My Fair Lady (Lady Dimitrescu x Actor Mark story)

Chapter 48: Poor Little Maiden

     It was the dead of night when Mother Miranda summoned Lady Dimitrescu northeast of the village, just beyond the grounds of her castle. She'd called over the telephone as the Lady laid in bed, though she had not been asleep, not even for a moment. Miranda expressly required the Lady to meet her in a place the two of them knew well, regardless of the time, and though it concerned Lady Dimitrescu to be summoned in person at such an hour, she slinked out of bed, made herself presentable as fast as possible in the dark of her room, wrapped a winter coat around herself, and left the castle without a soul knowing it.

     As she walked on her lonesome through the forest, her concerns made themselves present in her mind the closer she grew to the location where she would meet the priestess. 

     The first, and most blatant concern, was that she'd been summoned to speak of something Miranda left unaddressed in person. That often wasn't the best sign, especially coming from as busy and reclusive a woman as Miranda, who often spent her time in her own dwellings away from the eyes of the village inhabitants. Whatever she wished to speak of must be important enough to drag her away from her work in her labs, of which she dedicated almost all her waking hours to.

     It was also rather troubling to be summoned considering the timing of all this... It had been several days since Mark had been in Miranda's possession. Lady Dimitrescu had been awaiting each day anxiously for such a call, knowing that this would determine the man's fate... the fate she'd damned him to. 

     The second concern was the location. This place she had been summoned to... it was a place she did not dare ever come to, for the memories deeply carved into the stone walls brought her great anxiety, even now. Ancient ruins laid to waste, pillars collapsed and many a wall covered in the clawing of her agony. This was a place Miranda often kept her... once she discovered of her mutation that came along with her Cadou implantation. 

     Her mutations were quite drastic, resulting in great acts of bloodshed to anything near her agonizing transformation. No matter how hard she tried to reign this beast within, she would always lose control of it. Because of how unpredictable these mutations were, Miranda often kept her at this place, far away from the village inhabitants. The priestess would often resort to chaining her down in order to prevent her from going on a bloodthirsty rampage through the village streets, but even that wasn't enough to hold her. 

     The pain. She remembered so vividly. Every transformation was agonizing, slow and yet all too sudden, rearranging the very bones in her body, breaking some, growing others. It was a pain she had never conceived she'd feel, especially as she herself was quite familiar with pain, the pains of her genetic condition of which weakened her greatly. It was that very condition that prevented her from being perfect in Miranda's eyes. 

     In those times of years past, the village folk feared the beast, the great dragon they could hear wailing out in the middle of the forest, far to the east of the village, past the old castle. Little did they know the beast and the Lady of the castle were one in the same. Committing the same atrocities in different ways, like two of the same gift merely within a different wrapping and bow.

     It had been decades since she'd mutated like that, and as far as she was concerned, she planned to keep it that way for the rest of time. One day... she would be perfect. One day, she would be like Miranda, greater than her limitations.

     ~~~

     "Mother... Why must I stay in this place? Am I not, by right, permitted to remain in my own castle?" she'd once asked, still just a newly born babe in this implanted form.

     "Alcina. You know you cannot be left alone in such a state," Miranda had told her, "The village folk are terrified enough as it is, many claiming to have seen a great and mighty beast slinking through the streets. Should they know it is you, what will you have me tell them?"