The room was simple and unadorned. The walls were bare stone, devoid of tapestries and paintings. This was a functional space. Jorsin raised his torch, searching every corner of the room. There were runnels all the way around the edge, flowing into rusted drains. There was a fireplace set along one wall, adjacent to the fireplace in the crone's bedroom. This was no fireplace for warmth, though. Jorsin looked with distaste at the brands carefully arrayed on the hearth. In the middle of the room were a number of tables, worn leather restraints criss-crossing them, a number of rusty scalpels scattered over their surfaces. Jorsin could hazard a guess as to what the drains were supposed to carry away, having worked in similar spaces himself when participating in interrogating prisoners in the castle dungeons.
No, the room and it's contents were not a mystery to Jorsin. However, what in the name of the First Queen, was it doing in the chamber of a princess of the realm? None of the made any sense. Why had the Queen imprisoned her own daughter and then built a torture chamber in her bedroom? Who was it for? Jorsin had seen the princess. She hadn't bore any signs of physical mistreatment. So who had been interrogated there? So many questions. The most burning question of all, though, was how this had all happened without Jorsin knowing. As far as he knew, he had been a part of every council that the Queen had held, every secret meeting, every cabal, ever since he had taken the blood-oath. It was his job to keep the Queen's secrets, and yet here, bright as day, was a sign that she was somehow keeping them from him. He would need to pay Senelle a visit in the dungeon, and do a bit of interrogation of his own.
Jorsin heard feavered footsteps in the corridor outside of the suite. He backed out of the secret room and removed the key from the door. The bookcase slid smoothly back into place, as the door to the main chamber burst open. A guard quickly stood to attention in front of him.
"Sir, you must come quick, the princess has disappeared."
"I am aware. I am currently investigating her whereabouts."
The guard blinked several times. "Not Princess Maeve, my lord. The Princess Mora. She has disappeared as well."
The light of the full moon shone down upon the clearing, sending scattered shadows dancing though the night. All around, were pearlescent luminous flowers, moths dancing here and there amongst their ethereal light. By the base of a tall oak tree, the panther stretched and stood up, careful not to disturb the sleeping fae girl.
Silently, and with all the grace of a supernatural hunter, the panther leapt from the forest floor, and into the trees. She looked down from her perch for a moment, listening for danger. All was quiet. All she could hear were the peaceful noises of a forest at night. The screech of the owl and the squeak of the mouse and the keening noise of the bats, as they darted amongst the darkened trees. Up above, she could hear the faint tinkling noise, like a symphony of tiny bells, from the wings of the faeries.
Satisfied that everything was as it should be, she flicked her tail, and darted into the grey twilight of the forest, leaping from tree to tree.
She wasn't particularly graceful. She was still trying to understand her body. It was so much bigger than she was used to, with all her parts in the wrong place. Trying to co-ordinate her front and back legs after a lifetime of only using two was a nightmare. It was like trying to learn to walk again. She would need to get better, though. She didn't want to embarrass herself, when she got to The Gathering.
A particularly ambitious leap almost sent her tumbling back down to the forest floor. She scrabbled at a tree limb with her hind legs, scratching the bark deeply. A fall from this height could seriously injure her. Thank goodness Aelix wasn't here to see her. That would be mortifying.
Hauling her body upright, she gripped the branch tightly, catching her breath, her tail twitching with embarrassment. She still hadn't got used to that. Her tail seemed to have a mind of it's own. The sight of it had startled her more than once throughout the day, catching sight of it from the corner of her eye. Each time, she had thought she was being attacked by a snake. At one point, she had tried to catch it with a claw, and ended up biting herself. She had startled herself so much that she had landed flat on her face. She was definitely glad Aelix hadn't seen that. She would probably have died laughing.
Not that Aelix did laugh all that much. Too much brooding. Always trying to appear to be a proper lady. As if that would do anyone any good. Why would anyone want to be a stuck-up noblefae, locked away in a castle, when there was a whole world to explore? May had spent too long stuck in that dreary bed chamber, with nothing to do for her entire life. If Aelix hadn't come along at some point, she supposed she might have died of absolute boredom.
When she had been little, her mother and Senelle had tried to get her to be friends with Mora, which had been one fiasco after another. To be fair to Mora, that had been mostly May's fault. Her sister had tried, showing her embroidery, taking her on picnics and telling May all of her favourite stories (which had been mostly ridiculous fantasy stories, where the handsome prince fell in love with some lowly serving girl and made her his Queen. It had always made her laugh scornfully. She had asked Mora if she was going to marry Derion, the pot boy, when she grew up). May hadn't been able to bring herself to join in. She had given up stitching part way through, and amused herself instead by hiding the needles in all the cushions around the throne room. That had been great fun, until she'd been locked in her room with no dinner as punishment.
The picnic had been an even greater fiasco. It had started off well. All the way through the cheese and sweetmeats, May had made herself behave, engaging in the most dull and tedious conversation she could muster, commenting on such topics as the weather and the status of the latest Doranelle fashions. She could have wept at how mind-numbingly dull the afternoon was going, though her sister had seemed to lap it up. Once or twice, Mora had tried to steer the conversation towards May's own interests, though Senelle, acting as May's chaperone, had always shut down those enquiries. By the time it had come to tea and crumpets, May would have sold her soul for anything, anything to free her from the tedium of spending any more time with the dullest person in all of Doranelle, her sister.
As it was, the gods answered her, and the heavens opened. Within minutes, the downpour had become a deluge, and the ground became thick with mud. The servants had tried to rapidly adjourn the picnic into a wheelhouse and prevent them from getting wet. Somehow, in the commotion, Mora had … hmm .. slipped and fallen in the mud. Though, how she had managed to get muddier than a bog monster, her perfect silver hair stained to a disgusting brown, was, of course, a great mystery to everyone.
The mystery had quickly been solved when the perfect princess, angry tears tracing lines through her muddy cheeks, had rounded on May, calling her a filthy beast, no better than an unwashed commoner, too stupid to even act civilised. May had just laughed, retorting that Mora would probably need a bath herself. At this point, the servants and Senelle were treated to a very un-ladylike display of the two princess's grappling in the mud. That had been a lot of fun. Still, she had been confined to her bedroom for three days after that and Mora had never invited May to spend time with her again. It hadn't all been a waste, though. She had found the secret room during those three days and Aelix had moved in with her not long after that.
May supposed she was supposed to do something with her tail. It seemed to affect her balance. Too far over one way, and it would send her head over paws. Most times, her instincts seemed to get it right, but when leaping between different levels of branches, it all seemed wrong.
May squinted at her tail suspiciously, flicking it from side to side. If she was going to be a proper hunter, she would need to work out how the thing worked. She readied herself to leap to another branch, following her instincts. She was poised, tight as a coiled spring. Just before she pounced, she flicked her tail flat. It was a disaster.
With a frustrated yowl, she crashed through the branches and landed on the ground with a thump. She winced as she got up. She could already feel the bruise blooming around her jaw. Thank the gods that she had fur, or Aelix would never let her hear the end of it.
As she put her weight down on her left fore-paw, a sharp, splintering pain shot through her body. She gave a yowl of pain, hopping on her remaining three limbs, crashing through patches of beautiful luminescent flowers and crushing delicate moths under foot.
Owowowowow. May examined her paw carefully. It looked wrong. Her foreleg bent at a funny angle. Definitely broken. She must have banged it on the tree as she fell. She started to cry, sending out great whooping noises through her panther throat.
After a few minutes, she realised that it wasn't helping. She wasn't going anywhere with only three legs. She would have to hope that Aelix found her somehow and carried her. This seemed a sensible plan, so May settled down for a moment and started licking her injured paw. That made her feel a little bit better. Then, it occurred to her that there was a much easier solution.
May groaned internally, not looking forward to going back. Still, she searched inside of herself and found that slow, squishy and tailess form. She forced herself back into it, panting as she went. Gradually, she felt her body transforming, fur rescinding, her bones forcing themselves inwards. Her jaw hummed, like a tooth-ache, as her fangs rescinded, becoming sharp fae-teeth.
She sat there, glumly, in her fae body, covered in leaves and dirt. Her arm still ached. She would need to splint it somehow. Everything felt so much slower in this body. Her senses less attuned. Even her eyesight seemed worse. In the night, neither her fae or her panther eyes had been able to see in colour. It was all so much duller. She gnashed her pointy teeth in frustration. It would be much harder to get Aelix through the forest if she were stuck in this useless lump of meat. Another thought stuck her. Would she even recognise the way to The Gathering, if she were stuck as a fae? When she had gone before, she had been a panther, guided by the faeries.
She slowly bound her wrist tight between two sticks with a lock of her hair. She had had to bite it off with her own teeth. It didn't feel very secure. May frowned at the offending wrist. It was all going to be so much more difficult.
Trying to retrace her steps through the forest was much harder too. She looked out for the scratches she had made on the branches after each leap. She would definitely need to work on that, as soon as her wrist was better. It was dawn by the time she made it back to the clearing where she had left Aelix. Her wrist was throbbing painfully. She would have to ask Aelix to reset it. That wasn't going to be fun. Aelix was always funny around blood or injuries of any kind.
Her friend was where she had left her, sitting against the trunk of the oak tree, her head lying on the bark and her eyes closed. She seemed to be twitching slightly in her sleep. She let out a slight moan. May rolled her eyes. She had had that sort of dream herself. This was hardly an appropriate time, though.
Suddenly, Aelix let out a scream, a cry that shattered the still morning air. May rushed over, her broken wrist forgotten. Aelix's twitching was worse. She was shaking all over, her head smacking into the trunk of the tree with rhythmic wet thuds. May tried to grab her friend and shake her awake.
"It's just a dream Aelix! It's just a dream! You're safe. I'm here. Wake up!"
It was no good. She couldn't get a grip on the girl. Aelix fell from her arms and on to the floor. She twitched violently, her arms and legs cracking as her joints strained at the limits of their capacity. May jumped onto Aelix's chest and tried to hold her down, to stop her from hurting herself anymore.
As suddenly as it had started, the fit stopped. The girl's muscles relaxed beneath her hand. She fell back into the dirt and her breathing evened out. In and out. In and out. May breathed with her, her wrist on fire from being bashed about in the commotion. Nevertheless, she held onto her friend, lest the fit start again. She looked at Aelix's face.
It seemed calm now. Her breathing even. Her eyes were still closed, though the veins of her eyelids and around her mouth seemed to be raised and dark in colour. Even her hair seemed darker in colour. May frowned. Something felt wrong. Utterly wrong. And there was a strange scent in the air, a slight metallic tang.
Aelix's eyes flew open. They were black. Pure darkness, as if the pupil had swallowed up her iris and the white of her eyes. Black and utterly depthless. They stared into May's violet eyes; black, still, eternal and calm. An animal's eyes. An ancient predator's eyes. Aelix smiled, revealing sharp little canines.
Before she could react, the girl was upon her. May cried out as Aelix sank her fangs into her neck. She fell back against the ground, Aelix worrying at her flesh. With her injured arm trapped beneath her, May tried to pull Aelix off herself, but the girl grabbed her arm with her hand, her nails, like talons, digging into her skin. With her other hand, Aelix gripped May's hair, pulling her head to one side, her teeth sunk deep into her flesh, like some beast.
May bucked her body, trying to free herself. Instinctively, she reached for the roaring power within. The shift felt like she was forcing herself through a too narrow tunnel. With a massive paw, she batted Aelix aside, blood streaming down her fur. The girl smacked into a tree with a meaty thump, her head cracking against the bark with a snap, rolling into a heap at it's base. For a moment, May thought that her friend was dead. She limped over on three paws, dread in her heart. How had it all gone so wrong?
Black eyes shot open. Aelix grinned, May's blood dripping from her open mouth. Her own head was gushing black blood. It all smelt so wrong. It was far worse to May in her animal form than as a fae. Something shifted in those black eyes, sucking in May's feline reflection. A wave of darkness crashed into her. Every dark thought that she had ever had, towards her sisters, her mother, it all crashed into her, paralysing her.
She heard Mora's voice, "You stupid unwashed commoner!" You will never be as perfect as your sister
She saw the disappointment on her mother's face, as she once again failed to live up to expectations. You are an unworthy heir. You are a stain upon your House.
She saw Aelix herself, her hand sore and swollen from Senelle's beating; the pain inflicted upon her best friend, as a result of May's actions. You are selfish. You do not deserve the love of others. You bring harm to those closest to you.
It was too much. It was all true. All she did was cause pain to others. You are worthless. You are unloved. You run because they hate you. You run because you deserve to be alone.
It was her fault. It was all her fault. All her life, she had been different. She had never fit in. Always apart. Worse, she had never even tried. All her stubbornness, her pride. It only ended up hurting others. She was just a stupid. She deserved to be in pain. She deserved to bleeding into the dirt.
Aelix's smile widened. You deserve to die.
Her mouth opened wide and her eyes flashed as she leapt at May.
All over the forest, birds took flight, as the roar of the beast echoed out.