Winter Solstice - Chapter One *RE-EDITED* (sfw) (Patreon)

This is just an edited version of the first chapter of Winter Solstice. 

I'm putting it up on here again since I'm not going to edit the one on Tumblr because it's been reblogged, and you folks deserve the 'new version'. No major plot changes or anything, just a few tweaks here and there. 

This is obviously in preparation for me working on the rest of it (hopefully in the next few weeks now that I'm getting better after being essentially completely out of action in the past week), and I am re-reading and re-editing the former chapters to tighten things up now that I know exactly where all of the rest of the story is going. I'll be posting the other edited chapters over the next few days too, so stay tuned for more of those. 

I'm also going to add them to my masterlist under the 'Fae Realm' section, even though they're not technically Patreon-exclusives. 

Hope you enjoy, even if it's familiar territory! 

Her ears picked up almost nothing save for the whisper of snow falling all around her. The woods were silent and empty except for the hiss of the wind in the bare branches and the steady, creaking crunch of her horse’s hooves on the old forest track. No birds sang; no deer moved between the sentinel trunks of the ancient trees; no rabbits scampered through the thorny arcs of purple-limbed brambles. 

She had just leaned forwards to pat her mare’s coarse, white mane, the dapple of her coat blending in with the winter around, when the silence of the woods exploded into chaos.

Something erupted out through the trees with such force that her ears rang from the crack like a thunderclap, and snow sprayed in a thirty foot arc, spattering against trees, and sending her horse rearing up, hooves lashing out as the mare neighed an equine scream of terror. 

She fell from the saddle and landed heavily on her back, the wind knocked from her lungs and her vision sparkling. The heavy-set mare immediately launched herself into a plunging gallop away through the trees, tail streaming behind like a banner, leaving her rider exposed beside the frozen, woodland stream and wondering what in the name of all the realms had just happened. 

Then she heard it; a slow, deep growl, and the prowling footsteps of something creeping through the mist of disturbed snow up ahead at the point of impact. Her heart thudded in her ears, almost drowning out the sound of the creature, but as she scrambled backwards in blind panic, she saw it crawling out of the debris of the shattered tangle of fallen hawthorns on all fours, turning its head this way and that, snuffing and scenting the air like a hound trying to find a trail. 

Its body was as big as a bear’s, but it was skeletally thin, with gangly arms and long, spindly fingers. Its skin was a mottled greenish grey, and as it swivelled its head around and fixed its gaze on her, she was met by two enormous, moon-like eyes, glowing with a horrid, dead light. 

The scream that tore itself from her throat sounded foreign to her ears. She grabbed the first thing her hands fell on, which happened to be a stout, fallen branch. The creature skittered this way and that, bouncing playfully off the trunks of the trees, lunging after her like a cat at play, and then it opened its maw. Horrifically, its jaw split into four, fringe-like sections, like some hideous flower, and the inside of its mouth was blood red and filled with row upon row of needle-like teeth. 

She scrambled to her feet, desperately trying to find traction in the mucky slush beneath her, and swung at the creature as it made its final dash towards her. 

The branch collided with the side of its head, and it staggered and veered away, snarling and snapping that grotesque mouth and narrowing its enormous eyes. The drool that dropped from its four-fold lips hissed and sizzled as it hit the snow. 

A blueish light shifted in the trees a little way off behind the monster, but she didn’t have time to call out for help as it darted for her once again.

This time it was too quick and she screamed again as its vile mouth clamped down on her neck and collarbone, sinking its myriad venomous teeth into her skin. Searing pain shot through every nerve and she dropped the stick, her fingers going almost instantly limp. Its disgusting breath stung her nose, its continuous, delighted snarling filling her ears, but she could barely breathe through the pain as it tightened its grip on her and brought its long, gnarled fingers to her waist and drew her close to its foul body. 

Her arms were clamped to her sides by its own terrible hands on her, but as the long, hard handle of her belt knife dug into the inside of her wrist left, she thought vaguely of freeing it somehow so she could at least try to gut the creature who was going to take her life. It had to be a Fae, though she had never seen anything like this before. 

With her connections at the palace - loose as they were - she had seen the pets that the nobles kept on iron chains, parading them around like exotic animals for everyone’s entertainment. Fae on this side of the shield between the realms were not supposed to be able to access their powers. This one, however, was strong and quick, lithe, and gods above, her neck was on fire with its venom. 

Finally loosing the knife as she twisted, choking on the pain and screams which lodged together in her throat, she rammed the six inch blade deep into its gut. Foul black liquid gushed out, burning her hand, but the creature released its hold on her neck immediately. She staggered and fell backwards into the snow, her right hand darting to her neck that was a mess with ragged puncture wounds. The pain was indescribable, searing beneath her skin in waves of rippling needlepoints and clenching her lungs and throat so tight that breathing became almost impossible.

The creature writhed on the ground, reaching for her with its taloned fingers, scraping them through the churning snow and mud as if determined to drag itself towards her and finish her off, no matter the cost to its body. She managed to kick it in the face with her heel before she slumped back into the snow, dizzy, cold, and sweating.

“I don’t want to die,” she rasped, turning her blurring vision up to the lacework of black branches above while the snow pattered down around her. “Please…” she prayed to no one in particular. 

Hoof-beats pounding through the slush made her turn her head dazedly, and a second later, a burst of darkness exploded out like a drop of ink in water, and the creature screamed. A human-shaped figure now stood beside it and she squinted as her own vision began to dim. She thought the figure that had erupted from the darkness had wings, but when he turned, she saw that in fact he only had one wing, and where there should have been a second protruding from the special slits in the back of his leather armour, there was only a ragged, black stump. The right wing hung like a giant bat’s wing down his back, and she could see dapples of light through its shredded membrane. 

Before she could take in much more about the figure, he had clutched the creature’s head in his hands and torn it clean off in a spray of gurgling, black ichor. The thundering hooves drew close and a second person swung down from the saddle of a huge grey stallion. The horse’s hooves danced in the snow while he whinnied and snorted at the scent of the creature’s blood. 

“Is she alive?” she heard a rasping male voice ask from above her. 

“Yes, highness,” the winged figure swathed in shifting darkness replied. “Looks like she did our work for us though.”

“What do you mean?” he asked, and suddenly he was crouching beside her. 

His clothes were simple fighting leathers, but they were tooled with silver filigree and studded with a glimmering metal that was not of the Mortal Realm. His long, silver-white hair was tied back in a simple ponytail at the nape of his neck to reveal tapering, elegant ears, and he wore a simple band of white metal around his head. As he turned to look at her, she caught a glimpse of the right hand side of his face and gasped. Where his left cheek was smooth and pale as polished marble, his right seemed, to her blurred and fading vision, to be made of quicksilver. 

Their voices warped, her hearing failing as the poison in that creature’s maw got to work on her body in earnest. 

“She’s going to die,” the prince remarked, in much the way that a housewife might comment that someone was nipping out to the market for flour to make bread. 

“Please,” she hissed, her fingers - slick with the creature’s black blood - groping for a hold on him. She found his hand and he wrenched it back from her clutches with a look of disgust on his beautiful face. “Please… I don’t want to die. They need me. I…” Her throat closed, but as the world tilted back into darkness in a wash of agony, she caught the flare of curiosity in his grey eyes and hoped it would be enough to move him to pity. 

It didn’t occur to her that asking a Fae for her life without waiting to hear the price was a very, very foolish thing indeed. 

___

Stay tuned for more updates in the next few days in preparation for the rest of the story. It's currently 15 chapters long in the plan, but that might change as I actually write it all!