The Obsidian Pillar

Chapter Forty - The Beast

He heard her on the balcony. That eerie slicing through the air that signalled her arrival when she appeared from nowhere always sent shivers up his spine. He had been drifting in and out of sleep, resting against the cold wall, his clothes torn to shreds at his feet and his body scarred from his own claws. The transformations were taking their toll upon him. Luckily, they were becoming infrequent, but took him by surprise. I wonder if she is growing tired of me after all these years, he wondered to himself as he wiped the sleep from his eyes and sat up.

She floated inside; he was never sure whether that was actually happening or not, but she glided so seamlessly that he often pondered over whether she could indeed levitate. Her magic was strong; his twisted, beastly form proved as much.

The sorceress seemed concerned, her perfect skin was pale and her usually smooth forehead was wrinkling unattractively. She drifted over and clutched the supporting column of the four-poster bed, leaning her head against it tenderly.

'You're unusually sombre,' he murmured, unsettled by her silence. She often enjoyed entering with a degrading or demeaning comment.

She turned her head, her eyes clearing as though seeing him for the first time. 'I have something to ask of you.'

'You ask me now? What fanatical amendment is this?' he chuckled without humour, grasping his ribs as they ached from the movement.

She noticed the chains around his ankles and without a word they unclasped, setting him free. He looked at her with fear; a known enemy is something that one can prepare for, but this...this will surely be the end of me.

'I need you to kill again.' She walked away from him to the dresser, pretending to fiddle with the few items that lay there.

'I won't ever take another life.'

'Then you will die.' Her voice cracked.

Bolstered by courage and curiosity, he approached her cautiously until half of her face was visible to him. That beautiful face...the window to her poisonous, monstrous soul.

'A beast such as you could never survive without flesh.'

'One day I will be free of this curse and that will no longer be an issue.'

'Free? Or dead? Are they not one and the same?' she lamented hoarsely.

'I do not speak of my own death.' He stepped closer, his face perilously close to hers. He saw that her skin twitched with discomfort at his intimacy.

'Then you speak of mine.' She smiled sadly without looking him in the eye. 'If I am dead then so are you, sweet one. I created you and I am the source of your life. The earth that we stand on bore us as children, if that were to end, do you think that we would continue without it?'

She moved away to the bed and it was his turn to shrink away. It was the thing he detested most about his situation; the manner in which she exercised her power over him. It was too human an act for two monsters to perform. Yet she had forced him since he was old enough, forging an unwanted bond, tying him to herself with an invisible coil of web around them both. He felt nauseous.