Private Tales Where Even the Stones Scream

[Alarak]

"Killing?"

The Anirian man frowned and pulled back.

"I don't understand."

Idle fingers found his harp and toyed with a string there, plucking the note over and over softly, creating a discordant noise.

"Does killing make you evil? I suppose I am too then. I think everyone on this island might be."

Who on Cerak At' Thul had not killed before?

"Didn't you just kill three people?"

Keres

 

[Keres]

“Yes.” she snapped, the sound sharper than she had intended and her brow knit tightly.

“Thank you for reminding me,” she added bitterly, as if he’d scraped a fresh wound open.

“I didn’t want to kill them…” she muttered, as though saying it aloud might wash some of the blood from her hands. Surely that had to matter. Intent had to matter. Didn’t it?

Her gaze flicked away, jaw working. “I don’t make a habit of murdering people,” she said, quieter but no less tense. “Not before this place. Not before him... I don’t want to become like them.”

 

[Alarak]

“Like them… you mean monsters?”

The door suddenly thudded with the sound of a fist hammering into it over and over.

“No…” whispered Threnody, eyes wide. He got up off the bed and backed into a corner of the room, holding the harp tightly to his chest.

Outside the door could be heard muffled voices, “Agravayne why are you bothering with her, she’s just some slave. Ravenna put you up to this didn’t she?”

The voice was reedy and thin.

“Shut up,” came the reply in a bright tenor.

“You’re drunk.”

The door burst inward, nearly torn from its hinges as a huge dark elf entered the room. He was shirtless and the dark ash skin of his well muscled-chest gleamed where he’d spilled wine from the flagon in his hand. He wore a short sword at his waist and loose pants. His lavender gaze swept the room, passing over Threnody before falling on Keres.

“There’s the bitch,” chuckled the tall warrior called Agravayne.

Behind him came a thin, shorter elf with a scar beneath one eye and an awful haircut. He at least was fully clothed in blacks, with gloves as well. He tugged at one glove now, glancing Keres up and down.

“Well at least she’s pretty,” he sighed, and it became apparent that he was the owner of the thin, reedy voice, “I guess we should bring up Xun and-“

“Already here, Raith.”

Behind them came a man in scale armor, the one she’d seen at the execution in the morning. His face bore scales as well and his eyes were a horrible, acidic yellow with slitted pupils.

The three of them made Keres’ room claustrophobic.

“Guess we should get started,” Raith turned to Keres, “Sorry, but Ravenna says you have to go. Don’t make this worse than it needs to be.”

The spymaster of the Fortress smiled thinly.

Keres

 

[Keres]

Keres flinched at the first heavy slam against the door, her breath catching. She was on her feet before she even realised she’d moved, backing away, palms seeking something solid until her shoulder blades collided with the cold stone wall. The draft from the narrow window played through strands of her hair, but did nothing to cool her rising panic.

The door exploded inward. Agravayne’s massive form filled the frame, and Keres startled visibly, her spine pressing harder into the wall as though she might push straight through it. Her gaze flicked from one to the other as they stepped into her room. The way they made the space shrink around her made her chest tighten.

Ravenna says you have to go.

Her stomach dropped. Her fingers twitched at her sides, curling, uncurling, useless.

“I—” She swallowed hard. Her lips felt numb. “I don’t belong to Ravenna…”

Her voice was quieter than she wanted, but steady enough to hide the tremor in it. Her fingers curled into fists, nails biting into her palms. and she lifted her chin just slightly, because shrinking wouldn’t keep her alive.

“Don’t you think you should discuss it with him first,” she arched a dark brow, “before you lay a hand on his property?”

She hated the word property, she hated saying it, hated how easily it came, hated that she was right. But it was all she had. The only shield that might mean anything here. He had bought her, had spent his time and coin on her, needed her for something. Surely he wouldn't allow this?

Her dark eyes moved across the three of them, weighing, searching for any flicker of hesitation amongst the intent. Her pulse thuded against her ribs like a trapped bird. She could feel her magic like a coiled thing in her ribs, but she knew with icy clarity that even if she reached for a soul, even if she found the strength to rip one free, shed never make it through the other two. These three were not immobilised by stockades.

There would be no fighting her way out of this.

 

[Alarak]

“Hah!” Agravayne’s barking laughter drowned out the unsettled expression Raith bore at her words.

The best swordsman in Cerak At’thul stepped up until he stood chest to chest with her. She didn’t even reach his chin.

“Sure, let’s ask him…” Agravayne looked around as if searching, then leaned closer, breath reeking of alcohol. “Oh. He’s not here.”

Raith appeared behind the shirtless warrior, he’d pulled free a small knife from his belt and was using it to clean his nails. “He hasn’t said anything to us about you, slave. As far as we’re concerned, you’re disposable.”


The swordsman grunted, then lifted his flagon and up ended it over her. Red wine gushed out and onto her head.

Keres

 

[Keres]

She couldn’t argue. He wasn’t here. And yet she wanted nothing more than for him to stride through that doorway right now.

But she was alone, always, and perhaps she was a fool for thinking he'd actually 'care'.

Her breath quickened as the brute stepped into her space, the shadow of him swallowing her whole. She made a small, involuntary sound as the wine flowed over her, cold and sticky, trailing down her face, her throat, her chest. The scent of sweet, rotting fruit filled her nose.

Was this really her life? An endless cycle of rejection, humiliation, and the slow decay of whatever self worth she had left?

Why was she still running? Fighting?
Because she was infuriatingly and stupidly stubborn, and it would take more than wine to break her. She licked the bitter droplets from her lips and raised her dark gaze to meet his. Then she moved.

Her knee shot upward toward his crotch, fast and vicious and with every ounce of strength she had left, all instinct and desperation. Any attempt to distract him for the brief moment she took to go for the blade at his hip.

 

[Alarak]

The greatest swordsman in Cerak At'Thul stood before her.

The greatest.

And also, perhaps, the most intoxicated.

Agravayne's wine sopped mind processed the incoming knee a heartbeat too slowly. It crunched into his balls and he let out an astonished grunt before doubling over in pain, making a half-laugh, half-retching noise.

She wrenched the short sword free from the sheath. Agravayne stumbled back and tottered like the half-drunk warrior he was, wondering if he'd father any more bastards like Elidraena or if Keres had suddenly fixed that for him.

"Oh deepest black fathoms fucking shadow," Raith but a hand up to pinch the bridge of his nose. "Fuck. Now you've done it, slave."

He didn't seem afraid of the sword she now held. Not in the slightest.

Xun loomed to one side, his eyes seeming to glow yellow in the dim light of the room, focused on her.

"The wolf when caught will chew through its own paw to escape," Xun said softly.

"We'll see if she can," Raith replied.

"Fuck you, bitch," Agravayne roared.

"Right," Raith said, lifted a hand, and summoned a swarm of spiders from the cracks of the castle's walls. They came forth like a black tide, like shadows come to life. Hundreds of crawling black spiders. Thousands.

They scuttled across the floor with their many legs, then sought to engulf Keres in an encasing blanket of spiders.

Keres

 

[Keres]

The sound Agravayne made as he folded in on himself was deeply, viciously satisfying.

Keres kept the sword up despite the tremor in her arm, the point wavering as she tracked each of them with it, her grip tightening until her knuckles ached.

The voices surged the moment fear slipped its hooks into her. Dead tongues clamoured and shrieked inside her skull, overlapping, pleading, screaming an endless chorus of suffering that made it hard to think. A gift, they called it. She’d learned better. It was a curse. A useless, miserable thing.

Then the spiders came. Her eyes flicked downward as the first wave poured from the cracks in the stone. Too many.

“Spiders,” she breathed out in disbelief. “Really?” She didn’t scream, she wasn't the kind of girl to get squeamish about critters, but when they hit her feet, her ankles, began climbing, skittering over her bare skin, her jaw clenched hard. She stamped at the floor and batted at them, trying to dislodge them as they crawled higher. It was horrible, not fear, not revulsion, but the sheer wrongness of being covered, smothered by movement.

“Get off,” she snarled, kicking again, breaths quickening.

She lashed out blindly with the sword, steel flashing in a wide, desperate arc toward the nearest shape, any of them. The blade met resistance with a wet sound, and she didn’t stop to see who it was. She slashed again, teeth bared, back hitting the stone as spiders continued to swarm.

Her breath came fast and ragged. If she was going to die, she wasn’t doing it quietly. Without hesitation, she dragged the blade across her own palm, blood welling quickly. The pain flared brightly, cutting through the noise, through the panic, and she began to murmur quickly to herself amidst the frantic slapping at spiders.

 

[Alarak]

The blade she stole whistled through the air with her blind slash. Agravayne had honed its edge to a razor fineness, so it all too easily peeled apart the belly of its victim like the skin bursting on an overripe peach.

"Oh shit," Raith chuckled, "Didn't even see the thrall there."

Threnody stood, harp in one hand, the other clutched to his belly. He stared wide-eyed at Keres. Blood pumped between his fingertips and the yellow of fat and intestinal white could be glimpsed through the sheets of scarlet flowing between his hand. He tried to keep them inside. The blood poured down his front, soaking his tunic.

"Keres," he croaked, collapsing to his knees.

Raith laughed, high and snide, but the laughter died as he felt the blood magic coalescing around Keres. "She's a blood mage. Wait. Agravayne!"

The spiders sought to scuttle inside her mouth as she spoke, to clog her tongue up with their bodies so she couldn't finish her spell.

At the same time, the dark elf swordsman, still recovering and still tottering drunk, lashed out with a kick aimed for Keres' stomach to launch her back into the wall behind her.

Keres

 

[Keres]

Threnody.

"No!”

The wore tore out of her as spiders flooded her mouth, skittering over her lips, her tongue, her teeth. She gagged violently, hands flying up to claw them away, smearing blood and silk and black bodies across her face as tears burned hot in her eyes.

“I’m s-"” The word died, choked off as she spat, retched, screamed in raw frustration, shaking her head hard enough to make her vision blur.

She never saw the kick. The impact hit her like a battering ram. Air exploded from her lungs in a soundless gasp as the boot drove into her stomach and hurled her backward. She struck the wall hard enough that white flared behind her eyes, her flayed back screaming as stone bit into torn flesh. Pain burst through her spine, through ribs already aching, and she slid down the wall in a boneless sprawl.

She couldn’t breathe.

Her chest hitched uselessly, mouth opening and closing as she fought for air that would not come. The voices surged, shrill and ravenous, drowning out everything but panic and guilt and the coppery taste of blood.

Threnody.

Her shaking hand found the floor beside her. Blood dripped from her palm in thick, dark drops, pooling against the cold stone. With fingers that barely obeyed her, she dragged them through it, carving a crude, trembling rune into the floor, sloppy and imperfect, but she hoped it would do.

Her vision swam.

One word clawed its way past her throat, barely more than a rasp, a barely audible summoning whispered on ruined breath. Her dark eyes lifted to Threnody as he knelt bleeding, broken, trying to hold himself together.

Guilt crushed her chest harder than the kick ever had. “I’m sorry,” she breathed.

Somewhere in the keep, came the strangled bray of a minotaur, and her dark eyes rose to the men looking down at her.

 

[Alarak]

"What the hell was that?" snarled Agravayne, wiping ale from his chin as he eyed the kneeling girl.

"Shh," Raith held up a finger, having gone very still and tense as he worked his own magics to sense... to sense... His eyes flared wide. "How?"

"What?" barked Agravayne.

In the corner, the cut open thrall gurgled wetly, sobbing as he held his insides together with both hands.

"She's strong. Powerful. Maybe as powerful as Ravenna."

The scaled man at the back crossed his arms and cocked his head as his reptilian eyes examined her. "A totem falls. The balance shifts."

"Would you cut that shit out," Agravayne snapped, "Are we killing her or what?"

The spymaster Raith held up a finger, then commanded a pair of the spiders swarming her to bite, their fangs sought to inject her with a paralytic. Not as fast acting as he would wish.

"Xun, get her up."

The scaled men moved to try to grab her by the arms and lift her up with inhuman strength.

Keres

 

[Keres]

Keres stared up at Raith as understanding dawned on his face, her vision swimming as the room seemed to tilt. Totems. Balance. The words slid past her without meaning, slipping through a mind already splintering under pain and panic.

'Are we killing her..'

Her heart lurched violently in her chest.

Find me, please.. Quickly.

Powerful, they said. The thought was almost laughable. She didn’t feel particularly powerful. She felt broken, slick with blood and spilled wine, spiders crawling over her skin, her bruised ribs screaming every time she breathed. Her arm curled protectively around her side, fingers digging in as if she could hold herself together by force alone. Her hands shook. She couldn’t stop them.

Then the bites came. A sharp, stinging pressure followed by a spreading wrongness that made her breath hitch. She slapped at the spiders frantically, fingers clumsy, skin already beginning to feel numb.

“No, no,” she protested hoarsely, the words dragging themselves out of her throat as if through mud.

Someone reached for her, and panic flared. She kicked out wildly, but the strength behind it was already fading. His grip closed around her arms, lifting her from the floor as her feet scraped uselessly against stone.

She tried to scream, but the sound came out thin and strangled, her throat refusing to obey as venom flooded her veins, muscles turning to lead, vision dimming at the edges. Terror clawed through her as she realised, with sickening clarity, that she was either going to die, or worse, and whatever happened, there was nothing else she could do.

Her body sagged in Xun’s grasp, limbs heavy, unresponsive, head lolling. Another bray thundered through the keep, closer now. Much closer. The sound of splintering wood, of something massive forcing its way through corridors not built to hold it. Hope flared weakly in her chest, fragile as a candle in a storm.

“Come find me... come kill them...” she rasped, not sure if the words left her lips or only echoed in her mind.

 

[Alarak]

Xun dragged her out of the room, the other two following behind talking nonsense. The stone stairs were cruel to stumbling feet and knees, but he sacrificed her comfort for speed.

They emerged from the tower onto the battlements. As ever in Cerak, a light storm had set in and a shower of rain fell on them. Xun glanced up into the sky, droplets peppering him.

"Hm."

Agravayne had retrieved his sword and he stormed now onto the wide battlement, glancing between the steep drop to the courtyard on one side and the sheer cliff into the ocean below on the other.

"Which side are we dropping her off?"

The spymaster shook his head. "No. We must recalculate. She is valuable."

A bellow came from below. All three heads turned. A huge shape emerged into the courtyard, horned and hooved.

"What is that," Agravayne snapped.

Keres

 

[Keres]

The last thing she saw as they hauled her from the room was Threnody. The hands that had held her, that had played her music, now slick and red, pressed futilely to his ruined belly. The sound her name had made as it left his lips in a trembling breath of stunned disbelief. That look on his face lodged itself into her chest like a barbed hook. She knew, with a hollow certainty, that it would never leave her. That even if she lived, that moment would haunt her far longer than the pain.

Then the venom took hold.. It was a terror unlike any she had known. Worse than fire. Worse than the pyres, the mobs, the ropes. She was awake, she was aware, every sound too sharp, every sensation too vivid. But she could not move.

Her limbs were dead weight. Her tongue useless in her mouth. Her breath came shallow and fast, trapped behind a body that no longer answered her. Panic screamed through her mind, soundless and endless, as Xun carried her forward and she could do nothing to stop it.

They reached open air, and cold wind and rain washed over her face. She saw the edge of the battlements, could hear the dark, churning ocean far below. This was how it ended, then. Unceremoniously, discarded like refuse. It didn't surprise her, really...

Valuable, one of them said. If she could have laughed, she might have. The word echoed bitterly in her skull. Valuable only when she could be used. Worthless the moment she resisted.

Her mind clawed outward, desperate, and she heard the beast calling from somewhere below.

Please, she begged silently, pouring everything she had left into the thought, into the pull between them. Come to me. I’m here. I’m here.

Below, in the courtyard, the corpse’s vacant gaze snapped upward. Horned head lifting. A roar tore from its ruined lungs, thunderous and enraged. It charged. Stone cracked beneath its hooves as it barrelled for the stairs, and up.. and up..

 

[Alarak]

“Minotaur,” said Xun, pointing helpfully.

Raith rolled his eyes. “Black seas below, Agravayne, kill it.”

The drunk swordsman sniffed, eyeing the charging beast thundering up the stairs, then the much smaller dark elf beside him. The rain pattered on the elf’s muscled frame, cascading in rivulets.

“Why? Can’t you see. It’s already dead.”

Xun exhaled slowly, then breathed in. Once again, he needed to solve the problems of the elves.

Lightning flashed in the dark clouds above.

Agravayne stepped near to Keres, gripping the top of her head by her hair. “Tell it to stop.”

Xun made a hissing sound, taking both hands to weave his fingers together in a movement. “Do not bother.”

A bolt of lightning jetted from the heavens in a blinding flash, striking the Minotaur as it charged. The explosion shook the wall. Sparks flew. The smell of burnt hair grew oppressively thick.

Raith waved a hand away, blinking rapidly to try to restore his half blinded vision.

“Is it down?”

Keres

 

[Keres]

Pain flared through her scalp as Agravayne fisted her hair, wrenching her head back. But no sound came, her body betrayed her utterly, slack and useless in his grip.

Kill them...

The thought was not shouted. It was whispered. Her own voice, cold and vicious inside her skull, stripped of hesitation or mercy.

Kill them... All of them.

She willed the dead thing she had called back, the last scrap of will she had left clawing desperately outward.

Then the sky split.

Lightning crashed down in a blinding white fury, the impact shaking the battlements beneath them. The sound was deafening, a god’s hammer striking stone and corpse alike. Heat blasted across her face. The air filled with the stench of burning hair and charred rot, thick enough to choke on.

For one awful heartbeat, there was nothing. Silence. Her heart seemed to stop with it. The beast was all she had. Her last card to play. If it was gone...

Get up, she begged soundlessly, panic tearing through her. Get up and kill them.

Smoke billowed from where the beast had been, and suddenly, something moved. A massive slab of stone tore free from the stair wall and hurtled through the haze toward Raith with murderous force.

The Minotaur followed, charging through the smoke. Dark blood coated its chest, the old knife wound still gaping across its throat, jaw hanging at a wrong angle as it bellowed, a broken, furious sound ripped from dead lungs. Its shoulder and chest were scorched to the bone where the lightning had struck, flesh melted and blackened, ribs visible beneath smoking ruin.

Still, it ran. Hooves thundered against stone, each step shaking the battlements as it barrelled toward them, eyes white and sightless, driven by her will alone. It did not slow. It did not falter.

It was coming to smash them into the ground.

It was coming to lift her from their hands and carry her to safety.

 

[Alarak]

From the highest tower's balcony, pale gray fingers wrapped around the balustrade and a hooded figure with red eyes, unnoticed in the haze of thickening rain, peered down at the conflict far below on the walkway of the battlement. Watching. Waiting.

Upon the battlement, chaos reigned.

Hurled stone struck Raith and sent him crashing backward, letting out a shriek of pain as something cracked. One hand clutched the merlon as he struggled to keep himself upright, his right arm tucked tightly against his chest.

"Bring it down!" he hissed.

Xun's fingers began to weave another complex web, but Agravayne let out a snort. The rain and the fight seemed to have wrung out the alcohol from him and his eyes were clear and bright. He leveled the sword against the throat of the necromancer, pressing the razor edge close enough that she could nick herself if she swallowed. Fingers in her hair tightened, the grip brutal.

"Release it," growled the huge swordsman, "Release it and I'll let you live."

Ravenna might want the necromancer dead, but Agravayne could not give two fucks what his sister wanted most days - except when she threatened to rip out his entrails. Then he did her bidding begrudgingly. She'd asked too much this time. Sent him in without telling him what was waiting for him. That made him angry.

"Now, human."

Keres

 

[Keres]

She swallowed hard on purpose.

Steel kissed her throat and bit in, just enough. A sharp sting. Warmth followed, a thin bead of blood welling and sliding down into the hollow at her collarbone. Her breath hitched, but she did not look away. Dark eyes locked onto Agravayne’s face, unblinking, feral.

Fuck.. you.

She didn’t say it aloud. She hurled it at him, a jagged thought driven straight from her skull into his, loaded with all the hate and terror and fury clawing inside her chest.

The Minotaur did not slow. Its hooves thundered closer, each impact rattling stone and bone alike. Keres could feel it through the battlements, through the blood humming in her veins, through the bond stretched tight as a wire about to snap.

Her mind scrabbled desperately for purchase, and found pain. It found rage.

The manacles biting into her wrists.
The lash flaying her back open, again and again.
The cold shadows.
The whip shoved between her teeth.

'Punishment for failure.' The Shrike's voice slithered through her memory. 'I think you enjoy the pain. You think you deserve it.'

Her chest heaved. Rain plastered her hair to her face. Agravayne’s grip twisted tighter, brutal, the sword edge trembling against her skin as the Minotaur bellowed and charged ever closer. No. She would not call it off.

Her lips parted in a sharp breath. She stopped fighting the pain. She embraced it. She gathered it, all of it, the venom numbing her limbs, the cut at her throat, the fire that had screamed through her flayed back, the image of Threnody clutching at his belly, the terror of dying here like this...

She pulled it inward, condensed and sharpened it in to a shard, and then she struck back.

She drove it outward in a violent surge, a howling psychic backlash aimed straight at Agravayne’s skull, ripping, shrieking, merciless, every scream she had swallowed, every death she had seen, every voice of the dead that clawed at her waking hours unleashed in one brutal, focused assault.