Downtown Druid

“Looks to me more like a dead rotting leviathan with a madwoman standing in front of it,” responded Dantes as he took inventory of everything around them to prepare the best wand and strategy for that moment.

“Dantes is right Serpica. You must see how mad all of this is,” said Traizen, his voice anguished. He looked around with a look of anger and disgust on his face. “You are using the gifts that she gave you to corrupt the Mother’s children. To act against her will. The suffering you are causing…”

“The suffering I am causing!?” she asked, her voice trembling a bit. “I have seen suffering. My locus was a battlefield. I watched as the ‘civilized’ races tore one another to shreds. I watched villages pillaged, their elders beheaded and their women raped. I’ve watched forests cut down to build machines of war, and the land salted to keep the enemy from ever growing new crops.” She shook her head. I once tried to force peace. I made my locus a den of horror and death to stop them from fighting over it. Poisonous plants blossomed across all of it, and brambles with thorns the size of daggers covered it all. For some time the fighting ceased, and things were…peaceful. Then one of them found a single nugget of gold in a river just outside of my locus. That was all it took for the fighting to begin again, for my locus to suffer. I still remember when the last river was torn to shreds after that war ended. I remember seeing a man smiling as he watched, a golden smile. The despair I felt.”

Traizen stepped forward. “You never told us Serpica. You never came to us for help. We could’ve done so much for you. There was no reason to bear all of that suffering alone.”

She laughed. “I wasn’t alone, and I’ll never be alone again.” She peeled the mask from her face, it came away along with a thick coating of pus and pieces of her skin. Her face was rotted, her flesh coated with pustules and sores, her eyes half eaten away, and exposed bone peeking through her jaw. “I carry life within myself now. The largest source of life that was left in my locus. Disease, plague, that is the gift the Mother gave me. She trusted me with the life of her most numerous children within myself. With it, I will end the civilizations that destroy the world for shiny rocks and foolish notions of honor. Starting here.”

Traizen began to cry, tears streaming down his cheeks. “That is not the Mother that granted you that. I cannot imagine how painful it is to be without her love. Its absence has damaged you beyond all reason.”

“I am closer to the Mother than the rest of you ever were.”

Traizen shook his head. “I’m afraid the only god there is left for you is the Father. I hope he welcomes you with love when I send you to meet him.”

Serpica screeched and launched herself at Traizen.