Serve (Patreon)

A decade ago I was incredibly deep into roleplaying in MMOs and elsewhere. Fionavar Mistwallow was my longest running character, and back then I saved a few moments from her lifetime and shared them on my deviantArt.

There's a different feeling when you've been a character, a deeper connection to their history and their emotional state. I can get close to that with my writing, but coming back to these characters every once in a while brings back a lot of feelings.

Enjoy "Serve," a story about Fiona.

*****

They must have thought themselves clever to bury their vault beneath a wayside tavern like this. I’d invested weeks in pinpointing the location, and surely it would only be a matter of time before I could overcome the locks and sigils keeping me from my prize as well, but I’d already spent so much time.

Someone here certainly could open it for me. Every exit was sealed, and the most recent patron to get my attention squirmed in the palm of my hand, shrunken to the size of a mouse. An incantation broadcast his agonized screams at deafening volume directly into every sentient mind in the building as my lacquered thumbnail slashed deeper and deeper into the man’s yielding flesh, his warm blood dribbling slowly between my fingers.

“Your friends are all craven or selfish.” I didn’t bother to look at my most recent toy, instead scanning the room, searching the others’ eyes while the little man’s screams abruptly ceased, his severed head popping free and rolling from the tips of my long elven fingers. It disappointed me that there were no heroes here willing to rise and fight. If they all valued their secrets more than their lives, well, then I’d be annoyed.

The couple at the nearest table caught my eye next. I could have cleaned the blood from my hand with the simplest of spells, but it was more fun to see it smeared across the woman’s skin as I bent at the waist and cupped her chin. She gasped and shrieked at my touch, but just the unnatural strength in my fingers was enough to keep her from pulling away.

“The vault. Tell me.” Already she seemed useless. A wave of my hand sent their table flying away to crash against the wall. Throwing her to the floor was easy, though I briefly considered that if I’d broken her jaw she might have a hard time telling me what I wanted to know.

A whispered word and a flick of my wrist flung her companion towards me, roughly tossing him to the floor at my feet. I took a moment to enjoy standing over them, even smiling the slightest bit when she reached out towards him while they both groaned and tried to pull themselves together.

He wasn’t getting up, though. The moment he lifted his belly from the floor, I raised one of my tall, elegant stilettos and planted a sharp heel firmly in his back, smashing him down and holding him firmly underfoot.

“Silence, maggot!” The gibbering woman grew quiet when I roared at her, and she followed my eyes to watch what I gathered was her husband squirming beneath my shoe. At least she was quiet until she noticed the man slowly shrinking.

She reached for him, shrieking, crying, begging for my mercy. All of it was ugly and pointless. “Say something useful,” I growled while extending a finger to blast her back with the most meager burst of arcane force.

She didn’t. She laid crumpled on the ground, sobbing in anguish while her husband grew smaller and smaller, his ribs starting to collapse beneath my toes, bones snapping and crunching one after another until he disappeared entirely under my shoe, pulverized to a nasty wet mess as my sole settled to the floor.

This place reeked of peasant desperation. Worthless beings gathering together, chasing false mirth to distract them long enough to endure another pointless week, month, year.

It was the kind of place I’d have enjoyed shrinking and obliterating underfoot as a whole. I resented needing something here, but admittedly I found some satisfaction in showing these creatures how to suffer. I slowly twisted my shoe back and forth, enjoying squishing the last solid bits of that man while letting his wife hear the squelching.

I rocked my shoe back on its heel to give her a good look at the gory smears, too, but I didn’t stop there. She was close enough that I could just stretch out my leg and set my shoe down right on her face.

“I stand surrounded by worms. Ugly beings that live and die crawling in dirt, unwanted and unnoticed.”

She wailed and whimpered while I ground the grimy bits of her crushed husband into her face. Destruction satisfied me--I’d obliterated entire villages beneath my shoes, snuffing out every last life and crushing every single structure to rubble and dust for no other reason than because it was there, and because I could.

There was pleasure in destroying a person, too. Not just in ending the life, but destroying the heart, crushing the spirit. I smiled briefly while the woman whimpered and convulsed under my foot. There was nothing left for her. She’d never recover from what she’d seen, what she’d felt--what she’d lost.

It was a familiar thought. There was nothing left for her. I waved my hand and shrunk her instantly, my smile fading while her body crumpled easily beneath my toes.

“The barkeep will have information.” I made the declaration as I looked the man in the eye, watching him fearfully back against the wall.

I stepped towards him, my shoe’s blood-smeared sole peeling loudly from the floor. “The barkeep always knows tidbits of information--rumors and stories from all those passing through. Will you be useful to me?”

His stammering pleas for mercy confirmed my suspicions. He was worthless, just like the rest. I whispered a few arcane words and dominated his simple mind, bending his will to my commands.

“You disappoint me. Until you have something worthwhile to share with me about the vault, I want you to bash your head on the top of your bar.”

He screamed, realizing he couldn’t stop himself. His hands braced against the edge of the bar and his skull smashed against the wood. “Maybe that will shake some information loose,” I suggested while he lifted his bloody face, ready to slam it down a second time.

A roar and the loud clanking of armor suggested a foolish warrior charging to his doom even before I turned around to face him. On instinct I twisted the wooden floor, bringing the planks to life and ensnaring him, a trick I’d learned as a young druidess so many, many years ago. 

I was so much more than that now. I ripped the man free of the brambles, my body coursing with the strength of a dozen warriors as I lifted him by his throat, smiling at his struggles until I decided to fling him to the ground. 

My mind buzzed with countless mysteries of nature and secrets of the arcane. For a hundred years, with every experiment, every tome consumed, every artifact possessed, my power had grown. I was a goddess to these ants--they could withhold nothing from me.

I dropped my heel on his breastplate, the metallic thud echoing through the room and standing in contrast to the continuing, dull smack of the barkeep’s forehead slamming down. It set a pleasing rhythm to my movements, becoming the percussion for my violent inquisition.

“You have three seconds to share your secrets.” In truth I was already stepping down. To his credit, he looked into my eyes for as long as he could while the steel over his chest started to creak and groan.

I kept my weight towards my toes. My heel could have punched through his armor with ease and shredded his little heart, but I wanted him to have time to think about what was happening. I wanted him looking up at me, pathetic and helpless while my shoe caved in his breastplate and slowly crushed his chest.

His filthy fingers clutched at my leg and I had to resist giving into my irritation and crushing him instantly. “How dare you touch me,” I sneered over the sounds of his crunching ribs and rattling last breaths, and with a swift wave of my hand the floor twisted again, wrenching his arms back and pinning them at his sides.

Blood dribbled from the seams of his armor as my shoe pushed towards the floor, growing to a steady gush as his body yielded to the unstoppable force of my foot. The last six inches went quickly, filled with ugly squelches and crunches and a splash of disgusting gore.

It got on me, and now I was annoyed. Of course I expected to get my hands dirty, I expected some grime on my shoes. Not only had this revolting little warrior had the audacity to touch my stockings, he’d been stupid enough to bleed on them.

It only took a brief moment and a little incantation to separate the bloody bits from the luxurious ivory fibers, but the fact that they’d been dirtied at all soured my mood. They were all that she’d left me, and while they didn’t reach quite as high on my long legs as they had on her, the exquisitely smooth, soft stockings wrapped me in her memory from my thighs to my feet.

For so many years, they’d never left me. Preserved by enchantment, still as perfectly white and pure as the last time she’d worn them. They reminded me of nights curled against her legs at the foot of her bed, or afternoons spent beneath her desk, showering her soles with sweet, loving kisses while she lost herself in research.

I snatched the nearest disgusting peasant and shrunk it before I’d even fully lifted it from its seat. I wasn’t thinking now--grabbing its arm at the shoulder and starting to twist was just an impulse.

Frustration came through clearly in my voice. Rarely did my emotions escape, but this was too important and I was getting nowhere.

“I’m growing tired...” the little thing’s arm tore free while it twitched and screamed.

“Of you insects…” I snapped its other arm off above the elbow and let it drop to the floor.

“Wasting…” I pinched its ankles between my fingers and twisted, feeling ligaments and tendons pop and tear.

“My time.” Another sharp twist ripped both legs from its body, leaving me with a bloody stump that I crumpled in my fist and flung to the floor. They were going to answer me, or they were all going to die. Every last one.

I could have snapped their necks or crushed their skulls with my bare hands. I could have burned them all alive with a snap of my fingers. It was my preference to squish them like roaches under my shoe. They were beneath me, ugly vermin infesting my world, and there was a certain soothing satisfaction in treating them as such.

One after another, I turned my attention to the remaining things now rising from their seats, embracing a more wild, animal panic. They screamed and scrambled about with nowhere to run or hide, shrinking away with a wave of my hand and vanishing under my shoe.

Nobody was going to help me. They would have spoken up by now if there was anything to say. I erased them efficiently, one by one, lowering the pointed toe of my shoe and twisting my foot back and forth just slowly enough to enjoy the sensation.

Minutes later there was nothing left alive. Little splatters covered various spots on the floor, with the flattened warrior collapsed in a puddle of his own viscera. Even the barkeep had grown still, slumped on the floor with his blood and brains smeared across the area.

I took a moment to look over the gory scene, but all I saw was a colossal waste of time. I’d get my answers somehow. No puzzle could defy me forever. I turned to go, but stopped in my tracks.

A human girl stood in the doorway, brilliantly attired, small and slight. On instinct I shouted an incantation to hold her paralyzed. There was resistance--powerful resistance. She was a sorceress of some sort, or at least carried heavy enchantment. 

“I didn’t know you were here.” It was true, she’d surprised me. Nothing ever managed to surprise me. All that knew of me rightfully thought me a monster. Over the decades, entire armies had been mobilized to hunt me. My keen senses and countless wards should have alerted me to her presence. She was both a danger and a mystery, and I despised both equally.

“Speak, girl.” She had done nothing but stare at me wide-eyed, wearing this broad, crazed grin. “Before I erase you from this world.”

She gasped at that, but not like I’d expect. There was a hint of a happy sigh in her, and her grin didn’t fade one bit. “I can’t believe you’re here. Truly, you are more powerful, beautiful, and wonderfully cruel than I could even imagine, though I’ve imagined you endlessly…”

“What are you on about?” I regarded the strange girl with narrowed eyes and a furrowed brow. She seemed manic, crazed, and that made her unpredictable.

“There’s so many stories. Entire towns crushed to rubble under the elegant shoes of a colossal goddess. Kings and queens crawling on their bellies before a merciless elven witch. Hunts for abducted nobles leading to nothing more than a tiny patch of gore ground into a rug.”

She took a deep breath, steadying herself before she continued. “I’ve chased your legend for years, Lady Mistwallow, and watching as these poor people cowered before you, weeping as you made them your toys and dying like, I believe you called them ‘worms?’ Like ugly little worms beneath your magnificent shoes…”

Her knowledge made me uncomfortable, but it was knowledge I sought. “The vault. Tell me what you know.”

Now she was stammering a little, still excited but increasingly nervous as well. “I know that I’m going to die. You leave no survivors--that’s part of what makes it so hard to chase down the stories about you. Please, I just want to kneel before you, to kiss the feet that would trample nations and crush armies before they destroy me as well.”

She was fighting through my enchantment--I could see her overcoming the paralysis, her legs trembling and her knees starting to bend. She was powerful indeed, but I chanced letting the spell go and watched her fall to her knees. She was nearly panting as I stepped towards her, clutching her skirt and craning her neck to stare up at me with those same wide, eager eyes.

Even kneeling upright and attentively, she barely came to the middle of my thighs. I had to bend just slightly to seize a fistful of her bright orange hair.

“The vault.” I wrenched her head back and flinched a little to hear the girl softly moan. Her lips parted and her breath grew heavy as she continued to stare into my eyes.

Now she trembled. I watched the last bits of her confidence fade before my eyes. “I’m so sorry… I made it up.”

The very idea made my head spin. “What?” I roared, jerking her head back further, watching her wince in pain. I’d researched this for months, chased down several leads, interrogated more people than I could recall…

“I spent my whole life chasing you. No matter what I tried, the closest I could get would be discovering a scene of carnage and destruction left in your wake. I’d try my best to recreate the scene, to fill the gaps with my fantasies, but I had to see for myself. I needed you. I needed you to come to me, so I laid the hints and clues out for you. The rare legends and stories with a hint of truth said you search for one thing…”

“You tricked me.” My voice fell flat as the unimaginable reality set in. I’d forgotten rage. I’d forgotten how it felt to have it build in my chest, to bubble up and start to overwhelm me.

Before she could finish a second apology, I whipped her head to the side with all the strength in my body. I was so furious I didn’t even feel her little neck snap, but it took mere seconds to watch the light slowly drain from her eyes.

Straddling her crumpled corpse, with nobody around, nothing left alive anywhere that I could see, I threw back my head and screamed into the night. Another dead end. Another failure. No wonder the path seemed so promising, but it had seemed so real, too. I’d let hope take hold in my heart again, but I was a fool, tricked by a simple human girl.

It only took a few minutes to settle myself, to find my composure, but I wasn’t quite ready to move on. I had been angered, but this was still a remarkable moment. I produced a soulstone in my hand and let it drain, watching as the recently dead girl sputtered, coughed and twitched, her life suddenly returned.

“Why?” It was a simple question, but one I needed to have answered.

It took a while for her to speak. I’d felt the shock of death--I knew the disorienting sickness she felt. I’d also discovered some unexpected patience for her, so I let her take her time.

“You’re my goddess.”

In moments of euphoria I’d felt as such, but to hear it on another’s lips stirred a very different feeling. I didn’t respond, waiting for her to continue.

“You’re an unstoppable force, so divinely beautiful, so far above us that you can see the truth. The rules of man and the laws of nature are nothing to you--you see that life is not sacred, the soul has no value, that people have no purpose.”

I slowly shook my head while I watched her. Her speech was measured, almost reverent, like she’d had these words in her heart for years.

“We don’t deserve our existence. We’re filthy maggots, wriggling about in a pointless world, and you see us for what we are. You smear us beneath your boots, you crush hundreds without a second thought. I’ve dreamed of you every night I can remember, and imagined you above me every time my mind wanders during the day.”

I let out a long breath while I watched her wet, dreamy eyes. “Your charade has cost dozens of lives, all just to give you a moment with me?”

“I wish it was thousands,” she sighed with a happy grin. “I wish this entire world could be crushed to rubble beneath your feet. I’ve waited so long to see the pure perfection of your cruelty. You like to hurt as much as you like to destroy, and seeing it firsthand, seeing the satisfaction in your face as you erase one life after another with a twist of your toes...”

“You came here to die.” A part of me enjoyed her passion, but I didn’t fully understand.

“It’s the only thing we’re good for. One brief moment of your pleasure means more than a lifetime of our little petty fake joy. I just pray, please, crush me slowly. Savor each crunching bone, and let me see my own blood spurting beneath you, adorning the bottom of your heavenly shoe.”

Such desperate devotion. I’d made people beg for a quick death before, but she’d gone to incredible lengths, devoted her life to finding me just so she could die like a bug. She begged to suffer, for the experience of a horrid end under my foot.

The foot of her goddess.

I was letting her distract me. “You know what I seek. Perhaps you know more of me than anyone. Surely you have some bit of information that can be of use.”

“I’m sorry…” That’s all I needed to hear to start preparing the well-rehearsed spell to shrink her to nothing. Another waste of time.

“...Your mistress is gone.”

I stopped dead. The aching in my chest had died decades ago, but her words gave it new life.

“She stepped into the Void, and you know nothing can remain. One can grow tired of this world but still know love. I’m sure she loved you, as even now, I love you. I’ve loved you since the first time I heard whispered words of your deeds.”

This foolish girl had me reeling. I struggled to catch my breath, but at the same time there was something about her that I understood. I recognized the look in her eyes, and I remembered a young elven girl, lost in the forest, and the dark, reckless woman disregarding every law I’d been taught since birth.

I could see her still, whirling in a torrent of flame, laughing as the things we called sacred and the people who stood in her path were reduced to cinder and ash. The pure, wicked glee as the charred bodies crunched beneath her feet. The way my heart raced when I got down on my knees and obeyed her demands, as I gathered my dress and wiped the remnants of my forest and my family from her merciless leather boots.

She was violently possessive and ruthlessly selfish, and I gave myself to her desperately. I was her servant, her pet, her guardian, toy, student and slave.

I knew this girl’s heart. I understood every bit of it. She let out the faintest gasp when I slipped my heel free from my shoe, and a soft moan while she watched my long foot rise into the air and move over her body.

“Goddess,” she whispered to my sole as it hovered inches above her face. There were moments where I’d have disagreed, but here and now, it felt proper. It felt good, and it felt right.

She rose to meet me, her little lips pressing to my arch in a soft, reverent kiss. I remembered these moments, every curve of the sole wrapped in these same lovely stockings, accented with touches of grey from the long hours wrapped in black leather. I felt her breath through my toes and remembered the warmth, the rich scents of that same leather mingled with sweat.

She groaned when I lowered my foot and pinned her to the floor. I heard a muffled “thank you” many times between her increasingly frantic kisses while I stepped on her. Every moment beneath her goddess could be her last, and she gave every ounce of passionate devotion while I enjoyed slowly grinding her face under my foot.

She gave herself to me, and I’d made my decision. Minutes later the tavern was consumed by conjured flame and we vanished from the scene with a wave of my hand and a blip of light, ready to explore a new chapter of life with my new possession squirming delightfully in my pocket.