Page 13 of Fate & Monsters
There was no moon here. And I was alone.
Another strangling sob tore through me.
“I couldn’t venture a guess,” Thayer replied after an eternity of silence. “Inferni don’t conduct themselves in such a… performance. This behavior is unknown to me.”
Quaking on the floor, sobbing through the feelings that accompanied my awakened thoughts. I grabbed at fleeting memories and notions obscure to mythical beings. A sudden influx of maudlin sensation, uncontrollable tears, juggling fear and panic… missing the foundation of who I was—what I was.
Grief.
Natural for humans. An intense emotional response to significant loss, death, and upending life changes. And I’d lost my entire race, my sense of self, my power, my world. I was stranded, hunted, alone. Entirely divorced from my reality and forced into a mortal’s encompassing range of emotions and instinctual behaviors. Then there was the guilt wrangling fresh sobs from my chest.
Distressed by knowing I had survived when all others had passed. Victims of a cataclysmic event wiping out magic and mythical life. I was undeserving of escaping when all the other sylphs were gone—exterminated by a man with unfathomable power. And I could only cry harder when an alien sense of rage, red-hotand putrescent, slithered through my chest and wracked through my body.
The Crimson Mage. The vile bastard who hunted my kind, and many others… he would come for me if he knew where to look.
Then fear, like acid in the blood, crept over me and corroded away at whatever light remained in my core. Snuffed out, diminished, fading as sobs wrung me out, I wished to shrink into oblivion.
What would be preferable? Living as the last of my kind bearing the pain of existence alone? Or allowing myself to fade away until my kind completely withered out of existence?
“Come, sweet creature, let’s move past this. We have things to do.” The world blurred out of existence. Some portion of me remained aware of movement and walking and talking. Thayer guided me into another room where a bath waited, a large copper thing filled near to the brim with steaming water. More creatures materialized in the room, forming to life like slick oil in the cracks of the stone walls before dripping to the floor in vicious puddles. A shiver ran down my spine, but I remained mostly catatonic as the puddles surged and androgynous creatures—these Inferni—solidified. I stared out, unblinking, sniffling through the last of my tears, as five of them grabbed and scrubbed at me.
Some of them were no larger than a rabbit. Some were tall and thin. They had varying features ranging from snouts, fluffy ears, snaketails, claws, long and short horns. Two had scales that interspersed their formless furry outline. The strangest oddities I’d ever encountered, and I didn’t have the energy to observe or react more than necessary.
This was a world of curiosities, yes, but the Crimson Mage wasn’t here.
I was.
And I was alive.
That had to count for something.
Wisps of silk and gossamer enveloped me, varied materials and pale colors overlapped in a flurry, a veneer of couture opulence. Thayer returned once the smaller Inferni dried me off and left me sitting on a chair in front of a fire. Some of my consciousness returned to my body, and I noticed I was in my room again with a fire roaring before me. The heat kissed my skin, rousing me as ribbon-arms manipulated my hair.
“Why am I here?” I asked fate.
“You will dine with the prince tonight,” Thayer answered instead. “And you will look splendid.”
Reflections were for human vanity. Theface staring back at me in the mirror wasn’t mine—wasn’t any part of me I had ever known. A stranger in every way that mattered, plus the ones that didn’t.
Just a human woman. Trapped and alone in a body dying all around me.
Frozen, I passively beheld my new features. Creamy, pale skin. Pale blue, silvery hair that fell to my waist in subtle waves that Thayer was braiding into a crown. Eyes that gleamed like every shade of the summer sky crushed into gemstones.
A mockery that stung.
“Yes, yes,” Thayer spoke in a musical cadence that drew me from my morose thoughts. “This is wonderful. Lovely. These will do for now.” It’s arms whipped around, and multiple garments appeared from thin air. “A few nightgowns and a handful of dresses until a complete wardrobe can be completed.”
“A complete wardrobe?”
“Yes, as requested by the prince.” Without waiting for a response, Thayer slipped an ethereal, glimmering swath of fabric over my head. The firelight caught the material, highlighting that the dress shifted colors when I moved—ranging from silver to pale blue and purple. A scoop neckline with a bodice that clung then flared at the hips, cape-like sleeves, and lighter than air. Both odd and strangely secure on my new body.
I didn’t feel as vulnerable any longer.
It was no armor, but it was supportiveand bolstering.
The undergarments, however… uncomfortable and constraining.
“Call on me if you need anything, creature.” Thayer faded into the wall, leaving me alone once again.
