Purpose and Place (Patreon)

Thank you to Ghostie98765 for suggesting the premise for this little flash fiction Patron reward. Enjoy, everyone!

***** 

No cage could contain the Witch Queen of Daruk, yet here I remained, surrounded on all sides by shimmering bars coated in cold iron and platinum, suffering the deafening roar of peasant revelry.

The bars curved towards the top, and even upon the tavern table where I sat, I found myself looking upwards to see past the hips of most women and men who crowded around, moving past in a slow and steady line to each take their turn to gawk and stare, to make their faces and jeer.

The same arcane energies that kept me imprisoned also kept their filthy fingers away, so at least there was that. I had to have been betrayed. Only the grandest conspiracy could have overcome my network of informants, familiars and eldritch protections. When I returned, I’d purge them to the last. It was the only way to be wholly certain.

And I would return. They had cut me off from my reagents, silenced my voice, shrunken me to a height of mere inches and trapped me in a heavily cursed birdcage, of all things. They’d done everything they could to suppress my power, to leave me helpless.

They didn’t know any better. A wizard explores magic like a science. A sorceress harnesses the arcane through instinct and force of will.

Witches… witches are magic. Scrolls, gestures, incantations--all useful and powerful, but they do not create the magic. They’re aids to focus, tools to shape and channel and arrange. Even now, shrunken, caged, stripped naked and hands bound behind me, I was more than any of these revolting revolutionaries could ever be.

With every moment that passed, every cretin that leaned over and marvelled at my majestic, miniaturized form, I pushed further into their wards and enchantments. I unravelled their bindings while they fantasized about a new nation under their rule. I picked apart their transmutations, understanding what they’d done and how I could twist and adapt them to serve my needs.

I could have done it sooner, but I waited until the mayor and the priestess had gathered everyone so they could make some grand speech about their grand victory and the brilliant future for the people.

My people.

I was their queen, and there was so much more to being queen than simple raw power. Perception is everything. During a moment of raucous cheers and applause I forced the cage around me to shatter.

All that excitement and jubilation, erased so easily by one flash of light and concussive burst. They were so wonderfully silent, and they stared, just as they should. Every eye in the building was focused solely on me.

I was back to my full height in that same instant, but that was just for the moment. I paused only long enough to swirl my fingers in a single elegant gesture, conjuring a fitting outfit for the occasion--a gossamer gown molded perfectly to every inch of my exquisite curves, leaving bare my thighs above rich, intricately patterned stockings that vanished at the ankles into dark boots with thick soles and tall heels.

I was naturally quite tall and adored looking down on my lessers. Today, they would all see just how far beneath me they truly were.

They had tried to make me small enough to cage. What they’d done was give me the key to something magnificent--something unbelievably delicious.

Reversing the reduction enchantment wasn’t terribly difficult, and it was almost as easy to channel the same energies and push, and push, and push…

I was almost ten feet tall by the time the first person unleashed a scream. I had nothing I needed to say, but I did let my head roll back as I laughed.

At twenty feet they started to turn, and the first to flee were certainly the wisest. I could have reduced every one of them to ash a dozen times over, but this was so fresh and so new and so right.

A flick of my fingers frightened the debris away from my clothing and hair as I smashed through the tavern’s roof, and a firm outward shove with both hands ripped the structure in half around me, sending the outer walls crashing to the ground.

I’d never experienced such an exhilarating surge, and all that passion and rage and power carried me into the night sky, hundreds of feet above this little village and these ridiculous things that thought they could contain me.

They were my people--my subjects. They had a place and a purpose in my domain. A queen with no people rules nothing but her throne. Tonight, these people--these particular subjects, their place was beneath my heel.

Their purpose was to die.

I whispered a few words and waved my fingertips. It wasn’t easy to spot them, especially with the light from the tavern fading beneath its own rubble, so I lit them up. I called to their souls and watched them flicker to life, illuminating my little people from within with this ghostly violet glow.

They tried to hide, but I could feel them, too. I could sense their life and their fear. I lifted my boot and slowly moved towards the nearest structure--just a simple home, wood and straw and bits of stone. It barely resisted, crumbling sweetly beneath my unforgiving sole, but it was the settling rubble crunching beneath my foot and the soft, squelching wetness between the bits of pulverized masonry that sent a shudder through my core.

A half dozen little lights faded out underfoot. I twisted my toes, letting out a soft sigh of satisfaction that echoed through the village. It pleased me to grind their tiny bodies to smears, and they deserved to know that. There were little lights everywhere, though--so many more, and they were all going to have the chance to please me.

There was one, though, so much brighter than the rest. The priestess fought to control the panic, to seek the aid of the divine to hide these helpless insects from my wrath. I dropped to a crouch and reached for her, my fingertips pushing through her barriers with ease. They crackled and collapsed against my skin, like a static charge that lingered...tickled and buzzed.

She remained deep in desperate prayer as I pinched her in my grasp and lifted her from the ground, and I let her continue as I held her before my face, looking over her intricately decorated armor, memorizing the emblems of her order so I could address them when the time was right.

Eventually she realized that her words would do nothing. I silenced her voice, suppressing her with the simplest of spells, and then she turned her eyes to mine, glowering with pointless, pitiful hate.

“You should have prayed to me.” I pressed my thumbnail beneath her chin, smiling softly as she struggled and choked, both of us knowing how easily I could tear her head from her shoulders with nothing more than a flick. “You should have begged for mercy. It wouldn’t have saved you, but maybe I’d have just crushed you with the rest.”

I glanced down and swept my foot across a group of villagers in flight, sending them sprawling in the dirt. I turned the priestess to watch as I covered each one with the tip of my boot and simply pressed down, smashing them into the ground with one efficient twist back and forth. He burst so sweetly beneath my sole, just like the next, and the next, and the next.

“They could have lived out their lives, but you turned them against me.” I wouldn’t let her turn away, and still she struggled against my insurmountable strength. I liked having her squirm. I liked that she still thought there was anything she could do.

“Now, they’ve become nothing more than worms at my feet, and you’re going to watch me squish every last one.”

I swung a kick into the biggest building in reach and chuckled softly as it completely burst against my boot, spraying debris across half the hamlet and sending a pile of people tumbling and rolling through the street.

I closed my eyes and slid my foot forward, lifting my toes and letting the villagers’ essence call out to me. I could sense them, feel their existence just waiting for my massive boot to obliterate them, to snuff out everything that they were.

I shifted my weight and felt the exact moment of my little subject's end, when life left the tiny sack of flesh and nothing but flattened gore remained beneath my step. My eyes remained shut as my foot sought out the next, knowing just where it needed to fall.

I stepped on them, my lips parted in ecstasy as every footfall erased another inconsequential fool. I purred softly to myself as I simply walked on them, not even bothering to look down as their bodies scrunched beneath my tread and their homes shattered against my beautiful shoes.

I trampled the entire village to nothing but blood-smeared dust in a matter of minutes, and the rush of power was like nothing I’d ever known. My eyes opened to see the pathetic priestess sobbing silently in my grasp.

A curl of a finger dismissed her enchantment and let her precious, well-deserved wailing loose to reach my ears. “You’ll need your voice to tell tonight’s tale,” I informed, watching her grow silent as she realized what that meant.

“You’re… not going to kill me?” There was no hope in her eyes as she croaked out the words. She was confused by the concept, more than anything else.

“Of course not. Enjoyable as this evening’s become, pleasure wasn’t my purpose. This was a message, dear priestess.” She barely reacted, still dumbfounded by my incredible actions and presence.

“And you’re the perfect messenger.” I shifted her in my hand and moved my other up alongside her, covering her face with my fingertip, feeling her features against my skin and sliding downwards until I covered her mouth. “Now, like I said, you’ll need this.”

I gave her my sweetest smile while my finger slid down along her side and curled beneath her thighs, teasing down the backs of her legs. “And you’ll need these to carry you from town to town.”

She shuddered a little atop my finger. Of course she was terrified, but she’d done a good job of suppressing her fear. It was nice to have a bit of physical evidence all the same. I let her legs drop to dangle and moved my fingertips back up along her armored body.

“These…” I gripped her shoulder and drew my touch down along her limb, stretching her arm out to the side. My thumbnail pressed into her underarm, and just a little curl of my index finger and a tug was all it took to rip it clean off.

“These will just get you into trouble.” I tossed the torn and twitching limb aside, letting her most agreeable screams fill the air as I got ahold of her other flailing arm. This one I more twisted off of her trunk, but it took hardly any effort at all before sinew and flesh ripped away.

“Now. You stay here.” I crouched back down and laid her gently back in the middle of the tavern’s remnants. “Someone’s sure to come see what all commotion here was about.”

I seared each of her sides so she wouldn’t bleed out, and then bent my knee and gripped my boot at the heel, carefully sliding it free from my foot and then doing the same with the other. I didn’t really trust her to stay in place, so I was going to make sure.

“Shhhhh.” I couldn’t resist gently settling my freshly freed foot on her little body and letting her screams tantalize my warm sole through the fabric of my stocking. “Save your strength, darling.”

Slowly and delicately I pushed my foot back and forth along her steel-wrapped frame, letting my toes slide across her face, dragging them against it until she fell silent.

“I wish I could see the faces of whoever comes to find you.” I bent at the waist with one boot in each hand. With great care, I positioned her body beneath the center of one of those heavy platform soles, and that, of course, brought about a whole new round of screaming.

Still, even a boot larger than a house wasn’t as heavy as one, and her breastplate didn’t crumple under my shoe. I decided on a whim to keep the other as a memento of this special night, and my free hand already had begun forming the series of gestures that would portal me back to my castle, my servants, my throne.

“When they do, you’ll be certain to tell them--The Witch Queen Sehanine rules this land, today, tomorrow, and forever more.”