Stormsong
Stormsong
by Korpse_Infested_Karnival
(KIK)
_(Author's Note: From the crypts of Norse mythology and old world gods, Viking heathens and seductive demons does this story find its bearings. It is somewhat more plot driven than my other pieces, and it was very laborious in the end, certainly not my best. But I intended to release a strong piece at least in read, so, here it is, enjoy, and stay golden.
-KIK)_
The wind swept through tufts of pearly-tinted grass as cold impregnated breaths exhaled from the blight of the cold sky. Great frosted pine trees spiking from the womb that was the Lonely Forest eerily stood as silent soldiers in the face of an unforgiving winter. The air was crisp with the scent of bitten mist, a dry yet fresh chill pulsing about as though the core of the earth had lost itself in deep freeze. Carrion vultures that only crept out when the days and nights were like the bone of a glacier fish swung about lazily in the air, malicious eyes darting to and fro in search of the snow's ripest victims. Cracks of falling stone echoed through the Lonely Forest, and the massive pines creaked and whined at the push of icy wind, all else silent as a grave.
For many days, Ardath had done little but observe the scape of white, a frozen ocean of blanketing snow picked from the hoary beard of the Storm Master himself. His leather boots had crushed the pattern-work of this opaque sketching for so long, yet each imprint was again and again covered by a renewed burst of hollow ice, as though the heavens were trying to bury him in a tomb. Every day he realized that life was being rooted out and engulfed by the tyranny that was this winter, that there was no escaping this barren, freezing phantasmagoria, and every day thus he began to succumb to the despair of his purpose.
Ardath was son of Edrith, the King and High Shaman of the Amon people. He knew his weary eyed and furnace hearted father as a great hero of the Amon, single bodied savior to the North Men, having banished a terrible and malicious demonic presence so many decades ago. Edrith had proved and impeccable leader, from his gold entwined throne of oak and ebony leading the Amon into seasons of nearly endless prosperity, again and again keeping the imposing empire of the dreaded metal-men at bay. The King had rallied together the web-ensnared minds of the arachnid worshiping Orik to his side, the outskirts of the Parted Forest strewn with silk crypt corpses hanging from the stalks of blackened trees.
An ultimatum, a purified and refined warrior of his people, a living entity of the god's will made manifest, perhaps coursing with his own divine blood, was this Edrith. For Ardath, there was no better role model, and no better father. Yet continuously and constantly, the son of the High Shaman sat deep rooted in the viscous ire of Edrith's shadow, the cumbersome weight of how he would have to outdo his father in some triumphant, glorious way always thrashing at his shoulders. A vexing curse that came not in poison or punishment, but blood and duty. His father reigned still as the lord of the North Men and its cascade of villages and tribes, but even so those mocking faces, those blaming eyes of the Amon looked at Ardath with a deadened, ingrained sense of expectancy, as though his very lips and spit should secrete some form of gold or silver.
They all wanted something from Ardath, these Amon creatures. Nay, not wanted, demanded. They had set the expectations for Ardath far beyond that of his all ready prestigious father, and to how one could surpass Edrith in such feats escaped the High Shaman's seed completely. What was he, but the most tarnished ruby and scorched emerald, and his father that like a pristine sculpture of twining diamond.
So it had been for all of Ardath's life, this ruling on his fate to be a great, noble creation that would outdo the High Shaman at every turn.
And now it was to be the twilight ending of a feeble light, only to dawn again as a blood hot supernova that would scorch the horizon. That is to say, the coming of age for each great lord is designed and set by the ancient rite of the Stormsong. Hence a young sprite has run his course upon the earth for a set of twenty years, he is then administered a task by the North Men's wisest council, to dispute and resolve whatever blight or terror has embedded itself through the veins of the Amon's land. Each course has done so, by the order of the god's eyes and their red planets, and each prince has found himself his own lore, his own chapter in the minstrel's arcane poems to rain upon the hutches of warren and families.
Whether it be by the aged tongue of the North Men or their now compacted and hoarse throated speak, the Stormsong was that immense honor, that verbal badge to be wrought through the skies by bard, angel, and demon alike.
It was now time for the son of the King to forge his own Stormsong. The task was given to Ardath at the passing of his last humbled, fire coated night. The catalyst of hope, now but a hollow husk in his soul, was to be filled by the either the elixir of great promise or the foul rot of venomous disappointment. Those clay, solemn faces with their greedy, tombstone cracked teeth bludgeoned his thoughts like an iron to a skull, and all the more did the silent, loathing whispers of the giant pines fill his trek with a terrible apprehension.
It was actually a thing of supreme irony. Ardath was far more gnawed and pained by the prospect of being a loathed king rather than concerned of his actual task. Nay, not a single word the wise council proclaimed as his lore-to-be had his mind in the fog of woe. Should not such an indefinable and unthinkable feat to overcome the status of his father worry him, perhaps he would better reserve his fears for what was ahead.
In the numbness of his conscious perception, ever perused by the encroaching imminence of a dreaded failure, the council of the Amon had spoken of a most dangerous task that was designating rumor amongst the many lesser towns in Vicekrag. In this southern most snowbound hell, waking nightmares of a creeping, black water that swallowed up innocents whole were taking Vicekrag by storm, a silent siege giving birth to aborted carrion that rose from the darkest depths of water. Creeks infested with swarms of corpses ran wild through settlements, and even regions of Orik territory had bore witness to floods of cemetery singing river waves.
The ancient councilmen were aware of this plague. Fragments of old myth had spoken of a great dispute between the gods at the time of the earth's conception, when the Storm Master had to quell two of his lesser brothers, Gorg and Oroth. Gorg commandeered the echelons of moaning dead, a responsibility to lay their shrieking bodies to peace, and Oroth was responsible for the ways of the sea, a master of the ocean's tormenting fury and unparalleled natural beauty. They were struck down easily individually, but the council recited scripture of how the two conjoined and acted as one, aligning the dead and water to channel as a singular, terrible essence. The red planets in the far off nebula symbolized this disease of rotted water to be the Tide of Gorgoroth, and like an ancestral virus, it began to slowly pick apart the sanctity of the North Men's land.
Eyes of a shaded amber scanned the bleached skull of ice and rock for any sign of this Tide. Half distracted he was, but some part of his inner animal, his warrior-driven engine made haste to catch this amorphous blight, to taste the air with scent for that of lingering salt water or the bitterness of sour flesh and bone. Another wisp of the funeral's cold air licked at his brown hair, as though a void stepping into reality was calling to him, and, molding alongside his paranoia of failure, now came the tiniest, most delicate of hints that out here in these wooded parts. . . he was being watched.
Perhaps another half waxing of an hour had passed (though Ardath had difficulty telling with the sun smothered by the gray clouds above), and the prince reached a patch of clearing that was like a hole in the pathway of the Lonely Forest. His legs complained and his back was tired, and the constant frost started to dampen his cloak of furs. If he was to move on, he had to rest, if only for a while.
From his leather-bound pack of different antiquities, Ardath clambered together a collection of sinewy black sticks, a rare kind of wood that burned far longer than most trees could muster. Setting up a fire, one that crackled and danced the very hue of his eyes, the son of the High Shaman warmed strips of dried meats and took swigs of water which were in canisters of animal hide. Yet, even with the fire, the southland cold of Vicekrag's horrific winter was beginning to diminish him, and he had to build a shelter if he wished to remain alive.
The rest of the day went on as thus. Ardath began to forge a shelter out of pockets of snow, until the solemn grin of night would peruse the contents of the Lonely Forest, and all the stalking carrion birds were replaced with death's ambassadors, winged flocks of rooks and crows.
Though it was not his intent, Ardath soon gave way to the cumbersome hammer of exhaustion, and found his eyelids clamping shut as the soothing embrace of sleep quickly took him.
*~*~*
The night took its cold, placid hand and choked Ardath back to awareness. It was a sudden stir, a flicker scraping the brow of his conscious that he had felt earlier in the bitter day. Again, the skeletal arms of the massive pines clicked and whined at the brush of a sinister breeze, and the son of the King felt he was once again being called, beckoned by a force most unnatural.
Understanding the ebb and pull of the natural order, Ardath understood this phenomena to be not of the land, earth, sky or tree. Not even the bloodiest teeth in the depths of a mountains rugged carcass relinquished such a sensation. Nay, the force he could feel tugging at the hairs on his skin was far more dark, of a dangerous ilk that reached out from the cataclysmic pits.
Steadily, he clambered out of the snowy cave he had formed. His eyes a' dreary from lack of rest struggled to find whatever form was beckoning, but was only met with the steadfast hue of the midnight gallery and its orchestra of inhumane noises.
For a moment, it appeared the night was toying with him in vexing tricks, but in the second of his disbelief, a whisper tapped at the clockwork of his conscious. It had no precise sound, no absolute meaning, but was more a tangled contraption of nigh inaudible vowels strung together as if to deliver a cryptic message.
At once, Ardath stood, making sure his leather boots were laced and buckled properly. He was not cloaked by his collection of furs, allowing the icy twilight to scratch at his bare arms, and with no wind chill there was little discomfort.
The prospect of danger grinned at him. He quickly dashed back into the hole and returned with a leather sheathed blade at his side, as if nefarious tendrils of inky poison water would rise from the frozen ground and pull him asunder. Ardath felt as though he should call back, break this fragile silence with the baritone of his young voice, but decided against it. Perhaps the possible foe wanted him to do as such; there were legends of voracious creeps and cretins that fed upon the souls of men by the very voice they uttered with.
A moment tediously slid by. Ardath was absolute that he had become delusional, and it only added to his waning self esteem. Not only would he most likely face impending failure, but he was terrorized by hearing voices too? He was becoming like the elderly of the Amon: decrepit and mumbling towards senile insanity.
With a shudder and shake of his head, Ardath turned 'round to fall back to sleep. Until, however, the whispers, the needling voices caught him in stride, now more clear and direct. A voice, if he could call it that, picked at his spirit and carved unseen visions in the subliminal hymns resting at the cradle of his mind.
So tauntingly did the words find root where the machinations of his thoughts lay. So did it plant a seed and await an ominous tree of bloody hue and hanging heart to grow and spread, to become an influence, of unknown purpose and design.
"Ardath. . ."
A simple word, yet a profound title. It knew his name. And the 'it' suddenly ruptured through his past worries and became the presiding, dominant one.
He shivered, but in a most unusual way. Not from the cold, but something else, as if a bizarre clamp of longing had been sown into his chest. The young prince placed a hand to his brow, and noticed how his wrists trembled, to the very core of his betraying marrow. He was afraid, now?
"Carving. . . Ardath. . ."
The child of the High Shaman grit his teeth, and clamped at the grip of his weapon's hilt. What was that voice? What did it want with him? It dared mock him through the empty skeleton of jagged rocks and spit-spine trees? These vague, cryptic notes, these toying, heretical verses. . . Ardath wanted nothing to do with them. And yet, at the core of his aching, throbbing heart, he did, he did so long for it, yearn for it, of reasons that escaped his comprehension.
A blank numbness took hold in the pocket of his inner furnace. He felt this essence was familiar, like an old friend aching to embrace him, yet instead the friend's place was taken by that of a grueling, curse ridden husk, a tapestry of misused skin and spirit.
Perhaps, in fact, mixed in with all these manifesting confusions and hexing, this was the source of the watery plague. Was, in this surreal turn of events, this the way to the Tide of Gorgoroth and its source? In conjecture, Ardath mused it may have been the land itself trying to speak with him, he simply did not understand the guiding of its sunken tongue.
Something urged him onward. An ineffable force, a profane curiosity. Nothing of this quiet tenacity contained any source of 'good' or 'divine'; it was most certainly a germinated fabrication of wicked intent.
Without regard for his animal skins still resting in his man-made hoary nest of snow, Ardath began to move, somewhat relaxing his tense grasp of his blade's leather-clad sheath. Into the bowels of this oak-army beast he would go, and all the while the echoes of his home in the regions of Vicekrag steadily began to fade away, the grotesque clay mannequins of his blaspheming people molding to naught more than a muddy, obscure nightmare.
In this trek, he had no knowledge of where he was going, of what forces were pulling at his legs. The whispers themselves could not be followed; they had no direction, they were synthetic musings conjured up by the breaking of Ardath's hold on reality (or so he assumed). The cold even, this was becoming more and more distant, it's dividing bites like an icy dagger no longer affecting Ardath as it had done in days earlier. Instead, all that remained was an instinct not his own, the hex of intuitions that would lead to him to success or doom.
Further he went, the spires of burnt gray and bleached white hung with the peering eyes of night crows and rooks, awaiting a theatrical climax to all this tension-swelling subtlety. Even without the light of silvery candles strewn about in the night's tapestry, somehow, Ardath was able to find direction, a perplexing nostalgia overwhelming him as he marched onward through the thick packets of snow.
Once more did he hear this 'voice' spew forth its foreboding whispers in the confines of his thoughts.
"Carving. . . giants. . . Ardath. . ."
Once more did his hands begin to tremble, but from fear or the perversity of excitement, the King's son could not tell.
*~*~*
The heavens cracked open. Hanging slate clouds that had dominated the sky gave way to a fissure, allowing a singular, stationary wound of the wind's maternity to gape wide and let forth the reigning light of the stars and moon.
Ardath peered upward, in disbelief, gazing at the lunar father's light shine down, the cloth tomb of perpetual gray now affixing themselves to this exact supernatural blueprint, not moving nor stirring, yet allowing the chasm to remain steadfast and luminosity to pour through. Clearly, something was at work here. Ardath's shamanic instincts told him it was nothing of the Storm Master, but the design of someone or something much more. . . parallel.
Trying to retain control of himself, the young prince grasped his sword's hilt calmly. What lingered in the shadows birthed by the tall pines? What forsaken secrets did the twilight rooks and crows have to tell?
Mechanically, as a fleshy pendulum, he went on. His senses were all a' buzz with the static of these events. The Tide, the voices, the sky. No doubt, he was nearing it, he had to be. After a while longer, yet another clearing vexed his vision, but this time, it was a far more different sight.
The woods of the Lonely Forest seemed to shrivel in their own right of fear, stretched farther apart from what lingered in the center. There was no wind, no chilling breeze, no cacophonous sound, merely the thrush of Ardath's own breathing. The scent, however, was far different. The acrid stench of copper and salt ransacked the prince's nostrils, and the most timid of rusts raked over his tongue, like he had inhaled a bitter iron.
He tensed. Ardath recognized this smell.
And there, he saw it. More malignant and malformed than its oaken brethren was a tree, a winding contortion of the blackest bark, emaciated limbs jutting outward like skeletal hands barren of leaf, yet wrapped with vicious, spindling thorns. It was an abomination, reaching half the size of the large forest pines yet layered with stagnant washes of gore and innards. Yes, in fact, to Ardath's abrupt horror, dripping entrails were amassed over the branches as a web-work, a monstrous art gallery hung with a' many unfortunate fallen, though the how and why was unknown to the King's son.
So he was not losing his mind, but at the very same, how could he have fallen for this? Was there some hidden manifesto of his character that he was never aware of that, Ardath, son of the most wise and great Edrith, was more sinister and sickly in the mind than perceived? This was now more unsettling than any arbitrary rite or collective task set to failure. The shaman son felt he knew nothing of himself, his existence and purpose but a carefully woven lie.
His breathing became feverish; he knew not what to make of this devil machine. But this device of seething wickedness surely was part of the Tide; matter so dead and dormant like this was not natural. Though against his better judgment, Ardath began to draw near it, poised to strike should the deformed lumber seek to set battle upon him.
As his footsteps crushed the powdery snow, his hawk-esque amber eyes noticed something, a shape that was as though it was part of the tree. Was it? Nay, not so, for inches closer revealed that there was a figure, a humanoid shape at the trunk of this motionless beast. Instinctively, Ardath assumed that someone was in terrible danger, mayhaps being molded into the tree itself or awaiting to be eaten alive by the swarms of carrion birds come morning.
Or, it may have been a trap.
With caution as close to Ardath as a brother, he crept toward the figure, and the ever ominous horror-scape that was this seemingly lifeless, twisted prophet of nature and blood. Dare he speak? Were murmuring worms awaiting him below, to snatch him from the earth at the sound of his voice? No, he was being foolish. He had to understand, had to know if this 'person' or some such needed help. Maybe it was the reason he'd been called in this direction.
"Hail! You there! Speak out, are you hurt?" he called, a fair distance from the jutting monolith and its prisoner. He couldn't tell if the body was dead, though, for the cast of shadows marred his sight considerably, even with the pale curtains of moonlight to aid him.
"You are welcome here. . ."
He stopped momentarily. That voice was closer now, and far more understandable than it had been. No longer mutilated by the terrain of ghostly interference, Ardath noted the tone was very sultry and feminine. . . was it being directed straight from the deadened oak? He could not tell, for it was only in the temple of thoughts, ever still,
Was it this figure? Though apprehension railed him and his logic, he had to see what this was, had to comprehend, find answers. If this was the key to stopping the Tide of Gorgoroth, so off a chance that was, he would take it.
With a handful more steps and teeth clamped tight, Ardath was finally able to make out the. . . person? No, not a person. . .
He concentrated harder and found himself taken aback. Nay, it wasn't possible, was it? Old lore and crumbling manuscripts were full of tales of every creed and hero, every mysterious life-force and every sentient baptized in the cold shadows. But, no one took these things for actuality, did they? It couldn't have been, yet, in front of his eyes, there, bound by metal chain to the tree, was in fact what lingered in withered tongue's warped stories.
The 'it' was a she. A most potent and sinister female this was, as well, for she was none other than a Lapis Succubi. Though Ardath was not purely adept at deciphering the nexus of what monstrosities were wrought from the pits, he was at least aware that this persona was of the demonic, and now grasped what was leading him here in the first place.
What luck, the alluring essence was asleep. . . or even conscious, wrists bound high by iron chain, her ankles cuffed and locked to the ground to keep her there.
If the Tide of Gorgoroth was caused by her, if this lapine-esque demoness was the precipice that would doom the lands of Vicekrag, then she would have to be slain. Ardath in haste withdrew his weapon, a broadsword favored by the North Men and their exploits, preparing to make a deep cut across the creatures stomach.
Ardath stepped forward, ready to plunge the steel and let loose torrents of tainted blood, yet, his wrists began to shake, his breath becoming shorter. His mind yelled at his body to react, throw his arm and end this fleshy artifact of the abyss, but naught of the sort he could muster. That irreconcilable longing, that festering urge that dragged him here returned ten fold, and recognition of this succubus began to turn the wheels of his mind.
The weapon lowered, and lazily hit the twilight snow, shaking in the hold of its master. He gazed upon that which trapped him without consciousness, that which pulled the strings of his soul and guided him to a place so shrieking with malevolence of the twisted gods.
The lusty stare of the moon gave way to the demoness at the mercy of the spiraling dread-oak Her fur was a sacrosanct vortex of indigo that graced the bare skin as a tingling, lavish satin, a whirlpool of pure ink electrified at the spark of light. A rich mine of violet hues and explosive cerulean collided amidst the other, and deep in the center-web of the succubi's making rested the dormant markings of her origin, only visible in the defining of her powers.
A face most cunning and entrapping was the parallel to the blight of an angel's luminosity; smooth yet sharp carvings in the dark god's clay dominated the features of her visage, a warped poetry of feminine beauty but struck by the lust of guided stares. It reaped shapes of perfection and was adorned with a cascade of light lavender hair, poison shades of night-rose wrapped about her long bangs to reflect the mirage of fractioned midnights. Complimenting this feral tapestry were the hidden set of pearly fangs just under the pluck of her sweet lips, and the long, darting ears that lay limp with her slumber.
No concept of form such as this was of natural making. Guarded only by velvet strips of a consuming onyx black, her delicate, lithe frame was a delectable implementation of the sensual nature. Precise, richly tenured arms were both soft yet strong, divots of purgatorial muscle accompanying the grace of these finely crafted ligaments.
So well guarded and hidden by the twilight fabric were the unsung jewels of the succubi's lush frame, round, taut breasts that were the forbidden fruit of her sumptuous flesh, firm and silky that danced and bounced at the slightest hush of her breathing. Her hot and sweet mounds only waited to be groped and taken, seething with tangy juice that was yet suckled by the abyss lords and lesser demons, fresh and milk kissed that was virgin to men and imp mouth alike.
This fruitful canopy sided with the décolletage of her steady hips and thighs, tight and supple with lithe precision that teased the crowns of men. They were glorious curves that wove into the downpour of this euphoric female, sidled with a puff tail that flicked and twitched with amusement as her persuasive shadows drew mortal near.
Ardath was befuddled. He had never seen this succubi before, so where did this enigma of familiarity come from? He could not raise his hand to strike her nor could he abandon this lapine femme to decease by rot. What was this? Why did he feel connected to this consort of dark lineage?
He could take no more. His sanity was battered and his questions were swelling. Was he being toyed with? The young prince would let no such sire of Hell make a fool of him. Somehow mustering what his body forbade, he wrenched up his broadsword and made a haughty gash in the tree, plunging the bone-snapping steel into the hearth of the malformed life-form's diseased bark.
With a resounding skrush the icy metal was slammed but a few inches from the hellishly divine rabbit femme, and Ardath kept his amber eyes affixed to her silent frame.
"Speak out, witch! I know you have lured me here!" he commanded, though bluffing in his own right, for he had no awareness of such a manufactured truth.
No response. The shuddering pine around the locale shuddered, and the hissing gremlins of sky and death cawed and squawked from their overseeing perches. For Ardath, fear and angst was being replaced by the consuming burn of frustration.
"Awaken from your lie-coated sleep! Answer for this sickness you have afflicted me with!" yelled he, face drawing ever closer to the lovely facade of the lapine succubus. He dared to try and threaten her, but some tangling in his heart, some ruined memory burrowed there and held him back from doing so.
Again, no response. The King's son was prepared to scream, bellow up some storm of anger and break the cosmos with his lashing tone, if it was not for a sudden feeling that scattered his skin and shook his marrow. His engorged weapon vibrated once, gently, a singular pulse like that of a fading carcass. Then again, louder, the most distant of drums ransacking the silent voids. Once more. Louder.
Over and over, each beat persistently greater than the last, until, with realization, Ardath understood. This perverse obelisk of butchered nature had a heartbeat! Yes, consistently, in the exact pattern of mankind's own, a living, banging metronome. He staggered backward, in disbelief, and the very frost of the earth below seemed to shake with the thunder of this disturbing discovery.
A terrible utterance then followed, a cacophony of deranged voices all collaborating in some horrendous dementia that ravaged the inside of Ardath's head, spiking deeply and coldly into the bowels of his spirit. Within, rending him, tearing apart the light and spewing forth the acid poison that was some locked up beast, some reality never understood but now crossing the fading dimension that was to be the old Ardath, taking hold, resurrecting, becoming.
"You, the son, are welcome here. You, the son, will carve the giants. You, the son, will bring the Tide."
A deep, inhumane raucous clashed through his mental senses. A war raged within all fragments of his natural function, being twisted about and obliterated.
The child of the High Shaman fell to his knees and clasped his palms to his ears. The breaking was so furious and terrible he could not even manage a scream.
"We give her back to you, the son. To sire offspring and power, you will, the son. We give you the blight of prosperity, we give you the disease of Black Water. You are the son. You will bring the Tide of Gorgoroth."
"W-what!?" managed Ardath, sputtering but unable to move, only endure.
"Unto the blight you will be given.."
An echo pulverized the threshold of his skull. The voice, cryptic and dominant as it was, vanished as quickly as it had thundered through Ardath's thoughts. All that remained was the eerie silence engulfing the tree's surroundings and the cheery caws of the ever watchful rooks. What remained as a part of the young prince, however, was entirely different.
The rapture of nightmarish paralysis pained him as the blizzards of apocalyptic frost had once done to Vicekrag. What was left of him now? These contraptions of mental terror reigning in this living phantasma, the voices, the succubi, the tree...
There was a wicked revelation within him, of his spirit, of a more malignant synthesis. It glowed with happiness, as all things to its reality were set right, as the way they should be. Yet the mind of the King's son, this pagan arbiter, was decimated, skewered upon myth and reason in abstract concepts it dared not hope were true.
He felt weak, nauseas. Ardath fell to his hands, eyes quivering, staring into the blank oblivion of the snowy ground. He couldn't hold himself together.
Everything unto his eyes seeped to the hue of the fissured sky. He was fading away into a numbed trance, a defenseless unconscious state. The last thing his acute ears picked up was the unusual clang and snap of metal chain.
*~*~*
A deep breath. A shiver from the cold innards. Blackness vaporizing, pools of light returning. A slow, monotonous thunder that shook as an unseen pendulum, back, forth, on and on. Deep, bellowing, drumming.
The young prince gasped and sucked in great pockets of air, as though all was suffocation in the terror of lifeless waters. Eyelids opened, arms shook, and mouth sputtered, confused, decimated, without awareness. The first thing realized was that Ardath was on his back, swiftly raising himself from such a helpless position.
The grace of soft velvet met his fingers. Still mumbling with confusion, he looked down to see he was, or had been, presiding on a bed of blue silk. He was in disbelief. Was the mist of a dream locking the corridors to his reason? The how and why toppled over him like an avalanche, and he began to fear for his life, as cowardice as that seemed.
Where was he rattled his thoughts. His memory was a vague blur, only recalling that which was the staggering looming tree, the pines of the Lonely Forest, the jeering crows, the chained succubi.
Even worse, he was as bare as a newborn. His coarse animal hides and leather buckles were gone, and most importantly, the sheet of metal that was his one source of protection, his axis of hope in the all-consuming plague that surrounded his world. Without it, he was as easy prey, simple to slaughter. Strong he was, but nay was he apt to deal with any foe with naught but his skin to avail him.
With waves of panic he attempted to settle, the sleeping warrior within him began to stir itself, ready to administer courage here in the void of this unknown territory. Ardath's first inclination was to understand and analyze his surroundings, letting hawk-esque eyes scan the unknown imposing upon him.
This room was a bizarre binding of both masonry and nature, it appeared. There were no openings, just a paradoxic canvas of winding roots molded into the craft of marble, a breathing stone, mayhaps. The floor had spots of rich moss on it, and there were pools of nova-black water rushing down the sides of the vinework, seeping from the wall and trekking back into the granite itself. The only light came from a nigh indefinable source, but it was in the same pale streaks of the moon's unconditional blood letting luminosity. Other than the strange, out of place bed he had been (apparently) resting on, there were no objects to represent this malfunctioned combination of wood and stone to be of man's doing.
Ardath had no certainty for the situation at hand. Walking around was of no possibility, especially not in the nude. There were no doors, nigh window or source of escape. Was he now a prisoner?
Though this was like a trap from a deadened phantasmagoria, He was taken by an unsettling calm. Fear his mind tried to stipulate, but his body ignored it, senses tender, feeling. . . right. It all flourished about Ardath as natural, as though this was where he belonged, a long lost child finding its way through the bane of confusion, to home, to family. . .
"What is this. . ." he muttered in dry tones.
A laugh. A giggle. A sinister chuckle in admiration of Ardath's novice 'innocence.'
The young prince drew back and feverishly looked about to find the source of the mocking sound. It was, for the first time, not inside his head. Or was his lunacy now spreading to the very outward rim of his crazed hide?
"Oh my, look at you now," mused the voice, ringing through the frame of the chamber. "So grown and dashing since your conception. And how adorable, you don't even know why you're here," it went on, familiar, lustful, sultry and malevolent.
Ardath blinked. He recognized that sound, the timber of that voice. Yes! It was her!
"Show yourself, witch!" he barked, "You've landed me folly in this place, but still you hide like a coward!" challenged the pagan arbiter, feeling somewhat foolish for having been struck by a trap of this tenure.
Another laugh, a strike at his noble pride, bemused and beside herself with his hapless defiance.
"Oh, they told me you would be commanding. Even now, you're as stripped as a little fawn, yet you demand with the fire of a tyrant," the succubi observed, words rounding about the walls of the room.
Ardath began to grind his teeth, his mind feigning anger. He supposed that he had passed on and been sent to some level of Hell, to be forever tormented by this luscious Lapis Succubi.
"Why don't I put your mind at rest, North Scourge?"
Before the young prince had a chance to retort, a rip in the air itself caught his eye. Like waves of heat pile-driving the ashy carrion of a barren desert, discordance in the fabric of realities tapestry began to ripple and sway. Viscous shadows of wispy, onyx matter divulged the monstrosity that was the inside of this deformed chamber, beginning to take shape, substance. Ardath watched as a portal more dark than the suffocation of a black hole allowed entrance to that which was both beautiful and nefariously dangerous, a violet coated poison ivy.
With lithe grace, she stepped out of the 'doorway' and onto the softness of the marsh-marble floor. For the first time since the ordeal of this horrific escapade, Ardath saw her eyes, and was again shaken by the familiarity they represented.
Whirlpools caught from the vibrant vortex of dead galaxies itself rang through her iris in shades of intense violet, only to be tinted with the dead blood of each dead world in pigments of stinging, blood red. The final piece, the missing gap, the doorway to the wicked power this rabbit succubi possessed and the distant Tide she bode for Vicekrag.
"Who are you?" he gasped out in query.
She tilted her head and smiled, a silvery fang glimmering from the constructed moonlight.
"Syren," she stated softly, overjoyed within to finally speak the name she had once been called.
All things for the weaver of nature's lores went blank. The name. That name. He knew it. As if growing inside a hardened egg for years, now it was bursting back into his mind, old pasts and old memories re-written in the fresh husk of his form.
Every fear and every anxiety. Every worthless aspect of his paltry people were obliterated and sown anew into a purpose that was awaiting retrieval for a great deal of years. Now he knew, now he recalled.
"And I have come back to you," she continued, as Ardath, in reaction. . . smiled.
He was an entity waiting to be raised. He was not the plant of man, but of Gorg and Oroth, made to take back what they presumed was their own. Before the flesh of the pagan arbiter was another, old and decrepit, needing new form, new flesh, and sow, birth was to be given again through the ways of humankind.
Ardath's feral mate, Syren, was to keepsake a power that dared not be risk in the dangers of the cold north. What she retained was the command over all midnight waters, the doom of eating tides and heathen waves. And now was the time to give it all back.
"My love. . ." said he in hushed whispers, "come to me,"
With eagerness the lapine went to her mate, creeping over the bed to rest before him. She grinned with lust and desire as she had done many lunar passes ago, and was delighted to see her husband back in a new frame of strong skin and bone.
"It has been. . ."
"Too long," she finished for him, caressing his cheek tenderly.
There was little else they wanted to do. Spirits of the demonic pendulum had insatiable, smoldering desires, and to be parted from a kind lover in the bowels of the abyss was enough to crush them with madness. Syren had kept herself strong, but she could smell the scent of fresh pine and cold snow upon her partner, and stripped him bare for this very reason.
Talk could be for later. The tree would keep them in haven. This was, after all, what they're old home was like. . . and how better a garden would seem sprawling with the ritual of their children.
"You are no less beautiful than I remember," whispered Ardath, allowing his embraces to straddle the lapine's shoulders, slowly but surely removing her of her top garments.
She put a finger to his mouth.
"Shhh. No more talking. Let me return to you what was lost, first," she said with the soothing song of her angel's voice (how delicious the irony).
A moist lick from her soft tongue graced the edge of Ardath's lips, a tender beckon to open. Without recoil he creased his lips and let her rug of radiant pink wash over his own, dancing about in his mouth, tasting every inch of his inner jaw. She hummed and cooed, letting exploring hand-paws rake the edges of Ardath's sides, tingling the crevice and groove of every defined muscle, entrancing him in her lusts of passion.
Like a wine, Ardath had to engorge himself on the entirety of Syren, as if sipping a dark wine to go drunk on her sex. The sensations of her soft fur washed over him in oceans of tantalizing delight, and the melodies murred through her divine kisses added to the encroaching stimuli of all aspects to the flesh. The shaman's palms went to her buttocks and gently squeezed the firm haunches, whilst crafty digit rubbed near the fine lines that guarded her beloved nether regions, missing intentionally, teases to dapple her sumptuous body with.
Not to be outdone, one of her free hands sneaked away from the pulls and tangles of their kissing and ever so timidly toyed with the sensitive skin on Ardath's shaft. Momentarily, he had to break the lip-locking of their foreplay to gasp. Warm velvet was caressing so barely the little nerves in his genital, a singular digit stroking the limp flesh-pike, then doing the same to Ardath's testes, efforts to raise him into arousal, quite literally.
The pagan arbiter dared return this, peeling back the frugal tapestry of black covering her loins, using his finger to sweetly peruse the sensitive lower-lips of Syren's snatch, a slow, tedious motion that caused her to shudder and cease with her own toying. Bountiful cascades of euphoria made her inner thighs glow and grow moist from these touches, her paw-hands going to Ardath's shoulders as if needing support, her eyelids clamping shut as she cooed and moaned wildly at the most timid of gropings.
With this graceful moment in play, Ardath allowed his other free ligament to have its way with the ample bosom pressed to his chest, intrigued to grapple and cup his hand over this wonderfully firm and round forbidden fruit.
His arousal, now, had become apparent, with his digits now massaging every detail he could of Syren, to her delicious clit to the supple, milk bearing breasts that danced and jiggled over him with each of the succubi's shivers. His nether mast was throbbing with floods of hot blood, and the heated moistness dripping from Syren's loins further drove his manly aches to plunge and hungrily bind the two.
She could take no more, moaning with pangs of heat assailing her vibrant body, retrieving her hand and grappling with Ardath's own toying fingers. Syren then spread the gape of her clit and let her haunches press at the High Shaman's son in numbing ecstasy and want. Ardath himself sucked in breath through gritted teeth as a supernova of electric pleasures racketed his loins, leaving his playing with Syren's nipples and using both palms to tease and tickle her dripping snatch.
"Mmmm. . . so wet. . ." muttered out Syren, lavender-scarlet iris' flashing with delights of sexual appetite.
"Hurry Ardath," she whispered in his ear, licking his cheeks and sides, "take whats yours before I get away," she half-mocked, urging the young prince on, wiggling her taut rump and flicking her puff tail.
Though she remained on top, Ardath found himself able to press into her inner thighs, his fleshy mast plucking at the edges to sip this delicious liquor. They both gasped once, and Ardath repeated this slow, piston motion, this time traveling deeper into the cave of her immaculate sex. Again, he did so, but this time sank deeply into her vaginal walls, the trails of inner hot pink lapping away at the entry of his shaft, hot, soft silky drips of cunny liquid dripping from Syren in copious degrees.
"Yes," she hissed in euphoric heavenly stimulus, "take it back!"
As wild as the daft ram in spring heat, Ardath held her sides firmly, his eyelids snapping shut from the ineffable war of incredible spasming nerves bursting through his endowment. Both were saturated in the waves of their own hormones and delectable nectar, allowing for slick thrusting on Ardath's account. In possession of absolute lust their grunts, pants and moans were apparent, the blue silk bed quivering in its own right as if excited itself.
As the movement of gyrations continued, the marks upon Syren's body began to spew alight, and, as if a flame written with the pyre of hazy blue, her wondrous coat of indigo fur became a mixture of arcane symbols and signs, representing the power she had long kept for Ardath was now seeping back into him.
An orgasm of great magnitude abruptly hammered the two, perhaps stronger than the angelic bolts of lightning launched by the Storm Master himself. Gushing rivers of opaque seed flooded Syren's inner cave, hot blankets of snowy-tinted nectar filling her whole, while, in return, a supernatural energy that had once been part of the young prince came crashing back into his flesh.
It had been too long. Too many years.
He felt Syren fall upon him, and he greedily embraced her and wrapped his strong arms about her exhausted frame. She had been patient, and she had returned what was his.
How he loved his Lapis Succubi.
The black marks of swelling rune ripped over his right palm in gusto. A swollen curse that was as a worm slumbering in the dirt, thriving, waiting, growing. It belched sheets of cold, venomous water ripped from the essence of the darkest depths manifested by the Tide. His purpose was set.
When the sun would rise, there would be no Vicekrag, but submerged ruin. There would be no kings, only the Tide of Gorgoroth. All of the North Men would despair, for dead creeks and corpse ridden rivers would consume them once again, rushing forth until it reached the axis of the empire.
This was the end of all old myths. This was the beginning of Ardath's Stormsong.
*~*~*
_Cold be the hand of man's little seed,
Out from the black did thou heed,
Made of wretch and flesh, water and skin,
Bring the curse thy Tide of grim
And unto the men of metal spire,
And unto the men of frozen bone,
Away with them and their greedy fire,
A 'slaughter them ye must and return them home,
So vex be his mind and ruin be his heart,
Aghast in love with the devil's daughter,
Symbols of red to the land ye' carve,
And all shall swim in the corpses water_