Thorny Sedilium
Sylvia Pitts found that the many prongs of agitation on her loose folds were a familiar comfort, she found this both ironic and amusing as she settled in for a rest. There were the familiar pricks of agony as she lowered, rolling herself upon the bed of nails that kept her from resting too deeply, losing too much memory of the day to (the tidal flows of REM, sleeping, breathe in, breathe out, swell and recede) so that she was less aware of the real world in case a protective ward were to be triggered. In this practiced drifting meditation or “shallow napping”, she was most relaxed and could let her great folds and girth, both of her mind and of her aged body, know some semblance of rest. As the nails settled, the tarry pudding of thickened vinegar and strained fermented cabbage that coated the many, many little iron fangs bit into her tattooed mass, releasing the build up in the many zits, boils and boubous freckling her. This was a practice, a discipline that she longed for after long days (and often longer) churning and grinding upon her mental forge.
Sylvia was fragmented, splintered like those scarce few that sought the truth; pursuing and studying the art for as long as she had. The chase of it had run into the thin weaves and films of rumor, things of fever dreams and moldy tomes. Once a zealot priestess of Lolth, she was known in that circle as the Shepard, watching over the denizens that were ignorant to the ways of her coven. They were deadly assassins and infiltrators, seeking what royalty bought on auction or what churches buried or sometimes try to destroy. An oracle of Lolth saw her maiden’s enemies that squandered such resources, or tried, and she would send her coven out to ravage them with sickness dripped into ears in the nights or a lovers tainted-scratch at the height of forbidden pleasures.
Sylvia now was rogue and had turned from her patron’s whispers and spymastery. She had grown selfish and longed to hoard the pilfered prizes from her pursuits such as a wicked and covetous dragon may. The wicked witch felt her mind unraveling to the wonders (wanders) beyond her goddess and now had made another opponent, and she cared very little about this. Lolth too had grown portly and had trusted too few followers to care for her as Sylvia had, so she had left her maimed by her own enormity to rot alone.
In the present, Sylvia Pitts’ coven hunted where their crone’s out-stretched and withered arms directed, crushing opposition by rotting their foundations form within, take what was of worth and cleansed the remains in a black sabbath of fire and joyous laughter, all in mother Sylvia’s name and further her immortality. She suffered as she prolonged this conquest, her experiments and rigors would often induce low lying toxicity in the varicose tubing bulging along the thinning flesh, which was a fortunate by-product so that if she needed to test a new poison or tonic, she would endure, she would go on. Her face was blanched, left side drooped, and a creamy verdant hue from lack of sun and exposure to the alchemy, except for the portions that were blotchy from scalding pops from a belching cauldron or ruptured flask. Her bulbous knuckled hands, in a constant curves with broken and flaked nails (painstakingly filed by her followers) when relaxed were stained from centuries of inks, chalks, tinctures and oozes, yet were huge, monstrously dexterous instruments that knew her shelves and pockets without the need for the corporeal sight. She crushed salts with mortar and pestle, the crystal driven to dusts (she couldn’t always be bothered with wafting) and invariably she would breathe them in or get it caught up in her long and grimy hair, be it on her head, face, chin or nose. She had once had the most beautiful set of ivory hair combs and picks to hold it all out of her way as she went about her work…..alas, she was certain she pinned-out a fresh eye from a lover once with one, but of the others….. she would ponder as she stirred forbidden concoctions. She had kept the knowledge to herself and upon herself, her tattoos were vast and numerous, forming quite a suit of legacy, on and over, weaving through the peaks and valleys of her mounds and crevices. She would relinquish her accomplishments over her dead body.
Long ago, when her hair was thick and her voice was clear, she arrived a refugee from an overrun district now pressed beneath Laconian’s heel, she would perform the necessaries for the ruling class and to keep the locals from prying into her practice. As long as the empire needed her skill, she would crawl like a perpetual vine, entwine with their great need for her craft, for this was before the Oduum and before their teachings in the ways of medicine and surgery. She would soothe and massage those that ached, bake, brew and boil delicious things to help induce sleep or abort the unwanted or forbidden. She could endure their suffering wails, loyal daughters holding hands and flailing limbs, while savage and sympathetic Sylvia sawed off limbs that couldn’t be saved from the Laconian agricultural accidents. She even pulled teeth, gave advice on makeup and applied pleasant smelling oils and shared palaver with leaders needing her wisdom and her great sight. The glamours that veiled were different every time, often they saw the comforting practitioner exactly the way they needed to see her. Often the illusion was a semblance of a long dead relative, only slightly familiar, just enough of a coax to put nerves to rest. These tricks, tonics and treatments all came at a price though, always the balance. Balance, before the Oduum, was and forever shall be the breathe of Gaia.
The tasty prey, lured by her castings and pheromones, were male vagabonds, drifters and culprits from outside of town (when her putrid and carnal need was great) would wander (wonder) onto her silken web that was cast ubiquitously in the form of smokes, chimes, and silken fabrics streaming everywhere - with the oddest looking , but very pleasing sigils woven into them. These were the hooks lures and snares to their dulled perceptions and defenses. She cast her glamours on these jeweled specimens to their fullest extent, concealing the haggard body of real for the appealing lines and voluptuous curves that get the dim mind’s juices pumping and high logic numbed. Palms read, fortunes spoken of, forbidden things that could be sought after….these the longings and follies of such heated and simple men. Intoxicated by it all, she would take those young, virile ones to her bed within the open yurt and writhe with them to finality. Ride them hard, so that their juices flowed into her, too many - the release and spams too great, too erotic, too much. As their hour long orgasm would peak and begin to taper-off, as their expressed loins withered and the vessel ran dry, with the illusionary pouty face on her diminutive glamour she would often (but not always) press them with her mass into the nails themselves. The finale of carnality could be likened to the entomologist admiring the prized insect and then mounting it under glass, the pin being her titanic unveiling.
The remaining fluids would then drain to the bed, as life dimmed in the watery eyes (she would harvest these most of the time). The slick would gather on the frame, through a sifter and into a large reservoir or beaker. The blood is a powerful spell component when fresh, when the heart is racing towards the ecstatic peak….trending towards terror. The other fluids that were ejaculated into her she would siphon and withdraw for another use however, for this was a greater prize. Among the many spell components that she knew to gather, she kept a record of achievement on her own flesh. On the folds that she pressed to the nails on nights that she needed the rest, on this rubbery fleshy parchment were the tattoos scribing and warding the magic within herself. The blood of her sons and the wastrel wanderers that crept upon her psychic webbing made the best ink.
The crone, this mighty necromancer was more habitual than purposeful in these as the years progressed. The dawn stretched to dusk and her fire and cauldron never cooled, one of the daughters or mindless thralls, once the sons flung from her feminine forge, would make certain of it. She hadn’t spoken to any of them in months, the croak and tripping trimble of her ragged vocal cords punctured by so much rot and smoke from experimentation, could incite terror in them too easily. She learned that the hard way….
Even thralls, her belly fruit that had circumstantially been male, have a dead-eye soulless sense of self-preservation, it would seem. Not the completely empty vacuous vestibules that she sold to lovely Ob the throb lord. Those moaning Meryl’s that held his beloved intoxicant - the ichor were seasoned by her craft year after smokey year. Hers was a incestuous madhouse that had seasoned both her great flabby flanks and all those that dwelled with her within. The vapors indeed caused a dementia and hysteria, but at the correct pinprick of proper exposure brought on great revelation and insight…..all within the confines and comforts of home, her den at the center of the invisible web.
Gassed by her practices and diet of spores, greens and mushrooms, even devoted and mostly mindless minions would eventually fissure under pressure. The thralls would suffer enough damages that some would seek a place that didn’t melt skin or form pus-filled postules over eyes and airways. Self preservation in the remaining grey stem would be the last to wither and they simply weren’t all the way dead yet! So there would be the nuisance of them clawing at walls and dashing themselves against the stone fixtures and through paned glass. It could be quite disruptive to Sylvia’s focus, if she didn’t think it were so very humorous. Her daughters were quite bothered by the scene, looking up from crystals and orbs as their brothers lost their minds to the amusement of mother.
These, her many, many daughters were her carriers of knowledge, her records and annals. They would spy and collect intelligences on where the next target was, where the caravan should whisp away to next, or mount the yew shaft and take to the night air to collect for the mad matriarch. And madness. Like their madam sire, the numerous progeny weren’t entirely whole, they had no reproductive cycle of moon and waters of their own, only mother was meant to twist and shape life from her girth it would seem. They wore a braid of cord, in shape of a broken noose around their necks made from the living cord that sustained them for nine months, as a reminder and also the source of their infertility. The daughters would recite mantras while massaging the beads within the mothering cord, but all were secretly, silently resentful. Though many of them were invited often to attend to mother, watch her ceremonies, watch her writhing fornication straddling a fresh companion or brother, all under heavy enchantment and breathe her vapors and knowledge, the daughters still longed to be whole and for mother to pass on her greasy matronly mantle to them.
Maeve watched the march of possum pass her path, taking her time to admire the peaceful drove and forgot the bushel of wolfsbane, grey bark and moon flower that she was tasked in collecting today for the Mother of Bitches. She was fascinated at the animal’s instinct and need for mother’s direction and protection, for she and the eldest of bitches had lacked that magnetism for so long. Like the bees testing their flights from the hive’s outer husk, the breathing motion of their wandering (wondering) had gone further and further from the source, further from mother’s webs and intoxicants. Further from her snoring, she claimed to sleep to briefly and shallowly….and for a time, in their ignorance of youth, they had believed her. Believed in her stearing and rearing of them, believing her tales and lectures. Believing in her might and their need to shade them from the Great Outsides onslaught and judgment of their pagan ways. The crone had grown found of her den though, fattened by her practices and successful diet of dried man meats and sweetest organs. When Maeve couldn’t hear the cackling fade, the sensation of raspy and spittled breathing on her still youthful flesh (mother adored looking upon her bathing daughters enviously more and more), and the reek of the crones languorous flatulent vapors, and forget the sight (for a time) of what a mighty titan had distilled into…Maeve felt free.
When so unbridled and let loose from her birdcage, Maeve tended her secret flower garden. She would forget herself and just feel natural and in tune with every fleck of soil she turned. It was on a delightfully cozy day under the midsommer’s peaked suns, the wanderer, bedazzled by mother’s call no less, tromped right through, laying low or beheading many daisy with heavy and clumsy tread work. Trespass through wards, intentional bramble and thicket and the ghostly effigies of straw and twine, the dimwit was quite a sight, bloodied and delighted in the sweating effort simultaneously. She would’ve taken trowel to temple and fertilized her grounds out of fury had her quick wit not prevailed.
With a sharp right cross, she began the arduous task of breaking mom’s binding on the simple mind. She smeared spearmint oil across his nose and waited for the black pupils to constrict a bit. When the man was able to begin speaking and thrashing in resistance, Maeve pressed her thumb to his forehead to stimulate his third sight, so that temporarily the fool would have no choice but to hear her clearly and be unable to forget their encounter. With her mother’s influence lifted, the breathing leveled out, the thrashing subsided, even if the gird in the man’s loins still pressed to her, it mattered not. He tried to speak in a raspy, dreamlike way and she took his sweaty face between her palms and spoke into him, “Find GrenHilda the tavern master. Bring her here tomorrow or the next, but dawdle not or I won’t provide the cure to what ails you”. Stupefied and base as he was in his misunderstanding, he pressed himself to her once more, but her response spilled from her apothecary ring into his eyes and mouth before he could stop it.
“The kiss I’ve laid upon you will work quickly, so make haste and do not fail. Bring no harm to her in her gentle recruitment or peaceful escort here, not a single strand of auburn lay disarray when we next meet or your stub I will have an’ you parted from”. It was the emphasized word ‘stub’ that he felt the trowel edging the side of his manhood.
It was the dusk of the second day, when GrenHilda shoved the man back through the glade, returning him to the garden’s soil quite literally, she sent the man sprawling with a beefy shove. Gren was mighty indeed, she ran her own tavern, put up with intolerable patrons who would be adventurers, boasting all about “dire wolves protecting gold hoards” this, and “brandishing my vorpal bastard sword at the viper queen” that….She had seen these swords and wondered how the twig-armed drunkard could heft such an implement and how in Moradin’s blackened anvil would a dire wolf squirrel away coin? Many nights laughing at their tales of adventure and hefting the oaken casks left her fuse short but her body able to take out the trash when necessary.
She kicked her oiled letter boot into the arse of her tender attendant and taunted, “Well then, my mighty protector, where is the enchantress that wishes to pay your tab then? Call out to her, have you the stones, and pray we don’t both just work you over.”
Face caked in the dirt of the road and from Gren’s continuous thrashings (there had been several along the way back), all he could muster was a “Help…”, before she used her boot sole to shove him down once more. “Quiet, y’whelp. I know of the coven near these parts and I’ll not spare my hide for yours if one of the broom-fuckers comes to skin us. This better not be a wily snare, on ya.” She had pulled a large gleaming cudgel from her belt and waited.
The ruse worked and the frail man was indeed frightened beyond his mind. Twice as the sun rose he had met with these now two incredibly fierce women who had beaten him bloody, poisoned him and he knew not if he would survive the encounter to tell of it. Truth be told, Gren knew this garden well, for it was was at the very periphery of a psychic leash that a wicked old crone kept her daughter’s within. One in particular, Maeve, was a soul she called friend for they had traded many goods between the two and thrice as much laughter over strong mead. Maeve would send ‘messengers’, be it animal of one sort or another to call Gren to the garden, but something was amiss. The air was heavy in the garden, the grounds ween’t tended as well as they aught, the colors not as vivid on leaf or bud.
Stepping from the outcropping just beyond the opposite border of her garden, Maeve made no attempt to ambush our startle the giantess of a woman she had long called friend. Gren had a strong brow and had always been neighborly to her and her sisters when they could barter with her hearth and not just for the coin, knowledge, heresays and good honey drink were always welcome. The coven had no reason to attempt to impress or otherwise posture Gren and she had quite a good head to discern the gossip of foolish parties from similar puzzle pieces laid out to her and upon occasion, for good pay, she would assemble what she had been told or overheard for a few.
“Gren, long is the days you stride and pleasant company may you keep in your night.”, Maeve stepped into the diminishing light with strong, open arms to be seen and fingers splayed, “I wouldn’t dare try to charm the likes of you.”
“Maeve, you daughter of a wretch!”, their arms met in the familiar forearm grasp, “Well met”. They assessed one another before speaking further.
“Gren, I need to bend your ear to a bit. My mother’s pitiful madness….she pulls still from a deep well who’s waters soured long ago. I’d have a friend hear it and pray tell what ya know of it. Will ya come set at my fire and share palaver?”
“Ya, I could set for a bit. The road is too long to trodback on the night anyway. I am tired of walloping this shite and won’t have him bound away before he pays his purse to me.”
Led to the fire, the two bound, gagged, blindfolded and waxed the ears of the bloodied man, for theirs was a secret talk, not to be shared with the likes of him. “Mother wailed and still mourns the defeat of her lover, Ob. He has been laid low, his horn delivered to us. We scry the bones with her and there’s congruent signs of who it could be. Yea, no common Laconian assassin could pull off such a feat and why would they cross the infernal plane to begin with.,” Maeve recounted while sipping at the mead flask Gren offered to share. “Though she mad in her long days, we had not seen her so solemn in quite some time. She is focused on finding her lover’s assailant, but the time has come for us to share something quieter and more precious. Her mind is a twist, she lays and writhes with strange men from the road, royalty….our brothers. All for the seed.”
Gren spat at that, knowing for a time the depth of Sylvia’s villainy, knowing that she had fallen from a dangerous cult, cut her ties with them and now to hunt them down systematically. In a way, she and her daughter’s were performing a service, for the cults and coven that worshipped Lolth, the spider, were foul thieves of knowledge - at least Sylvia’s daughters, like the comely Maeve, made trade and pleasant company. She could share a cup and never fret what was within the drink in fact. The barkeep wrung her hands nervously, she knew what Maeve was getting at, where this road would lead them, knew it was a righteous act of the natural order. As she knew these and weighed the evening, she looked-up from the fire to see her coconspirator weeping gently and this was a rare and fragile thing. Gren spoke more breathe than words, “She deserve not your tears or mercy ‘gainst her wrongs. How many Maeve? How many men and boys (she was cautious…) and your brothers has she taken to bed? Taken their seed and their lives?”
“As is, my sister’s and I will be hunted for her choices.”, Maeve stabbing at the fire saying this and pulled again at the flask. “There will not be peace between the spiders of Lolth and the Knot of the Scorpion, our coven. The conflict we will bear and eventually make a peace with them perhaps, but that is not what whips at our backs lately. I felt it even here, waiting for you in the garden, the cord about my neck, the talisman the holds my bond to mother and prevents my bleeding. My sisters and I know that we are not and can never be whole and have children of our own, nay we will not age naturally without a dependency, like mother until we are freed of the cord. I feel it pull at me now, Gren. She beckons me home, hold me to her side, rub her aches and plan new horrors. She must end in order for any of us to have a life of any sort.”
Time passes without words. Gren watches Maeve cure the beaten man and then charm him again. Sending him on his way to fetch grave components that she would need soon. The man would murder for her tonight and think it nothing more than a dream. He would murder another on the road, perhaps wait for them outside a tavern or house of ill repute, flog them with stone or timber, and take from their body what Maeve required. All in the enamoring of love for her and all in a dream-like state.
Gren did not drink and listened intently to her friend’s tale as a dear friend would do. True, Gren had also heard the tale of “Hastur’s shadow”, the “Sanguine Huntress” and she was very conflicted for her friend’s chosen path. The tavern owner indeed wanted to meet and applaud this keen blade that tales and troubadour had spoken of so much as of late. Her cuts seemed to favor the necks and groins of cancerous pigs and fiends it seemed. The criminal spine and fearless pride had wavered as of late for the crime lords needed to look over their shoulders. Numbers mattered not, their spell hurling wilted and withered. She was a bold resolution to years of treachery.
Yet. Yet Gren was not a fool and feared what her friend would ask next. Indeed, Gren saw the stampede coming before Maeve even whispered the words to her:
“I’ll go fetch mom’s copy of The King in Yellow, so that I may recite the words, carve the symbol and light a beacon to call this killer. Her time has come and my sisters and I wish to splice the apron strings to her sour and rank womb.”
Maeve for the first time dipped into ‘Mother’s Well’, the dirty magic that clamored simple minds to do nefarious deeds on her behalf, the harder it resistance to the charm, the stronger the will the greater the cost. She had dipped her ladle into that olde warped bucket of sour and viscous waters already. This second draw would pain and scar her.
She drank in the continuum and the energies were cold, like soils untouched by the hands of the living. Something left outside of the warm family house and those inside would hope would go away or die. Her will was sharpened but seized like strong hands clamped over her neck and mind.
Maeve took a breathe and recounted mother’s interaction with the inebriated priest of Hastur from long ago fairly clearly, aided now by dark energy. She recollected the faded and frayed clothe of memory like and heirloom, but the cost of the recall was like so much bile in the mouth when one suffers a sour stomach. Drawing the heirloom memory out of the depths itself was a potent spell component, but caused it’s own low simmer of filth upon Maeve’s already burdened but intent mind. As Maeve slipped-on the oily yellow cloak, the one he had taken off to roll with Mother, she slid into her memory also, for it would help her call up the appropriate energy, more grimy mana of a rotten soul. Maeve did note the murmur of absolute joy amongst the murk, as she watched mother’s spinnerrettes weave round his wrinkled vessel and crush the juice out of the wretched old prune. She was very, very aware of the encrusted portion that still remained around the crotchety-encrusted groin where the ceremony of Hastur’s avatar “had been performed” under the stars.
Maeve’s thrall had returned with his grave pack of goods for her. Gren left her friend her friend to concoct her crime. The man would return to himself in the cleansing morning’s light, tethered to the Laconian lawman’s doorstep for dire crimes he had committed, but would never recollect. Not until he was fitted with his own noose or axe blade fell across his nape only then would the horrors flow back into him as his life flowed out.
Maeve knew to intentionally call the masked god, one of the Oduum, was a crime against the natural order, a sin against what the continuum and the cycles of natural energy were: for in Hastur there was a definite end and in the law of energy there ought to be a ceaseless cycle of continuation and transformation. Hastur was an entropy, an end to cycles. Maeve could not waiver, making the call and carving his sigil to the Hidden One, there would be no return from this. She thought on this as she smoothed the oily cowl over her beautiful hair and whispered the mantric plea while soiling her hands creating her offertory effigy:
“Dark Father. Dark Hastur with your hidden face, send your childe unto me, for the trespass of the blind and their lack of insight must be cleansed with your rapture and wrath. Dark Father. Dark Hastur with your hidden face, send your childe unto me, for the trespass of the blind and their lack of insight must be cleansed with your rapture and wrath. Dark Father. Dark Hastur with your hidden face, send your childe unto me, for the trespass of the blind and their lack of insight must be cleansed ….”
Committed to the task, knowing that there was no turning back, she had collected the elements for the ceremony: her enemy was female and she had brought the skeleton of a woman, fresh flesh, a warm heart and a bowl of blood from her mother’s stores. She faced the head to western ridge, so that the intended’s path went to the fall of dusk and she made the circle around them of ash. As she chanted repeatedly, she stabbed at the heart repeatedly and violently, imagining that the matricide would be hers to perform, not the herald huntress of Hastur.
The scene became dangerous and sinister energy rolled in and the evening grew abysmally dark, {Black Hole Sun} the light was absolutely absent and had run for the hills, it was unwelcome in that place. Her sweat sang on her skin as the chill of the act crept out of her, past the circle and upwards past the tree canopy and to the open sky. “Ring, ring you yellow bastard. I offer my mother’s soul for you to sup on.” Maeve finalized the sacrament with the sigil carved into the flesh, though she dared not look at it herself, this would make her the target instead. She poured the basin of blood over her head and all went dark for awhile.
Maeve woke clean and naked upon a floor that was not the effigy, not the bed of terra where she had fallen to after her spell casting. No, this was a wooden floor, rough hewn, well tread, and very alien. Bleary and tired, her eye begged to be pardoned from functioning, they did not want to pass their passives to solve the mystery of where their vessel now lay, so she just lay and breathed for a bit. It was the prisoners moans and complaints that finally conquered her exhaustion…..
The three were across from her bound and kneeling. The three all had different dress beneath their hoods that sucked in and out from rapid, uneasy breathing, but it was indeed the matching execution hoods over their heads that caused Maeve a sudden rush and return of terrible life to her tired limbs. Trembling, she stood and felt it a silly courtesy to the three to do so silently, as one may do in not disturbing a slumbering child.
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She turned to flee this scene, was she having a nightmare?, and in her haste she brushed through a soot web clinging to a sturdy old bookcase. Instinctually, she went to brush the web from her face and jerked back in reaction, but the web only appeared to be and feel spider web like, her hands told her that she had just touched someone’s leg. Incredibly, there was indeed a life-sized and uncannily shaped structure formed upon the top of the high case, it appeared to be just sitting there, swaying it’s “leg” back and forth absently. It wasn’t until it leaned towards her and spoke that Maeve stumbled back, fell and knew she would be removing splinters from her bum if she indeed survived this phantasmal encounter.
The specter on the shelf said, “I felt that this form would best suit our arrangement, little spider. Yet, you seems so unsettled..you are aware of the severe circumstances in which we now deal, yes?”
Maeve ventured, “So you are indeed?”
“I am. I am what you called for and the answer to your plea to my patron, yes. I am here to accept your payment, once you’ve offered it and seal our grim pact. This place is in your mind and it is quite private and cosy, but believe that our business is indeed dire and dangerous….for one of us at least” the other’s voice seemed to echo and fade away with every sound, as if speaking to Maeve from a great telepathy from far away. Indeed the mannequin that reposed on the high shelf, did not appear to be moving it’s lips, if indeed lips could be discerned at all.
Maeve went to begin her barter, “Mother has become…”
“Stop.” The spook spoke gently yet firmly, “One must commit to this task and pay for the bounty in advance. I take from my quarry what I need, yes, those are my conditions. Behind you are three of your enemies, bound and ready to be executed. Their crimes are of no concern of yours, but I will allow you to speak with each of them for a time. Know this, little spider - a life for a life. If I am to take this task from you and end someone on your behalf, one of these will die by your hand now. If not, I will sunder you instead and you will never wake from this, witchling.”
“Across the room are three lives that are wasted and without value. All with contracts on their thin souls. Take the blade from the table and get your hands dirty. Just because you employ one such as I, there’s a price and a balance. Everyone’s hands get dirty.” ,the sooty specter on the shelf slid her whispers into Maeve’s mind and it was chilling. The request was cold, the scene was unnerving and would haunt her, it would change her very tone of voice anytime she spoke of dark cabins or was unsettled by a mere cobweb. Maeve’s knees gave knock as she rose and she beckoned them be still, they refused, so she crossed unsteadily to a small table next to the fire and the hearth. The flame coughed and soot blustered out, careening to her bare foot and singed a bit - so this wasn’t a dream and yes, she would be tainted by the act that she had to perform. The fire was warm, but she shook and her body tensed and the wood sighed a dissonant preamble as she picked up the dire device and considered the cruel implement. She thought the edge had seen much better days, likely something better sooted for shaving scales off of a pike than…
The thought was broken by a voice from beneath the closest hood, bound and hooded, but e’gads they were aware of her, “I could pay you. If coin is your desire or what their families paid you, I’ll pay you more! Yes, yes, I confess to the crimes. Too many crimes and I should pay them, one day I will, but if I can leave this place, it will not be today. It’s true, I fulfill contracts, often and ugly. Family verses family, remove someone from the bloodline so that someone can process and come to power. You know the type, yes? They marry wrong, they are a nuisance, they spend their time with the wrong company….” The voice was husky and established, but the desperation was there tearing down the fringe on his finery. This one was guilty and knew it, likely to have slithered out of traps before to strike another…
The next interrupted, “I’ll not plea, like this one. Such a broken ass who has lost their stone. I know my crime and if you’ll kill me I ask you to be brave and just go ahead then. The children and husband I leave behind, well the children I love, but to him I have been faithless towards. He bought your hand that strikes me down tonight, aye? He may bed any ole’selkie while he’s in port - in her ports for certain, Har! ….but I bed with just one while I am left so all alone and find myself here with legion such as yous.....” This one was strong and unwavering, like the warf she stood on so many times watching her betrothed’s sail leave her som many times, leaving her there…like the pylons that held the wood against the crashing waves, she was proud, stood straight yet ready to be punished. Maeve was uncertain, what if it were lies? She turned to her commanding dust cloud to inquire when the third spoke.
“Clearly, a mistake has been made, you are uncertain and take too long with the voice that will leave you changed forever, you’re hands will never come clean of this and our words will stain your dreams and mind forever. Perhaps you find yourself flat=footed and caught unaware of the company you now keep, let me help you along on your ruinous path, I am Vesserre.” Maeve quickly noted that this one was the only fool that introduced themselves by their name, not a full name, but a name none the less and Maeve knew something of the authoritative power in knowing a name and she went to work assessing this one as he spoke, his voice was like a viper’s would be she imagined.
Calmly, the third hood continued to speak, and she imagined a forked-tongue darting ever so often as he did, “This is not the first time I have been hooded and dragged from my bed clothes. I tend to drink too deeply on these unfortunate nights. I am an obtainer of goods, life taker and defiler of my foe’s children. Perhaps you have heard the stories? Perhaps you have feared or beckoned for my aid while you prodded upon your first walk along the path? I too was a young artisan on their first walk and trial long ago, I was a natural though - you however….is this your trial? Am I what you found at the end of the dirty road? If that is true, I am not surprised given my great prestige. You pause and tremble and piss there, yes? You have heard the name before? Free me now and perhaps my people will not carve it upon your body when they hunt you down in whatever Laconian dung sack you claim as homestead.”
Maeve rooted and plundered from his wide open and brazen mind, he didn’t even feel her fumbling there the egotistical cretin, as he went on cajoling her, almost daring her hand to strike, “It will be your ocher that paints these walls tonight, not mine! Soft and pink, little piggy don’t you understand? Every shadow that would intercept my path, every nocked arrow from rooftop or knifes unsheathed in doorways passed. My enemies are numerous and if I weren’t threatened from time to time for my expertise, it would be quite an insult. Free me or you will be butchered.” For dramatic flair, he began to count but the dullard did not share what he was counting to,
“One”
And she saw poisons and black market goods given to desperate children on their Laconian birthday paths that would “owe him one” later.
“Two”
And she saw through his mind and his spoken name, his brokering of lives. Always with a wall of muscled ‘mules’ surrounding him that would either protect him or courier the children to and from Vasserre’s robed grasp and pillowed room.
“…Th…”
It was a deadly stab, certainly not smooth or graceful, but she went for the brain stem, standing behind him jerking his forehead back with one hand, inserting the crude metal into his memories with the other. She operated him from the visions that his mind relentlessly gave into her and she would not forget those children’s faces. Their fear, their innocence. If Laconian tradition wasn’t bad enough for their youth, this rapist had taken advantage even beyond. He made it easy and she was glad that the hood was absorbent, perhaps her hands would become clean one day.
She heard the muffled slow clap, that reminded her of children free snow from mother’s knitted mittens, from across the room. Maeve turned and the specter was no longer kicked-back on the tall bookcase, in fact the blurred effigy was no where in that space visibly at all. When the unseen blackjack flogged the backside of her head, Maeve could have sworn the bitch said, “Well…done…”.
Adrestia took Maeve from that place and returned her to the comfort of a familiar fireside. With the snap of the sharp mint ampule pressed under her nose, Maeve began to stir and grasp clumsily at her face. She bolted up from the warm bedroll beneath her, a much better comfort than the musty cabin of murder and death mannequins made of web. She found her robe and garment were back, her satchel of alchemical implements, her staff and knife were a weight that she welcomed back alongside of her. Her hair had been brushed and tied back with a twine like substance, it was when she was investigating this foreign accessory when her head was clear enough that she thought she should survey the scene.
The fire that separated the two of them was the only illumination, there were absolutely no stars though Maeve felt the freedom of the outdoors was trying its best to make itself known. There was air, but it didn’t stir. Without wind, it just felt like an unnatural filter of membraneous bubble breathed the air into that space. It did not feel safe, to Maeve at least. There were no bordering of walls, fences, shrub, rock or tree, but indeed Maeve felt an inky black threshold encompassing that place. No ground or rubble, the blanket rested on void. Even with this grim contract process in progress, even with the awful price paid, Maeve knew who had the upper hand and did her best to steady her shuddering, a wrest she once again found out she was losing at for the second time.
She had an imposing but not unpleasant appearance. Her dress was supple yet had the materials and the fit of function, ruffles at the neck with a perfectly blood red blouse, pants that hugged musculature curvature that looked trained to be ready. There was a stone set in the blouse and a serape slung over one shoulder and both were as the surroundings were, an absolute absence of substance. The stone was easy to look at and hard to pull one’s gaze from, in fact Maeve felt that if she had to defend herself against this herald of the masked god, the inset stone might prove to be too much of a distraction. The being that appeared to be another woman sat smiling, working absently at the frayed edge of a tricorn hat, the hat of a sea captain perhaps (she briefly remembered the hostages, she recalled what her hands had done, she must not retch into the fire), her companion just smiled as a predator might smile at the prey. A heartbeat and what felt light a fortnight passed without audible vocalics, Adrestia took a deep breathe and went first.
“Adrestia. Please call me Adrestia. When you feel it is right to due so, please take water and dried meat from the satchel you were using as a head rest. It is quite safe, but you have no reason to trust me yet, I understand. Know that you are my client under this covenant now, you have paid the boatman’s toll - so they say. Until the fulfillment of this agreed upon grievous act that I will perform on your behalf, you are under our care and our protection.”
Odd, Maeve could have friended this woman had she known her in another firelight, but alas she felt instead as though Great wolf or perhaps another sort of beast circled the periphery even as she took the bounty huntresses Comforts and found them both delicious and refreshing.
Adrestia continued, “Lolth sold her pact, lost it actually. I be your molding mother hadn’t told you that.”
Maeve held the gaze cautiously, but her heart did flutter in disbelief. “the old gods and brokers of the continuum’s power and secrets do lose their efficacy when so much belief is lost in them. What do you believe?”
Maeve was lost in the moment, felt dizzy from the day’s adventure and the shock of the news. If mother’s villainous but former sponsor no longer held reign over her family’s bloodline and if what the maiden of shadow spoke of in the way she said it were true, who now held the chain that bound and fed mother’s power? What of the corruption over the years was a far more sinister bind? Maeve felt the tendril of doubt sieve her throat for just a moment, there was no turning back now that the gaze of Hastur and his avatar were upon her. Bringing up a bit of focus (her voice still wavered), “I believe my sister’s and I have paid our due and I do not lay this pact with you lightly or without trepidation. The time has come and mother will not go gently.”
“Our brothers and stepbrothers become thralls for the sake of their own sanity. If they knew, if they could see how they were used by their mother, it is a better salve that they aren’t fully whole. But neither are my sisters and I. We watch her free them from the skeletal cage night after night and consume them, make tinctures and oils from them, the ink of her body art is of them. It all needs to end. “
“As we’ve already established, if your mother’s foci does not resonate in the practices of Lolth and if what you tell me it’s completely true your mother draws from an internal font, a very personal one. I will require some of your blood now.”, as Adrestia says this the shadow closest to the log that she sat on came up into the light, an unimaginable feat to behold. It was as if the shade were an intangible cloth, an edging of cape and began drawing in on itself. The portion towards the corner shape and folded over and over until the outline and edge create a density that no longer looked White cloth at all. The void solidified and became a spectacular dagger of a metal darker than rare obsidian. Adrestia took up this weapon and it was freed like a budding fruit from a vegetative limb, they shade withdrew and slithered back behind the log seat. In seeing this, Maeve knew well why she felt so surrounded, that so many eyes seemed to be gazing all at once and how this starless night was occurring. This shade that accompanied her companion encompassed the both. From the clothing and weaponry that the huntress presented in and all throughout the periphery, Maeve was completely surrounded and had no route to escape.
Adrestia stood and walked the side of the fire tapping the blade against her hand, “Do you consent, young one? I need to test a theory.”
Maeve really had no choice but appreciated the sentiment all the same, and extended her hand, palm up to the most dangerous creatures. The cut was cold and quick, barely intelligible at all, a cut that if it were fatal, and it wasn’t, Maeve felt she could fall asleep forever to. Maeve hoped in a sigh that her mother would receive the same, as merciful wish for the matron. The daughter knew her mother all too well though, Mom was a fighter and the onslaught of arcane ability would be terrible for any foe of her to face. Her maternal agent would draw up her own summoned companions, things of death and skeletons, she could rain melting plague in the outdoors, the trees would obey and whomp tremendous limbs in swaying dances of carnage. These were here abilities that had been witnessed in years past, Maeve did not know how heightened her rage could be now if so accosted and provoked. To somatic ties to mother were limited and dangerous to press into, they could lead and control her sister’s intentions and actions, but to inquire upstream was a folly. There were childhood lullabies intermingled with a thousand dead voices all bemoaning their death throes over and over, for they knew no rest yet - they merely simmered in mother’s great cauldron in an ongoing effort to intensify the iron’s patina. If the lethal cut could be quick though and in close proximity.
Maeve looked up from the fire and her thoughts, holding a bit of offered compress to her hand and saw that the fey feminine was rubbing a bit of blood between gloved fingers, clotting it and drying it in the friction of the motion, yet not at all. And it was not her bare skin doing it at all, it was though she had dipped her delicate digits into tar, but this substance looked exactly like the unnatural night that cradled them now. All the while, she was staring at Maeve while she had been lost in a moment thinking of her mother’s abilities and apparent weakness. The daughter of the spider-witch wondered if the mercenary assassin had been listening to her thoughts, if a delicate telepathy had occurred in the moment.
It was Adrestia’s grin that confirmed this, the perspicacious intuition, the delicate telepathy that had transpired between the two. The effect was instantaneous and the bond was made, it grounded the human in the hunter, but withered the bond she had with the other - some form of allergen in it’s host being allowed to feel humanity. Adrestia’s companion didn’t note the inhabital scene change, the parasite had lost it’s grip on the veil for a moment and in that moment a little light broke in, cracks in the periphery like the first creep of hope at dawn when creature of the night are at one’s exposed throat, Calvary’s horn heard in the distance when all seems lost.
All Maeve now held in her mind was the absolution of what needs to be done. If she had been diving in the abyss up until now, this was the hopelessness one must feel, the rapture in death as the last clutches of air escape the tormented and twisting lungs, the quake of muscle and lurch of throat as the will to breathe overrides logic. A survival mechanism built upon the real driver of the body’s wheel at sea…in that moment of disbelief in what our body is illogically performing, we see overwhelming Truth - that we are not in control at all. This is the sundering shore that Maeve sat on, bemoaning the rise of storming, salty waters kissing her bluing toes. Adrestia was an ocean of will and to defy or to defend was hopeless.
Maeve pulled her adornment of slavery and bond out from beneath her robes, the umbilical torque that her and her kindred all wore, “do the same to this as you do with my ichor and you will know our secret”.
A second link passed and without breaking the contact, Adrestia looked again into Maeve’s weeping eyes, “this price is doom”.
“It has to be done. Sisters forgive me. Brothers be free of your nightmare. Let all of her children know the exodus you grant us from bonds.”, Maeve lowered her head as if she were praying to something unseen.
******
The simple device, “tic, tic, tic”, small weighted bar in one hand, the forked and thorny reed light in the other. Gentle percussion, repetition for hours, patiently the thorns bite over and over breaking the scaley opaque and greenish dermus. The old crone enjoys the sensation and longs to see the next page of her archives scrolled on her. The forbidden language is jagged and incomprehensible, the forms of the characters create awful and jagged things on her blubber and folds. Sores weep and the artist applying the work has to wipe over and over. The sopped up infection saturates so many rags, but the mindless sons of Sylvia just bring them over and over as the artist taps away.
“Tic, tic, tic”…
Sylvia make small talk and it’s effects are dizzying to the skin alterer, “I appreciates that you were timely of arrivals though you discovered that the reeds are deeper in the bogs this season…”
“The girls have been busy weeding and beating back the fungals spores and adders that could have gotten to yee...”
The artist affirmed apreciatingly a simple, “Mmm, hmm” as the skilled hands continued at the gruesome work steadily the stippling sought for pussy packed pores to embed the ink into.
“Tap, tic, plip” wipe away….
“Another”, the master whispered from beneath the cowl and beaked doctoral mask. The fragrance and incense within it the tip kept the hands steady, for the pungent releases from all around her client’s hovel were most dangerous. Gloves were to be worn at all times, clamps were used to stretch the canvas delicately, there must be no tears to the thinning skin. No breaks for either of them and this would go on for hours as the thralls took the saturated clothes away to be burned. Too close, too close, the smell of this penetrated the mud hut’s main aperture. From the outstretched hand the soiled cloth was slimed away and a fresh one was draped over the shoulder.
Another dip of the ink, deep breath of eucalyptus for focus,
“Tic, tic, tic”
The mother continued to draw on, “I must be more a more attentive parent to my swarm of workers. The girls must be restless, they’ve been out gathering for at least a day.”
“Mmm, hmm”, the laborer kept to the work.
Sylvia had missed that it had been three days passed since here bedpan had been cleaned by the steady hands of the daughters. The pulse of their messages through the hive and outlying perimeter had been forgotten. Sylvia had let this natural ward fall.
“Tap, tic, tap, tap”
Steady hands working the folds of the neck and shoulder, steady now…..
“Tic. Tic.”
The work ceased, springs on the tiny clamps were released. Strain halted and Sylvia felt relief as her gravity sagged and settled back in to it’s enormous place. A good wiping of oil ensued to seal the work into the cells.
Passing off the last remaining towel to the empty-faced thrall, what would have been a good looking lad, once fair like his sisters, the color had been drained from eyes, hair and pigment. An odd dichotomy to the work that had been done over the last ten hours.
The artist rose from the stool, watching this final thrall clamber up the ribcage of the enormous prison they all hammocked in, dangling like mother’s polyps. The skeleton was huge, a giantess long past with mosses and vines growing over it’s forgotten, camouflaged limbs. Even if it were a colossal homunculus, the artist wasn’t bothered by it as the protective gloves, mask and finally the cowl was drawn back, exposing and making all of the surfaces vulnerable to the dangerous scene.
“Bring me the reflecting glass so that I can see the perfection of your work, dear”, Sylvia’s voice crackled. The worker took up the large piece and passed the old witch the smaller. Sylvia inspected for quite some time and the artist tensed, just a bit.
“So much work around my beautiful neck, unexpected imaginative flair, I suppose….you’ve had a long relationship with this vessel. This part here, “ , Sylvia lifted a fold at her neckline, “I’ll need to prop this portion to even see it, dear. My black pearls perhaps could weight the skin, maybe. Tsk, tsk..”, she clicked and wondered if she could gauge the price a bit over the discrepancy, even though the tattooist always did such great work and could be relied-on when Sylvia’s sparrows brought her requests.
Sylvia was inspecting too closely now, muscles tensed and coiled. The protective mask slid into place behind the large mirror, the serape unfurled from nothingness and the tricorn extended slightly askew, as was the fashion. Sylvia probed, too enamored with the work, a small variation from the old work of another joining with the new. The old artist’s hand were bond to it opposite. The messenger bird had flown to the disguised avarice, identities were assumed, down to the familiar fragrances of a body in close proximity to another after long hours of labor. Gentle telepathy, memory of skill and pace were grafted into nerve endings…
“Tap, tic, tic”
Indeed the old bitch was fast as a furie and flung across the room clutching at the work upon her with a huge, monstrous hand, “What have you done here? What are you playing at? What deceit! I’ll harvest your marrow for it!” She rose, the sag of her, from teet-tip, to the uneven unkept toe talons all scrapping on the stone floor as she levitated.
Adrestia felt the enormity of her vacuum, Sylvia’s will pulling at the continuum, imploding it in her, galvanizing it. She took up no wand, staff or broom, but the enormous cauldron did bubble and froth and indeed the giant skeleton began to creak. The giantess of long ago, runes upon the skull, an eerie sickly yellow light blossomed in the orbital caverns that had been sleeping, now aroused as a continuum infused homunculus. Bone and vine, sap and magicks, the construct of nature roused in an eerie dull, smokey light Adrestia dropped the mirror finally and Sylvia Pitt’s jowls went slack.
“My lover’s cleaved horn, by your hand! I see the jest well, but you have come to death and I have a pocket full of Obul’s for Charon’s boat ride for ye. I hold sway to incomprehensible powers to a mere assassin such as you! You slithered on your belly only to be within my seat of power!”
Sylvia’s droopy cudgel of a forearm twitched, but a mere spasm and the vines took Adrestia by the wrists and ankles, they entwined and sought to penetrate the very skin but only found skins there that would not yield. Sylvia protested this coating, unwilling to accept it and continued to probe. “What are you then? Who are you to be so bold to mount an assault on my lover and now to me? I call my daughters now to prepare a fine butchering of your parts! One should know that you cannot permanently killed a duke of the infernal. As I believe in his thorny parts, he will rise again from loyal belief alone. And when he does, his tummy will rumble and parts of you and your valued ichor will be the feast I serve him!”
Sylvia’s command blasted the hive in a wave and even the colossal, polyp-ridden skeleton sat back down from the psychic blast. The command was not resounded though, as it should have been. No. And Sylvia cocked her head to the side in doubt.
“Where are all of your belly fruit, crone?”, Adrestia finally spoke. Not in a whisper or a defiant shout, it was a tone of a casual, confident taunt. “Gone to rot, perhaps. Stolen away, hanging putrid from your wasted branches, mine the wind that tore them from your soured milk. Mine the whisper that taunted their girded need to be whole women, not the half-life you offered, so the birdies thought to fly from your nest, but found quickly they knew not how to flap, so they floundered. The cry of Icarus.”
“Oh, they weren’t defenseless, you would have been proud of the coven as they rose to my threat. But, alas, I was not the lone wolf in the fight and they certainly not modest sheep in a scrap. They entertained me so, for a bit. How yee kept them beneath your slimy skirting and apron from the seeing eyes of the Laconian Spire was quite a trick! They would have been marvels on the paths, if they were ever given the chance to learn and adapt in their own ways. Alas, all they really knew was your grizzled, earthen ways…..fairly predictable am afraid….poor dears.”
“The eldest told me your secrets, gargling their own bile, even the little tales that they didn’t want to know…. were in denial of. The creeps and moans from their brothers torments and throes, disgusting.”
“Still, they paid good coin, yes? That at least was inventive enough, I suppose. For still, all they unanimously dreamt of what my hand does tonight, They delighted in your death ….wanting it so that they may live. But you, olde one, you know the universal jest in that, aye? You didn’t share all of your wretched ties, did yee? A paradox to form a death pact with one such as I and to those I execute services in honor to. The yellow king’s gazeless face shines on you now. Go to know that there is still rot and ugly evil here upon yon terra.”
The bounty huntress gave a long pause, a final gift to the witch so that she may realize fully what had been done. Lament the loss perhaps….
The witch huffed and acrid cloud in heaving displeasure, the girth coughed out the fumes in Adrestia’s surroundings and the plain furniture, the stool corroded and scalded as a black mold withered the supports and sizzled the very stone. This pelted Adrestia’s shade and it consumed the spittle unfazed. Not even the opaque Kabuki-style battle mask was burned by the miserable mage’s phlegm. Adrestia just stood defiantly as the vines kept their snares, supposedly holding her in place.
“Have they called back their return, mother? Will they aid your fight? Your blood is their blood and yet, ..yours is now theirs. Don’t cry mother, for they haven’t left you.”
With this, Sylvia faltered finally, her hovering dipped slightly and even for the gross mottled nature of scaly skin, the bitch still blanched slightly in the realization that her progeny were no longer there. Her children, her sparks of immortality were not resonating and lending their will to her. There were no charging of robed daughter to the doorway and hum of chantings because the huntress had silenced their voices. While mother was distracted with her work, Hastur’s angel had killed her kin. Still, she felt them so close. So close indeed. Terribly close as she patted the new jagged, varicose lines on her decrepit flesh. What trespass was this! No, this ink. The black lines that crawled in artery walls, too deep they stampeded the clots and coagulating valves. Her daughter all screamed their torment in their mother’s head all at once. The psychic pitch stunned her.
In that, Adrestia’s newly tattooed garrote synched violently and not to seize, not to choke, but in a swift, fine line severed head from body. Sylvia pits was still working out her next attack in her mind as her brain lost it’s air and blood supply, as the body dropped and barrel-dumped it’s wreaking sewage onto the floor, the head floated there for a bit still puzzling out how to return fire. It finally plopped into the goo with a small splash and began to melt.
Adrestia whipped a tendril out from her arm and the astral whip knocked the cauldron into the sewage. She had just knocked her boots on the threshold, scraping dead mother’s muck from them when the inferno began within the mud hut. She could hear the thralls cooking the skeletal bond pods, roasting them in their cocoons. Adrestia cleaned for a bit and felt satisfied that they would have rest now from this horrible incarceration. The fire would burn for days and luckily the bog would consume it. It would remain a place of filth and darkness forever. Nothing would want to grow ever again in the pit that remained of the once coven of Sylvia Pitts.
The tavern known as the Stumpy Halfling would just need to manage itself for the evening as Gren attended to her dead friend. She waited at bedside, just as the scrawly note instructed and waited for the harvest-yellow moons to wain. “She said there would be clouds, Maeve, she said they would sign….”, she whispered to the cold friend as Gren held her hand and as promised the clouds rolled in from seemingly nowhere, masking the effect. Gren was hopeful then and looked towards the sickly adornment that she had never once envied at her dead friend’s throat.
She stared at the organelle ornament as it withered and cracked, it’s unsettling independent pulsing stopped and it dried and wilted. This went on for mere moments until the cough at the window, a refresh of the changing evening air blew even the dust of it from Maeve’s neck.
“NOW”, bolstered a command in the vigilant bartendress’s mind and she apply the balm that had been delivered with the instructions to the head, cheeks, neck, sternum, belly, pubis, palms and soles of feet. Gren waited and prayed to her gods.
Slowly, achingly, Maeve’s chest did eventually rise as the antitoxin took effect. There was much rejoicing.