Blake Thorne can't be undone by (beausang) wrote in doorslogs, @ 2012-07-17 11:18:00 |
|
|||
Entry tags: | beast, door: tales, ravenna |
Who: Ravenna and the Beast
What: Ravenna goes to check up on her most favorite Beast in the land.
Where: The Beast's castle [Fairy Tale Door]
When: Recently
Warnings/Rating: None
Rain turned the deserted castle’s siIent vigil over the blackened land into a roar of pattering drops and swirling dust. Gray water poured down the mossy flagstones and rushed out of the mouths of stone creatures crouched on cornerstones and clinging to walkways, filling the wide moat once more with muck and giving it the deep depths it had not seen for years. From his high window, the Beast could look down and see the moat, fed by the stream coming down the hills behind the castle, sloshing against the rotting remains of the bridge. He had only ever seen the moat so high once before.
In the days before the war, when the Beast was young and not a Beast at all, there had been a rainy season that lasted three times as long as any rainy season should, months of torrenting thunderstorms that turned streams into rivers and some parts of the fertile valley into bog. By lucky chance, during the fair weather and mild spring storms of the previous year a competition had been set forth by the Beast’s father for scholars from the Valley and neighboring lands. All were invited to propose designs to the royal engineers to prevent the castle from leaking like a sieve, with a gold prize as enticement. The unlikely winner wasn’t a scholar at all, a stocky blacksmith from the edge of the wood, and he had managed to offend every brainy scholar from here to the sea with his disgust for their tiny detailed drawings. This man, given the time from his forge, built small working models. Watching the water stream from the model castle’s delicate spiraled rooftops down into carefully placed pipes no wider than his wife’s little finger, the king awarded the blacksmith a knighthood and set him to work. When the rainy season came not long after that, the blacksmith assisted with irrigation planning that kept thousands from starving the next winter. The king had wanted to make him a duke, but there was no land for a duchy, so the title was an empty one.
During the war, the blacksmith built an ingenious system of levers and pulleys that could spring a man from the ground up into the safety of the trees. The system helped the small band attack and retreat, stretching the war a little longer. When the small band of insurgents were caught, the blacksmith had been executed with the rest, with no more courtesy to his brilliance than any of the other men were given. Sometimes the Beast wondered what miraculous things he would have made if he had not been taken to pieces in the public square to make a point. Something wonderful, to be sure, because even after so many years, after the lichen crawled up the side of his father’s castle and the land withered away--the roof did not leak.
Turning away from the sight of the moat, where the blacksmith and the others had found their eventual graves, the Beast lumbered back through the second-largest bedroom--his mother’s, and now his--and into the hallway. He moved on fours because it was easier, if louder: the sliding of scales, the rustle of feathers, the clack of claws and the thud of muscle and bone did not move silent on the flagstones. He had enough fur that he did not bother with clothing except a deep hood and cloak that kept the draft from his neck and back. He was just at the entrance to the main hall when he heard something, something that was not one of his mute, invisible servants. He stopped and growled a soft, predator’s growl. He could hear her, smell her, even if he couldn’t see her. She stank of scavenger crows and raw steel.
The queen was surveying her kingdom.
It had been some time since she had been able to take the time away from her castle to do this - she did not know how long. Too long, however. And since her fresh imprisonment in another realm, she had been forced to spend time away from her own world. Now that she was back, it was necessary to re-establish her rule, to be sure all the pieces on her board were still where she had placed them, all her workings still well oiled.
She saved the Beast for last. He was a special case, for a variety of reasons. His very life and breathing were one more layer of tar on her black heart. But to kill him and let him go would have been too kind, and, somewhere, whatever affection she'd once felt for him wouldn't allow for him to go beyond her reach. She wanted to always know where he was, to know that he suffered, and to know that he lived.
Ravenna mounted the stair to the warped door of the castle like a whisper, her long black cloak trailing behind her up the staggered planes of the steps, rippling and dragging softly in her wake. She brushed a finger across one of the massive doors, and it swung gently open at her touch. Stepping over the threshold, she observed the darkness, the quiet. In the hallway beyond, she heard the thump and drag of a body lumbering its way over the stone, growing closer.
She stepped further in. The raindrops from outside rolled off her velvet cloak like oiled feathers, and the fan of delicate dark lace at her neck clung to her skin, stopping just at the nape, before a long expanse of perfect, pale skin. She wore her crown of dark steel, and a sharpened ring of the same plated metal armored over each index finger. The cloak was clasped at her breast with a raven's skull, the bone worked into a delicate clasp, the talon of the raven hooked through its empty eye socket to keep its weight around her shoulders. She listened as the creature came closer.
She had not seen her Beast in the (warped) flesh in...a long time. She had watched him in her mirror, on occasion, but denied him the respite of raging at her personally. She had been younger when she saw him last, she remembered that, his kingdom just one in a parade before and after, special only because of him. Him and his beautiful music, music the likes of which no one in the world remembered anymore but her, and no one would ever hear again. She had been denied his heart, but his music belonged to her, now, kept like a caged bird in her ribs.
She was as beautiful now as she had been then, as tall, as pale, her hair the same butter gold, drawn back behind the crown on her head. Her eyes were the same gray green, mist-colored, reflecting back the light rather than accepting it. She held out a hand to the shape in the shadow, and curled her fingers, one by one, into her palm, the iron talon last. "Come into the light," she said. Her voice was gentle. Its resonant sound had toppled thrones and burned cities to the ground, issued death sentences and laughed at the sight of hanged men. That voice had cursed him to his twisted form, and that voice, that face, that terrifying beauty, was to be his only companion in the many, many years before she would allow him to die. He would not accept her, but she would be his only, his life, his focus, his draw, that which he hated, and the only living creature he would see. In that way, she would be his, then, and he was hers.
He knew exactly why she was here, divined her purpose very early. There was something new in the air, something he did not understand, something quiet and watching in the back of his mind. He wondered what it was waiting for, but he had waited the morning before the rain, and nothing had happened. Whatever it was would happen in time, and now that she was here, he suspected they were connected. Withdrawn into the shadows of the great archway that led deeper into the castle, he watched her from under the line of his hood, a thick garment lined double with cotton and dyed a deep red-black, the color of a doe’s torn heart fresh from the body. When she called to him, he made no move, only stood in the curve of the big stones.
The Beast was massive, fully bigger than a man and stopping just short of giant status when he was on his hind legs. The cloak was a mound of living flesh, misshapen though it was, and the cloak moved at strange angles as he breathed and more than one limb moved. “You would like me to come like a dog, wouldn’t you?” he asked, his voice so thick with malformed jaws and inhuman tongue that it sounded more like grunts than a man’s words. “But I am not a dog. I am many things. And do you know I just found out I’m venomous? Perhaps you would like to come closer, and I may test it. There’s nothing big enough in this forest to challenge me, and I would like to see you squirm before your magic saves you.”
Ravenna looked up at him, unafraid, though he towered over her. "Yes," she said, a touch of a smile on those dark lips. She stepped closer to him. "You would bite me?" She tangled her fingers in the lace of her skirts and lifted them from the stone, exposing boots of soft black leather riveted with more dark metal. The sharpened points of her rings did not so much as catch on a single loop of fabric. "Do you think it worth the risk?"
She came to a halt just a few short feet from him. She stood as tall and regal as if her spine was wrought from the same iron as her crown. She turned her hand up toward him. "If I made this of you for show...what might I do to you, do you think, if you prove to be a danger?" She licked her ample lips, eyes averted, far away. "I had a dog once. A large thing, a stray, grown out of a sweet puppy I found starving in the street. There was hardly enough food on the table to sustain the wretch, let alone bring it back from the brink of starvation. But I gave it bits of my meals, and it grew, and it grew. It began to catch game for us, birds and foxes, and my brother and I feasted as we never had in our small lives." She looked up at the Beast, eyes searching beneath that cloak the color of black heart's blood. "But, one day, there was too little food for all of us to share. A long rain came to the land, and washed all the little creatures into hiding. Our hound caught nothing, and my mother made nothing, and we all went hungry. After two weeks, the dog, driven mad by hunger, bit my brother on the hand." She traced a crescent line from ring finger to thumb. "Here. It took two of his fingers for a prize. My mother dragged it outside by the ear, and she took the axe she used to chop wood for our fire. That night, we ate hound, and we survived through the floods, until my mother could bring us food again." Her open palm turned down. "I learned then that it does not matter what you feel for an animal. For they are only animals, in the end - as you are. And wild creatures that bite should be put down. Their corpses can be made better use of than their traitorous teeth can wreak harm with."
She gestured again to the stone flags where some paltry light flowed in from outside. "But tame ones that obey their queen may find favor." Her hand dropped slowly to her side again. "May find forgiveness. If they behave, as a well-trained beast must for its mistress, and come to heel. And if you think I did not give you venom for a reason, you know my thoughts not at all, for I saw to it that your every word should drop poison, and that every creature that saw you should flee from your very touch." Her eyes widened a fraction. "Now. Come."
The Beast very much doubted that Ravenna had planned his appearance. There was no real cohesive thought to his nature, and he had a feeling that she, in her fine dresses and elegant appearances, would have chosen one beast for her inspiration to create some kind of artistic monstrosity if she had planned her spell. He was such a chaotic assembly of things, sometimes to the point of bone-achingly mismatched, that it was difficult for him to envision her with that much randomized imagination. He couldn’t even find the creature that was the source of the strange venomous little claws halfway up his wrist, and her comment that his bite might be venomous went along his line of thinking.
The huge cloaked figure pushed away from the archway and moved a few inches toward the opening of the door, but made no move to come closer to her. There was just enough light for the gentle shine of a wet dark nose to appear from the folds of his hood, and an ivory gleam slid off one fang as he drew his lips back in silent snarl. “No.” At least he kept his mind. That was something. And his mind, oh, his mind would not tame.
In truth, the Beast was right. The curse she had laid on him had been an act of raw rage, impulsive anger, and a heavy cost of power. This was no second rate spell, no small trick. What she had made of him was as chaotic as the magic that had wrought his form, and she could only pretend to have planned its every twist. The mess of it soothed her, though. It was a fitting punishment.
"Pride," Ravenna said, softly. She hadn't actually expected him to obey, but it would have pleased her if he had. "It suits you very ill, I must say. Who ever heard of a prideful Beast?" She turned from him, walking toward the center of the entry, apparently unconcerned about turning her back on him, still delicately holding her skirts above the ground even as dead leaves and grit collected in the train of her dark skirts. "It is almost as if you prefer your current state."
She waved a hand, and there in the center of the hallway, standing in a shaft of light from the door, was the prince - the king. The king as he had been, of course, not as he was now. The image wavered, simply a thin mirage painted onto the air, but how real he seemed. Every detail was there, down to the curl of hair at his temple and his handsome jaw. The image moved, had dimension, and it opened its mouth. No sound came out, but it was clear enough that the illusion was in the act of singing. Ravenna stood beside it, looked at it from head to feet. "You could have it," she said. "You could have it back. All of it. All you need do is bend that prideful spirit toward me, and it could all come back to you again. You, as you were. And music. All the music your heart could possibly want."
The castle was mostly in ruins despite its sturdy construction and durability through many generations of his family, and few of the great floors and passages were open to conserve the efforts of the two servants that remained to him. It was through his own efforts that the three of them had not starved, and it turned out that despite his chaotic limbs, the Beast was a decent predator using the thoughts of a man and the strength of--well, of a great many things. It was mostly rabbits he caught, and there was enough animal in him that only about half of his prey actually made it back to the castle to be cooked. Ravenna was larger than a rabbit or a deer, but he could imagine her blood flowing over his teeth just as easily as theirs--and had done so many times.
The Beast eyed the back of her neck and thought about tearing it out as she passed. He knew that Ravenna’s magic would no doubt save her, but he only looked up from the temptation when a third person appeared in the room. He stared at the man for several seconds, sniffing the air pointlessly for a scent that never came, before recognizing him. It had been many years since he’d seen his own image, and he took a heavy step forward to get a better look, the humped lines of the cloak dragging after him. He remembered the music clearer than his own face, and missed it far more.
To what purpose would he put it should she give it to him again? There was no one left in the Valley to hear it, and for that matter, none that would recognize him even if he walked among them again. The Beast had no clear idea of how many people were left, but he thought the number small indeed. The lands surrounding the castle were ripe with prey as fauna slowly came back to scrounge in the remains of the flora, and not once had he scented a man to hunt them. No, the Beast didn’t live to be whole again. It was not possible. If he really lived at all, it was for the distant prospect of revenge. One day, someone would succeed where he had failed. One day, Ravenna would fall.
“I will never be as I was.” He was moving again, dropping down heavily on four unseen feet with a grunt, sending motes of dust up from the neglected floor and the long cloak. It was still dark enough that the limbs could not be seen, but the rustle of feathers and swish of tail joined the soft growl stirring in his chest as he came closer. Perhaps her magic would save her, but he would enjoy the attempt. And what could she do? Kill him?
Ravenna listened as he moved behind her, investigating his image, then dismissing it, coming closer. She waved a hand, and the vision disappeared like a curl of mist. "You could be," she said. It was hard to read her tone - serious, but maybe wistful, maybe teasing, maybe simply dismissive. "But you care not to be. You prefer the life of an animal. Unsurprising." She turned to look back at him. "It is all you know."
She turned to face him fully, where she knew him to be, even in the dimness. Unsurprisingly, her eyes were sharper in the dark than those of most. "Almost any spell can become a curse," she told him. She knew that. She knew that better than most, down to her very bones. "All magic has cost, to be cast, and to be unravelled again. If you wish to know the truth, I am unsure I could bring you back, even if I wished to." Her hand crept up toward him. "Magic cast from feeling is the most unpredictable and powerful, and the most difficult to undo. You would need to find another, someone who could meet the curse and end it. With their love." Her voice dropped down to a whisper, forlorn and tightly wound as a steel cord. He was within her reach now, and her fingers edged closer, inches from his fur. "And you must know. I will never allow that to happen."
Barely listening, thinking about the her blood on his tongue and his teeth in her throat, the Beast prowled closer, following the edge of the hall where the dusty ruins of pennants still clung to the stone as the rain poured past the open windows. The idea that he would prefer this body irritated him but not to the point of rage. He was horrific, yes, disgusting beyond measure, and he abhorred the idea of self, but at the same time he hated her far more than himself, and that was more nourishing than any meal. The cloak concealed much of his bulk, but as she put a hand out the black wolf’s muzzle creased in a snarl of rage and the gleam of round gold eyes caught the edge of incongruous white down the color of cygnet feathers. He had teeth longer and stronger than any wolf should have, and under his jaw the gold threads of a lion’s mane twisted away under the folds of the hood.
The Beast was thinking about attempting to take her hand off when abruptly his expression changed. It was possible to read expression, the movement of the brows and the shift of grey to white in the thready feathers on his cheek, and much of the expanse of teeth disappeared. He drew back from her hand. “What do you mean, with love?” His very tone was disdainful, as he had strong magic himself when his music was in his possession and no amount of love have saved what had been most precious to him.
She felt a thrill of joy to see him this way, in the light at last. She knew what he looked like, yes, but it had been a long time since they'd been face to face this way, and she'd been able to see so directly what she'd made of him. She took a long breath. "Did I not tell you?" she asked, brow creasing ever so slightly, playing at not remembering. "I suppose not. Your curse - to end it, one must love you." She tipped her head back, and she smiled, like it was a joke. "You."
"They must come to you through the black woods to this forgotten place, must find you, and must fall in love with you despite your grotesque, your venomous, your animal nature, and love you with their whole heart. And, shall we look at it as it is on its face? As I said before, that will never happen." She looked out through the doorway, still slightly ajar, to the ravaged land beyond. "Even if some wretch were to find their way through the forest, no one would love you as you are now. No one." She'd seen to that. And what she did not say, of course, but he might know, was that spells were often undone by the very thing that had created them.
Ravenna pressed her lips close, smiling thinly. "Let that pathetic hope worm its way into your heart and eat at it. There is a way. There is a key to your prison." Her voice betrayed her, growing louder by the second, fire in her gaze. "But you will never come close enough to see it, let alone touch."
The Beast’s eyes widened at first, brown glints of fool’s gold in the depths barely visible, but then they narrowed again as he saw the purpose of the explanation. She meant to give him a hope, a very narrow hope, with the idea that he would pine and wallow away in the thought of it. There was no one left in leagues, and even if there was, anyone in their right mind would run screaming from him, and of course she knew it. Depending on his mood, they might be right to run, too, not that they would get far.
The Beast shifted his weight onto his back legs, and he thought there must be some horse’s flesh there, because sometimes they quivered with the tension that was only released in the run, though the Beast only ran to pursue, not to flee. This time would be no different. He would not bow to her, not even for his freedom, nor his face, nor even for the music he ached so much for. He would not care for this new torture she had come to inflict, would not attempt to pursue it.
“And what would I do outside this place?” he growled, now rising a little higher in shivers of flightless wings and shaggy fur under the long sweep of fabric. “What I desire is here, only I prefer you dead or bleeding, witch.” And he lunged at her, one arm the size of a tree’s strongest limb outstretched, the spiraling line of some deadly snake’s skin glinting under the ragged brown pelt. The pads of his hands were some great cat’s, his claws curved wickedly in the same manner, and the satisfaction that would come of sinking them into her would be beyond any other.
The wide paw connected, and sent her skidding across the flags. She hit the wide wood door and then the ground.
A normal woman would have been crippled, maimed, or dead. She lay, curled in on herself, a hand clutched to the place where his claws had raked across her flesh, drawing bloody gashes. Blood pooled, and she looked down at her hand, stained scarlet.
Then, she sat up, as smooth and easy as if she'd merely been resting. She moved quickly, before he had another chance to strike her, keeping outside the sweeping range of those paws or the snapping of those teeth. She stood, straight-backed, eyes glinting bright in the dimness of the entryway, and her lips curled back from her teeth in as much a snarl as he could ever meet her with.
Ravenna cast her blood-slicked hand out, pointing one long nail in his direction. Flecks of her blood spattered across the cold stone, then lifted, twisting, growing, blackening. She shut her eyes, and breathed. The indistinct shapes grew crackling legs, and their bodies began to shine like dark glass. Her other hand wrapped around the torn black lace at her stomach, she started laughing - the shapes grew heads, heads with teeth, and they barked, snapping jaws filled with teeth as hard and sharp and shining as polished basalt. The hound-creatures of dark glass bayed, growled, snapped, darted in.
"Run!" she commanded, her voice shaking the very stones. Like the tortured fox before the hounds, she would see him flee, and the dogs would stop only when he was just short of mortally wounded. "You dare to draw my blood, the blood of your queen, and I shall draw yours twice over. You prefer to be an animal, and so you will be hunted as one!” The dogs, each a picture in warped black glass of the hound she’d had as a girl, dove for his haunches, jaws wide and ready to tear.
The Beast got no chance for a second blow, but oh, the scent of her blood was worth it. There was a moment of disbelieving elation when she crumpled and stayed that way, but it dissipated quickly. He had not really expected the injury would last. He watched her rise with glowing eyes of amber hatred, not bounding forward but watching the rise of his new enemies. Backing up so quickly that his back feet slid awkwardly on the dusty stone with harsh rasping sounds, the Beast whirled around to protect his flank, lashing out at the shining creature with a roar. The thing was not intimidated, and several more clawed at him, tearing at the cloak and revealing brindled lines, thick shoulders like a brown bear’s, striped haunches, and the mantled wings of a mottled eagle. The lion’s tail lashed to no avail, and the iridescent feathers and green snake scales were a bizarre rainbow of color as the Beast swiped again. The roar turned into a howl of pain as more glass edges cut into him, and the Beast made no attempt at an intelligible rejoinder. He ran for his tower and higher ground.