*With emotions running high, and the stress of Ysbethael's kidnapping weighing heavily upon an already troubled mind, memories of her past begin to come back in the darkness of night to plague Maelfina once more.*
She knew well enough that she could not give in to her natural urges, the primal need of a child to feel the comfort of a parent's form; to do so would be to face the searing scorn of her mother and the physical punishments that would likely follow. So Maelfina kept her distance as they made their way through one of Zelentar's infamous Viper Forests, while making sure to remain within the light of the torch her mother carried high above her head.
She could see the eyes of half a dozen of the tree's "branches" watching them while the sound of interminable, angry hissing surrounded them. She knew that hungry maws and poisonous fangs waited in the darkness, held at bay only by their fear of the flame they carried; a fear reinforced by the Dark Prince's penchant for subjecting entire groves of the Viper Trees to raging forest fires just to enjoy the dying trees' screams ("Thank the Abyss for that" she thought).
She stared ahead as she walked, pretending not to notice those horrid eyes. She pretended not to be afraid.
Her eyes fixed themselves upon her mother's scarlet wings, like those of a giant bat, her mind occupied with thoughts of how much easier the trip would have been if her mother had just flown them. The occasional glance from the red-skinned Alu-fiend and the amused grin that accompanied it, confirmed her young daughter's suspicions that their travel arrangements had been so ordained purely for her amusement. The trees began to thin around them as they neared a clearing, the sunless sky slowly becoming visible above the writhing branches.
"Is that Samora up ahead Mother?" Mael asked, looking up at the chiseled, inhumanly beautiful continence of her mother.
"Indeed," She replied, giving a fanged grin "now I'm going to have a word with your grandmother about the new shipment of slaves...you stay here with the torch."
Maelfina, knowing better than to argue or suggest that waiting within sight of that dreaded canopy would discomfort her, nodded glumly and reached up to take the torch.
"Do have fun dearie, I shant be gone long" Her mother promised, her grin widening slightly with the last few words. Not believing for an instant that her meeting would actually take a short amount of time, Mael removed her mane-skin satchel from her back and began to set up a rudimentary camp. Not long after she'd gotten a fire going with a few scraps of dried troll flesh and some firewood she'd brought along, she heard the tramping of many clumsy feet and guttural abyssal curses echoing along the path she'd only recently left behind. A squabbling band of manes, led by a brutish and horribly deformed rutterkin burst from the copse. As the rutterkin's gaze fell upon the young fiendling she felt her body begin to tremble as waves of magically enhanced terror bombarded her senses, her mind recoiling in abject fear as the demon's form seemed to her clouded senses to twist and warp horribly before her very eyes.
She was only dimly aware of running from her makeshift camp, or the sadistic, gurgling laughter of the Rutterkin as it slowly faded from her hearing. Only when a serpentine maw swooped down to snap shut within an inch of her head did she notice the hissing surrounding her, and her complete lack of fire to protect herself. She froze, watching thirteen giant viper heads lower themselves down to face her, long tongues flicking out to slap her face as they tasted her scent. Had she taken a second longer in spotting the hollow underneath the furthest tree and hesitated even slightly in scrambling toward it, she realized later, she would have been devoured on the spot.
Time seemed to stretch interminably in the cramped confines of that filthy hole as she waited, too terrified to do more than breathe as the vipers above spat and hissed their fury and hunger.
Hissing, all she knew was hissing...
Dreams Of A Troubled Mind
