She felt the cold sweat of doubt tickle her brow and the furrow between her breasts. Is it too late to turn back now? What if it doesn’t work? What if the only reward for all her unimaginable atrocities was the cold permanence of death - her legacy nothing more than a footnote of inexplicable savagery on the history of Venn’s eastern continent? No. She pushed down the fleeting moment of self-doubt. I’ve come too far and given up too much. Slowly sliding her naked form under the surface of the tepid bath, she locked eyes with the dead gaze of her mother and then her brother, their distended corpses hanging by their ankles barely a foot above the tub. As the last drops of blood fell from their yawning throats, the warrior-witch closed her eyes and fully submerged herself in the ichor. Her skin tingled as every inch felt the touch of Orcus’ recipe - the lifeblood of one unicorn, three holy enemies, and her immediate family. It was nearly complete.
The insatiable burn of ambition quickly overwhelmed her lapse in confidence. She felt her lungs burn, begging for new oxygen but resisted breaking the surface too soon. Finally, as fireworks began to explode behind her eyelids, she clawed the sides of the wooden tub and exploded violently upright. Waves of blood crashed over the sides of the vessel gathering in small pools at its base. Her open eyes were two white discs of contrast against the solid red of her dripping torso as she gulped for air. The ritualistic blood baths were common practice. Many battles turned on the shocking visage of her red-stained form surging into the fray accompanied by the screech of her death whistle. She fed on that energy. The enemy’s intimidation and her own army’s swelling confidence fueled the potency of her casting and rage to great success…but not today.
Today, she would make no appearance. Today they would meet disastrous defeat. Outnumbered and outflanked, she knew they wouldn’t reach the Glimmerstones and the prize she coveted so fiercely. As the blood dripped from her body to the surrounding pool, her loyal barbarians were being whittled down by the gnoll hordes of Siremiria. Their only hope of avoiding slaughter was the timely arrival of their leader on the battlefield, but she would not join them. This was the final act of sacrifice the pact demanded. What she could not acquire with mortal might today, would be achieved with the unbridled magic force of the next life. What did fifty years of servitude matter to those who embraced immortality?
Her bare feet left clear bloody prints across the hides surrounding the ritual tub as the muscular warrior padded towards the circle of glowing glyphs carved into the nearby earth. Ignoring the muted din of battle raging in the distance she perched cross-legged in the center of the inscriptions. Three carefully positioned objects lay within reach: a wooden scepter, a clay skull on a chain, and a flask of swirling liquid. The dripping blood from her skin formed the outline of what would be her final mortal resting place. Only two acts stood between here and eternal power. Fifty years of indenture to Orcus, then the artifact’s recovery from the icy Glimmerstone peaks and the conquest of Venn, perhaps more, would be within her grasp.
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She picked up her scepter and smiled. By all appearances, it was ghoulishly ceremonial. A carved and tapered hickory shaft wrapped with the fraying intestines of long-dead enemies topped by an egg-size inky black stone. No one knew its secret, not even Orcus.
She gazed at the full moon peeking through a narrow gap in the hides that made up the tent walls. Now or never. The death whistle was a small clay skull with a tube protruding from the top of the head, attached to a gold chain threaded through a loop on the whistle’s posterior. Though primitive and crude in its exterior design, the hollow interior was intricately crafted into two chambers. Air blown into the tube created a resonance of pure fear, a haunting and distorted scream of agony and despair simultaneously human and otherworldly. Without magic, its shrill wail manifested a foreboding sense of doom in every ear it reached. Enhanced with a spell of fear, it was utterly devastating. This specific whistle’s interior had also been painstakingly imbued with magical glyphs and inscriptions to serve a second critical purpose. It would become the vessel for her soul, vital to her journey into immortality. She retched at the memory of consuming her own mother’s heart, minutes before, as part of the preparation ritual. At least our souls will always be together. The weak rationalization and the return of her burning desire for power propelled her forward.
Placing the chain around her neck, the whistle came to rest between her breasts, the cool clay against her wet skin cascaded a sense of emanating calm from her chest. Her breathing deepened as the eye sockets of the whistle flashed with an unnatural green glow.
She raised the flask, framing the full moon behind it, and considered its contents. A precise recipe of powerful poisons combined with the venom and ichor of several dangerous creatures – the penultimate witch’s brew. She would have less than two minutes after consuming it before her life would end. This is it, success or death. No Do-overs. She mentally ran through the necessary words and hand gestures one final time before tipping back her head and raising the flask to her lips.
The taste was even more foul than expected as she choked and gagged before emptying the small bottle and tossing it aside. Quickly connecting to the essence of her casting, she began to weave intricate gestures in the air, her voice rising in a cadence of phrases from a long-dead language. Streaks of fleeting green hung in the air, trailing the movements of her fingers. The same glow began to pulse on the scepter’s stone and finally, the eyes of the whistle. The cycle was complete.
Her voice dropped to a whisper as her hand stilled and the magical glow receded first from her fingers, then the scepter stone, and finally the eyes of the clay skull around her neck. She felt herself slipping away as her body slumped backward onto the tent floor. She clung to her hunger for power. I will return stronger. I will fulfill my destiny.
And with that final thought, the Red Queen left the mortal realm.