Realm Book Three - Illuminated Death

by K. A. M'Lady

  Without warning, he wrenched me from the water and slammed me against the backsplash of my adjacent shower. Modgav’s naked, barrel-shaped and wart-ridden body, glowed a strange bluish hue in the remaining candle light, pressing against mine while he pinned me against the wall. His right forearm pressed into my throat, his left hand holding my arms above me. My airway was blocked. The desperate urge to breathe became all-consuming. The will to survive overwhelmed my soul.

  “You will remember,” he growled just before his disgusting lips, which barely hid his mouthful of razor-clad teeth, latched onto mine and my repulsion and lack of oxygen thankfully sent me into the void of darkness and forgotten memories.

  Chapter Three

  The door-latch is always stubborn

  beyond it dozes a beast

  tinged by the fire

  From Loners by Jean Lollain

  Translated from the French by Roddy Lumsden

  The heavy restraint of shackles bound my wrists and ankles. It was a weight I’d never forget; no matter how much Light or Darkness filled me. No matter the length of time that passed from this burning memory until the next.

  And yet, somehow I had forgotten. Or chosen to forget. Strange how our minds protect us from the Darkness that dwells deep inside us. However, the seepage of pain was there. Calling me. Forcing my will. Demanding that I remember.

  The blazing ache in my arms from being strung too long above my head, away from my body, and the sharp, metallic burn of cold iron cutting into my flesh bore a hole inside my soul. Carved a hatred saved for later days. These were the pains I began to remember. Scars buried beneath the hollow hill of mist and secrets of my memory’s forgotten time.

  My limbs felt as though acidic fire coalesced through my veins from where the shackles rubbed along my flesh. My naked body hung from a wall like a beleaguered calf waiting for the butcher’s knife. I’d become an offering; a feast for the frenzied Horde. Or, at the very least, a very twisted gift to a Dark Lord from two very demented minds. These were the memories that bound me. Memories made real.

  I’m quite certain now however, that at the time, neither giver thought they’d be dancing in hell for the deeds they wrought that night. It was a small victory I’d save for another day.

  In the mean time, hatred and loathing for my bitch of a mother and my Queen burned an insidious path to my spirit. The question scourging itself upon my heart—How could they have done this to me? How could they have given me to the Goblin King? I had no answers. Only the knowledge that I wanted to burn them both alive and let the carrion pick at their flesh.

  “Your wicked thoughts betray you, half-breed.”

  My personal voice of doom reverberated off the walls of his private rooms, bounding their way inside of me to bounce along the walls of my empty, hate-filled husk. It only sent my angst skyrocketing anew as revulsion, fear and the overwhelming desire for murderous revenge wrapped itself around my heart. I tried to find the bearer of the maddening voice that haunted me, but his body hid among the shadows—taunting me from afar. As he’d done for so many days before.

  I didn’t want to think what would happen when the distance no longer hindered and he chose to horrify me up close and personal. For now, he stayed among the shadows, spewing his vile desires. Parading any and every creature of Darkness he’d selected to come and see the half-breed toy he’d been given as a gift from the Land of Light. The multitude of the Goblin Horde fought each other; snarling, spitting and groveling before their King for just a morsel of a taste of my ivory flesh.

  It made me want to retch. Or cry. Either emotion, at this point, seemed futile.

  Then of course, there was the King’s own languorous laughter ringing in my ears incessantly. Night after night the chortle rang until I thought my ears would surely burst from the unrelenting clamor; adding more fuel to my suffering fire.

  I’d been at the tender mercies of the Goblins for five days when my keeper decided he’d toyed with me from his place among the shadows long enough. It seemed Modgav, the Goblin King had grown hungry for the flesh of a Fey and mine, even in its diluted form, was ripe and perfect for his pickings. Had there been anything in my belly, I would have puked. I’m certain even this would have caused him glee.

  The crack of a whip across the cement floor startled me awake; the shockwave jolting my entire body, my wrists scraping against the iron chains. Pain, lancing like fire, burned through me anew. Fear of my imminent demise washed through me.

  “Wake up, demon spawn.” He laughed, the muted hue of the blackened whip shinning in the candlelight. I could barely lift my head. My body was weary, my mind exhausted from five days without food, water and very little sleep. Despair filled me and I had become its whipping boy. The edge of sanity became the flame by which misery kindled the last spark of hopes dying embers.

  Peaking out between the ratty strands of my long green hair, my eyes locked onto the portly shape of my jailer with his odd bluish-green flesh and various lumps and hairy bumps. Then, of course, there was the swirling, freakish color of his eyes that glowed with my destruction. Or maybe it was my submission he was seeking. Either way, it was going to be a very long night.

  Hope may have been lost, but hatred and revenge stoked the coals of abject revulsion within me. Rebellion and an inane desire for my keeper’s death burned within me, each a dark dread seeping like a wounds bleak stain.

  The whip cracked along the wall next to my head and Modgav’s snarling smile increased with what could only be described as glee. “Your submission will bring me great joy, half-breed,” he stated, the slathering growl of his anxiousness more than apparent. He was five steps from me when he let the whip crack again, this time connecting with the flesh along the outside of my left thigh.

  My scream wrenched through the room, torn from the bottom of my soul like the leather cord had torn through the white of my flesh. A brilliant burst of crimson surged from a new three-inch long gash that zigzagged its way down my leg. Blood seeped in time with my now raging pulse.

  “So much more of your blood will flow before I am through with you.” His snarling smile lit his eyes with pure evil delight. “When I am through with you, Rihker Tennai, of the Ivy-Tenna-ai, I will have made you so unrecognizable that the Pixie will never accept you into their fair fold. I will mar you and scar you until even you don’t know who it is that looks back upon yourself.” He let the whip loose again, this time striking across the tender flesh of my belly.

  Burning pain ripped through me, the hot stain of my blood seeping from a puckered gash across my lower abdomen. I knew it ran in a fount of scarlet, blending with the blood oozing from my leg. I couldn’t help but scream again and again as every strike met its mark, my throat now raw from my raving, my wounds exuding my life blood and pieces of my soul.

  I was completely at the mercy of my soon-to-be killer. For that is what Modgav was about to become. I, a mere half-breed, as yet to know the taste of her Tells—the gifts of power from the Prophets—a mortal human left for dead in a month of sheer hell at the hands of Modgav, would never survive the month, let alone another five minutes of this torture in the care of the Goblin King.

  The despair of my entire life, my horrid and terrible situation, flashed before me—weak, naked, quivering and bleeding. Chained and helpless in the hands of the Goblins. No mere human could ever hope to survive. Then, as quickly as this thought came, it vanished, replaced by a burning, fevered hatred. A loathing so dark and so black I could barely see beyond it. I became consumed by a stark and vile hatred burning inside of me for the entire Goblin race. Most specifically, this Goblin in particular.

  Then, the boiling pitch of darkness and loathing for the Goblins turned and became a blinding white madness, spurred on by the repulsion I now carried in my soul for my mother and my fair and beautiful Queen.

  Blinding hatred ran chills up and down my spine, turning my seething blood from red-hot flame to lanes of ice. A pallor of destruction slithered through my vision
. It hung like darkened sheets of death and Darkness, all-consuming, filled my mind in one fell swoop until nothing remained but bleak, black, endless Darkness.

  A void of nothingness blocked the pain coursing through my veins. It blocked the fire burning in my flesh until I could no longer feel the beat of my heart pumping my blood onto the floor. It burned until I couldn’t even feel the acidic fire of iron piercing my flesh where I hung from the wall.

  My throat then closed with ice. When this stopped its burning, a haze of hatred filled me with icy tendrils of bitter and comforting Darkness. Allowing me, for the first time in days, to close my eyes and luxuriate in the abyss of my destruction, an oblivion of sweet, dark nectar.

  I’m not sure how much time I had passed in this state of abandon, but when I opened my eyes, Modgav stood before me, roaring obscenities. Spittle dripped from his clenched jaw, the whip clutched so tightly in his hand his knuckles creased white and his strange eyes became a rainbow swirl of anger and frustration.

  He drew his arm back, ready to strike, and I felt the flames of dread and hell’s fire fill me. My chin rose with the conviction of my loathing. My utter hatred of him and everything he represented followed the slow and cursory movement of that whip.

  I watched how, for a split second, he hesitated, uncertainty dancing across his eyes. He took his first lumbering step backward.

  “You will submit,” he stammered, flexing his arm, the whip curling against the floor. Consternation quivered in his voice, as if saying it aloud would help to garner false strength and courage against a dark madness even he did not understand.

  I’m not sure what he saw on my face or reflected in my eyes, but it didn’t really matter. For he and I both knew that it was too late, far too late for the both of us. Tonight, something inside of me died. Or was reborn. And it chose that moment to rear its loathsome head.

  I felt a doorway open inside me and beyond it loomed the abyss; a deep, dark, spiraling abyss of cool, comforting nothingness blanketed by a gusting wind of consoling Darkness. I opened myself to that wind and willingly wrapped it around me. Rolled myself in the comfort of it like a chenille blanket and basked in its succor and solitude. I relished its totality. I surrendered to its disturbing release and majestic wonder.

  When I looked out at Modgav, he was stock still with what I could only describe as abject fear. Fear of me. And, for the first time in all of my meager life, a small part of me delighted in this dark knowledge.

  While I clung to my Dark demise, a wind from everywhere and nowhere began to howl inside the chamber. It grew deafening. Roaring wildly in the confined space of his private quarters. Every item that wasn’t heavy enough or nailed down spun in the funnel the wind created. It became a violent rush of debris ricocheting around us. The walls rocked and the floor quaked. But the violence seemed to be centered within me. It was torrential and destructive and I knew that I was the cause of it.

  My hair whipped uncontrollably before me. It thrashed wildly, making it hard to see beyond the long green strands, but the second I thought about it, the wind settled and suddenly I saw everything clearly before me.

  Like a lover’s hand, the buoyed wind caressed me, cooling burning flesh, easing the pain of open wounds. Blood that had seeped ceased to flow. What had once felt like a scourge of fire ants marching inside my limbs from the iron shackles that bound me stopped their painful dance. When the shackles that held me prisoner to the wall burst, falling to dust around me and I fell to the ground, I heard Modgav whisper, “What sort of Darkness is this?” Once again I could not mistake the mark of fear in his voice.

  Looking up from the floor I saw the depth of horror in his eyes. And my own spark of joy spread through me like quicksilver. I should have been worried for my own soul, but at that moment, free of my bindings, with the King of my nightmares struck dumb with fear of me, I couldn’t help but rejoice.

  “You are nothing. Nothing!” he suddenly roared. “You are a mere half-breed without power. How have you this Darkness?” he growled. Fear, anger and wonder filled swirling eyes awe-struck by the power of Darkness. Power and Darkness that he did not possess.

  I didn’t have his answers. Hell, I didn’t have any answers. But I knew in that instant that I was something so much more than just a mere Pixie. Far more than any half-breed could ever hope to be. That the Prophets had not abandoned me after all. And, that the Light was not my only ruler. I was both a child of the Light and the Darkness.

  For better or worse.

  Weary unto death, covered in bruises and ripe with now drying blood, I stood and faced the Goblin King. A smile of dark knowing and even darker delight warmed my insides while a victorious smirk spread helplessly across my lips. Happily, I knew that from that moment on, whatever it was that I was to become, that Modgav, the Goblin King, feared me. And, I knew just as solidly as he stood there and cowered, that no matter what my future held, that from this point forward, I was going to make certain that the Goblins paid for his transgressions. That my mother and my Queen both paid for their transgression.

  And from this moment until my next, that who-so-ever harmed me or anyone weaker than I, would suffer my wrath.

  For even the Light can be shadowed in Darkness.

  Chapter Four

  I contemplate the end of the world but in my case

  I walk the rainbow in the dark

  From Mu’allaqa by Imru’ Al-Qays

  Translated by Frederick Seidel

  I awoke to the soft hum of snoring. The subtle warmth of heated breath on the back of my neck. The comfort of strong arms wrapped around me. I didn’t need to roll over to know that Jade slept curled against me, holding me against the fear of the Darkness. Holding me like a lifeline or a treasure. I felt the essence of his beast curled against mine...two wolves curled in a den, snug against the oncoming madness.

  Make no bones about it; madness was coming, to be sure.

  I’ve found that the Darkness always seems to linger in the stillness of the night. When we’ve all taken to hiding amidst our bed covers; seemingly safe in the layers of silk or cotton. Forgetting—if for the moment—that it’s out there, teeth salivating and claws sharpened; its belly empty and waiting for our vulnerabilities to grow lax so it can strike.

  I didn’t need to see the clock to know that the curtains kept the idle darkness at bay. That the demons had yet to be summoned back to Hell, nor the angels returned to Heaven.

  Currently, the last demon I ever expected to see this close and personal, the one possessed of a particular need to haunt me, sat on my bedside chair watching me sleep. I was certainly in no mood to see him. Sure, he wore the refinements of an archangel, but I knew he was truly the devil in disguise.

  A quiet voice inside me questioned why I hadn’t killed him already. Even now, gazing upon his lovely visage, I knew it had been a good idea. For beauty is a smart-tongued devil, but the angels cry when perfection is soiled by the foul words from a dark deceiver’s lying lips.

  “The lovely lady sleeps,” Lucien whispered. There was a slight smile to his perfectly chiseled features. The kind that makes your knees weak and your stomach flutter just that little bit. Strange that the last I’d seen of him he’d sloughed off into a black haze, disappearing from my living room in his bloody remnants of clothing; body and cloth torn to shreds by my angry tirade. Of course, that was after he’d disposed me of the majority of my own clothes, lingering thoughts of a good mood and my best intentions.

  Of course, I had been holding back the urge not to ram a stake through his heart...if the bastard even had one. You could be certain it wasn’t a decision I’d withhold again.

  Lucien couldn’t be trusted. I’d known it the first instant I’d stared into his drowning blue eyes. What he was doing sitting so casually at my bedside, like we were old lovers and he’d come seeking favor, made me trust him even less.

  “How the hell did you get in here, Lucien?” Pissed didn’t even begin to describe the tangled web of emotions tha
t began to course through me. Scorn dripped from every word.

  “Now, Cheri. That is an unkind way to treat someone who may be trying to help you.”

  “May be trying to help me? His audacity held no bounds. “If my memory serves, Lucien, the first and last we met, you were most ungraciously trying to kill me...after I allowed you to divest me of all of my clothing.” The smug little toothsome bastard actually snorted at that comment and it was all I could do to keep from blasting him out of his seat with a power ball of Light. However, there was a reason he’d come and, now that I was up, I wanted to know why.

  “You know,” I continued, pointedly ignoring his smugness, “it’s not just anyone I let get that up close and personal with me. Not to mention the fact that you so unkindly sicced your Shadow upon my Guardian.”

  “It could have been much more pleasant for the both of us, had you just complied.” That unmistakable glimmer had returned to his lovely blue eyes. The emphasis on the word ‘pleasant’ strolled through me like a gentle caress, making places on my body twitch as if he’d run his fingers along my flesh. I watched his gaze travel its way down the silhouette of my body, each of my limbs constricting beneath the heavy scrutiny; setting nerves on fire, sparking not only my desire, but even more of my irritation.

  I absolutely refused to allow Lucien the upper hand. Again. When we’d first met he’d somehow shoved Kieran from my thoughts, pushing away my connection to him, forcing himself into my mind. He’d touched places that no one other than Kieran had ever touched before. Then, when he decided I’d be a lovely little evening snack... Well, let’s just say that all bets were off.

  There was no way this side of Hell he was ever going to touch me like that again. I was officially done with Lucien and his lusty mind games. Been there, did that and hadn’t enjoyed the ride. Well, that’s not entirely true. The drive was nice, the scenery quite enjoyable, but the person doing the driving needed a refresher on the rules of my road. He obviously hadn’t seen the warning signs that read, ‘No Biting Lane’ and ‘Keep Teeth to Self at All Times’. Because apparently, he’d missed the most important warning of all: ‘Don’t Piss Off the Pixie’.