by Tristan Vick
We step through the doorway together and suddenly we’re standing on a light gray sandy landscape. The ground is soft, like the beach, but there isn’t a trace of water in sight. The sky is almost entirely black except for a few barely perceptible stars and not much else. Oddly enough, there is a tranquil and calm feeling to this place.
Daeris guides me over to the dining table. She stops beside it and turns to look at me. “You wanted to know where this place is?” she asks me. I nod. She points up at the sky behind me. “Look and see for yourself.”
I raise my eyes and look up only to see the giant blue and green planet hovering above us. It’s as though I’m submerged beneath the ocean, looking up toward the survace, only to see another ocean being reflected back at me.
I recognize it as Valandra, but I don’t know how I know. I just know. Which means, I’m beneath Valandar. I’m…in the Nether.
What did Zee say about the Nether? That a person could get stuck here forever. Suddenly, I’m hyperventilating and I grow week in the knees.
“B-but how?” I ask, unable to mask the fear and trembling in my voice.
Slowly, I sink down to my knees. Daeris catches me under my arms and sinks down into the dirt with me, not caring about dirtying her dress but, surprisingly enough, caring about my needs. Wrapping her arms around me from behind, she gives me a firm squeeze to let me know she has my back. Suddenly her lips are at my ear and she whispers, “Breathe, child. Just breathe.”
Resting on my heels, I sit gazing up at Valandra Prime, which hangs over our heads like a giant mystic orb.
I close my eyes and take in a deep breath, just to be sure I’m not dreaming, and then open my eyes again and look up at the swirling blue and white and green sphere looming before us.
“This is some kind of trick,” I say, still in shock. “This is more black magic, isn’t it?”
“Oh, it’s not trick. I assure you that it’s all real. But you’re right about it being a bit of magic. It takes a lot for me to keep us both here, but I thought we could use the privacy.”
Daeris, still close, leans in and bites my ear playfully. The pain of it reels me back into the moment.
“Ow!” I yelp, reaching up to touch my ear where she bit me. I stand back up and turn to confront her but she continues to kneel in the sand. She smiles up at me with an unapologetic grin that suggests she rather enjoyed tormenting me.
“What was that for?” I ask.
“You were having a panic attack. All I did was help to refocus you.” She stands up and brushes the glittering sand from her dress.
“So, you bit me?”
She looks up at me and smiles. “I’m afraid that before this night is over,” she tells me, her voice dripping with salacious intent, “you’re going to be begging me to bite you in places best left up to the imagination.”
Dismayed, I stare at her and attempt to gauge her intentions with me. Seeing as she is approaching me as a challenge to be conquered, I give her my best sportsmanlike smile and reply, “We’ll just have to see about that.”
Waving me over to the dining table, she pulls out my chair and helps me get seated. I sit, but realize I need to pull up my dress, so I immediately stand back up, adjust myself accordingly, then settle back into the seat.
Once I’ve been properly seated, Daeris walks over and takes her seat across from me. Placing her elbows on the table, she clasps her hands together and rests her chin on the backs of them. She stares at me with her dark smoldering eyes. “So,” she says.
“So,” I reply, not knowing what else to say.
“I guess I’ll just come out with it,” she begins. “The way I see it, there are two paths we could take. One leads us toward a closeness neither of us have ever dreamed of before. The other leads us down a path of suspicion and mistrust where we’re constantly trying to get at each other’s throats. One path leads to peace, the other to ruin, and the question I pose to you is…which path will you walk with me? Will you choose to become my Queen, or will you be my enemy?”
“You make it sound like it’s an easy choice.”
“How is it not an easy choice, Arianna? You have the power to prevent the end of the world by simply agreeing to be with me. The alternative is death and destruction.”
“That’s not much of an alternative.”
Daeris leans back in her chair and bites a fingernail as she contemplates how to best win me over to her side. “Let me put it this way. We all have a role to play. Some call it fate. Others claim it is their destiny. Regardless, the fact remains there are powers and events beyond our control. I have spent nearly three thousand years chasing my destiny, and now I’ve finally found out how to achieve it. As you might imagine, I’m not about to let anything stand in my way of getting what is rightfully mine. And you, Arianna De Amato, seem to be the one thing I hadn’t anticipated. You are an Outlier. The one thing that could stand between me and achieving my destiny. So, I deliberated long and hard and determined there were two possible options. One, we stay enemies and fight until one of us wins and the other loses. Or, I make you my ally, my partner, and share my destiny with you.”
“And what exactly is this destiny?” I ask.
“In the few millennia I have been alive, I’ve discovered how mortals like us can achieve godhood. I’ve discovered a key, so to speak, that will unlock an unfathomable power. Both the power to destroy and the power to create.”
“So, what you’re telling me is, you want to become a god?”
“I will become a god,” she reassures me, emphasizing the will part with unfettered conviction. “What I am offering is for you to become a god along with me, and together we will destroy all that is corrupt and evil in this world and rebuild it in our own image.”
I turn my gaze back to Valandra Prime hanging in the black void and think for a bit. Daeris Darkthorne just watches me patiently from behind her dark scheming eyes, but she says nothing. She wants…no…needs me to decide it on my own. Give myself over freely with no coercion.
“But what if I don’t want to become a god?” I ask. “What if I just want things to be as they are?”
She looks at me curiously, then taps her fingernails on the table top as she searches for a response. They clack in concession only to repeat the ritual. After another moment, she finally breaks the silence with a question.
“Are you afraid things would change? That you might lose your friends? As a god, you could choose to use your powers or not. It would be entirely up to you. But what I’m offering you I only offer this one time.”
“I hope,” I say, “You’ll give me time enough to sleep on it?”
She chews on her bottom lip softly as she deliberates my request and then, after a few seconds, she smiles at me and replies, “If that’s what you need.”
“Just one question, Daeris. If you don’t mind?”
She smiles at me when I use her name in such an intimate fashion. “Anything. You can ask me anything. Always.”
“Would you think less of me if I told you where I would like to receive that love bite now?”
Daeris’s ears perk up and she sits up straight and looks at me with a surprised look. “Why, Mistress Arianna, you are full of surprises, aren’t you?”
I crawl onto the table, and doing my best at a cat impression. Pulling up my dress, I bring my bare knee forward and brush the bread and butter and glasses of wine off the table. Maintaining eye contact with her, I slink across the tabletop to where she is.
Face to face, our eyes lock in a fierce magnetic-like attraction, and I crane my neck forward and search for her lips with mine. Suddenly she leans in and grabs me by the scruff of my neck and kisses me insatiably.
Daeris lets out a salacious moan and soon enough her tongue slips into my mouth and gives my tongue a twist. Daeris guides me to her and leans back, forcing me to slide off the table and onto her lap. I straddle her hips and bend down and kiss her mouth, doing my best to keep her fixed in the moment.
D
aeris slides her hands up my thighs, then moves them up my waist and, finally, she reaches up and gives my breasts a firm squeeze. She watches my eyes intently to see if that’s the direction I want things to go.
So, playing along, I close my eyes and moan softly. This solicits and even bolder response, and I can feel her fingers slide under the folds of my dress and then pull it down. Just as I’m afraid that my right breast will slip out, her lips attach themselves to my breast.
She kisses the bulge of my breast a couple times and then, to my surprise, opens her mouth wide and sinks her fangs into me.
I feel the piercing sting as her fangs impregnate my right breast causing trickle of blood to run down and tarnish my dress and I let out a small whimper from the pain.
I open my eyes to find her suckling on my tit, and I reach over, run my fingers through the back of her dark hair, and grab a wad of hair and grip her tight.
Not wanting to appear weak, I jerk her head back and she releases my breast. Her eyes wide with excitement, she looks up at me gazing down at her with a scheming smile and, with a crooked grin, she licks the remainder of my blood off her teeth and lips and then bends down and laps up the small stream of blood that trickles down my chest.
I smile. Reach down and pull her chin up. Bending down I kiss her firmly on the lips. The light salt and copper taste of my blood still lingers on her lips. What she isn’t expecting, however, is the dinner knife I clench in my right fist.
Before she can read my thoughts, I drive the knife under her rib cage and plunge it straight into her heart. Daeris sits up, the contentment melting away from her face only to reveal complete and wide-eyed dismay. My little distraction worked. She was never the wiser to my true intentions.
“I thought you could read minds,” I say mockingly. I twist the knife and she groans in pain. I twist it again and force her to cringe.
Sliding off her lap, I raise my foot and kick her right in her chest. She falls backward in her chair and crashes to the ground. The knife protruding from her chest.
She turns her eyes to me and back up at the visage of Valandra floating above us.
“Answer me this, if the all-powerful Daeris Darkthorne dies in the Nether, is she trapped here forever?”
Without waiting for her to mumble a reply, I turn and run toward the door, pulling my dress back up as I go. It had to be done, I tell myself. Besides, if sex was all she desired from me, she would have taken me to her bed chamber, not to the Nether.
Once I reach the door, I turn to see Daeris clutching her ribs. She rolls over onto her hands and knees and looks up at me with the expression of deep betrayal. Thick purple blood trickles through her fingers as she grips her side and drips down onto the white regolith all around her.
I thrust open the door and step back through to the other side. Off to my right the horses nibble on some desert grass, unaware that anything barbaric has transpired. Certainly, not murder.
My heart pounds in my chest, and I peer through the doorway as I watch Daeris push herself up. She collapses back down to her hands and knees and, determined to get her revenge on me, she begins to crawl toward me.
“Arianna!” she growls through her clinched teeth. She looks up at me and scowls. Rage burns in her dark eyes as she stretches out her hand toward me. It’s as though she wants to grab ahold of my throat and choke the life out of me, but—to my great relief—she is too weak to get to me.
Her attempt to reach me is thwarted when she collapses and falls face first into the grey glittering sand. A pool of purple blood begins to flow out of her, soaking its way into the gray silica and dying it burgundy. That’s when I see the giant spider climb down the back wall of the web and crouch over Daeris’s body.
Repulsed by the terrible sight, I race over to the chariot, pick up the reins, and scream at the horses to “Giddy y’up!”
They do as I say and pull away and, without hesitation, I bring them up to a race pace. Circling about, we gather speed and then I turn them back toward the door. Once we’re flying, I aim for the doorway, which stands by itself in the open field. Snapping the reins, I yell “Faster!” and the horses comply. Their hooves gallop almost as fiercely as my heart races.
Abruptly, a strong jolt threatens to upturn the chariot, but I regain control and with a crash and a crunch the chariot smashes into the door and runs it over.
As we pass swiftly over it, I turn and look back to see only wood shards and splinters littering the ground. I smile and think to myself I was lucky to have gotten out of that with my life. Away from that terrible creature and her pet spider.
The sun is already starting to set in the west and the sky is rapidly dimming to a cool purplish pink. Soon it will be night. I look up at Valandra’s moon, which hangs in the cerulean sky, providing enough light for my evening ride. I stare long and hard up at that pale-yellow sphere and wonder where Daeris truly is. Wherever she is, I’m sure she’s plotting her revenge. I can practically guarantee it. Nobody who lived to over three thousand years old ever died of a simple little knife poke. She’ll be coming for me—with a vengeance. And I’ll be ready for her.
The chariot’s wheels kick up dirt as the horses and I race along the arid landscape. Pulling snugly on the reins, I direct the horses back toward the camp. First, I’m getting my sword back. Then it’s straight on to Sabolin. Back to my friends. I only pray to the Goddess that they’re still alive.
9
Darkness descends and the shroud of night blankets the landscape. The horses continue to race, undaunted by the distance. But even as my team pushes onward, a sudden wave of vertigo hits me and the outside world all around me begins to fade in and out of focus.
Bleary eyed, I feel as though I’m growing sleepy, even though adrenaline rushes through my veins and my excitement to be reunited with my friends pushes me into a nervous frenzy. This is how I know some unseen force is affecting me. But since magic doesn’t work on me, I suspect that I’ve been poisoned. That’s when I remember Daeris’s love bite.
I look down and I see my right breast bleeding profusely. More so now than it was earlier. In fact, it has soaked clear through the turquoise dress, leaving only a large purple blotch. I reach down to touch it but a sharp pain shoots through my entire body. Immediately after, I lose my footing and fall off the back of the chariot.
The only good thing to come out of it is I incidentally knock the Moon Blade off with me. It’s the only consoling thought that runs through my head as I hit the ground with a harsh impact.
I roll three times, skid, and then roll some more. My turquoise dress is shredded on the rocky terrain and my arms and legs get banged up rather badly. Lying flat on my back, I raise my head to see the horses race away with my chariot. I fall back down and look over toward my sword, sitting in its sheathe no more than an arms length and a half away. But before I can attempt to reach out for it, a sudden blackness washes over me and I pass out.
A rancorous bout of yowling startles me back awake, and I lay on my back looking up at the star-spackled sky. I feel cold, so I know I’ve been asleep for at least several minutes, if not longer. And I’d get up if I could. But, as it turns out, when I try to move my muscles I can’t. My entire body is paralyzed.
“What did that witch do to me?” I mutter aloud. Then it dawns on me. She must have injected me with a paralyzing venom when she bit me. I was the one meant to be the giant spider’s dinner. The very thought of being wrapped in a web and having all my insides sucked out while I’m still conscious sends a nasty shiver down my spine.
Before I can even thank the goddess for continually watching out for me, I hear the sharp cry of a wolf.
The howling is loud, which causes me to think they must be nearby. Using all the energy I can muster, I turn my head and discover the tree line of the forest. I’ve come to the end of the desert but now must contend with a pack of hungry wolves that have caught onto my scent.
“Leif was right,” I say to myself. “Hanging out with me is absol
utely harrowing.”
Ahrwoooo!
The wolf’s cry seems neared now. Not a good sign. I thought maybe I’d have more time. Apparently, I was wrong.
I scan my surroundings looking for my sword, but it is too far away for me to reach in this condition. I look for a rock, a stick, anything else I might use as a weapon instead, but there’s nothing within reach.
Padded footsteps approach me from the trees. I stare hard, trying to see their golden eyes glimmering menacingly in the moonlight, but there isn’t a trace. Even so, I know they’re there. Watching me.
“Get out of here!” I yell in my most threatening voice. “I’ll cut you fur-balls down to nothing. I swear by the Goddess I will! So, you better find some prey less determined to live!”
Slowly, a single gray Dire wolf pokes its head out of the forest. It’s testing me. Checking to see if I really am as ferocious as I make myself out to be. Creeping toward me with soft steps, it points it nose up and sniffs the air. Satisfied that I’m not a threat, it cranes its neck up toward the moon and howls.
Suddenly more eyes appear in between the dark trees and more gray heads emerge. Soon there is an entire pack of at least twelve bloodthirsty wolves inching toward me. All of them with their lips peeled back, fangs showing. All of them growling—a terrifying guttural rumbling in the back of their throat which acts as a constant reminder to me so I won’t forget who’s the hunter and who’s the prey.
“Go! Get!” I scream. Then I scream again out of frustration of not being able to move.
The Alpha dog takes point and puts his nose down. He arches his back and prowls close. It bares its teeth and starts to growl. That’s how I know it’s about to attack.
Suddenly a hooded figure lands between me and the wolves. Rising back to their feet, whoever it is, is holding a flaming torch. The wolves pull back, but don’t give up so easily. After all, I’m a free meal, and they’re hungry.
The dark figure jabs the flaming stick at the alpha and forces the dog back. It growls at my protector, warning them that it’s not about to give up with a fight. Without warning, the dog lunges, and leaps into the air, fangs bared.