DragonStar halted, stunned, as he recognised the person waiting just inside the entrance.
“My, my,” StarLaughter said, leaning back against a rock and making full use of the situation to
display her body. “Haven’t you grown handsome since I last saw you?”
“What are you doing here?” DragonStar asked.
StarLaughter smiled. “Waiting, of course,” she said. “DareWing said you’d be back.”
Another form emerged out of the gloom behind her. It was the Strike Leader.
DragonStar switched sharp eyes to the birdman’s face. DareWing? In league with StarLaughter?
StarLaughter’s smile stretched, but she remained silent. Privately she was wallowing in
self-satisfaction, knowing her plan to convince DragonStar of her trustworthiness was bound to succeed.
He was so guileless, so malleable.
“We have found a haven in the bowels of this destruction,” DareWing said. “And, I believe we have
found a friend. Many of them.”
DragonStar looked back to StarLaughter, completely unable to believe that she’d so easily
(and conveniently) swapped allegiances.
“Oh, but you should trust me,” she said softly. “I have grown tired of the Demons, and I admit a
modicum of sorrow for what I’ve aided them to do. I wish to —”
x
“I find this somewhat hard to believe,” DragonStar said.
“You did it,” she said, and her face was entirely serious now. What better way to gain his trust than
to pretend she’d travelled the same pathway to redemption he had? Fool! The weak were always
prepared to believe others shared their weaknesses.
DragonStar stared at her.
“Come below, and talk,” DareWing said, and disappeared into the gloom.
Faraday caught at DragonStar’s arm. “It’s a trap,” she whispered.
StarLaughter’s eyes slid momentarily to Faraday, hardening as they did so, then back to
DragonStar’s face.
“I can help you against the Demons,” she said.
DragonStar stared at her, trying to discern the truth — or otherwise — in her words and her face.
He didn’t find it hard to believe that the Demons had abandoned StarLaughter, but on the other hand he
found it difficult to believe they’d just let her go.
It wasn’t in their nature to just “let someone go”.
It was very, very easy to believe this was a trap. The Demons were using StarLaughter as an
ambush. No doubt once they’d finished consuming the Sacred Groves they’d drop by here to finish him
off.
She was bait … but such unbelievable bait that DragonStar started to think that this couldn’t possibly
be a trap. Surely the Demons wouldn’t expect him to fall for this?
There was a movement at his side. Sicarius, sidling forward to sniff at StarLaughter’s skirts.
He nosed about, then lost interest, sitting down to scratch at a spot just behind his right ear.
And then DareWing re-emerged from the gloom at StarLaughter’s back. With him he had
several members of the Strike Force.
One of them stepped forward. “She is a cold-hearted bitch,” the birdwoman said, “but she has
given us the one thing we needed to make us believe in her.”
“Yes?” DragonStar said after a moment, and then froze in horror as another form emerged from the
gloom.
It was one of the Hawkchilds. Star Grace.
“She has brought us the Hawkchilds,” DareWing said, “and a highway to the Demons’ den.”
Qeteb’s form flowed back — horribly, for his flesh assumed many loathsome lumps and bumps in doing
so — into his handsome, human form.
For the moment he had grown tired of the encasing black armour.
He advanced a step towards the Mother.
“You’re a sorry looking cow for all the power and glory you are supposed to represent,” he
remarked.
Her expression — exhausted, resigned — did not alter, although one hand spasmed briefly
within the folds of Her skirts. “I am what you have done to Me,” She said. “I am the living representation
of the land, and I —”
“Do not have much longer to live,” said one of the other Demons, sidling closer. Its pig snout snuffled
along the ground, as if it wanted to suck up the Mother’s skirts, and perhaps Her with it.
The Mother’s mouth trembled in a smile, or perhaps an expression of fear. “No. I do not think that I
do.”
“With you gone,” Qeteb said, and he took a pace forward, “the entire land will be mine.”
Both his hands dangled at his side, but his right one shifted and changed, reshaping itself into a
gigantic fist some five or six times normal size.
It had hammerheads for fingertips.
“There is the small matter of some remaining resistance,” Ur muttered from her bench. Her arms
were now so tightly gripped about her pot they were completely white.
Qeteb leaned back his head and roared with laughter. “DragonStar? His useless lieutenants? A
Sanctuary full of terrified incompetents? There is no magic left I do not control; or will not, within days.
There is no place anyone can hide. And there is no soul that will not eventually be mine!””
He was screaming by the end, spitting out words and saliva in a torrent of hatred.
Ur turned her head aside, hiding her expression from the Demons.
Qeteb’s massive right hand suddenly shot out and seized the Mother’s neck. “Stupid, stunted
bitch,” he seethed, and the muscles of his arm rippled up and down. “Your time is done.”
And his fist tightened.
DragonStar was leading his band down into the bowels of Star Finger when Faraday halted, put a hand
on one of the corridor walls for support, and groaned.
She sagged, her moans becoming frightful, and DragonStar wrapped his arms about her.
“Faraday? Faraday? What’s wrong?”
StarLaughter looked on, mildly curious. Was it the gloom this far down? Was she a girl who
needed light to feed her good temper and optimism?
Faraday screamed.
The Mother began to writhe, although She was obviously making some effort to keep still and accept
death.
Her hands half lifted, then dropped as She forced them down.
Her eyes She kept still on Qeteb’s straining, reddened face, although panic and fear swam about in
them.
Ur leaned forward, and grabbed the Mother’s skirt.
Qeteb’s fist tightened, and the Mother’s eyes bulged in agony.
Faraday was convulsing, and DragonStar did not know what to do. Leagh and Gwendylyr hovered
about, their hands patting helplessly, their faces frantic.
Everyone else stood about in a powerless circle.
DragonStar raised his head and stared at StarLaughter, his expression hard.
“It’s not me,” StarLaughter said, and shrugged her shoulders. “I don’t know what ails her.”
More than anything else it was her utter disinterest that convinced DragonStar. He glanced at
StarGrace — she also shrugged — and then he looked back to Faraday.
Red weals had appeared about her throat, and her eyes were bulging and agonised.
“In my fist,” Qeteb said, turning his face slightly to talk to the other Demons, “I hold the life of the land.
Pitiful, isn’t it?”
Blood now stained the neckline of the Mother’s robe, running down in rivulets to blotch and dampen
its bodice.
“Nothing can stop us now,” Sheol said. She had rearranged her snout into a more elegant form.
“Except blindness,” Ur said, and Qeteb growled.
“Will blindness save Her, now?” he said, and his fist abruptly tightened.
The Mother’s neck broke with a snap.
Ur’s face contorted, her hand clenched even tighter within the Mother’s robe, and then she sagged,
almost lifeless, and let go.
A scream tore through the air of the corridor, and DragonStar stared at Faraday, not
understanding how she could have screamed so loudly and not opened her mouth.
He’d thought she’d been calming somewhat.
“Leagh!” Gwendylyr yelled, and DragonStar blinked and realised that it was not Faraday who had
screamed at all.
Leagh had turned away, and was now rolling about on the floor of the corridor, as agonised as
Faraday was, her arms wrapped about her belly, screaming and shrieking as if she was gripped by
the final extremities of death.
StarLaughter turned away and rolled her eyes. Couldn’t they manage a simple walk down a corridor
without enduring some drama of epic proportions? Who had DragonStar gathered about him?
“Teh, tch,” she muttered.
Qeteb’s fist opened, and the corpse of the Mother dropped to the ground.
His fist shrank back to a more normal size.
Ur blinked, blinked again, and looked up, as if she had just woken from an afternoon slumber and
was mildly disorientated by the encroaching scenes of death and destruction.
Qeteb stood, not two paces from her, a charming grin on his face.
The Mother’s corpse lay huddled between them.
“Silly little woman,” Qeteb said, pleasantly enough to Ur, “time to die.”
He reached forward, both his fists now expanding.
Ur lifted her head, scented the air, and then roared.
Urbeth and her daughters bounded and leapt through the devastated landscape.
They grinned, for hunting lay ahead. The Mother was dead, and that was annoying, but the Hunt still
went on, even if the earth screamed and died.