Lilith lighted the candles on her make-shift altar, shielding the flames from the watery gusts from the waves crashing against the rocks so far below. the copper flecked wicks flickered wildly but never went out. She knelt down with some difficulty and clasped her hands, letting them rest on her protruding stomach. Her straight, light brown hair whipped around her face as the winds grew more impatient. The chant rose softly, ripped away and into the night on the tempests breath.
It was the dark of the moon, and even if it wasn't about to rain, barely anything would have be discernable away from those paltry lights coming from the candles that fought to obey the wishes of the one who had lit them. Tonight marked the eleventh month of the day she had come to this strange place full of monsters and magic that could be harvested like wheat. And it was the tenth month of her wedding.
Lilith's chest grew tight as the air continued to be pulled from her by the mighty bursts of air that pounded at her relentlessly. However, she continued her mantra without pause.
She pushed to be shown what others were blind to. She demanded to be opened to the future. She gasped as the child within her lashed out and her mind was suddenly full of memories, flashes, voices and faces that she had seen only in dreams and visions.
She had thought that the urgency in her soul to see the future had been to protect to child that she would give berth to at any moment. But, it wasn't the boy who swelled within her now that she saw any sign of. It was a girl. A daughter unlike to other children she had seen in her future.
She saw a young girl with wild brown curls and glittering hazel green eyes running to a strong, handsome, man with a salt-and-pepper beard. He swung her into his arms and kissed her cheek, making her giggle and comment on his beard. At this, he rubbed his beard against her cheek and made her giggle again.
She saw a young man and woman, both of whom she knew would eventually be her children as well, holding the child as well. She saw the girl running thru the woods and speaking in a hushed and secretive voice, to a stone that looked like a sleeping lion. She saw her curling up beside it and falling asleep as the sun set. She saw herself, holding this newborn girl in her arms and weeping quietly.
She saw herself saying goodbye to the child she would never know as an adult. She saw love and peace and a missing place in a picture where she should have been.
Lightning crashed around Lilith and she fell to the side of the altar, moaning and holding her stomach. Yet the visions would not stop. Even as the candles gave a last glorious effort, the visions couldn't stop.
She saw her daughter and son, who had acted as mother and father to their young sister, dying horribly. She saw the handsome man with the black and white hair being restrained as he cursed at a man whose face she could not make out. She saw the little girl being dragged out of a hiding space as a house burned and the charred body that was pinned to it finally died. She watched these men throw her to the ground beside her dead siblings. She watched as someone took a red-hot branding iron and pressed it to the little girls forehead. She felt the cat-o-nine-tails whip through the air and slash against the child's exposed back. She heard the wild screams as the men around her died as the girls power was unleashed on then at long last.
She could feel herself bleeding in the real world. The world outside of her mind and what she saw there. She could hear her own screams rising into the blackness. But, they were not for her own pain. They were for this child whose hell has still not ended.
She saw a woman with blond hair and a collar and leash in her hand. A roll of parchment was stuck through her belt and she laughed cruelly with every breathy word. There was a man with a feral look on his face and a collection of needles in his hand. There was a woman with a feeling of despair that she hid with a mask of bubbliness holding the hands of two children with lavender hair. She saw a creature, half feline, half canine, protecting a small, bloody child. She saw pain a desertion and death masking the love that came from a distant source.
Then Lilith screamed in agony and wept in sorrow, for there was one last horrific image to see.
The little girl, now a grown woman with an older mind and spirit than body, stood in the middle of a smoking ground. A black star was burned on her forehead and she stood like a dark angel with golden feathered wings spreading from her shoulder blades as she stood with an army of massacred men at her feet. Amongst the burning bodies, was a a beheaded woman with the wings of a butterfly. This was the reason all these people were dead. They had killed this amazing person she had loved and so she had killed them. A thin red snake coiled around her right arm and her hand held a delicate, beautiful, and deadly blade. The other hand was bloody and there were claws in place of fingers. A feminine man with pointed canines was sitting on the dry ground and leaning against her daughter's left leg. His iridescent black, bat-like wings were fanned and the right one slid behind and around the girls legs in a loving manor. The only other life on the field was a thorny vine curling around her daughter's right leg.
Lilith's vision cleared at last and her gaze focused on the man who had come in search of her. She looked at the face of her husband and shook with fear. Instead of worry or concern, his face was twisted in rage.
He was the father of the boy that was now fighting to be born. But, he was now much more. Much, much more. He was the man she thought she loved. But now, she also knew he was the man who would kill her daughter and son in the most brutal way. He was the one that would kill the father of her children. he was the reason she would never see her children become young adults. He was evil.
End