dark fantasy – Lenise Lee

By Moonlight. 4.2c

Posted on January 16, 2023January 17, 2023 by iamlenise

The gods themselves heard the vow.

On a distant star, too faint to be seen from the Earth, and too enchanted to be sensed by only the most blessed beings of the Universe, the Pantheon was in an uproar.

Hyperion and Theia had disappeared into the fallen realm of Mankind and had yet to respond to the beckoning of the Celestial Imperion. They were the guardians of earth-plane and were sworn to protect its sanctity at all costs, but Theseus feared they had been too slow to act this time.

While the ensemble of dieties from various worlds, realms, and dimensional planes from the vast corners of existence gathered together, fretting, arguing, mumbling and whispering amongst themselves, their elected leader watched the emptiness of oblivion outside of the towering window of the ivory palace.

The rules of eternity dictated that the native people of Earth would always be granted freewill to decide their own fate; that is, unless that decision meant the complete downfall of their species and their world. And, for the first time since the All breathed life into that distant realm, the true end of the earth-plane had almost arrived. Its creatures – all of them, least and greatest – were on the eve of utter extinction. The guardians had held back from interceding for far too long and now all hope rested in the hands of one pair of humans, who were barely into their human teen years.

Why had he waited so long to gather his fellow gods? Because he had always had a high respect for the resilience and wisdom of humankind. They were a proud and stubborn species, mostly due to their isolation at the opposite side of the universe. But this had been their greatest strength for so long, like battle-hardened soldiers, shouldering the worst wounds while building the greatest empire ever known. Yes, this was their great source of strength, believing they were surviving alone while hurtling through empty space, until this trait somehow devolved to their become part of their own annihilation.

Deceivers infiltrated them, casting spells of terrible conceit that heralded their doom. A society that fractures to its core is destined for death, eventually.

When the swell of voices and other vocals had reached its crescendo, Theseus erupted into a roar, ” ENOUGH!”

As he spun to face toward the interior of the grand hall, gleaming whiter than ivory and shimmering like the twinkles of faint, ethereal stars, the train and long sleeves of his flowing robes moved with him like a strong breeze, flowing and rippling across the translucent floor.

The innumerable members of this universal counsel immediately hushed to a respective silence.

“We all know why we are here,” his steely eyes moved over the various forms present. “The Earth and it’s people are about to fall. Forever.”

Once again, the hall erupted into vocal chaos, but fell into silence as soon as Theseus raised his robed arm and hand.

“As you know, the complete death of a primary world, such as Earth, could have catastrophic consequences. It could trigger a ripple that could eventually tear the fabric of this eternity.”

Again an intense and unified gasp shot out in all directions.

“So what do we do, Theseus?” The question pushed hard into his mind from thousands of others all at once. Had he not been an ancient being, well-trained in all manners of telepathy, the sensation would have been overwhelming, possibly even fatal.

“Shall we descend to Earth? Put the invaders on trial? Or just execute them, destroy their forms and expel them back to the Void?”

This was the unanimous thought of the members, take the easy route: Seek. Destroy. But Theseus knew that this would make them no better than their enemies who had used the same means to cause this near-catastrophy.

“No.”

Shock pulsed all around him.

“Then what, wise magistrate?” The delegates asked with eagerness that pushed toward him like a forceful wave.

“Before we declare war, we give humankind one more chance. They have two very enlightened beings standing for them. Though they are barely beyond childhood, they are strong and courageous. More importantly, they love one another fiercely and that love has made them more powerful than our enemies had predicted. They are our last line of defense against the great fall. Hyperion and Theia are with them now. They will train them as quickly as possible and hone their powers into sharp, unbreakable blades.”

He turned back toward the window, toward oblivion, and spoke to himself more than to anyone else in the expansive hall, “Because they cannot falter nor fail. They have no choice but to chop down their enemy. Our enemy.”

By Moonlight, Fiction

By Moonlight. 4.2b

Posted on January 15, 2023January 15, 2023 by iamlenise

Their inky shadows slivered across the wooden floor of the darkened den.

Like a slow-winding river of slithering darkness, they crept up the legs of the pair of claw-footed, high-backed chairs. Slowly, purposefully, their swirling essence filled the spaces of the seats.

Legs. Arms. Torsos and heads. Suddenly, the whites of eyes opened wide then gleamed against the backdrop of their ebony forms.

Man and woman. Sinister. Vengeful. Overflowing with all the powers of the Void. The Elders were reborn.

This was their world now, and not even the gods themselves could cleave it from their grip.

Their first order of business: Find their wayward son and his peasant bride. Hunt them down and destroy them completely, until not even ash remained. Their powers had grown, even in the short time that they had been free. But they were slow to organize themselves, and that would be their weakness and their downfall.

The end of all Light begins now.

By Moonlight, Dear Agony, Fiction, Into the Light

By Moonlight 2.3 : Show No Fear

Posted on April 22, 2019April 22, 2019 by iamlenise

I’m here.

Her thoughts touched his mind and he jerked.

The sudden burst of movement sent a stab of pain through every inch of Ethan’s broad frame.

He was unimaginably stronger – physically, psychically, and kinetically – than any other being under this roof, yet now he was suspended mid-air and helpless. They had beaten him first and then cast their spells to bind him in chains forged in titanium. As added punishment for his insolence, and to ensure his suffering was as excruciating as possible, Mother and Father – his handlers – had tied him in an unnatural position, with his arms and legs twisted and bent, criss-crossing each other in unusual ways, and stretching his tendons, muscles, and joints to their extreme limits.

Until this moment he had been absolutely still, summoning the mental focus to pause even his breaths to bare minimum so as not to raise his chest wall too much. A breath taken too deeply would squeeze the chains even tighter around his ribs, nearly to the point of his suffocation.

Where are you? Her ability to speak to him through their mental tie came easily to her now, and he was pleased with how fast her newfound senses were awakening, sharpening.

He wondered. Did his presence trigger the gifts buried deep within her to bloom? Or were they destined to do so on their own? She was of age, so maybe he had not been the catalyst to her awakening as she had been for his reawakening.

Within the timeless dark void of the chamber, he had thought of nothing else but her. And now she had come.

He had done away with a kingsmen to protect her, and now he was bearing the fullest consequences. Battered and bruised from brow to toe, lungs collapsing, and eyes swollen shut. And he would do it all again, without hesitation.

He would always save her.

And she would always return to him.

Their bond was unbreakable now. Her appearance here had proved this to him. He saw the sequence of events after he had been taken from the room, and she could have used her abilities to escape and left him behind, never to be thought of again. But she had not. Instead, she was risking her life to come to his rescue this time.

Through his agony, he called out to her. Silent thoughts seeking out the only soul who could comfort him. And she had responded without delay.

I can’t see anything in here, she spoke to him in silence, moving her thoughts from her being into his mind, I can’t even hear you breathing. She paused, still as the midnight. Are you still alive?

She asked the question, but he knew that she already sensed the answered before the words were even formed.

He, on the other hand, knew exactly where she stood.

Three feet away and to his right.

He couldn’t risk injuring himself any further – after all, he was only half immortal, for now – so he sent only the smallest energy pulse toward her. Like a drowning man, using the last of his strength, to signal a passerby, hoping against all hope that they would spot the plea and drag his weak and withered body from the depths of the ocean waves or from the exhausting flow of the rushing stream and back toward the calm stillness of the shoreline.

Shay was Ethan’s lifeline, and he urged her, gently, to hurry and come nearer.

He felt her mind tug and recoil. It was mostly from fear. She did not understand what he was trying to do.

Don’t be afraid, love, his mind whispered to hers. We don’t have much time.

Reluctantly, at first, then more willingly with each tick of the universal pulse that surrounded them all, she dropped her guard and edged forward. Closer and closer still, until they were within a breath of one another.

His upside down coolness drawn into the warmth she pushed down on him from her right side up position.

They told the guards to take me back upstairs, to the room. He didn’t need her to retell the story, he had already read the path of events directly from her memory, but allowed her to continue. She needed to work through what had happened. She needed to understand how powerful she would be become, especially now that they were united. I knew they were going to kill me, eventually. I was prepared for that…, she stuttered, but I…I didn’t want them to keep hurting you…, he sensed the moisture gathering at the corner of her eyes. You saved me….again. You knew this would happen, and you did it anyway. And they hurt you so badly because of what you did for me.

She paused, her mind went silent and he nearly panicked at the absence of her awareness.

Shay…

Then he knew why she had shut down. Her story had almost ended has horribly.

He was walking me upstairs, she continued, right beside me, so close that his skin was brushing mine. That chill! Her hands flew to her mouth as she muted what nearly became a frantic screech. I knew, I knew, I knew. I saw it in my mind…what he was going to do…to me…once we were back at that room, she held in the sob but he knew her lips were quivering. I don’t know what happened next. I freaked out…I was going to try to run, but then I saw your face. I…felt your presence…standing nearby, but when I looked around, you weren’t really there. And then it all just made sense…I wasn’t scared anymore. I knew what to do next…it was a like an impulse, an instinct. I stopped and I just…I just turned to him and said the words. Take me to him. Then this feeling, like an electric shock ripped through me, but it didn’t hurt me. It hurt him though, I could tell, I could see the change. His eyes went gray and shiny but his stare was blank and dumb. Then he turned around and walked me down here.

Ethan’s mind roamed toward the door and finally moved beyond it. He sensed the guard there. Shay’s grip on him was loosening. They had to move. But even if they escaped this room, there was no escaping the true darkness that was beyond, surrounding them in all directions.

At the moment, it didn’t matter. He would think of their next move once he was free and they were moving toward somewhere, anywhere away from this torture chamber. This would be his last time ever entering this room.

Shay, he spoke silently to her once more, lean down.

And she did, eagerly following his thought-words.

She could do this, he knew she could. The power was already overflowing from within her.

Touch your head to mind, like this. He showed her a vision of how she had to lay her brow against his. And she did.

Her warmth stirred a strange lust and an even stranger comfort within him. The kind of hypnotic, pleasurable strangeness that would become an addiction in no time at all.

Then he showed her how to move her energy into him. He was weak and his internal bleeding was heavy. He needed her to heal him, and maybe then he could break the chains that immobilized him.

After her first try failed, he touched her thoughts with an invisible kiss – soft and reassuring. He promised her that if she could not do this, he would not be mad. Instead, even if it was his time to seep into the depths of the unknown beyond, he would go happier than he had ever been before this night. No one else had ever filled him with as much peace and hope. Not even Tiffany.

With that last thought, a feral wave bubbled forward from Shay. Full, hot, quick and powerful, filling him with a burst of strength. His muscles swelled once more, the blood that had been pooling around his organs dispersed and returned to where it was needed most for healing.

He was reborn within the strength she had blessed to him.

And with one giant pulse-wave and one spoken command – UNBOUND – Ethan flexed his full frame and the titanium shackles that held him broke.

Just before tumbling to the floor, he quickly rotated his body and landed with his feet planted on the floor, crouching and filled with renewed purpose and bursting with pure energy.

No time to waste. They had to run. Far and fast, before anyone knew they were gone.

Ethan grabbed Shay by her thin wrist and pulled her forward toward the door.

Before his fingers touched the knob, the chamber flooded with blinding light. From high over head a voice – still cruel, still intoxicated with dark influence and still dripping with mennace – boomed down on them.

“Very good, my son.” Father said, with pleasure in his tone. “Excellent, my new daughter.

I see what all the fuss has been about.” An unseen smerk filled his spoken words. “She is truly the missing piece to this puzzle. And we are so very glad that you have found her for ussss.” He hissed the last word, allowing his natural being to leach out. A momentary slip that he quickly corrected. “Now the initiation of the darkest dawn can begin.”

The door to the chamber swung open. Shay’s glimmer was fully broken, and the guard had returned to awareness.

“Take them both for cleaning and dressing. Feed them as well. We need them beautiful and strong, so that the rite can move forward as foretold.”

There was a drawn out pause, not even the air dared to move.

“Dear son,” Father continued. Ethan had always hated being called that. This warlock was never a father to him, nor was the witch his real mother. Captors at best, torturers at worst. Seeping darkness into him, until Shay returned the possibility of reigniting his light. “Did you think she escaped on her own? We had to see what she was capable of. We had to see what you were capable of together.”

They had used him as bait in order to force Shay to evolve without delay.

But now they would regret the fruit of the seeds they had sown.

Without thinking, the couple clasped their hands together, and intertwined their fingers tightly. Their bodies pushed together, interlocking their energies as well. Waves moved around them, first invisible to human eye and then brightening with each pulse into a flaming gold barrier that shimmered and flared.

Show no fear, love, he whispered calmly into her thoughts.

I never do, she replied into his mind.

A half grin touched his mouth as he squeezed her hand tighter. She was a woman after his own heart and filled with his same fierceness.

Ethan balled his free hand into a tight fist. Crimson energy waves first sputtered and then sparked into a full illuminated glow. Shay followed his lead and did the same with hers, releasing a flame of indigo blue of equal size and power.

The color of their eyes shifted – his from pale blue and hers from hazel – into the most brilliant and glowing gold hue.

Alone, they each only had half the potential to ascend.

Together, they would become celestial. Brighter, more radiant and more powerful than the nuclear energy flowing through a thousand yellow suns.

Starting at this moment, they would become the light piercing the darkening world, awakening it from its slumber.

Shay and Ethan flexed their energies in unison, and the stone walls of the chamber shook.

As their unified power rose, this ancient castle would eventually fall.

End Part Two

By Moonlight 2.2 : Offerings and Other Things

By Moonlight 2.1 : Fire and Ice, and Sun and Moon

By Moonlight 2.0 : Rise, Queen

By Moonlight 1.5: Shay, Into the Light

By Moonlight 1 : The Beginning

By Moonlight, Dear Agony, Fiction, Into the Light

By Moonlight : Interlude I : Hyperion and Theia

Posted on April 22, 2019June 27, 2021 by iamlenise

“Shall we assist them?”

They spoke, but not in a manner that any human could fully comprehend, and not in a language that any human could completely understand or speak fluently.

They existed, but not on a frequency that mankind could dwell within for more than a flash of a moment, or what they perceived to be a moment.

They constantly observed, with the children of men having only the slightest sensation of their presence.

They battled and waged great wars amongst one another and on scales so immense that the sons of Adam and the daughters of Eve were only signaled of their occurence by way of unpredicted and grand celestial events.

They also loved, more tenderly than any mother or father toward a newborn, and more passionately than a lover with a newfound kindred spirit.

Yet now, through all they had witnessed over the eons, since the dawning of all things, this moment had caught their fullest attention.

Great members of the House of the Pantheons stood on alert, contemplating if intervention was needed – not only to save mankind but, more importantly, to save themselves.

Man would continually evolve and regress and then return to a thinking, contemplating species only to tumble downward once more, as was his destiny, but the celestials were created to overcome such a barbaric cycle.

However, here and now, this perceived moment could potentially be the beginning of the undoing of the many layers and ribbons that enfolded the fabric of reality itself.

Hyperion, mighty king of Sol, looked, more like motioned his celestial energy toward, Theia, his wife, mother of Luna and Gaia.

She acknowledged him by casting forward a rippling wave of light energy of her own to touch the source of his being.

If they were to manifest into tender flesh, he would be in the appearance of a kind and jolly father, handsome and robust for his age; and she would be a startling beauty, too vibrant to be thought of as a mother and too enigmatic to be anything other than adored by all.

“We will wait,” was her quiet, calm reply. “They must prove themselves worthy of our help.”

He nodded.

She was correct, as always.

His wife was the more rationale one, and he, the more radical of the pair.

Where she was meditative and strategic, he was quick to action with pure emotion.

Still.

Still, Hyperion could not shake the feeling that on this particular point, she could be – dare he think it – wrong.

Perhaps not assisting the humans in this particular struggle could prove to be a mistake.

These two were different.

They were more like gods than humans.

Demi-gods, of course, but that was only a play on words and concepts most of the time.

Quickly, he returned his attention to the seriousness of the situation at hand.

Every timeline from this point forward played out before him.

The pair were victorious in none.

And in the process of losing, they would destroy half of the earth and most of the lifeforms that dwelled upon her, by accident, time and time again.

They were too inexperienced in this form of combat, and had very little knowledge as to how to truly harness, focus, and control the power that swirled erratically and chaotically within their genes.

Now bonded, they were like a nuclear inferno, with all of the correct fusions reacting all at once.

Poised to blow in all directions, consuming all things in its path.

“No, dearest,” he spoke to her in a loving wave, “you are incorrect. This bonded pair has already proven much.” He continued as his memory replayed the couple’s individual lifelines. “We have seen it, since their births, how they have already overcome many trials, traps, and adversities, and are still pulsing with a wonderfully bright beacon of purest light.”

He paused, awaiting a stern objection, but none came.

“Husband,” Theia replied, turning her glorious being in his direction. To Hyperion’s shock, she was smiling, or what a human would describe as smiling, if ever a human could see her true face without being consumed. “Finally. You see beyond passion. You see true reason. You see true purpose. And yes, I agree. My initial judgement was in err… on purpose,” she quickly added. “We will intervene…but not just yet.”

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