to keep a low profile, and not reveal herself to be an Alter to the world. A very beautiful human is what she has transformed into, rather a motherly woman, not to slim and not to plump, though her breasts are larger than average.
Her clothes has also changed, it is like the mother’s clothes, but with a little more design put into it. Xe’Harin’s conjuration of clothes are one of the redeeming qualities. The dress is in a dark brown fabric, though the fabric is made of pure magic. Her sleeves are long, so long that they cover her hands completely. Her lower dress piece isn’t standing out like the mother’s, instead it smoothly goes down her legs until it reaches her ankles.
It is a warm dress with dark fluffy fur that starts at her collarbone, then goes around her head to the other collarbone, like a scarf that one warps around ones neck. She also have a hood that hangs down her back.
She made a bed for her son to sleep in, though it is a simple bed that she has in front of her chest. He lies sleeping there in the curtain-like bed which she has tied so it won’t fall off. But Xerzher too has changed into a human baby. He has the same features that his mother has, brown hair, purple eyes and fair skin.
Xe’Harin doesn’t know where they were teleported to, but she has already killed four people out of blind rage, because she feels such pain and hatred for such a disgusting race, though when she killed the woman, she was thinking clearer, but not clear enough to forgive simple insects.
The horses had ran off when the last two brothers died, one of the younger brothers lies in the snow with a large line that has been imprinted on his body, for Xe’Harin whipped her tail so it came from above, then ran down his body, crushing his skull and ribcage.
The other brother was quickly disposed of by a simple forward thrust into his throat, making him gurgle in his own blood.
Xe’Harin, her son, and her husband was supposed to be teleported together, but now… she is alone with her baby. Alone in this strange place, not knowing what to do next. She begin to scavenge the corpses of the brothers to find anything that can indicate where she is, but what she found are only pouches of silver crowns, displaying some woman engraved onto them.
Xerzher is sleeping ever so soundly while a thumb is stuck in his mouth, probably a replacement for his tail tip. He is wrapped in fur, only making it so one hand is free, because he started to cry as soon as he couldn’t suck on something.
It has gone thirty minutes since the little girl ran over the field, suddenly Xe’Harin hears a shout in the distance, where she killed the mother.
“Hmm, I should’ve killed that little bug too,” Xe’Harin said as she shows her fanged teeth, but she looks down at her son. “Let us be off, my love.”
Xe’Harin started to travel on one of the roads casually, not having any haste at all. Her conjured fur boots stomps in the snow, making crushing sounds for every step she takes. As she journeyed for one hour, her eyebrows pops up in surprise, the carriage is there on the road in front of her.
The horses has stopped because they found something to eat, red barriers of some kind.
Xe’Harin walks up to the horses, they doesn’t even notice her until she begin to unfasten one of them from the carriage, though the horses just looks at her questionably, then begins to eat the barriers again.
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A horse comes strutting on the snow road going to an unknown location with a woman sitting on a saddle while she cries in her sorrows in silence, her tears runs down her face in an emotionless way, she doesn’t even bother to wipe them off, so the tears turn to ice since the air is extremely cold.
She just suffers in complete silence with slight snivels, for she doesn’t want to wake her slumbering child which she’s looking at with lovingly eyes.
Her daughters are gone, her husband is gone, and she knows her race is gone, because the portal she jumped into teleported her into the future, though she doesn’t know how far into the future she went, but she is most certain that she and her son is more than a thousand years forward in time.
She can’t act rash anymore, she must be careful to not endanger her son.
Her eyes goes suddenly wide as she remembers her followers, her sisterhood of spies, assassins, and guardians that does her every bidding to the finest detail.
She hastily jerks the reins to turn the horse to gallop into the thick forest. Xe’Harin has never ridden a horse before, so this new experience is very refreshing, it gets her to think about something else than her hunger for revenge which she’ll so enjoy when the time comes.
She rides for a couple of minutes until she couldn’t see the road anymore, but Xerzher woke up from all the bumping the horse gave, so she slowed down to easy the load of movement, though what he cries about isn’t the bumping she notices as he keeps on crying rather loudly. She takes Xerzher out of the wrap that hangs on her chest, to rock him affectionately while Xerzher pulls her dark brown hair, as if he wants something.
Xe’Harin jumps off the horse as she pulls it to a low tree where she can keep it tied to one of the branches with the reins.
“Are you hungry, my love?” she asked Xerzher as she holds him up in front of her face while she smiles with such eyes of warmth. “Better be done with it before I put up the summoning circle to go to my domain, right?”
Xerzher just keeps crying as she talks to him, not even minding how loud his cry sounds throughout the forest.
She found a spot to sit down upon as she does a simple hand motion for the snow blow away, revealing a grey stone. She unties her upper dress to show her bare bosoms. She simply places his mouth on her nipple, then the sucking commenced.
After time went on, the hungry creature burped a couple of times, so she decided to stop feeding him, and to begin to form the summoning circle into her own domain.
Putting out a summoning circle that goes to a domain is very difficult, though it is easier to summon those who’re already inside her domain to her side, but she didn’t manage it when she needed them the most, the ten sisters. Her faithful servants.
After she has cleared all the snow from the ground to only leave a flat trampled surface, she begins to write her inscription on the ground with ease. The writing shows a huge circle with many different weird letters that’re being engraved onto the earth. She is standing as she writes, only her one hand and mind are at work in forming the rune that is now beginning to glow in an amethyst colour.
As she finished the shell of the writing, she kneels down with her son to touch the rune formation that has been written to perfection.
She starts to pour in her magic that has returned to her under these two horrifying days of pure sorrow.
She was very surprised that her son didn’t really act like a new-born baby, maybe it is because of her healing when he was born premature. He can see things and react to them faster than her daughters could. Though, he has tendencies like any other infant, it is only normal, but yet it is not normal for him to crawl like a bigger baby. It is very weird, though it is her first son, so she doesn’t mind if he’s different in his growth.
Xe’Harin frowns as she feels the power draining from her, though her face returns to peace in a split second.
With a whoosh the summoning circle lights up to show an oval gateway that leads into her domain. Xe’Harin frowns again as she looks around the forest to see if something saw what just happened, but she puffs out air in relief.
She turns her head to look at the horse rather troublingly with a raised eyebrow. With a swish of her hand, the horse becomes calm as the cold breezing winds.
Xerzher stares with glittering eyes at the portal, he reaches forth with his hands, but those short hands doesn’t really do him any favours. Xe’Harin laughs as she sees her son wanting to go into the portal, so she does as her little Emperor commands.
She disappeared into the portal with her son, leaving it widely opened in the green thick woodlands.
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Until next time! XivanB out!
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