A Militia Bastard Commandant came out the woods with his dedicated militia and rounded up everyone in this little podunk town I and [A Certain Winter Shrine Maiden] were visiting. The Commandant did not like the townsfolk, viewing them as soft, weak, ~insert all the justifications for genocide here~, and all around worthless. Strangely, instead of killing everyone outright, he decided to have a little “fun”, and started forcing the townsfolk to compete with each other in athletic games. The losers of each round was to be killed once identified.
I knew I would not be able to help the townspeople if I gave away my supernatural abilities. The only way for me to get into the camp was to be eliminated in the games. Through some sleight of hand I made sure I was the loser of the first round. The Winter Maiden “betrayed” me with screeching that made harpies jealous as she “gloated” over my imminent. Her display pleased the Commandant so he gave her the right to name the method of my death. She declared I was to be placed in a gibbet while everyone was given plastic knives. The townsfolk would then stab me with these flimsy as fuck picnicware that could barely penetrate water, much less anything with resistance.. A little more sleight of hand, and the Winter Maiden stuffed something else in the gibbet as I drifted away from the scene as a meandering dust devil.
I look back and see the substitution is a human sized bottle of caesar salad dressing. She replaced me… dark skinned me, black feather cloaked me, marked from head to toe me… with the most bland mass market high-frou WHITE salad dressing ever.
Okay. Whatever. Gawd.
I change form once I reach the camp’s outer walls. Human, but nearly impossible to see unless you know what you are looking for. I start to take a step when the shadow in front of me moves. I’m not alone. There is another Traveler watching. We meet. We greet. He doesn’t identify himself but states that he is here to stop the Commandant but can’t do it alone. Okay. I’m in. We move through shadows across the camp while in the distance I hear the Winter Maiden spurring on the townsfolk to “teach that one-flavor bitch a lesson”. She knew what she was doing. I’m gonna have words with her later.
The guard at the gate picks up on the Traveler, but doesn’t pick up on me. We both scurry back into hiding. “I was a part of this militia before abandoning them once I realized who and what they served. They know me and my scent. They don’t know you. Listen. The Commandant will overpower you if you attack him directly. But he is not the will behind this force. He’s just the muscle. Tell me, how well do you know your history?”
“How far back are we talking?”
“World War Two.”
“Spotty. Why?”
“You remember the SS, right? Or at least heard about them, right? Ruthless. Powerful. Strong. Single-minded in focus. But do you remember who led them? You can destroy all the members of this camp, and even the Commandant, but before you have turned around, they will be back and twice in number. Unless…”
“Unless I find their Himmler. I’m looking for a small mouse of a man. Someone that looks like he should be bullied by these troops, not leading them.”
“Precisely. Don’t underestimate him, [Traveler]. Will is greater than flesh here. You know this.”
Know it? I’m demonstrating it. As the Winter Maiden shouts her glee at someone finally managing to pierce the plastic bottle in the gibbet, I move past the camp guards and search for the Commandant’s advisor. No one saw me as I moved. I found the Commandant as he was returning to the camp and trailed him as he went to the back of the camp.
In a small tent sat a small man. He was the antithesis of the perfect soldier. Weak arm, lagging leg, a small round face with an undeveloped jaw, he looked like the perfect target for the Commandant’s ire. The Commandant saluted the still seated man before kneeling before him. “Master, the townspeople are turning on each other, just as you predicted. I shall continue purging them of their weakness, and then save the purest and strongest of their lineages to breed into the ranks.”
As the Commandant knelt and bowed his head, I saw his weak point. A symbol, looking like the superimposition of several letters from different languages, was tattooed into the back of his neck. It was the size of a thumb print, and partially obscured by the folds of his skin when he stood up. If I was going to take out the Commandant, I would have to destroy that symbol.
The seated man covered the Commandant’s neck (and symbol) in a physical sign of superiority. “Well done. Be thorough. I sense a source of power among them. They are weak people, made infantile by their bloodless culture. Only by stripping away what they think identifies them, will that power be made evident. It will be trivial to take it from them. They do not know what they have.” He moved his hand away and the Commandant shifted as if to rise.
I moved, waiting until I was on the Commandant before taking physical form. He threw me off his back easily, but not before I had gripped the flesh of his neck and ripped it off his body. The small man smiled at me. The same way you smile at a small child playing “grown-up”. “Break her.” He smiled as he said it.
The Commandant roared and charged at me faster than I could move. I was never more thankful for all of K’s asswhippings as the instinct ke honed took over. I exploded into a cloud of loose feathers that the Commandant thundered through without harm to him nor me.
“Quickly! Take a feather! If you have just one you have all of her!” He stood in anger at the failure of his minion. My feathers flew into a tree where I coalesced into my winged form.
I removed the symbol, why didn’t the Commandant fall? I didn’t spend time thinking about the answer. If removal didn’t work, then time to heat things up. The tree shook violently as the Commandant charged into it. I quit the tree as he managed to knock it over. Muscle, indeed.
As I flew over him, I spat a fireseed into the flap of skin and blew it into flame. The skin ignited faster than I expected. Quickly it and the symbol it bore burned into ash. Below me, the Commandant suddenly fell forward and stopped moving.
The short man rushed to escape but his weak leg gave away his movements. Step-slide. Step-slide. I descended to pounce on him, but an immense spider lept from behind the tent and caught him first.
“Where are you going, Little Man?” I recognized the unvoice as that of the other Traveler. “You have debts to pay and amends to make.”
I landed a safe distance from the two. “The townsfolk?”, I asked. The short man was half the height of the fuzzy spider. The Traveler had taken on the form of a mythic hunting-type spider and pinned the short man with four of his feet.
“When you destroyed the Commandant, the troops fell as well. They gained their power from him, and he gained it from the brand. The brand is destroyed, there are no troops to hold the townsfolk, and they are already halfway back to their homes.”
“You said you were of this camp. That means you were tied to the Commandant as well.”
“I was. That is why the guards could see me. The Commandant would have stopped me with only an order. But Spider released me from depending on the Commandant to continue. I am Hers, now.”
Spider? Her? Ariadne? “Hmm. Well. I have no further involvement here. The townsfolk are released. Do with Baby Himmler, what you will.”
I turned to leave and heard the Traveler crying out in pain. I turned back just in time to catch the short man leaping onto me. “You! You are the power I sensed! Yield to me or be destroyed!” In the palm of his right hand was the inverse of the Commandant’s brand. I now understood his earlier gesture. I also understood I could not allow this little shit to brand me as well!
I allowed the man’s momentum to roll me down to the ground. Keeping with it, I was able to throw him off of me without being touched by the brand. A twist in the throw meant he landed at in an awkward position, one his compromised leg would have trouble recovering from. I scrambled to the broken Traveler. The giant spider body was lying on his back. Eight legs twitched in agony. On the underside of the abdomen was a burning brand that matched the man’s hand. “How do I get it off! Burning, slicing, or tearing?”
“M… M… Mother…” The Traveler’s mind was burning from the man’s will. I looked up to see the guilty party unable to rise off the ground because of a broken leg. He was raising his right hand instead and forcing his power into the brightly glowing brand. His face was already celebrating triumph.
“The one before you. Destroy her. Your master commands it.” The Traveler struggled with himself. The short man kept his arm raised high. I moved towards the short man but the Traveler grabbed my leg. He was losing the fight for control.
Did the bastard keep his arm upright? Damn right he did. What a perfect little target.
I summoned the feathersword and changed its shape into a throwing blade. Before the Traveler could grab more of me, I threw the blade and cut off the upraised hand at the wrist. I was surprised to see not blood spurting from the wound, but the oozing of a dark thick fluid.
The Traveler released me and collapsed, still in his mythic spider form. I reached past his legs and apologized for what I was about to do. I pinched his exoskeleton and separated the outermost layer from the still forming inner shell. It was substantial enough to allow me to peel the branded layer off of him without exposing his viscera.
“Mother Spider, your son needs your strength. Forgive me this pain I am about to cause, but I will not allow that bastard to take anyone else!” My muttered prayer completed, I pulled hard on the layer and ripped it off his body.
The Traveler twitched violently before closing all eight legs in on himself in pain. I examined the flap of spider “skin” I removed. Unlike the Commandant’s skin, where I could feel a connection between the removed flesh and the brute, this piece of exoskeleton held no trace back to the Traveler. The brand was only skin deep. He had resisted it enough so removing the brand removed the bastard’s effect on him.
Speaking of bastards…
He had produced a knife from somewhere and held it clenched in his teeth. He was trying to carve the inverse brand into his left hand while speaking the incantation for empowering it but making a complete mess of things. His removed right hand had been consumed by the inverse brand’s power and appeared like a half melted lump of black wax. The stump was weeping smears of black ooze and was slowly regrowing a new hand.
In anger I inflamed my hand, burning the shred of exoskeleton and the brand it bore. I called my feathersword back to my hand, this time in the shape of a kukri. Before he realized I was no longer distracted, I had removed his left hand as well.
“BITCH!” Word and knife were spat from his mouth as my foot gave no deference to his small chin.
“Accurate.” Kicking him onto his back, I drove the blade through ribs and heart. My smug grin faded as his laughter began. No blood, only more of the black ooze spreading from the wound.
“You can’t kill me. Not here. There is no flesh here to kill. Only the outward appearance is tangible. Under the skin, under the surface, there is no human weakness. Only the purity of power and strength.” My sword quivered, then slowly started rising as his body rejected it. “I am still human enough to require hands here. A temporary vulnerability. It gives you such a wonderfully false hope that I don’t mind having to take extra time. You can’t kill me. I am immortal.”
«Child. Finish what you have started. Split him open and expose his interior.» This new unvoice filled me from head to toe with reverberations of power. I leaned on the sword’s hilt to keep it in place and looked up at the speaker.
The sky looked like any other earthbound sky before. The clouds were now trapped in a series of interconnected webs. The sun was caught fast in one part of the sky. The moon was caught in another. All the stars were attached to the infinite webbing, and what sky could be seen was black. But what filled the vision of the sky was a spider. The body was impossibly small and the legs were impossibly long. It’s body was every color ever imagined all at once and it was blacker than the black sky. Between the feet of the lowest two legs was a web of spider silk. Carried in that web was the wounded Traveler still in the form of a giant spider. To compare his size to the one that carried him was to compare a napkin to a parachute.
«Wish you to help My son? Finish what you have started. Split open the [defiler] and expose his interior.»
This was not the time to challenge authority. “Yes’m.” I wrenched the sword down and twisted it. The bastard gurgled in his mocking laughter and winced in pain. But otherwise, he showed no ill effects. I noticed his right wrist had been restored and the bones of his metacarpals were reknitting themselves.
«Pull back the skin. What is it to you who have been exposed to far worse?»
How would she know what I’ve been through. I had to have met her before. But she’s not fitting Ariadne’s presentations. I think. Before touching the edges of the wound, I knelt down and snapped off the budding right hand. As the man promised a new round of indignities upon me in revenge, I pulled on rippling skin.
He said he was only skin deep, and now that I am manhandling his exposed flesh, I can’t help but agree. “What have you done to yourself? Not even the Hollow Men are filled with this… tar. The fuck is this?”
«He has sacrificed his integrity for power. His future has been devoured by his past and now all he has is the present. The evils he has done in exchange for what he believes to be power has undone his soul. He is correct. You can not kill him. He did that to himself long before this day.»
“I took your son, Spider. I took him, and tasted him, and he feeds me still. Give him to me, and I will end his suffering.” He mocked the entity above us with no fear of repercussion. Maimed and vivisected, he uttered his scorn as if he were still in the whole of health.
«This is his blindness. He does not see what is apparent to you. He thinks himself whole and refuses to face that he is being devoured from within. But the very thing that allows him to inflict suffering will relieve it.» Spider lowered a leg and very gently dipped a talon in the turbulent ooze. The man did not acknowledge the taking of his inner matter as She lifted Her leg and sucked on the taken offering. She then lifted the wounded Traveler and fed him a regurgitation of what She had taken. I watched his wounds start to close.
Several times She did this, until the Traveler recovered his senses. “Ah! Mother Spider! I have failed you.”
«You promised me you would bring [the defiler] to me if I helped you. I helped you. And now the defiler is here. You have not failed me.»
The Traveler wanted to argue but was either too tired, or too smart, to do so. I watched as Spider scooped out globs of black ooze from the pinned man and feed the Traveler or Herself. The pinned man continued making long winded statements of gloating and promises of his rise to power, but it was clear he was diminishing.
«Why have you not taken your due? It was your actions that opened [the defiler]. You are entitled to the spoils.»
“Ah. Grand Spider. You who catches the stars and fixes the sky! I wouldn’t know the first thing to do with him.” I smiled to show my awkwardness. “What I came here for was accomplished. I remained because I could not allow Your son to suffer needlessly. [The defiler]’s army is stopped. He is stopped. Your son is cared for. What else is there for me to do?” I spread my hands to display my ignorance.
Spider reached down from the heavens and pricked me on the chest and on my forehead. The spots burned as if I had been bitten. I fell to my knees in sudden pain and curled up as I shuddered from an impossible fever. As fast as the illness had felled me, it passed.
Eight legs extended themselves as eight unblinking eyes adjusted to new inputs.
«See, daughter. Your prey waits its end. Finish what was started.»
Several matters flitted across my mind about what else needed to be ended. Some matter about a tightrope stretched over darkness. Another matter about written works. But these and others belongs to someone else, to something else. Right now all that mattered was a strange hunger seizing me, and the remnants of a prepared prey ready for the devouring.
It reminded me of chocolate, of good quality dark chocolate pudding. Whatever that was. Must be a human thing. Of which I was not at that moment.
I woke up thinking of pudding and discounted the dream for most of the day. Until I made a flippant Tumblr post about the success of the Winter Maiden is using a giant bottle of caesar salad dressing as a substitute for me. An inquiry into the backstory unlocked the memory of the dream.
And now I’m craving chocolate pudding again.
Well, then.