Tapestry Of Deception
Her hold upon mortal hand vanished in the breeze of eternity.

Lady Elfleda, Beth, Pythia... So many names, so many guises. Hers was a perfect tapestry of deception.

And it was Æðelflæd who found herself, now, summoned into this; what she had truly believed to be the genesis of oblivion. A place where she could not be, could not dwell and from which she should, by all agreed rights, be instantly banished. Cast out. Consigned into exile.

Exile...

As heavenly light bathed that pale creature in costumed black, Æðelflæd looked on with an utmost cautiously fearful gaze. She did not, would not, cower, but that did nothing to dispell the knowledge of what this place was. What it was for. By what laws it had been arranged.

Judgement.

And yet... She felt so strangely numb, as though encased in some increasingly obvious block of fluidic ice, incapable of allowing oneself to emerge from. Only... Only to be melted by some external source. A source which, even now, continued to thin her from that spiritual captivity. Eyes gazing down to the extremities of fingers, only to find something oily, black and slick beginning to smear and melt away from skin. Sickly colouration shifting slowly, surely, to a gradual effect of something healthy.

She knew not why. Knew not how. The usual whispers were no longer there, in her mind, to give guidance. Were not there to shield her from that which she must not see, must not hear, must not know.

Must not... Be open to.

Without strength of shadows, Æðelflæd faltered, increasingly unsteady of her own sense of self. Two figures standing before her. Faces recognised, not with the usual disdain or vicious anger for not providing her with one-time salvation, but instead, a most curiou sense of understanding.

Understanding and deep, horrific, overwhelming shame.

A shame so graphic, so haunting, that were its true weight of guilt not resisted, she be flattened. A total and utter inability to escape that tapestry she had woven; of remorse, of wickedness, of slashing, deathly pain. Of unholy praise, moral poison and pleasureful sin.

But it was held back. It was held back by them.

Æðelflæd would have recoiled from the very thought of going near them, yet found herself without the strength to do so. Could not move, for the suffocation of her own...

Deception.

"Æðelflæd," the voice imparted. "You must choose..."

There is a place in England, some say, where Æðelflæd fell from grace. Where she was snatched, in innocence and family wept. Her wages of sin would be great and the joy in sowing those fertile seeds of corruption, even greater.

Yes, there is a place where she was taken from one world and made a bride in another. Born royal in one, given throne in another. Should one walk there, strange things can be heard. Echoes, so they say, of a time now lost. A time of sorrow and a herald of shadowsome deeds most foul.

But no more does Lady Elfleda dwell. To slumber she has gone; Æðelflæd, once more, to walk in her stead. A soul who, once free of accursed influence, wished for one thing, above all.

Forgiveness and the will to work towards it.

Æðelflæd guides to the light, those who Elfleda would have led astray. One who has much to learn, now freed from her bondage of the Abyss. But learn, she will and learn, she must.

Illumination now, not sabotage.

Lullabies, not poison.

And every so often, once in a while, a helpful word in the ear of a Slayer named Rhiannon...