[The Celestial Wars] Chapter 1.6

CHAPTER SIX

“… Columbine.”

The voice echoed from a distant point into her dream.

For some reason it sounded urgent—an emergency of some kind, no doubt.

Still, the desire to answer the summons felt too much like effort and sleep was a strange commodity that she still hadn’t fully adapted to.

The mindless pleasure that came from floating through a dream reality that never existed was one of the more enjoyable side effects of being Mystallian. So, Columbine moaned instead and rolled over, effectively putting her back to the speaker.

Someone took her by the shoulder and shook her. “Rouse yourself, child. You and I need to talk, and I am far from happy with you.”

Ludovic!

Columbine barely registered the owner of the voice before she threw herself up into a seated position with her legs beneath her backside and her head bowed. Her very Mystallian hands lay palm-up across her lap with her fingers interwoven.

Staring into the pale pink flesh of her hands and the soft silken nightgown that clung to her body, she realised her form was no longer Hellion, but Mystallian again.

Someone had changed her back while she slept; most likely her mother given how much everyone else hated her bipedal form. But in doing so, Columbine had enjoyed the Mystallian’s ability to dream.

But the moment she recognised Ludovic’s voice, she lost the luxury of wondering what this was about. All too vividly, her prefect memory replayed how she and Cora had been caught fighting inside the Highborn Hellion Lord training room.

Her breathing intensified until she began to feel lightheaded again. There was no punishment that could cover this action. None. No Lady had ever been so disobedient—in all the history of history.

“That is enough of that,” Ludovic said, and although his tone still held an aggressive edge, it didn’t possess the fury she thought her disobedience warranted.

He never touched her, but her quivering body stilled, and her breathing slowed. She was grateful for the reprieve. “You know what you and your sister did was very wrong, do you not?”

Columbine hunched her shoulders and nodded slightly, unable to say anything in her defence.

“Do you not?” he repeated.

She nodded deeply once, refusing to look any higher than his armour-plated waist.

“Then why did you do it? Cora, I can understand. She is … difficult at the best of times. But you …” his words drifted off, as if he couldn’t even bring himself to say them.

Columbine shuddered beneath the waves of unspoken disappointment that emanated from her uncle.

This time, Ludovic did nothing to ease her distress. “You only had to cry out, child. Dissipate and summon one of us. We would have been there before Cora could do anything permanent to you, regardless of whatever threat she threw at you!”

She heard him mutter something more under his breath at himself and his accursed luck of being the closest one to the training room before continuing, “You are a Highborn Lady of Hell, Columbine. You will never be in a position where you will need to fight. Not with another Highborn Lady and not with a weapon! That is not what you were born for. I cannot begin to stress how much you need to understand that.”

Columbine lowered her chin to her chest and rolled her shoulders inward to make herself as small as possible. What she wouldn’t give to be able to tell him just how much she understood that! Truly!

She might not have been able to say it right now thanks to Cora, but she really did understand. Highborn ladies were to learn the more refined things in existence—such as music and dance and needlework and pleasing their eventual husbands in every possible way.

That was what they were born for. That was all they were born for. She may not have understood what that latter statement meant, but for the most part, she tried hard to be what was expected of her.

“You should not have allowed your sister to bully you into something you knew was so very, very wrong.” He released his breath in a smoky sigh and sat down on the bed beside her. “You will have to be punished for your part in this. You know that, do you not?”

Again, Columbine nodded. Regardless of the circumstances, she had been where she wasn’t permitted to be and acted inappropriately, and for that, there could be no reprieve.

She heard Ludovic shake his wolven head and another of his heartfelt sighs covered her head in his smoky breath. She didn’t allow herself to cough.

“I have spoken to your mother since the incident. You were already disciplined for bad behaviour not an hour before, yet you continue to follow this path of disobedience. It is so very unlike you, Columbine, and I do not know what we can do to amend it.”

Oh, how Columbine wanted to cry. The knowledge that she had so bitterly disappointed those she would have died for tore at her insides more than any other punishment they could possibly think of.

She was so beyond retribution that even Ludovic was at a loss as to what to do with her. She would have done anything … said anything … whatever it took to gain their forgiveness …

Still, despite the despair of her thoughts, she kept her hands clasped in her lap and her eyes downcast, as her upbringing demanded.

Ludovic ground his jowls together and drew in a deep breath. “You are hereby confined to the family wing until further notice,” he decreed, then paused for a moment to give his next words extra credence. “And, since it is while you maintain this superfluous form that you seem to forget yourself, you are hereby forbidden to assume it. By my command, return to your demonic form, Columbine, and never again assume the form of a grounded biped.”

Columbine’s jaw fell open and for the first time in her young life, she broke tradition by hesitating. Never again? As in never-never again? But … this was her father’s form, and he had liked it so much. He had said so.

She looked at her uncle—begging him with her eyes for leniency.

“Now!” Ludovic commanded, the fury he had shown in the training room resurfacing in a flash of rage.

At once Columbine’s slender, Mystallian form shifted and swelled into her ebony plated demonic armour with her wings and tail wrapped firmly around her body and her large dark head bowed subserviently.

“You will maintain this form,” Ludovic said, with more than an edge of anger still in his voice. “Your meals will be brought to you and your Highborn lessons no longer exist, until such time that you and your sister remember your respective places.”

He stretched out both hooves and dragged them back across the marble tiles towards himself, causing a cascade of sparks to appear. “Make no mistake, young lady,” he said, as he rose to tower over her. “I have been extremely lenient with you—far more lenient than I was with your sister. Do not force me to regret that decision or I promise you, you shall regret it more than you can ever imagine.”

And with that not so idle threat hanging in the air, Ludovic took his leave.

Soon after he’d gone, Columbine’s chest plates began to swell from an internal pressure until they were forced apart and steam surged through the gaps with an eerie hiss through every crevice in her upper plating as grief continued to overwhelm the demoness.

Never again.

The words kept playing over and over in her mind. Never again. They never wanted her to take a Mystallian form again, and she knew she would. She was free to shift between forms regardless of who ordered what. But already, the backlash of that perceived defiance tore at her heart. They would be so angry.

As her despair escalated, steam continued to fill the room until nothing visual could be made out with any amount of clarity. Her finger talons knotted and clawed around each other and her taloned toes sank deep into the soft fabric of her mattress until they entwined themselves with the exposed springs within.

As she reached her emotional climax, she tilted her head back and screamed a squealing note which would never penetrate the steam barrier she had created. This was worse.

This was so much worse. Her mother’s spanking had been momentary—over in a heartbeat. But this, if she permitted it, was to go on … and on … and on … and if she was going to please the Highborn Hellions, she was never going to show her father that she could take his form again.

Why? Why did she allow Cora to take her beyond the safety of the family levels? Why hadn’t she contacted the men? Why hadn’t she done what she was told?

No one came to console her during this time of anguish. She didn’t expect anyone to. The grief of a Highborn lady was something to be endured alone, and everyone knew that.

She would be given however long it took to regain her former composure and could once again perform the duties she was destined to. Until then, she would not exist to them. Any of them. The steam she had released would tell them of her mental state. When Columbine was ready—she, and she alone—would take the steam barrier down and rejoin society.

For a long time, Columbine dwelled on what had happened, condemning herself for not doing what she knew was right. She should not have gone.

Elders must always be obeyed, but what to do when some elders refute the will of the general population of elders? From her perspective, it was a no-win situation. Perhaps that was why Ludovic had disciplined her only by banning the one form he had no desire to ever see again.

Then, in the throes of her own mental discord, did Columbine realise with some surprise that it was not just her own grief she was sensing but the misery of someone or something else nearby.

What was even more surprising was that someone or something had the power to penetrate Columbine’s secluded steam barrier. To her knowledge, the only one who may have had that ability was her maternal grandfather, but he never had as it would breach their high etiquette.

Putting aside her own anguish momentarily, Columbine unwound her wings and tail and stepped down from her bed. The steam was now everywhere, and all her physical senses were useless.

No sound … no taste … no sight … not even touch would register until the steam was dissipated. Nothing should be reaching her, yet she could hear the individual’s despair … deep inside herself.

Yes. Inside herself.

Despite the loss of senses, Columbine twisted her head in the direction of her sister’s rooms. Cora was the only other demoness that Columbine knew from recent experience could reach out and touch her this way, though she never thought the emotional link between them went beyond the physical limitations of a steam barrier.

Cora’s misery had been in the back of Columbine’s heart since Ludovic had awakened her, but Columbine had been too wrapped up in her own circumstances to realise it. Now that she did, she pushed her grief aside and took the fourteen steps she visualised in her mind to cross the room and close the gap between them.

The wall that separated the two sisters had to be right in front of her. She raised her hands and held them where she felt the wall should be and focused on Cora on the other side. Unable to send words, Columbine gathered up her love for her sister and pushed it towards her as an offering.

The tidal wave of mental anguish that flooded back at her from the other side threatened to drown Columbine beneath its intensity. So much pain. So much misery! Columbine thrashed her head and flexed her wings using every iota of inner strength she had to control the flow of emotion.

With a final, near desperate surge of will, Columbine managed to sever the connection between them and sagged to her knees uttering a gasp of relief. The leather around her eye sockets narrowed as she bowed her head, her throbbing mind racing for an explanation as to what had just happened even as her physical body scrambled to recover from it.

At that moment, Columbine remembered Ludovic’s parting words:

I have been extremely lenient with you. Far more lenient than I was with your sister.

Of course, Cora would be suffering for her crimes. Ludovic himself had probably beaten her personally. That was never in doubt. But Cora had been beaten many times before during punishments and she had never shown the kind of overwhelming misery that she had revealed just then.

Yet what could she do about it? Ludovic was a Lord, and her place was to obey him in every way. She was already in enough trouble. She should just walk away. Switch off, and let time heal the wounds as they were meant to. She should have …

Only, she couldn’t.

It was time to ignore all elder commands to stay as she was and shift freely between her forms.

Clicking her tongue against her beak and rubbing her chest plates together, Columbine looked past her left wing to the space where her doorway would ordinarily be located. From a Hellion point of view, Ludovic had been very explicit in his instructions, however, Columbine’s Mystallian mind began to see the interpretational loopholes in his choice of words.

She was to stay in the family wing, and not take her father’s form. Well, in the short term, that latter one didn’t matter so much. Which meant the only stipulation was to stay inside the family wings and she knew no one would be coming to check on her while her steam barrier was in place …

… and her sister was in so much pain …

Having decided she would risk it, Columbine became as gaseous as the steam around her.

A year or so earlier, she and Cora had collectively used their shapeshifting to create a small opening at the base of the adjoining wall between their rooms. It was a crack really, barely the width of a talon.

The insignificant size was selected in the hopes that no elder would notice it, but large enough to allow either sister to travel from one room to the other without going through the main halls outside. It was a secret which the two sisters guarded very carefully.

Once she passed through the opening, Columbine was beyond the reach of her steam barrier and all her senses began to function again. Which was just as well.

Cora hated their father and since his kind needed light to see by, no light of any kind was permitted to exist in her quarters. Columbine quickly adapted her sight to the darkness, already knowing what she would see.

Cora’s quarters were as opposed to Columbine’s as one could possibly hope to achieve. There were no tapestries on the walls, no balcony that allowed false sunlight to stream into the room, no polished marble floors, no four-poster bed and no furnishings of any other kind. Nothing at all that could associate the elder daughter of Avis with his bloodline.

The cavern walls were bleak and barren. Her father’s kind didn’t like sleeping on anything but soft mattresses, so Cora had rock shelves carved into the walls. The Mystallians loved extravagant furniture, so Cora had none.

The Mystallians kept records in huge old tomes, so Cora’s grimoire was a harmonised, demonic blood crystal that floated in the middle of the room, its vibrations beckoning anyone in its vicinity to come and admire its perfection.

But Columbine wasn’t there to admire her sister’s shapeshifting masterpiece. She was here for her sister.

Turning away from the crystal, Columbine looked for her sister’s essence and found Cora high on a rock shelf, nearly at the ceiling.

Oh, Cora, Columbine thought to herself as she spread her wings to fly the short distance between them. She landed as gently as she could, observing the way her sister lay facing away from her with her wings and tail wrapped miserably around her body. Her hollow sobs echoed in Columbine’s sensitive ears.

When Columbine reached out to touch her, Cora flexed sharply and pulled away, rolling on to her back with her arms raised in terror and in doing so, exposed the extent of her punishment.

Columbine had expected to find injuries. A Lady couldn’t do what they had done without some kind of elder ramification, but there were injuries, and then there was what had been done to Cora.

Columbine’s heart broke at the sight of the shattered mess that lay on the stone ledge before her. Not one inch of her plated hide had been left intact. Her wings had been slashed and her facial features and chest plate were cracked and smashed, not from Ludovic’s paws, but from the hardened edge of weaponry.

Ludovic had hacked her into submission using weapons that only men and the Hellion Guard knew how to use. Several pieces of cartilage around her throat and arms were crushed where he had struck her with a blunt object, and in too many places to count, Columbine could see where blood and other life fluids had been drawn.

Then Columbine saw her arm containing the flux weapon. Or rather … the dregs of what was left of it. Because Ludovic or one of the other Lords had removed it at the shoulder, though rending it would be a more adequate description if the scorched flesh that dangled from the cauterised wound was anything to go by.

It is the will of the elders, she reminded herself, finding no fault with what Ludovic had done purely because of his social standing. She reached out to take her sister’s fractured hand. Her only remaining hand. Cora was too weak to resist, and the moment Columbine came into physical contact with her sister, she felt the repugnant taint of tefsla flowing through Cora’s system.

Tefsla!

To a demon, there was no viler a punishment. It was a poison that locked all their powers away—forcing them to endure a single-formed existence with no means to alter anything that happened around them. Barred from their innate ability to shape shift around discomfort, Cora would be forced to endure the cripplingly slow healing process of a non-shifter.

Columbine took her sister’s taloned hand in both of hers and gently pressed it to her forehead. Forgive me, she wished she could send, still not taking the risk of allowing Cora’s emotional state to affect her again. Please, please, forgive me.

Knowing exactly what trouble would befall her if she followed through with her current plan, Columbine closed her eyes and pushed that knowledge aside, replacing it with a dedicated focus on the physical connection she had with Cora’s hand. In reality, an atom was merely an atom: a single physical element in a multi-realm co-existence of mental and physical elements.

There was virtually no substance to a Highborn Hellion. So long as the celestial essence remained intact, the body that housed it was almost inconsequential. Changing that housing depended entirely upon the age and the generation of the essence within. No one could change the shape of an elder, however Belial had anointed Columbine at birth and that celestial adoption gave Columbine equal footing shapeshifting wise, with her mother’s generation.

The amount of tefsla in her sister’s body would have been perfectly measured to keep Cora’s essence from taking over the molecular structure of any substance, which was the foundation of any given shift. It would never have occurred to any Hellion Highborn that a discipline involving tefsla would be interfered with by another.

Columbine was about to change that.

Breathing out a full vent of steam to steady herself, she broke down the armour around her own talons and force-fed them between the cells of her sister’s hand. Even that small shift proved difficult because of the tefsla, like trying to manoeuvre through wet concrete that was almost set. But Columbine was determined to accept her part of the blame in this, regardless of the cost.

Forgive me, grandfather, she thought to herself, and then began the arduous process of digesting the tefsla poison, diluting it within her own body and purging it partially from Cora’s.

Never, had Columbine felt anything like the damning presence of tefsla. Although barely born in demonic terms, she had always known exactly what her body consisted of and how to break it down into almost anything she wanted. But this … it was as if parts of her were shutting down, unable to cope … like an impenetrable wall was being erected around her core essence.

Still, despite it all, she pushed on.

Anything to help alleviate her sister’s suffering.

“This is all your fault,” Cora hissed, as a small ember of fire appeared in each of her empty eye sockets. “You only had to comply, and we would have been back before anyone had even noticed!”

Columbine’s heart broke beneath the weight of Cora’s viciously truthful allegations and her own guilty conscience. She bowed her head and stared at the rock ledge under them, waiting for her sister to free her tongue and permit her an explanation.

“Get out!”

Startled by the savagery of those two words, Columbine looked up at her sister. By the rules that governed their family, Cora had to at least offer her a chance to explain which meant she needed to let her speak. But adhering to family protocol didn’t appear to be on Cora’s agenda any more than it had been on Columbine’s.

Cora used her marginal shapeshifting ability to heal just enough of herself to move, and with her gaze locked firmly on Columbine, she rolled on to her stomach and began to drag herself the short distance between them. Her orbs shone with the intensity of her hatred. “Get out before I tear you apart, you miserable little scallye!”

Filled with fear and trepidation, Columbine spread her wings and pushed herself away from the ledge, but still she did not flee. Cora was still her sister, and she was convinced she could reason with her until an amicable solution could be found. They’d always found one before. Cora, please … she wanted to plead, hovering only a few feet from the ledge. Let me tell you how sorry I am.

The embers in Cora’s eye sockets ignited into open flames and she lunged the short distance between them, all her talons extended to destroy the cause of her pain. “Get out!” she roared, snaring Columbine by the throat with her remaining hand.

She drove her across the room and rammed her into the wall that separated their rooms. Her legs swung up and raked across Columbine’s lower body. “It’s all your fault!” An avalanche of mental fury poured into Columbine’s vulnerable mind, drowning her in all the guilt, blame and hatred that Cora held for her.

“Lady Cora?” A voice asked from outside the room.

Too swept up in her rage, Cora said nothing in response, but Columbine managed to utter a strangled gurgle of despair.

“Lady Cora, what …” A centipede demon, not unlike Diviten, entered the room. She searched the immediate vicinity for her ward, and failing to find her, turned her gaze upward. “Lady Cora! Lady Columbine! Desist this at once! At once!”

She drew herself up on to her four hind-most appendages to give her a vertical reach of over three metres, but she was still more than a metre short of the sisters. She clapped her front legs together loudly. “Lady Cora, stop that immediately!” she commanded, as Cora hissed and continued to rake her toes across Columbine’s body while the younger sibling huddled in terror. “Diviten! Guards! Lady Cora’s bedchamber! Quickly!”

Columbine, already weakened by numerous gashes and the presence of Tefsla, watched through the gap between her sister’s right shoulder and wing as Diviten scurried into the room. “Lady Cora, stop that at once!” she cried, desperately adding her demands and height to that of her sister-demon, Gingen. “Lady Cora, you are being very disobedient! Behave yourself! Lady Columbine, shift out of there at once! Lady Cora, stop that, do you hear?”

But anger continued to drive Cora’s bloodlust as the source of all her pain and strife cowered before her, pushing her to a place in her mind where she could totally ignore the demands of the two governesses below them.

Columbine wailed in despair as she hid behind her raised plated arms and sank back against the wall, completely beyond any reasonable thought. She knew she couldn’t shift away as Diviten was telling her to do because of the tefsla flowing through her system, and she didn’t know of any other way to fight back.

Time then seemed to stand still as a large mass of plated gold streaked through the cavern mouth between the demonic governesses and up towards the children. One second the Highborn Hellion Guard wasn’t there, and the next it had removed Cora’s hand from Columbine’s throat and wound its tentacles around her legs to bind them together tighter than any rope. Cora screeched and writhed in outrage, just as Columbine collapsed and fell into Diviten’s outstretched limbs.

“Do not harm her!” Gingen cried as Cora was forcibly turned to face the guard and dwarfed by its massive bulk.

Columbine wrapped her wings and arms around Diviten and wailed pitifully at the top of her lungs. Diviten returned the embrace and lowered herself to her normal height, then pressed her lower abdomen to the floor and lifted her supporting legs. She locked her toes around her upper abdomen and rocked back and forth on the spot. “Sshhh …” she crooned, stroking Columbine’s back and large, leathery wings doing everything in her power to calm her ward. “Calm yourself, Milady. All will be well.”

“Leave,” the guard said, quite without heat as it continued to hold Cora’s thrashing form within its grasp. Cora swore as she struggled, determined to break the grip of the trained guard who held her so effortlessly. “Return Lady Columbine to her chambers. Gingen, go with your sister.”

Gingen looked up at Cora in despair, but against the Highborn Hellion Guard, there was nothing she could do. Both centipede hellions scurried hastily from the room.

* * *

The silence that followed the room being cleared hung very heavily in the air. Cora should have noticed that no one else rushed in to offer support to the guard, and would have, had she not been so deeply entrenched in her rage. No one from the Hellion Highborn came in to take charge.

No other Lord or higher-ranking Lady. Yet the air itself continued to thicken ominously. The structural support over the doorway between Cora’s chamber and Gingen’s collapsed to seal the room and the two were properly alone.

Only then, did the guard’s indifference to the child in its arms change. “How … dare … you?” it said, yet despite the monotone of its voice, its rotating head carapace stilled and a brow ridge formed, narrowing into an unnatural frown. It released her with a dramatic shove and hovered a few paces away to observe her, yet Cora’s body felt just as restrained as before.

Blinded by her own blood rage, Cora continued to struggle for inner control against the guard’s paralysis effect, promising herself that it would pay for its interference! She would see to it personally—if it was the last thing she did!

Unexpected flames of pure hellfire then ignited inside the shadows of the guards headpiece and without any other kind of movement, Cora was slammed backwards into the crag-lined wall with enough force to cause every plate on her broken body to scream in protest.

“I said,” the guard went on, as if Cora’s threats meant nothing to it. “How dare you attack your sister.” Despite its lack of ferocity, the icy demand still held a very threatening male undertone to it.

The jarring impact shattered Cora’s blind focus. The pain that subsequently pulsed through her small frame gave her a moment of clarity and with it she finally began to realise what was happening here. The air wasn’t thickening at all. A presence that had been previously hidden, was being revealed.

Male … Hellion Highborn … with presence. Only the Highborn could shapeshift something from one form to another without touching it and whoever this was had no fear of being discovered in the guise of a Hellion Highborn Guard. Those guards were Belial’s military elite, and their terrifying reputation was something he took very seriously. Only one would dare to impersonate them without fear of reprisal. The same one who refused to raise his voice, because he never had to.

With that understanding, her threats stilled, and her beak closed. One look at his flames that licked through the headpiece shell, and Cora wished she had the power to fall to her knees and beg for leniency she knew would not be forthcoming. Her entire body trembled in terror.

Only one had the power to deceive all. Only one had the title Lord of all Lies.

“Gr-grandfather?”

“Indeed.”

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CHAPTER SEVEN

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