Biting the hand

	Never, in the moments she had spent awake and living or asleep and dreaming, in all the time she had spent fleeing or defeating the horrors of the Feywild’s mad life or the cruelty of the Primes, had she ever dreamed of such a sight.  The floor of the forest was bare save for dried pine needles and leaves, and the trees all around them looked sickly and dying.  The branches overhead were no soothing green canopy, they were gibbets and cages, and nearly a hundred skeletons of people and things that looked like people hung in them, dessicated to the bone and scraps of skin and hair.  The clearing had tables in it, or maybe altars, strung with the remains of unknowable thousands of meals and sacrifices.  Maybe the meals were sacrifices.

	Somebody had carved runes that hurt her eyes into every tree trunk.  A skeleton in the dress of a noble sat at the head of a table of stone and bones, lashed together with crude rope sewn from shredded clothing.  A pile of dead animals sat waist high beside the table, surrounded by knives rusted from blood.  A cage in one corner of the clearing had a dozen humans, none of them old or especially young, covered in bruises and stripped to the skin, with their hair shaved off and horrid burns on their feet and faces and genitals.

	Half a dozen satyrs lounged around the clearing, stuffing their faces.  Another few raced about, taunting and harrying a human with dead eyes that ran in circles for their entertainment.  When he fell, the satyrs kicked him until he rose and started running again.

	At the center of it all stood a throne of skulls and rock, piled together in mockery of the throne he had sat in the court of the Countess, and on it sat Gillint the Dance Lord, now grown to seven feet in height and bearing a hundred runes in no mortal’s language carved onto his naked skin.  His nose and mouth had grown to a snout like a hyena’s, and he had great black claws he was using to grip the armrests as he rose to his cloven hooves.

	“Ah, and the daughter of our noble line comes home,” Gillint said genially to the horror-struck Lumira.  “Come and sit beside kindred on the forests’ loam.”

	Lumira opened her mouth to scream, but instead she said “Dance Lord!”

	“Thus it is, and so I shall be forever, Lumira my lamb,” Gillint laughed.  “This is my forest, I am its Dance Lord, and if I will it so, I AM,” he said, and the earth shook from the force of his voice.  Despite it all, Lumira felt her knees weaken with bestial desire.  Her heart screamed with lust even she could tell was unnatural.  All she wanted was to spit herself on his titanic cock.  “Come and sit, sup at by table, tell me of the land of fable.  Are our kindred bored in their boring Feywild?  Compared to my court, surely, their time is mild,” Gillint laughed, and rose to his feet.  He grabbed a roasted beast of some sort from a skewer beside himself and sat it on the table next to the skeleton.  “Sit, do not disrespect your host’s command,” he added when she remained unmoving.  “All guests must now obey me on my land.”

	Lumira’s knees unlocked and she wobbled over to the table, feeling light-headed and giddy with fear.  “Of course, Dance Lord,” she cooed, hoping her panic didn’t sound in her voice.

	A little monster from absinthe dreams sprang up before her on the table and stretched its claws menacingly.  She screamed and started backwards, but a word from Gillint halted them both.  “No no no, Uskratsinar, you have gone and went too far,” Gillint said chidingly.  “A guest she is in Gillint’s tempt, from my intruder law she is exempt.”  He patted the seat across from him with one gnarled claw.  “Sit,” he commanded, and Lumira did so.  She looked around, wondering if a quick death was within her reach, anything that would let her escape her nightmare.  Gillint, perhaps mistaking her searching for something else, reached beneath the skeleton’s chair and withdrew a clear glass bottle.  “Ah, but where is my courtly grace?  Celebrate finding this place!”  He poured wine into a scarred cup, covered with just as many runes as the rest of the place.  Lumira’s skin crawled.  He threw it back, refilled it, and passed it to her.

	“O-o-oh, thank you,” Lumira managed.

	Gillint smiled kindly behind his Abyssal fangs.  “You are my guest, young Lumira lass, and this is my welcome cup to pass.”

	She drank.  It tasted totally normal.  She nearly cried in relief.  “I admit, I have missed a few of my kin since our flock was rent asunder,” Gillint said.  The clearing filled with crackling as the other satyrs strung the cow up on a great spit and began roasting it.  “I did allow myself to wonder, if my rending our family was a blunder.”  His fanged maw split in a sick grin.  “But now Lumira has come to join our number!”

	“I… I am tasked with protecting Viridian on a visit to a friend here in the Prime,” Lumira admitted.  “I can’t stay forever.”

	Gillint rolled his eyes.  “Bah!  Let her be protected by that Paladin lad!  Here, there is a far more pleasant time to be had.”  He had to raise his voice to speak past the screams of one of the women in the cage as one of the satyrs grew bored and saught a toy to relieve his ennui.

	The Dance Lord noted the tear in the corner of Lumira’s eye.  He narrowed his own eyes and raised his snout, sniffing loudly.  He had hoped to add Lumira to his tempt naturally, but time was short now, and there were other ways.

	“Hmph.”  He rose from the table, and Lumira did the same, leaving her food uneaten.  “Well.  It seems we shall have more guests soon.”  Lumira froze as he turned to her.  “Do you, my dear girl, now accept my boon?”

	Lumira shrank back as he extended his hand.  “B-Boon?  What?  I am offered nothing, am I?”

	Gillint’s eyes glinted with black fire.  Lumira whimpered in terror.  “Everything,” he whispered.

	Lumira’s head spun.  “I… I am frightened,” she cried.

	“I know you are, little satyress, I see you quake with stressed duress,” Gillint said quietly.  To Lumira’s utter horror, her hand began rising of her own accord.  She looked around in panic, and saw Slicce lying on the table behind her, idly waving a finger in the air, following Lumira’s hand as it moved.

	No… dragging.  Dragging with telekinesis.  Lumira bleated in terror as Gillint took her hand.  “NO!  NOOOO!  I don’t want this!” she screamed, as a horrid feeling of wilting overcame her.

	The screaming faded as Gillint drank of her soul.  “When have we ever let that stop us?” he hissed, and his eyes surged with hungry flame.  Slicce ran a clawed finger over her lips in a mockery of a shushing gesture as her friend’s eyes went blank.  A chorus of low laughs sounded from the other satyrs, who had paused in their work to watch.

	A bolt of iron tore through the air and impaled Lumira’s shriveling head.  Gillint released her hand with surprise, and she fell to the ground with a wet thud.  Her face twisted in agony and terrified relief, and then she died.

	Gillint looked up and saw a Paladin in glittering silver armor astride a freakishly large Pegasus, both aglow like fire and gold and platinum mist.  He had a shimmering sword in one hand and a clockwork shield in the other, both pulsing with magic energy.

	“Oh, look, a mounted murderer in shining armor has come,” Gillint sighed.  “Linus, I see that, to the urge to hurt those you dislike, you have succumbed.”  He grinned cruelly.  “Paladins, eh?” he added to the laughing tempt.

	“That was mercy, you paltry, Gnoll-touched thug,” Linus said.  Rage burned through his voice.  Blood ran down his chin as his mouth spoke with the voice of an avenging angel and his lips cracked.  Light glittered from the mane of the Pegasus as it glinted from the back of Linus’ throat.  The hircine laughter stopped at once.

	Gillint straightened up and cricked his neck.  “You’re no fun, but I suspect-”

	A javelin caught him in the forehead and knocked him on his tail.  He swatted it aside – it hadn’t even broken the skin despite the wall-shattering force behind the throw – and glared.

	“No more rhymes, animal,” Linus snarled.  His angelic voice was gone, but now he was aglow with the magic of his weapons instead.  “I’m going to watch you die.”  He urged Noble on with a thought and charged.


	Viri held her head in her hands and wept.  She was alone.  Again.  First, she was ripped from her home by the Rupture, then she watched her family grow ill one after the other, then she had grown ill herself, then she had been attacked by that bear, then she had gone out alone to trick Linus.  Then, when things were finally getting better, she had gone home without many of her friends… now she was alone again!  Now she was stuck in a strange tower of magic and money with a missing tooth and a friend cursed by monsters!

	She sniffled miserably and looked around.  The Lady deKestral’s tower was a beautiful place, at least.  Behind the weapons and the trophies, it was neat, cosy, orderly, and comfortable.  The magic teapot was hot and refilled itself from the decanter on the wall.  There was a nice breeze coming from the bare stone walls somehow.

	Eventually, Viri overcame her funk and decided to explore a bit.  With some difficulty, she climbed the ladder up to the second floor, and looked around in awe.  Whereas the first floor was a museum, this place was a gallery.  Each wall had hangings of art, beautiful art, all of them magnificent paintings.  She recognized the Lady deKestral of course, and she was in nearly every picture.