city_limits Hungry, Thirsty Roots
'We must not look at goblin men,
We must not buy their fruits:
Who knows upon what soil they fed
Their hungry, thirsty roots?'
- 'Goblin Market', Christina Rossetti.

Some said it was nothing more than a state of mind. Others, that it was a huge lake of ice or fire. But just as with heaven, hell was many things. Was, is and would yet be.. In the study of those who experienced a fleeting touch of death, only to return to the mortality of life, more than would be expected underwent an infernal, rather than blessed brush with eternity.

Some, though... Some beings flourished there. Some positively thrived, languishing in the effluence of hopelessness and despair of this ethereal, intolerable landscape of oppressive extremes. Oneself felt the need to breathe, yet could not. Oneself felt the need for salvation, yet had none. Oneself could do so very little, in the realisation they were abandoned to perpetuity in this realm of horrors, yet found no escape.

That was hell. No matter its form, structure or perceived likeness - this mountain of skulls, this aged swamp, this foul stench of the countless damned... Whatever could be imagined of it, both was and was not there. Twinkling lights in the blackness, offering the temptation of somewhere else, somewhere suggestive of love and calm, luring whatever souls saw it to a futile exhaustion.

Hell was absence... Hell was a void... Hell both was and remains the grand, infernal Black Abyss of nightmares. Temptations abound, but few can be had. One appreciates the rarity of it all, down there...

For hell is appetite. Hell is the unquenched thirst. Hell is the ungrateful orphan, supping upon the liquid bones of a long-dead mother.

Hell is emptiness.

And so, too, are its brides...

Emissaries of the Black Light, some called them. This one, Elfleda, the Corruptress, understood the true measure of what that colour meant, for magic, you see, is not strictly 'white', nor is it 'grey'. Such things are misnomers to the true practitioners of the art. No, there is yellow magic, green, red and just about everything in between. Black, however... Yes, that exists. It can even be used for the purposes of good, yet, without the central eye of harmony, its qualities of strength, of power, can so easily overwhelm the others in this metaphysical rainbow.

And here, power was everything.

That was why she was at meditative one with herself, in this place. Black represented silence, after all and in this one fortress of bestowed many, her unformed essence peacefully swirling, turning in on itself, time after time after time... Mixing, immersing, with that of its preserver; the one who had taken it, remoulded, educated it in the ways of forever's destiny. Earthly time did not pass here. Here, things were beyond all such measures and categories. Here, things would not fit, according to designated station. Only in what was decreed by that which had crafted this domain.

Not quite in slumber, but at rest, all the same, the Corruptress was kept ethereally attuned to every little alteration of the expected. Across entire worlds too numerous for any mortal mind to possibly record, a macrocosm of life had been mapped out and scored. One had to understand that Elfleda did not function on a basis of linear interaction; there was an instantaneous mental comprehension of the slightest deviation from all concerns, at one and the same time. If news was of need to travel to her, then it would be brought by the whisperings of a servant's mind. That was how she learnt. That was how she remained for always aware.

'You need an advocate, someone who could turn you back...'

Sometimes, as with now, it was not merely a case of matters of concern changing by themselves. This was an example of something else having an effect upon one. Elfleda acted as mentor, as tutor and as guide, but could be possessive in her other role, too; that of guardian. Certain things were not to be altered or messed with - at least, not until their appointed times and ways.

This counted as unwelcome interference.

'Today was a gift...'

What could be perceived as a mildly hateful gaze now turned attention fully upon the interloper. The utter... Righteousness of it all - how awful, how sanctimonious. A loathsome interruption in the grand scheme of things, as they could be. With a cautious sense of revulsion, the Corruptress' mind skimmed through the surface of history, touching, tasting of the woman's personality, her fears, her hopes, her worries, her dreams.

A warrior-healer. Well, wasn't that just... Quaint?

In the earliest of hours in a US Army laboratory, CCTV began to record an unusual burst of static. Images distorted and a figure in black, somehow out of focus with the surrounding environment, glided slowly, ominously into view. One could not make out the face, but this creature felt somehow not right. There was something about it, just from looking upon its ghostly visage, able to cause a most disturbing feeling to settle upon those who might view it.

And it knew, this ghost, this feminine outline of shadowsome darkness, that others would look. Look, because she allowed it. Her face somehow messy, unable to be seen, but undoubtedly turning to look directly at the nearest camera.

That was when the recording stopped, the room's magnetic locks shutting instantly into place. Alarms raised, but to no avail. Men with guns would not force themselves in there and that was all part of the lesson meant for Captain Forbes. No amount of electronic or mechanical trickery would open those doors, not until the deed was done.

In the time it took for the entity to be gone, intermittent recordings were shown of the most bizarre things. Not a sequence of it making even the slightest sense. They were surreal, awful things and not all of them even seeming to come from what was going on inside that laboratory. By the end of it, the cameras finally cleared to what would remain: A scene of carnage and devastation, with the woman's name written in perfect script, but not in ink; in human excrement. Indeed, were it analysed, the results would curiously show it was somehow correspond to the woman's own biochemical fingerprint of body waste. The how of it was unimportant, but then, that was the whole point...

While some made inroads into explaining the supernatural, the previously unacknowledged, by way of science, the sheer depth of true comprehension into the arcane was beyond the realm of known text books. This woman wanted to seek cures for vampirism, for the demonic, by simple hope, faith and a smattering of chemicals?

Then she would fail.

Things did not work that way, but certain other things did get angered by presumptions of the same. Elfleda was one of them and took care in burning 'NO HOPE', in a mixture of Celtic and Latin, in scorch marks across whatever surfaces had not been touched by the human's name.

Next came the bones. Namely, three skeletal 'scarecrows', each crucified by nails to the opposite wall. All of them pitched up to seem as if leering at whoever made their way into the door and clothed in torn, ripped laboratory coats. Captain Forbes' name, again, smeared across the white materials, this time in ashes.

Whatever Petri dishes had been placed in freezers and the like, had been removed, opened and the most revolting things grown out of them at a vastly accelerated rate. There would be no scientific answers as for how. Only the revelation that something horrifically unnatural, unable to be explained by contemporary science, was making its presence known, not to the military, but to a specific individual.

All around, glass had been shattered. Not smashed against anything, but spontaneously... Shattered, apparently of its own accord. More than that, the very floor had somehow cracked in the pattern of an inverted pentagram, clear and undeniable.

When armed guards did eventually find the doors unlock by themselves and enter, they found there the most terrible stench possible, like a sewer for plague victims with diarrhoea. Nothing had entered through that door and nothing had gone out, but the smell would remain for a very, very long time, no matter the chemical treatment. Just as would the sensation of being watched by some otherly force with malevolent intentions, for whoever happened to go in there.

'We must not look at goblin men,
We must not buy their fruits:
Who knows upon what soil they fed
Their hungry, thirsty roots?'