The Mortal Sister

The hero crumbled to the ground. He was going to die. The monster had him. She struck a blow to his knees. Another to his back. His body obeyed, as if commanded by the monster, to fly, across the grotesque reliquary of her solace. The wind had left him. And with it his fate. He knew the battle had ended.

His friends were still wandering her lair, fear consuming them. Each searched the labyrinthine halls, separate and alone. They had been tricked, duped by the monster’s cunning. How could they have been so careless? Their foe had had ages of solitude to let her madness fester. How were they so naive to think they could best her?

Every would-be hero that had ever trespassed her home was now dead. None had ever returned. Their bodies were strewn about like monuments of her power, shrines to her hatred. The grim garden that was her home was matched only by her aspect. The fallen were memorials to her, warding away the cowardly, and tempting the foolish. She was terrible and cruel.

The hero pulled his legs, one by one, into a natural position. He sat, destitute, and panting against a pillar. His strength had failed him. His valor betrayed him. He checked the small pouch at his side. It still held a single golden coin. There was at least some solace. He put one hand on it, taking comfort in the money. At least after his last breath escaped him, he could pay the ferryman passage into hell.

The hero wished he could warn his friends. He would scream for them to turn back. He would have them return home, return his sword and shield to his mother. At least then maybe she would know he had tried. She might have found comfort in his death, will in his story. But she would never be free.

Anger was fire inside him. Anger was ice inside the monster. It fueled her pain and scraped against her fragile sanity. She craved to feel the crunch of his bones against her again.  She coveted the warmth in his blood. She smiled as she searched for her prey. She had slammed him across her cathedra, off the dais of her throne and into some recess of her temple.

The hero had managed to scramble away as she recoiled, invigorated by the blow. She screeched as he clamored for safety. Why forgo the inevitable? Belief was now no more useful to him than the layer of dust that coated the chamber. He had disturbed it with his arrogance. His pride clashed with the scene like a sword through a mirror.

The monster called for him by name. She taunted him as she slithered around the columns and corpses. She tempted him to betray his friends. To give up the last glimmer of hope he possessed.

He abandoned the dignity of his position and clutched his sword. He pulled his shield over his eyes like a blanket. The hammered bronze was glinting from his fading torchlight. Even the flicker of the tiny flame was dying. But the monster lingered. The vault became silent.

The stygian foe explored her familiar halls. The finely polished marble gave way to terrific volcanic formations and cavernous growths. The natural spikes leered at the questers as if nature had placed them with subterfuge. It felt as if the heavens had planned this moment, as if the earth had crafted them, ages before, for this purpose alone. The cave had no other purpose than to stand as a forgotten tomb.

The monster struck with her eyes closed. She wrenched the head from its supple shoulders and cast it aside imagining the horror forever engraved on his face. Bow and arrow knocked the ground. She refused to release the body. She wrapped her arms around the figure and shattered the bones. Somehow the feel of them snapping underneath the flesh reminded her of a lifetime past. She stood the broken man, like a marionette on its feet, eyed it approvingly and left it standing on its feet.

The second adventurer shivered from fright as he heard the rough sliding of scales across the thin sea of dust. Panic and tension collided inside him. He swung his sword in wide sweeping circles around him. His hand shook as his blade clanged against stone. His arm outstretched in a perfect gruesome posture, the monster attacked.

She rammed into him with her body. Chests pressed together, pinning him against stone. He screamed as his skeleton and bowels ruptured. The beast breathed in deeply. The man became silent, another statuesque testament to the evil that had become her.

The last companion was a woman. She was pretty, golden hair with a strong but feminine body. The monster grabbed her by the neck from behind. She squeezed. The girl gripped the monster’s putrid wrists. Their eyes locked. Neither turned away until the victims legs stopped kicking and hung, already beginning to stiffen. The monster pulled her arms free from the rigid grip that held them. There was reminiscence in the ways she had been held. Something again of a former life.

She dragged the body with her. Perhaps she held special meaning to the hero. The beast moved, leaving great streaks in the dust behind her. She could already smell the hero. She could feel his heat dissipating in her frigid den. She could sense the pulsing in his chest. It grew more rapid as she approached. He could sense her too.

The hero prayed in his heart. The gods had led him on. They had led him to believe. They had given him gifts. But now he was forsaken. So great was their betrayal that now, even in the very moment of his demise he prayed to them. He no longer even possessed his own will as he once had. All was lost.

The torch across the hall diminished to nothingness. As the last of the light fled from him he saw the monster.

She felt a strange presence inside her. Something with which she had once been familiar. Though she had known it once before it was a sharp, new sensation. Just as it had been last time. But then it had been lower. She let go of her load. Time fell from her perception. Her memories flooded her vision. For just an instant, her life as a girl came back to her. She was fair. Perfect skin, lusciously molded. Her hair was golden. She was raped.

The man had seduced her, but might have had her willingly. That was not his way. He hurt her. He put evil inside her. And she was a monster. She was hated. She was feared. Not even her sisters came to her. They mourned her but they rejected her. This is what she had become. A monster.

The corpse of the girl she had now destroyed crashed to the ground. The hero screamed. The sword exited her neck. The room spun as her head rolled to the floor. She saw her body fall. She saw her children spout fourth from her neck. She saw the hero looking at her, through the reflection in his shield.