She stood, on the highest tower of the castle, staring down into the flaming wreckage that had once been her home. The tattered remains of her clothing flew, like banners caught in a tornado, around her. Once pristine as snow, now caked in mud and painted with splotches and smears of crimson.
She laughed, the sound a fierce battlecry as she rose her hands to the turbulant sky and stepped bare feet onto the cool stone ledge. Her dirt smeared face grinned up at the thick sheets of rain that pelted down, dirty rivers running down stained cheeks.
Voice rang loud across the drowning valley, rose over the cacophony of screams, thunder and roaring flame. "Show them they've wronged us! Show them what happens!" It echoed over the land, unearthing the roots of the oldest tree's, stripping the mountains of great clots of stone and dirt that rolled and buried the villages below.
The smoke rose from the withering palace, and curled up around the tower. It massed, writhed, twisted until it came to face the banshee woman. The serpent was smoke and ash, each gleaming eye a great void of starlight. It spoke in a million voices, each naught but a scream to answer her call, then shrieked it's way down, down to where her family stood in the courtyard, shellshocked and wide eyed.
It shot, like a great shivering spear, deep into the waiting, wailing mouth of her sister. Choking her lungs with ash. Garnett's eyes glazed for but a moment, as the beast dispersed itself through her body. And when the blockage cleared a wild frenzy was upon her. Her fingers rose and grasped great handfuls of those long red locks and ripped them from their folicles, bits of skin dangling from the roots. Raw bits of scalp torn in long dripping strips that clung beneath her nails.
And high upon her tower, the Hareshian woman smiled. Her hands moved foreward and let the blackness trickle from her fingernails, staining each crystaline raindrop with thick black ink. It poured down into the wide eyes of the people below. Squirmed through their ducts, painting the blood in their veins black.
She watched. Nothing now but a spectator to a macabre play. To Uhtred, taking the clumps of his beautiful wife's hair and shoving them by the fistful into his waiting, slavering mouth. And when it was gone, he dug great gashes into his skin with a splinter of steel and shoved the slivers of her scalp into the gaping wounds. Screaming they would be together always.
To Ilgnuit, joyfully pulling the nails from his fingers, then piling them neatly beside him. His dripping hands reached out to take firm hold of a hatchet, and one by one, he lopped off the fingers of the opposite hand. So carefully, he wrapped them together with twine until they resembled a doll. The fingernails shoved into it's head. He held it up to the black sky and laughed "She is mine!"
To Mereavus, so carefully peeling the skin from Samuel's flanks with a broken teacup. Then stabbing the bits onto a twig and placed it over some of the burning wreckage. A long trail of saliva rolled down her chin when the smell of burning flesh floated to her nostrils. And as she crouched, hunched over the fire, Samuel strolled up behind her, and held her head down into the flames with one strong arm, and reached over with the other to pluck a charred bit from the twig and pop it into his own mouth, chewing noisily as she writhed and screamed beneath his hand.
And to the King, standing before his burning throne, and humming as he nailed his wife, limb by limb to it with long metal pikes. While Danele's head bent foreward, her sharp teeth gnawing through his pompous attire and into the soft meat of his gut, pulling long strings of muscle and fat to pile onto the ground. Her eyes lit when the cavity of his stomach was exposed, and she pressed her face lovingly into the gore.
Then Ella came, perfectly pristine in the middle of the courtyard of horror. Dazed from the fire, stupified at the sight she had stumbled upon. Her legs seemed to loose their functioning, for she simply stood there as the hungry eyes of the other nobility turned to her, forgetting their tasks. And as one, they moved for her.
The bright eyed Hareshian screamed from her tower. The girl was not supposed to be there. She had never stood in her way, never wronged or slighted her. Ella had never made life hard on Synaria. She leapt from the edge, the pelting rain soaking through the tattered white dress, the fierce wind ripping at her curls. She was nearly there, she could almost touch her golden hair, but something pulled her back. Thin, shivering fingers locked possessively around her womb and gathered her back into the safety of the tower. Those wide eyes filled with heartbreak. "You would leave me?"
The girl forgot. Forgot the woman below, even as the frenzied hands of the nobility tore at her skin, as she wailed so loud the earth trembled and the tower shook. She forgot, and she smiled adoringly, hiding her face against his warm skin.
"Never."
And when her back turned, the rain turned to shards of steel that silenced the cries from below.
Tue Feb 24, 2009 12:08 am