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"A Looking Glass" (Genevieve) ------------------------------ Celestial Castle, Midgard ~ November ------------------------------ Blue and silver butterfly wings brushed the hand, felt because they were seen to touch the gray curves of fingers more than because the one holding it could truly feel. They were feather-soft, a fairy kiss, and the only loving caress she would receive while locked within her own castle. She didn't even have the strength to crush the poor creature, but she would never do that anyway - they were creations of her magic, and works of art that she would never allow to disappear. That was the vanity of the elves, she supposed... the only emotion they seemed to possess. Genevieve flicked her hand, sending the glimmering butterfly away. Her bones cracked and she uttered a curse - or would have, if she had still been able to speak. But her lips were frozen as only death could freeze and speaking aloud, moving her lips to so much as breathe, would only result in more damage to her fragile vessel. A thousand years was nothing of note to her, but to the body she inhabited, it meant everything - death, decay, and the curse of the undead. She liked to pride herself on being different from that ilk, but as she was now... Disgusting - that's what it was. She could have worn a beautiful body as she would a pretty dress, but no, she was trapped within her own castle by the seal of an upstart little goddess and her own weaves of power. /That/ she had finally realized, after ten centuries of studying the accursed knot; it was a merging of the goddess's power with the energy used to lift the castle in the air, and breaking it would mean plunging into the ocean unless she could unweave it from the outside, where it had been created in the first place. She could not see all of it from where she was, and that made it an infuriating puzzle that could never be solved. She had not the power. What she did have... well, it was useless. Genevieve could not leave of her own accord, but she /could/ answer a summons from the outside if the sorcerer had enough strength to withstand her. That was not so rare, as the idea of power had sustained many a wizard and priest in the past. But one who would, in this age, know her name and the incantation to call her - that was more difficult to come by. Darkness was growing in Midgard, but not so quickly that the legend of /her/ power would come to light again soon. She was trapped, still. So many years had passed that only her will kept her vessel together and moving with some semblance of normalcy. Only her vast power - hard earned - kept death at bay. Surely her soul would survive if the body did not, but then she would once again be wandering the world as a restless spirit, and /that/ was a fate she would avoid at any cost, even if it meant taking the form of one of her creatures or butterflies to sustain her physical presence in the world. Leaping bodies wasn't as hard as it seemed, but taking one after years of wandering and fading demanded a heavier price. Genevieve rose from her marble bench with the slow, burdened motions of one very old - or stiff from death, as was true in her case. Her skin, gray and flaked as the bark of the trees in the Sylvan land, felt as if it would break apart at any moment like so much brittle parchment. She should have been a pile of bones; now she looked like a doll with its stuffing decayed and removed, left to rot in the sun. She needed no mirror to see her loathsome form, for she felt it within. That would make her next task easier. Her vanity was already bruised to the breaking point, but one more blow would not destroy it completely. If her plan worked - a plan devised after her last glance in the mirror, and her last try at unweaving the seal - she would only see this wretched body one more time before it would be replaced by something more tasteful. Balanced somewhat precariously on her decaying feet, she shuffled out of the little garden with as much speed as she could muster and entered the finery of her palace. The gold and ivory and marble were a blur to her - old, insignificant, things she had seen a million times. The paintings were her own work; murals of the elves hard at task and the sweeping boughs of Yggdrasil reached over the walls and splayed across the ceiling, as were pictures of the palaces in Asgard before they were dulled by the brighter luster of the gods. The divine entities themselves were never present in her work, however. She felt nothing but revulsion for them, and the feeling was mutual. In a way it was a shame, but even they could not claim the title of 'most beautiful' in her mind. Power - that was the stuff of heaven. The room she entered was deathly quiet and cool, unlit, and illuminated only by the glow that spilled through the doorway upon her entrance. Genevieve pushed the door closed and put an end even to that, leaving herself in the comforting blanket of blackness. The way was unobstructed; she walked with halting footsteps to the far wall and grasped at it with her unfeeling hands, closing her fingers around thick velvet when she felt them catch and pulling as hard as she dared. Darkness fell in soft whispering folds, and by the faint sliver of light still glowing from beneath the door, a mirror shined cold and pure. The reflection within was loathsome, beyond her desire to describe. Her skin, her spindly fingers, her face, had all been stretched like a drum, eaten away by the passing of time until she was no longer recognizable as the woman she had overcome a millennia ago. Annabelle's beauty, the pride and joy that had drawn Genevieve to her, was now in ruins, vanished as if it had never been. Only her hair remained in good condition, still bright like cornsilk and flowing over her shoulders and mocking her. It took a great deal to ignore the vision before her, but she managed to focus her sight on the surface of the mirror, and the lines engraved ever so carefully within the silvered glass. It was a scrying rune, one of ancient power that had been lost to the world since her fall. She needed it now, though she had made it merely as a formality for the magic back in the days of her glory; its power, or what remained of it, would be all that allowed her to reach past the seal and into the domain of the humans. As much as she hated to admit it... she needed them for now. With great effort, she lifted her hand again and extended a finger to trace over the faint lines of ancient magic, whispering the words in her mind and reaching deeply into her reserves of power to find the energy she needed to make the enchantment work. The magic hung for a moment in the air, roiling and hesitating as if it wanted to collapse in upon itself, and she held her breath - or imagined she did - as she watched it pulse over her reflection in the glass. It didn't fall apart as she'd feared. The rune faded and her ruined features with it, and in their place was a swirl of colors, all and none, the very fabric of the world that only the Valkyrie sisters were allowed to look upon. But natural laws meant nothing to Genevieve, and she raised her hand to the glass again, extending her will through the touch. Fate twisted before her eyes, and she was carried away on the wings of a vision. ------------------------------------ "A Looking Glass" (Genevieve) By Amber Michelle ------------------------------------ |