The Black Unicorn

[Tim Willard]

(This is just stream of consciousness stuff. No editing, no second pass, no nothing, just something to do for fun and relaxation. It takes place in the Six Worlds, following the carnage of the First Lich King War)


The Black Unicorn
Part One

The clicking sound of her heels was the only noise in the hallway, the metal taps set into the sole of the artfully inlaid shoes striking against the mosaic tiles that made up the floor. She passed by tapestries depicting old battles or scenes from myth, legend, and history, statues of people long since dead, and artwork from all over the Six Worlds that was selected more for their meanings than for wealth and appearance. She paid no attention to the whispers and rustles in the shadows of the high vaulted ceiling, ignored the shadowy movements in the banners that hung from thick timber rafters, and was aloof to the way the carving on the visible parts of the walls pulled at the eye and hurt the mind. She stared straight ahead, ignoring the smaller hallways that intersected the one she steadily marched down, her eyes a solid jade green with no whites, no pupils, and inhuman beneath the wealth of blood red hair that framed her face, swept back from her shoulders, and cascaded down her back, held back from her brow by a simple unadorned beaten copper circlet.

Two guards stood at the end of the hallway, flanking a massive door that was roughly hewn into a forest scene, each guard wearing heavy plate armor that had no decorations or spikes upon it, with a simple white enameling coating the heavy steel. Only a single black rose resting in a hand that was palm up on their left breast gave any hint to whom the massive armored forms owed their allegiance to, As the woman approached the two figures they each suddenly took notice of her, their masked faces suddenly turning toward her and a deep purple light burning in their eyes. The woman's slitted nostrils flared slightly as she was able to smell the faint scents of spice and decay from the duo.

"Who approaches the throne of the Eternal Elba?" One asked. The steel masks the two guards wore were molded into monstrous visages that concealed their actual appearance, making it nearly impossible for most people to know which one had spoken, but the woman's keen hearing caught the trick of the one of the left stating the first word and the one on the right finishing the question.

The woman stopped three paces from the armored figures, her hands hidden within the voluminous sleeves of the white smokesilk robe wore, and stared at the two guards for a long moment. Her eyes were a flat jade green, with no whites and no pupil, almond shape, and seemed too large for her sharp planed narrow face.

"I do." She answered, her voice rich and soft.

"Then let us know who you are by your titles." The two ordered, and the woman barely restrained a sigh of frustration.

"In my Step-Mother's house, I am known as Aveliene, beloved daughter." The woman finished the formula.

"Pass, beloved one." The two figures stepped back to either side of the heavy wooden door. The woman waited, suppressing an urge to tap her foot, until finally the doors gave a deep groan and slowly swung open wide enough to admit her.

Beyond the doors a huge sunlit chamber waited. Columns were carved from granite or marble, shot through with veins of precious metals or threads of gems, their shape graceful and flowing, melding into the floor and the ceiling. From the unshuttered windows high above steams of sunlight fell through the air to illuminate the wide open spaces, to sparkled on the inlaid mosaic tiles of the floors. The pattern of the tiles drew the eye to the far end of the room, where a dais was slightly offset to the right. Atop the dais sat a plush overstuffed divan covered in brushed naka-fur.

Aveliene moved across the throne room, her heels breaking the silence that lay comfortably in the throneroom, moving steadily toward the dais and the figure reclining on the divan with a book held in her tiny hands.

It never failed to amuse Aveliene, the contrast between the reality of her Step-Mother and the legends. The woman's skin was a rich alabaster, the natural chocolate coloring burned away by decades of wielding arcane power, her hair was a thick lustrous black so deep it nearly hurt the eyes, and her eyes were a rich brown that often sparkled with mischievousness or gleefully withheld knowledge. The woman curled up on the divan reading a book was not the titan the legends claimed, but was rather a petite woman who fell short of the five foot mark, with a lush body and nearly freakishly endowed. Her face was covered with a white ceramic mask, a crack down one side of the face that had brown edges and a deep red coloring in the depths of the crack, and the crimson lips of the mask moved as if they were alive, telling Aveliene that her Step-Mother was speaking.

As Aveliene came closer she could hear her Step-Mother's quiet voice speaking softly, gently, and the sight of over a dozen small lizards curled up with her, all of them staring at the book, forced a smile out of Aveliene.

The great and powerful Thorn Lord, reading to babies. she mused. She could recognize the tale now, a cautionary tale about trusting strangers. She moved up the dais and nodded to the massive kobold, the raptor-like creature's scales a highly polished bronze. The kobold, her Step-Mother's eternal companion (and some believed: soul mate), flicked his fan-like ears in response, opening his mouth slightly in the reptilian equivalent of a grin.

Without asking Aveliene went over and sat next to the divan, leaning against it and letting her head rest against he Step-Mother's head. Her Step-Mother reached out and gently ruffled Aveliene's hair, never taking her eyes from the book or the bright water-colours, her voice never faltering.

Aveliene waited patiently until the story was finished and all the tiny little black eyes had closed. She could hear the faint purring-like snores of the baby kobolds in the long moment of silence as Aveliene's Step-Mother passed the book to the great bronze kobold and then watched the sleeping babies with a faint smile.

"You called me, Step-Mother?" Aveliene finally broke the silence.

"Yes, beloved eldest daughter." Elba answered, turning her head to stare Aveliene in the face. Without warning the pale woman reached out and pecked a kiss on the rich mocha skin of Aveliene's forehead. "I'm always happy to see you, beloved one, but I have a chore that needs doing this time." she continued.

"I'm always happy to do your bidding." Aveliene said, flushing in pleasure at such an obvious sign of her Step-Mother's favor.

Elba made a pleased sound low in her throat, smiling gently, and pecked another kiss onto Aveliene's forehead. "I need you to go somewhere and kill something for me."

Aveliene chuckled and smiling, the parting of her full lips revealing rows of triangular teeth that were tightly interlocked. "I thought so, Step-Mother." Off to the side the great bronze kobold Xava made the quiet huffing sounds of kobold laughter.

"I've heard something disturbing from where the Kingdom of Laprinious once was." Elba began, and Aveliene nodded, fixing where the kingdom had been before it had been destroyed during the Lich King War. "Travellers have begun to spread tales of a black unicorn amid the wreckage of the kingdom." Despite herself Aveliene gasped, and Elba nodded.

"Go to the ruins of Laprinious, find the black unicorn, and kill it." Elba ordered.

Aveliene bent her head in obedience.

[Tim Willard]

(as I said before, stream of consciousness. No editing in Word, no second pass, nothing more than typing right here in the posting box. With that said, sorry for any grammar problems or misspellings or anything of that nature, and I hope you enjoy...)

Can a mod fix the thread title? It appears I misspelled Unicorn

Aveliene leaned in the doorway, taking in the sights and sounds of the great city of Novak. The shimmering heat of so many bodies in the street, the thick odor of animal manure that dropped from the various beasts of burden and lay on the streets before the sweepers could get to it, the combined smells of a dozen different culture's food all mixed together, and the tang of salt air. She was close enough to the great ports that the ocean air occasionally swept away the rest of the smells.

She was dressed in leather armor, thick leather straps with metal buckles adorning the arms and legs. Her blood red hair was tightly braided and stuffed beneath the armor. The inhuman planes of her face were covered by the plump softness of a human woman, her eyes a bright green and her cheeks chubby. She wore Von-Lon imperial army boots, with a pair of jackal-men daggers tucked into them. At her waist she carried a folding spear and a short sword.

Her work clothes.

Sighing with the knowledge that she couldn't just stare at the vast teeming mass of city life forever, that she had a chore to do for her Step-Mother, she pushed herself out of the doorway and smoothly moved into the crowds heading for the Great Gates of Novak. From there she could use her own reputation and the reputation of her Step-Mother to have a gate warden activate passage to the wreckage of the Kingdom of Laprinious.

The crowds jostled her as she made her way through the city, taking time to enjoy the sights and sounds. There a merchant was bartering with a massive undead clad in the armor of the Iron Legion. Here a prostitute was leaving a carriage, her hair and silk clothing exquisitely immaculate. Over by that corner as troupe of jugglers and fire breathers performed for the gathered crowd, gathering coins as they plied their skill in return for sustenance. In the air flying mounts swooped, carpets sped, and arcane casters supported themselves with their own power. All of the sights gathered together melded into one huge vibrant example of life that showed that even though the Lich Kings had been thrown down, even though IV and Gor DuMay were dead, life went on.

It was nearly evening, and Aveliene had walked nearly a dozen miles deeper into the city, toward the great mesa known as The Anvil of Novak, to reach the huge emerald field where the Great Gates of Novak hurtled travellers to dozens of destinations within the Six Worlds. She stood in line, humming the ballad from the great elven opera Last Leaf of Summer while she waited, remembering the last time she had performed before an audience in the lavish opera house that was the jewel of Novak Eck's noble entertainment.

Finally she stood before a thin weedy man, who had combed the hair on the sides of his head across to cover a huge balding spot, and from the scent that Aveliene's sensitive nostrils could detect he had used herb infused animal fat to keep his hair to badly conceal the fact he was going bald. The man eyed her coldly, thinking she was another sell-sword, or some penniless mercenary hoping to get cheap travel to one of the kingdoms struggling to reassert their authority in some war ravaged land.

"May I help you?" The words of the Second Trade Tongue nearly dripped with condescension, and he lifted on eyebrow imperiously.

"I need a gate to the Kingdom of Laprinious." Aveliene smiled.

The man harrumphed and checked the sheets of paper in front of him, searching for the cost of a gate. After a few moments he gave up and stared at Aveliene coldly. "There is no service to that location, ma'am, do you have another destination that may be closer as it appears that there is no gate terminus where you desire to go?"

Aveliene opened a pouch and felt around inside for her Step-Mother's token. "It would not be an active gate, the kingdom was lost during the Lich King war."

"Then I'm afraid we will not be able to accommodate you." The man tried to brush her off.

"I'm afraid I must insist." The token dropped from Aveliene's hand and onto the man's desk.

"Despite what you might think, the Gate Society does not..." When his eyes finally fell to the token his pompous lecture ended in a strangled gasp. On the upright side of the token a black rose was held by a white palm, the stem winding around the thumb, the thorn digging into the flesh with little red specks to denote blood.

"I'm afraid I must insist." Aveliene repeated, pulling the man's bulging eyes from the token to her own. She smiled widely, letting her camouflage drop enough that instead of the small and even white teeth she would normally show he saw the serrated interlocked triangles of her natural dentation. "I'm sure you understand."

With a few frantic gestures the civil servant managed to wave over a woman in a white naka-wool robe, the edging and the embroidery on the cuffs denoting a higher ranking than the man Aveliene stood before, the bleached fabric in contrast to the woman's dark skin. As she approached, the balding man stood up and bowed.

"Is there a problem, Denar?" She asked, her voice cool and professional.

"I'm afraid so, Mistress Uhline," The balding man said, trying to wave both at the token and at Aveliene in the same movement. Sweat mixed with grease was beginning to run down his forehead.

"How so?" The woman asked, turning to face Aveliene. To her credit only her nostrils flared slightly when she recognized who stood before her.

"I require transport to the Kingdom of Laprinious, to do the bidding of my beloved Step-Mother." Aveliene said, bowing her head slightly to acknowledge the other woman's rank.

"Laprinious you say?" The woman's brow furrowed for a moment. "Ah, yes, I recognize the name." She sighed deeply and stared into Aveliene's eyes. "Sadly, the forces that overran the kingdom during the war not only destroyed the gate there, but also damaged the magical weave when the Younger King Xerinies was destroyed."

Aveliene felt a burn of irritation. She'd spent all day walking to the Meadow of Gates only to find out that she'd have to take the High Roads instead, something she could have done without wasting an entire day. Now it would take another day to reach somewhere that the High Roads could be accessed easily.

"Please understand, we mean no disrespect to yourself or your honored Step-Mother's house." The woman said, and Aveliene could smell the fear on the woman that belied the calm words. The man behind the desk was terrified, and the smell of it almost overwhelmed Aveliene's senses and made it so that she had to restrain herself from leaping on the small man and devouring her.

His fear made between her legs throb in tune with her heartbeats.

"I believe you meant no insult, honorable Gate Keepers." Aveliene answered, reaching down and picking up her Step-Mother's token. She dropped it back into the pouch and buckled it closed with one hand, her long fingers working dexterously.

Aveliene bowed to each of them, then turned and left the building.

Behind her both of the civil servants felt their knees go weak as they finally let their fear show.

It wasn't every day that someone got to deny the leader of the Wraithkillers what they desired and survive.

* * * * *

Aveliene folded her hands behind her head, staring up at the stars. She habitually picked out the important constellations, noting how dim or bright they each were. Her father's constellation was still dim, except for the newly appeared stars representing the bindings on his arms, which twinkled merrily. Her Step-Mother's constellation was just as bright as always, with the speckle of stars across her "brow" brighter than usual. She smiled at the sight, knowing that astrologists would be quickly annotating that the Eternal Elba was involved in machinations involving the mortal world.

She'd ran the last three days, quickly bypassing walled towns, fortified inns, and farms once she'd left the confines of the massive city. She'd been over seventy miles into the city when she'd decided to take the High Roads, and it had taken her nearly two days to make the trip from the Meadows of the Great Gates to the five hundred foot wall that surrounded the city.

Now she was camped a ways back from the highway she'd been following, far enough back to avoid being seen by any passerbys, but close enough that it wouldn't take too long for her get back on the road once she'd gotten a few hours sleep.

The fire she had used to roast a rabbit had fallen to embers, the ruddy glow doing nothing to illuminate her campsite. She relaxed in the darkness, the shifting shadows having less to do with the fires and more with the fact that she'd entered the High Roads earlier that afternoon.

The High Roads were dangerous, even more so with the Lich King War being less than a decade before. The war had gotten desperate and vicious enough that ancient weapons of war had been drawn from vaults, had been brought out from the Astral or Ethereal Core, each side releasing the weapons they'd seized on the other side, and many of them had escaped during the carnage that had swept over the Six Worlds.

The twisting roads of the High Roads led through impossible landscapes, through forests, deserts, hills, and mountain ranges that did not exist anywhere in the Six Worlds, and were dotted with fortifications built to seize control of various sections, with the isolated city here and there founded by those who had become lost in the endless tracts of land.

The High Roads touched each of the Six Worlds, yet existed on none of them. From any point of the Six Worlds one could enter the High Roads, travel for eighteen days, and leave the High Roads at their destination for a total of twenty days of travel. That made it so that anyplace on the Six Worlds could be reached from any other point with only two weeks of travel, no matter what the distance and obstacles between. Before the Lich King War that meant that settlements were scattered about willy-nilly, only in a rare few empires or kingdoms were there highway systems between cities, and only then to connect settlements where it was shorter to travel the normal way than it would be to take the High Roads. Now, since the war, many veterans and former mercenary groups were making a name and carving a reputation for themselves by helping clear the detritus of the war and ensure the safety of the work crews who were building grand highways. The highways of the High Roads were falling into disuse.

With a sigh, half of boredom, half of desire, Aveliene unbuckled her belt and slid her hand into her pants, cupping her crotch with her hand and squeezing softly. She'd been excited by her entrance to the High Roads, but so far nothing had stood in her way, and now she needed to find a way to curb her excitement if she was going to get any rest at all.

She quietly pleasured herself laying next to the fire, the warmth of the coals lapping over her, and she finished with a low gasping moan. She lay bonelessly relaxed, her eyelids fluttering for a few minutes, before slipping into a contented slumber.

* * * * *
"Stop running, it just makes me hungry!" Aveliene called out to the black garbed man, vaulting easily over the alleyway and to the next rooftop. She held a dagger in each hand, and the excitement of the chase had caused the inhuman planes of her face to rise up and replace the decadent softness she normally wore as a mask.

The man ahead of her ignored her, jumping from the rooftop onto a lower one, disappearing from sight. Aveliene grinned, knowing that the man would do one of three things. He would take a chance and jump to the alleyway, providing there was something to break his fall or he believed he could make it without injury. He might keep running across the rooftop, the knowledge that Aveliene was gaining on his steadily gnawing at him.

When she reached off the edge, aiming for the opposite rooftop, which was a good six feet lower than one she'd leaped from, she knew he'd chosen the third option, hoping she was moving too fast to be able to stop herself.

He was standing there waiting, his sword cocked back, both hands holding onto the hilt. His eyes were narrowed in concentrating, the grim lines of his mouth hidden by the black cloth he had wrapped to conceal his face, and his entire body, swathed in a skin-tight black outfit, was trembling in contained anticipation. She knew the man intended on chopping into her before she could get her balance, possibly even going so far as hoping to catch her with a blow in mid-air.

Amateur Aveliene sneered, giving a little extra push with her toes and arcing forward, her hands held tightly. You forgot I'm not some slack jawed mortal idiot, didn't you?

The extra effort let her sail over his head, tucking into a roll at the apex and twisting in midair so she landed on her feet facing him.

"Oopsie." Aveliene grinned, licking her lips with her serpentine tongue.

Without a word the man jumped off of the edge of the roof, vanishing from sight. With a sigh Aveliene stepped up and looked down to check which direction the man had gone. He had headed right, deeper into the ward where the damage from the Lich King War had not been repaired yet in hopes of losing Aveliene in the ruins.

Idiot. Aveliene thought, racing along the edge of the rooftop, passing the man who was skirting trash and other debris, and dropping from the rooftop to the street below. Two quick footsteps took her to the entrance of the alleyway, and she pressed her back to the wall, listening closely and waiting.

The man exited the alley looking up, his eyes wild, and ran smack into the war-blade held tightly in Aveliene's fist as she swung it out and let the man's own momentum impale him on the blade.

"Looks like you had an accident, Alquezar." Aveliene mocked him as his eyes bulged out and he screamed loud and long. Aveliene cocked her wrist, twisting the knife upwards in his stomach and using it to support him. He'd exited the alley with enough speed, and she'd added enough force with her swing, that the blade was past the sharpened or serrated edge, past the two inches of dull metal, and the guard was actually embedded in his flesh.

Aveliene stepped in front of the man, smiling at him, the twinkling lights from the magically illuminated streetlamps reflecting in her flat jade eyes. He had dropped his sword to grasp her wrist and was trying to push her arm back to pull the knife from his belly.

"What were you thinking, taking a contract on the diva?" Aveliene asked quietly, although she didn't expect an answer. "You should know that the fine art of theater is under my protection here in Novak-Eck, and I only I decide which contracts will be filled."

She twisted the blade again, and he gasped and tried to stand up on his tiptoes to relieve his agony, but Aveliene just lifted the blade with him. She shook her head, staring into his eyes.

"Right about now you're wondering why that little magic trinket you lucked into isn't healing your wound for you, aren't you?" She asked conversationally, tucking the other blade into her belt. She gave him a minute to answer, mocking his inability to speak around the agony in his stomach, smoothing a few strands of blood red hair away from her forehead. "What's wrong, you diaphragm still hasn't healed?" She twisted the bladed again, smelling the overpowering fresh excrement reek of punctured intestines. "What's that? I can't hear you."

The man beat on Aveliene's chest with his hands, raining blows down on Aveliene's leather covered breasts, the blows growing weaker by the moment. His mouth was open in a silent scream and he was tossing his head back and forth in denial.

"Did you really think that a trinket like that would save you from me?" Aveliene asked, reaching out and brushing the man's hair from his brow. "Just because it lets you heal from normal wounds doesn't mean it will save you from me."

She could feel the tissues knitting around the blade and wrenched it again, tearing apart just healed flesh and preventing the recently healed diaphragm from allowing him to inhale.

"You shouldn't have ran." Aveliene smiled, the smile quickly turning into something far worse as Aveliene's jaw widened further and further. The man's horrified expression on his brown skin faced realized what was happening as Aveliene's hand snaked around to grab his hair.

He still couldn't scream when Aveliene pulled his head back by his hair, exposing his throat and the pulsing veins of his throat. His hands uselessly tried to push her back as the single row of even white teeth in her impossibly widened mouth blurred and were replaced by a triple row of serrated triangles.

"Yum yum." She quoted, and leaned forward to rip into the flesh of his throat with her teeth. Blood spiced with fight or flight chemicals fountained into her mouth, and his flesh was spiced with hysteria and pain. She relished the taste as she tore free the majority of the soft tissue in front of his spine, chewed twice, and swallowed the huge gobbet. Her neck distended as she leaned forward and bit away his lower jaw and cheekbones, her jaws working as she shattered the bones with her teeth.

* * * * *
Aveliene awoke from the pleasant erotic dream of devouring the assassin when an angry roar shook the ground and made the leaves and branches of the surrounding trees tremble. She went from lying sprawled on the ground to on her feet with her war-knives in her fists in one fluid movement.

She grabbed her pack and slung it over her shoulder without releasing either knife, quickly sliding her arms into the straps and settling it on her back. She ignored the fact that her braid had come partially undone and was outside of the leather tube she normally kept it in,

Another roar shattered the normal sounds of the woods and Aveliene sheathed her knives and took off toward the source of the sound at a dead run. Whatever making the noise had to be huge, and to Aveliene that meant a Horror of War or another living weapon that had been released during the Lich King War.

She leaped over fallen trees, bushes, and rocks, making her way steadily toward the noise. She climbed a large pile of cracked and broken rocks that had probably once been fortress quickly, using her hands to help pull her up the pile by grabbing saplings and pulling.

At the top of the pile of rubble she paused, staring at the scene in front of her before smothering giggles with her hands.

In a large clearing a half dozen men were facing off against a huge upright lizard that stood nearly forty feet tall. Its flanks were armored with black iron that had been fused to its flesh, the small atrophied arms had been replaced by massive black iron arms that were crawling with eye watering arcane runes. In its massive jaws magic flared as the giant lizard chewed on the screaming form of a mage, the huge teeth shattering the mage's protective magics.

One of the armored men ran forward and shoved his sword between the massive armored plates that had been fused the flesh of the lizard's belly, then yanked it out and darted back, obviously expecting the giant lizard to react. Aveliene giggled to herself as a long moment passed while the huge living weapon chewed up the now silent mage.

Suddenly the creature made a sound that sounded suspiciously like "Urrr?" then roared, its massive jaws opened and it let loose with a roar of pain nearly thirty seconds after it had been stabbed. The unswallowed pieces of the wizard fell to the ground, and a sound of dismay could be heard from the gathered men.

Good luck, suckers. Aveliene thought to herself, moving back the way she came.

She knew better than to challenge the massive living weapon. It had probably been released to deal with the keep whose rubble she was climbing on, or it had wandered onto the High Roads on its own, or followed someone else on the High Roads and then hung around.

Behind her another roar of pain sounded out, and the ground shook as men screamed.

Idiots. Aveliene mentally sneered.

[Tim Willard]

Less than twenty minutes run from where the morons had decided to engage a modified Thunder Lizard in combat, the High Roads went from dappled glades and rolling fields into thick forest. The trees were stunted and twisted, the shadows fell menacing, and the wind carried whispers and mutterings that made the hairs on Aveliene's neck stand up.

Something's wrong here... The thought snaked through Aveliene's mind, and she dropped her masquerade in order to let her senses reach out. When she was shapeshifted her senses were slightly muted, limited somewhere between the form she had chosen and her own, limited by flesh she garbed herself in. In her own form, her senses were sharper, her reactions quicker, and the chances she could be caught unaware dropped.

The woman knelt down, poking her fingers into the rich earth and bringing a few grains of soil up to her lips. As soon as the soil touched her tongue she spit it out, and kept spitting for a few moments to clear her mouth.

Corruption. But it's too early. She looked around her in shock. Her Step-Mother had spent the entire Lich King War keeping an eye out for the Eternal Enemy, watching for his plots and machinations, and hadn't seen anything that looked like his work.

But the corruption she could taste in the soil could only mean one thing.

The World Ender had been at work in the Kingdom of Laprinious.

Does Step-Mother know? She wondered, glancing around the forest. Of course she does, silly, would she really send her most beloved daughter to some ruined kingdom to kill and ugly one horned mule? No. She mentally chastised herself. You don't send Fraker the Axe to pick posies, you don't send the Sterile Queen to perform animal husbandry.

She knew enough about the High Roads to know that just because a section of the High Roads was contaminated that it didn't mean that the regular parts of the Six Worlds that coincided with that section of the High Roads had been affected.

Still, it was a good seventeen days from where she'd be able to drop out of the High Roads and into the Kingdom of Laprinious. The problem was she couldn't move around the contamination.

Unlike most road, the High Roads were both malleable and fixed. While the pathways may appear to change, while one could move from lush rain forest to desert in a handful of strides, what map-makers and most sages who had never spent time in the High Roads did not understand is that the basic paths never changed. Aveliene could not go around the corruption, since a change of direction would lead her down a different path, take her to a different place, possibly even one worlds away from her destination.

No, if she was going to get to Laprinious, she'd have to move through the corruption.

Which meant that it was deliberate. Someone was trying to block access to the ruins of that kingdom, but for what reason, what purpose, Aveliene had no clue.

Maybe that's what Step-Mother wanted, silly girl. Aveliene mused, standing up and looking around.

Now that she knew what was wrong, she wondered how she had missed it. There were no animal sounds, no buzzing of insects, and the leaves, branches, and grasses that moved seemed to move wrong, not in tune with the breeze.

Her expression went blank, and she stared for a long time at the path in front of her. To get too far off the path meant she would be lost in the High Roads until she found another path or the one she had originally left. She had no choice but to follow the one she was on, since she couldn't take a path to a place on the other side of Laprinious and then enter the High Roads and approach from the opposite direction. No matter where you were, no matter how far away, the path from one place to the next was the same. Only the Great City of Novak was an exception, but even its roads followed the rules to an extant. To travel the High Roads, one needed to know the landmarks. Each landmark was a days travel from the next. People had tried to move slowly each day, only to find out that it took them longer to reach the landmark. Everyone who was familiar with the high roads knew that each landmark was a days travel from the next.

Moving quickly she started down the road, her normally fluid and graceful movements jerky.

She skipped over that patch of flowers, kicked the tuft of dandelion fluff free with with a toenail as she passed, bypassed that pile of leaves across the trail, leaped up into the trees to run along the branches and skirt that enticing river embankment.

Within a half hour, she was covered in sweat and had covered less than ten minutes worth the ground.

She spotted a huge misshapen hornet's nest and stopped, her nose less than a handspan from it. She rocked her hips back and forth, trying desperately to regain her balance. A fall to the ground would land her in the middle of an outcropping of rock that had thrust their way up from the loam, and if she fell forward the hornets would react with a savagery.

One hornet climbed out of a hole in the side of the nest, and Aveliene cursed inwardly. It was jet black, with a tiny skull in bright green on its thorax. The stinger was nearly a half inch long, and a bead of dark green venom was glinting in the light. It crawled around for a moment, fluttering glimmering wings, and Aveliene realized that the wings were still wet. It had felt her breath and left the nest to try to dry its wings.

She inhaled and held her breath, her gyrations lessening as he momentum bled away. The hornet crawled around sluggishly, stopping to preen at its antenna, but still Aveliene held her breath as it wandered around the misshapen paper nest.

You're new, aren't you? Aveliene asked silently. She'd seen these hornets before, watched as they'd decimated the elven inhabitants of a hiem. The venom would paralyze an elf, and the hornet would quickly burrow up the elf's nose and into its brain. Alchemical changes would cause the hornet, even a worker or warrior, to quickly metamorphis into a queen. The hornet would order the elf to seek a quiet place where it wouldn't be disturbed as the hornet went through the change. Through arcane methods the new hornet queen would use the unlucky elf's own body to begin laying thousands of eggs within the elf's abdominal cavity. Once they began to hatch, the worker would gnaw huge sores in the elf's skin, allowing the bees to come and go at their leisure.

Once the new hive had been built inside some unlucky, still living, still aware elf, the queen would command it to return to the nearest elven settlement.

And once there, the hornets would swarm on the elves, each insect out to create a new hive.

The fact that the hornet was living in a misshapen paper hive told Aveliene that this was fresh, that the hornets had not migrated here from some hiem that had fallen to the Eternal Enemy. Rather, something or someone had placed the hornets here to prey on any unlucky elves who happened to use this section of the High Roads.

Moving slowly Aveliene reached behind her, her dexterous fingers easily opening up the small belt pouch at the small of her back. She felt inside for a moment, centuries of practice allowing her to pick the correct token from the pouch. She held it in two fingers, and closed the beltpouch with the other four fingers on her six fingered hand.

She slowly brought her hand around, stopping when the breeze stopped, slowing when the breeze slowed, and moving when the air currents stirred. She reached out to the trunk of the tree and pressed the gently throbbing ruby into the bark, ensuring that the rune was pointing away from the trunk, the symbol for elemental fire pointing directly at the hive.

Just in case. She told herself. She had not survived eons of warfare and assassination work by being sloppy or unprepared.

She moved upward, climbing branches after checking each one for any insects or swollen nodules on the wood, until she was almost thirty feet above the nest. She ran along the branch and jumped to the next tree, slithering down the branches until she could see the forest floor.

From there she kept moving.

Less than an hour of careful movement and Aveliene caught a whiff of heavy corruption that made her stop. She went perfectly still, recognizing the scent as the hunting pheromones of one of the Eternal Enemies most potent weapons.

Reavers. Aveliene hissed internally. She looked around carefully, eyes first, then slow movements that imitated the swaying of the branches in the steady breeze. There.

The six Reavers appeared to be massive bipedal insects, thick pebbly green mottled chitinous armor, four arms, two which were grasping claws, one a fine multi-fingered "hand" with almost a dozen tiny tentacles and "fingers", and the last one a normal arm with a large "spike" instead of a forearm and hand. The "spike" had perforations in it, and Aveliene knew that when that spike was driven into the body of a living creature, fierce maggot-like worms with chomping jaws would eat into the flesh of the victim. Additionally the Reaver could burrow into the victim with small barbed and pointed tentacles.

Those that were punctured by the spike, living or dead, inevitably became hosts to whatever type of Reaver that the massive insects were charged with creating and sowing.

The insects heads were almost tiny, merely a platform for the massive eyes, crushing jaws, and four antenna that jutted from the forehead. Aveliene knew that the Reaver's brain, what little of it there was, was located in several sections within the torso. Large nodules of nerve ganglia were scattered about, to prevent a single injury from stopping the Reaver completely.

Reavers were tough. As tough as the Eternal Enemy was able to engineer. The Eternal Enemy wasn't like mortals, who viewed crushing defeats as the end of their plans. The Eternal Enemy viewed defeats as a way to improve upon his designs, as ways to prevent a defeat in the future.

Unlike mortals, the Eternal Enemy had all the time in the world to engineer his creations. He would be around far after the sun went out.

Aveliene stared at the sextant of Reavers below her. They were busy throwing carcasses into a pile. The leader, identifiable only by its wings and the rows of cyst-like nodules beneath the folded wings, was carefully manuevering each one so that it interlocked with those already stacked. The crackling of bone and the tearing of flesh was audible to Aveliene almost fifty feet away.

Compost pile. Aveliene identified it with a chill. The Reavers, nicknamed "Nannies" by her Step-Mother, would pile the bodies up, then infect them. The gravewyrms would heat the pile of flesh to make it ready for the eggs that Aveliene could see that the leader was carrying. They would have to keep adding flesh, to keep the pile hot, to give the gravewyrms and other catalyst insects that the Nannies would inject into the pile flesh to work with so they could excrete the chemicals that the immature Reavers would need to grow to maturity.

The hornet nests and the other lesser Reavers she'd seen were nothing more than perimeter guards, placed to keep people away, possibly kill them in order to add more to the compost.

From the color of the cysts and the size of them, Aveliene could tell that the lead Nanny was carrying more Nanny eggs.

Aveliene quickly ran through her choices. If she bypassed them, they'd spread through the High Roads, driving living creatures before them and multiplying rapidly. Nannies only needed compost piles until they could build the complex birthing hives, but to do that they would need to incubate the Reavers that could extract metals from living creatures, objects, and raw ore. If she dropped back and told her Step-Mother, more than likely the Eternal Elba would simply send her right back to fight a guerrilla war against the Reavers, which in the meantime would have explosively multiplied. Finally, she could take the only reasonable option.

Aveliene thought for a brief moment, running all the permutations through a six month timeline, then slowly exhaled, knowing she only had once choice.

Her choice was a poor one, if they infected her, if her body's natural and enhanced resistances could not cope with the infection, she would have to be slain, then reborn. The last thing anyone wanted was for a Reaver to be born from the body of a Wraithkiller, much less from the body of the Sterile Queen.

She drew both of her jackal-man war-knives, inhaled deeply, and dropped down in sight of the Reavers.

"Hey! Over here!" Aveliene yelled, even though all six of them were already turning toward her.

Without bothering to see if they were giving chase, she spun and began running back the other way, back the way she had came. A glance over her shoulder showed that they were following, all six of them giving out eerie hunting cries. A pair of cries sounded from either side of her, and she knew that the sex behind her had called in the rest of the hatching. She had hoped that the other two had been killed, but at least all of them were following her now.

She deliberately triggered the Reavers hiding along the path. The rocks unfolded to reveal armadillos with tentacles on their backs and fearsome insect jaws, the patch of dead leaves erupted into a grotesquely distorted wolf with six legs and a head that was split down the middle to create hideous maw that bellowed out its hunting cry. Along the bank of the river foul creatures covered in moss and algae rose, dripping, from the water, headless creatures with starfish bellies that revealed their teeth and maws as they gave chase. As she passed the bees she gave a mental command and the gem exploded in an eruption of burning acid heavily mixed with necromatic energy, destroying the hornets and their nest. She flipped a gem into the patch of flowers ahead of her, running through the energy and feeling it claw at her innate protections as it incinerated harmless looking flowers that in reality tore at flesh and attached to any creature unlucky enough to wander into them in order to drink their blood.

Another glance back showed they were falling behind, and she dropped another gem, this one a chunk of jade inscribed with necromatic and infernal runes. The wolves triggered the spellmine as they overran it, and acid burning with hellfire erupted, necromatic energy ripping and tearing at the wolves lifeforces. The other Reavers howled in rage, redoubling their efforts to catch Aveliene, disable her, and use her to breed more Reavers.

She could sense the rage and hunger of the Nannies, and knew that the "queen" had identified her, and was encouraging the other Nannies to catch her, that they'd identified her as a prize that was worth exposing all of the ones that would normally lay in wait.

She burst through the forest and into a clearing, where the massive lizard had been, and still was.

Shattered pieces of armor littered the clearing, broken weapons were between its massive feet. The clearing was scorched and blasted from magics, all of it giving mute testimony to the fierceness of the battle.

The gargantuan upright walking lizard had its head slumped down, revealing that the top of its massive muzzle had been plated with black iron plates, that its skull was protected by more of the same. The massive eyes were closed, and the nostrils flared as it inhaled slowly. The metal arms were hanging limp by its sides, blood still smeared across the arcane runes that covered all of the black iron.

The ancient Kobold living weapon had feasted, and now it was sleeping, digesting its meal.

Aveliene swerved, running along the side of the huge thunder lizard, and plunged her blade into the end of the massive toe. Her strength, her momentum, and the enchanted blade all served to sink the war-knife to the hilt and let her drag it the entire length of the toe, over the massive knuckle, and along the side of the foot until it pulled free at the backside of the humongous foot.

She snapped her wrist to flick the blood from the knife as she kept running. Behind her the living weapon exhaled, still asleep, and the Reavers howled out their hunting cries.

Moving quickly and agilely, Aveliene moved up the tumbled rocks that had once been a keep, once again using the saplings to pull herself rapidly up the hill.

The vast sound of the living weapon suddenly jerking awake suspiciously sounded like "Huurrrm?" and Aveliene jumped, clearing the crest of the hill and putting a set of massive stone blocks between her, the living weapon, and the Reavers.

RAAAWWRRRGGGG! sounded out behind her, the enraged pained bellow shook the leaves, loud enough that sound made her ears ring. There were shrieks of rage from the Reavers, and another roar from the living weapon, and Aveliene giggled to herself. Aveliene waited a moment and peeked over the top of the rocks to take a look at the scene.

One of the Nannies had climbed up on top of the giant lizard's head, but a quick swipe of one of the metal hands snatched it from its perch and delivered it to the waiting jaws. Two chomps, and the living weapon tossed its head back and swallowed. A foot stomp crushed two of the wolves, and a lunging bite scooped up another Nanny.

Aveliene watched as the living weapon, a legacy from a war eons ago that had been released from a vault for reasons unknown during the Lich King War, gobbled up every one of the Reavers, and pounded after the Nanny Queen when it ran into the woods. The earth shook with each footstep, and the lizards bellowing cry, louder than thunder, caused of shiver of fear in Aveliene's core.

She'd seen one during the Lich King War, released by her Step-Mother from the ancient vault it had been held in statis within. It had routed the opposing army nearly by itself, and unlike the one chasing the Nanny deeper into the woods, that one had still retained its weaponry from the bygone war it had been created for.

She waited a few moments and followed the living weapon. She needed to be sure that it destroyed the Reavers in the area. The Reavers would make the mistake of attacking it, viewing it as food or an enemy to be destroyed, an interloper in their territory. They would keep attacking until they were all gone, and the living weapon would snap them all up like Fraker the Axe and a plate of shrimp.

Aveliene smiled wide as she ran after the relic.

He who does not fight yet wins is most beloved.

* * * * *

Sunlight fell into the clearing in glittering golden beams, falling about the woman laying nude upon the flat topped rock and caressing her skin. Her hands drifted down her body, pinching here, rubbing there, caressing at that spot, and lightly squeezing that place. Golden motes danced above her gently parted ruby lips, and perspiration glittered on her rich brown skin like morning dew as she moaned softly. Her deep sea green hair was spread out beneath her head like a fan, with green leaves scattered in her hair from where the leaves had apparently fallen from trees, and her opalescent fingernails glittered in the sunlight. Her deep green eyes were slitted as she gasped again with the intensity of the sensations rippling through her, causing her back to arc, her chocolate tipped breasts thrusting up toward the leaves above her.

Aveliene crouched in the shadows at the edge of the glade, squinting at the woman on the rock. She was looking at the woman's body closely, looking for telltale markings on the woman's body. The woman's nipples were large, and Aveliene could see faint puckerings on the side of her nipples, each indentation filled with a tiny drop of thick clear liquid, and Aveliene knew that each pucker held a small thornlike barbs that would erupt from the flesh to pierce any flesh that came into contact with it, and the liquid was highly toxic, a powerful aphrodisiac and euphoric. The woman's hand had almost invisible fuzz on her palms, which Aveliene knew to be tiny needles, like found on stinging nettles, that would embed in skin and cause heightened feelings of euphoria and numbness as they dissolved into the bloodstream. That and other small attributes told Aveliene that she wasn't looking at some lovely hermit or beautiful nature lover communing with Mother Earth.

The woman was a fey.

Aveliene watched the wood-nymph attempt to lure her out of hiding and hid a smirk. Despite what many people believed, fey were very dangerous, enough that even her Step-Mother was wary around them. The nymph knew that someone was near her glade, and Aveliene could smell the rich loam scent of her pheromones even over a dozen paces away. Any normal mortal would be stumbling toward her, stripping off their clothing, their minds fixated by the impressive dance she was performing and by the scent of her, unaware and uncaring that fey like the nymph liked to play with their food.

The fact that the wood nymph chose to lay on the rock and pleasure herself to lure in food and playthings told Aveliene volumes. Something, or someone, had caused the nymph to revert back to a more primal mode. She should have been dressed provocatively, singing to herself, possibly playing a lute, pan-pipe, or harp. The nymph should have been surrounded by butterflies, bunnies, and dragonflies (maybe even with some Peepers watching intently and enjoying the songs, poetry, and stories if she was clever enough), and she should have artfully posed near a body of water. Instead she was far enough from a body of water that Aveliene couldn't smell any, which meant she was keeping far away from any water-nymphs, pixies, or kelpie's territory.

Three things could have caused the nymph to revert to a more primal behavior, Aveliene knew. If the section of the High Roads had been abandoned for long enough, without travellers, she could have born and never met any civilized creature, had never lured a plaything in to learn from and indulge herself with, had never had another fey teach her how to properly hunt. But that would have required centuries to go by, and the clearing was the exit point from the High Roads to Kingdom of Laprinious, which meant that either she would have been eliminated, or quite civilized, as Laprinious had only been destroyed a handful of years over a decade before.

The nymph could have wandered from deeper in the High Roads, the more primal areas where not even the halfling's caravans or the goblin tribes dared go. Or been transplanted from such a region, perhaps her black pine seed could have dropped from a passing caravan just before Laprinious had been destroyed, and she had grown in the last handful of years. But that would mean she would be much younger looking, almost prepubescent, and would be more interesting in frolicing in the forest among the sunlight, leaves, and butteflies. And killing and devouring all who entered her domain.

The other choice was that something had happened where the High Roads bled into the Kingdom of Laprinious, where the two overlapped slightly. Something that would have severely damaged the land, something that would have returned it to a primal state.

There was only one thing that could have done that, and Aveliene prayed she was wrong.

Aveliene knew she had to get by the guardian, and there was nothing within a few days travel to distract the nymph with. She would have to cross the clearing, and that meant exposing herself to the nymph.

She concentrated for a moment, and her armor and weapons melted off of her, seeming to be absorbed by her rich brown skin, leaving her naked at the edge of the clearing. She reached up with one hand and rolled her nipples between her fingers, first one breast, then the other, her other hand dropping down as she parted her legs slightly. Her fingers moved within her folds, rubbing first the top nubbin, then the one at the bottom. After a few moments she slid a finger in with a gasp, rubbing the highly sensitive spot inside of her.

To heighten her pleasure she remembered the last time she had taken her pleasure from the Step-Brother, how she had chased him deep into the Primal Lands of the High Roads, had smashed him across the back of the head with a large rock, knocking him face first into the moss. How she had rolled him over, slamming the rock into his massive heavy forehead twice to stun him, and then how she took him into her mouth. Once he had been hard, she had straddled her and taken her pleasure from him, almost weeping with the way his length and thickness stretched her.

The nymph suddenly sat up, her hands falling to the rock and the leaves in her hair coming with the lush expanse of green. Flowers suddenly blossomed in her hair as she looked toward Aveliene and licked her lips. The Wraithkiller kept watch, remembering how it had felt when she had rolled over and used her powerful legs to drag her massive step brother on top of her. The nymph stood up, gasping, exhaling golden motes as she took first one step, then two, toward the Wraithkiller.

Remembering the feeling of Fraker the Axe driving into her, his growling urgent passion as he took fully, pushed her closer and closer to climax, the nymph coming closer in closer almost in time with her rising orgasm.

Just before she reached her peak, she stopped, stepping out of the foliage and into the clearing.

"Embrace me." The nymph whispered, her throaty voice husky with lust and invitation. Leaves parted and allowed a beam of golden sunlight to fall upon her, illuminating her in a warm golden glow, the dewdrops of perspiration glistening on her rich brown skin.

Fingers that were covered in dampness from her hidden folds were brought up to her mouth, and Aveliene rolled her tongue around her fingers, coating her mouth with the taste of herself. "Worship me." Aveliene replied, arching her back slightly to lift her breasts, the sweat that had covered her during her self-ministration glittering. A single drop of perspiration rolled down the swell of her breast, across her nipple, to hang, quivering, from the bud of puckered brown skin.

The nymph inhaled and her pupils dilated as she smelled Aveliene's scent on the air, the breath from the duo of words Aveliene had spoken laden with her own scent. The nymph groaned, a loud, eager noise, and took another step toward Aveliene. Aveliene spread her arms wide, exhaling long and slow again as she stepped toward the Wraithkiller.

As the nymph approached, Aveliene smiled.

Sunlight sparkled as the nymph fell to her knees before the Wraithkiller, her long emerald hair puddling over Aveliene's feet. Warm hands caressed Aveliene's flesh, and the tiny dissolvable needles on her palms embedded in her flesh, causing her skin to light on fire as if she'd just snorted a heavy dose of skinfire. The nymphs saliva from her kisses made Aveliene's nerves flare with pleasure.

A low moan escaped Aveliene's throat as the fey's questing fingers opened her up and an urgent tongue pressed into her. The fey's venom did little more than cause Aveliene's lust to surge.

With a smile Aveliene took the fey down onto the ground.

* * * * *
The forest blurred slightly around Aveliene as she stepped off the rock, and she felt the glade shift slightly, the trees becoming sparser, the grass thicker, and the smell of a stream nearby. She'd made it out of the High Roads without too many problems. Speed, planning, and agility serving her better than an attempt of brute force would have.

Aveliene smiled, concentrated, and felt her armor and weapons appear from the strange not-place they went to when she hid them. She paused for a moment to adjust the armor properly where it was too tight in some places and too loose in others.

A rustling noise in the grass made her pause as she buckled the leather tube around her long red braid, and she looked around slowly.

Butterflies danced over the flowers, dragonflies flitted about in the sunlight, and the glade looked like something out of a painting with berry bushes laden with ripe fruit hedging the glade.

Her stomach plummeted as she stared at her surroundings.

A noise made her look down, where she saw a small reptillian head the size of an apricot pit looking up at her, its bronze scales glimmering in the sunlight and its tiny black eyes staring at her. In the little lizard's claws was held a small stick, the pointed end discolored by a thick sap-like substance.

"Yum yum." The Peeper said, looking up at her.

[Tim Willard]

Thanks for changing that. This is a smaller entry, but still fun.

Peepers are a little smaller than a rabbit, have long slender necks and tails, little heads the size and shape of an apricot pit, and are immature kobolds. They like to sing, dance, play with butterflies and dragonflies, and are in general as innocent as any child.

Unless they don't have adults to teach them songs.

Aveliene whipped her gaze up to the branches above her and saw dozens, scores of little black eyes staring at her. The mottled pattern of the Peeper's lizard skins made them almost invisible, but their bright eyes, gleaming little sharp teeth, and tightly held little spears were easy to spot. Many of them were licking their chops, and what was normally a loving, trusting look in their eyes was replaced by a predatory hunger.

Without pausing Aveliene took off running, high stepping through the grass.

"Mustn't step. Mustn't step." Aveliene kept repeating, dancing from spot to spot as she rushed across the clearing.

Little holes, roughly the size of a person's foot, were scattered through the clearing, many of them with sharpened rib bones from small animals or sharpened sticks on the sides or bottom. Several times Peepers pulled vines in front of her feet, intending on having the vines catch on her ankles so she might step on one and fall. Peepers popped out of the ferns and grass of the clearing to throw their little spears which bounced off of Aveliene's leather armor.

In the branches the other Peepers rushed across the branches, over one another, those who caught up with Aveliene leaping at her. One bit her ear as it stabbed at her neck with the point of its spear, and Aveliene could feel the burning of the venom. Another landed on the top of her head, holding onto one of the small braids, and began jabbing at her scalp. Still another landed on her shoulder, bit deeply into her earlobe, and began digging inside of her ear with the spear, jabbing painfully into her eardrum.

Aveliene snatched them off as quickly as she could, dancing around the clearing, until she neared the ring of berry bushes. Two steps gave her the momentum to clear the bushes, rolling tightly in midair to shed the handful of Peeper that were holding onto her before landing in the ferns on the other side. She felt a few stakes crackle under her boot and gave thanks for the thin steel plates layered into the sole.

"Yum yum!" sounded out from around and behind her, and Aveliene kept hopping, stepping high enough to avoid any sudden yanked vines, and watching her feet to make sure she didn't step in any more holes. Behind her the Peeper rushed after her and let out warbling hunting cries.

Hunting cries that were echoed ahead of her.

"You have to be kidding me." Aveliene mumbled, putting on the speed.

"Come back, you're made of yum yum!" A high peeping voice called out from behind her.

"Yum yum!" all the others called out.

"I'm telling Mother on you!" Aveliene yelled over her shoulder.

Behind her the brightly bronze colored one and a small lean silver one both paused for a second, cocked their apricot heads, then continued with their charge after the Wraithkiller, voicing their warbling hunting cries.

Aveliene cleared the woods and into a grassy feel, repeating her mantra of "mustn't step mustn't step" as she kept high stepping through the grass, dodging foot traps, vines pulled up to snag either ankles, and spears jabbing at her ankles. More Peepers dropped on her as she left the cover of the woods and held on tenaciously, jabbing at her with the sharply pointed tiny spears. The venom they used made her skin burn and itch, but other than that it had no effect on her inhuman physiology.

The Peepers from the woods fell back, merely hopping along behind her, while the grassland pack took up the chase, warbling and stabbing at her ankles and the top of her boots with their spears. One brave little Peeper leaped up, grabbed ahold of her belt, and began gnawing through the thick leather, while two others used him as a ladder to climb up her back. Both of them reached her shoulders as she dodged a whole bunch of the small lizard that were holding up sharpened chunks of metal debris. Her hands darted to her back, grabbing at the Peeper who was industriously half way through the thick leather, and the two holding onto her hair at her shoulders reared their heads back and opened their mouths, small needlelike fangs unfolding from the roofs of their mouths. She managed to grab the one at her back and toss it away, but the two on her shoulders bit deeply into the side of her neck, their jaws flexing as they pumped venom into her.

Aveliene screamed as the Peeper venom flooded into her system, stumbling for a moment. Her vision went gray and her heart began to hammer. She snatched the two of them away, leaving bloody holes in her throat that pumped blood with the steadiness of ruptured veins and the pulsing flow of a nicked artery. Once the Peeper left her hand, flying backwards through the air with droplets of venom and blood glittering on the translucent fangs, she clapped her hand to her neck, squeezing tight.

"Yum yum! Yum yum!" sounded out around her, behind her, and she kept stumbling on, driven by instinct, willpower, and centuries of training and experience. She could feel the blood running from her nose, and there were sparks across her graying vision.

She stumbled out of the grass, the Peepers holding onto her ankles and chewing on her leather armor dropping free and quickly hopping back into the grass. Blackened dirt, more ash than soil, puffed up around her boots she kept stumbling forward. She kept moving forward, glancing behind her.

The Peepers were gathered at the knife-edged division of the blackened soil and the grassy field, jumping up and down and waving their spears, peeping in their high pitched voices for the "Yum yum to come back."

Not willing to take any chances, Aveliene kept stumbling forward, her eyes fixed on a patch of tumbled rock, on a small ruin. She could feel the venom coursing through her body, but at least the holes in her neck had closed. Slowly for her, but still they had closed all the same, meaning she wasn't losing any more blood.

She rounded the corner of the pile of rubble, her bladder letting go between one step and the next, filling her underclothes with a thick oily liquid. She took a couple more steps and went down on one knee, her stomach heaving twice and then boiling up her throat in a rush. Noxious green bile spattered on the black dirt, her body trying to purge out the Peeper venom before it stopped both of her hearts. Already her primary heart was stuttering, making it feel like her chest was being crushed and shooting pains merged with muscle cramps in her shoulders and down her left arm. She heaved twice more, the last of the contents of her stomach splashing between her hands.

With a moan of pain she pushed herself over, onto her side, away from the puddle, curling up on the dirt and hugging her knees close to her chest and moaning as fire coursed through her veins.

Stupid Peepers...

[Tim Willard]

"I'm telling you, I don't want to be here." Electulu panted, trying to keep up with Aveliene. Her hair was soaked in sweat and her dress was grass stained from the waist high foliage that her eldest sister had led them through. The ground rumbled and Electulu almost lost her balance, bringing a smothered giggle from Aveliene. Sweat covered Electulu's rich brown skin, glimmering on the intricate and swirling tattoos that had been etched into her skin with a patient and skilled hand.

Where Electulu was dressed like a farmer's wife, complete with a sun bonnet that was tucked into her sash, Aveliene wore skin tight leathers with thick straps across her limbs. Electulu was only armed with her namesake, the wondrous Brass Flute that her Step-Mother had commissioned for her, but Aveliene was armed with her ever present jackal-man war daggers in her boots and a short sword on her hip.

"Quit complaining. Mother said you needed to come along, and I don't argue with her." Aveliene said sternly, turning away from her younger sister and darting through the grass. The small mountain had slowly grown as the two had traveled toward it until it filled the entire sky. Another rumble caused the grass to wave silently, a deer breaking free of the nest it had slept in and bouncing away through the emerald field.

"I don't like him. He's a menace and we should just leave him there until the sun burns out." Electulu said, striving to hide her nervousness.

"Bah, he's funny, and our little brother." She paused and stared at Electulu for a long moment while the younger woman caught up. "And you should show him some respect."

"Yes, Eldest Sister." Electulu answered, ducking her head.

"Better." Aveliene said, then darted away again, forcing Electulu to run after her. A silver shimmering laugh sounded from the redheaded Aveliene, and another rumble didn't even slow her stride through the grass. Electulu cursed under her breath, the voice that had left lords and ladies weeping after an aria, the voice that had brought to life opera after play, the rich melodious voice that effortlessly lifted others to great heights was a rough growl as she snarled words that would have her patrons and fans gasping or fainting in shock.

Another rumble, and Electulu could see a massive figure in front of the mountain, thin lines attaching the figure to the stone of the mountain. As the duo drew closer the figure became more and more clear, a massive bipedal figure clad in jet black armor with red edging. Details became clearer and clearer the closer that Electulu and Aveliene got, the blond Electulu slowing down even as Aveliene skipped forward.

Chains as thick as a ox were anchored to the very bones of the mountain, falling from the rocky heights to sink into the armor of the massive figure, narrowing as they got closer and closer until they were only the width of a blacksmith's arms. One seemed to sink into the back of the helmet, a pair sunk into the shoulders, another into the wrists, another into the thighs, and yet another pair into the ankles. A massive harness made of blackened steel chain wrapped around the figure, looping over the shoulders, around the chest, around the hips, hooked to a massive ring of polished orichulum.

Electulu shied away as the figure took another slow step, the ground rumbling as the mountain scraped forward another few inches. Aveliene rushed forward and laid her head against the steel clad abdomen, standing on her tiptoes and spreading her arms out as wide as she could as if she was hugging the massive figure.

"So happy to see you, Little Brother." Aveliene crooned, nuzzling the armor. She looked back and saw Electulu holding back, wringing her hands in front of her. "Quit being a ninny and get over here."

Aveliene let go of the massive figure, reaching into a small belt pouch, her arm vanishing up to her elbow despite the small size of the pouch. Her arm twisted and she stuck her tongue out of the corner of her mouth, crossing her eyes as she dug around in the impossible space. Her face lit up and she began pulling hard, her muscles in her arm and shoulder bulging and the tendons on her neck standing out. Finally the mouth of the pouch stretched impossibly and the head of a massive war-axe began to slowly be dragged out from the pouch until Aveliene let the huge axe fall.

It had a blunt hammer on one side, and the arc of the blade was at least a meter. A brutal foot long spike topped off the axe, and the handle was almost four feet long with a heavy steel ball fashioned into an inlaid skull tipping the handle. The lower third of the axe-haft was wrapped in black stained leather taken from the flesh of serial killers lynched by their victims. The upper two thirds was inlaid and engraved, precious metals and gems graven into eye watering runes that glimmered with an inner light. The head of the war-axe was engraved and inlaid, gems taken from the Astral Core, the heart of an Ethereal Plane hurricane, from the gizzard of a cockatrice, and other strange and obscure places. The axe was a work of art, and the medium the axe worked in was war.

The figure chained the small mountain stood upright, the chains falling slack, and the helmet slowly tilted down with the scream of tortured metal. Aveliene looked up with a smile, seeing the twin pools of blood that passed for the eyes of the behemoth chained to the mountain.

"Ahh, you recognize it, don't you, Little Brother?" Aveliene smiled, looking into the red eyes almost twenty feet above her. "You remember holding it in your hands, don't you? You remember what it was like to feel its weight in your hands, feel it crunch into those who fell before you, and I bet you remember every spray of blood it tore out of those who you felled to water the wheat."

At the last few words a deep rumbling growl came from the massive figure that Electulu could feel in her bones, a growl that made the hair at the nape of her neck stand up and urged her to run, screaming into the grass, to run and run until not even the mountain could be seen.

The breeze shifted, coming from behind Electulu and blowing toward the massive figure.

Another growl sounded, and the figure raised its head, the twin pools of blood locking onto the small petite form of Electulu.

Electulu shivered under the weight of the gaze, feeling the hunger that filled the gaze that pierced her to her very core, that somehow violated her and left her feeling soiled and obscenely exposed beneath that bloody eyed gaze.

"Pay attention to me, beloved Little Brother." Aveliene sang mockingly, banging on the massive chestplate with the pommel of her war-dagger, producing small sounding thunks. The gaze slowly ground from Electulu back to Aveliene, then somehow seemed to intensify as it saw the axe and the woman who was dragging it up with both hands to hold it above her head.

The massive figure's right hand slowly moved around in front of it, the fingers wrapping around the haft with slow purposeful strength.

"Our Step-Mother sent me, beloved Youngest Brother." Aveliene cried out as the figure slowly raised the axe head to the level of its eyes.

"Let the Herald of Carnage be unbound!" She cried out, her voice ringing and echoing. She jumped up and slapped the shining ring, and with a crack the ring shattered, the chains slithering off the figure.

"Let the Favored Son of Gor DuMay be unbound!" Another cry, and the chains on the legs fell away with a crack.

"Let the beloved son of the Eternal Elba be unbound!" Aveliene shouted, and the last of the chains fell away.

The figure's presence seemed to grow, no longer a feature of the landscape but rather a living breathing man clad in the steel armor of the Stygian Wave.

Another growl rumbled from the figure, even as it seemed to shrink, and Aveliene laughed gaily.

"Oh, Little Brother, it is so good to see." She licked her lips with a serpentine tongue. "How I wish you were for me to dine upon, to slake my lusts upon, but alas, our Step-Mother wishes you to present yourself straight away."

Another growl made Electulu flinch again, and the figure's head turned toward her.

"Her? I brought her for you, Little Brother." Aveliene laughed, then turned to smile at Aveliene, her interlocked white teeth flashing in the sun.

"Run, younger sister, run!" Aveliene said. On the figures waist a belt pouch bulged and a small apricot-pit sized head popped out, the small reptilian head on the end of a long slender neck. The small reptile yawned, revealing razor sharp teeth and a pair of translucent fangs.

Electulu backed up, shaking her head in denial.

The massive figure dropped the axe into the cradle on his belt and took one step toward Electulu, the sound of spurs on stone sounding out.

Electulu broke and ran, Aveliene's cruel laughter echoing behind her.

"Mother said if you catch her, you can have her!" Aveliene laughed as the massive figure began pounding after the fleeing young woman.

"I hate you, you bitch!" Electulu's voice floated back to Aveliene, mixing with the redhead's laughter.

-----------------------------

Aveliene felt the sun go down, her body beginning to cool down, and started to stir, her eyes opening up. Every bone and joint and muscle hurt but she opened her eyes anyway.

The stone pile was only a few yards away, and she began painfully crawling toward it, collapsing several times.

Finally she managed to pull herself into a small alcove, where she collapsed, closed her eyes, and let her dreams/memories take her again.

[Tim Willard]

The Black Unicorn (Cont 5)
Aveliene awoke from dark dreams of her past, her stomach cramping hard enough to pull her from memories of sitting at her Step-Mother's feet and basking in her love. She rolled over, hung her head over a chunk of rock, and vomited up a thick knot of blackish tar, the Peeper venom bound to dead blood to purify her system. The inside of her armor felt sticky against her skin, but she knew that there was nothing she could do about it.

Sunset was only an hour or two away, the western sky an angry purple and crimson, lightning flickering off in the distance. The edge of the grass was only a few dozen paces away, and she could see the grass rustling when she peaked over the top of the rubble pile. Her sharp eyes caught a pair of apricot sized lizard heads ducking down into grass, right before a pair of dandelions popped up out of the grass and waved back and forth.

By my mother's widening ass, you have to be kidding me. Aveliene swore, seeing dandelions pop up and wave back and forth deeper and deeper into the clearing. They're signalling that I'm moving around again to the rest of the packs.

She could faintly hear the cries of "Yum yum back!" floating toward her, and knew she had to move soon.

Her limbs wouldn't support her when she tried to stand, going back onto her knees and curling up in a ball to shudder away a few minutes with the strain of the effort. Only one of her hearts were beating, thudding in an arrymthic pattern, and she knew that she couldn't run.

A small group of six Peepers exited the tall grass and Aveliene had to restrain an urge to laugh. They'd rubbed leaves on tree sap, attaching the sticky leaves to their snake-like skin, making each of them look like leaf covered lizards, the disguise unlikely to fool anything with any smarts. Each of them were holding sharpened sticks, and even though her vision was blurry she could see the thick tarlike substance on the tips.

They advanced slowly, the one at the back keeping an eye on the grass behind them, the two on each side swiveling their little heads watching their flanks, and the one in the lead keeping its beady black eyes on the stone pile, but watching its surroundings at the same time.

What are you little ones so worried about? Aveliene wondered. She'd seen Peeper "hunting parties" before, and they'd never moved in the same way as the six heading toward her. Never so nervous, and never with such attention to their surroundings. The rear one kept looking up, and Aveliene knew that it was looking for hawks, falcons, or other birds of prey.

Aveliene's leg spasmed, residuals of the venom still in her muscles, and a handful of stones fell to the ground with a thump.

With fearful cries the Peepers turned, as one, and raced back to the grass, two of them dropping their little spears. Red flowers erupted in the field, bobbing up and down a few times before vanishing.

What in the world?

Aveliene's stomach cramped again, hard, behind where a belly button would be on a normal woman, and a stuttering thump made her gasp. She squeezed her eyes shut, clutching her stomach, as the stuttering beating of her second hard began, taking several long moments before it evened out. She coughed, hawking up a gob of tarlike substance and spitting it on the rocks.

By the time she was able to look again, the Peepers had moved almost halfway across the distance between their grassy field. Aveliene could see that if anything, they were more agitated than before, often hopping foot to foot while the leader stopped and scented the air with nostrils and a flickering little tongue.

Curious, Aveliene kicked some more rocks down, letting them fall in a patter of thumps.

Just like before, the Peepers turned and raced away, and the red flowers bobbed in the grass.

She could feel strength returning to her muscles, her superhuman strength flowing back into them with every dual beat of her hearts. She kept watch on the field as she undid her small flap at her crotch, squatted down, and urinated another puddle of thick oily-like urine that stunk of alkaline. She began to feel better after expelling the liquid from her bladder, where her body had deposited the Peeper venom. She began to feel warmer, her body temperature going up as the last of the venom was expelled from her system through her sweat glands. She urinated again, only a few dribs, then wiped herself with a cloth she pulled from a pouch. She put away the cloth, then buttoned back up her armor, standing up and stretching.

"YUM YUM!" came the cry from the field, and Aveliene's sharp hearing could hear the answering cries from the ones across the field in the forest.

They're working together. My Step-Mother would be proud of her babies. Aveliene mused, watching as another group came forward. And look at you, little prince. Aveliene felt a rush of pride and affection, even though they were coming for her, as she saw that they were led by a slightly larger Peeper with shiny bronze scales beneath the leaves.

A hawk cried out, and all of them hunkered down, pressing their bodies flat on the ground, the bronze hissing and exposing a pair of translucent fangs that unfolded from the soft tissues at the roof of its mouth. They stayed that way for a few moments, waiting for the hawk to sound again, and Aveliene smiled. She'd seen Peepers do that before, in her Step-Mother's garden, which had literally scores of Peepers gathered together in dozens of small packs.

The last rays of the sun glimmered like fire as the sun slipped below the horizon, the shadows deepening, and a stillness came over the land around Aveliene.

Suddenly the Peepers leaped up, turning and fleeing back to the grass. Aveliene could hear the bronze urging them on, urging them to hide in their burrows, that yum yum could be found when the sky fire came back.

This isn't right. Aveliene's brow furrowed. Peepers, like the kobolds they would grow up to be, were perfectly comfortable during the day or the night. At night they saw with almost perfect clarity in hues of gray, but could see all the same even better than an elf.

Aveliene could hear a faint drumming, getting louder by the hearbeat, and the Wraithkiller looked around.

Deeper into the plain of blackened earth she could see a copse of trees she hadn't noticed when she was stumbling toward the rocks. The trees were twisted and malformed, their branches reaching up like the hands of a drowning man, the leaves black and oily looking, and the fruit that she could barely make out seemed lumpy and malformed.

The Peepers had just made it into the grass when it burst from the trees, the sight of it making Aveliene gasp.

Twice as tall as a normal horse, its flanks rippling as its muscles drove it across the oily feeling black dirt. The back hooves looked like unforged iron, a deep almost pebbly looking gray, while the front hooves were cruel looking paws. Its horn was as long as Aveliene's leg, as thick as her thigh where it joined the massive head, and the point at the end of the curling horn gleamed in the rapidly dimming light. From the bottom of its massive jaw a pair of thick tusks curved upwards, and from just below the nose the matching pair curved wickedly to below the bottom of the jaw. It paused for a moment, rearing high in the air, it's paws clawing at the air, its mouth opening up to reveal dentation more like a shark, or Aveliene's jaws, than the flat teeth of a normal horse. Its thick penis sheath told Aveliene that this was a stallion, and by its size, Aveliene guessed that if there were more about, this one would be the herd stallion.

It let loose a blood curdling scream of hunger, rage, and an obscene announcement of its dominance over the land. The sound of it curdled Aveliene's blood and made the small part of her mind scream at her to run, run as hard and fast as she could, to break away from her hiding place and run for it across the packed oily earth.

Aveliene's sharp hearing picked up the small screams of terror from the grass, bringing up memories of her youth when the Blue Ridge Berry Pack had been swept away by a flash flood. Anger swept the last of the venom from her system, her heart rates slowing, the beating of her heart becoming deeper and more intense, pushing more blood through her system although the beats slowed down. She felt the cool trickle of adrenaline release down her spine, in her groin, deep in her breasts, and at the base of her skull. Her senses widened, expanded, and sharpened.

She could identify where the individual Peepers were based on the terrified cries; the rustling of the grass that told her where they were located, where they had been, and which direction they were going; she could hear the heavy breathing of the black unicorn, the thudding of its heart, and the sound of her boots scraping across the moss covered rock as she twisted. She could see the veins pulsing with life beneath the black fur and skin of the abomination, the flecks of froth around its mouth, and the ropey spittle flying from its mouth as it let loose with another roar of rage as its front claws came down and it bunched itself to charge toward the grass.

Aveliene's leap took her over eighty feet from the edge of the rocks, her war-daggers appearing in her hands as she pulled them from her boot tops, the leather wrapped hilts fitting in her palms like old friends.

The black unicorn, its eyes red and maddened, launched itself toward the grass, its tail streaming out behind it, as Aveliene quickly closed the distance. Her lips were pulled back in what the rest of the civilized races thought of as a smile, what her species showed when they were fueled with aggression, their bloodstream filled with combat hormones and chemicals.

My Step-Mother wants your horn, beast, and be it to masturbate with or beat naughty children with, your horn is now hers. Aveliene's thoughts rocketed through her mind, more of a feeling than an actual thought, a brief flashing image of herself kneeling before the Eternal Elba, her head resting in the other woman's lap, being read a story from the huge book penned eons ago by Ancient Ping, her Step-Mother's face shining with love and pride as the hand not holding the book stroked Aveliene's hair, a pink ribbon woven into the Wraithkiller's crimson locks.

The beast's red eye facing Aveliene was full of rage and hatred, and... joy?

The realization that there was more to the black unicorn than a crude beast came to the woman as she threw herself up and forward, one hand reaching for the horn, the dagger stuffed back into the boot sheathe, the other bringing the knife back.

Her hand grabbed the curled horn just as the beast pulled back its head, beginning to rear back.

A normal woman would have had her hand torn free of the horn, but Aveliene's grip could crush walnuts. Instead of being flung loose, Aveliene curled around the movement, swinging out, then up, as if she were performing on the parallel bars for her Step-Mother's approval. Her weapon hand flashed down, the enchanted blade's engraving and inlays glimmering with an inner light, the edge swinging toward the base of the horn.

There was an artery was located in the horn, and a nerve cord as sensitive and important as one in another creature's limbs. Severing the horn would leave the unicorn screaming in agony and pumping spurts of blood from the stump, in intolerable pain in the few minutes before its heartbeat emptied its veins. The unicorn's horn was as hard as steel, and a normal weapon had no chance to sever it, but the blade in Aveliene's hand could slice through stone or enchanted armor alloys like tissue or be blunt enough that it had no edge.

The edge, more than razor sharp at Aveliene's intentions and will, swept down and met the base of the horn.

A sharp crack sounded out, a bright blinding light flashing from the blade, and the war-dagger spun from suddenly nerveless fingers as her whole hand went numb from contact. Sharp shooting pains went up her arm, and the useless limb flopped at her side as she completed the swing around the horn and let go. She tucked into a roll at the top of the arc, her good hand darting to her boot to pull out her other dagger, and she could sense the unicorn rearing back and swivelling to follow her as she came down and rolled with the momentum.

She came up running, hearing the odd combination of hoofbeats and paws thudding on the ground as the black unicorn voiced another scream and charged after her.

I'm not a little baby. Aveliene snarled in her mind as she kept running for the copse of trees. Let the big bastard follow me, and if there's any more of them around, they'll come to his defense.

She could feel the hatred rolling off the big black animal as she charged toward the copse of trees, her movements strangely fluid as she ran in more of a skipping motion than anything else, her long legs and her strength letting her lengthen out her strides with inhuman grace.

The abomination of an equine screamed again as Aveliene drew slightly away from it, her speed bringing forth another scream of rage and hatred from her pursuer. Another quick few paces and the twisted, loathsome trees were almost close enough, the black and oily leaves shining with what Aveliene knew would be venom. She was close enough now to recognize the trees, to see that they were trees that had been thought to be extinct since the First Humaniod War. The leaves were coated with a virulent toxin that not only killed anyone who touched them, but caused the flesh to mortify within minutes, providing nutrition for the tree.

A toxin that Aveliene was naturally immune to.

Screams of rage followed her as she leaped into the branches, the black leaves swallowing her from sight. Even though she'd gotten above the foul creature and vanished from its sight, she remembered the vile intellect she saw in its eyes as she swung around its horn, and kept moving deeper into the trees, leaping from branch to branch with the same speed she'd have on the ground.

The thudding of the "horse" following her weaved around the thick trunks that oozed venomous sap, and Aveliene paused for a second to get her bearing from the echoes of the black unicorn's movements, her mind creating a three dimensional map based on the echo returns.

Below her the black unicorn reared up and screamed, its front paws savaging the trunk of the tree and causing bark and splinters of wood to fly.

It screamed with rage again when Aveliene stuck her serpentine tongue out at it and blew a raspberry, rearing up even higher to rip and tear at the bark in its rage as if it was substituting the tree for Aveliene's flesh.

Aveliene took off running, moving deeper and deeper into the forest, noting the occasional cracked and broken stone or half rotted wooden beam sticking out of the rich loam of the forest floor. According to her internal map, built off of paper maps and her own travels, told her that she was at the edge of Joulienne-Wek, a metropolis before the violent clashes of the Lich King War. The thick threes had grown up where the city had once stood, the roots of the trees and bushes as well as the moss and grass had torn apart the ruins of the city in record time. Aveliene had seen it before, in places long abandoned, but never without elves encouraging nature's shock troops.

As she bounced off a fairly thick branch she spotted a large stag which was scenting the air. Two more steps and the stag was wheeling around, squealing in fright as it scented the black unicorn, and began fleeing from the predator it could hear and smell approaching.

Sorry, young one. Aveliene thought, dropping from the branch and landing next to the fleeing stag. A quick looping slice with her war-dagger opened up its neck from one side to the other, severing the windpipe and the veins and arteries in one quick movement. The dagger was sharp enough the stag didn't even feel it, instinctively flinching away from Aveliene in the moment she was there before she ducked underneath the stag's neck to the other side of the dying animal and then leaped back up into the branches, the stag's blood coating her from head to foot.

She stopped, pressing herself against the trunk, and went still, breathing slowly and shallowly through her nose even though her lungs cried out for more oxygen.

The unicorn burst into the clearing, its eyes wide and rolling, and it lunged forward, stabbing its horn deep into the dying stag's flag just behind the front shoulder. The force of the blow sent the stag crashing to the ground, blood pumping from the wound, and the black unicorn reared again, screaming in triumph as it forgot about Aveliene.

Not satisfied with a simple stab to the stag's flank, it lunged forward and began ripping at the body of the downed stag with its paws, the heavy claws tearing apart the stag, ripping free gobbets and flesh. The stag twitched, residual nerve impulses from a creature already dead, but it was enough to spur the black unicorn into a greater fury. It disemboweled the creature with two swipes, then spread its intestines and innards about in a frenzied burst of violence before stopping suddenly.

It looked around, sniffing the air, its flanks heaving, blowing foam from its nostrils as it straddled the downed stag and looked around again. Aveliene could sense its unease, and watched as it sniffed again, its baleful red eyes sweeping the surrounding forest.

A quick sweep of the treetops, and the creature didn't even pause when the hate filled eyes swept past where Aveliene was pressed against the tree trunk.

Satisfied that Aveliene was gone, and no threats were around, the creature snorted and shivered, the heavy muscle on its flanks rippling, then bent its head and began ripping off bloody chunks of the dead stag.

Aveliene watched with narrowed eyes as the massive black unicorn feasted on the body of the unlucky stag.

[Tim Willard]

The wind moved through the trees slowly, warm and humid, rustling the leaves and causing the branches to sway in the darkness of the night. All three moons had set, with a little light coming from the fragmented ring of what had been a white moon a few centuries before. Starlight helped, with the major constellations shining brightly from the skies even as key stars slowly moved to reflect events going on in the Six Worlds.

Particularly fading of the slowly pulsating stars that had lit up on the "wrists" of the constellation of Gor DuMay, the Blossom of Death, that astrologists insisted signified imprisonment rather than his death and punishment in the afterlife.

The forest was thick with large trees that appeared to be decades or even centuries old, despite the fact that a mere decade before a city had stood there. The ground was a thick rich loam that occurred after years of leaves falling to the ground and slowly decaying, with ferns and bushes covering vast swathes of land.

Animals should have been rustling in the foliage, night birds should have been calling out from branches and nest, or silently glided through the sky, but only two things moved through the forest, one watching the other with narrow hostile eyes.

The Black Unicorn trampled vegetation under its claws and hooves, often veering out of its way to take a moment to stomp a bush or flower patch into mulch before moving on. The massive stallion's muzzle was caked with clotted blood, and the woman following it could smell the stench of decaying blood and flesh billowing off of it like a noxious cloud.

Where are you going, my new friend? Aveliene wondered, pausing after leaping over twenty feet through the air to the next branch. She was covered in drying blood from the stag she had killed to distract the massive equine from her, and knew that it couldn't distinguish her smell from the blood covering its long nose.

So far the black unicorn had led her along a wandering path, sometimes trotting, sometimes galloping, but steadily moving deeper into the forest. It carried a massive chunk of meat in its mouth, and Aveliene knew it wasn't thinking of using it as a snack for later.

So is it a mate or a foal? She wondered, waiting a moment before launching herself through the air to the next branch. She held on for a moment as a brief wave of dizziness overcame her. Stupid Peepers, she grumbled internally. The little baby reptiles had come close to killing her with their venom, and she wondered again why her Step-Mother had never ensured that she was immune to the venom of her Step-Mother's chosen children.

A neighing scream sounded out ahead of her, and the black unicorn picked up the pace, abandoning the bush it was trampling. The scream made Aveliene's flesh pimple up, full of hatred and rage and an obscene hunger that vibrated something deep inside of her and almost forced her to flee from the sound.

Mate it is. She nodded, gliding along a long branch and stepping onto another that was attached to a tree trunk in the direction the stallion was trotting. Guess my Step-Mother will have two horns to beat naughty children with. She smiled, exposing interlocked teeth. Her hands dropped to her waist, and she made a moue of disgust as her fingertips grazed and empty sheathe.

I'll have to go back and get that. She chastised herself. The knives had been forged by her other Step-Mother, the Eternal Elba's wife, known to many as the Forge Lord, and were literally irreplaceable.

Up ahead the black unicorn slowed down, and as Aveliene watched another black unicorn appeared from the shadows. This one was several hands smaller than the massive beast she'd been tailing, with cruel fangs and sharp claws like its mate.

And a massively distended belly swaying below it.

Three horns. Aveliene amended.

The mare lifted its head, its nostrils dilating as it sniffed the air.

Uh-oh. Aveliene froze, pressing close to the tree trunk.

The head slowly swiveled, the black nostrils quivering as the mare scented the air.

With a scream of rage, it whirled around and began galloping away, the stallion dropping the hunk of meat and whirling around, rearing back and pawing at the air while screaming a challenge.

Aveliene launched herself away from the trunk, the force of her legs snapping her forward causing bark explode from the trunk. She passed over the unicorn, tucking into a tight ball and rotating so that she landed on her feet at a dead run. Behind her the black unicorn screamed again, but Aveliene was already at a dead run.

The mare came into sight, running flat out, but the Wraithkiller was rapidly gaining with long sure strides. Her jackal-man fighting knife was held tightly in her fist as she skimmed lightly over the ground. The animal behind her screamed in rage as it realized that what should have been easy prey was outrunning it and gaining on its mate.

The mare neighed in desperation as she felt Aveliene draw close, then screamed in pain as the woman lashed out and slashed the tendons at the back of its left hind leg. Before the leg could do more than buckle, Aveliene was abreast of it, the knife looping out and around to the other side of the neck, and before the mare could even scream Aveliene had opened its throat and veered off to the side, springing up into the trees and stopping.

Below her the mare tumbled a few times before ending up on its back, three of its legs kicking feebly as it tossed its head back and forth in denial of the savage wound Aveliene had inflicted. Aveliene watched the mare as the bleeding on the throat suddenly slowed.

The Wraithkiller cursed silently to herself as she saw that the animal possessed supernatural healing ability and felt a surge of anger at whatever god had created the foul creature.

With a snarl she launched into the air, not bothering with a roll, and dropped down with both of her Von-Lon infantry boots leading the way. The stallion was only a few score yards away and rapidly approaching as she dropped down out of the air, one hand absently sheathing her remaining dagger.

And landed directly on the massively distended belly.

Her feet burst through the skin in a shower of black viscous embryonic fluid, hit something that resisted for a second, and then her knees were absorbing the force of her landing. The mare screamed, a gurgling thing through a badly damaged windpipe, and Aveliene took the time to straighten her fingers, the talons on the end of her fingers gleaming for a moment in the starlight, and slam her hand into the mare's chest, shattering ribs and tearing through flesh.

She topped it off with a bite that left a triple circle of blood oozing holes, her jaw flexing as she pumped venom into the mare's body, before straightening up, stepping free of the mare's body, and kicking her right foot out in the same motion. Legs that could power a kick that fractured solid stone threw the body away from her, the internal organs rupturing under the powerful motion.

Before the mare's body even stopped rolling, the legs snapping and crackling as the bones broke, Aveliene shot straight up into the air, landing on a branch only a few yards up. The woman squatted down, one hand wrapped around the branch for balance, the other once again filled with her cruel dagger. Her smile was wide, baring bloody teeth, as the stallion burst from the foliage and came to a halt next to the shattered body of its mate.

It stood stock still for a moment, breathing heavily, staring at the broken and twisted body, the entrails that had burst from the stomach, and the crushed body of the foal that Aveliene had landed on.

Then it threw back its head and screamed, rage filling the primal sound.

Aveliene answered with a scream of her own, her opera honed voice carrying over the unicorn's voice and smothering it, continuing long after the unicorn stopped and whipped its head around to stare at her with murderous red eyes.

"What's wrong, precious? Lose something?" Aveliene taunted, and smiled wider when the dark intellect behind those eyes flashed angrily.

She tensed her legs, ready to drop down and kill the annoying beast, when it suddenly spun around and raced toward the edge of the small clearing.

"Come back, I'm not done playing with my food!" Aveliene crowed, dropping off the branch and giving chase.

The unicorn plunged into the shadow, and vanished in an inky ripple.

Aveliene snarled and leapt into the same space, concentrating for a moment, and felt the reality of the Six Worlds wash away as she crossed the border into the Shadow World where the black unicorn had fled.

The trees were twisted mockeries of themselves, reaching skyward with tortured bare branches. Only sullen red pinpricks burned in the heavens, stars that had long since vanished, and a bloated version of the destroyed white moon hung in the sky, shining down with a greasy feeling light.

Despite Aveliene's fleeting concern that the black unicorn might be waiting in ambush, she caught sight of it racing away, its tail streaming out behind it. With a howl of pleasure Aveliene gave chase, racing across the black half-unseen landscape.

Past tumbled down ruins covered in leperous moss, through twisted forests where things best left unseen scuttled in the eternal twilight, the black unicorn led the way, its horn gleaming in the dimness.

Finally it jumped at a bright patch with a braying sound of triumph, vanishing in a stomach turning ripple. With a grin Aveliene followed, ready to instantly counter any attack it might make as she felt the reality of the Six Worlds suddenly reassert itself.

Before her, in the darkness of the night, the black unicorn stood, muscles trembling and sweat covering its hide. It faced her, the cruel intellect she'd seen before flashing in its eyes as it reared upward and screamed its challenge.

Around them, lights came on in the houses of the town they'd suddenly appeared in, and the crowd of people on the street screamed in terror.

Aw, crap.

[Tim Willard]

The Black Unicorn
Part 7

Aveliene cursed under her breath as the massive stallion reared in the air, pawing at the air with it's savage claws, it's jagged tooth maw open to bellow a scream of rage and hatred. Aveliene was still pulling herself from the plane of shadows, one foot and her left hand still in a realm of nightmares, memories, and things best left forgotten. The Wraith-Killer was still snarling curses under her breath, knowing what the foul equine was going to do, when it lunged into motion at the crowd of people who had gathered in the town square.

A set of claws on the end of one muscular leg tore open a pregnant woman's belly, dumping her entrails and the shredded embryonic sack onto the stones of the square. A swipe with the other clawed foot tore the face off of a small child holding a candle in her two small hands. The horn speared a young boy still in swaddling clothing and a toss of the muscular neck threw the tiny blood spewing into the crowd as the black unicorn was suddenly among the people of the town who had, only moments before, been lighting candles in a vigil to the God of Justice.

Aveliene kept up a steady stream of profanity as she managed to get her foot loose, but her jackal man fighting dagger was stubbornly refusing to leave the shadow reality where the ore to craft it had been mined. The dirt and bugs on her boot dissolved away into wisps of shadow in the space of a heartbeat, but in that time the black unicorn was within the crowd, its horn coated in blood, its claws covered in blood and worse, and its jaws tearing into unprotected body.

One man, a heavy bodied scar faced specimen, managed to grab the horn, wrenching the beast's head around and preventing its horn from being plunged into the body of a young girl who was standing still in terror and shrieking at the top of her voice. Aveliene gave up on pulling the dagger out, cursing the gods of luck, and yanked her hand free as the scar faced man yanked the horn, trying to pull the beast off balance, ignoring how the whorls of the horn were slicing deep into his hands.

The crowd was panicking, shoving and trampling each other in their terror, trying to get away from the creature that had killed over a score of them, mostly women and small children, in the scant heartbeats since it had arrived.

"My mother wants your horn, beast!" Aveliene's clear voice carried above the shrieks of the crowds and the enraged screams of the unicorn as it yanked its horn out of the man's hand, ripping the flesh of his hands off and baring the bones of his hands for a second before blood filled the wound and hid the bones. To his credit, the man didn't scream, but rather threw himself at the unicorn's neck, wrapping heavy arms around its neck and lifting his feet.

The black unicorn went to spin in place, but the weight of the human threw it off, causing it to stagger, and when it lashed out with both rear hooves in an attempt to catch Aveliene with a kick, the weight of the man drug it further down than it intended and Aveliene was able to easily duck beneath the hooves.

Her hand, fingers curled, struck the outstretched left rear leg, the edge of her hand hammering against the thick muscle. Something gave with a crack, and the unicorn sagged as agony washed through it. It tried to throw off the human, and managed to get its powerful jaws clamped onto the man's legs. The man screamed in pain as the jaws crunched into his leg, crushing the bone, but still held on tight to the unicorn's neck as Aveliene lashed out again, the hard ridge of her hand snapping the Black Unicorn's leg at the knee, dropping its hindquarter's to the ground.

This time it was the unicorn who screamed, its jaws opening, blood from the severed femoral artery spurting twice before it suddenly slowed to a dribble.

"BLOOD AND STEEL!" the man bellowed, finally managing to lock his hands on his wrists. Aveliene spun to the side, avoiding the collapsing unicorn, and lashed out with a kick, her boot heel slamming into the unicorn's left hindquarters hard enough to not only shatter bone but to cause the monster horse to skid a couple of paces.

The unicorn tried to throw the man off again, but he managed to get his feet under him, and gave a mighty heave, twisting his arms, his face growing red as he wrenched the unicorn's head around. Aveliene drove an elbow into first one rib, then the other, shattering the ribs into flinders and driving the shards deep into the black unicorn's lungs and heart.

With a crackle, the unicorn's neck gave out, and the body jerked, more of a nerve response as the spinal cord was brutally severed, since the massive beast was already dying. As Aveliene watched, folding her arms over her bosom, the man gave another yank, twisting at his thick waist, and the creature's eyes protruded, its tongue lolling out of its fanged mouth, the vertebrae crackling a second time.

"Nicely done." Aveliene congratulated the man, moving up the head, her fingers trailing along the sweat soaked black fur. "How's the hands?"

"They'll be fine." The man grunted, releasing the unicorn's head to crash on the ground. Black blood dribbled from its nostrils as the man held up his hands, showing that thick scar tissue had already formed over where the ridges of the horn had torn away the flesh, degloving his palms. He spit on the head of the unicorn as Aveliene moved up to the head, and flinched back when he saw her.

"Aveliene." He said, stumbling back two steps.

"Legionnaire." She nodded, reaching down and grabbing the horn. She kept her eyes locked on the heavily built man as she wrenched the horn free of its skull roots, tearing it free in a shower of gore. "Iron or Stygian?"

"Stygian, Your Grace." The man rumbled, falling to one knee and bowing his head.

"Your name, Trooper." Aveliene asked, staring at the man's bowed head and the back of his neck. Swirling tattoos were visible on his neck, disappearing beneath the man's rough spun shirt, and Aveliene's eyes gleamed as the shirt and the thick neck reminded her of Fraker.

"Volan Theronius, Lance Commander, 19th Spear." The man said slowly and clearly.

"Return to your family, gather your dead, and take time to mourn." Aveliene told him, turning away, satisfied that the man wouldn't attack her out of misplaced idealism. "Keep watch for some of my Step-Mother's children, they will bear her thanks." She moved to the middle of the dead creature and bent down, sliding her hands beneath the creature's body.

"And then?" Volan asked, still kneeling.

"The future will take care of itself, Lance Commander." Aveliene grunted as her shoulders took the weight of the dead unicorn. "It always does.

* * * * *

Saav Burrowfar was clever and strong, and unlike many of his hatching mates, had burrowed away from his egg before digging his way to the surface when he hatched. If there had been any adults waiting to step on him, he would have escaped, having surfaced beneath a berry bush, but no adults had been around, and Saav was the leader of all of the People who lived in the grass and bushes. Jeema was the singer of songs for all of them, her skin a shining silver that caught the light and seemed to glow on days when the sky fire hung in the clear blue of the above.

The small piece of wood in his hands was long, straight, and hard, and his little teeth worried at the end, chewing it into a point. The big one who had come through the People's hunting grounds had escaped with many of the valuable stickers, and Jeema had been busy mixing together secret things in a hollowed out acorn shell to dip the points of the stickers in.

When the Death that Thundered had come, Saav had been afraid that it would trample more of the grass and kill any of the People unlucky enough to be caught by the great black monster, who was obviously a creature of the Son of the Black Moon. Instead, it and the big one, who smelled faintly of something that made Saav want to sing and dance, had begun to fight, and eventually had moved beyond where Saav could see.

A warbling cry broke into Saav's thoughts of the big one and the Death that Thundered, and he stood up on his hind legs, the half finished sticker in his claws, and ran into the grass.

It was Keeva Longneck, a warrior of the People who could see further than anyone else, and that Saav had told to stay at the edge of the grass and watch for the Death that Thundered to return to torment the People. He was trilling, at first in alarm, and then urging everyone to "come see" and Saav could hear the tapping of the People's feet ahead of him, meaning they were curious, anxious, or happy. Combined with the trill that more and more were picking up, Saav was worried that whatever was attracting attention might be dangerous to the People.

"What is it?" Saav asked when he was close enough to see Jeema hopping up and down, her long neck extended so she could see over the grass.

"Both the big one and the Death that Thunders come." Jeema said, her ears fanned out and pressed tight against her head.

"I will call the stickers!" Saav said, inhaling to let loose the trill that would gather all of the warriors of the People. "Too long has the Death that Thunders slain us. It must die!"

"No." Jeema snapped, swinging the stick with the dried head of a hunter-bug on the end, and Saav let out the breath he had inhaled in a whoosh, not trilling for assistance. "The big one carries the Death that Thunders."

Saav straightened up, raising his head above the grass, his black beady eyes alert as his apricot sized head swiveled until he saw what Jeema spoke of.

The big one was at the edge of the dead place, the dirt where nothing grew, and the Death that Thundered was held above its head by spindly arms. As Saav watched it threw Death that Thundered onto the ground, right at the edge of the grass. The smell of blood, rich and sweet, washed over Saav, and he heard several of the People's stomachs growl at the scent.

Amazingly, the big one opened its mouth and actually spoke, like one of the People.

"Elba Eggmother gives this to the People, so that you may grow strong. A big one of the People will come, to sing songs and teach you, but for now, eat."

Aveliene watched the scores of apricot pit sized heads, each of them with a pair of glittering black eyes, swivel from her face to the body of the Black Unicorn, mouths gaping open in Peeper smiles, and her sharp hearing could hear feet slapping in approval. Their ears were flared as they began to move forward.

"Take this gift, eat of the yum yum that it has become, and grow big." The big person said, striding into the grass.

"Let it pass, it speaks the secret name of the Queen of Dreams." Jeema trilled, and those of the People who were moving forward backed away, their ear fans spreading out to show that they meant no harm, that they were just playing.

Aveliene chuckled to herself as she moved the weak point between that world and the High Roads, the two horns clinking in her pocket.

Behind her the Peepers, baby kobolds who had turned feral with no songs to teach them, swarmed over the dead body of the black unicorn, to feast and grow fat.

[Tim Willard]

Sparkling water in the fountain poured from the dishes held by nymph carved with a master's touch, pattered onto the shined bronze leaves, then spattered off of the carved Peepers that were forever caught mid-step in their capering innocent dances. The water burbled, fish swam within, and brightly colored semi-precious stones glittered from the bed of white sand imported at great expense from islands that were jewels themselves.

The woman sitting on the carved marble bench watched the small lizards leap from the nymphs, or from the leaves, to splash into the pool and swim around, or imitate their stone dopplegangers. All of them were peeping the same request, for the woman who wore the cracked ceramic mask to look at them, to watch their antics, and to pay attention to them. The woman was dressed in a comfortable dress of shimmer-silk, without a bustle or hoops to extend it out as the current fashion demanded, her feet bare and grass stained, and her hands busy with a long sky blue ribbon that was being woven into the hair of the woman sitting at the other woman's feet. The woman sitting on a cushion on the ground was dressed in a demure cotton dress, with moccasins covered in elaborate beadwork folded beneath her calves. The woman on the ground had a dreamy, contented look on her face, and the long, delicate fingers of her right hand traced the color picture in the book held in her lap. A small silver Peeper with bronze stripes down her back sat, curled up, on the young woman's left, her fingers gently running down the little lizard's back, making the tiny female Peeper purr with pleasure at the affection.

Lady Elba pulled the hair tight, then crossed it over, careful not to fold the ribbon as she did so. She leaned forward so that she could see the book held in Aveliene's lap better, pecking a quick kiss at the top of the Wraithkiller's head. When she cleared her throat all of the Peepers that were dancing and jumping and preening scampered over to the bench, climbing over one another to climb up on the sun-warmed stone and curl up next to the woman. With a laugh, the woman on the bench began reading again from the worn book, her voice full of care and love as she recited the words to a story she had read a thousand times.

"But Little Red shook her head and told the great wolf that she was not allowed to leave the path, and even though she really wanted to go see where the butterflies danced she remembered her matron's warning that as long as she stuck to the path she was safe from all harm." Elba said, then kissed the top of the woman's head. "Turn the page, dear."

Aveliene smiled, turning the page to reveal another picture, this one of the same Peeper holding tight to the wrapped hard candy in its claws and running down the pathway. The Peeper's scales were bright red, its eyes a glittery black, and a tiny cape of red felt streaming out behind it. Aveliene's fingers drifted across the picture she'd seen so many times, and she shuddered with pleasure as Elba kissed the top of her head again, her hands still busy in Aveliene's hair, weaving in the blue satin ribbon.

"The wolf gnashed its teeth as the Peeper hopped away, but was not willing to give up his plans on devouring Little Red. He thought for a moment, his head heating up with the effort, causing fleas to jump from his head to his rump, and their biting made him twist around to chew at his hindquarters. Suddenly, he had an idea. There was a bunny he had once spared from being eaten, mainly because he had been full from eating a naughty goblin child that had wandered away from its matrons. He would have the bunny lure Little Red from the trail, and then eat her!" Elba continued, pausing once to kiss Aveliene's head again as the Peepers made noises of horror at the pronouncement (one even hissed out "naughty!" in a scandalized peep).

"Its black heart, as black as its fur, full of the joy at the idea of eating both the bunny and Little Red, the wolf bounded into the forest." Elba kept reading, smiling at the audience of Peepers and the woman at her feet.

And Aveliene, the Sterile Queen of the Wraithkillers, known far and wide for her deadly skills at murder and assassination, almost purred with pleasure as she was rewarded for doing her Step-Mother's bidding. She knew that the other Wraithkillers would be jealous of the ribbon, envious of being red the Tale of Little Red & the Wolf, and she planned on lording the ribbon over them at dinner that evening. Especially over Electulu, who had been getting a bit too full of herself in Aveliene's opinion.

Several of the Peepers yawned, some closed their eyes and purred as they dozed off, and others sighed and wiggled drowsily, as the story continued in the sun warmed garden.

* * * * *

Volan Theronius, former non-commissioned officer of the Stygian Legion, survivor of the Battle of Hellfire Ridge, husband to Pashima, watched impassively as the last of the small funeral pyres were lit. Too many little ones had been killed when the black unicorn had burst into the village for Volan's peace of mind. Even the one pregnant woman that had been killed had been one too many in his mind, and despite the words of the priest of Drox, God of Death, gave him no comfort as he looked around him at the faces of the parents who had lost children and the children who had lost siblings.

At times he felt like he had brought bad things onto the village by settling there, by thinking he deserved to be happy, to have a wife who loved him. Even though he knew, in his heart, that his presence was not what had brought the terrible black unicorn into their midst, in the dark of night he found himself wondering if the village was paying for the terrible things he had done during the Lich King War.

The crowd parting caught his attention, and he stared in shock at the small woman who exited the crowd, dressed all in mourning white, her face veiled and her hair hidden by a hood. The woman walked toward the first pyre, and several people screamed as the woman stepped into the flames of the funeral fire. When the flames neither touched her skin nor singed her robes, Volan felt his mouth go dry. The woman reached out to poor little Neenette, her hands seeming to plunge into the small, frail body of the dead little girl, and when the woman lifted her arms up, a pale, translucent version of the dead girl seemed to pull free of the flesh that was beginning to burn as the fires grew hotter.

Two small backward steps, and the woman had stepped clear of the fire, the ghostly figure of Neenette held closely to her, cradled lovingly in the woman's arms. The woman ran her hand across Neenette's brow, then made a motion to the crowd, which shrank back from the woman.

A single figure, gold skinned, clad in white and silver, with feathered wings folded at its back moved through the crowd, approaching the woman and kneeling, the figure's face alight with love for the woman, who held the ghostly child out to the figure. Without a single word, the winged apparition gathered up the small child's spirit to its bosom, spread its wings, and launched itself into the air, spiraling quickly upward with strong beats of its wings.

One funeral pyre after another, the scene was repeated. Crying redoubled, and Volan found himself kneeling, tears running down his face and dripping into the dirt as the hand maiden of the God of Death collected each of the souls and sent them to the heavens in the arms of angelic servants.

When all of the souls were collected, the hand maiden moved into the crowd, stopping in front of each person who had lost a loved one, those unlucky people found themselves unable to flee as the white clad woman approached them. Most were too shocked to even think of fleeing, and those who could have thought of it had no intention of angering or insulting the Lady in White.

She pressed long brown fingers to each person's breast, bowing her head in sympathy, and then moved to the next, before shimmering and vanishing with a tinkle of silver bells.

Volan held his wife close that night, and gave thanks that his daughter, tiny Neenette, had found a place in heaven.

* * * * *

The song was beguiling, and caused Saav to look up from where he was chewing on a straight twig in order to sharpen the tip and turn it into a sticker. His ears flicked back and forth as he listened, the song pulling at him, filling him with a longing to hear more and to see whoever was filling the clearing with such a tune. It could be a stranger, a dangerous stranger, who would see the People as something to eat, and that danger in mind, Saav kept the almost-sticker in his little claws as he ran through the grass, chirping out for his packmates to join him.

His stomach was bulging, full of yum-yum that had once been the Death that Thundered and its mate. The stranger that had nearly been yum-yum, with the hair like sour flowers that grew in the field nearby, had left both terrifying creatures where the People could feast on the yum-yum they had become. His full belly slowed him down a little, but the song was still bright and clear when he reached the flat rock in the middle of the People's home.

Jeema was atop the rock, doing backflips and slapping her feet in welcome, and when Saav managed to scramble to the top of the rock, the shock of what he saw made him drop the almost-sticker onto the warm rock, all thoughts of danger gone.

A big version of the People, with great wide ears, bright eyes, and skin as glittering and silver as Jeema's, was standing at the edge of the clearing, a huge metal acorn shell held in one claw, and a pot in the other. Dried hide was around the great silver's neck, and led to a strange thing that Saav had no words for, a thing that was flat, but held many strange and wonderful things.

The matron, Heemas Longnote, watched as over eight score little heads appeared, all of them watching her closely. The babies all joined her on the second time through the song, and she moved deeper into the clearing, dragging the travios behind her.

The Great Queen had asked her to find the babies that had been raised without song, to find them and sing to them, to teach them to be People rather than feral children devouring all who crossed their paths. She had been warned that there was a silver and a bronze with them, but Heemas had argued against stepping on Peepers of silver or bronze, for she believed that they, like all Peepers, should be cared for an nurtured.

As the Peepers gathered around, she began singing another song. A song they should have heard in the egg.

The song was old, its origin lost in the mists of time.

The words to Elba Loves the Little Peepers floated through the forest, and on the second chorus, a multitude of tiny, peeping voices joined in.

[Tim Willard]

That's it. Hope you enjoyed it.

[Deleted]

Alright, uh, you didn't say what crit you were specifically looking for, but I'll give it a shot.

Jul 25, 2011 8:32:41 GMT -8 Tim Willard said:

She paid no attention to the whispers and rustles in the shadows of the high vaulted ceiling, ignored the shadowy movements in the banners that hung from thick timber rafters, and was aloof to the way the carving on the visible parts of the walls pulled at the eye and hurt the mind. She stared straight ahead, ignoring the smaller hallways that intersected the one she steadily marched down, her eyes a solid jade green with no whites, no pupils, and inhuman beneath the wealth of blood red hair that framed her face, swept back from her shoulders, and cascaded down her back, held back from her brow by a simple unadorned beaten copper circlet.

First off, I really like the line about 'pulling at the eye and hurting the mind'. It flows really nicely. However, I know you said this is stream of conciousness, but I still think a few more periods would help this out, or maybe semicolons. Also the description about her hair sounds slightly awkward and its kind of a mouthful. Maybe you could just try saying 'held back by a beaten copper circlet' or something of the like.

Two guards stood at the end of the hallway, flanking a massive door that was roughly hewn into a forest scene,

This makes it sound like the door is hewn into a forest, rather than a forest scene being hewn in the door. Change 'into' to 'in' an it sounds better to me.

Only a single black rose resting in a hand that was palm up on their left breast gave any hint to whom the massive armored forms owed their allegiance to, As the woman approached the two figures they each suddenly took notice of her, their masked faces suddenly turning toward her and a deep purple light burning in their eyes.

Interesting description of a crest. Period is needed after 'allegence to', and you say the word 'suddenly' twice very close to each other. It would sound better to replace one with 'quickly' or something similiar.

"Who approaches the throne of the Eternal Elba?" One asked. The steel masks the two guards wore were molded into monstrous visages that concealed their actual appearance, making it nearly impossible for most people to know which one had spoken, but the woman's keen hearing caught the trick of the one of the left stating the first word and the one on the right finishing the question.

That seems like a very odd way to ask that question. One of them says one word and the other says the rest? I think it would make more sense to just have one of them say it, and then the other maybe say whatever they're supposed to say next.

The woman stopped three paces from the armored figures, her hands hidden within the voluminous sleeves of the white smokesilk robe wore, and stared at the two guards for a long moment. Her eyes were a flat jade green, with no whites and no pupil, almond shape, and seemed too large for her sharp planed narrow face.

You already described her eye color a few paragraphs back, you don't have to do it again. It sounds better to just say her eyes were 'flat' and then just go right to them seeming too large for her face.

Beyond the doors a huge sunlit chamber waited. Columns were carved from granite or marble,

Makes more sense to say 'and' instead of 'or'. Saying 'or' sounds like you're not sure which it is.

The pattern of the tiles drew the eye to the far end of the room, where a dais was slightly offset to the right. Atop the dais sat a plush overstuffed divan covered in brushed naka-fur.

I know I'm probably not supposed to know what a naka is, but more description as to what it looks like is a good idea, so that even though its not explained, people still have some sort of idea what they are supposed to be thinking of.

"I've heard something disturbing from where the Kingdom of Laprinious once was." Elba began, and Aveliene nodded, fixing where the kingdom had been before it had been destroyed during the Lich King War.

'fixing where the kingdom had been' doesn't make a lot of sense. It seems like you mean 'thinking of where' or something.

"Go to the ruins of Laprinious, find the black unicorn, and kill it." Elba ordered.

Aveliene bent her head in obedience.

Why is a black unicorn something to worry about? You don't have to explain all of it, but a teaser might be nice, even if Aveliene is just thinking it. Like after her step mother says 'black unicorn' and she gasps, she could think 'A black unicorn. Destruction.' or 'death' or 'war' or whatever it is it means. An inkling of why its important she kill this creature is good, even if we don't get the whole reason yet.

Overall, interesting start. I liked the titles bit especially, and the idea of people with no whites or pupils is fairly creepy. I also like the lizard-guard-soul mate-thing.

Hopefully I'll get to the other chapters eventually, and I hope I was able to help out some.