Page 19 of Dark Fae's Destiny

“What do you want us for?” I know the creature has to have me bound in a trio to do whatever it wants of me and of us. “What is it you ultimately wish to use us for?”

If I told you that, it would ruin the game, the creature says now as it swirls into its man-shape inside the darkness. Though the blackness around me is infinite, lost as I am inside my mind right now, Staphylogenes’ form is darker. As if whatever it is could swallow all light, it’s an impenetrable, inky darkness that swirls before me now.

Just as its void swirls behind it—calling me to jump in forever.

“I’m not going in there.” I say now as I glance at it.

I didn’t ask you to go in there. It speaks cheekily as it gestures to the void behind it. I ask you merely to stand beside it and gaze into its infinite nature. And see what can be found there.

“What can be found there?” I watch it for deception, which I know is at the core of its being.

You have to look in. And tell me. It says now, as its golden orbs stare at me.

I frown. Something inside me is going off like alarm bells ringing; though all my magical power has been stripped away, this deepest knowing somehow still exists within me—and it flares like a four-alarm fire now, as Staphylogenes invites me to look into the darkness.

Because somehow, I know that it can’t. That’s the one thing it can’t do, though I thought it had manifested that terrible, swirling void inside me.

As I approach that inky void, the Gold Eyes seems eager. It wants me to look, thinking I’ll find some kind of power there that might be of use to it. I know better, though, with my alarms ringing all inside me now.

The gold-eyed creature can’t look into my innermost darkness. It can’t touch my own inner void, because it doesn’t have control over whatever I’ll find there. It can only enhance my perception of that void, swirling and dark inside me. Forbidding, so I would be afraid of it.

And never truly look—lest I find something of power there.

The creature does not expect me to approach that void. As I do, it startles, beginning to rush towards me with its blackest Night. But I’m already there; I’m already tipping into it, being swallowed by my personal void, deep inside. As I fall to the bottom of the pit, I feel the one thing I never want to admit devour me.

That I possess hate, deep inside.

Towards the creature that Made me.

“My entire life has been a lie.”

I hit the bottom of that void now, as I am swallowed by my pit. Rage like I’ve never known consumes me; much more than when I found out what I was. It’s far more than when I discovered my parents had been lying to me all my life. And it’s endlessly more than when I found out I had been Made by the Gold Eyes and was acting as its puppet.

Ever since I was born.

That’s not entirely true; I wasn’t precisely its puppet. Primarily because my parents hid my magic when they understood what had occurred when the creature Made me. They knew that I had struck at it, and thrust it back, as a tiny, one-day-old infant. Somehow, something indomitable and furious deep inside me had been enough to thwart it.

The deep, unfathomable power of my rage.

“I hate you.” I look far up at the creature, gazing down into my void where it cannot join me. Because this is my pit, my own anger that devours me. And it is here I will find true power, I know now, as I stare up at the creature still gazing far down at me with its intense golden eyes.

What will you do with that hate, Ariana? It asks me now from so far away. Its voice is like an echo inside my mind now, since my pit is so deep. I ask myself the same question; some deep part of me is joined with the Gold Eyes, since it Made me so young with its power.

And will be until I vanquish it.

I take a long moment to digest that question. As I sit with myself, deep inside, I feel my hate churn. Blacker than black, it resonates with the creature still staring down at me, far above. I know now that it has its own inner hate.

Hate that spawned inside it, the moment it ripped out its heart to change history.

“You couldn’t love her, just the way she was—your daughter.” I know somehow that Staphylogenes’ story with the Wanderer is important now, just not how it connects.

This isn’t about me. It’s about you. The creature objects as it gazes at me from far above. I’ve heard its Music shift in its endless tones. Where once it was gloating and mild, it has become sharp. Bitterness seethes from it in waves now. I feel them all the way inside my pit, though that same bitterness is inside me.

Because I hate it, the Father who Made me—just as much as it hated its own infant daughter.

“It’s about both of us,” I say as I feel where I resonate with the creature now—and why I hate it so very much. “When your daughter was born, you thought her malformed, unnatural, because she did not look like her mother and yourself. You thought when you were procreating in the flesh that you could Make the perfect earthly creature, one who was an ideal blend of her mother’s bright rainbows and your own sun-bright glory. Instead, what you got was a moonbeam, who didn’t wish to stay by you to build your earthly empire, but wander from place to place, reveling in the earth and all its glories. You couldn’t have that, so you tried to manipulate her, change her. You tried to Make her the way you wished her to be with the power of the Music… until all that failed, too. You drove away not just her, but her beautiful mother from you, forever. Leaving you alone… until you could Make another daughter, perfect like you had always wished.”

Silence smites me from above. It’s so long, I think the creature has departed, taking its sorrows and wrath elsewhere and leaving me for good. But no, I feel its gold-eyed taint still lingering far above. It watches me; I can see those golden eyes flickering in the darkness as I gaze far, far up.

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