Black
Vengeance
Adalind had been waiting for this
moment for years. It had taken that long to perfect the ritual and she knew she
wouldn’t have a second chance at it. Part of her mourned what she’d given up to
come to this pass. It would take all the power she had to complete the spell
and it would sever the connection she had with her goddess. What she was about
to do was against everything her goddess stood for, a perversion of the power
she’d been granted with her vows on the day she’d become a woman.
She considered the last five years
of her life a perversion of creation. The inevitable conclusion of the abuse
and shame was resting in her belly and it would fuel the ritual she was
preparing. Generations would pay for what had been done to her.
Slowly and with exquisite care, she
started drawing the symbols on the floor of the room she’d been locked in since
her condition had become known. All the hate and pain she’d experienced in this
room coalesced and poured into each line drawn in blood and called to all the
powers she’d possessed.
The spell was time perfectly to end
exactly at midnight. As the sun went down, Adalind spared a passing thought for
her ability to complete the ritual. It had required fasting for the last week,
meditating on everything that had happened and focusing her mind on exactly she
wanted to happen.
At full dark, the door to her tower
opened and a cloaked figure entered. Adalind’s hand shook as she continued
pouring her power into the symbols she was drawing on the floor. The cloaked
figure sat across from her and started drawing her own symbols. The circles
joined and the power from the new comer joined Adalind’s. Her hand stopped
shaking and she finished her ritual strong, at exactly midnight.
She could feel every person in the
castle who shared blood with the creature in her belly. Her first target was
its father. He woke in his bed, gasping for air and clutching at his heart as
he felt it stop. His skin shriveled as all of his bodily fluids evaporated. The
same thing happened to every male of his line in the castle, with one
exception. The life forces coalesced around her, almost solid. There had been a
lot more men of this line in the castle than she had suspected; more than a few
bastards had been hidden among the servants and guardsmen.
Adalind added a blood condition for
the exception she had left. He would have to feed the men of his line from his
own body. She worked the blood into the conditions for breaking the curse, too.
Every curse had to have a way to break it to truly take hold. This curse was
meant to last for generations.
As she released the power into the
castle, Adalind waited for the change to come over her.
