Creature of Fire and Flame

The hag was waiting for them at the gates. The stance portrayed none of the nerves of fear that might have been expected; it was instead tempered steel and ice-and-fire that lay side by side, bent but not broken, either. Wrinkled hands cupped over the darkened edge of the chalice, as the slight slish-slosh of liquid inside persisted, and all the while as the world trembled around them.

Elara’s hands shook. 

On instinct, she pulled the cloak tighter around her. The raggedy thing scratched uncomfortably against the paper-thin sheen of her skin. She tried to pay it no heed, because while the cloth itself was barely anything but a tattered brown clump, it seemed even heavier than the crown itself that once nestled above her head. Like Atlas’s chains, the weight of it pulled her down, towards the earth, and she wondered if she would be swallowed up.

Her breath hitched, and she nearly stumbled against the cobble beneath her feet. A steady hand held her tight, and pulled her up, and she spared a grateful glance towards her similarly hidden companion, half-swallowed in the shadows and spindly blackness of night. The steady companionship burned like a flame in the darkness, and she found herself all the more grateful for it.

No words passed their lips. Silenced under the watchfulness of the bitter moonlight. Too many eyes.

Warily, she cast another glance into her surroundings. Her attention whittled as she sought out the hag. Upon the sight, was her focus ensnared, and caught between the undercurrent of desperation and caution, her feet drew her closer.

Behind her, her shadow followed. Two spectres moving underneath the cover of night. 

They drew to a halt in front of each other, a distinctly uncomfortable fit. The contrast was striking. Sticky-silvery strands of hair against rusted brown, and child against the agelessness of time. Disgraced against the beloved of the land. The physical distance itself was sparse, but the pit that yawned up beneath still persisted in making her feel more divided than ever.

Both. Neither. 

The words dried in her mouth, like age-old paste.

The witch’s gaze was sharp and hooked. But... soft, for some unfathomable reason. “Oh, child.” The dark creature rasped softly, and reached out a withered hand, clawed and hideously disfigured even in the veil of night.  

It took all the strength that Elara possessed not to flinch in response. Weathered, coarse skin rubbed against the skin of her cheek, like hooks clawing beneath her skin and boiling up the blood in her veins.

The sharp edge of the blade swung out from behind her as Malou let out a warning growl, eyes burning with fiery fury. 

“Down.” Elara said sharply, reaching out and pressing the palm of her hand against the flat edge of the hilt. She ignored the dark look that her raven-haired friend pierced her with, and instead softened her voice. “Malou, please. We need her.”

The hag chortled in response, somehow finding mirth in the situation that was anything but. “Oh, you need me, t-to help,” Lungs rattled with every strained breath. “Need me, need me. Far too late, child.” Her eyes shone with pity, and tears began to roll down ancient cheeks, pale gleaming threads stitched across a broken canvas. “There’s no help coming, child.”

“The scrolls,” Malou burst out, barreling forward. “The riddle in the tombs, and my father’s last words-.”

Elara finished the sentence. “From yew to fir, and seed to earth. Broken bones to sell, and blood to weave bound.” 

Something like fear crossed the witch’s face, profound and tremulous. “A price.” She finally admitted. “There’s a price.”

Elara grasped onto that. “But there is a way,” She argued, a sliver of hope seizing her breath.

“Aye.” The admission looked as if it cost a lot. Far too much. The hag glanced at the two with pity akin to sorrow. 

Hesitating slightly, the witch added, “The shrine in the forest. Drain blood against blood.” She hesitated, quietly tacking on a, “But, how far are you willing to go?”

Anything, she thought fiercely. She would do anything.

She said it aloud, as if the act of bringing it forth into existence would somehow make it more real. It portrayed none of the steel that she hoped to muster, and instead came out in the tremulous promise of a frightened child.

The witch's face was knowing. "Good." She croaked out, reaching out and gripping the hem of her cloth. She glanced up into the horizon of the sky, gaze darkening with realisation. As if able to sense what they couldn't, and this apparently turned out to be not far out the mark.

The shadows began to lurch around around the hag. Like a cicada fleeing free from its skin, a dark hungry look engulfed the oil-slick of her eyes and mind. It coaxed out a creature of teeth and claws, of blood painted upon a paper-white canvas of skin and bone.

Terror barely had place to sprout in her heart, before the hag disappeared in the inky mist. Gone. Just like that.

The air whispered and rattled the final word in her lungs.

Run.

She breathed in.

Her body didn't comply.

Elara knew that it was only Malou’s timely reaction that saved both their lives.

Gloved hands encircled her wrist and pulled her into the shadowed crook of the alcove beside. Limp and pliable with shock, she let the cool of the stream awash over her, the undercurrent tugging at her ankles. It threatened to pull her into the murky depths, and - as her eyes were unable to tear away from the sight of the writhing mass of bodies so close in front - fright overwhelmed the breath in her lungs into shards of ice.

The shadows yipped and howled as they began to crawl out of their hiding places. One after the other, grotesque and flayed limbs that scratched and tore away at the air. The smears of colours were terrifyingly clear to pick out. 

Almost as if detached from her body, Elara could only watch. Her father’s soldiers - once a source of comfort and safety - were now only a painful reminder of everything had changed. Death and decay, coaxed out roughly from a cocoon of humanity. Whatever scraps of sanity that might have been there was now engulfed amidst a flurry of nightmarish horror.

She saw the elongated limbs, the unnaturally burning red eyes and the waxy skin. The sharp-edge of bladed knuckles. Flesh twisted in upon flesh and bones shuddering as it freed itself from underneath the cover of stretched parchment. Dark red, broth-like and viscous fluid dribbling down and staining everything in brushstrokes of great cruelty.

Realising that time had run out, Elara clamped down on a sobbed choke. She reached for Malou’s grasp. 

They ran.

-_-_-_-_-_-

Maloe remembered the day that the sickness spread.

(They both did.)

The hiss-crackle of the great beast as it rocked on its hind, and its rider illuminated against the pale back-drop of lightning and fire and razed earth. A great voice that had ripped the skies in two. The prophecy of a doom-sayer. 

A curse cast. The land devoured.

Their deaths spun in broken, tattered cloth.

-_-_-_-_-_-

It was hard to make out anything. The forest loomed around them, a skeletal fist closing in around its captured prey. Withered limbs sunk deep into the dry soil. It gleamed bone-white in the spotlight of the moon - wrenched ribs and flesh lovingly rendered from a field of soot. In the middle was a clearing, ethereal and hollow, sacred and desecrated all at once.

The shrine itself was an unassuming structure. Half-buried in the rock, it in itself was a scattering of barely shaped fragments and petrified chalk. 

Elara slashed the jagged end of the crystallised rock into the skin of her palm.

A slight shiver of pain shot through the frayed nerves, and she pulled in a deep breath. Thick blood began to ooze over the cut, but even as her stomach churned, she knew that it would not be enough. Hands trembling, she reached up and pressed the sharp edge into the wound once more. Again and again, she tore through flesh, fingers peeling open the gaping cut, until the blood had begun to properly drip onto the ground. 

She watched as Malou began to do the same, feeling oddly numb.

Their gazes met over the main centrepiece - a chipped paradigm of obsidian and rusted frost, on which above stood the two broken remnants of a set of statued feet. A petrified stone head lay nearby, rolled underneath the slant of sharp slabs.

In a mimicry of before, their hands reach out to grasp onto each other. Pale skin against each other, and bloodied flesh scraped raw against sandpaper of bone. Blood mingled and poured as they pressed it onto the center of the faded altar. It really did look black in the moonlight.

Elara willed it to work, imagining that spark of belief to catch fire upon the fuel of their blood and grime. Fire against fire, and blood against blood, a destruction wrought of their own making. 

-_-_-_-_-_

Malou’s lips trembled. Desperation strung her body like a ragged puppet, and in a fit of inspiration, she lifted her head towards the heavens, and began to sing brokenly, “From yew to fir, and seed to earth. Broken bones to sell, and blood to weave bound.”

With a pang, Elara recalled that particular tune from the one that Malou’s father had used to hum for them - a special melody just for two carefree children roaming the castle and the fields around them.

“-Broken bones to sell, and blood to weave bound.”

Their blood swallowed up by the fount. Their tears drank in by the earth.

It began to rumble.

-_-_-_-_-_-

The creature - demon, she realised as renewed terror flooded her veins - was birthed to life of the summoning in a whirlwind of buffeting winds and the mournful wails of a varulv somewhere far off. The jagged timbre gave away the twisted humanity of the creature, although it was of no immediate concern. Not next to the towering mass of mangled darkness and sharp teeth peering out at them from underneath a canopy of cracked ashen wood.

“Your command.” It rumbled, echoing with the past howls of a thousand used souls. “And the price.”

Understanding dawned on them at that moment. It ensconced the air into a charged atmosphere. 

It was understanding that doomed them, but it would also be understanding that would also allow Elara to do this one last thing. 

She stepped forward. “My deal, and I will pay the price.”

The creature began to smile - a truly horrible grin with far too many teeth and crooked edges as it seemed to peer into her soul.

“Elara, no!” Malou screamed at her. No matter how much it hurt, she cast it aside, and stepped closer towards the gaping maws of the beast. The wind buffeted around her, and pulled her into the center of the blazing circle, so that she was face-to-face with the eyes of death.

Thoughts raced through her head at that moment. She saw too little, and too many things at that moment. Sorror, anguish and grief - a coalesced and mangled mass of all of them - and the sight of so much loss and death burned into her head like a brand. She strained against the impulse to turn around, for if she knew that she did, she would back down and flee once more.

An idea took hold, and rooted in the depths of her mind. 

What a truly horrible idea.

(It would work, her heart whispered.)

At peace at last, she smiled. Dared the creature to take her plea. “A way out. Open the gateway.”

“An intriguing demand, little princess. Powerful magic. Why might I?” The creature countered.

“You know why, oh mighty beast.” Her voice was soft and dangerous. 

It started to laugh raggedly. “The land is rot, little princess.” It agreed. It raised a splintered eyebrow. “But, what is your price?”

Now or never.

“My sight.” Elara offered flatly. “Take it from me.”

“That would be a service, not a price.” The creature replied, observing her. “But I would take it, on one condition.”

“What would that be?”

It began to chuckle, leaning down to brush a rough talon against the clumps of her hair. “I want,” It whispered in her ears and her bones, “I want you to do it.”