Sister Dragoness
He had decided to mourn no longer but to rise and scorch the Earth like the very god they worshipped.
"The One reviled like us," the little sister had said devoutly, "the Horned God of Wilderness, the beautiful Serpent."
How had she danced, the little sister, when in the woods the old shaman beat his drums, she danced like a red-haired sprite barely touching the ground, danced in such wondrously powerful ways although still nearly a child - unto a red-plumed serpent alike, and thus had she become known as the Red Dragoness.
She who had loved the beasts of the wilderness and never complained that it was hard to survive out here, especially in the winters, out here, far from those evil men who sought to subdue and destroy all life that was heathen and free and that resisted conversion to their faith of tyranny. But his sister was a free spirit, and so was he himself, wearing his light blond hair long as did the kindred Indians of the old shaman's tribe.
How had she cried, the little sister, when one day the old shaman was gone. Searching for him far and wide, full of dire foreboding as to what loathsome fate must have befallen him.
Reading in the visions of her familiar wilderness, the girl eventually beheld the shaman's image in the depth of the lake. And knew they had come for him. The men of Christ had come and taken him away forever. The Father of the Shaman Cult, fallen by crusaders' hands.
He, the brother, remembered how he had seen the serpent flame flickering up in her eyes after they had eventually dried from the days of endless grief, after she had spent all the tears she had, after there was nothing left but the venomous seed lain in this soil of pain - intent to avenge the shaman!
What had she become, the innocent young girl she had once been?
"I shall find ways," she had announced and with what fervor in her youthful voice, "to raise the monsters of the seas, to bring storms and disaster and scorch their land with serpent fire!"
And he, too, hated the men of Christ for they had scarred his sister's heart.
And they both would turn to the god of all-rebellion of their European heritage, who was the Enemy of the god of all-tyranny worshipped by those iniquitous, those inquisitors, those ruthless oppressors. To the Fallen Angel they both turned, unyielding upholder of rebellion and shining beacon of freedom!
The youth had seen the kind old chief in front of his tent drawing ill-boding signs in the sand, with sorrow in his glance, heralding of war to come. The men of Christ would not rest but resume their iniquity, their crusade to subdue the entire world, a crusade that had to be stopped, that was a tyranny greater than the world had ever seen and his little sister was about to clash with it. He worried so deeply for her, "let it rest, Louise," he had said, "even the proud warriors of the Shaman's tribe have been powerless against them."
But with stern determination she had answered, "I cannot, Eldred, the Shaman was alike to a father to us, he and those many others, in my sleep I hear them cry to be avenged. And if they killed him for deeming his knowledge of the spirit world an evil magic, I shall teach them what evil magic really is, and what it does!" And the expression in her eyes with these words had sent shudders down his spine: that of an age-old soul and of centuries of pain, both bygone and still ahead. Yet she could not act in any other way, and Eldred knew neither could he.
She had learned a lot of wondrous lore from the old shaman, and more sinister things from other familiars and spirits of the wilderness. The Red Dragoness was going to gather more, more of the sinister witching power, and in time she would wield it against the murderous oppressors. She danced around fires at night, fires that soon would shine dimly with strange omen of forbidden witchery, and she was learning how to direct the ferocious forces of nature. Soon they were to strike at the oppressors to let them know the Red Dragoness had arisen, and storm and flood arose with her!
Much hardship and misery was to be suffered by the Christian conquerors now as the forces of nature turned against them, as sudden whirlwinds struck their settlements from out of fair skies, and loathsome slimy things were breeding in the wells were they drew their water, rendering it foul-smelling and very distasteful to drink. And Louise became incensed anew at an incident when a young Indian boy was assaulted by a Christian preacher who grabbed him by force and cut the boy's long hair off, stating that only girls were allowed to wear their hair long.The boy had cried bitterly about the loss of his hair, and Louise was furious since she had oftentimes played with the Indian children and this boy was one she was particularly close with. Some of the other children then managed to get a personal item of the preacher into her hands, which happened to be a shred of his clothing, and she was very pleased about it, knowing well how to use it.
The man should soon no longer preach with the same fervor and conviction as before, so as if some ailment was causing him great unease , but out of shame he would not talk about his woes for weeks, until he eventually confided in a physician who concluded that besides a thorough exorcism, surgery was inavoidable to cure this unnatural and demonic affliction. Louise laughed when she learned from her spies in the spirit world that a bristly tail, alike unto that of a donkey, had to be cut from the preacher's body, but that after this surgery his condition had grown worse: thick bristles kept growing in the unhealing wound on his hindside, and he became addicted to morphine because of the constant pain it caused him.
But Eldred was worried as Louise cheerfully related this tale to him. Because it remained not secret to the Christians as to who had caused them such strange afflictions. Word of the Red Dragoness spread across the land soon, the evil witch who murdered innocents in the name of the Devil, so they said. Eldred worried day and night for her, hiding away in the wilderness with her, doing his best to protect his little sister who was to have only her 17th birthday this summer, and Eldred was not much older. Having the gift of vision himself he felt they would find her one day and he would be powerless... but he refused to accept this ill foreboding, and this was perhaps the reason why he did not at this time embrace the study of magic arts with the same fervor as did she.
But his cruel vision asked not whether or not he would accept it as in time it came true.
The armed men of Christ surprised Louise by the lake where she often sojourned with Eldred in memory of their friend the Shaman, and they stroke Eldred to the ground as he tried to come to her aid and they bade him to protect not this loathsome witch, and they dragged his little sister away with them and paid him no further attention, angelic-looking youth that he was; the red-haired witch was all they wanted.
He saw her only one more time thereafter and wished he had not: it was in the early morning light, and she was bound to the stake, held upright only by the shackles that bound her, on legs that would no longer carry her - the Red Dragoness, a broken serpent now, praying for the fire to take away her terrible suffering. Eldred had come - as to let her see him, to be there in her darkest hour as she was to burn at the stake. He could hardly bear to look at her now, so bruised and battered was she that he barely recognized her, the once serpent-spined dancer so broken both on the inside and the outside, he prayed to never learn what the Christian monsters had done to his sister, and he did not know where he took the strength from not to break down crying but did not want to let her see him like that. But she also knew that her brother was present, and the pain she knew he would suffer through her death weighed heavier on her than all that of her own tormented body, and she summoned all of her last lifeforce to ease Eldred's pain as much as possible: by showing the familiar red fire of her spirit unbroken! Yes, fire had always been her element, and as it started to rise about her now she would make use of its power to put her curse on the people of god: "My faith is in the shining Morning Star," she declared, "and He shall strike you all down with rabid fever, and He shall poison your children and scorch your soil with bloodred serpent fire!"
Eldred looked her in the eyes as the flames whirled up to take her into the other world - away, far away from all her pain - and only in his mind he called out to her so that no one else could hear his words, "Father Satan with you, Louise, have faith in Him! ... Farewell, my sister!"
Farewell. Knowing now she was gone, that was when he did break down and cry. No one of the gathered crowd seemed to see it, this crowd that cheered now, now that the witch was dead! And under his tears the fair young man looked up to the morning sky in which a strange cloud was lit up fiery red by the rising sun, a cloud that had taken on the shape of a mighty dragon with spread wings, fiery and furiously it hung there in the sky, glaring down at the ignorant crowd who had just slain a young girl who had been the Red Dragoness.
Eldred knew not how to survive the days to come, and the pain so infinite - she had been his all and everything, his little sister whom he adored and would have done anything to guard and protect - but he had failed, had been powerless against the superior force of the armed hordes of inquisition.
He knew she had been right in fighting them by all means available, and now it was on him to seek revenge - in time this was the only thing he could still feel, all other feeling stifled by the violent loss of his beloved sister who had once been so innocent, so beautiful, talking to the spirits of nature, loving the creatures of the wild... dead and gone now, corrupted, tortured and murdered by the Christian bastards! He, Eldred, had to strike them down for good, having no mercy on them nor even anymore consideration for others possibly getting harmed in it - and alas, there was hardly anyone left; those of the friendly tribal people who had managed to escape death or slavery by the hands of the men of the Church had all fled by now since the Christian oppression had grown so evermore fierce whilst hunting down the Red Dragoness.
The Red Dragoness was gone, gone... but Eldred cried no more - save when at times in the dead of night the terrible dreams of her death came to haunt him - the Red Dragoness was gone, but the most dreadful Warlock whom they would call Evil Absolute, he was to rise in time, he was to wreak cruel revenge on Christendom and to strike them down for their iniquitous crimes! And he swore he would find the Red Dragoness, he'd bring her back to life, no matter how, he would have to devise some way when he was through with his horrible revenge, when the Christians were no more and the world was a safer and friendlier place again. He had no clue how to achieve it but he devoutly prayed to Father Satan for guidance, with all his heart, as devoutly as his sister had done - being all alone in the world now, he had no one left but Satan, and Satan would answer him, guiding him, arming the arisingWarlock with powers more dreadful than Christendom had ever seen.
The Warlock tried to recall all the things he had watched his sister do, to learn everything she had learned, and then to move even beyond.
The first thing he succeeded in was to bring the poisonous fungus unto the crops, it caused indeed a rabid fever in many of the Christian people, some grew insane with violent delirium, some were crippled as their limbs discolored and withered away, and many died, especially the children. And as Eldred walked through the village from his secret hideout in the woods to behold the terror and despair in the eyes of those smitten by his sinister work, then his face brightened with a serene smile, his very first smile ever since they had bereft him of Louise - yes, *they*, the very people who had rejoiced in seeing his sister die in torment, and now Eldred rejoiced in beholding their torment and dying in turn.
The village lay dark under the heavy burden of ailment and curse, strangely dark despite the vertical sun; and as the sun set on that day, Eldred's withered heart felt for the very first time again the warm rays of joy as there in the flaming evening skies a wondrous cloud rose: bright red it glowed in the shape of a dragon, winged and mighty it conquered the skies, a sign heralding of the Red Dragoness who had, through the hands of the Warlock, wrought her revenge; and the Warlock would not stop here, he would dedicate himself to bringing her wrath and that of Satan unto the people of god!
He grew to love what he did and what he had become as his magical powers steadily increased, enabling him to experience strange visions and wonders in his lucid dreams, and to behold Louise in them as she joyfully danced to the old shaman's drums, and to even talk to Satan Himself in them and He affirmed to Eldred that his sister was now free of all her pain and delighting in seeing her curse being fulfilled.
He took on a new, demonic and secret name, and his ever-growing powers enabled him to get his hands on some forbidden grimoires from which he learned even more sinister lore and which he guarded like a sacred treasure. Years had passed by in this manner, and he had grown into a beautiful man, still wearing long blond hair that shone bright in the sun like an angel's. But in time he should meet upon a man who was able to look beyond the angelical appearance and recognized Satanic witchcraft in him, as this was a man who had dedicated himself to hunting down those engaged with such craft. And once this witch hunter had taken notice of the Warlock and his blasphemous art he would not cease to track him and thereby became a nuisance - just a nuisance, so the Warlock thought, but not a real danger to him anymore, had he but over the years attained such mastery of black magic that he had to fear little from anyone uninitiated in such art. The witch hunter was well a fanatic Christian as was common for most people of European roots in this time, but he was a simple man of farmers' descent, recently married to a likewise god-fearing young woman. And Eldred sensed that this was the man's softest spot: his love for his devoted wife. And since the witch hunter would not cease to cause him troubles, the Warlock elected to take away his wife just like Louise had once been taken from himself, and he would do it with much dedication! Not only because he hated the witch hunter who pestered him, but he hated also his wife since he had watched her for some while now, and she was of the kind that would never miss a service at church and was to the utmost pious and obedient - blindly adhering to this faith of tyranny and genocide which had murdered Louise!
And the day came when the witch hunter would come home to find his beloved wife crucified on the wall, limbs broken and shattered, covered in blood was she, and the worst was that the large crucifix with the carven figure of Christ which had aforetimes occupied the place on the wall where she hung now was tied to her chest, with the figure's face buried between the tortured woman's breasts as an act of blasphemy - not only his wife had been defiled but also his god! - and it was tied there with some pink, moist glistening, obscene kind of rope... the witch hunter would faint at the realization that it was no rope at all but his wife's own torn-out intestine.
Maybe it had been a mistake, Eldred thought, to go this far - although his success was evident. He could feel that he had finally achieved what he had, despite his mastery in wielding plague, disaster, and all kinds of evil spells, never fully accomplished before: to wound a human heart to the same depth and with the very same kind of pain as his own had been made to suffer when bereft of his beloved sister.
This achievement satisfied him, and it mattered far more to him than the fact that it made things much worse for him now. Because the witch hunter, soon to be widely known and having great support among the Christian folk, would not be intimidated into giving up his persecution of the Warlock but in the contrary: driven by inexorable thirst for revenge resembling so much Eldred's own - although not seeing it since the Christians never saw the pain they cause but only their own - the witch hunter would even study ways to counter certain black magic spells and start out for a crusade against him. Albeit a true master of his craft, the Warlock knew that crisis was on the horizon, he knew it from the tokens of time and from the card that showed the tower aflame - but in the omens there was also to be read a chance of escape and even of gaining a tremendous victory. His power of will and strength of faith was to undergo an excruciating trial.
Little could he foresee though the wondrous adventure that lay before him, that after falling for a trap set out by the sly witch hunter and being held for three days in chains and thumb locks and sentenced to death as once the Red Dragoness - escaping more severe torture as she had gone through only due to their justified fear of his Evil Eye - that through his very faith he would eventually be rescued, into a time of strange marvels and much disbelief when the Christian tyranny had lost much of its oppressive power, a time of horseless carriages and of huge machinery thundering across the land and having even conquered the skies: a time nearly 300 years in the future. Little could he foresee that he was to eventually become Satan's own son even though defeated through an unexpected twist of fate in that time so alien unto him - but this is another story which has already been told elsewhere.
© Diana Daemonique, 6/30th/2008
