Fate Theory

"Adeleadeleadele why, why this everything I havedonehas been for US andnowTHISwhy this?" gibbered Belboz just before he spied a nugget of flesh, just dead enough, and flung his deformed head into it, chewing furiously. In pure, undiluted terror, Adele watched as Elaine then slid over her father's pus white flabby body and reared her round head up at Adele like a spitting cobra, swaying in the air like a naughty naughty waggling finger "I took the ring to helpeveryoneAdele evenyou don't you understand anything anythingATALL? Help everyone help me did I do all this Adele? I don't....."

The maggot with Elaine's face fell from the crowded gash and splatted on the floor, unmoving and Adele tore away her unblinking gaze only to find it falling on Sigin, and poor, poor Sigin there he was at the very corner of the wound, limp, dead, he was dead he HAD to be dead and still he spoke

"Destruction. It is such a base facile act, to unmake that which is made. Have you unmade all....?"

Question unfinished as others pulsating with mechanical, focused hunger squirmed themselves over him sensing succulent death and bit and tore and screamed no it was Sigin screaming

please stop this I'll do it

Others. Fred, Astra, Matthias, one by one they fell, to join Elaine. One by one they split open in a fountain of glorious green mucus and from the split crawled a bloated fly. Wings unfurled and together they rose, surrounding Adele's head, and the flies had their faces and that is when Adele saw that each of their faces had their own tiny wounds each crawling with their own maggots, their own decay. Adele wailed like a great proud animal as its head sinks beneath the quicksand, turned and ran

I'll do it, Conscience! ANYTHING! No more magic no more stop this please please no more NO MORE!

"Then go."

She opened her eyes and she was inside the crystal box inside the machine. The lid above her was closed. Then her body's senses awoke, and she felt them. She was submerged in maggots, all alive, all wriggling. Screaming, she raised her arms and pushed with all her desperate might against the lid. It opened without resistance. Scrabbling her way out of the translucent coffin, Adele leapt to her full height and slapped frantically at her every naked part. She scraped her nails across the most persistent of the deathworms, leaving thick, angry welts on her skin. She tore at her hair, intertwined with dozens of them, all seeking to delve deeper, to the warm skull. They each dropped to the floor as they were cast off. No mucus spurted, no flies emerged.

It took Adele a full ten minutes to rid herself of her repulsive passengers, at which point she swept up her forgotten robe from the floor and wrapped it tightly around her body, shivering from far more than cold. She stared at the box, still filled with them, twisting and ebbing like a white sea. She did not remember ever getting into the box, but she must have. She must have....

Adele turned, and saw that her ring has fallen from the panel's recess and now lay patiently on the ground. Adele stamped on a cluster of large maggots that were worming their way towards the ring with a seemingly united purpose, and picked it up.

She couldn't stop shivering.

...

Conscience remained in the chair for a while longer. When she was certain that the weak woman has been expelled, she leaned back and smiled. The maggots on her face burst into flame and were no more, not even ash. The wound from which they had sprouted somehow also ignited into flame. When the fire disappeared, so too did the wound.

This was a good start. Conscience had refined her mendacity much, had learned well from her mistakes with that paranoid insect Belboz. And now his daughter, his very daughter had stumbled into his footsteps, seeking the same answers that he had sought. But where the father had been immeasurably careful, meticulous and clinical, the daughter was soaked with regret, governed by pathetic memories and a hilarious dream of how the cogs of the universe should turn. She was a perfect vessel, a perfect conduit.

The Laws were static, unchangeable. From this total truth, Conscience understood that the way things were could not ever be any other way. These humans, whose mental impulses - all completely governed by the Laws - told them with a straight face that they possessed free will, were somehow more misguided than a lowly maggot, operating unquestionably on nothing but instinct. But despite her understanding of the Laws, Conscience has always allowed herself one little treat. A belief in fate.

The necromancer, travelling to the Shreken, the very place Conscience had been annihilated and drilled into the earth. The necromancer, who had rejected death and decay, spending centuries building another Nexus. The dragon's truce. The dragon's death. And now the necromancer's flesh and blood, returned. Sweet Adele, perfect Adele, unquestioning. Loyal to her end. Fate was, ultimately, a theory. But the supporting evidence was oft overwhelming. She raised a glass that had not been there.

To Adele's end. And to her beginning.

...

Astra and Elaine had come to the conclusion that escape from the dangerous place they had found themselves in was going to be more difficult than they thought.

They were on a huge island of dark obsidian, surrounded on all sides by the flowing lava. Their island was shaped like an irregular pyramid, and whilst they could see other smaller slabs of rock float past, carried by the orange tide, their pyramid remained in place, perhaps still moored to the lava bed by an unbreakable obsidian anchor.

"I think I can see a shore of some kind over there." called Astra, pointing to a flat outcrop of stone just above the lava level several hundred feet away. The noise of the molten elements all around meant that voices had to be raised to be heard. Elaine did not reply. She was casting a glassy eye over everything, her mouth slightly open. Astra shook Elaine's shoulder, and she barely responded.

"Elaine, did you hear what I said?"

"When........when I slew the dragon." she said in a slow, quiet voice that Astra had to strain to hear. "The battle......it tore the mountain apart. All I could think about was the triumph, the flame, the ring. Did I do all this? Is this my fault?"

Astra wanted to slap Elaine, but decided it wouldn't help to add to the injuries Sigin, Exotica and Adele had already inflicted on her. Instead, she grabbed Elaine by the cheeks and pressed her own face close, filling Elaine's vision.

"I am not dying here while you indulge in some macabre reflection, Elaine!" barked Astra. "Everything that happens is everyone's doing, Elaine! That is the truth! Now let's get.....out....."

A cataclysmic rumbling had begun, emanating like an aural supernova from the source of the lava's flow. As one, the princess and the sorceress turned. They watched as an entire section of cavern wall, at least four times larger than their island pyramid, cracked suddenly and toppled towards the molten river. It belly-flopped into the steaming orange, making a splashing noise neither would forget for the rest of their lives.

The wave sailed towards them, uncontrollable and unstoppable.

"Get to higher ground!!" screamed Astra.

1. The wave smashed into their island, ripping it from whatever mooring has held it in place....
2. Meanwhile......

Add New Option

Go Back

View Forward Story Tree
View Back Story Tree