Dark Solitude

The bruised and swollen storm clouds rolled along the horizon battling for position as they gathered for celestial war. In Hellcat form, she cupped her eyes and gazed towards the sky.

This was the pre-cursor to anarchy of the heavens. She knew that it was the herald of a storm of storms. The elements had ravaged her mind for so long that she had to search the caverns of her memory to see a time when it hadn’t been so. The cacophonous howl of the wind was as vital to her as the blood in her veins, as essential as the oxygen that she drew into her lungs, as precious a life force as the heart that beat in her breast. The wind was tormentor and friend, the blessed vigilante who washes her soul of impurity.

Sheets of rain pelted her face. The intrusive icicle fingers ploughed their nails through her cheeks. It was cold, it stung her, but she felt no urge to escape the needles of pain. Hadn’t she wanted this? Hadn’t she needed to feel this agony? Only now did she feel alive and aware of the need to breathe.

Now, at the mercy of the cleansing elements, the suffocating oppression and the desire to break away was a symphony of voices telling her to run, to pull free of the manacles binding her soul to this time and place. She knew that freedom was to be brief and that she must return, to withdraw and retreat to the darkness and security of her sanctuary. On transformation wasn’t it she, The Dark Sorceress, daughter of Seliska, the mistress of Luskaal who after years of barren desolation, had braved the hostile world above?

The Hellcat had left the solitude of her cave and sloughed the cramps of hibernation so that she could feel the breath of life on her pallid skin.

After such a brief time above, striving so hard to gain the acceptance of and live in harmony with the surface dwellers, she realised that she didn’t belong here. She yearned to walk in the golden hills of Luskaal, but she couldn’t go home. She knew that before this day set, she would return to her lair to sleep away a thousand moons, until waking refreshed to a world that may yet have a place for her.

The Hellcat moved into the circle to rejoice in the apex of the storm. She trod with stealth, a stalking feline grace, her almond green eyes watchful, flashing with a fierce intensity. At the centre of the circle she stopped. Her eyes scanned the territory she’d claimed as her own. Secure in the knowledge that she was alone, she arched her back, succumbing to her feline nature. Then—she rose, casting the husk of the Hellcat, tall and proud, the matted animal skins worn for comfort in the cave, sloughed.

The Dark Sorceress stood amongst the druid stones, resplendent in the robes of her ancestors. She wore a gown of purple brocade, bejewelled and trimmed with gold, topped with a floor length, hooded black cape. Her breasts heaved from the bodice of the robe as the excitement she felt from the storm raged within and around her. With ragged breath and arms outstretched, she flung back her head. The hood fell away.

She looked to the glistening light of the swollen moon and moaned her acceptance of the storm’s possession.

Her hair, long as her torso and black as a raven’s eye, fell tumultuously down her back to be taken by the rough caress of the wind and thrown about her head in a halo of Medusa tendrils. The fingers of the wind, persuasive as a lover yet with the brutality of a demon, massaged her skull, her neck, her throat. Throwing her hair out to let it fall softly at rest. The wind plucked at her breast, thrusting through her bodice to cup her heart. She opened her mouth to the deluge of stinging pelts of rain that flowed from her full lips, filling her mouth with the sweet, cold water. She swallowed and the fluid slid down her parched throat.

She felt the fire of passion erupting like magma within her as the storm raped the tainted breath from her body, savaging the filth of the past, purging her soul of its evil, leaving only the dark force of her brooding, maniac nature. She washed in the wind and stood erect, power infused from the storm. She was ready, with the fire of a warrior burning. She steadied herself for the final onslaught.

The clouds burst, torn savagely as the forked tongue of the lightning darted out to taste her, only to be deflected by the guardian petrified in the stone. The tongue slithered sibilantly from the dense folds of the mouth of the cloud. It hissed and crackled as it fell short of its temptress. It should have exploded through the breastbone and into her heart but it met, instead, with the dead slate of the leader stone as it smashed into the great plinth. The pungent aroma of sulphur emitted within a swirling yellow mist that circled, ethereally towards her. The lightening recoiled rumbling in impotent defeat and retreatrd petulantly back from whence it came, beaten and demeaned by the maniacal high laughter of the Dark Sorceress.

With this last ritualistic windwash, and the abatement of the storm, the sorceress felt the flowing tide of sadness come upon her. No more could she strive to conform to the boundaries and restrictions that the mortals imposed. She couldn’t fall into the confines of their acceptance. She was of another kind, forced into a subterranean existence, hiding from the surface dwellers that so yearned for, and yet feared, her magic.

She could never be one with them, saddened by the brutalities of the past, and resigned to the rejections of the future that would one day come, her disposition towards revealing too much of herself forced her to shy away, melting into the embrace of solitude. She had no need of others. Yet there were those whom she had come to care for and would always remember. The warmth of their friendship would sustain her during the bitter days and nights when the probing breath of winter pierced the walls of her cave. As much as she longed to have the company of those few surface folk, it could never be enough. The signs were there. She smelled their fear, and while they said they cared for her, their eyes were turning over the soil at her feet, not daring to see their denouncement of her in those iced green eyes. The witch-hunt was assembling; soon they would amass to bring her down fuelled by their fear of her difference to them.

She could see them as clearly as she could see the morning sun in her memory. She knew that soon the mortals would devour her and take away her spirit. She’d spend her days in the company of solitude rather than relinquish the one thing that she could call her own; her soul.

Taking her final windwash had purged the hurt and rejection that so often plagued her. She turned her back on this world and walked quietly back through the mist to the entrance of her cave. She turned her head enough to glance at the life she was leaving. Sadness and yet relief filled her heart for if she was not there, then rejection could no more reach out it’s vicious fist to beat her.

The Dark Sorceress bent her head to enter the gaping arch of the stone entrance and through the mists of thoughts and memory ... she disappeared.