---

 

 

---

 

 

She hates them.

 

Her fingers claw into the wet dirt beneath her back. The sand there might have once been dry, given the constant, baking heat lingering in the air, brought on by the presence of the heavy summer, which seems to have lingered for far longer than is normal this year. But now, the dirt beneath her back is wet.

 

They’re so disgusting.

 

The fairy lays there in what remains of the grotto, staring up through the gap in the ceiling of the cave-like structure above herself, staring up through the hole and towards the moonlit night, which shines brightly out on the other side of it.

 

A thousand eyes, a thousand pearls in the sky, a thousand lights, stars, shine down through the gap, staring, focusing, as if every glowing point in the heavens above were present solely for her sake right now. The mother-moon floats high in the night sky, but it offers her little comfort, apart from a bathing of its cold light, which has never felt as loveless and empty as it does right now.

 

She hates them so much.

 

The sounds of people at work are present all around her; miners. Humans, elves, orcs, dwarves, and goblins are all things that are collectively known to her kind, the fairies, as ‘human-people’. They have found them and their grotto at last.

 

The small fairy grits her teeth, feeling a crack run through her jaw as her broken fingernails scratch down through the loose sands beneath herself, down to the rocky surface which lies only a few presses deeper.

 

- Pearls. They’ve come for them.

 

The grotto was always a safe place. Her kind has been sheltered here for generations by the mother-moon, hidden away from the always hungry eyes of the human-people in a secluded, secure place. But their insatiable greed and their never-ending desires know no bounds, and now, those disgusting feelings have led them to her home.

 

The sounds of pickaxes ringing out against gem-filled rocks, the sounds of clams being ripped apart by forceful hands, the sounds of screams going quiet, the sounds of indifferent voices, the banal, almost bored talk of the plunderers, the intruders into their home, the murderers, the sound of the odd screeching that is coming from a source that she only identifies as herself due to the raspiness of her own throat — these are all the things that she hears.

 

As for the strong beating of her heart, the wild thrashing of her chest, the cold, deathly glare that is present in her burning, dry eyes which haven’t blinked once, as they stare towards the stars, as they stare towards the mother-moon, these are the things that she feels together with one other remaining, clean, clear emotion.

 

It is something she has never felt before, ever, not like this.

 

It’s stronger than the love she has for her family. It’s stronger than the warmth on her skin during a bright day, like today had been, while the sun was shining in through the hole atop the grotto. It’s stronger than anything she has ever known to be true.

 

- She hates them.

 

So much. She can’t put it into words; she can’t even put it into thoughts. That anger is just a foreign presence inside of herself, a stream of twisting, knotted energy, a conflict of overpowering emotions wiping away anything that might have been painted on her soul over her few years of life. Despite the joyousness of those years, despite their happiness…

 

In an instant, that has all gone; it has been washed away in a minute flat. It has been reduced to nothing but a wet spot on the sand and a tight, disgusting, clean feeling in her heart.

 

“Hey, you missed one,” says a voice from above her. A giant silhouette comes to block out the starlight.

 

“Fuck off,” sighs a bored voice to the side, before a pickaxe rings out again against rock. “I threw that one away already.”

 

The fairy pushes herself upright, lifting a hand, her bloodied, now wingless back lifting off of the sands that she stains as she lifts a finger towards the titan towering above herself, a creature far beyond her scope and size; a human.

 

A glow surrounds her hand as she begins to cast a spell, an attack. It’s useless against something this big and with this many health-points.

 

 

But it’s about the message.

 

She hates them so much. She just. can’t. stand. it.

 

Before she can fire her spell, the shadow of a leather boot falls down and crushes her against the ground.

 

- Something cracks.

 

 

Everything is dark.

 

---

 

She floats.

 

The thing that was once a fairy hovers there, suspended in lightlessness.

 

The stars have died. The ground has vanished. It is as if the entire world had been washed away by a rising tide, which now itself has also receded, leaving nothing at all behind. There is nothing left of her environment, of her senses. There is nothing except for the vague feeling of herself and the sheer emptiness that is all around her, the void that she is floating in.

 

- She hates them so much.

 

Her eyes, heavy, open up and look down at the ‘body’ which she now inhabits. She died. This isn’t her body. This is something else.

 

It’s nothing but strings. She seems to be made up of a series of connected and wound yarns that come together to form a gestalt. It looks like the sinew of muscle, but it carries a paler, warmer color than red flesh.

 

This is her spirit.

 

Her big brother had told her about this once, about spirits and the afterlife. He’s dead now. She’s dead too.

 

- Something cracks.

 

She hears a sound. No, she feels it. It’s a memory of a sensation. The sickening sensation of the crack that she felt running through her own body when a giant thumb pressed against her brother’s neck, snapping his head off while she was trying to claw him free.

 

Her eyes are heavy. She’s really tired. The water is so warm…

 

The void, the ocean that she finds herself in, this entrance into death — whatever lies beyond the plane of the living has a quieting feeling to it. It’s almost alluring, the desire to sleep, the desire to rest, the desire to just… stop. Just let it go. It feels like there’s a voice speaking to her, a soft feeling that imprints itself upon her tired mind with a single statement. ‘It’s okay. Everything is going to be fine in the morning.’

 

It’s time to sleep.

 

Brother had said that the afterlife is just temporary. After a while, they get to be reborn in a new era, to be tested anew by the mother-moon.

 

She closes her eyes. She’s so tired. She’s so drained and sleepy. The water is so warm, so… calming. Why did she wake up? How annoying. The girl yawns. Everything is fine. She feels oddly at peace all of a sudden. It’s as if nothing had ever happened. She… she hopes that she’ll get to see him again next time. That would be nice.

 

Mirabelle sleeps.

 

- Something cracks.

 

Her eyes shoot open again, wide and paranoid, as she remembers the sensation of someone grabbing her wings and twisting them off. That hurt so much. The vision had left her eyes for a few moments after that. For a moment, everything was so bright that she recalls thinking for a brief second that she was staring into the sun.

 

The thing that was once a fairy stares around in the darkness, which seems to swirl and press itself around her, as if sensing that she is awake once again. The current of the lightless water comes towards her, swaying her from side to side, gently rocking her form, as if it were the cradling arms of a nurturing father, rocking his troubled child back to slumber.

 

Her eyes begin to close again as she feels that odd voice speaking to her, as if it were her own thoughts.

 

‘Everything is fine. She’s dead now. Don’t worry about it. Get some sleep, okay? Everything will be better in the morning.’ That promise runs through her head, though she isn’t sure why.

 

Before her eyes fall entirely shut once again, she sees a glimmer of light off in the distance. Another soul like herself is cradled together in a fetal position and drifts away, deeply asleep. It looks like she is a ‘person’ made out of glowing, bright strings that have come together. They look like a child’s doll.

 

Mirabel turns her head, feeling the water start to pick up its pace, she sees the strands of her ‘hair’ billowing past her face in the current as she stares at the others. Hundreds, thousands of bodies float around in the ink, as if they themselves were the glowing stars amidst the night-sky.

 

She remembers seeing it when she died. The sky.

 

Everyone here has the same body, more or less. They’re all the same size and have the same ‘humanoid’ form. But there are some differences. One person there has a series of loose, flowing strings, as if they were wearing an elegant gown.

 

She turns her head.

 

Another one there is also asleep, but he’s clutching another against his chest, who holds onto his broad body.

 

Death… In death, they are all the same size. In death, they’re all as small as her and as weak as her. It’s comforting, in a morbid way. Everyone here, no matter what they once were, is now the same.

 

The current of the water comes to spin her around and around. The warm sensation comes to her again. It’s overpowering. It’s so… calming, so soothing. She feels so safe, so happy, so… sleepy.

 

For the third time now, she closes her eyes, feeling pretty sure that this time… this time everything is going to be okay. Why wouldn’t it be? Everything is fine. She just needs to sleep.

 

She begins to slumber in the odd water, content that she is now finally at rest, and seems to leave her troubled form there, floating all by herself.

 

‘Everything is fine now. Everything is going to be better in the morning. I promi -’

 

- Something cracks.

 

She opens her eyes, feeling a pressure in her jaw.

 

The girl screams, remembering the sensation of being crushed. Everything in her core, in her entire frame shakes and hurts. It hurts.

 

Something changes. The pressure in the water, the sensation that has, until now, numbed her soul. It’s gone.

 

She hates them. She hates them so much. She can feel it inside of herself. She can feel that statement, that feeling of burrowing, wiggling, and moving around inside of herself like a parasite, like a worm. She can feel that clean truth pulling through her chest, pulling like a tight cord strung between her gut and her heart.

 

The girl screams. Lost to whatever this feral sensation is, her fingers dig through the fabric that makes up her ‘body’ as she begins to claw and to rip at herself, tearing open the strands and the sinew of her spiritual existence. Her fingers dig into her chest, into the cavity where her heart ought to be, as she tries to find the source of that pain.

 

The pressure in the water comes again, having sensed her latest disturbance, but this time, she doesn’t fall for its tricks. She doesn’t get swayed by the gentle warmth, she doesn’t let its movements, its calming sensations, or its sweet promises trick her.

 

‘It’s going to be okay in the morning?’ ‘Sleep?’

 

Mirabelle continues to scream; she continues to mutilate herself.

 

A voice tells her that she needs to stop. But she doesn’t care. She rips at the strings that make up her spirit. A voice tells her that she needs to sleep. But she doesn’t care. She snaps a cord apart that connects her arm to her chest. A voice tells her that she is going to wake the others. But she doesn’t care. Her teeth sink into her forearm, and she rips at it with everything that she has. She doesn’t want to sleep. She doesn’t want to be here and wants to float until she is reborn as someone else, somewhere else, as someone who has forgotten.

 

“I HATE THEM!” she screams as loudly as her cracking, breaking voice can manage. Her body is fraying at every angle as she literally tears her spirit apart. The twines of fabric that encompass her form are splaying and coming loose, becoming tangled into each other as her humanoid form begins to lose shape and coherence. The more she mangles herself, the less coherent as an entity she becomes. Her strings start to fray; they start to stick out in all directions as she becomes indistinct in her shape. She just screams and tears and screams and tears. The odd water enters her and moves through her as whatever ‘it’ is once again tries to calm her and lull her to sleep.

 

But she hates them too much to sleep.

 

Mirabelle can’t think about anything but those feelings, those sensations, those disgusting, gross feelings of her body being mutilated.

 

She hates them so much.

 

SHE HATES THEM SO M-

 

 

---

 

The reborn fairy coughs and sputters, flopping around as a spasm shoots through her body. 

 

Wet shoots out of her mouth, pressing itself out from the convulsions of her burning throat. She turns over, spewing out a mouthful of black ink, retching, and vomiting. Her stomach presses itself inward painfully again and again, but after a minute, nothing else comes out of herself, apart from desperate, clawing breaths that try nigh-fruitlessly to take in some fresh air.

 

Her fingers dig into the familiarly wet dirt, pressing through her vomit to reach the stones below.

 

What happened?

 

She was dead. She was dead. She was… She lifts her gaze, looking around at the familiar grotto. Her home.

 

But it has changed.

 

The ceiling, which once only had a small opening for starlight to shine through, is broken and jagged. The walls are smooth and flattened. There is a break in the once solid rock, through which a tunnel now leads through, a human-people sized tunnel.

 

It’s empty. It’s just… empty.

 

Everything is gone. The clams. The pearls. The stones. The bodies… This isn’t the work of a night or a week. Even for their hands, even for many, this is an endeavor of months, of years.

 

Mirabelle howls and falls down into the dirt, next to her puddle of vomit.

 

Everything is gone. She won’t let them get away with this. She won’t forgive them for this.

 

“I want to kill them,” she hisses through her aching teeth. The girl jumps to her feet, lashing her neck up towards the opening above her head, glaring with the depths of her soul towards the thousand eyes that still remain above the grotto, the same thousand stars that might have once been watching her in the distant past, when she was murdered.

 

“I WANT TO KILL THEM!” she screams at the stars. Spit flies out of her mouth, her eyes burn with an out of control intensity. “- ALL OF THEM!” howls the fairy. She stamps her boot down into the mush she is standing in. “EVERY -” Black-water splashes out in all directions. “LAST -” Stains cover her body from head to toe. Stains from above. Stains from below. “ONE!”

 

It is impossible to say which star in particular was there that night, watching and listening. It’s impossible to say what force might lie behind it. Or perhaps it isn’t any such specific thing? Perhaps there is simply something else that has been listening, or perhaps… Perhaps this is just the power of the strong wish that she has — of the truest, deepest thing she has ever felt in her soul?

 

She can’t sleep. She won’t ever sleep again. The thought of sleeping makes her sick to the deepest pit of her stomach. She will never sleep again. Not until every single one of them has paid for the sins of their fathers. She hates them so much.

 

The thousand stars above her head, the thousand eyes of the night, shine with an unusual brightness.

 

The pact is sealed.

 

 

 

 

 

 

---

 

Mirabelle stares up toward the mother-moon and the stars. They are the only things that she knows of which could grant her such things, such powers. Only a god could restore someone to life. Only a god could give her these… unusual abilities.

 

The moon is associated with water. Mirabelle herself has always been favored by the spirits of water, being a grotto fairy. It was a good position to have in her old life. She was comfortable and happy. By the standards of their community, she was something that belonged.

 

But this isn’t good water. This… ink of hers. These smears that she leaves behind herself as she walks.

 

Vomit and spit are still dripping off of her fingers and legs as she sinks into the dry sand.

 

This isn’t the magic of the good water that has accompanied her all of her life. This is something new, something different. This, whatever this is, doesn’t come from her old god, the mother-moon that had abandoned her to her fate, the entity that had done nothing for her while everything that she loved was taken by them.

 

No, this is something new. Something darker.

 

Mumbling to herself, she stumbles down the new hallway. It’s cold. Her body throbs with all manner of aches and pains. The ruined, destroyed walls of the once beautiful grotto are all too steep for her to climb up, so she has to take the tunnel that the intruders had made in her home.

 

Mirabelle clenches her fists, walking forward. Given her small size, the distance is considerable. But, for whatever reason, the force that has restored her body has opted to leave her wingless.

 

It still hurts her back. That’s fine.

 

She walks on forward, heading down the tunnel that is monstrously large in comparison with herself, soft, damp sand squishing beneath her bare feet.

 

It feels bad not to be able to fly. It feels terrible. She feels so slow and vulnerable. It hurts to walk on the sharp sand with her bare feet. But it doesn’t matter.

 

She won’t need her wings to do it and as for her sore feet…

 

The cruel fairy spares a glance back over her shoulder, back towards the destroyed grotto, before facing back forward and narrowing her eyes in cold determination.

 

She won’t need anything else to kill them all, apart from this new magic of hers, and even if she has to walk over razor-sharp glass and burning coals to do it, she’s going to make all of them pay. All of them.

 

Every. Last. One.