He laughed, an acrid, haunting sound. “You think you can best me? You are nothing compared to me.”
Oriana manifested a flaming whip, flinging it out at him, but Anthes caught it just before it collided with his face, yanking it to tear it free of her grip. Oriana willed it out of existence.
She stabbed her blade forward once again, hoping to catch him off guard, but she should have known better. With a swing of his enormous axe, he shattered her enchanted blade and drove his weapon into the earth below. The ground around them caved in, cracks and fissures splintering out like a spider web in every direction. Buildings collapsed; large gaping holes swallowed entire sections of the town whole. People screamed in fear and all Oriana could do was watch as the City of Dreams crumbled around her. Listen as the screaming died to an eerie silence. Her magic fell useless against the destruction. She couldn’t stop it.
They were gone. They were all gone. Darragh was gone. Something inside of her broke, something that could never be repaired.
“You will pay for that,” Oriana whispered, low and lethal. She should have led him away from the town, somewhere they could talk in private and fight away from this place, away from these people she called family. But she didn’t. She was too full of rage, and the bloodlust wanted revenge.
“Mere cattle to be slaughtered.” His voice was calm–too calm. “You will come home, leave this place and continue your duty as overseer.”
“No,” she spat in response. She would not go with him, she would not live her life the way he wanted, the way the High Council commanded. There was so much more to it. These people had shown her what life could truly be. “No,” she choked the words out. “I will not.”
“You would defy the High Council for this place? It is your duty. You have no choice.”
“You’re a monster! You just destroyed this entire town, hundreds of people ruthlessly taken from this world without even a thought! They were living beings, and I loved them!” she howled, tears now freely flowing down her cheeks.
His laugh was cruel and without humor. “You loved them? You fool. You will never be one of us. You are nothing. You want to stay with these people so badly?”
She hadn’t given him the pleasure of a response. She would not beg, nor grovel before him. She would rather die than go back and be one of them, the thing that she was destined to be.
“Fine!” he roared, the ground quaking beneath them. “You give me no choice.”
She stilled, knowing what was to come. “No,” she breathed. “Stop…” But he had already set the words into motion, the spell swirling its way around her.
“In the cover of night’s celestial glow,
A lust for blood left hidden will grow.
Two halves at war, broken apart,
Each vying for command over the heart.
The weakness of man your only satiation,
A single choice made will be your salvation.
When the power of crimson reigns free ten times,
Only one can survive and take over the mind.”
That was the very last thing she remembered before waking in the field outside of Sardorf. It must have been the first town she came across with life. So much death that night and so much more death to come. She finally felt the full weight of her grief; it felt as if her heart had been torn from her chest and trampled by a team of horses, leaving a gaping hole in its wake.
She remembered her sweet Darragh. The way he called her Ana in their most intimate moments. The feeling of him against her. It was too much. It was all too much! Not only had she lost everything she loved in the cosmos, but she was now stuck in a curse to hurt, to kill this world she loved so much. It was the worst punishment, the most horrid torture.
Orianna cried into the night air, letting her anguish out. She screamed for Darragh and the love they had shared, for Elscar and its people, for Sardorf and the bodies she had left like breadcrumbs in her wake, and finally, she screamed for those she had yet to devour but knew she inevitably would.
After a long while, when her voice diminished to nothing but a breath, she got back on her mare and began the long journey back to Sardorf.
Oriana avoided the town of Sardorf and made her way directly to the barley farm. She burned the bodies of the farm’s owners–her friends. She cleaned the blood and filth from every surface.
And then she came to sit in the center of the farm, legs crossed, hands resting on her knees, eyes closed. She breathed in deeply, chest rising with the effort, shoulders relaxing as she took in her surroundings. A soft breeze whispered through the trees, sharing secrets of yesterday and thoughts of tomorrow. As her body and mind found peace, she reached down into the depths of her magic and brought forth the enchantment she had brewed in her mind during the ride back from Elscar. The world around her changed as if a giant wave of air had risen above everything only to come crashing down upon it, creating something new in its wake.
The small forest began to grow and spread around her. The once thin, leafless trees thickened into mountainous evergreens that reached farther and farther into the sky as her enchantment took root. Their branches lengthened into sharp, needle-like foliage that fanned out wide above and below. Mist descended, weaving its way through pine and bark like a snake, filling the forest with a murky white, hiding both light and sight within the newfound darkness of the woods.
When her enchantment was complete, a hush settled over the now vast forest. No birds sang, no rodents scurried over branch or through brush; not even the distant chirping of insects could be heard in its depths, only the soft rustle of pine and low creak of wood as the trees moved, shifting their maze of shadow and gloom. It was a dark wood, created to addle the mind. To trap those who entered, a prison for her dark passenger.
For she knew that when she transformed into the monster, the forest would be her bastille. A labyrinth of pine and mist, ever-changing. A cage to keep her inside. She just hoped that, on the eve of the next full moon, it would work.
