((Note: I am not the author. This wonderful story was written by the player of Anguloceyon and is being posted with his permission.))
The corpse had been downwind on a flat shelf along the miles-long slope of the dome hill so the stench had not come before the sighting, but now Harla stood over the ruined body, and the stale dust smell of northern earth was pushed under a front of iron, salt and excrement.
The man’s face was opened up with flaps of shredded flesh as the petals of a gross blossom with a wet skull for the seed head. The sockets were empty dark pits apart from some shimmer on the gobs of membrane that clung to the nerves. A rictus gape revealed the chewed stump where delicious tongue meat had been pulled away. His arms were stripped to bone with tattered sleeves adhered by unlapped blood. The hard leather cuirass kept the skin of his chest intact, but down near his hip he had been ripped wide, and the beasts, wolves or wargs, had nosed into the rib cage to drag out the choice organs.
So that was the hunt. He was no use now.
The village had been burned out by orcs a week ago, and of the scattered survivors this lone man’s tracks had been most promising. He was brave enough to go on his own, large and confident, but also fearful enough to flee rather than kill those who would cut down him and his kin. That kind of man would be easily brought to trust a young woman, lovely, red-haired, slight and demure. He would not only accept her hospitality, but think himself in line to be her protector and courter. Others had done before him and realized in their bonds as the concoctions ran pain and death through their bodies how foolish they had been. This one had not that chance. It was a pity.
Foolishness was all around. Orcs went marauding the people of the wasted north. And then they suffered vengeance themselves when a clan meet declared alliance against the foul brutes. The tall men of the southern kingdom must laugh at their enemies bickering so bloodily. The laughs would die on their lips in the day some power brought all this country to heel and directed its malice and might on those arrogant men. Such a power would welcome an insightful woman with knowledge of torture, toxin, and fear, and to that one only would she bend a knee submissively.
She frowned down at the useless husk, but then her lips curled upwards. One leg was left unmarred by ravenous teeth. The trousers had been cut on the seam and rolled up to the mid-calf, but below that the flesh was distended in a sickly-colored mound with purple and black veins between green splotches on the gelid gray flesh. Several pairs of punctures had gone in at his ankle and the holes were crusted brown at the edges with muddy streaks like weeping eyes. So that was why he had begun limping. It was not a wound that began to bother him after the shock faded; he had been bitten by a snake. Snakes could be more useful than subjects, if there were enough in the brood.
It was a day’s hike returning to where his tracks had altered for the wound. The site wasn’t notable in any way, and had only found a place in thought because an injured refugee was more susceptible to accepting false aid. It had seemed more a camp than a scuffle on her first pass, as though he sat to inspect some hurt finally and, after tending to it, affected notice of the injury as he walked. He had killed the snake, crushed the skull with his boot, but he had flung the carcass well off beyond his path. The trail of the snake was a more subtle reading. With lighter body went fainter traces.
The creature had a nest under scrub and stone. It was a plain and singular dwelling. But there were sounds in the air about the place, faint rattles of tambourine and shaker stick, as if a song were made of hissing only. Some places here in the bewitched northern lands had ominous tunes about them. She had learned of them herself, and they gave patterns for enthralling melodies of her own. That was a talent she possessed as well, to hear what no other ear could, and then to warp those melodies into spell-song to which any ear might succumb. This song was new and intense, and it called for her approach as though she stepped through a waking dream.
All emanated from a cavern mouth concealed in an alcove of one of the cliff faces along the jagged plateaus. The song did not build as though played louder on her approach; that was not the way of these portents. Yet this was the source. Within this eroded system lay whatever made that entrancing snake song.
She entered without light. There had been days of tracking and now a hexed pull. What need for a torch? Those first steps into the darkness were made falsely bright by sunlight dust-scattered without and so were not an entrance into a dark unknown until that darkness collapsed on her. Unseen chittering and slick scraping put a torch in her hand, and a striking flint next to spark a flame in it.
The floor was writhing, tiled in scaley bodies which moved in and around one another. Snakes. Vipers all with full venom sacs awaiting harvest, a deadly trove. Her hand was out in front, trembling, eager, with spasms as if to clutch the closest body out of the mass yet unable to decide for the wealth of choice. Each thick rope of winding muscle held its promise of a dozen or more harmful vials.
The song fell silent. Her hand stilled, slender orange in the torch-cast glow, and beyond, in the shadows of the fang-like stone pillars of the cave, a hugeness shifted. The link-weave of snakes at her feet shuddered and slithered as one being away from the open floor and towards safe hiding between the stalagmites.
“I can taste your heart, woman.”
The voice was like a man’s, but massive and sly. There was a harsh sibilance in the low speech as by a long tongue dragged upwards on curved teeth.
“Pain-bringer. Life-wrencher.” A shadowy stripe went between two blue-tinted columns far away. “You have a serpent soul, but serpents prey on one another if they choose.”
“I’ll not be prey,” she asserted. Her voice was clear and strong despite her youth, made certain by having exerting power over life again and again. Yet her last word stuttered out and trembled as the concealed bulk ground with sudden swiftness along the fragile stone fence between them.
“Then I must find your use. I could use you. So much potent venom fills the world and goes into the ground unspent on happy lives. It sickens me.”
“You wish to poison all the world?”
“Have you seen eyes bulging in despair as their limbs convulse beyond their will to control? In that instant they know, pitifully, how they are not master of themselves or any fate. They are slaves of their bodies, mastered wholly by their pains. It is the last and best lesson.”
The voice was wise. That was how they died, on her table or in her chairs or cast off on a straw mat in the corner of a barred cell. There was a moment where pleading ceased and only the groans of agony made free of their mouths. Whatever presence held this cave, it knew well of the potency of suffering. But it wanted service. Was this cave nested shadow the great power to unite all the north against the weak ones feasting away in peace? It had no other servants, and one woman alone could not be the captain of a new realm. For a time though, this was the promise of knowledge and new power.
“I have seen,” she said, steady-throated, “and I would see more and better deaths. I must harvest your brood to do so. If I may choose from them some eight or ten each visit, I will set their venom in many.”
The shadow’s laughter sounded from far down inside a long throat. “Good. Good. You may have your choice, today, and on each return. But wait.”
A swift coiling of the large body passed among the far reaches of the cave. The motion passed by interval along the length, as though a spring coiled and released.
“Someone approaches. I did not call for him. Servant, your first task to earn my children: send away this trespasser by whatever means you possess.”
The presence fled as the gathering of serpents had done, and it pulled some of the darkness away as it did. The cave had a soft blue light and pools of water which glinted from what light came in so far. There was a flat rock near one of those pools, suited for a bench. She sat, unslung her silvered lute and waited.
A figure blocked the entrance. Tall and slender he was with a wide-brimmed hat and long dark cloak over fitted black garments. A sword leaned out above his shoulder, harnessed behind him. His angular chin and judgmental lips were out under the shadow cast by the hat, but all else of his features were hidden, apart from two green eyes which glowed with unreflected light.
The lute rang out a complex chord, neither soothing nor jarring.
“Hello traveler. What has brought you here?”
“My business is my own,” the figure spoke. The voice was deep as thunder in old ruins.
“And if this cave is mine, you must explain yourself.” Another chord followed, like the first with a sinister note placed midway on the course.
“This cave is not yours. Another claims it, and that one I must contend with.”
“This is no place of contention.” The first chord returned, suddenly sweet and quiet. “This is a place of rest.”
“A place of…” The swordsman stumbled as under strong drink. His heel rolled in awkwardly and he lurched after balance.
“A place of rest. Don’t you wish to rest? You may rest here. Close your eyes. Take sleep.”
His hand went for the grip of his sword, but too late. Of the many ensnared by her silver strings, this one was the first to sense a spell placed upon him. He had long, sharp ears, as the head drooped. He was an elf. Her magic worked on them as well then. The chords began to change rapidly, but smoothly also. He would fall, and then she would have him. How might a viper’s bite affect so large an immortal? She grinned.
The body rolled forward, but stopped. With shoulders hunched and head lolling, the torso turned as though the belly was trying to see. The arms flopped about limply.
“This is altogether new.” The voice was grave and cruel. It came from within the black tunic the swordsman elf wore; his lips moved not at all. The body righted itself on her. It heard her playing. “Was this your doing?”
“You should be asleep.” Hollow disbelief could not fill the emptiness of her stilled fingers on the lute.
“That must be the cause. I think he is asleep. Had you plans to kill him?”
There was no answer to this voice out of a body. She moved away, silently as she might. The slumbering frame threw feet forward to step at where she had been, and then tested a new direction as she went.
“If only you had done so. I would find you so quickly, snuff you out like the weak flame you are. We will try it this way.” The body gave a stilted pull on the sword, drew it out and made a sweep through the air, neck height. The sword was huge and forced a bend in her spine. Her heel scuffed the stones. “Ah, there!”
She rolled forward, dove under the next cut. The body was already wheeling in its blind gait to face her and swing again.
“Won’t you try another spell? There must be one which can affect me.” Stupidly blind arcs of silver light opened the space between them, always too close, barely a miss from flesh and arteries. “Or are you so very untalented? The world is full of power, and you haven’t enough to overcome me in this poor condition.”
Was the being which moved the elf swordsman mocking her? If so, the long blade in this cavern would be her end in an instant once the game was tiresome. She leapt to a wall, where a stroke would turn the body from the exit.
“You are having trouble yourself, with an-” She darted from the slash and lured the body deeper. “An untalented woman. I’m not impressed.”
“Your breathing is a confession. You won’t be able to evade me forever.”
“No,” she said, and ducked into a charge past. “But long enough to escape.”
She had only looked over her shoulder, but that delay severed a lump of trailing red hair. No more glancing then. The body would stumble after, if it chose, but to her the world was visible and open, and her strides longer and sure. She could flee.
A large, flat head, black as moonless night rose on her side. The eyes were black as well, but shone with yellow slits in each from the angle of the cavern mouth. It was a viper’s head, unnaturally huge, and it snarled with intelligent hatred.
“Pitiful coward! You are no servant.”
The head lunged at her, snapping for her legs. She bounded up, curled and flipped. She landed hard on her shoulder and rolled over her lute with a loud crack. The gaping shadow-snake maw swallowed emptiness on her heels. It turned as she clawed up onto her knees and sprang from her toes. It was quick. If it followed her out of the cave, she was helpless. One more strike would prove. It had only more more chance to stop her inside.
The serpent shrieked upwards having tossed its head at the ceiling. She fled into the fading daylight and turned back. The swordsman body had driven the long sword deep into the mass of the snake being.
“Am I forgotten?” The blade dragged down through dark scales and black heart blood jetted out like oil cast into the air. The droplets caught on fire, red embers, before they spattered stone formations, roof and floor. “You should have stayed hidden. I’ll have you first.”
The serpent flailed wildly. The ground shook from its mass.
“Traitor! Why fight the darkness?” The head snapped towards the body and was driven back by a clash of fang on bright steel.
“Why cling to the world, dark one? Do you fear oblivion? What a child. I’ll make your bravery.”
The serpent voice howled crazily. The body’s voice laughed with mania. The laughter was muffled by constriction when the shadow serpent entrapped its foe, but it tolled more exuberantly as it faded.
Harla stepped back. Each foot laid pad to heel in a roll. Now was the time to flee properly. Both foes would have her dead for the pleasure of the kill, and both could achieve her death if barely scathed from the affray. Yet such beings demanded attention. They were unseen aspects of creation, manifest power and magic with rare lore to be had from so little as a watchful post.
The cave belched flame. Orange streaks on red column spewed out and dark smoke spilled up to nothing on the rim. There were howls. There was laughter.
She fled.
Scattered patches of scrubby brush lay all about, and some few clusters of rocks, perhaps with a ledge to crawl beneath. All were too close. None were enough cover.
The clamor and rumbles behind grew less, fell below the huffs of lung and pumped limbs. Then all was quiet except herself and the shiver of wind on her ears.
A crack sounded, like a fissure had opened in the world. She dove into the nearest thicket, feet first. The soil scraped her thighs even as she turned onto her belly and pushed rapidly with wild hands to get all the way into the sparse, thorny veil. Blood trickled down her arms and pooled in beads on her palms.
Far off in the direction she had run, a shaft of fire arced into the dusk sky. At the greatest height the flame was ragged and blurred, but a body rose above that hazy boundary. It had not only arms and legs but sets of wings, two at the least, both soot-black as the figure itself. It was watching the land. It was searching for her.
She did not breathe. The stillness in her hands met throbs as abrasions cried out for soothing. She did not move.
The flying figure remained as the flame fell away to nothing below. It was a black speck in the sky, a star in reverse. Its twinkle was the turning of a horned head, but it never found her.
Soundlessly, without any cry of rage, the figure beat its many wings and flew off, not fully away from her, but not approaching. Only when the sky was left with no signs but the ripe sunset clouds did the tremors find her.
She made her camp as far away as she dared travel before the fullness of night and she lit no fire but ate cold rations and laid her bedroll under a mask of brush. Whatever promise of snake-bred alchemy the cave had held, it was gone. She could not return, and would find no useful stock or brood now if she ever did.
There had been no subject, no supply of venom, and no revelation of a power to bind the north to war. But she had survived, and she had learned. Knowledge always had a use.
