How do you cope with learning that your mother was murdered before you were born, your father is a fairy hitman, and you wield the power to raise an army of devoted love slaves... except you haven't the least idea how to control it?
Tom Corwen's di...
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The richness of her garden long ago ceased to yield the peace it once had. Majestic columns bore remembrances of the past beyond tall wickets entwined with dark ivy and pure white wood anemone. Golden arnica and wild mountain saxifrage nested in hearty zoysia. Pale hellebore and vibrant lupins flowered among a forest of venerable red maples. All served only as reminders of what once had been hers. All other beauty had ceased.
She returned to its heart not for the white marble fountain that shone with echoes of moonlight and wild patterns of frost, but for the figure standing at its center, equally bright, equally cold. Equally dead.
Alberich, my soul, my great warrior. She pressed the palm of her hand gently against his likeness, allowing the abyssal specter of sorrow to kindle memories within her breast and nourish the embers of her terrible hate.
"My Queen," a small, rasping voice pierced the silence like an arrow. She turned to face it.
"Perias," she acknowledged in a resonant voice. Her cold blue eyes fixed on his and he trembled.
"My Queen, the Moirae has awakened." The wizened imp bowed low, his nose nearly scraping the granite path.
"Bring her. Summon Nictis." She strode past, nearly trampling her servant.
In days long since passed she would have entered her throne room with an entourage. Those days were replete with promise and rage, when battles were fought and won or lost against the Titan she once loved, but anger no longer provided sustenance and had since burnt to ashes of spite and cruelty.
She took her place alone on a great throne worked into the weathered trunk of an ancient tree. She had slain its keeper with her two hands, watched in anticipation as her minions bore it to the ground and carved the seat of her power into its corpse. She would never be caged within it again.
The wind whistled a lonely tune, blowing leaves through her Grand Hall, past once-living archways now glittering darkly beneath a thin layer of ice. The druids had bound her palace to her heart and it had once been radiant, but centuries of failure and pain had stolen her joy, and the mighty temple had fallen into ruin.
The druids and their knowledge were gone, the majesty of her reign now a ghost of regret and loss. Time was all that remained, and of that, she had an abundance. So, she waited.
A massive shadow ascended the stairs to her hall and marched ponderously toward her, dragging a carved stone sarcophagus at the end of a long, heavy chain. Perias trotted some distance behind the mountain troll and its charge, nervously eying the tall, shadowy form of Nictis, captain of the queen's guard and general of her forces, who kept pace beside him.
The Queen stood and descended from her dais on bare feet, her diaphanous, blood-red robe billowing starkly across alabaster skin. She wore nothing apart from it, not even a crown, save for the twisted locks of her sable hair.
"Open it." Her command echoed twice more and died.
The troll placed his burden at her feet and unlatched the prison's iron bindings, then pushed aside its heavy lid. The body of the Moirae lay desiccated within.
The Queen stood over it, delight twisting her visage into the mockery of a smile. "Speak," she purred. The corpse burst suddenly into icy flame and haunting screams multiplied in the Great Hall. "Where is the Nain, seer?"
A harsh, ghostly voice broke through the pain and flame. "Thine eyes shall not alight upon the sacred line!"
"The Druid's Tome?"
"Neither shall its myriad mysteries be thine!" It cried.
"Then why do you stir? You will have your freedom when the oracles lie at my feet. Do you so lust after torment that you would disturb me for aught else?" The Queen asked peevishly.
Low coughing rose from the mouth of the coffin and ascended into wracking, agonized laughter that haunted the canopy of the Great Hall.
"The darkling child has risen! The Devourer has come!"
"Liar." The Queen calmly dismissed this news with a flourish.
Raging sapphire flames rose in a bonfire from the Moirae's prison, taking the flickering shape of a young woman, eyes bound in linen, its arms in chains and straining from the effort of her manifestation. "Usurper of ice and shadow, ruler of bones and dust! Cast your dark gaze upon the West. From thence comes your doom!" it cried in a hollow voice.
"LIAR!" erupted the Queen and even the troll staggered back. The startled flames flattened in the wake of her reverberating denial.
"Seal it." She hissed. "Let the cursefire burn 'til the moon wanes new."
She turned on her heels and ascended to her throne as the troll set the heavy lid in its place, restored its chains, and dragged the sarcophagus and its tortured occupant out of the hall. Taking her throne, she beckoned to Nictis.
"My Queen," answered the slender shape in a sibilant voice, approaching the throne respectfully with a deep bow, but her attention was focused beyond this world.
"Could she be mistaken?" She asked at last, speaking quietly into the air.
"I fear not, Mistress," the death god said without lifting his head. "The Moirae can not lie."
She finished for him quietly, as from a distance, "And she sees far beyond the veiled shadows." Then the weight of her scrutiny fell upon him. "Gather the hunters. Find it. Destroy it. The Moirae's prophesy will rest beside her in her tomb."
Nictis the Orcus smiled viciously, leering upward with bright yellow eyes, baring teeth like needles of ivory, the taste of blood already on its tongue.
"Yes, my Queen."
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