Lament of the Traitor King (Complete)

Chapter 33 - A Stray Innocent

Ash snapped himself out of her quickly. Netta felt, with a gasp, as he pulled, totally, out of her mind.

Ash said, "I didn't realize that I was inside of you." After a start, he leaned over to her, tried to have Netta recline on the bed.

She said nothing, staring, wide-eyed, at the ceiling. Netta could not decide if she was more shocked by the realization that she had, even if only for a few moments, felt her understanding of Ash - the real Ashwood - bloom into shocking clarity, or that he had been able to see, if he had wanted to, every aspect of her very soul laid bare to him.

Even more than that, though, there was the terrible understanding that there had been a melding, a transformation for a time there, one that seemed to be in direct comparison with the merging of their bodies.

Netta turned her head, her face cooled by the soft, smooth texture of the comforter.

As Netta tried - attempted - to get hold of her breathing, feeling the strange, openness that filled her, she felt her mind stop as she recalled something else. She could not forget the weight that she felt in Ash's consciousness, the clear imprint of terrible, hidden power.

As she turned her head, gazing at the Monster who wore the form of a nude, beautiful man - so contrary to the spined, hairy creature that wore this flesh - she knew one thing with terrible clarity.

For her lover - this beast - was no Incubi.

Someone coughed in the packed living room.

Exasperated, Netta looked over the room and got the impression that, like her, many of them had never seen this sort of thing done.

It did nothing to alleviate her worry, which had only been building, steadily. It was made only worse by the fact that seemingly the only sound in the room was the gentle ticking of a wall of clocks.

What an odd choice of decor, Netta found, in a Witch's home. A clock was useful, still, even in this time of Human technological advances, which Netta had long ago adopted easily. But the wall of clocks that these Witches kept - and their infernal, perfectly calibrated ticking - seemed to suggest an almost, bizarrely, Human fixation on the mortal idea of being chained to the concept of time.

And what a collection the Coven had managed to procur. Cuckoos, kitschy ones that had the designs of cartoon characters on them, ones that had odd, strange shapes and colors to them. The Coven's clocks that adorned the wall to the left of the fireplace were, Netta supposed, a purposeful show of eccentricity and collage. The only other thing she could think of was that they were some sort of a reflection, perhaps, on the different aspects of the personalities of the Witches.

Netta wanted to turn to look at Ash, to see what expression he wore on his face. Neither of them seemed able to look at each other since she had woken.

Whether he had noticed it or not, Netta had been able to feel Ash's emotions. She could read them, the vague shadows in his mind.

While they were seemingly more apart now than they ever had been before, it was undeniable that their consciousnesses seemed to have begun some forbidden intermingling.

When Netta realized that another one of the Witches had spoke, she could only catch the tail-end of what she had said.

"...We'll be able to speak to Ophelia's sister, then?"

Calliope cast a quick glance at Netta, giving the younger Witch one of her patently sycophantic smiles.

"As long as one of us made the appropriate... sacrifice," there was a silence in the room that seemed to be Netta's own size and shape. "-then we should be able to progress with the... ceremony. Netta, dear, I may sound like a broken record now, but are you certain that you have not found yourself wanting to do anything dangerous to yourself or to any of your own kind? It may not seem like much of anything, but the dangers of becoming possessed are real -"