My Muse

By
Mystichawk
 My Muse

Brightness. That was the first thing I remember.

White fire, shining radiance, blinding me and forcing me to close my eyes.
Even with my lids closed the light poured in, making ribbons of rainbow
colors dance across my vision and strange shapes that I didn't know the names
for. I couldn't see, I couldn't hear, or see, or smell anything. It was like all of
my senses had been shut off, save one.
I could feel.
I felt softness beneath my hands and turned my head to feel the soft, gentle
fuzz of grass against my cheek. I inhaled, but I couldn't detect any scents. I
wanted to open my eyes, but the dancing shapes and rainbows were still there,
so I didn't. I just laid there, immobile, for a long time. I heard nothing, said
nothing. I just laid there, wishing I could stay like this forever.
But, of course, I couldn't.
When the rainbows faded away and the shapes melded into the blackness of
my eyelids, I knew it was safe to open them again. I did and was astounded by
what I saw. I was lying in a golden field covered in buttercups and peppered
with white daisies. There was a blanket of yellow roses laid over me and when
I sat up, the blanket slid off of me like it was silk. I stared, first at the roses,
then at my own hands which had lifted off the ground when I had sat up.
My skin was a burnished bronze, like a shiny penny, but slightly darker in
tint and shade. I stared at my fingernails and at my pals, trying to figure out
what country I might be from. India maybe? Or Egypt? The names just came
to me and had no idea where they were or what kinds of people lived there.
I sat there, wondering who I was and how I had gotten there for the longest
time, then I dropped my hands. The only way I would find out where I was,
was to look around. I tried to rise to my feet, but I was unsteady and ended up
falling on my stomach and crushing a patch of innocent buttercups. I cursed in
a language I didn't know I knew and tried to stand once again. This time I
succeeded and balanced precariously on my two wobbly bare feet, trying to
regain my sense of balance. I felt like I'm been there for years.
As I waited for my balance and coordination to return, I stared around at
the sweet golden field. It stretched on for miles, and I couldn't see anything
else in front of me or to my sides. Just blue skies and miles upon miles of
yellow flowers. I sighed. This place, wherever it was, must be a kind of
paradise. Just blue sky, and flowers. Perfect, alone, and peaceful. I inhaled.
With my waking, my senses had flooded back and now I could smell the sweet
flowers, taste the breeze, hear the sound of birds singing and laughter!
Laughter!
I turned around slowly, trying to keep myself upright. In the center of the
field behind me, dancing and romping around with a little brown dog. She had
a wreath of golden flowers garlanded in her hair and her dog had them in its
fur, twisted and braided. The girl had pale skin and golden, shining hair. When
she turned towards me and called for her dog, I could see she had sky-blue
eyes underneath her long bangs.
"Sayzay!" the girl called, patting her knees. "Come on girl!" She was
wearing a white dress that was had a yellow silk ribbon tied around her
middle. She was barefoot, just like me. Sayzay came and jumped on her,
barking happily and trying to lick her mistress. I took a hesitant step forward
and called out to the girl. "Hello?"
The little girl, she couldn't have been more than five or six, ignored me and
fell back against the ground, laughing and rolling around with her dog. I was
witnessing pure happiness here and I knew I should let the girl be, that I had
plenty of time to figure out who I was and where I was, but something in the
back of my head told me no, you don't have time.
"Little girl please, can you tell me where I am?" I asked, taking another
step forward.
The girl capered on, oblivious to my words. She started trying to perform a
cartwheel and tumbled to her knees each time. She didn't get discouraged
though. She just kept trying and trying.
If it were me, I thought absentmindedly as I sat back down amongst the
flowers, I would try something different for a bit. Dancing, maybe, or going a
hand-stand. That way she won't get tired out from all that turning.
As soon as I thought this, the little girl stood up from her latest tumble and
said, "I'm tired of cartwheeling! Sayzay, why don't we dance?" And she
proceeded to move her little body and shake her hands, laughing and singing
in a strange language I didn't know. She jumped and twirled, spinning and
laughing. She was so happy it made my heart ache.
I watched her for I don't know how long. The girl and her dog, blissfully
happy. Not a care in the world. And all the time I watched her frolicking the
world around me didn't change a bit. The light above me remained burning in
the sky, and the flowers which she trod underfoot sprouted back up as vital as
if they were made of rubber.
I noticed a flicker of movement out of the corner of my eye. There was
someone else here with us. I turned. A tall, slender woman was stepping out of
a tear in the shimmering light, like an angel descended from the heavens. She
wore a cornflower-blue dress which ran fine with veins of gold and green,
swinging around the hem and up the bodice like leaves. On her brow was a
crown of blue flowers. Her hair gleamed like freshly polished obsidian in the
bright sunlight, casting an eerie glow over her visage.
"Excuse me, do you know me?" I asked the woman, staring up at her.
She ignored me.
I sighed, apparently these two were deaf. I got up and tried to tap the
woman on the shoulder, but my hand went right through. I jerked back,
clutching my hand.
"What- Who are you? Where am I?" I said, staring from the little girl to the
woman.
 I was ignored again.
"Please, lady, speak to me!" I begged, reaching for the woman's shoulder
again but it went right through again. I tried again and again, each time getting
more distressed. "Please!" I was nearly crying now. "PLEASE! Someone
TALK TO ME!"
Nothing.
"Why won't you talk to me?!"
Not a single word.
I broke down and began to sob. Salty tears flowed down my cheeks and I
beat my hands against the earth, begging someone to speak to me.
Suddenly, the little girl stopped dancing around and stared straight at the
woman in blue, as if seeing her for the first time.
"Who. . . who are you?" she asked, taking a step back.
The woman in blue smiled and beckoned for the dog to come to her. It did,
wagging its tail and when it reached her it began to lick the woman's
outstretched hand.
"My name is Gaia. You know me as Mother Earth." She said.
I stopped crying and raised my head. "M- Mother Earth?"
The little girl mimicked my question.
"Yes my dear, Mother Earth." The woman said, walking towards the little
girl. The little dog followed. "I've been watching you. You are a very special
child, no?"
The girl shrugged.
"Oh, come now. I've seen you when you're out in the forest. Every time you
see something wrong with the leafs or if you see an animal hurt, you always
try to take care of it and make sure it lives. That is a kind thing to do."
That's a humane thing to do, I thought.
"It's humane." The little girl said.
The woman smiled. "That is a very good word for it."
I blinked. Had the little girl just said what I was thinking?
"Yes. And I like the little animals. I try to take care of them." The girl said,
smiling shyly.
The woman smiled back. "Well, I'd like to do something to thank you for
your consideration."
The girl's smile widened. "Really? Like what?"
The woman shrugged. "Anything you like. It's rare that I'm seen by mortals
anymore and I'd like to do something nice to one of my few remaining
believers."
The little girl frowned, thinking.
If it were me, I thought almost subconsciously, I'd ask for the earth around
my town or village to enrich and for the crops of the village to strengthen
tenfold. That wouldn't be a selfish wish.
The girl raised her head. She has a smile on her face.
"I know what I want!" She said triumphantly. "I want the ground around
here to be perfect for growing crops and for us to have the best crops ever for
the next few years!"
Mother Earth blinked, surprised. "Really?"
"Our village is suffering from food shortages," The girl replied. "I don't
want anyone to die of starvation."
Mother Earth bowed. "You are a generous and kind girl. It is done. For the
next twenty years, your village crops with strengthen tenfold and your farms
with enrich like never before!"
I blinked. "Did she just say. . ." I whispered.
The girl shouted with glee. "Thank you, thank you!" She said, running at
Gaia to give her a hug. The old woman accepted the hug and I felt my eyes
begin to water. I wanted to feel another person's touch and, before I could stop
myself I lurched to my feet and ran at the girl and woman. Of course, I went
right through them.
"Please!" I screamed, dropping to my knees and staring up at the sky with
tears streaming down my face. "Please! Where am I? WHO am I?"
You are the Muse.
I blinked, staring up at the cloudless sky. There was a voice speaking in my
mind. It was a calm voice. A female voice, not unlike that of the woman in
blue and yet much older, with much more power layered within it.
"Who are you?" I yelled, trying to get to my feet but failing.
I am Æther.
I didn't have the strength to yell any more. I sank to my knees, staring up at
the unrelenting sky. "And...who am I?"
You are the Muse.
I began to cry again. This Æther was answering none of my questions.
"What is a Muse?" I asked. "Where am I? Why can't anyone touch me?!"
But there was nothing.
Not a single sound.
And ever since then, I've been alone.
Ħ
It was midnight in Texas. I was in the bedroom of a ten-year-old boy with
brown hair and an unnatural love of spiders.
Now, before you go jumping to conclusions I'll tell you right now: I'm not a
creeper or anything. I just like walking around in people's homes- seeing the
loving pictures tacked to the walls of happy families on vacations or
magnetized to the fridge or the personal affects people kept around their house
(sometimes very very amusing affects,). I mean, it's not like people actually
see me, so what's the harm?
Walking around in people's homes was an odd habit of mine, but I never
stayed too long. I preferred isolation. At least when I was by myself, I never
got passed-through. Still, once in a while I couldn't resist sneaking into a
human's home to take a look around. And when I did, it was usually worth it.
I was sitting on the thick black-topped desk, looking out a window. It was a
large window, big enough for a small child to hop in through. Certainly big
enough for me, even if I couldn't fade through walls. A boy laid in a bed
across the room from me, dreaming about riding a gigantic tarantula in a
rodeo. One of the more original ideas I've seen around here.
I slid off the desk, keeping my eyes on the vision dancing above the boy's
head. An authentic cowboy gallon-hat sat atop his head while the gigantic
tarantula bucked and kicked, spitting webbing everywhere within the confines
of the orb. I grinned. "Ride 'em cowboy."
My job here was done. I had given the maker of this dream his allotment of
inspiration for the dreams tonight and it was time for me to head back to my
regular haunt. I live in a small, abandoned house near the edge of the town.
Very stereotypical I know, especially considering that I'm sort of a ghost, but I
like it. I've lived there for quite a while. Texas is my favorite state, and the U.S
my favorite country. They're such an imaginative bunch, and only a fraction if
it is due to me. That's pretty good for humans.
I woke up in what history calls the birthplace of civilization. Babylon. A
maelstrom of new ideas, new concepts. All needing someone to regulate them.
That was my duty. My birthright. Babylon was a beautiful place. All rich,
terracotta houses and earthenwares. Vibrant colors, languages, new things
being born every day. It was like heaven to an excited immortal child. And the
years meant nothing to me. They all passed in a blur of creations and
inventions, each making me happier than the last. Of course there were plenty
of failures. More failures than successes some times. But it was all part of their
learning process. And mine.
Time is all relative to how you choose to live it. I'm immortal, and that
meant I had all the time in the world to learn, to grow, and to fix mistakes. The
problem was, if I made a mistake it would throw the entire world into turmoil.
Ever heard of the butterfly effect? Taking a stroll through the ages is like
stepping on a thousand butterfly wings. You can hear them breaking gently
like the leaves on a crisp fall morning.
Physically, I never changed a single molecule of my body. Mentally, I
underwent several shifts in my thinking processes.
As time wore on I started to see patterns. Decades would appear when I
was so over-worked from running all around the world that I would fall onto
my straw mat or wooden floorboards or wherever I was sleeping at the time
and be out like a light before I hit the ground. Those were the best of times for
me. The time when life prevailed, and I was happy. Exhausted and mentally
drained, but happy. I could almost feel the warm light coming from the
celestial kingdom above in the sky as I laid my head to rest; Æther's praise,
telling me I've done a good job and that I could rest easy, knowing the world
was happy.
But it didn't last.
A few years- ten, twenty, would pass and the joys of new discoveries would
start to become mundane. They continued to learn and grow, building off
things that had already been created. Making new editions, new volumes.
Copyrighting the world. Distasteful and I tried to discourage it, but there was
little I could do. I just had to hope that someway, somehow, it would all work
itself out in the end.
When the first war started, and I saw swords and axes used to cleave skulls
and destroy lives, I felt like a murderer. Had I been lazy? Had I not given them
enough ideas? Had they gotten bored and that was why they killed? It's stupid,
I know, but, at the time, it made sense. I may be a spirit but I'm not immune to
the other elements that effect humans. Fear, hatred, loathing, sadness. If
anything I'm more susceptible to them.
I spent at least a whole year of my existence flying through smoke and
burning banners, sifting through bodies, trying to find one that was alive so
that I could impart the inspiration to stop this mindless fighting! My negativity
caused so much death it turns my stomach. Was this really what she wanted?
My creator? I had so much faith in her, that she would find me one of these
days and let me rest, was it all for nothing? I rarely doubted myself. I was firm
in my convictions, and even firmer with my ideas. But this was one seed
which would not take until the battle was over and the all the blood had finally
cleared.
Somehow I always ended up in the middle of the sea of scarlet, kneeling
amongst the broken limbs and bodies with tears rolling down my cheeks. Only
then would the seed take root and the survivors would realize their mistakes
and try to fix what had been broken. Bonds were mended, civilizations rebuilt
under different banners, allies were formed.
I marveled. They turned on each other so easily, and over stupid things!
Lands, resources, the likes of which could be found all over the world! And
then they fought, and then they healed. And then the circle started all over
again. It was...amazing, to say the least. And disgusting to say the worst. And
when dust settled and the mist of blood faded from their vision, the world was
at peace. But it always came back around.
New ideas are what keeps this world as peaceful as it's been the last few
hundred years. In the short slumps between great ages, things tend to get ugly.
So I'm constantly kept on my toes, trying to think of new inspiration to impart
on them and keep them occupied. I practically had to hand the Japanese the
communism thing on a silver platter. And of course, in typical ungrateful
human fashion they took a perfectly innocent idea and turned it ugly. I have to
deal with that too; repercussions. Thankfully I learned that early-on, almost
directly after my efforts to avoid war failed.
The western world was still reeling after destruction and mayhem. Scholars
recorded it as the Middle Ages. I call it the trial ages, when I spent hundreds of
years using different tactics to counter-act the circle. I sent inspiration for
dreams of far-off places into the minds of common people; of fantastical
beasts and mythic people and lands rich with treasure. OK, so sometimes I
went a little over-board but I wanted to see just how far I could push them.
They went and explored, branching out farther and farther across the sea, into
the wild lands. The problem was... other people already lived there.
Bishop takes rook.
And the thunder rolls.
My perception of humans has changed almost as much as my perception of
myself throughout the centuries. I started out thinking that they are closer to
babies in their way of thinking. Little children, incapable of forming their own
ideas without help from me. And when I do give them ideas they turn them
dark and cruel. And sometimes, when they want to be, they come up with the
most insane creations just from littlest ideas. You've got to admire their
tenacity. Aaand then they end up making me regret ever giving them anything
by making stupid decisions (*nudge nudge* Atom bomb). I became their
nanny, taking care of them, cleaning up their messes because there wasn't a lot
else I could do. That's where I reside now. I'm their caretaker. Their mother.
Stuck with my lot in life. Not content. Not happy, but smart enough to know
that I can't change what I have no control over.
It all comes back to being more than them. Different. In my heart of hearts I
don't like it and I would give almost anything to give it up. Give up the power
and I would be free, but it's times like this when that almost is just too damn
strong.
I smiled at the spider-riding cowboy. "Almost." Then I headed home.
I only sleep for a few hours a day. There's far too much to do. The rest of
the time I spend flying around on the back of the wind– whom I have become
good friends with by the way –exploring the world and sharing my inspiration
with everyone that needs it. Spirits, humans, even animals. The amount of
times I've showed a kitten how to climb up or jump down from a counter top
to get at treats… oh it makes me smile.
When I reached home, the first thing I did was run a bath. Spirit or not,
luxury was key. I had to pamper myself a bit, since no one else was going to
do it. It was a drastic but well-worth while release of stress and helped me
keep my sanity.
Sinking into the water which was as hot as lava was as welcome an
experience as lying on a futon and sleeping for a million years. I let out an ah
and sighed contentedly. The hot water opens my pores like floodgates,
washing out all the bile and gunk from my skin, leaving it shining. Though I
might be a spirit, I still have to keep good hygiene.
After my bath, I headed to my bed and slept for a couple of hours.
Dreamless sleep. The Sandman never visits me in return for the inspiration I
give him. Freeloader. The nightmare lords don't even grace my mind with their
presence. Only one spirit ever truly effects me, and I don't even know if this
spirit is real. It might just be a figment of my mind. It might not. But I like to
think that maybe there is another spirit, invisible to all others like me, who
imparts faith and hope. And if so, she certainly likes spending time her time
around me.
 Even as the decades grow and accumulate and I start to see things a little
differently, in a more realistic (and cold) light. They aren't babies because
babies have no concept of right and wrong. Neither do they, but in that same
effect babies cannot judge or base opinions on hate and fear. They do this to
the letter. Humans. The most inhumane race on the planet. What irony.
The slump was over. The inventing was over. Now, the only inventions
were new war machines. Idea were pouring out faster than ever from their
minds, but they were all the wrong ideas. Fear what you don't understand.
Hate what you fear. I was lost. I was scared. Bombs were dropping on
monuments I had seen being erected centuries earlier. Paris. And American
towns. My heart ached. I imparted more than a few ideas on mass-burials and
graveyard plots. And strangely, for all my coldness, I cried for them. Fresh
tears, for fresh massacres.
I wanted to hate them, really I did but I just...couldn't. Because for all my
pessimism, I still have hope for them. They change almost as quickly as the
years which carry them. Even if they make stupid decisions that get them
killed. And I still have hope that Æther will find me and give me what I want.
After so many years of service, didn't I deserve more?
So I took a deep breath, prayed to my maker, and plunged neck-deep into
the fray, resolving to put it right.
I spent nearly five years running around the world, whispering thoughts
into the minds of so-called leaders. I was trying to get them to see their errs
but they practically ignored me. They only listened to what they wanted to
hear. They were the editor, I realized one night as I sat on the edge of the
white-house's balcony. They were the editor of my writings. My thoughts.
They cherry-picked the best parts that would benefit them and threw out
anything else. Did this mean the end?
There was an election in America. I don't pay attention to names. Just
another bureaucrat that ignores my council.
I abandoned the politicians and tried to work on the minds of the common.
Inventors, ushering in clean energy solutions and bio-electrical engineering.
That had been a fad for about a year and a half now: Implants that allow for
internet access and wireless signal to be conducted through the body;
Prosthetic limbs with circuitry matrix, capable of anything from crushing any
object to independent motion. The implants fed on human batteries, powering
themselves like leeches by sucking the lifeblood from their hosts.
At first, my plan worked. Clean energy was a wide-spread phenomenon.
Windmills were set up all over the world, dams revamped to draw hydro-
electrical power without harming the local wildlife. The great power of the
monsoons were harnessed along the banks of the great rivers of India which
soon-after became another economic powerhouse. Nearly the entire world had
electricity.
Then the glory hounds- big rig oil companies which knew they were about
to be shut down for good once the clean energy movement began, got wise
and bought out the entire industry, sharing their stocks and all manner of
nonsense to get a piece of the action. Clean energy became tainted. The smog
that had covered Beijing had just barely began to clear before the oilers used
their massive company stocks to start ramping up production of cars that used
recycled sea water and more electronics than ever before. The output from
machines alone was enough to swamp all of China in a massive cloud. The
entire country was evacuated. All in all, the entire clean crisis took nine
months. Just enough time for a monster to be born.
I wore myself dead into the ground, flying back and forth across the globe.
I was desperately trying to get someone- anyone to listen to me. The spirits
weren't any help. Most of them had either been given back to Æther or retired-
their ilk not needed. No, it was in humans I needed to put my trust.
Thousands died. From exposure to toxic fumes, from starvation, from cold.
A world full of technology and it still wasn't enough to combat these issues
which had dogged their race since the beginning of time. I wept. Oh how I
wept. My tears flowed fast and free, staining the ground until I had no more
left to give. Then the world turned on itself. It blamed other people for its
mistakes and the wars began. I fought alongside the human race as best I
could, whispering ideas of peace and compromise into the ears of the soldiers
who truly didn't want to fight by day and praying to Æther by night. What else
could I do? Eventually one of my strategies had to work!
It did. Together, hand in hand, all desire to fight forgotten, soldiers marched up
from the trenches, straight into the enemy's encampment and laid down their
arms in surrender.
"I do not want to fight." He said, repeating my words. "This isn't our fault.
It is the fault of humanity, that we should stoop so low to try and kill our own
kind over what did and did not happen. Millions died this way. I will not see
my men or I die the same way in a pointless battle."
They were gunned down before he had even finished his speech.
I wept. The battle was over. I had lost.
It took ten long years. Ten long, tiring years for me to finally understand.
But I did understand.
I was sitting in that boy's bedroom in Texas. There was a full moon that
night. Bitter light to guide me home, like silent judgment. All was silent, still
and cold. The boy who once slept here had died some time ago. Killed by a
child-gunman on his way to second period in his middle school. I saw the
funeral. Whispered some nice words into the pastor's ear for him. I looked at
the empty bed and wondered. How had this world changed so much from the
ancient days? Why couldn't there be peace?
As I sat there, looking at the empty bed, it finally dawned on me. I realized
what my problem was. Like a bolt from the blue, understanding flashed across
my face for no one to see. There was no reason for me to be here. Not here, on
this earth- I had a very good reason for that. But here, in this room, mooning
about a dead kid. I was trying to accept responsibility for the acts of billions of
people because I gave them the ideas behind the massacre. Of course it really
was my fault, but they didn't know that. How could I accept such a thing on
such a vast scale when I'm the only one that knows about it? It was pointless!
"Nothing is ever pointless child."
I hadn't seen the shadow looming over me. I was too wrapped up in my
own melancholy. I spun around. Standing behind me, resting against the
window-frame, was a tall, black woman. Her hair was long and shimmering,
falling around her exposed shoulders and trailing down the sides of her face
like an azure water-fall. It was the color of twilight sky on the edge of the
horizon, farthest from the light. Dark, foreboding. And yet entrancing. Nearly
black but not quite, especially when the moonlight from outside caught it.
I didn't know wither to scream or run. The fact that someone could see me
totally escaped my grasp until she spoke again. Her voice was kind. Quiet.
Familiar.
"Don't you recognize me?" She asked, tilting her head to the side slightly.
Her ripple of blue hair fell with her head, lolling languidly.
I shook my head, stunned. "You can see me."
"Of course. You are one of my children, after all."
My mouth was dry. Every fiber of my being radiated magical energy,
drawing power from the woman. "Are you…" I could barely speak the words
aloud. "Are you Æther?" Could it really be?
The woman laughed. It was not a pleasant sound. "That's precious." She
said, taking a few steps towards me. Her dark violet dress rippled in the gloom
and suddenly she didn't seem so nice. "No my dear, I am not Æther. My my,
you are a naive one aren't you? Thinking that the all-mother would come down
from her celestial domain to visit you. She barely even talks to us anymore,
and certainly wouldn't waste her words on a half-spirit like you."
"Wh-what do you mean?"
"I mean, the spirit realm is finished. Finite, kaput. The whole realm in
chaos." She started pacing. "Humans are killing themselves by the droves, all
of the major spirits have either died or been replaced by new ones that haven't
a clue what's going on. Father Time, Myself, and Mother Nature are the only
powerful spirits left. Oh, and Black Annis and the other darks but they don't
count. They're probably reveling in this."
I watched her pace around the room, ever so lightly. Her footstep didn't
make a noise. "Who are you?" I asked again. "What do you want with me?"
At my last question she turned to face me, bright green eyes glittering.
"Isn't it obvious?" She asked, grinning darkly. "You're the one who caused all
this bloodshed and turmoil, Muse." She spat my name. "You and you damn
bio-engineering, your vaccines, and your clean water. You gave the humans
the ideas that sparked this century. You took away our source of life, Muse. It
was all you!" Faster than I could blink she had my by the throat. I felt myself
being lifted up into the air. "You need to pay, Muse."
I don't cower easily. I kicked her in the stomach. She staggered back,
winded but only for a second. "Don't you think I've paid enough?!" I snarled,
crouching down in a defensive position, should she try and come at me again.
"Millennia without anyone seeing me?! Nearly dying each time someone
walks through me?"
"Perks of the job kid." She replied, unsheathing a pair of wicked black
blades. "Now, hold still. The others want me to take you alive."
"Like hell!" I dove for the window. The streets were rain-soaked. Climates
had shifted so drastically it was raining in Texas, in July. I never made it. She
caught me in a net of shimmering white spider web-like cables and I fell
unconscious. The last thing I saw was her face, grinning cruelly.
Ħ
I woke up in a cage, suspended from the ceiling. Cold metal bit into my
flesh. My eyelids fluttered open to the sight of blinding light. I shut them
again, moaning.
"Looks like our pigeon is up."
I knew that voice.
Turning my face away from the light, I covered my head with one arm so
that I could openly look down below me. There she was, standing below me as
bold as brass. Her hair was braided and she looked like she was going to a
fancy dress ball.
"You." I snarled, trying to shift my weight but the metal of my cage had a
sharp edge to it.
"Me." She replied evenly. "I must say, you took your time. Nature was
going to have to shock you with a lightning bolt to make sure you were still
alive." She nodded to her left.
Her gaze drew my attention to the two other people in the room. A young
man, with bronze skin and dark brown hair, wearing a tan trench coat over a
blue shirt and khakis. Beside him was an old woman who had the air of once
looking very beautiful, but was now a shriveled old hag of a spirit. Her hair
was silvery white and her green dress was mottled with mold and patches and
tears. The vine-patterned bodice curling around her thin frame seemed to be
made from riverweeds that had grown brown and old. I assumed this was
Mother Nature, warped and twisted from all the pollution.
I looked away from her, guilt gnawing at my heart. "Where am I?" I
demanded. "What is this place?"
"This is my home." The young man said, his voice cold and emotionless.
More like a machine than anything. "I live here."
"Who are you?!" I almost screamed. "If you're going to kidnap me than at
least allow me the luxury of knowing your names!"
The woman stepped forward. Her voice was once again kind, and as soft as
silk. "Yes, my apologies. I did forget to introduce myself, didn't I?" Her hands
lifted, pools of emerald green mist pouring from her fingertips. There was no
need of show of power here. I could practically feel the energy radiating from
her, even though I was so far away. "I am Hecate, mistress of that which is
arcane, dark and deadly and old and rotten." She announced in a grandiose
voice. "My powers stretch past the realms of nightmares and into the deadly
arts."
I winced. Hecate. Now I know why I didn't remember her. I had seen the
goddess with three faces a few times over my years as a spirit, but only in her
child-form. This was the matron. The mother. The crone would come next,
perhaps in a thousand years or so. If she manages to live that long.
"Why aren't you in Rook?" I asked. She rarely strayed from her tower-
home unless an incredibly powerful sorceress was rising or the dead were
coming back to life. Hecate was selfish that way, only helping when it met her
needs as well. But she was prideful, and that I could work with.
Hecate sent a bolt of lightning towards me. It ricocheted off the bars of the
cage once, then slammed into me. My body enveloped it like saving grace.
Pain, unimaginable pain coursed through. My fingers twitched. The scent of
burning hair, clinging to my nostrils. Scorched skin, and smoldering clothes.
"You!" She screamed, hurling another bolt at me but this one fell short.
"YOU ARE WHY I'M NOT RESTING PEACEFULLY IN MY TOWER
YOU LITTLE DEMON! My realm was once as strong as Time's is here, but
then you came along with your science and engineering and brought me down!
Magic wasn't needed in the world and as a result I nearly died!" Another bolt.
This one hit me and I screamed. She screamed louder. "But do you know
what? My magic saved me! It brought me a cure and I used it to save others!
Nature and Time are alive because of me!"
I shook my head, grasping at the bars so tightly my hands bled. "No." I
hissed, bringing my face as close to the bars as I dared. "They aren't. Look at
them. Time isn't a living thing anymore. He's just a clockwork toy."
"YOU'RE WRONG!" She screamed and her roar turned into a jet of blue
flame, catching my hair alight. Within minutes it was burned away and I lay
on the bottom of my cage, crying and screaming, clawing at my scalp to rid
myself of the embers.
"Nature's forest sanctuary was ripped to pieces by bull-dozers long ago,"
Hecate snarled up at me. "Torn apart from the world. She was destitute. I took
her in. ME! We fled to Anansi's cave but the spider-queen had died with her
husband long ago. She paused. Her voice had been slowly fading from a
scream into a quiet, reminiscent whisper. "Only Time's clock tower now
remains. The last Great Spirit Dwelling." She told me quietly.
My body felt like it had been dipped in lava. And not in the good way.
Moving hurt. Breathing hurt. I would heal, but not for a long time.
"How?" I managed to croak from my place at the bottom of my cage. I was
looking through the bottom bars at her, my dark eyes boring into hers. "How
did you manage to stay alive?"
That sadistic grin crept back over her face. She tilted her face upwards to look
at me and covered her mouth with her hand, masking her words from the
others. "I killed a nightmare lord." She told me quietly, as if she were telling a
great secret. "Killed him, stole his blood and preformed a blood reparation for
fear."
My eyes widened. "You didn't…"
She clapped her hands and her face briefly morphed into that of a child's,
then it switched back, almost like the blinking of an eye. "Oh yes, yes I did.
And it worked! My powers returned tenfold! Fear is in such great supply these
days you know. Then I did the same for Nature and for Time. It didn't take so
well to either of them but at least they're alive and can draw power from
something!" That hideous grin widened. "Or someone."
"So that's your plan?" I coughed, grasping the bard of the cage and hauling
myself up. "Use me as a battery to fuel yourself for all eternity until the wars
end and humanity returns? What makes you think there will be an end?!"
She shrugged. "They all have to die some time. But not you. You won't
die…ever." She turned to leave. "Have fun pretty bird. We will be coming
back later for our…feeding."
"Wait- STOP! How can you see me?" The question had burned on my lips
for longer than I could recall. I wanted the answer. Now.
Hecate paused on the threshold of a doorway, nearly out of my vision. "I
don't know what you mean." She replied coolly.
"How can you see me?" I repeated, just as coolly. It wouldn't do to lose my
temper now, now with answers in my grasp. "Millions of years and no one, not
anyone, spirit or otherwise, has ever been able to see me. Why now? I can
only guess that it has something to do with you."
She turned back and walked across the room again until she could see me.
Staring up at me with dark, cold eyes she replied, "I guess you have lost
Æther's favor child." And then she left.
Weeks passed. Every day they would come and torture me. Fear was a
living thing, Hecate told me during one of the rare times she felt like talking.
Just like magic. Both fed off of inspiration and to her, now that she wielded
both, I was an all-out buffet. And since Fear was living, it learned and
understood things. I could grow to learn what to expect if they just beat me
mercilessly. And I wouldn't fear it any more after a while. So every day was a
fresh new batch of hell.
Hecate started out small; she would take me out of the cage, chain me up
like a dog, lower the cage into a pit of hot coals, heat the bars up and then stuff
me back in the cage to burn. The screaming made her laugh. Nature just
looked on dully. The clockwork Time never spoke.
The next day Hecate lowered me into a pit of snakes and spiders. I'm not
afraid of either but the pain from getting bit and the later agony of having the
venom work its way out of my system was good enough for Hecate. I was left
alone that night, shivering, cold. But I wasn't completely devoid of hope.
Looking up at the moon through the bars in my cage, I prayed to Æther for
something to rescue me. Anything. My well of inspiration was running dry
and I wasn't sure how long I could last.
 That night I learned I wasn't the only person here. As I tried to sleep I heard
screams coming from the door behind which Hecate disappeared every night,
when she was finished with me. I ducked my head. So there were other spirits
still alive, being tortured for their fear in this terrible place.
I could have helped them, I thought, fresh tears welling in my eyes. I could
have saved them. Another scream, sharp and female. What on earth are they
doing in there?
Suddenly, Hecate burst into the room, dragging a body behind her. Time
followed with another and Nature trailed lastly. She had no body.
"It seems the Muse has some new room-mates," Hecate told me wickedly,
chaining the unconscious person to the wall. Short red hair covered his face
and his clothes were tattered. Burns, like brands rippled across his chest.
Horseshoes. Iron.
"Liam…" I breathed, staring in horror.
"Oh I see you've met?" She grabbed the unconscious Leprechaun by his
flaming red hair, yanking his head up. His face looked just as tormented as his
body, criss-crossed with fresh and half-healed scars. "Poor dear Liam here
refused to join us, you see. And, instead of just killing him we decided to get
some use out of him before sending his corpse to Æther."
I couldn't take my eyes off the beaten man. He looked so old… much older
than his twenty six human years. Liam what have I done…
Hecate walked over to the other body which Time had chained up. I tore
my eyes away from Liam and looked at the other victim. It was a woman. Her
skin was moss-green and her blonde hair lay slicked-back against her scalp
like a hat. A dryad, I guessed from the bright green blood she was leaking
from various cuts all over her body.
"This one here," Hecate shook the dryad. "Was simply in the wrong place at
the wrong time. Liam here is the real catch. Hope you have fun with your
playmates!"
She left.
Liam didn't wake up for hours. Occasionally he groaned and moved his
head, but barring that there were no signs of life. The dryad didn't make it
through the night. She died from sap-loss and internal injuries.
They threw her body in the fire-pit. The sweet, smoky smell knocked me
unconscious but before it went dark I murmured a prayer to Æther for her
essence to be re-absorbed.
When I woke up, it was to Hecate jolting me with her lightning. "Wake up
dear," she cooed. "We have visitors."
I lifted my head which was pounding. The ache was almost more than I
could bear but I forced myself to bite back the pain. "Who?" I croaked.
She stood back a few steps and revealed not just one, but four new victims
chained to the walls surrounding my cage. Liam was still hanging in front of
me. The new victims were younger than both of us. Two children, and two
adults. Or so it seemed. All were awake and the children were screaming. I
recognized them instantly. The Halloween twins, Sam and Hein. Both dressed
in identical Halloween wear, spiders and bats patterning their stockings and
shirts. Sam's skirt was ripped and Hein's shirt was torn open, revealing
bloodied gashes.
Rage like I have never felt reared up inside me. "Monsters," I snarled,
rounding on Hecate. "Why would you do this to innocent little children?!"
Hecate scoffed. "Innocent?" She repeated. "These two," she nudged Hein
with her clawed finger. He screamed. "These two have led more children to
their deaths on Halloween night than I have killed in millennium. And you call
me a monster? They lead them into forests, get them lost, then feed on their
souls."
"No!" Sam wailed, struggling against her chains. "No! That's a lie! We're
supposed to help kids!"
Hecate silenced her with a sharp crack across the jaw. "SHUT UP!"
"Hecate," spoke one of the adults softly. I turned to look and saw, to my
great shock, that it was none other than Eros himself! Hecate's half-brother.
His bronze skin mottled with burns, turning him almost piebald. "You don't
have to do this. Let us all go free, and we won't come after you. I swear it."
Hecate laughed. "Nice try brother but I don't think so. Why let you all go
free and hope I live when I can just keep my completely inexhaustible supply
of fear right here?"
Eros's face was dark. "They'll find you, you know," he told her coldly. "He
will find you. And when he finds you he will kill you."
A shadow passed over Hecate's face and, for a moment, I swear she looked
just a little bit scared herself. Then it passed. She stalked over to her brother
and, screaming in rage, raked his chest with her razor-sharp claws. He let out a
scream that would've curdled blood.
She caught him by the skin, sharp needles digging into his skin. "If he does
find me," she hissed. "Which he won't, it won't really be your problem because
you won't be alive to see it!" One more slash for good measure. Then she
stalked off.
I waited until I was sure she was gone before speaking. "Who is he?"
Eros jumped a little, startled by my voice. He lifted his head and looked
around curiously, though it must've pained him to do so. "Eh? Who's there?"
"I'm here," I told him, waving. "In the cage."
He craned his neck. "Ah I see you know. Who are you kid? Another one of
Hecate's prisoners?"
I nodded. "Yes. Like you."
Eros nodded, cracking a grin. "Aye child, like me." He squinted. "Just who
are you girl? I don't remember seeing you before. Are you a young spirit?"
I had forgotten that none of the other spirits had seen me before. "No." I
answered. "Not a new one. An old one. I kept to myself a lot but I know of
you Eros. And I know that Hecate is your sister."
Eros scowled, then winced as if the mere suggestion of movement hurt.
"She's no sister of mine now. Not after what she's done. Murder, torture of
fellow spirits and children. No. Those are offenses I cannot forgive."
"Glad to hear it." I told him. "Because if I manage to get out of here she
will be dead within a fortnight that I can promise you. And I wouldn't want to
have to kill a sibling as well to stop a revenge vendetta from starting."
A small smile cracked his bloodied face. "Smart child." He commented.
"You certainly do sound like an old spirit. What is your creed, child?"
Creed was the street-name for our spiritual responsibility.
"Inspiration." I answered honestly. "I'm the Muse. I was invisible, even to
other spirits until a few days ago when Hecate used dark magic to turn me
visible."
He frowned. "Invisible to other spirits?"
I nodded. "Yes."’
"Huh."
There was silence for a while before I spoke again. All I could hear were
the sobs coming from the twins and Liam's heavy breathing. He was still
asleep.
"Who is he?"
Eros looked up. "That? He's the Leprechaun. Liam Patrick Connors-"
"Not him. I know Liam. The him you were telling Hecate about. The one
you were threatening her with."
He nodded. "Ah, that one. A Nightmare Lord by the name of Daven."
"What's so special about this Nightmare Lord?" I wondered aloud. "After
what she's done, won't they be welcoming her in with open arms?"
He seemed to forget that I was older than him. "That's not how it works
child. Dark spirits are still spirits, bound by their vows not to hurt a human or
spirit soul. Not even the dark ones will take her now that she's forsaken her
spirit status and killed her own kind."
"And because they are bound more loosely by the codes than other spirits
the Nightmare Lords want her dead." I surmised, nodding. That made sense. It
wasn't all though. My silence prompted him to reveal the rest.
"That...and she killed an Elder to get her power."
I'll admit, that made me wince. I knew she had killed a Nightmare Lord and
took his blood to fuel her vile experiments, but I didn't know just how had it
was. "Which one?"
"Arvein."
"Damn. He was one of the strongest."
Eros nodded. "And now the others want her head on a spike. Before I got
captured, there was talk of an invasion."
"On the Time Tower? You've got to be joking." I couldn't conceal my
disappointment. "I would have expected better."
"Not on the Tower, no. That would be stupid. The time field would raze
them all. They were thinking of an inside job."
Again I was flummoxed. "A red herring?" Somebody would actually allow
themselves to get caught, just to break others out of here? "Who would be that
stupid?"
Eros flashed a blood-stained toothy smile. "What about me?"
"Nice try love boat but I know better. You got ambushed, just like Liam and
the dead dryad that came with him. What the hell were you doing out there
with the twins anyway?"
Eros inclined his head in acknowledgment. "Fair enough. I was taking him
to my home in Paris. I've converted the castle there to a bunker for younger,
innocent spirits."
"How did you get caught?" I needed to know as much as possible if I was
going to plan escape for others now.
"Like you said, ambush. They cornered us. Father Time-"
"The clockwork." I interrupted. "He's not a spirit anymore. Just a mindless
automaton."
Eros gave me a strange look before continuing. "The clockwork, then. He
stopped time around us and we couldn't get free. They carried us, frozen in
time, here and chained us all up before unfreezing us and when they did..." he
paused. "They did unspeakable things to the children. Things so bad it might
almost be preferable to let them die here."
"They won't die." I told him matteroffactly. "They're real spirits. The dryad
died of her injuries. They won't. They'll just keep healing and healing. Their
minds will break before their bodies and when that happens, Hecate will suck
their life-force out and trap their souls on this plane as ghosts to serve her."
"I know. Which is why I'm thinking of ending their lives, in case we can't
get out of here."
"It should be their choice."
"They're children, they can't make that decision."
"Slit their throats, I don't care. Just don't let them hear you talking to me
about it. It's bad enough they're already terrified. Any more fear and Hecate
will have a full buffet ready and waiting for her." I replied, settling down in
my cage. Information was flooding through my mind and I needed to think.
Liam still wasn't awake.
"You're right."
I was silent.
"What's your name child?"
"I don't have one."
"Everyone has one."
"I was merely given a title."
"Muse?"
"That's right." Shut up already!
"How about if I called you M?”
"No."
"Why not?"
“Because it's not my name.”
 “Child, we were all given new names. Your title is who you are now.”
I remained silent for the rest of the night.
The next few days were more like a trail period. Hecate would put me
through a thousand different nightmarish scenarios to see which ones I was
afraid of the most. I was dropped in the cold sea, forced under water in my
cage until I passed out from lack of oxygen; I was left in a burning building-
which Hecate knew would work as I hate fire. They didn't come to get me
until the ashes were cold; I was chained to a wall and Hecate spent hours
slicing away at my skin, testing how long it would take before they would
heal. She collected the spilt blood and used it for her vile experiments. Each
time I let just enough fear out to keep her sated.
Eventually, she learned that I didn't fear for myself any more, that I was too
strong for that, but for the others who had to watch my pain and suffering.
That's when the fun really began.
One day, when she was dragging me back into my cage, beaten and bloody
one of the twins let out a sob for me and it caught her attention. She swung
around.
"What was that pet?"
Sam sniffed. "Please...don't hurt her anymore." She pleaded, giving her the
big, wide orange eyes.
Hecate grinned, yanking me up by the hair. "Does this make you afraid?"
She demanded.
The little girl, not knowing any better, nodded. Her by now greasy black hair
bobbing and waving like inky fingers. "Yes." She whispered.
Hecate's grin could have lit up an empty room. "Good." She snarled.
"Because what's happening her is exactly what is going to happen to you."
And with that, she dragged me by the hair past the twins, Eros and Liam who,
by this time had woken up and was watching silently, his eyes clearly wishing
he could help, and into the room beyond. A wooden table was set with straps
and pulleys. Buckles and braces lines the framework and a huge crank sat like
a goblin, its handle wavering unsuredly.
Hecate flung me onto the table. I tried to get away but she quickly grabbed
my wrist, hauled off and punched me forcefully across the cheek to make me
more complacent and once I lay back, dizzy, she set about fastening me to the
table. Once she was done, she stepped back to admire her handiwork.
"You know," she said thoughtfully. "Being the Muse, I'm sure you could
think up something much more effective than this to bring fear out of people."
I didn't know if she was referring to the table which was obviously an old
torture device, or her methods of using the unknown to terrify the children. I
remained silent, my eyes shut.
I felt a hand on my chin, squeezing my lips into a pucker as a voice whispered
so close to me that I felt her breath gracing my exposed lips. "You could help
me you know." She told me, squeezing even harder. "We could be partners.
You and I. You could help bring this sorry world back to what it was! The
Muse and the mistress of Magic. We could make the spirits remember who the
real power is!” She waited for me to respond but I didn't, so she adopted a
more kindly, mothering tone. “Come now, I know there's an ambitious streak
somewhere in that pretty head of yours.” She cooed, trailing her hand up my
temple until it graced my forehead. “You've been ignored and cast aside for far
too long! With this newfound power you could rule those that turned a blind
eye to you! And all it would take was one quick second of pain. Surely that's
better than this mess you call an existence hmm?"
The entire time she had been giving her long, drawn out monologue I was
busy working up a good spit-ball from all the blood and bile that had built up
in my throat from previous torture sessions and when she paused for breath I
pulled my head back and let fly. The projectile hit Hecate squarely in the face,
splattering her with gunk that would make a sewer-system green. She
staggered back from the table, cursing and wiping her face.
"I'll make you pay for that you little bitch!" She snarled, stomping over to
the controls. Her hands flew to the crank and I felt the straps around my arms
and legs tighten drastically. The cranking continued. "See how you like this!"
She cackled, tightening my straps to much that I wasn't even lying on the table
any more, the straps held me so snugly.
Then the pain started. I felt the agonizing, slow pain of an insect being
pulled apart, leg my leg. My bones popped out of their sockets. I didn't
scream. Only the barest grunts of pain escaped my lips. I would not let her
win. Still the straps tightened. My arms and legs were being ripped off my
body slowly, force tearing tendons and muscle like tissue paper. I whimpered
but didn't scream. Then the skin started giving way. I felt a cold, dark swell of
fear settle over me and knew I was going to scream soon unless I did
something to stop myself.
So I started laughing. Not happy laughter. Mad, euphoric laughter. Evil
laughter. Crazed, insane laughter that made even the mistress of dark magic
edge back.
"What?!" She screamed, stalking from the crank over to me. She loomed
over me as I continued to cackle, my voice reverberating around the smaller
room. "What is so funny?!"
I kept on laughing, telling myself that it was for the kids. All of it was for
them. “Æther protect me,” I whispered before continuing in my mad pique.
"AHAHAHAHAHAHA HAHAHAHAH AH AH AHAHAHAHAHAH HA!"
There was no warning. Suddenly, I felt an earth-shuddering snap and my
laughter broke off with a cry of pain while feeling started rushing to my right
leg which Hecate had broken with her fist. I hesitated only for a moment, then
kept laughing. "HAHAHAHAHAH AH! AH! HAHAHAHAHA!"
She let out a scream of frustration and broke my other leg. "STOP IT!" She
roared. "You're supposed to be screaming!"
She sounded like a bitter child and I laughed in her face. She broke both my
radius and ulna on both arms, my right humorus and was working on my left
when she finally realized she wasn't going to get anything from me and drew
back, disgusted.
"You might be able to laugh your own pain away, Muse," she snarled,
getting up into my face again. "But the twins won't be so humorous about their
fate I'm sure."
My laughing abruptly stopped and I glared murderously at her. Ooh, you
evil twisted psychotic bitch! I wanted to swear at her, though it was really
myself I was mad at. Instead of using my mad, euphoric glee to save them I
had potentially condemned them. If I couldn't do the job of making them
afraid, Hecate would do it for me.
So I started screaming.
I honestly think that was the only time I've seen Hecate falter. "I haven't
done anything to you yet!" She protested, looking me up and down in
confusion. Then an evil grin spread across her face as she guessed my game.
"Ah, I see. You want to save them the pain and sacrifice yourself as my little
voodoo doll. Well, I can tell you that if that's going to happen and if I'm to
keep my hands off the little ones, I'm going to need a bit more screaming than
that."
I screamed louder. Blood-curdling screams that would make a demon's hair
stand on end. She clapped gleefully.
"Yes, yes, much better. Though it won't do to just have you screaming with
nothing being done to you. That wouldn't be fair." She picked up a knife and
started cutting along my dislocated arm. I screamed real screams. Agonizing,
ear-shattering, make you teeth chatter screams that brought a look of childish
delight to her face. I felt sick. "Yes, yes, this is much better." She cooed,
setting down the knife after a while and smoothing my hair back from my
forehead. "Much more life-like."
I stopped screaming just long enough to glare at her. "Wipe that sick smile
off your face you bitch. I'm only doing this for them. Now put me back in my
cage."
Hecate slapped me. To be honest it was more of a love-tap but it still awoke
old bruises beneath the skin that had long-since faded from view. "Now now,
we've made some real progress today. No use spoiling it all." She tutted,
resting a hand over my stomach. "And you aren't going back to your cage just
yet. The healing process is almost as painful as the breaking process from
what I've been told, and I was hoping to see it for myself. "
And so I was forced to lay there, screaming non-stop as the bones and
tendons re-knit. Tissue sprouted from wrecked muscle and my body felt like it
was on fire for hours and hours while Hecate watched, grinning like a maniac.
I don't even remember going back to my cell.
I woke up to Liam, speaking to me. "You're very brave, you know." He was
saying. "To take such pain for them. It's honorable."
Opening one bleary eye, I gazed down at him. His red hair glistened, just
like the others with sweat and caked on blood. He didn't know I was awake.
 "I would do the same, if Hecate gave me the choice."
"You're wasting your time Liam," Eros told him. "She's out cold. Probably
dead. Even spirits can't survive that kind of torment for days on end."
"She's alive," Liam insisted. "I can see her breathing up there. Why do they
keep her up there anyway?"
Eros shrugged. "Because she's Hecate's favorite plaything. Who knows! I
just want to get her down and out of here, same as you and the twins."
Liam sighed tiredly. "You and I both know that's never going to happen."
He told the spirit of love seriously. "We're going to fade here, all of us. And a
new batch of spirits will be brought in to feed that monster's lust for power."
Eros silenced him with a death-glare. "We won't get out of here if you keep
talking about it like that!" He reprimanded, glancing the way of the twins who
were still on the opposite side of the room and as such unable to head
anything.
"He's right you know." I said. My voice was dry and croaky. It hurt to
breathe.
Both of then looked up. Liam smiled. "Hey there little'un, glad to still see
you among the living."
"I'm not." I said seriously.
His smile faltered. "What?"
"I'm not glad I'm still among the living. But I am glad you are."
The two men exchanged glanced and chose to ignore my comment. "How
are you feeling?" Eros asked.
"Like all my bones were pulled from their sockets and then broken."
Eros winced. Liam played it straight with a mask-like face.
"Listen, I know what you've been through for their sakes," he told me.
"And I thank you for what you've done. But you don't need to suffer any more.
We have a plan."
"Oh?" I asked. "And what is that?"
There was no hesitation. "We wait until they leave to go to get more people,
then my luck will break the chains and we'll be able to all get out of here!"
"The iron stops your powers. Try again."
"My luck is a part of me," Liam countered. "It's not a power. And while the
iron hurts, it doesn't hurt my powers that much."
He was lying. I knew it.
"You can come with us. Be free once again."
I didn't answer him.
Liam tried his escape attempt the following week. I watched as he wriggled
out of his chains but his luck didn't hold for much longer. He was trying to use
a rock to break Eros's chains when they came back. Hecate slit his throat
without thinking and he lay bleeding on the ground. The twins screamed. Eros
cursed. I watched silently. No prayers were said.
Hecate screamed at them to be silent, then glared at Eros. "I suppose this
was your idea brother?"
 Eros swore. "No, it was Liam. But I would have gladly gone along with it,
just to keep these children out of your reach."
She hit him. Hard. His head snapped back and he spat blood back in her
face. She wiped it off and hit him again. And again. And again. By the time he
was knocked unconscious her fist was red and the knuckles were bleeding just
as much as his face. She rubbed her fist, massaging the cuts thoughtfully
before unchaining him and dragged Eros from the room. I had to listen to him
screaming for hours and hours before they were suddenly cut short. I strained,
hearing a gurgling and then silence. She had obviously decapitated him.
Then she started taking her rage out on the twins. I was already too beaten
down to be of any use to her. She wanted to hurt something. Something that
would scream for her. And scream they did. I spent so many hours trying to
ignore the screams that I lost count. Only sleeping I spent hours and hours
sleeping. Ignoring the screams. I wasn't ready to escape yet. I needed more
time. My prayers to Æther had stopped sometime after Liam's escape attempt.
There didn't seem to be any point.
She spent hours torturing the twins. One of them broke quickly, though I
couldn't tell which as they were in a different room. Only one's screams lasted
until the very end. She didn't kill him though. I could tell by the self-satisfied
way Hecate strode into the room hours later.
"Well," she said in the falsest sweet voice I've ever heard. "I think it's about
time to get you some new playmates."
She didn't tell me what she had done with the child. I didn't ask, though
occasionally I would catch a glimpse of a shade, following her around. She
had a perverse thing for children it seemed. Maybe those tales about her and
Black Annis were true.
I expected her to be gone for a few days. The clockwork and Nature kept an
eye on me. When she came back, she was dragging only one body. An older
man, dark of skin and hair. His hair hung long over his face, tangled, matted
with blood as nearly dreads.
She chained him up and left. He was unconscious, or so it seemed. Once
she left his head snapped up and he looked around. This one was different. I
could tell. He was more predator than prey. His black pants and long, black
shirt was ripped a little- enough to expose sculpted muscles underneath.
"Who's up there?" His voice was cold, calculating. And angry.
"Me."
"Who're you?"
"The Muse. What about you?"
He deigned to answer.
"How did they trap you?"
"They didn't. I let her catch me."
"You're the mole? You don't look like much."
"I'm not supposed to."
An underplayer, like myself. Quaint.
 She waited one whole day before coming to see us. She waved cheekily at
me, smiling as she passed beneath me and stood in front of the newcomer. I've
elected, in lack of his name, to call him Obsidian.
Hecate asked Obsidian a lot of questions, none of which he answered. Not
like me then, I thought. I would've answered. Then again, he probably has
things to lose. Not like me. Then she lowered my cage and dragged me to the
other room to see if I was still scared. She made a few cuts, nothing
momentous I didn't scream. Broke a few of my fingers. They healed quickly. It
was as if the broken bones understood that it would keep happening and as a
result, grew back stronger each time. What doesn't kill you and all that, I
suppose.
She finished, disgusted and threw me back in my cage. When she left,
Obsidian asked, "Are we the only ones here?"
I spat blood. The ruby red droplets slowly fell to the ground. "Yes. The only
other beings here are beyond help. You missed the boat. There were four
more."
"Four?"
"They died. She killed them."
"Damn. How long have you been here?"
"Longer than I care to look back on." I replied.
"And you want to get out?"
"Why wouldn't I?"
"Do you want Hecate to die?"
"I want her to suffer."
He laughed. "Well, as the Muse I'm sure you'll be able to think up plenty of
ways to do that. But you haven't been able to get out of here yet."
"I'm getting there."
He laughed again. "I like you child. I think I'll help you get out of here."
"You do that. It'll be a change of pace."
Obsidian tried to escape immediately. The next day, I woke to the feeling of
a hand on my mouth. I didn't fight. I knew that wasn't her hand. It was his.
"Surprised?" Obsidian asked, his dark gray eyes sparkling with his own
private mirth as he uncovered my lips. He was kneeling in front of me. I was
out of my cage. Nature lay on the ground, her neck snapped. Clockwork was
scattered in pieces of cloth, false skin and gears across the floor. Aww damn. I
slept through it.
I shook my head. "No. Nothing surprises me. Not anymore." He held out a
hand to me and I took it. My feet were unsteady and slightly off-centered but I
could stand. "Where is she?"
He shrugged. "She's out. Don't know where. Don't know when she'll be
back. But we should get out of here before that happens. Did you know she
never even bothered to lock the cage door?"
I nodded. I knew.
"Then why didn't you try to leave before?"
 I figured I owed him an explanation at least. “I had people who I owed." I
replied. “Now they're dead and I'm free of debt.”
He nodded, understanding blood-debt. "Will you come with me?"
"To where?" I was curious, though I had no intention of leaving this place.
Information was key. Always has been.
"Dark Hollow Haven."
I quirked an eyebrow. "A Nightmare Lord? I wouldn't have guessed."
He shrugged. "The days of long, billowy cloaks and fangs are long behind
us. These days the Lords opt for a more...modern and ethnic look.”
“Is that where the Elders are staying?”
“Yes.”
“Which ones?” I pressed.
He shrugged. “All of the ones left. Hermes, the Drakon siblings, Baba
Yaga, Osiris, Death, what does it matter? Are you coming or not?”
I shook my head. “No.”
He frowned. “...Why not?”
I told him. He didn't like it. “Are you serious?” He demanded. “After all
she's done to you? You're on the brink of freedom and you're going to balk
now because you've got godsdamn Stockholm syndrome?” He turned away,
disgusted.
“Wouldn't you? If you know what I know?” I asked, staring at him. My
gaze never wavered for an instant. “There's nothing left out there. Æther never
listened to my prayers. She never sent help.”
“She sent me!”
I'll admit, that one gave me pause. “She...what?”
Obsidian nodded emphatically. “Yes! Æther is there, right now, working on
a plan to put Hecate away, seal her up where she can't hurt anyone. Who do
you think told me to come here, get myself kidnapped?”
I shrugged. “I thought... I thought it was Daven.”
He stopped dead. “Who told you that name?”
I told him what Eros had told me. He laughed.
“I take it that's your name then?”
He nodded. “Originally I wanted to come here to kill her. Then Æther got
wind of my revenge scheme and asked me to get caught so that we could
gather information and free any prisoners.”
“You listened to her?”
“Of course. She's the All-maker.”
I turned my back on him. “Run.” I said, heading back to my cage to wait.
“Run before she comes back. I won't tell you again.”
Daven left without a second look.
I decided not to go back to my cage. Not that I wanted to be back in that
cramped mouse-hold suspended ten feet above the floor. But with my limited
strength, I wasn't sure I could levitate up there without crashing and hurting
myself any more than I already was. So I took to exploring my much larger
cage. In all my time here I had only seen this room and the torture chamber, so
it was a very new experience for me.
This building- the Time Tower, previous home of Father Time, certainly
lived up to its name. A gigantic clock-tower made from shimmering glass,
gold and bronze spires and bricks. Obsidian numbers set into an ivory face,
facing the east as I could see when I walked outside. It looked almost pretty.
But here and there I could see hints of darkness. Corruption. Death. Flowers
didn't bloom within fifty feet of the foundations. The ground was dark.
Lifeless. Ivy curled into brittle fingertips on the brick face and even though it
was mid-day I couldn't see a single ray of sunshine actually touching the brick
walls. It was as if light totally avoided this place.
The inside of the clock-tower was much more impressive. The wooden bar
which held my cage was part of the balance beams criss-crossing up and down
the tower, making it look like a massive sheet of shoots and ladders. The
expanse of the tower itself was divided into three main sections: Hecate
occupied a massive room just underneath the clockworks which was almost
entirely full of books and scrolls. Chests sat around in corners like hobgoblins,
ready to spew out any useful items as soon as Hecate snapped her fingers.
There was an off-shoot of the main room which housed her chemicals and on-
going magical experiments. Hearts in jars, eyeballs boiling in viscous material,
that kind of thing. And there actually was a cauldron. I had a good chuckle at
that.
Her henchmen lived in slightly less glamorous abodes; Nature had a
covered pavilion outside in the yard, draped in rotten vines and leaves which
were turning to mulch right before my eyes. It was straight out of the secret
garden, if Mary had never discovered it and left it to decay. Even the wood
that the pavilion was made of, whitewashed though it was, was crumbling to
the over-bearing force of mold and damp. I didn't stick around that place. It
gave me the creeps.
And finally, I found the thing that had once been Father Time's room; a small,
cramped space inside the mechanism where he could tend to his duties. There
was another room, presumably the room where the time-strands were kept on
the same floor as Hecate's room, but that was locked with a blood-barrier,
probably put there by Father Time himself. I didn't try to go in. Instead I
busied myself reading Hecate's vast about of books on spells, curses, hexes
and all manner of dark demonicy, trying to think of what fresh hell to enact on
her in recompense for all the lives she had taken.
Hecate returned hours later. She screamed upon seeing the chains hanging
uselessly from the wall and screamed still louder when she saw my empty
cage. I stepped out from my hiding place.
"Aww, what will all that caterwauling you would think you missed me."
She spun around and a bolt of lightning hit me full in the chest. I didn't flinch.
Protection runes spattered over my skin, inked in scars and blood. Dark magic
coursed through my veins. Fight fire with fire.
 My hand lifted. She flew across the room, slamming into a window. It
didn't do anything but wind her. She screamed gleefully and summoned
weapons out of the torture room, hurling the blades at me. I ducked and
dodged, letting a few of them hit their mark. They didn't hurt. Nothing hurt.
"Why aren't you gone?" She demanded, spinning around like a dancer,
hurling more fire and lighting from her fingertips. "You were free. Why didn't
you leave you twisted little freak?!"
I raised an eyebrow. "I'm twisted?"
She screamed again, hurling everything from daggers to poisonous snakes
at me. I danced around it all, getting closer and closer to her. She was backed
up against the wall. I was almost sad I let Daven go. He would have liked to
see this.
My hand crackled with bright blue flame and I screamed a word of power,
catching her dress alight. It burned white-hot and she screamed, but she still
didn't stop fighting. The area surrounding her body was a maelstrom of
whirling chaos. Winds buffeted her. She had stolen Nature's magic. Discarded
weapons flew back into her hands like a tape being rewound. She had stolen
some of Time's magic too. Greeeat.
"You know," I told her calmly as I ducked one of her bolts of red fire. "I
hope you know that you've beaten me. Just a bit."
Hecate ignored me and screamed a word of power. A pulse of energy shot
towards me. I dodged, letting only a fraction graze my skin but it was enough
to make my eyes roll back into my head. Gods above it was like being set on
fire from the inside!
I screamed and that gave me more strength. I fell to my knees. She loomed
over me, grabbed me by my tattered t-shirt, holding a burning fist up to my
face. I felt the flesh melting from my face and I screamed. My skin was
streaming, molten, down the incline of my cheek and I felt every single lick of
the flames. But the fight wasn't out of me yet. I kicked her squarely in the gut.
Hecate staggered back, right into the center of the circle I had drawn during
the hours we had been waiting.
Immediately, the barrier sprang up. A net of red and gold fire ropped from
empty space down on her. Out of reflex, her hands rose to try and stop the net
but contact scalded them and she screamed, whipping them back to her sides.
It drove her to her knees and the fire pressed down on her, causing her to
scream more.
"WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?!"" She roared, thrashing and kicking as the
net pressed closer and closer, mummifying her in a cocoon of molten flesh and
cloth.
"What have I done to nullify you powers or what have I done to enact this
barrier?" I asked, conversationally. My face was still stinging.
Hecate continued to thrash and scream obscenities.
"Well, I've always thought that irony was a good source of inspiration. And
what's more ironic than using magic to stop a sorceress?"
 She had stopped thrashing. The fire had reduced what was left of her skin
to nothing but charred flesh. Tears were streaming down her face and there
was terror in her eyes.
"Kill me." She whispered it softly, as if she expected me to actually do it.
"Kill me now. Avenge yourself."
I shook my head, kneeling at the edge of the circle of runes. "No. I'm not
going to kill you. That would, of course, be too easy. I know I know,
stereotypical. Heroine usually lets the villain live their life out because good
guys don't kill. But we both know I'm no good guy Hecate."
"So you will kill me?"
"I didn't say that. Actually killing you wasn't on my list of errands to run
today.” A snap of the fingers and the barrier was released. She lay there,
panting on the ground, looking green. Evidently the barrier had sucked more
than her magic from her. “I'm actually going to let you live.”
She blinked and for the second time in as many weeks, I saw a look of utter
confusion cross Hecate's face. “Not because I figure I owe
you anything, or because I wouldn't gladly walk out on this place at the drop
of a hat.” I continued, keeping an even, civil tone. “I don't, and I will walk out.
And there's nothing you can do to stop me. However, for now, I'm willing to
stay here and supply you with my fear.”
She was growing more and more confused by the second. “Why would you
do that?”
I paused for a few seconds, reveling in the bewilderment clear as day in her
eyes. We all have to have our small victories. “Remedium non ignota
cognitum, nisi aliquod visum.”
The barest hint of a smile graced Hecate's lips. “I'm not in the mood for
deciphering Latin today Muse. Plain English will do.”
“The cure for the unknown is not what is known, but what is seen.”
She nodded, instantly understanding. “Ah...I see. Having a crisis of faith
are we Muse?”
“Not a crisis, no. A revelation. It’s simple logic: I've devoted most of my
existence to a person whom I've only spoken to once and who has only
answered me once; a supposedly benevolent goddess whom I've just learned is
really out there, but that fact alone has eradicated her hold over me. Not only
that, but all my efforts have been proven to be in vain. The world is
predominantly screwed, and the human race along with it, so why not stick
with what I know and make the best of it?”
Hecate's smile grew wider with each sentence and when I finally stopped
for breath, she nodded. “So it's not hopelessness that drives you to make this
drastic decision, but pessimism? You have the will to carry on, just at your
own pace while the world implodes upon itself?”
I shrugged. “Like I said, I figured I don't owe anybody anything. I'd rather
spend my days tied up as a voodoo doll for you than wandering around
aimlessly, searching for my messiah. If she did care anything for me, she
would've helped me before now.”
“Which was what I was trying to get across to you earlier, if you recall.”
Hecate said reproachfully, pushing herself up into a sitting position onto her
knees. “If you would've come to this realization a few weeks earlier we
could've saved you all that pain and torment.”
“Bullshit.” I replied, smirking as I folded my arms over my chest. “You
would've still tortured me. It just wouldn't have been as much.”
She shrugged. “Fair enough.” Hecate tried to get to her feet but she only
managed to put one foot firmly on the ground before her body tilted slightly to
the side and she threw her left arm out to catch herself.
I stooped to catch her and our eyes met just for a second before I ducked
my head and helped her to her feet. She thanked me and I shrugged,
dismissing it. I wasn't in this for praise.
“There are three conditions to me remaining here,” I told her once we had
gotten her over to the closest chair and she was sitting. “Conditions which I
will expect you to agree to and should you break them, there will be
consequences. Let’s get that straight right now.”
She shrugged. “I expected no less.”
“Firstly, I will not live in that cage any longer. You can put me anywhere
else, but if you force me to live inside that cage I will leave you and put all my
efforts into keeping spirits away from you and you will die of starvation.” I
was confident she would adhere to this rule. It was the others I wasn't so sure
about.
Hecate agreed without challenge. “There are plenty of spare rooms.” She
replied, shrugging. “Take your pick.”
“Good. Secondly, while we're on the subject of your feeding habits, I will
allow you to do what you must to make me feel afraid of you in order to keep
you alive. Break bones, cut skin, I don't care. Whatever keeps you alive.”
She nodded, impressed with my courage or with my stupidity, I wasn't sure.
“You would let me do that?”
“Within reason. You don't have to destroy my physical form and leave me
in a horrific shell like the Clockwork. But if it keeps you alive, do what you
must. However, unless you are on the brink of starvation or nothing else it
available, I would request that you use another spirit or being to fulfill your...
needs.”
Hecate shook her head, marveling. “Well well Muse, I didn't think you had
it in you.”
She meant my utter selflessness, of course; what she thought was a defining
aspect but in truth was one of my most hated qualities.
“I'm not that naive.” I told her, a little offended. “I know you'll need my
fear again eventually and when that happens I will allow you full control over
how you go about it, but if this arrangement works out it will be better for you
if, for the most part, you feed off of others. We've already found out that fear
cannot be faked, after all.”
 “Fair enough. And your last request?”
“My last request is that when you inevitably do catch other spirits and use
them for your fear, that you let me take care of and heal all spirits you catch.”
Once again I was intriguing her. This was my goal and I was succeeding in
spades. “Take care of them?” She repeated, as if the words were alien. “You
mean you want to torture them? My my Muse, I knew you were selfless but I
didn't take you for a masochist.”
I contemplated slapping her for that, but then decided against it. That would
serve no purpose other than to sate my own anger. “Like I said, I've been
around long enough to recognize when someone needs to step in and play the
peace-maker.” I shrugged. “It's not like I've got anything better to do. And no,
I'm not going to torture them. When I said take care of, I meant it. They might
be your source of fear, but you don't need to treat them like pigs, ready for
slaughter. I want you to explain to them what you're doing, why you're doing it
and listen to my counsel when I offer it.”
She cocked her head to the side and a thin ribbon of scarlet trickled down
her temple. “And what do I get out of it, pray tell?”
“The quality and quantity of your fear triples exponentially, with minimal
damage to the spirits you harvest.” So simple it was almost stupid. I extended
my hand. “Do we have a deal?”
Hecate eyed my outstretched hand apprehensively. “And... what if I don't
agree to your terms?” She inquired in the most honeyed of tones. “What if I
decide to just keep you here as my pet and take your fear, be damned the
benefits of having you as an ally.
I looked her dead in the eyes. Here it came. “Then I will drop your sorry
hide in a pocket-dimension where blood-curdling, gut ripping scream-your-
heart-out fear is the only emotion you will feel as the souls of all the spirits
you've slain rip you limb from limb and devour your flesh. You will feel every
cut, every break, reverberating through your system a thousand fold and when
the pain ends, it'll just start all over again. Without any memory of what has
transpired except for the pain. And what's more, it will be never-ending. A
loop, for all eternity. And all with a front-row seat to what's really happening
out in the world.”
Hecate smirked, bringing her hands together in a slow, steady clap. “Bravo
Muse, bravo. You thought this one out I'll give you that. You let the Nightmare
Lord kill the other two so I would have no choice but to accept your offer,
even though you know it means you will be stuck here with me until the world
ends.”
Never the less, she extended her hand and I whispered a few words of
binding from Hecate's own book of spells which I had found up in her room-
the same one I had gotten the barrier from in fact -and just like that, the pact
was sealed. Her hand was cold and clammy. I released it and, turning my back
on her, headed for the stairs which led back up to the abandoned rooms. “Not
necessarily. Just until I get bored of being here or other spirits get sick of
letting you live and burn this place to the ground.”
Once Hecate recovered from the barrier's draining effects, she came to the
room I had chosen and told me she needed to go out hunting for spirits. It was
one of the off-shoots of Hecate's main rooms; small and cramped, but livable.
I've stayed on worse. I waved my hand in the direction of the door. “Go then.”
I told her.
Hecate leaned against the door-frame, smiling. “What guarantee do I have
that you won't leave as soon as I set foot out the door?”
I resisted the urge to roll my eyes. “Are you serious?” I asked plainly.
“After all the hell I've got through to set this up, that I would leave now? I
thought you were smarter than that Hecate.”
She laughed. “Fair enough. Don't go anywhere now.”
And then she left. She came back a few hours later, toting four beings on
celestial chains. One I recognized, but the other three were unfamiliar.
“I see the hunt went successfully.” I told her from my seat at the summit of
the stairs. She was chaining up the unconscious spirits. I watched, taking
careful note on how she handled them.
“Indeed it did.” She tightened the chains enough so that the slim wrists of
the woman wouldn't slip free and when she finished, she moved onto the next
and then the next until she had a wall of unconscious spirits, hanging like cuts
of meat ready for slaughter. Hecate moved back to stand beside me and
surveyed the captives. “So what do you think?”
I shrugged. “They look strong. Where did you find them?”
“On the outskirts of Dark Hollow Haven.”
“And what...they just let you take them?”
A self-satisfied smile slid onto her lips. “Nope. I had to knock them all out
with stunning spells.”
“Did anyone see you? You know they could trace you back here?”
She blinked.
I groaned. “My gods Hecate how did you survive without me?! Cast a
cloaking spell, quickly before they find the tower!”
Hecate shrugged and waved her hand. Nothing visible happened but I could
guess the invisible barrier was already erected. I nodded.
“Good.”
We stood there for a few more minutes, silently watching the prisoners as
they started to come around. The second on the left was a woman I had seen a
couple of times around the block. Her lack of body-mass and long, blonde hair
hanging down over her face made her look barely out of her twenties. But I
knew, for a fact, that she had been around almost as long as I had.
Hecate noticed my interest and leaned close to me. “Friend of yours?”
“That's Eris. Goddess of strife and chaos. She's supposed to be from the
same pantheon you are from actually.”
Hecate shrugged. “I thought most of those old deities died out decades ago.
Never really cared to meet any of the ones that were left.”
 “Most of them have died. Eris was only able to stick around because people
still believed in her element.” I looked Eris up and down, noting the good
quality of her clothes. She was wearing a slightly rumpled denim jacket, a
white tank-top, black jeans and one leather combat boot. A sock hung idly
from her left foot. “I'm surprised you were able to take her down.”
Hecate nodded happily. “She gave it quite a fight but nothing beats magic.”
Those four lasted us quite a long time, much longer than Eros and Liam had
lasted, and it was all due to me. Encompassing with our deal, I kept them
clean, fed and as physically healthy as circumstances would permit. That's not
to say they were in the best of mental health, even before they arrived here.
The three men were all olive-skinned and until I actually spoke with them I
thought they were Nightmare Lords like Daven. They were allowed to sleep in
the spare rooms and were only chained up when Hecate needed to harvest
them. Barriers and protection runes kept them from escaping, though two
tried. Hecate and I found them doubled over on the threshold of the door to
their room, screaming in agony as the runes the witch had burned into their
flesh tortured them.
“Huh. Well isn’t this interesting.” Hecate murmured, smoothly sashaying
into the room and snapping her fingers. The runes died and the captives were
left panting on the floor as the smell of smoky, scorched flesh clouded the
room. After we chained them up again, Hecate asked me what I would do with
them. “We can’t let them think that escaping is rewardable, can we?”
I didn’t even put any effort into thinking of a punishment and replied quite
simply, “Teach them a lesson. An incredibly painful lesson, so that they won't
do it again. Water and electricity work very well.”
Her eyes widened. "You're a blood-thirsty malicious little thing, aren't
you?" She sounded impressed.
I shrugged. "Inspiration is often evil. I think I've come to terms with that at
this point."
I was sure Hecate wanted to do more than merely teaching them a lesson,
but she was unable to as part of a clause in our agreement and chose to follow
my advice. She tortured them. I forced myself to sit with my back to the wall
outside the room, listening as a reminder that not all of them would be willing.
This would be tough.
I waited until Hecate was finished 'teaching' to come out from my hiding
place and speak with them. She swept out of the room and as I watched her
head back to her room I could tell that she was crackling with power. She
climbed the stairs with a hop in her step that I hadn’t seen before. I listened for
a door shutting and when I heard that, I stood up and silently crept inside,
closing the door behind me.
It was just the two of them, hanging by their wrists against the walls. They
were still conscious. One had lost his shirt during the course of Hecate's lesson
and the others' was hanging around his middle in bloodied tatters. I walked
right up to them. “Still alive I see?”
 One lifted his head and groaned something but I couldn't make it out.
“Don't speak.” I told him. “You might rupture something. And I'm no
doctor.” I left and came back with some medical supplies Hecate had
graciously given me to keep our captives from bleeding all over the floor. I
patched them up as best I could, wrapping cuts. Spirits didn't get infected,
though they could get sick from magical maladies and strength-sapping that
correlated to their creed. Longevity wasn't the same immortality and, unlike
me, they might age slower and look youthful, but they could expire into
nothingness if they lost too much blood. It wasn't the same as dying. More like
being sent to purgatory until they were needed.
Once their wounds were patched, I unchained and carried them, one at a
time, to the rooms I convinced Hecate to set aside for them. I sat down on a
stool in the doorway so that I could see them both. I wasn't sure how
conscious they were, but I spoke to them anyway. Explained to them why they
needed to stay here. That it was safe here, that we would provide everything
they needed in exchange for their fear. It was a business transaction, plain and
simple. Fear for safety.
“It's actually better for you to be here than out there,” I told them seriously.
“Not because you won't die or because you won't be hurt. You will. That's the
point. You'll die helping another spirit live. If you aren't being kept alive
through your creed, then obviously you aren't needed in this world anymore.
She's doing you a favor.”
They didn't believe me. “You're sick!” Screamed one, thrashing as he tried
to break the magical chains connecting him to the bed. “Sacrificing your own
kind to that maniac! You're sick! SICK!”
I wasn't in the mood for being insulted, so I left them with Hecate who,
even though I could tell she hated it, bid her time and didn't hurt them any
more than was necessary. I never even knew their names. I didn't want to.
It took nearly nine months to wear each one of them down, breaking their
walls and re-molding their minds with tools of fear and pain. Hecate used
every suggestion I was able to come up with. She supplied what they were
most afraid of, while I came up with the best ways to exploit it. It became
almost therapeutic, giving my inspiration after so many weeks of bottling it up
and I found that eventually I started sleeping easier after a session.
I learned quite quickly that all four spirits reacted to their worst fears
differently. One of the men might scream and lash out while the other might
cower and whimper, and then it would reverse, all because of slight changes in
the visions Hecate gave them. By her own admission, Hecate didn't actually
like cutting and breaking bones. She might be a sorceress but she was an
unimaginative one, which was why she had settled for her crude, if effective,
methods. But now, with me to supply a ready amount of ideas she was like a
little child again, eager to try out new spells and enchantments.
The first few sessions she stuck to basics, branching out slowly when she
found something that worked or didn't work. I encouraged this, figuring I
should keep her reigned in as much as possible. It was up to me to show her
how to use inspiration. The ideas might be mine, but she reacted like they
were hers. Which was just how I liked it. Recognition was not something I
needed nor wanted.
Then, after getting positive results in the form of minimal physical damage
and exponential amounts of fear for the low-level terrors she was inflicting on
them, she moved on to more pungent magics. She began experimenting with
their dreams, mad scientist-style with different alchemicals and magical sand
which she had stolen from the Sandman during her short stint on the run with
Nature and the Clockwork. Her experiments were, on the whole, tasteful and
none too violent. Most of the real experimentations happened when they were
asleep, whither forced or otherwise and consisted of running the subject
through a series of nightmare scenarios and testing which was more effective,
and with as little strain on the mental standing of the subject. I admired her
work ethic. She treated what she did as important, meaningful, and hard work.
Like any other job. She hurt people and caused massive mental breakdowns,
true, but she was doing it to keep herself alive. You couldn't ask for a more
humane cause than that.
It was late in winter before one by one...they broke. After months and
months of experimentation and afflictions, I watched as the dark men
crumbled into mindless balls of demented, sobbing, gibberish flesh. Eris was
the last to go. A fighter to the very end. Even with Hecate's nightmarish
visions and physical torment she would still scream that she knew the dreams
weren't real. The world would never be sated and pain, strife and suffering
would, as it always did, prevalent. I used to lie awake, listening to her
screaming laughter that hauntingly reminded me of my own while Hecate set
up elaborate visions to spike her fear output, with a smile on my face. I think
that, subconsciously, I liked listening to Hecate torment Eris and I was fairly
certain that Hecate was aware of that fact. Eris always seemed to scream more
than the others and end up with more wounds. Payback for imagined slights on
behalf of the whole human race.
We disposed of the bodies, after decapitating them of course so that they
wouldn't come back, by burying them underneath the pavilion which lad long-
since rotted away into a pile of mulch. The next day, Hecate went out hunting.
The next batch was pretty slim pickings, only two spirits of varying
strength, and that forced me to come up with more in-depth ideas to get them
to give Hecate more fear. One was a young man who appeared to be some sort
of half-snake being Hecate called a Naga, and the other was a little girl
wearing a tattered white dress. I didn't recognize either of them but fear was
fear. Same procedure as before: We locked them in the rooms, gave them food,
let them rest and recuperate before testing out their tolerances. According to
Hecate, the little girl was afraid of one thing and one thing only: the
Boogeyman. Thankfully I have met the Boogeyman before so I could supply a
decent description for Hecate to mimic. The young Naga had a deathly fear of
large birds and the vision of a phoenix burning him to ashes was enough to
exhaust his supply of fear. From that point on he turned into a mindless
cadaver and we had to put him out of his misery, leaving only the girl.
I had been hesitant to let Hecate loose on her since she got here- give me a
break I've still got some moral qualms, but it wasn't like I had a choice. It was
her or me. So I allowed Hecate to haunt her dreams and when she was
finished, I would swoop in and wipe her tears away, bandage her cuts and talk
to her until she fell asleep. It was in this way that I learned her name was
Iliana. She refused to tell me what type of spirit she was, only that she was
powerful and she could get out of here easily if she wanted to. I doubted it.
“You're too weak to even stand,” I told her. “Trying to escape would be an
extremely stupid decision.”
“Why shouldn't I fight?” Iliana challenged, glaring defiantly back at me
through a mess of greasy black hair. “You're just going to kill me anyway. So
why not make the bid and at least give myself some chance of getting away?”
“Because it's impossible. You can't leave this room.” I replied. “Hecate has
covered this place from top to bottom with cloaking spells, barriers, runes of
protection, hexes and things that would turn a child like you to dust.” I had to
admit, I liked her spirit. No pun intended. There was a determined gleam in
her eyes and when she answered, I found myself surprisingly amorous.
“Nothing's impossible. Magic is just having stronger willpower than the
other person, and I have the stronger will.”
I knew instantly that this one was a lost cause. She was a fighter. She
wouldn't accept or understand what we were trying to do, and she would try
and defy us at every turn. Hecate would use her up, then burn her down. I
actually spoke to her about this the next day, but there was no talking her out
of it.
“Energy is energy,” she replied, looking at me pensively over her oblong
reading glasses. I had interrupted her in the midst of studying stronger magics
to craft her visions of torment. “I take what I can get these days. It’s not like I
have a lot of options. What’s the matter, Muse?” Her eyes danced with
amusement. “I thought you had overcome your spinelessness?”
I glared. “It's not a matter of spinelessness. I just don't think the girl's life is
worth a meager amount of fear you'll get from her.” Even though I had pretty
much forsaken any moral compass I might've had in joining up with Hecate, I
still didn't want unnecessary blood on my hands.
But Hecate remained firm. “I can't afford to let good fear go to waste,” she
told me simply. She wasn't even looking me in the eye anymore. Her gaze was
down on her book and from the way she flipped the pages evenly, I suspected
she was paying it more attention than she was me. “It's like mortals throwing
away good food because they don't like how it tastes. Stupid, and wasteful.”
It was a lost cause. I fled to my room while Hecate worked and when she
was done, I helped patch things up. The girl wouldn’t speak to me but at least
she was alive.
 This isn’t a life, I told myself coldly as I sponged away the blood from a
gash in her leg. This is a shell. A hole that you dug yourself into.
Someone throw me a shovel.
The girl broke sometime after. She stayed strong for quite a few months but
balked whenever Hecate re-introduced her greatest fear. That was what broke
her, on a quiet summer day. The sun shone through the dusty windows of the
Clockwork’s old room, and the tower was silent but for the quiet whimpers
that managed to leak from her room.
Hecate showed up in my doorway, holding a scrap of the girl’s white dress
later in the day. “It’s done.” She reported. “Come help me bury the body.”
I stood and numbly followed her, down to the graveyard where our two
shovels were waiting. Hecate, for some strange reason, didn’t use magic to dig
the holes; though I’m sure she had plenty of banishing spells at her disposal,
she preferred to dig them by hand. As penance, maybe, or because she liked
working outside. I suspected it reminded her of Nature, before she had died on
the inside.
We buried her and her head alongside the Naga. No markers. Just a mound
of dry earth. Soon her corporeal form would disintegrate and the mound would
be empty, just like Liam and Eros’s.
As I dug the hole, swinging payloads of dirt back and forth like a
pendulum, I felt a sudden chill go down my neck.
Chill? It’s August.
Then a hot flash. My eyes clouded and I wavered, leaning on my shovel to
keep me upright. “Whoa…”
“Muse? Muse are you alight?” I could feel Hecate’s hand on my shoulder
and hear her talking to me, but it was as if I were listening to her through thick
glass.
“I’m Ok,” I told her, pushing the hand away and walking towards the
Tower. “I just need to…sit down. I’ll be-” I don’t know how much time passed
but all I could feel was the world, rolling around beneath my feet. I faltered.
Arms caught me, gentle arms, dragging me inside like a paper doll.
I was folded into my bed; a small note by a kind woman who had once tried
to kill me. I blinked lazily up at the dirty white ceiling, staring past it into
nothingness while the white cabaret of silence rested on my mind. Hecate was
leaning over me, shaking me, trying to revive me. I blinked once, then I was
gone. Spiraling off into the void.
Ħ
It was like falling through a mirror. On one side, I was falling asleep while on
the other I lurched back into consciousness, eyes wide and fearful as I gasped
for air that I did not need. I jack-knifed into a sitting position, clutching my
heart which was racing like a snare-drum. Incoherent stammers were all that
managed to work their way out of my mouth.
Silence buckled.
“I- what- where…?”
 I was breathing so fast I could barely speak and I had to will myself to take
several deep breaths before looking up at my new surroundings. No sense
having a heart-attack and passing out right after the last one.
The first thing I noticed was what I was laying on; an old bed with tattered,
dusty blankets resting on top of a surprisingly soft mattress. My hand trailed
across the material gingerly, afraid it might fall to pieces at my touch. The
ceiling was riddled with damp. Darkness cast everything in shadow but not
enough to hide the objects scattered about the room as my gaze fell upon
them.
The floor beyond the bed was a battlefield, full of moldy book tents and
plastic action figures which lay like fallen soldiers among their dust buddy
enemies. A broken lamp lay in the midst and a red and white child’s cowboy
hat rested on a hook that was almost falling out of the wall to my left.
It was like getting slapped in the face.
“I’m back…”
I rolled over, looking out the broken window. Still no moon. Had I simply
fallen asleep? My heart was still racing but it soon settled to a slow, rhythmic
beat as I laid back down and remained lying down, staring up at the ceiling
while my thoughts raced. It was so blissfully silent. There were no screams, no
laughter. Not even my own pain. My body didn’t hurt anymore- not from
starvation or from torment. Not even from the ancient bruises inflicted on me
by Hecate. Further indication that that had all been a dream.
What am I doing here? I wondered, my eyes idly tracing shapes in the mold
and damp of the ceiling. Is this a dream? Or was it a dream before? A
terrifying dream sent from the Sandman as a warning from the future? Naw,
that’s too easy. And plus the Sandman doesn’t even know I exist. It can’t have
been all a dream. But if this isn’t a dream, then how long have I been asleep?
You have to remember that I’ve never experienced dreams before, so I had
no idea they were so lifelike.
Well, dream or no, I’d better get up. I told myself and tried to swing my
legs off the edge of the bed and stand but found that I couldn’t. My legs
refused to move. I frowned and went to sit up but it was as if my body
weighed a million pounds.
It’s probably just sleep lethargy. I told myself. It’ll wear off soon.
But it didn’t. I laid there for what felt like hours just staring up at the
ceiling. Every time I tried to move my arm it was like lifting a brick. Blinking
was an effort, as I found out when my eyes grew dry from all the constant
staring. So I let them drift shut for just a second. Darkness greeted me like an
old friend. Not much different from the darkness in the room beyond but
infinitely more comforting.
I don’t want to move. I realized. Not really. It’s too peaceful. I never get to
just lie back and relax like this. Too damn busy doing a thousand jobs that
aren’t mine.
Could I just lay here? Sleep the rest of the world away? It would be fitting.
And didn’t I deserve no less?
“You know you can’t.” I told myself reluctantly. “Too much work. Too
little time. If that dream, or whatever it was, was a warning, I don’t have any
time to lose. I need to find Hecate, and kill her now before she start this mess
all over again.”
“Admirable mission.” Said a quiet, child’s voice from somewhere in the
room beyond. “Oh don’t get up dear, you might hurt something.” It added
when, completely ignoring its council, I leaped to my feet.
My pulse, which had settled into a steady thrumming not moments before
as I had laid there, leaped back to life and I scanned the room, looking for the
source of the voice. It didn't take me long before my eyes settled upon a
hauntingly familiar young girl resting against the windowsill.

My heart leaped into my mouth. “You...” I breathed.

Iliana nodded, unfolding her arms. “Me.”
Everything was the same. Her tattered dress hung about her knees, a grimy
curtain of snow while her hair glistened in the dark. Her skin didn’t have any
of the cuts Hecate had inflicted nor the ones she had sustained prior to
Hecate’s catching her. She stood there, half-seated, perched on the edge of the
sill like a bird, watching me through coal-dust eyes.
My heart leaped into my mouth as I stared blankly back at her. Fear was
ripping my mind open like a sutured wound as terror and confusion flooded
through me. I was trying to comprehend the situation but nothing was adding
up. If she was here then that meant I had been dreaming and this was real? Or
was this a dream?
As if guessing my thoughts, Ilianna chuckled, gliding over to the center of
the room where she stood like a stone statue, immobile except for her face and
hands which crossed and uncrossed as she saw fit. “Oh pet, that was no
dream.” She told me, smiling as she lifted a single hand and waved at the
room. “This is though. Nice isn’t it? It took quite a while to track down the
Sandman and get him to help me set up this little heart to heart.”
So it was a dream after all! “But then…you’re dead!” I stammered. “I
killed you!”
Iliana shrugged. “Technically you killed a corporeal vessel which I was
inhabiting to test your worth as a spirit. Which you failed, by the way.” The
un-child added with a smile that made me want to slap her. “And, also
technically, it wasn’t you who did the killing. So I can’t blame you in that
element.”
“I caused it to happen though.” I objected. “How can you say I’m not to
blame?”
“Did I say that?” She asked, a hint of anger lingering about those even
tones. “You are to blame, Muse. Don’t mistake my lenience for praise. You are
totally to blame for this mess. The earth, the wars, Hecate, all of it. You could
have saved thousands of lives if you had just stayed silent for another few
hundred years!”
 I couldn’t believe this! “Stayed silent?!” I raged, leaping form the bed and
brandishing my fists. “STAYED SILENT?! She sought me out remember?
Hecate found me and I got dragged into this mess without as much as a by-
your-leave! How can you stand there and blame me for this?”
And then she said it. The four words I had been fearing most to hear. “The
door was open.” She said it with as straight a face as you can get, those icy
eyes staring straight into my soul, judging me to the epitome of the word.
I flinched, both internally and externally. Though they were just mere
worlds, they still caused me a ghostly twinge of physical pain. My heart was
still pounding and it took all I had to swallow my fear as my fear turned to
defensive rage.
“What is it you want?” I spat, standing to face her while ignoring her vague
comments. We could get to that later. “I warn you I’m not in the mood for
games; I’m tired and I just want to be left alone to sleep, so unless you’ve got
a baggie of that dreamsand handy piss off.”
Again, she acted as if my actions merely amused her. “Well,” She told me.
“I can assure you that you won’t be getting any sleep here Muse. Not until I’ve
had my say.”
I tensed. That didn’t bode well. “Who are you, kid?” I demanded, taking a
step forward. “You never told Hecate what you are, or what you are. Tell me
now!”
Iliana smirked. “Haven’t you guessed already?”
“Don’t test me you little brat,” I warned her. “Straight answers, no tricks.
Who and what are you, and what do you want with me?”
The brat comment seemed to sting her a little. She shot me a murderous
glare and opened her mouth to speak, then thought better of it. She took a deep
breath and when she did speak, her voice was calm and collected. “You know,
after all this time I would think you would have learned at least a little
respect.” She remarked coldly, retaining that icy stare. “I see now that I was
wrong. You’re just as pig-headed as you’ve always been.”
“What do you mean by that? You haven’t known me for more than a few
weeks!”
“Oh but I have,” she corrected smoothly, holding up a hand to stave off my
argument, should I be stupid enough to try and interrupt. “I've had my eyes on
you since you were born, Muse. And I've tried to talk to you and help you.
But, because of your own stupid stubborn pride, you haven't heard me. And
that is entirely your fault.” “What?!”
“Did I stutter?” The un-child snapped, instantly going from annoyed to
angry as her eyes flashed green. “It’s your fault that you couldn’t hear me,
Muse. Not mine! I made you to be the perfect spirit: Obedient, imaginative,
caring and kind, strong, positively brimming with magic but you turned a
blind eye to all these gracious gifts and chose to be a nanny for the humans.
Disgraceful. You bring shame to the spirits, Muse.”
“I wanted to help them!” I raged, pointing at the boy’s bed and pointedly
ignoring the other comments. I couldn't handle that too right now. “I tried to
fix it, every single time I flew out there I tried to make their world better!”
She raised an eyebrow. “But did you? No, you didn’t! Because humans are
a self-destructive race by nature! They do insane things and learn from them,
that’s how it goes. And they even die sometimes as a result! But when they are
supplied with the inspiration to create weapons of mass destruction just for the
sake of a tense peace… that is truly insane.”
My will was wavering. The anger was rapidly leaving me the more she
spoke. It was like mere words were leeching the fight out of me. “I tried…” I
whispered, looking at the spot of floor in front of her feet. “I tried so hard…”
Iliana sighed. “I know, Muse. And that’s your biggest downfall. You tried
too hard. You notice none of the other spirits need so much direct contact with
the humans? There’s a reason for that.”
My heart was still pounding in my ears but I couldn’t stand any more.
Strength was being sapped from my body, siphoning off into the atmosphere
around me. I could barely keep my eyes open and managed to stagger over to
the bed where I sat with a heavy thump.
“If I’m such a failure,” I said slowly after a few moments. “Then…why
haven’t you just killed me?”
Iliana blinked. “What?”
“Why…haven’t you just…killed me?” I repeated, looking her squarely in
the eyes. “If I’m such a big old disappointment, if I’ve destroyed the entire
earth and I’m good for nothing, then why haven’t you just killed me? Sent my
soul back to the Void and have done with it?”
She was silent for a long, long time, gazing fixedly towards me but I got the
impression she wasn’t looking at me. More like…through me. In that distant,
thoughtful, mildly rude manner people do when they are contemplating deep
thoughts.
Finally, when she did speak, it was just as I had expected. “As…
embarrassing a spirit as you were and as poor as you did turn out… I still
didn’t want to just snuff you out like a dying candle. I knew that one day you
would be useful to me, so I let you live.”
Nothing but an asset. That’s how this leech of the cosmos viewed me.
“Let me guess,” I drawled, venom positively dripping from my tongue. “It
was a mistake.”
Scorn had returned to her tone. “Obviously. You destroyed everything, Muse.
Not only what the humans built but the human race itself! There are hardly
any of them left now, all because of your guns and your poisons!”
Oh please. “Humans have died before.” I told her pointedly. “Why is this
time any-”
“Yes, but under controlled circumstances!” She interrupted, and then
laughed bitterly when I gave her a confused look. “The Black Plague, Yellow
Fever, leprosy, why do you think when they contracted those diseases they
spread them so quickly? We’ve always kept the human population down to a
measurable number and when it becomes necessary we let a few thousand or
so die of sickness or starvation, but your inventions have put the whole world
out of balance!”
I’d heard this whole spiel before, so I tried to drown most of it out as she
raved.
“Vaccines are making humans live longer. No one has any respect for death
anymore! The cycles were broken and now, everything is in turmoil because
of you.” Iliana paused to take a breath, composing herself before speaking
again. “It’s just as well you’re going to be removed from the spirit plane.” She
said. “If I let you live as anything less than a demon they wouldn’t let me lead
anymore.”
That last bit caught my attention. “What?” I got up. “What are you going to
do to me?”
She waved a dismissive hand. “It’s not what I’m going to do to you, Muse,
it’s what is already being done to you.”
“THEN WHAT IS BEING DONE TO ME?!” I screamed, rage washing
over me once again, taking hold of my body as I stomped across the room and
grabbed the front of the cosmic girl’s dress. “TELL ME!”
Iliana, instead of answering, calmly drew back her hand and slapped me
across the face. She was strong for her form and the slap threw me across the
room. I slammed into the wall and actually through some of it, not much, but
just enough to send the rest of the wall crashing down upon me. I coughed and
barely had enough strength to lift my arms against the barrage of drywall and
dust.
“Sorry, but you deserved that.” She told me, crossing the gap between us in
four quick steps and kneeling down to my eye-level. She brushed a pile of dust
off my head gently. “You were acting like a child throwing a tantrum.”
I coughed again. “Can you blame me?” My voice was just a wheezing
cough but I seemed to be able to make my point clear enough because Iliana
sighed in response.
“Yes, but I gather that's not the answer you were fishing for.” She stood.
“Get up.” She ordered. “We don't have much more time here. I just wanted to
make sure I got my point across before you leave.”
“There was a point to that?” I asked sarcastically, heaving myself to my
feet. The lack of wall couldn't support me, so I moved slowly across the room
and sat back down on the bed.
“Of course.” She answered matter-of-factly. “The point is that we both
screwed up- you so more than me, but that's neither here nor there -and that
you can't cheat your way to happiness. The point is that the humans ended up
as they were fit to, destroyed by their own intelligence and now whatever is
left is just a means to an end. The point, my dear Muse, is that we are at the
end of your story. At least, as far as I'm concerned.”
“Stop speaking in riddles,” I snarled, wanting to grab her and throw her
across the room but in my current condition it was nearly impossible. Even if I
was in a dream, it still hurt. “What do you mean, end of my story?”
But Iliana didn't answer. Instead, she just stood there, regarding me
thoughtfully with her arms folded across her chest, eyes totally immobile but I
could see the cogs turning inside her mind. She was weighing her options.
Finally, after what felt like an eternity, she unfolded her arms and said, “I
suppose there's no harm in letting you know. You might die, after all. If I had
access to the timelines,” she added, pointedly looking at me. “I might be able
to tell you for certain but as someone is currently living in the Time Tower
with the monster that tried to kill her, I cannot. Still, I've been around long
enough to expect the worst and hope for it too.”
That was it. I stood, facing her head-on. “If you don't explain what you are
talking about right now I am going to turn around and run and I won't stop
running until I wake up.” I threatened, knowing that if there was one thing
spirits had in common, it was that we hate being ignored.
Iliana rolled her eyes. “Empty threats pet, but I'll tell you anyway.
Basically, you're seconds away from being renounced as a spirit. Oh don't
worry, it's nothing you did.” She added, revealing sharp little teeth in a hideous
smile. “Circumstances just happened to fall into the right places and you got
the blunt end of the deal. Tough luck.”
“WHAT DEAL?!” I was screaming again. “TELL ME, NOW!”
Iliana laughed openly at my distress. And it was a horrible sound. Bitter,
cold and totally malicious. I may have created psychological manipulation, but
she was a master at it. “Well aren't you a little ball of fire. Goodness, what
Aries could have done with you if you were a little quieter. Alright alright,”
she added, raising her hands as I took a towering step forward. “I'll explain.”
I waited, my breath hitched in my throat.
“Essentially, you are slowly being consumed by the lack of energy you are
getting from your creed.” She began, assuming the typical lecturer's tone. That
superiority complex was really starting to piss me off. “Like when skinny
humans don't eat, and their bodies start eating the left-over fat and muscle. It's
like that. Disgusting, but that's what you get for being neglectful.” And then
she fell silent, watching my face carefully, readying herself for what I'm sure
she expected to be an explosive reaction.
And boy was she right.
“I'm DYING?!” I repeated incredulously, glaring at her in disbelief. “Why-
how?! What-”
“Oh, don't tell me you didn't see this coming,” Illiana interrupted, raising
her hand. She sounded...disappointed. “You've taken very poor care of
yourself, Muse. So this really shouldn't have come as a surprise. And so, as a
result, you are supposed to be fading away into the nothingness.”
My gaze snapped up to meet hers. “Supposed to be? Why am I supposed to
be? Why aren't I just fading?” I demanded. “Tell me!”
She rolled her eyes as if my question was an unpleasant pill she had to
swallow and I suddenly realized, through my anger that whatever was
happening to me was not of her orchestration.
“It seems that the witch has become fond of you,” Iliana told me, scoffing.
“Though I can’t imagine why. She's using dark magic to do it of course, and
there are any number of problems which can arise once the procedure is
completed. But at least you'll still be alive. Probably. With any luck the
procedure will kill you and I'll get three birds with one stone.”
“Hecate...” I breathed...trying to come to grips with all of this knowledge.
“Is trying to save me?”
Again the cosmic child rolled her eyes. “Yes, stupid. I don't understand why
though.”
“I don't believe you.”
“Do I look like I care?” She retorted. Then she saw I wasn't going to
respond until it was proven to me and clenched her fist. “Fine. Here's your
proof. Stupid stubborn girl.”
I barely had a chance to blink before the fire erupted behind my eyes. I
dropped like a stone to the ground, clawing at my eyes. I screamed and she
just...stood there. Watching me.
The fire turned to images like charcoal to ashes, blackness painting a picture,
flashing as briefly as a set of fingers snapping behind my eyelids: Hecate, the
girl, myself reflected in a pool of blood, screaming. And then they were gone
like ghosts, flitting back onto my eyes and rolling back into my head, lost
forever.
I shook my head, willing the visions to disappear. I was still cowering on
the ground, holding myself against the pain. “No! This is a trick! It’s a trick!” I
sobbed, tucking my body in on itself, just to hide.
“It’s no trick pet.” Iliana said softly. She had silently crossed the room and
was kneeling beside me, which I learned when I felt a child's hand resting
against my shoulder. “Hecate is choosing to save your life by condemning
your soul, and as of this moment you are no longer one of my spirits. I will not
be able to speak with you ever again.”
“Not like you ever did,” I scowled, turning away and shrugging her hand
off. Just looking at her made me sick.
“What was that Muse?”
I rolled over onto my back, staring coldly up at her. Something hot and wet
was soaking into my side and I suddenly realized it was blood, steadily
dripping from my fists as fingernails dug into my palms. “If it’s true... and it’s
my fault that I couldn’t hear you...” I said slowly, staring her dead in the eyes
as my anger slowly started to build to a growl in my throat. “Then why didn’t
you try to fix it?! There are ways, don’t tell me there aren’t! I can see them!”
It was true. They were there, in her head. Thousands of ideas on how to go
about saving me. My inspiration, her road less taken. “So why?”
Iliana rolled her shoulders, clearly uncomfortable. “Why does it matter?”
She asked coolly. “You’re going to be gone from here in a few minutes and
you won’t remember any of this anyway.”
 Blood splashed across her front as I reached up and grabbed the front of her
dress yet again, bringing her face down until our noses were inches apart. “It
matters to me!” I growled. “Now tell me.”
She sighed, not even bothering to brush my hand away. “Very well. I didn’t
want to tell you because…” here she lowered her gaze to meet mine. “I was
afraid.”
I was so shocked I let go of the front of her dress, letting my bleeding hand
drop back to my side with a dull thunk. Iliana straightened up until she was
looming over me again, but it wasn't nearly as threatening in wake of her
admission. “You...” I whispered. My eyes were so wide that they were
beginning to water and I blinked. “You were...afraid?”
Iliana sighed, turning away. “Forget it. I should never have said anything.
Why aren't you waking up yet?”
I ignored her, summoning some strength to push myself up and stay
propped up on my elbows. “How can you be afraid?” I asked incredulously,
looking her up and down. Suddenly, she didn't seem so terrifying anymore.
“You're...” I wasn't sure what to call her. I knew who she was, obviously- I'd
be an idiot not to, but still...looks were very, very conniving things.
“Yes yes, laugh it up.” She scowled, turning back to face me. Her entire
aura was dark, angry. But shameful as well. “Even I've got a spark of
humanity left. Unlike you.”
I raised an eyebrow. “Who's being a child now?” I teased, knowing it
would annoy her.
“Oh shut up.” The un-child snarled, aiming a kick at my ribs. It caught me
and I doubled over, clutching the now broken bones. “Quit whining.” She told
me coldly. “And I wasn't afraid. That was a poor choice of words. I was...
apprehensive. I knew that if I fixed it and revealed myself to you... you would
get angry and turn your back on me. And you wouldn't believe me if I tried to
convince you otherwise.”
I snorted, though it hurt my ribs. “You were afraid of losing a pawn.” I
corrected. “Don't lie to me anymore. At least have that much respect for me.”
She tried to kick me again but I rolled out of the way. “You weren't
supposed to be a pawn!” She retorted angrily. “You were supposed to be your
own functioning player in this game dammit! But you can't be! You were
never meant to be, and now you're dying! I hope you're happy.”
Now she was starting to babble. Her anger was taking hold and the familiar
composure was totally gone.
I actually took a few seconds to think about it. Death, potential immortality
through dark magic, and an eradication of my connection to this bitch.
Sounded like a sweet deal to me. “Yes,” I told her, smiling and leaning back.
The effort of sitting up was taking too strong a toll on my arms. I folded my
arms behind my head and smiled. “Yes, I think I am happy.”
Iliana sounded as satisfied as I was. “Good. Then I guess we're both
satisfied with how things turned out. You can feel free to wake up now.”
 My eyes had drifted shut somewhere between our exchanges and I opened
them again. “Before I wake up,” I said slowly, keeping my eyes fixed on her
darkened face, searching for any indication of change in response to my
words. “Can you show me your real form?”
The cosmic child frowned, looking puzzled. “What?”
“I know this is a glamour,” I told her. “Though I don't know why you
would choose to look like a little girl. Or why you would give me the form of
a little girl. But anyway, I want to see what you really look like, at least once
before I can no longer see you.”
She sighed. “You're going to forget.”
“I know.”
“It's stupid.”
“I'm well aware.”
She sighed again. “Oh very well.” She relented, raising her arms up to the
heavens. “I don't know why I even bother to...” Here she trailed off into
municipal grumbling as her form began to ripple.
I watched carefully as the young child's form grew and stretched. To be
honest I didn't know what I expected to see. When I asked her to show me her
true form I had no idea what that form would be. What did an ancient
primordial Supreme Being look like? Stars? Clouds? Abstract energy?
No. Actually, she looked a lot like she did before she changed. Only,
instead of a little girl, she was an adult woman with black skin- not brown, not
dark brown, black. Inky black with gentle pinpricks of sunlight speckling up
her arms, exposed and completely flat chest and face. Her hair was a beautiful
shade of temperate blue akin to night sky, but with streaks of emerald green
and blooded crimson. I had to applaud her sense of color. Especially her dress.
The upper front was barely more than a few inches covering her shoulders and
not much else; a low, descending V running down her front and stopping near
her waist. From there, it descended into a plain skirt which reached the
ground, allowing no view of her feet. The fabric was the same shade of
crimson as the streaks in her hair, but had no pattern. It was just a plain,
elegant red dress.
I nodded, impressed. “Nice. So...this is what you look like?”
The form rolled her blood-colored covered shoulders in a shrug but didn't
speak. Her eyes expressed everything the child's form had lacked: Sadness,
fear, anguish and pain. But her mouth remained motionless.
“You...can't speak in this form, can you?”
She nodded, smiling. It appeared she could in fact move her mouth, but she
couldn't speak. I rather liked this form. At least I wouldn't have to deal with
any of that smartassery of the kid.
“Thank you.” I told her, pushing myself back to my feet and crossing the
room to stand before her. “It gives me peace of mind to know that, at least
once, I've seen you.”
She nodded, still smiling sadly.
 It was a goodbye. And then I woke up.
I woke up to Hecate frantically shaking me, staring into my eyes and
shouting something unintelligible to me because my ears weren't quite
working yet. To be honest, nothing was quite working aside from the tiny part
in my brain that registered messaged coming in from my eyes which were
cracked open and staring blankly up at her, unable to move from my position.
It was...kind of like being detached from my body and feeling what I was
feeling, seeing what I was seeing, from a distance. Standing beside myself,
watching Hecate try to wake me up.
Hecate had tears in her eyes and they dripped onto my face, rolling down my
cheeks like they were my own. I could hear her now.
“Muse, oh dammit Muse wake up!” She begged, using both hands which
were on my shoulders to violently shake my limp body. I was lying on the bed
she had given me and she was kneeling on top of my chest, begging- no,
pleading for me to answer her.
“You can see me, I know you can!” She was yelling through her tears, still
shaking me. “Your eyes are open! Wake up! WAKE UUUUP!”
“Hecate...”
The goddess of dark magic turned around to face me just as I realized the
word had left my mouth. My eyes widened, just the same time as the eyes of
the me lying on the bed widened. Before I knew what was happening, Hecate
had leaped off of the other me and was throwing her arms around the me me,
sobbing wildly.
“You're here! You're back!” She totally lost control of her emotions,
clinging to me like a lost pet that had finally wandered home. “I did it I
actually did it!”
I wanted to ask her what she did, and why I was lying in my bed and/or
standing there in the same time-space frame, but my mouth was obscured by
her shoulder which she pressed against me warmly, still sobbing and babbling
happily.
“I didn't ever expect to see you again Muse I'm so sorry for how I've treated
you! I promise I will never mistreat you again! Never! Never ever as long as I
live!”
I nodded dumbly, watching over her shoulder as the me lying on the bed
began to fade away. Hecate didn't notice, as she was facing away from the bed.
The former goddess pulled away, looking me up and down. “Well, I see
you're no worse for wear. I like the new clothes and hair. Makes you
look...darker. More like me!” Hecate seemed very pleased about this fact.
I frowned. “New clothes?”
...really? The first words I can speak and they are new clothes? Really?
Hecate nodded, conjuring a mirror. “Here, see for yourself!” She handed
me the mirror and as I looked into it, I saw my own face pale back to my
original skin pallor.
Because the face staring back at me had not been my original pallor. It had
been much darker. Not quite black, but the requiescent color between black
and dark brown. A brighter shade of black. My eyes were the same color they
had always been, my features also the same. My hair, on the other hand, was
black. No deviance. Just...black.
“There, you see? You look beautiful.” Hecate said proudly, patting me on
the shoulder. “And those clothes are amazing!”
I glanced down at myself. Gone were the tattered t-shirt and bloodied jeans.
In their place, covering my body like living cloth, was a black dress. A coal-
black, shimmerless dress. Devoid of light and life. I wasn't the Muse any
more. I was...something else.
“What... did you do...to me?” I asked, looking from the stranger in the
mirror and then at Hecate. My voice was wavering, tremulous. Afraid. And I
didn't know why, aside from the uncertainty of having a new shade and
clothes.
Hecate flinched slightly. “Yes...I was afraid you would ask that. You had
better sit down sweety.” She took me by the hand and led me to the bed,
frowning when she saw that the other me which she had been crying over was
totally gone and muttered something to herself which sounded like “Quantum
para-transubstantiation.” She didn't seem too upset though. In fact, she seemed
more interested in the new me.
We both sat in the spot where I had resided seconds before and Hecate
stared at me in silence for several long moments before speaking.
“I...want you to know something before I explain to you what's going on.”
She began seriously. “And this is very important so please pay attention.”
I nodded, but I wasn't looking at her. I was looking over her shoulder at the
night sky revealed through an open window. The moon was full.
Hecate took a deep, shuddering breath. “I did this with your best interests at
heart. OK? I truly, truly did. You were so close to fading that I didn't realize it
until now but if I had I would've done something about this much sooner. You
know that, right?” She asked hopefully, smiling a little through her tears which
were slowly drying into crusts on her cheeks.
I nodded again.
“Good.” She smiled. “Good. That's...good. Well...now that that's out of the
way...” She paused again, looking at her laced fingertips thoughtfully. “I'm not
really sure how to tell you what's happened Muse. Or...even if that's who you
are any more. I hope so.”
I hoped so too. Faces can change and sometimes those faces do make a
person.
“How much do you remember about what happened before you fell
unconscious?”
I shrugged. “I remember digging the grave. And then falling unconscious.
But that's it.”
“And while you were asleep?”
I shrugged again. “I can't dream.” I admitted.
 She looked surprised. “Really? You can't dream?”
I shook my head.
“At all?”
“Nada.”
“Huh. Interesting. Well, we'll get to that later.” Hecate smiled again,
reaching out to hold my hand. “Now, how are you feeling?”
Once again, I could only reply in listlessness. “Neither good nor bad.” I
told her. “In fact...I can barely feel anything at all.”
“Oh, that's totally normal,” she assured me, waving a dismissive hand.
“The numbness will go away in an hour or two, once your body assimilates
fully into your new form. I'm not worried about that. All that matters to me
right now is that you're safe and alive.”
I frowned. Why was she acting so kind towards me now? It was as if I had
left and came back to a totally different person. “Why wouldn't I be?”
Guilt flashed in Hecate's eyes and she blinked it back silently.
My eyes narrowed. “Hecate-”
“You were dying.” Hecate blurted out before she could stop herself. “You
were dying and I had to do something! I'm so sorry I knew you would be
angry with me when you woke up but I don't care! I don't care what you are,
so long as you're alive and here, with me!” She was crying again, but these
were tears of determined joy.
“Hecate, what have you done?!” I demanded, the desire to know blotting
out all other knowledge.
Hecate hung her head, shamefully. “When you fell unconscious... I was
terrified for you.” She admitted, hesitance slowing her words to a crawl. “You
didn't wake up when I called your name and nothing I did worked to revive
you. No potions, no magics. It was like whatever you had was actively
resisting my magic. So, instead of trying to revive you, I started seeking out
solutions. I wove numerous time-spells over you to keep your body from
decaying and to stop time so that I could figure out what was wrong with you
but they didn't take.”
I was starting to hyperventilate. It might’ve just been my proximity to
Hecate but I chills were rising up my spine and I felt terror like I have never
felt before. “What...have...you-”
“Bear with me,” Hecate told me gently, smoothing my hair back from my
forehead just like I've seen caring mothers do a thousand times before. “OK? I
promise I will explain but you need to listen to me very carefully.”
I nodded carefully, taking a few deep breaths to quell the terror. Let her
have her chance to explain first, I told myself. “OK.” I agreed. “Just...tell me.”
She took another deep breath. “Well...when the magic didn't work, I tried
other things. Alchemical substances. I poured them down your throat but it
still didn't do anything to stop you from dissolving. Weeks passed and you
were fading a little each day. I couldn't just let you waste away into the void
so...I did the only thing I could do. I took the forbidden knowledge and...I
changed you. From a normal spirit to something that would allow you to
remain alive and well.” Her eyes poured into mine, so sorry. The words were
there but she couldn't say them. “I turned you into me. A fear spirit.”
I pulled my hand away from hers as if she had struck me. “What...have...
you... done?!” My voice was nothing less than a terrified whisper.
“Don't look at me like that Muse,” Hecate begged, snatching back my hand.
“Please don't! I only did what I thought was best for you!”
“Best for me?!” I repeated. “How could this,” I shook my darkened hand at
her. “Be best for me?”
“It’s best because you’re alive,” she insisted. “And this is partially your
fault too! I'm not the only one to blame you know!”
My jaw dropped open. “How? How is this my fault?!”
She quivered with rage. “If you hadn’t- If you-” Hecate looked very ready
to rip me a new one for whatever I had done to deserve this, but she managed
to stop herself before anything else was said. The black goddess sighed,
kneading her forehead with her knuckles. “That’s not fair to me, Muse, and
you know it.” She told me tiredly, looking at me from underneath half-lidded
eyes as if I was the insane one. “We both know you were doomed the second I
bound you up in chains. I tortured you to the brink of death, then left you to
rot and die of starvation. You live- lived... off of inspiration,” she corrected
herself. “Just like I live off of fear. And I never once, ever once, thought to ask
you if you were fine, or inquire about your well-being?”
I let go of her arm as if she had struck me, flinching and I took a few steps
back. I advanced menacingly, anger filling my every pore.
“No,” she snarled, answering her own question. I flinched as she word split
the air. Her gaze had turned steely and she was slowly backing me a corner s
she spoke. Her eyes were blazing so hot I could practically see bright violet
flames licking in her hollowed sockets. “I didn’t! And because I've been
tempting you with all the inspiration you've given me, your powers think
you're back to your old self again but you're not! You're weak and helpless and
unable to gain even the smallest amount of energy! Don't try to tell me
differently I know how this works Muse. You can’t just draw power from one
source after having the entire world, both human and spiritual, at your feet!”
“There's...got to be a way...” I whispered, sounding for all the world like a
beaten partner. “I can change. We can get my own spirits. Stronger ones. I can
stage mock escapes and feed off the inspiration I give them! If you let me, I
can even go out and find spirits on my own. Then I can bring them back here
and-”
“Weren't you listening you silly little girl?” Hecate interrupted coldly,
shoving my shoulder. “It would have killed you Muse! I needed to change your
creed before you totally lost control of your powers and ended up just like
Black Annis!”
I flinched when she dropped the name but she didn’t care.
“I made a split-second decision to save your life,” she continued
passionately. “And I don't regret it at all!
My heart was racing, my mind rent with horror as the full comprehension
of what Hecate had done fell upon me. I felt dizzy and even though it probably
wasn't the best idea I tried to stand. I needed to get away, away from her. Away
from this place. Just...away. What has she done to me?!
“NO!” She grabbed my arm. “No, you can't leave! I've gone through too
much to let you go!”
I rounded on her. “You?!” I asked incredulously. “YOU?! You're not the
one who has just lost everything you ever were because of some stupid witch's
choice! You're not the one who-”
“I have lost everything!” Hecate roared back, gripping my arm like a vise,
shocking me into silence. “I've lost my creed, my people, my friends, my
family, I've even lost my soul and I will been damned if I was going to lose
you too!”
She snarled the last word, holding my gaze for several long seconds and as
I gazed, terrified, into her eyes I saw that behind the anger she really did seem
to care about me. Tears were welling in her eyes again and just as suddenly the
anger melted away and the witch queen collapsed into my arms, weeping
uncontrollably.
“I'm so sorry,” she wailed, clutching me like a lifeline to sanity itself. “Oh
gods Muse I'm so very very sorry! I was selfish and cold and a monster but I
couldn't let you go! Everything I've ever had has been taken from me and I-
I...” Hecate sniffed once before dissolving back into helpless sobs.
Unsure of what to do, I patted Hecate gently on the back and told her dully
that it was alright. That I didn't blame her. Sweet nothings which eventually
were enough to coax Hecate back to sitting beside me. She still wouldn't let go
of me and, oddly enough, I felt comforted by that fact. That she cared for me
enough to go to any lengths to keep me safe and bring me back from the brink
of death.
The truth was that I had suspected my own death looming on the horizon
for a while now. My strength had been waning since before Liam's death and
now that the only person I was imparting inspiration on was actually using it, I
was beginning to feel it more strongly. Like prodding a wound. You know it's
there but unless you don't unwrap it or poke it you can almost pretend it's all
healed. I just hadn't said anything to Hecate because...well...I figured I owed it
to myself to just slip quietly away and forgo all of this drama and mayhem.
Well, that's out the window. I thought, smiling as Hecate finally lifted her
head up from my shoulder. I wiped the tears away from her sunken cheeks
tenderly.
“Are you alright?”
She nodded slowly, sniffing and all at once she seemed so much younger
than the broken goddess I had once known.
“I think so. I'm more worried about how you're feeling.”
 I shrugged. “Well...the news that I'm a fear spirit isn't hitting me as hard as I
thought it would. Actually it's...kind of reassuring.”
She frowned. “Reassuring? How so?”
I raised my shoulders in another, unsure shrug. “I guess because now I
know I don't have a duty anymore.” I replied, a smile creasing my lips just a
tad because I knew it was true. I didn't have a tie to this world any longer. I
was...free.
Hecate smiled. “How does it feel to not owe yourself to anything but you?”
She asked, putting an arm around my shoulders. I let my head rest upon her
shoulder gently, gazing out into the empty space as that single, wonderful fact
circled continuously around in my head.
I was free...
I was free.
I was free!
“Good.” I told her quietly. “It feels...good.”

Liked This Book?

For More FREE e-Books visit Freeditorial.com