The Lord & The Mother

*vitalis*

T H E - L O R D - & - T H E - M O T H E R

SEE THE STAG. It is thin and ragged. It’s hind legs are crushed as is the banner upon which it is inscribed. Proud and rearing with cloven hooves raised to combat something unseen, in its quarrel the lord of the wood is faded with a faded golden mane on a faded green field. It drapes a sad remnant of timeworn conquest cresting a stone of the cavern. Beneath that same rock its hind quarters are crushed and its torn crown is bathed in such shadow that the silhouette of the passing druid who’s as good as its kin does not see it there. Thus it remains to drink from the shadowed waters that pool beneath the earth, neither remembered nor sought for.

From this blackness through the wending cavern Vitalis steps into the dim light of the chamber. Old stone among old roots and old bones besides. His mind is set to the nature of the task at hand: the warriors of Telith are emboldened again, and as always their opponents ail before the vicious onslaught of the undead horde. Like any shield wall it takes only one weak shoulder to topple the line. Whether there was a line to topple at all anymore remained in question. The battle had ended as it always did, with confusion. That Cimmerians seemed to lead the way this time around was troubling in itself. There was little in the way of self-preservation among their ilk. A troubling sentiment when the dead could rise. As for the old guard: Gwen dwelled somewhere nearby in the dank watching with her arm as good as broken. Of her coven she was alone and Wiccana refused to answer her, thus did she turn to Vitalis and the powers he tapped that she little understood and loved even less.

He heaved a weary sigh that his mask funneled at the snout into a grotesque growl. His fingers curled and the flesh he drags at his heels kicks again to life. Something in the growl had given the priest a second wind as he flops and writhes in Vitalis' wake bound in vines and twine and dragged by the hair. He begged for the mercy of Mitra when the view of the dark sky fell before the lid of the cavern roof. He begs for the celestial saints when the stink of moss and water and the creak of old branches assail his senses. He begs the noose to be loosened as he is tossed against something hard and cold and looks up to see something robed and beastly waiting for him there. The ghastly skull leans closer and to Vitalis there is a distinct stink of piss. Good, fear of the otherworldly makes men of faith pliable.

He thinks he sees an elk, a stag; a hart crossed with some fel forest capra. In the shifting light he cannot say for sure, for all he can say is a babble and a plea. He tries to shut his eyes and tell himself it’s but a figment. A skull, that’s all it is. *His god is great, he* tells himself. He knows it but he cannot see it for there is only one thing he can see. Hot air; it breaths. It’s deathly gaze is shadow and warped by something that afflicts bone. A history of turmoil etches the yellow surface the sickliness of a land upheaved by calamity after calamity. It corrodes all idols of which this skull was one. *His god is great and there is nothing greater,* the priest tells himself. Its antlers are splintered around the growth of horns that wrap and wrap and wrap upon itself. In shrieks he begs to the fury of the candlelight that casts in fits a ghastly yellow light. It twists and contorts the horrified effigy of disgust that brought him hence. He begs again and again to the silent face of the dead forest beast and unknowingly the man who lies silent in his own fears and ruminations behind it. Eyes clamp shut but all that awaits in the dark is the image of the skull. He begs again. He begs when his face is seized and his lips forced apart. A chalice is fed between them and something dark and warm and thicker than water sloops and undulates across his tongue and plummets down his gullet. The gag spits something black from his nostrils as a hand is clasped over a harrowed mouth. There it stays until the priest is still and sobbing. Only when the hand is removed does the begging begin anew in hiccups and gurgles. The noose tightens and he begs. Vitalis leans close and whispers for the man to *beg for the witch* just as the priest’s eyes darken. Something stirs in his stomach, filling him with the terrible belief of knowing. *Beg for the witch.* He is hung by his throat among the weald rafters and the swinging bodies. Spittal turns to foam and in time that foam takes on the pink of uncooked flesh, but the man is not dead. He will not die for some time yet. There he swings, shuddering against the gradual decoupling of his skull from his spine, adding his own howls to the drone of the grove.

The body twists and turns and makes sounds of drowning up there in the weald. Below him is little more than ruin. Old brick and mortar left to the dust. Pumiced foundations made fragile  with pumice pores and between them vegetation cracks and vines crawl over what remains. Vitalis watches from behind his mask the priest of Mitra struggle above. Behind him through wended caverns lay the grove of Wiccana and save but for one it stood empty of the wild witches who made it home. Vitalis stood before the stone altar, upon it arrayed the tokens by which the devoted of the goddess might be recalled. Bones hung from the branches and sang in response to the thrashing of the priest. Across the smooth stone of the altar every manner of lotus and their seed from every corner of the exiled lands were set beside a golden sickle. It is wrapped in blessed cloth soaked in blessed waters. Vitalis raises a hand to beckon Gwen from the shadows and she emerges into the candlelight in an outfit of ash and dust. Her hair is pulled back tightly to her scalp and doused white with lime. Ruddy feet touch the steps of the altar and she ascends shivering like an eidolon of wrath borne from something ancient and unwilling of this world. She quivers, for this is not her way nor is it the way she thought of her husband but before her nevertheless he stands. He had instructed her entirely and waited to receive her now. He is the conduit, she the desire, and the priest the sacrifice of an euphoric convert.

He holds the chalice out for her, a familiar hand in unfamiliar garb. She numbs herself to the horror as she had been taught, held the chalice to her lips and naked before the briar she drinks until the darkness takes her. She is upon the altar with Vitalis, embraced and subsumed. She hears and feels the ritual fill the halls beneath the mountain with screams, and like the priest before her a great and terrible knowing assaults her - that she did not stand alone in the shadows. She cannot help but scream in horror, her voice joining the cacophony. Breathlessly the last guttural cry from the dying man above calls for the witch.

*Witch.*

***Witch***