Lament of the Traitor King (Complete)

Chapter 49 - Bitter Longing

After failing to find anything downstairs, Netta took her accomplices upstairs and into her old apartment.  The first order of business was digging through the old writing desk that Calliope had kept in the cramped, knick-knack-filled area.

The whole apartment felt desolate, with only the rhythmic sound of the black cat wall clock to add anything resembling a heart beat to the place. With its owner gone, the clock only made Netta feel uneasy. She wanted to throw it out, but fought the urge, promising herself that they would only remain for a bit longer.

Netta looked once more through the entirety of the contents of the two-hundred plus year old's desk, only to coem away with old office supplies.

She was interrupted when Ash said, "There's something sad about this painting, you know."

Netta glanced around and saw Ash, looking positively gigantic in the small space of the kitchen. He was staring with almost laughably intense focus at the pastoral re-re-reprint that Calliope had kept on the wall.

Netta sighed and went back to packing the desk back up.   "Yeah - she probably got that from a Sears catalogue for not much more than what the price of the plastic and the paper that it's made out of."

"Nettles, you misunderstand me - there's something wrong about this, inherently awful. It's like - it's calling to me -"

At that moment, Ophelia made a re-appearance, opening the door to the bedroom and leaning out of it.  "Unless you would call the oddly specific collage your elder Witch made up of pages from Playgirl circa the nineteen-eighties "anything of interest", I can't find anything. You find anything?"

Netta sighed and looked over at Ash.  Pushing away her dismay at the fact that they had not uncovered anything, she asked her Familiar, "What's so odd about the painting?”  When he did not answer her, Netta looked back at him. “...Ash?"

He had become fixated on it - and Netta, for the first time ever, looked - and really examined - the painting, walking over to stand next to Ash.  

It was nothing more than one of those cliche pastoral scenes that depicted a picturesque day in the grass. A freshly painted red barn stood behind a rolling green hill. The sky was blue, the horses kept in the pen to the left of the barn looked like they were content to munch on the grass, with one looking back at the barn.

It looked warm, pleasant, if not generically so. She was ready to glance away from it, and to question Ash, when Netta saw the face in the leftmost side of the barn.  She remembered seeing that face in a window in the barn before - and a time before that, seeing a person standing once in the field.

A jolt shot through her, and Netta was overcome with inexplicable despair.

Ophelia's voice rose with a trembling unease. "What's with you two?"

Netta found herself speaking. "Ash-"

When Netta reached out to him mentally, she heard him speaking, the sound reverberating more than it normally did - as though she was eavesdropping on him.   -reveal yourself to me. Show yourself.

Netta wanted to question him on his odd choice of words, but was stopped. It was the sight of the painting, as it seemed to swell outwards.   With an audible, inhuman sigh, the painting seemed to yawn open. It deposited what looked at first like a crumpled pile of clothes on the ground.

Netta felt like screaming as the pile rose up, in a stiff, but undeniably sentient way. As it staggered to its feet, the motley clothes were revealed to be hanging on what looked like a man.

Ophelia did scream.  

When she finished, the revealed man glanced anxiously at her. Grabbing at his face, he proceeded to run his hands in a hectic, slapping manner down the space of his body. When he had finished, he turned to Ash, asking, "My appearance isn't frightening her, is it?"