Fragments of a Dream

The Muse Of Darkness

Her existence had started as a painful, dull nothing. It was an all encompassing emptiness that drained whatever it found. Then there was a small spark. Then another. Soon a fire was blaring and it threatened the entirety of her universe. It burned, scorching crimson and gold as it ate away at petals of grey-black nothingness. And when the flames had eaten through the imprisoning haze and the dull ache of something lacking, they came for her. They took her bit by bit. Hands, then legs, then hands again, till there was a pearlescent shine to her  charred bones. They scraped her flesh and scorched her humanity till she lay raw and unmade in the mourning arms of the newly created world.

She was nothing but soil and soul and solace, they abandoned her to the wild magic of the new charred world, nothing but a spectacle of the dark in the burning crowds of light. She had enjoyed the incandescent warmth of the light before it swelled into flames of all-consuming brightness. She stood alone, guarding her empire, With blood and bone, adorned in crimson roses and thorns, engulfed in the desperate blaze of paranoia. She was a calloused soul, deeply flawed and a wistful smile to cover it all. When she opened her eyes, questions burned bright, blinding pillars of benign light. And in a flash of whirling winds, she knew she was a creature woven from dreams. So, when the mask came off and the masquerade fell, to Morrigan, she prayed to end it all.

In answer to her pleading, the winds howled louder and in the distance the hounds of hell howled too. On the back of headless horses, banshees screamed as the wild hunt raced across the fractured sky. Kelpies peaked from the azureus pools of the dark damp. Sharp, metallic static buzzed in the air as lightning flashed across the, suddenly dynamic sky. Thunder roared across the heavens and down to hell, a drumroll to announce the arrival of a queen, a Goddess. A puppeteer, of the souls of both living and dead, heavens and hell. She rode on a grand stallion of midnight fur. Her lustrous mane of raven hair flowing freely in the billowing wind. Black crows swirled overhead, forming a living, moving crown of dark feathers over her. Morrigan had answered.

She fell to her knees, trembling with the sheer enormity of Morrigan's sovereignty. A chill ran down her spine, resonating with something at the very core of her existence. With downcast eyes she waited to be addressed, to be given the honour of speech in front of an entity so magnanimous. Morrigan climbed off her menestic stallion as her eyes fell on the skeletal thing, which she recognized as her dream. There was a soft, long finger, gently pulling her face upwards and before she could even think she was staring into what seemed like the most perfect landscape of life and death combined together. She noticed a slight twitch at the end of her queen's lips and a second of warmth radiating off of her, then in an instance, all semblance of her ethereal elegance shattered into shards of commanding self assurance.

"Who am I, my queen?" A tremulous whisper escaped her lips. Her voice "resembling scattered ash.
"You're nothing unless i say so but a queen in your own rights if you prove yourself worthy" Morrigan's answer was equal parts truth and riddle, all of it dipped in poison sweet honey. Morgan pulled away her hand, powder of bones and ash still clinging to her hand.
"What shall I be called, my lady?" she asked, struggling to avoid stuttering.
"You will have a name when you're worthy" she gave her a slight smirk, and with that she was gone. The faint tingling of magic and miracles still creating static in the air, or maybe that was the lightning.

The creatures came soon after. They did not wait for any questions to be asked or answered. They did not wait for her to find her sword or raise her thorns. They did not come with mercy. The first was the hardest. All salivating jaws with rows and rows of sharp teeth and claws to shred skin. She didn't have skin though, and when she finally held her blade, it didn't either. She had been nothing but a mere fragment of stardust in the eternal soothing darkness that surrounded her, and now she was a warrior decorated in crimson and moonlight. Her thoughts casted swirling shadows, dissecting her burning energy, giving it shape, and reason, a dark motive. She dipped her legs in the maddening waters of lunacy and began the massacre of nightmare screams as gracefully as a dancer who has been waiting in the wings. She was whirling swords, and limbs and skin and blood and bone. She was everything and nothing at all.

As she stood amid the carnage, surrounded by death, that defined her life, for the first time, she felt alive. Not living, but alive. The black dreariness coated the entire space as she waited. She understood at that moment, that she was Morrigan's. She had always been too passionate towards the shadows, to care for the flames moths flickered around. She understood that life and death were two sides of the same coin, and Morrigan was the invisible hand that flipped it. As if hearing her thoughts, a crow landed on her shoulder and gently pecked at the petals of her armor as it waited for her to take the letter it carried. The cold parchment pressed against her palms as she watched at the crow disappearing in the inky sky. The parchment held only four words. Those four words were more than enough.

Kyera
     The Muse of Darkness

—Your Caramel Chaos
in collaboration with Mocha