It is an imperfect world, with imperfect gods. The nights
are filled with the song of the Mystic Kinde, those of magick and of mayhem.
Mankind has been pushed to near extinction time and again, and the land belongs
to magick and magick alone.
Mankind
is suffered for fewer reasons every century. These have included slavery, food,
and a waning adherence to an ancient prophecy that forbids the extermination of
what has become a pestering plague of beings, magickless and short-lived.
The
massive armies of the Mystic Kinde battle each other across the Plains of
Citizenry, and in the skies over the Oceans of Chabar. Even the Underworld
shakes in the daily aftermaths of their battles. No place is safe from their
corrupt rule, or their constant bickering.
There are no heroes here.
The
giant goat tongue slathered the woman’s cheek, leaving a wet and smelling trail
of slime along the bruised flesh.
“I
told you there was no need to run, but you just couldn’t listen!”
The
goat threw his head back and laughed, putting his fur-covered arms up in the
air as he gestured wildly in his glee.
The
woman stared around with dazed brown eyes. The pain of the acts taken out upon
her flesh had numbed her to her core. She would feel no more this night.
“Why
are we wasting our time here?”
The
second voice belonged to a man with the fangs of a wolf in his mouth and small
goat-kid horns protruding from his matte of thick hair on his head. He lifted
his blood covered face from where he crouched between the human woman’s fat thighs
and glared at his goat-bodied companion.
“She
isn’t even that attractive,” he continued, frowning and standing up to his full
height.
At
only nine feet from hoof to head, he was dwarfed by the goat-man. But he was a
good height for a Satyr, and bulkier than most, too. It was what gave him rank
in this tribe.
His
thick black battle-worn hooves clicked as he walked away from the woman laying
impassively spread-eagle on the cobbled street.
“We
should have been gone hours ago. Look, the sun is almost about to rise!”
The
Satyr gestured with one hand distractedly towards the slowly lightening
horizon.
In
answer, the goat-man licked slowly over the woman’s naked belly.
“She’s
ripe, that’s the best time to have them.”
He
turned slitted pale-gray eyes to the Satyr, bleating low and dangerous.
“She
will likely bear children, if we let her live, you know.”
The
Satyr turned around, still frowning and rubbing his rippled belly muscles as if
he had just partaken in a most delicious meal.
“Well?
Kill her then. I don’t care, I’m done with this ridiculous play. Next time, I
choose the prey!”
He
tossed a hand at his goat friend in dismissal and clicked away down the street,
following the receding darkness in the sky. Almost lazily, he lifted a horn to
his mouth and blew one sharp note, calling his various minions to his side as
he entered the forest beyond.
“Hmm,
my pretty,” the goat-man said, swirling his thick pasty tongue around the
woman’s neck.
“He
doesn’t know how to appreciate man’s women, none of them do. I watched them all
with you tonight…A waste of seed, the lot of them…”
He
moved over her body, his distorted man-form laying heavy over her small but
fleshy frame.
“Plump.
Some lucky farmer’s wife. You don’t even have all your teeth, you cow.”
He
grinned and placed a misshapen limb on either side of her head.
Slowly,
she turned and looked at him.
“Yes,
you are comprehending now, aren’t you, my sweet human whore…”
He
opened his long snout, letting his tongue loll out and drip down on her chest
as he wriggled between her slobber-covered thighs.
“Want
to have some babies? Want to birth some horrid little beasties? Maybe they will
eat their way out from within!”
He plunged himself into her, and she screamed a
scream of pain and fright that echoed through the early morning.
Petty
retched into the creek, feeling all the blood drain from her head as her
breakfast landed ker-plop into the stream.
Winorna
the Midwife strode up to her and knelt next to her, grabbing her matted brown
hair and pulling it back from her almost-green face.
“There,
now. Ye’ve had babes before, don’t let this one get to ye so much, Petty. Yer
gointa to use up all my tea!”
Petty
nodded, placing a hand on her belly as if that would help to hold the food down.
And the precious tea.
Frowning,
Winorna put her own hand on Petty’s belly. Feeling around, she waited for a
resounding kick against her palm, then pulled her hand away, nodding.
“This
ain’t Breadar’s get, is it…”
It
was not a question. It was a condemning statement of fact.
The
middle-aged farmer’s wife stared at her reflection in the shallow water.
Sometimes, she wondered the same thing all the townsfolk wondered.
What
magick did Winorna the Midwife hold inside her mostly human heritage?
“Now
doncha fret over Winorna,” the old woman said as she stood up.
Winorna
offered her hand to Petty and the other woman took it, trustingly.
“I
would nay tell yer secret. What do I know anyways? Eh? Jes another bored wife
trying the bed of some man other than her wedded husband.”
The
old woman winked at Petty, who smiled greatfully.
“I
kin tell ye, yer not the first to go wanderin’! Jes let me know when ye need
more tea. And as the moons draw nigh, tell ol’Winorna when ye be needing the
other kind of tea.”
Only
one soul in yer belly, there, girl,” Winorna went on in her witch-like manner,
spewing what little information her prophetic and oft-wrong sight.
Together, the two women began to walk towards the
more populated area of the plain the small crop of humans called home, Petty
wielding her rusty but still deadly sword, and Winorna the Midwife leaning
heavily on her staff and oft bludgeoning weapon.
The
pain was sharp, tearing, and excruciating.
Petty
smiled prettily at Breadar and handed him his full plate of potatoes and
mutton.
He
eyed her suspiciously, then grabbed her and pulled her into his lap. He sniffed
at her hair, and then gently placed a hand on her swollen gut.
The
muscles beneath his careful hand tightened, contracting, and he tossed her from
him.
“That
ain’t no babe o’ mine, I been telling ye’! Tellin’ ye’ and my fam!”
“Nay,
Breadar, quit yer bellowin’! It’s yer get, as much as any of ‘em are!”
“But
I feeled it, Petty! I been a pa for how many times now, I know it’s yer time!”
Breadar
stood up quickly to make his point more firm, and upended his plate all over
the floor. As it clattered on the dirty floor and spilled its contents
everywhere, Petty sighed at the old argument they had been having for months
now.
“Breadar,
for the love of the Kinde, enough o’ this! If I weren’t havin’ yer babe, now,
could I do this?”
Grunting
barely audibly, Petty bent right in half and began to clean up the spilled
food. Tears of pain came to her eyes, but she ignored them. She provocatively
wiggled her fat behind near Breadar’s beefy thighs, nudging him “accidentally”
with one cheek.
The
farmer looked towards the stairs that led to the loft bedrooms above his roomy
farm house and shooed the giggling gaggle of children back upstairs. Then he
grasped Petty’s shift in one hand, bunching it up over her cheeks. He rubbed
himself against her, feeling himself grow hard in his leggings. Then he
released himself.
As
he thrust into his wife, ignorant of her small whimpers of pain, Breadar
thought to himself that it didn’t matter if Petty had wandered some night
almost a year ago. She was his, alright. And she always came back for what he
had.
He
felt like a man as he spurted into his wife.
And
Petty backhanded the tears from her cheeks. She would need more tea from
Winorna if she was going to make it. As soon as Breadar was done, she would
make up some excuse, some lame lamb that needed to be put out of its misery.
And she would waddle her way as quickly as she could to the Midwife’s hut on
the edge of the city.
Once
Breadar was done, she told herself as he started up again without a pause.
I
remember being born.
I
won’t tell you why, just yet. I’d rather like you to figure that out on your
own.
I
remember my brother being born before me. And that much we know for certain is
true.
He
let go of my hand from where we clung together in the dark-wet. And he smiled
at me, I know he did, I felt it. And he let the old crone drag him from me into
the bright-cold.
That
was how I knew the outside world.
And
that was how I came to hate Winorna the Midwife.
My
turn was next. I could feel my mother’s body rejecting me, feel it pushing me
out like so much excrement.
Her
portal was opening wider and wider, and the old crone’s hand was reaching in
like a demonic claw. She was trying to force me out, too.
I
kicked at the hand, and I kicked at the walls and I kicked at this human thing
that was to be my caregiver now, and no longer my warden.
I
kicked hard and I heard her scream. She had been screaming for hours. I
intended to make her scream more.
But
then I heard a sound.
It
was high pitched, even toned, and unending.
That
was the sound of my brother’s first cry.
I
eased up then, and let the witch Winorna grab one of my legs. She almost
twisted it off, trying to turn my head down towards the beckoning canal.
Voices
called out joyously when it was discovered my brother was a boy, and a healthy
one at that, for all his crying.
They
didn’t know he was calling to me, and me alone.
I
let them birth me then. Tear me from the womb that had been our home, together
and alone, separate from the future, from destiny, and from the hell that was
our new domain.
I
wailed in reply to my brother, filling my lungs with the foul and magickless
air that they all so craved and needed.
And
he crooned to me. He let me know he heard.
When
they severed the cord that bound me to our mother, and they placed me in the
arms of some elder sibling or other, they frowned because I was a girl.
My
brother, they felt, would grow up to be a strong farmer’s helper. He was so big
and chubby when he was born. Our “father” was so proud.
But
I was chubby too, you see. I would be a big eater. Yet I was not as equipped as
my brother, nor destined to his fulfilling career as a farmer under my father’s
guiding hand.
We
were infants then, both in our ages and our minds. We read things no child
should read, from minds no seer would ever bother to invade. And we learned
quickly.
They
placed me in a cradle next to my brother.
And
he cooed to me, gently. And he took my hand weakly in his own.
I
gripped his fat fingers in return, with all the strength my new body would
muster. I held on for dear life.
And
we swore never to let go, no matter what.
No
matter what.
