- [ A Rose By A Different Name - November 4th, 2015 ]
- Not everyone who succumbs to darkness is forced. Some choose the path of their own volition, sound of mind and body. Others still are drawn to it like moths to a flame, and devour it hungry for more.
Once, Iolanthe was one who chose the darkness willingly.
Her life was quiet, average, mundane. Her town was small, quiet, mundane. Everyone knew everyone else’s business, every Thanksgiving there was a giant festival, and every winter holiday season found the biggest fir tree the town could afford dressed up in the town square. The diner had been there since her parents were born, remodeled a few times to keep up with the modernization of appliances. If you wanted good books, you went to the used bookstore on the corner with the cats in the window. The same bus system for school ran for her entire childhood life, in the same order and on the same time table. You could be sure the sheriff would drive down the main thoroughfare at noon and six pm, and the speed traps never changed from month to month.
How she hated it.
She wanted nothing more than to burn the whole town to the ground and leave it’s ruins. To have something unexpected happen one day, and to be pulled away from the small town she’d never get out of. She began to map the stars and involve herself in mysticism with the thought that perhaps she could inflict change in her own little way. She would be the outlier, the odd one out of the small town. She’d offer tarot and star chart readings for a small fee, tell love sick teens their fate with crushes, and maybe, just maybe, something would happen.
One day, the charts told her change was coming. So she waited, and waited. She was nothing if not patient; one could not simply glance at the stars and know their secrets. Time and dedication were needed to fully understand them. Even then, only the heavens knew the entirety of their hidden ways. If she could wait hours for a constellation to rise, she could wait for a sign.
Months passed before a sign of that change came. Slowly, so slowly that only one who paid attention to the on goings of the town would notice, people started to disappear. First one of the school teachers, then a gardener. No bodies were found, and while the town ‘mourned’ them, they hardly noticed their loss. Others followed slowly, too forgettable to remember even their titles. Dark monsters lurked in the corners of the buildings, flashing sharp teeth and sharper claws. The stars spoke to her about a shadow and a dark cloud covering the town, and this was the sign she needed.
Iolanthe found the culprit of the kidnappings among the old rose garden on the north side of town. For someone who’d single-handedly orchestrated the disappearances of at least eight towns people, he was unassuming. A dark military outfit and dark hair with a quiet voice. His eyes stood out, maroon that glowed in the moonlight, but he was just as forgettable as the rest of the town.
He tempted her with power, power to change the fate written in the stars and to leave town. The stars told her this was her path. He sang songs of his people’s glory and guided her into the dark. Eager to join his cause and abandon the mundane, she opened her soul to him and let him slide one gloved hand inside.
He must have been too eager at the time, to finally have someone willing at his fingertips, she reasoned at the time. (In reality, he was simply an upstart who thought himself more powerful than he was.) He poured Chaos into her, and continued to pour more and more even as her star seed reached it’s limit. The reckless control of it backlashed and she collapsed into a writhing mess among the rose bushes. There was so much pain, so much darkness, and so much more pain.
Then there was nothing but clarity and silence.
As she stood among the bushes that curled around her torso and hips, she turned her gaze skyward. The stars were bright tonight, she mused, and Venus looked to be rising. A good evening for a rebirth. She turned her eyes to the officer who’d corrupted her so fully she was no longer human, and plucked a rose from the bush to place in her hair.
“Venus is rising, master. I do believe we should be going.” The centaur youma then simply turned and wandered through an opening in the bushes without a sound.
[ WC: 777 ]
