The wind blew across the blood soaked field, the smell of iron and sulfur a cloying stench upon the earth. In the far distance smoke and fire could be seen, the last fleeting moments of desperation being put forth by a force that had been beaten.
She didn't particularly care about the death of her cultists, or the loss of the hive on the whole. It had been a long time coming, something she knew was coming the moment the fifth spire was lost. The Green simply spread too fast, changed too quickly, and evolved too rapidly. It wasn't something she could fight against, not as she was now.
The Prince of pleasure had withdrawn his gaze from her months ago due to her lack of suitable excessive acts. So it was only right then that she had lost her world along with her patronage. Oh sure the loss of a single hive didn't mean the loss of the world, at least not in a normal scenario. Hives were replaceable after all.
This was not a normal scenario however, she knew that now. The green would spread across this world, consuming all in its wake. It was only natural at this point and she acknowledged that, and that's why she had to leave. She refused to die now after so long with all her ambitions dashed.
Defeat was a temporary setback, retreat, a chance to start anew, and death an end. She refused to have her story end here and now, not after she had put in so much effort for nothing.
So she made deals, it had cost her much, including ten thousand souls from the most loyal of her followers but in the end she had secured herself transport off this wartorn planet. She should have known it wouldn't be that easy.
Because standing in front of her in all of his dread glory was the Green made manifest. With antlers that spread out like the branches of a tree and eyes that glowed with purpose and power he was all she thought he would be. Ten feet of lean muscle and terrifyingly strange magic he glared at her, his hatred obvious.
"So you are the Vaunted High priestess, Grand Prophet of all cults upon Ulanir. I won't lie and say I have any real vendetta against you, but I will take great pleasure in watching your soul scream in pain and agony after I get my hands on you. You've killed far too many of my children to be allowed to get away with your crimes."
She raised an eyebrow at him, she hadn't expected him to lay out his plan to kill her so quickly or in so many words. She pegged him more for the strong and silent type, never trust first impressions as they say. "You killed my cultists and ruined my plans for this planet in their entirety. I've even lost the patronage of my Prince because of the stress you put me under, and you attacked me first, not the other way around. Your children's deaths' lay solely upon your head."
"You are a worshiper of the Dark gods, you would have sacrificed this entire world to your gods for a chance at greater power. Striking you first was just good tactical sense, but you still killed my children. Through your actions and your orders both." His eyes shifted to the bodies that surrounded her, agents that had attempted to slow her escape.
"The bodies of my children at your feet prove my words."
She said nothing as she glared at the creature of Green, something so alien and inhuman that donned the guise of a human form and tongue with such ease it disgusted her. It acted as if it were somehow not a corruption of the human form in of itself as it walked upon legs with backwards knees, and cloven hooves.
It disgusted her, and the forms of its guards even more so. Less animalistic and even closer to the human norm, but wrong in every way. Too beautiful, too lean and lithe, glowing with green power, and gazing upon the world with an inhuman mindset. They disgusted her.
The Angels of the Gods were never human, and as such could never be a bastardization, never a corruption of that which was true. Because they represented all life at its most primal and truthful. These things, these agents of the green were a corruption of all that was holy and right, from the divine Daemons of the Immaterium to the lowly and most base human form.
"I despise you, Green Lord, I hope you remember that for as long as you may live. I hope you suffer a thousand deaths before your true death, which shall be worse than all others. Know that I curse your bloodline until my dying days, whenever they may be." She spat, meaning every word. He had ruined her, destroyed all that she had built, and made her lesser.
She knew the rest of her life would be spent trying to destroy this Lord of the Green. Of that she had no doubt. He only shrugged. "Considering your life shall be forfeit in the next few minutes I put little stock into your threats and empty curses. I have faced death before, and you do not match his scythe."
Silence followed his words as Sorceress and Fey hunter glared at one another. She only needed to last a few minutes against him and the portal would open. GIving her the opportunity to escape that she needed. All she needed to do was keep him busy for three minutes, three minutes in exchange for the rest of her life.
He attacked without warning, crossing the distance between them near instantaneously. His spear, a finely crafted piece of soul work to her vision, flew towards her. She dodged with the grace of a dancer. Her gifts from the prince weren't obvious but they were no less useful.
She was fluid in a way that surpassed anything he had ever seen, dancing between his strikes like a ballerina, a look of pure serenity and focus upon her face. Just as suddenly as he attacked so did she, pink and purple flames rippling across the space between them, catching his cloak on fire
It didn't last more than a second before the green magic that surrounded him snuffed it out, but it was proof that he could be harmed.
That was all she needed.
Fire surrounded her like a storm as she called upon the deepest depths of power that she had never dared to touch before. The risk of Daemonic possession was always too great to truly push herself beyond harshly learned limits. At the moment however she didn't care, her opponent was too powerful to underestimate.
She sent it all towards him, a wave of warpfyre to incinerate both him and his soldiers, leaving nothing in its wake as everything was burned to ash. Including the soul.
Green met pink and purple, the opposing magics splashing against one another like two opposing waves. They battled for dominance, fey magic vs Immaterial power. Neither human, neither comprehensible to the average mortal, and both subjugated to two human souls cursed with power they should have never had.
Slowly, the green fell back, snuffed out under the sheer overwhelming amount of warp energies crashing against it. It fought a losing battle, trying desperately to keep itself together under the onslaught.
For a second she could almost feel it, that pleasure so deep and intoxicating it would define her from the first moment she felt it. She was so close to her deepest wish, the death of the green. She couldn't have known the Lord of the Green was far more of a physical fighter than a sorcerer.
The spear grazed her cheek as she stumbled backwards, it had come from above and stabbed into the ground next to her. Her concentration was broken immediately and the warpfyre went wild, spilling everywhere and dissipating quickly now that she was no longer fueling it directly. She barely put up a psychic shield quick enough to stop the first hammer blow from the hunter with the spear that he had somehow reclaimed.
He was in front of her now, having vaulted over the wave of flames to get at her directly. His spear was a hammer and scalpel both, powerful beyond belief and infinitely precise as his every blow went for some kind of weak spot upon her body. Not that it mattered as long as her shield stayed active, his blows would never harm her.
It was unfortunate then that his every strike nearly broke the barrier, it took all she had to hold it steady against the barrage of blows that came her way.
She felt it, the call of the warp. She felt reality split as a portal to the Immaterium opened up behind her, catching her in its embrace as yet another one of the Lord of Greens blows nearly shattered her shield.
She could only laugh at the irony then that one of his killing blows had been the last little boost she needed to fall into the embrace of the warp, swallowing her up and taking her away from his deadly threat. She had done it, she had escaped, now she just needed to survive her new patron and the flows of the warp.
Looking upon his dark visage she could only scowl. The Phoenicians smiling form hovered above her, his eyes full of malice and dark lust.
-
Heavy breathing filled the air, sweat covered his only loves frame and he could feel his heart beating in his chest. A Mutter stood to the side, carefully manipulating three souls to feed his lover's soul the energy it needed to sustain her physical form, and carry their child to term.
It was the thirteenth month since her pregnancy was revealed, over a year of waiting for this fateful day. Now that it was finally here he no longer felt joy or anticipation, instead anxiety filled his every waking moment as the labor marched on. None of their kind knew anything about Fae pregnancies, their creator never having bothered to impart that knowledge upon them for reasons unknown.
Now here they were with him gone and his love nearing true death as his child drained all of its mothers energy to grow itself. They should have been prepared for this, they should have known this was a likely possibility, their kind fed off souls and a Fae Child would need it most of all.
He didn't know if he would be able to forgive the child if it took his love from him, the fact the child was theirs didn't matter. The fact that Nuvi would never forgive him for hating the product of their love was beyond him. He knew that he would hate the child forevermore if his heart was taken from him in such a way, so he could only pray to the creator that such didn't happen.
"I know that look Love, you really do worry too much I'm fine. The Mutters are providing me more than enough energy to survive. Even if I'm a little weak right now hahaha." Nuvi's voice broke his cycle of despair, drawing his attention to her as always.
"Yes I know my love, you were always the stronger of the two of us. You should have been the High lord, not me." He said, grasping her fading hand in his own, desperately trying to hold back tears.
Her face was serene even as she faded in and out of existence, the only part of her that remained solid was her stomach and abdomen, a conscious choice to ensure their child remained healthy and living throughout the process. Her eyes however showed the deep sadness she felt as she watched him break down in front of her.
"Dyrrath my love look at me. I'll be fine. If the problem is the energy required then we'll just feed our child even more, I know they'll be beautiful and far more powerful than either of us with the amount they're eating. They're quite gluttonous are they not?" She said, giggling slightly as she imagined their child, chubby cheeked and happy with the two of them showering them with love.
It was enough to make her tear up, a sight that broke his heart. He knew she didn't really think she would survive, that was something they both knew. Their kind didn't fade unless their anchors were near collapse. "Yes they are my love, quite the little glutton. I'm sure we'll have problems feeding them, even with my position!"
She giggled, squeezing his hand and nuzzling his neck. They stayed like that for some time, breathing one another in, basking in one another's presence. She spoke into his ear, barely a whisper. "Promise me you won't harm our child Dyrrath, promise me that at least. I need to know you won't blame them for my death."
His breath caught in his throat, his heart pounded in his ears, and his very essence rebelled against making such an oath. How could he ever let another living being escape his wrath after committing such an act?
At the same time how could he deny her? How could he deny her when he loved her and the child both? It would be the ultimate betrayal of their love and bond to deny her here at this critical time, and perhaps that's why fate intervened. Before he could speak she screamed, convulsing on the bed and he was pulled out of the way by two of the other mutters.
They pulled him away even as he screamed at them to let him go, to let him be with his love, his Nuvi, to promise her, to make one final oath. They ignored him, constraining him with magic even as he struggled against their bonds, unfortunately their triple anchored forms had more magic than he did even after all this time and he could do nothing but watch.
The souls fed to his Love grew in ever increasing numbers, ten were devoured in the first minutes of true labor, one hundred before the head had left her, one thousand by the time the shoulders were out, fifteen hundred by the time the feet were leaving her womb. It wasn't enough, the child devoured the energy given and before his eyes Nuvi began to fade.
The child took her anchor, as one final act of gluttony it took the one thing that kept its mother alive and devoured it, as it had done with all those human souls that had been fed to it. Leaving him to watch, and desperately try and grab a hold of her after he was freed. "Nuvi, NUVI! Don't leave me please, please don't leave me! I'll get you another anchor."
He turned. "Get me another fucking soul! NOW!" The mutters paid him little attention, focused solely on the child in their hands. It was one of his soldiers who offered him one of their personal collection.
He grabbed it without hesitation and tried to bind her to this new anchor, but he was not the Grand Hunter, or a Feenmutter, or some grand sorcerer. His knowledge was limited by design, kept constrained from birth. His grasping magic found little purchase on the wisps of her essence that remained.
"I love you Dyrrath. Just like I love our child, a child I know you will love. Please love the-" Her words were cut off, her form turned into nothing but green mist, lost forever.
He felt his legs give out from under him as sobs racked his body and a scream so deep and primal it bent the metal near him into wild and confusing shapes left his mouth. All he could do was scream and cry as he clutched the soul that now held but a wisp of his loves' essence within it.
"It is a boy my Lord, Congratulations." He never heard the mutter, too consumed in his own grief to pay them or his new son any mind. That day Dyrrath, first of the Fae died his first death, lost with the woman whom he had given his heart. His son would never know the man he had once been.
His son knew that from the moment of his birth, his eyes full of intelligence and grief, aware of his own part to play in his mothers death but unable to do anything about it. If only he had been born human, at least then he would never know his own crime against his kin, sleep would claim the child not long after, sparing him the sight of his grieving father for the moment.