"You lying little whore.. I know who you've been with. I know." Asmodeus is convinced beyond redemption that the golden boy of Carver's Outpost has caught my eye. Stolen my heart. Taken me in dark corners. Because of this damned belief which I cannot shake him from, no matter by behavior and promises of chastity, the Briar King demands I bring the young man to him.

I cannot outright defy my Master but as I returned to the village to carry out the charge of not one demon.. but two, I knew I could not bring Alistar back to Asmodeus in full capacity.. knowing and feeling the torture to which he was about to face.

I'm not sure if my mercy killing was any better than the foul creature who controls me but I could think of no other way. No other way to spare him. I blighted Alistar, feeding him some of the mind spore fruit which he greedily ate. Inwardly he died in that moment of consumption, the seedlings fostering through his system like wild fire. Outwardly, he would seem alive enough to perhaps fool and satisfy my Liege's.. cruel jealousies.

My father.. I doused him with Valerian and he sleeps. Taltos demands father as a sacrifice for going to war against the Briar King and so I will comply with his wishes also. There is however, something even the great spirit Taltos doesn't know and so I hope to come out of this entire ordeal alive.. along with my darling papa.

I pray he will forgive me these extreme measures when I explain all but for now, I must act without his permission.. and in such a way, he may look on me in fear for the rest of my days. But.. he will be alive.

[0 petals fell]

I returned to Carver's Outpost.. to the Weald and to Asmodeus. This time, however, I did not go alone. The black cat Astarté has chosen to forsake her Master and tag along at my heels. Too, Taltos hides inside me.

The Briar King's lair is well hidden and even if stumbled upon, I think anyone in their right mind would turn back. The curse of the Briar Rose enables me and me alone to walk amongst the ever-shifting fields of briars, their black barbed trunks and branches moving restlessly now and again without rhyme or reason.

Within this unwelcoming nest, hidden away from the eyes of men, lies the horde of blighted trees who obey me.. or rather, obey the Briar Rose. Their count reaches the thousands with more growing every day within Asmodeus' cavern. He has plans, my Master does.

The blights are a horror to look upon. Squat, gnarled little trees with claws for hands and sunken depressions where eyes and a mouth should be. They have neither. Their only organ, the blight spore serves reproductive purposes. It is located in the head area as the rest of the creature is solid wood.

This blood-red pomme sits inside a hollow rather like a human brain, moored to the insides with sticky, resinous sinew. It is sectioned off in quadrants and contains the seeds to which the thing sprung from in the first place. It is edible and sweet.

When I come into the Briar King's lair, the blights tend to follow me and when I arrived from my trip to Eunomia, it was no different. They came lurching in my wake as I knelt at the feet of my Master. And he wasn't at all pleased to see me.

[0 petals fell]

He got to me. There is a spot inside of Warrick for me to fit. I need I can fulfill. This I sense strongly.. and although I wasn't to be scooped up in his arms and carried off to a bed of fragrant petals for my first instruction on physical love, I eagerly followed him back to the executioner's squalid little shack. He would teach me how to please him like no other woman could. I would be in his blood..beneath his flesh forever.

Warrick did not take me to bed as I expected.. the Necromancer instead tugged me downstairs into the darkness where Priam hid his dungeon from any disapproving eyes.

The walls were lined with every gruesome torture device known to man.. and by the welding marks I saw on an item or two.... a few homemade goodies had been added to the collection as the Executioner developed his own style of bringing the accused to confessions meant to purge their souls. But why would my husband-to-be take me to such a place?

The possible reasons shivered through my mind. Warrick meant to lock me up down there in the dark and to take from me.. the feathery whisper of a spirit I had traveled countless miles to garner. He meant to steal from me. To hurt me.. he doesn't trust me. Not as I am now. He does not understand. He wants in. But in for his own gain but not my own. I had to get away. I couldn't let him do this to me. He had to be stopped. I would stop him.

I ran upstairs as fast as I could, beating him to the stairwell door which I locked up tight. I did not want him to be afraid. I whispered down to him I was sorry but I could not allow his interference. There is too much at stake...too many lives.

I left Eunomia after Astarté helped me to borrow a horse.

Warrick...

I thought you loved me. How could you?

I thought..

[0 petals fell]

I felt amazing after our kiss. I am not sure if the Necromancer's lips bear a healing touch or not but my bruised ribs weren't grinding my spirits into the dust and I could think.. actually think without fear or pain weighing me down. Of course, on the advent of such a change for the good, my stomach rebelled and I got violently ill in front of the man I would like to be pretty for.

Warrick drew me outside for cooler air and a walk in the graveyard which surrounds Priam's house. He had my hand in his and he was marching us through all those tombstones and cairns, intent on finding something.. or someone. It turned out to be the executioner who was frantically reopening a grave with only his shovel and a fair amount of sweat. He had some making up to do.. which was the message he received from the board any ways.

I felt so good. Confident. Strong. Easily prone to grin in sardonic amusement.. and of course surprised when Warrick tossed his witch board and planchette in the fresh hole the Executioner was digging.

Priam balked. He couldn't believe this was the Nercomancer's intention any more than I could. Why all this time, those two items were lovingly cared for and never left out in view for very long at all. Still, Warrick demanded those precious relics of his to be buried in an unmarked tomb before turning back to me.

"Be mine."

"But Alexandra.. your wife."

"She's been dead.. a really long time, Bryony. You will be mine, yes?"

With this act, the man buried his wife for with the board gone, any hope of contacting her spirit went with it. Finally, he was letting go of Alexandra after many many years of clinging to her memory and he was doing it.. for me.

"Warrick, teach me tonight to be a woman and come morning light, how to be your wife."

[0 petals fell]

When the executioner returned, he busted through the outside door with a frantic edge to his voice, repeatedly calling for the Necromancer. Warrick quickly left my side and in the silence I wondered if the supposed kiss was a figment of my over-tired imagination and both my lips were liars. I fancied I could taste the man upon them. I will have to kiss him.. again.. to ever really be sure.

They were noisy in the front room with their exclamations and the hollow thunk of a heavy load being dumped unceremoniously on the floor. I was dead on my feet, yet I crept down the hall to investigate. I found the two men standing over a dead body, looking nonplussed as to what to do about it too. Yet before I could ask what happened, Warrick noticed me and began to herd me back to my cot in a back room of the house.

I begged him to let me stay close, claiming the executioner's house is scary and vile .. and I did not want to be alone. This was no lie for Priam's residence is all those things and I was indeed incredibly apprehensive. But I must confess, I am drawn to Warrick and I was much more content when curled into a rocking chair in the corner while the two men prepared to use the talking board.

I did not mind watching the action like a wall flower and was fully prepared to do so but it was not meant to last. For the Necromancer soon spun his spell and convinced me to not only join in but to call for Taltos again. If the planchette would've ever stayed on the board, I think the conversation with Asmodeus' ancient enemy would have gone smoother. As it was, I did most the talking.. nay, begging for a pact to be drawn between us in our mutual endeavors against the Briar King.

I never did get a clear and concise answer but as the ceremony ended, Warrick took me hard by the shoulders and covered his mouth with mine. Not to kiss necessarily but to exhale his lungs into my mouth which I swallowed like a little chick eats from her mother's beak.

The attraction we share walks on egg shells, no more.

[0 petals fell]

I kept a stiff upper lip and my distance for the rest of the journey to Eunomia. I would make it on my own without any help from the cruel fiend, I thought... no matter how grueling those last few miles were. Eventually we stepped from the woods and the village lay nestled in the shadow of northern mountains.

Warrick cordially if tensely, waited for me to catch up and I told him flat out if he gave me the name of the town physician, I would see myself tended to. And since I wouldn't be monopolizing his time, he could directly see to whatever prior plans he had cooking before I bungled them with my aches and pains. I was, in short, running. I could neither bear another glimpse of his mouth without hearing it coo the name, Alexxxanndddrraa so sweetly, nor listen to the echo of his sultry pillow talk in my ears.

The Necromancer pointed out he had promised to see me to the healer and he insisted he keep that promise. He also asked me to accompany him to the house of Priam. I suppose I did not protest very hard. My memory gets a little foggy at this point as my body decided it had enough of pain and exertion combined. Warrick was forced to carry - drag me the rest of the way to a lone house overlooking Eunomia but once he had knocked, the beefy oaf swung open the door almost immediately and invited us in.

Warrick put me to bed on a dingy, sweat-stained cot and bid our host to fetch Thanatos, the healer to come quickly. Priam was impatient to 'get down to bizness' but with a stiff nod stepped out into the night and hurried off to find the medicine man.

I was so tired. The lids of my eyes kept closing and I floated on a willow puff of delirium, drifting in and out of what was happening around me. So I could be wrong when I say to you.. that I believe the Necromancer kissed me.

[0 petals fell]

Alexandra. This whole time as I ached and agonized over the connection I feel so strongly with Warrick, he has been fantasizing I am another. The woman he loves, to be exact. A bucket of freezing cold water dumped over my head would have been less startling than the Necromancer whispering her name in my ear.

In unison we both quickly pulled away to stand there awkwardly waiting for the other person to say.. something. Anything. The gap between us had become bottomless all of a sudden.. and words could 'try' to fill it..

..but neither of us spoke up. I was too stunned to make heads or tails of what I was feeling and Warrick seemed okay to leave it as it was, for he soon turned back to the path and continued on. After a long time, I followed. Now the gap was physical too, a veritable chasm of space. At least if my eyes filled with tears, I would not have to share my shame with the man and if I was around him, I would cry.

I know I only got what I deserved. Warrick of Gloumenwood is a widow mourning the love his life. Maturity and wisdom would counsel me to give him a wide berth so the man might heal his soul in time. I have only pestered him with my handful of questions which bring the woman's death and his own loss back to the surface. It is cruel! For he is stuck on her, his heart raw with her absence whether she is able to care for him now or not. I get it. I understand.

Yes, I got what I deserved, yet I am still suffering the grips of a craving. I crave to heal him myself.

That's the ugly truth.

[0 petals fell]

Warrick believes it is in my best interests to be seen by the healer in Eunomia. He is worried how the pain in my side did not ease any after a good night's rest. He suggested I stay in bed while he fetch the man himself but the thought of staying alone with.. Alexandra spurred me to insist I tag along. My legs are not broke, after all.. and I don't think I would get much rest, not with the dead corpse of his wife around. So at my snail pace, we set out to the small village on the edge of the Gloomy Woods.

The walk was fraught with tension as I couldn't keep my mouth shut. I kept asking him questions about her. His wife. The fact he stays alone, shuttered away from the rest of the world with only a decayed husk of a woman and an apathetic cat to keep him company.. bothers me. I am not completely sure why ..but it does. And I asked him if he was content with such an arrangement, one where he was in all intents and purposes, utterly alone. No one to talk to. No one to touch.. to kiss. To love.

Warrick was perplexed half the time with my questions and tense the remainder. I knew I was over stepping my bounds as his client but I could not seem to help myself. He reminded me he had Astarté as if the cat was this overly affectionate beast which she is not. She ignores him most times. He needs someone. I can see it so clearly. And I think innately he knows it too, for the signals he throws me are not of a man happy to live out his days without the company of human kind... of a woman.

Many times throughout the day, Warrick would touch me. At first, his hand on mine came in the guise of assistance when our path became uneven and hard for me. Yet more and more frequent, the Necromancer's fingers curled mine until we had stopped by a tree and he drew me close. As I watched in struck silence, the man fanned little kisses over my knuckles, one after another. His lips did not tarry long but softly moved up my arm, kissing all the way until he put in me a powerful hunger for more.

My lips wanted them. I wanted him to kiss me on the lips, oh just once. I wasn't too greedy.. and from shoulder, his mouth moved up my neck, hitting all the sensitive spots before then pausing to tease over my ear, mouthing the lobe between molten exhales which made me shiver all over. Just a little further. A little over. I began to turn my head to offer my aching little mouth for Warrick's consideration, for his consumption and he spoke to me in soft, seductive entreaty.

"Alexandra...." he whispered.

[0 petals fell]

Warrick speaks of .. to Alexandra as if she is alive and well, and an integral part of his life. When I was noticed in the doorway, the Necromancer leapt up from where he knelt with his head in the dead woman's lap. I felt like an intruder. Not only because I now stood in the tiny, macabre shrine devoted to Warrick's lost love but with the man himself. I had thought him handsome and my gaze tempted to linger where it should not. And all this time, he was counting the minutes until he could be alone with her.

I back peddled, trying to recover in such a way neither of us would be wallowing in mortification but it was far too late for last ditch efforts. I was in her room for crying out loud, sleeping in her bed wearing one of her lacy night gown confections. And her man had sweetly tucked me in, taking my hand in his with a pleasurably slow knit of fingers before dusting my brow with a good night-sleep tight kiss.

I told Warrick I should sleep somewhere else, not Alexandra's room... and he assumed I meant in his bed! No no no! My own foot tasted foul, I tell you.

I ended up reluctantly sleeping where I had started out but only after requesting Warrick lock the little closet.. and his spouse away. Come morning, the tension between us was off the scales. A confusing swirl of misdirection because despite what I know of the Necromancer, his bright blue eyes upon me are both my joy and suffering. I suffered all day and I refer not to the steady agony of my side which kept equal footing with me on the long walk to Eunomia. I suffer because I want what I cannot have.

The man is married. Forever more.

[0 petals fell]

Warrick shoo'd me into a bath and it was then, when I'd stripped down to skin that I wagered my fall from Calliope had been a wee bit harder than I originally thought. My side was a painter's messy palette of black and purple tinged with raw red where the scrape intersected all my bruising. In short, I looked beaten down and up. I would consider myself lucky if one of my ribs hadn't been broken in the process.

When your ribs are battered, the last item on your agenda is to move.. much at all. Taking a deep breath is low on the totem as well. So changing of clothes was a struggle but eventually I was tucked into the wide, comfy bed in that same sleeping chamber given to me on my first visit.

All the furniture and clothing are elegantly feminine in nature. I could easily guess a woman once feathered her little nest with beautiful, cherished possessions, here in her isolation. I just wondered where she happened to be.. currently.

I am curious about the Necromancer and his affairs. Wouldn't you be? An attractive, viable man hiding deep in the boonies who kept one room of his spartan house as a testament to a certain pampered Lady.

When I pushed for an answer, he admitted his wife had once slept in this bed, wearing a nightgown much like the one I had donned.. but she had died many years ago. So I am fouling up this space with my presence in a way. You would understand my meaning if you could hear but for a moment, how Warrick speaks of this.. Alexandra. Her name is intoxication on his tongue.

Eventually I dozed off under his scrutiny but it wasn't long before a suspicious sound chipped away my fatigue. The quiet voice I recognized to be Warrick's but with my tip-toeing towards the small door I had presumed to be a closet.. I was dying to know whom he spoke to with such reverence. No, he wasn't two-timing on the beloved memory of his wife. I found the man, behind a high-backed chair, gently brushing a woman's hair.

Alexandra. The Necromancer had told the truth... she has been dead for many years. Dead and kept here for him to continue conjugal visits long after she'd withered to a shrunken and petrified corpse, forever to reign upon her throne.

[0 petals fell]

After frantic attempts to pry my horse from her web coating and get her hooves back on the ground, Warrick laid a gentle hand upon my shoulder to garner my attention. He can be incredibly tender at times and with my heart swelling thickly in my throat, I needed a wiser, more objective mind to point out a simple fact which had escaped me.

It was getting dark. The shadows were lengthening and soon enough we both would be in a predicament, outside at night in the Gloomy Woods. Out, when all the predators bent their heads, fangs and claws to hunger's grindstone.

I never felt so guilty in my life as I did leaving Calliope to her fate but at the Necromancer's urging, he hurried back to his house. He was right, after all. I was injured, bearing a sticky scrape along my ribs to match deep bruising and the scent of a wounded animal spells out a free meal for the night life of the forest.

We hurried back to the safety of his quaint home but hadn't even settled in when a passerby rapped upon the door. You see, she had come across the helpless mare and had freed the beast when neither the dark magus or I could. I was relieved.. at first.

But congratulations were short lived for you see, all we managed to do was bring an army down on our heads. A many-legged army of arachnids, their sheer numbers rivaling the forces of many a power monger kingdom. They blotted out the green of the wood. The forest floor could not be glimpsed between the overlap of furry, rustling legs. And it was deafening, the cachinnating whisper of their hordes while they marched, led by one behemoth web spinner who snatched Calliope up in its forelegs... and carried her away.

Warrick.. he tried to hold onto her reigns, and kept a hold of them until he dangled, ironically appearing much like a spider depends from its toe line . And when that failed, the man tossed me over his shoulder to haul me inside. No questions asked and permission would have been pure garnish. I did not argue with the man. He put himself in harm's way twice now for me and it was time for this red head to shut her yap.

[0 petals fell]

My return trip to Gloumenwood was on a wing and a prayer for if the Briar King has his way, I will soon be a murderess twice over. I cannot bear yet another death on my conscious but in all honesty, there was little to bolster my hope as I back tracked to the Necromancer's hermitage deep in the wood. He had left me high and dry last time, you see, and yet somehow contorted my perception to believe it a good start. I am not sure his calming sorcery is deliberate or not but I am most susceptible.

I had come to the final leg of the game trail leading to his sod roofed house when the quiet was shattered with a high pitched, yet guttural battle cry. I jerked by young mare about face to locate the source but the skaven got the drop on me. Ambushed!

Those vile half breeds are pure muscle and when it leapt down from its lofty hiding place, I was bunted clear from the saddle. One moment sitting tall and the next pitching to the side where I hit to the hard dirt without one mercy of either soft grass or leaves. Impact knocked the wind out of me and the pain that rip-roared up my side must've dazed me.

The events leading to an intimate view of the Necromancer's boots, periodically obscured by the rustle of his cloak's hem are sketchy at best. He was shouting in a tongue I am unfamiliar with, old and authoritative sounding while brandishing a staff over me.

Whatever he said was taken to heart by the rat man.. who after bobbing its head several times and making good its simpering apologies, scuttled off into the brush. We heard its piercing screams moments after its disappearance as well as what sounded like thick rain, unseen droplets falling from the canopy to patter down on the large leaves of the undergrowth.

Warrick had.. saved my life, I suppose, although when I gained my feet and my wits, I could tell he wasn't all that happy to be hero of the day. He seemed preoccupied and a little put out to have to deal with me and my insistence we find Calliope. My horse was missing, no doubt spooked from the attack.

And so we followed her fresh hoof prints along the path until we came to an immense web, so big it bridged the space between two equally sizable trees. My beloved mare was snared. In her mad dash to escape, she had ran right into it.

[0 petals fell]

[0 petals fell]

The ride home to Carver's Outpost was long, yielding little rest for my body and not one speck of peace for my mind. I had accomplished nothing for all my time spent in Calliope's saddle, for all those hours.. days stacked on days, in which I searched for the Necromancer of Gloumenwood. I found his humble bungalow deep in the forest's heart but little more before my Lord and Master yanked hard upon my tether and forced me home.

Home.. The Amberleaf Weald and to a lesser extent, Carver's Outpost has lost much of its appeal. Colors have blanched to shades of gray. The denizens.. who never warmed to me anyway, seem chiseled from blocks of ice these days.

Upon my return, the first glimpse of my native township was in misty light of a early morning. Dawn was painting the skyline with her lavender streamers and only the most early risers were beginning to stir from their beds. A window here and there glowed as watchful luminescent eyes amongst the otherwise sleepy village.

I confess I circled around the Outpost's main fairway, the dirt road which runs directly through the heart of town, not wishing to be spotted by someone who might mention it in passing to my father. I was barely in the saddle as it was, such had been the maddened rush to backtrack all those miles before Asmodeus tugged harder and beset me with something to really light a fire under me.

I was exhausted, pushed far past my limits.. yet I was shaking so badly as I rode into the forest that my teeth chattered. Jumping at every shadow, fear molted away any weariness. I had denied the Briar King. Ignored him. Avoided him. I could only hope he wasn't also aware I was trying to find a way to kill him... dead.

[0 petals fell]