Queen's Light

Capax Infiniti {Part II}

It was dark, damp.

She reached out with her hands but could feel nothing, touch nothing. All that was were her feet upon the ground.

Then a hiss. Two more joined the first shortly afterward. The edges of the skirt of her dress rustled. She leapt backward, only for the heel of her shoe to graze against something that made a shrill sound, as if in pain. The hissing engulfed her, echoing against walls she could not see.

They were snakes. She knew that now. The air left her lungs, escaping in one fell swoop. Suddenly breathing expended so much effort, movement was nearly impossible to muster. She could not make a sound, couldn't draw in enough breath to call for help or try to find her way around the immense darkness. She closed her eyes, though the difference made by the meager gesture was little, if any.

She felt them by her feet, slithering across her toes and attempting to burrow themselves into her skirts. She gasped in shock and slight disgust as one coiled itself around her ankle, yanking against the joint of her leg with all its strength. Her knee buckled, though she just barely managed to right herself before she could tumble to the floor. A floor that, judging by the noise, was covered entirely by snakes.

She managed to gradually draw in enough breath to let it all out in one blood chilling scream, a scream the likes of which she hadn't released since before she could remember. A faint sound echoed at the edges of her senses, recognizable but out of focus over the slimy sound of the snakes underfoot and her raucous roar.

She was ripped.

Torn into another reality.

An inky blackness filled the sky. Water burbled pleasantly within a sloping stream lined with stones. This is where she sat, one leg pulled close to her chest, a large harp propped against her knee, resting ever so slightly out of the reach of the water. Lithe fingers plucked somberly at the strings, producing a melody so full of thought and melancholy that one would think death itself were composing it.

And she was—her eyes closed, peacefully following the brook's bashful burble to build her impromptu tune.

"So," came a voice from somewhere not far behind her, "even Death fears a mortal's nightmare."

Her eyes did not open. "Mortality pays its own price."

"As you've repeatedly stated over the last two years." Booted feet appeared in her periphery, had her eyes been open to see, barely five hands' breadth away. "This was always your favorite place. Even all those years you spent held captive. If you could be found nowhere else, you were here. Plucking away at that instrument of yours."

"Hm." She tilted her head in the opposite direction, listening to the notes her hands elicited from the harp. "It is known to the mortals as my instrument, you know. Played at many of their traditional funerals. Every worshipper of Death strives to master it. And yet, you still mock and scorn. Will you ever be more than just what is at your surface?"

A lone figure came to sit beside her. "The others are coming."

The music stopped mid-phrase, harshly abrupt. "Who among them?"

"All who can. All who know." Two hands clasped together. "They come with a judgment. Their ruling. You've broken their chains once before. But mortality is temporary. The life of a mortal is as fleeting as a falling raindrop to us. They will come for you. He cannot help you again."

A small smile graced her lips. She opened her eyes, looking up at the clouds of smoke gliding through the dark sky. "I know this, Zúfalstvo. They will come the moment my mortal body takes its last breath. And they will come bearing chains to tie me down once more, to live yet again in agonizing distance from humanity. I know."