Gag Ch. 01

Something had happened... a blinding flash of light had consumed her shadows... that was impossible and she still couldn't see what was coming! She was steadily losing her ability to see, to know what was going on in her own castle... she was terrified. She launched her fists into the sky and began to build a snowstorm, to gather power. She would meet this enemy with every bit of her anger, her rage, and the power of the ice that was her birthright, her curse, and her power. Deep below her preparations and anger seethed uncertainty and the tiniest traces of fear that seemed to make the very ground unsteady under her feet.

Gag climbed; he climbed and he climbed and climbed. He paused now and then to slip his new friends bits of the food he had collected in the strangely preserved kitchens far below. To settle their obvious nerves and in the settling calm himself as well. He was beginning to doubt himself. What was he? A Johnny-come-lately wizard? He could feel the terrible power building above him. He somehow knew the dread power and recognized the terrible aching need for destruction that summoned it. He was at once unsure and sure, confused, and certain, terrified and confident. As strange duality affected each of his steps, each thought seemed to echo in someone else's head as well as his. Gag pondered, worried, and climbed...

At the summit of the last stair Gag paused, the end of his incredible journey to heights, nearly unimaginable to his half that was once a mobile bit of flotsam in a far off village, that merged with the gathering storm. The door before him was an incredible piece of art. Ice of every hue imaginable, onyx, ruby, carnelian, sapphire, diamond, beryl, and more in shards that twisted and sparred with each other in a dizzying cascade of color, light, and darkness. He stepped forward and the door parted for him.

Here it was! Whatever it was, it was here now! The door swung open and she gazed upon... what? That thing?! It was that little creature, somehow taller now, strange power swirled around him and roamed out to spar with the icy blast of her power. It was no matter. Whatever minor magic this boggle had learned in the depths of her castle would not stand before her! Her lips snarled at the sight of the beasts that stood around him and the strange aves which flitted around his head protectively. Yes, he had somehow made friends with beasts and gathered power, perhaps she could make use of him... somehow. Her certainty flickered, her unease redoubled.

"Kneel before me, Queen of the North, master of all I survey!" She shrieked with the voice of the wind whipping through the open arches that lined the tower's sides.

"No." The sound which emerged from Gag seemed strange to his own ears, strong and brave, confident, certain. He saw his single word hit the certainty of the witch in front of him. He saw it impact and the cracks of fear, the swirl of uncertainly in her eyes. He took small steps, step after slow step, into the room. He reached out and light spread out around him. She shrieked.

"Then die!" her fear and rage came pouring out of her, her arms flashed forward and with them came the wind, her icy rage, tendrils of frozen death seeking, searching, questing to find the life in him and strangle it as they had so many before him. Despite it, somewhere in her core something gibbered and shrieked, memories of a time before, a time when someone else had dared to say no to her, and survived... The ice and snow pounded in the open tower. The entirety of the storm funneled down to one point. She couldn't even see the boggle anymore. He was surely dead but her rage wasn't slaked until every erg, every icy blade of wind was poured out upon him. She would destroy him utterly for reminding her of her fear, of her pain. She panted as the last of the storm spent itself. The sky around the castle was now crystalline blue, still and empty.

The wind howled down, tendrils of ice, shadow, rage, and hate, and cold, cold death poured down upon Gag and his friends and his magic rose to meet it. It did not appease the unappeasable. It did not attempt to deflect or rebuff, to defend or reduce, instead it simply accepted. It shown on each strand its own light, on each blade, on each whip of energy. Reaching out instinctively Gag used his light to catch each attack, each vile stab and simply pulled them to himself. It was difficult to describe that time period. Gag could never fully remember it later, only flashes. He was back in the town being beaten and chased; he was cold and alone huddled under river muck as wolves panted above him; he was trapped cold and alone under the ice; he was being flayed by a million knives of ice; he was screamed at by the wind of a thousand winters that whispered to give up, to lie down, to die; he was a million terrible and bleak and tragic places; he was back in the lower castle in days of light playing with children he didn't know; he was huddled hidden as the screams were one by one silenced and quiet and the room got cold, so cold; he was there in the tower reaching out to a man with an easy smile, touching him, seeing the revulsion and horror on his face as death came for him and he froze from the inside out. Then it was over after some interminable time, it was finally over.

Light streamed in around a cocoon of ice around Gag and his friends. He looked down, strangely surprised to be alive. Around his neck glittered a strange jewel on a chain of links of every color imaginable. The jewel itself glowed with its own light, bright and steady. Gag felt stronger, surer, straighter than he had ever felt before. He stepped ahead and touched the shell and it crumpled like a soap bubble.

No! It was impossible! The blasted shell of ice and snow that should have been the tomb of the little thing that dared to challenge her crumbled and stepping from it, like the very Phoenix of the ancient tales of her childhood, was the creature. Only, he was different now, somehow... He seemed straighter taller, as if the blast, the ice, the howling wind, and the death at its core had done nothing but strengthen him. Impossible... her brain chattered. He couldn't exist, nothing could survive her attack. Her thoughts swirled like wisps of wind, snowflakes in the storm, whipping about in nothingness and she was frozen in place like a statue.

Gag walked forward curious now of this strange creature, this witch that had tried to destroy him and somehow in her attempt shown him bits and pieces of herself. She was beautiful in a strange haunting sort of way, her skin an ashen grey, her hair black as midnight, her silvery grey dress seemed to swirl and twist in the light like a wall of snowflakes in a snowstorm, at once diaphanous and yet impenetrable. She seemed frozen like the very ice she controlled and as his slow steps took him closer he wasn't even sure she still breathed. He reached out curiously and touched her.

Like the breaking of a mirror her visage exploded, terror, rage, incomprehension, and other less easily identifiable emotions flashed across her as her fists and feet, joined by the last of her power smashed him to the ground. She whirled and lashed out like a snake, like lightning striking her fists hit and then her feet and he tucked and rolled as he once had so long ago and then bounded to his feet, his hand out, voice calming his animal friends lunging to his defense. They circled her and she screamed at them, her whole body shaking like a leaf in the breeze.

She was in charge! She was in control! She screamed at the creatures that dared ménage her, creatures she should have been able to swat like bugs, would have already killed, except for the impossible boggle that they guarded. She couldn't even control herself; she felt: fear, pain, horror, terror, things she had locked away, commanded to not exist, her control was gone and the ice of her gaze was starting to crack. She was starting to crack. She fought on with the bleeding fingertips of madness straining at the back of her mind.

She heard him. This creature, this thing that had defeated her without doing a thing, this thing, what was it? She looked closer some strange realization tugging at her mind, some strange recollection, a fragment of a whisper of a memory. She shuddered and tried to wheel away from it, from him. To find an escape, but he was there and the beasts surrounded her each way she started. He was coming towards her again. The brilliant light from his ethereal pendant shining into her, transfixing her like a butterfly pinned to a mat. Rational thought was gone, only terror remained. She wheeled, fled, aiming for the opening of an archway to the air. She had once rode the winds on wings of ice, but this was not an attempt to rational escape, thought was gone, as was her power. She fled, surely to her death, but anything better than the light, his gaze, the awful strands of memory that tugged at her psyche.

He saw her whirl and somehow knew, he tried to lunge for her, but his short, stunted form could not catch her agile grace. She would leap, she would fall... Where he could not stop her, his friends could. Sensing his need the hounds that had followed him faithfully lunged, not striking, but leaping, knocking her off balance, tangling her feet, bringing her crashing down in a heap; as his stumbling halting steps brought him to her at last, his feet betrayed him. He crashed down onto her as well, arms reaching out for support and finding her frozen body under his hands. Felt her breast, her nipple jagged sharp against his palm. Felt his heat and the light of his presence touching, and stripping from her, her strange mystic dress. It whirled away as merely more snowflakes in the light breeze that blew through the tower and she was naked before him.

Her mind screamed, but she was frozen again. Back in that moment years ago when a Prince had dared her wrath, had survived her gaze, her touch. No! Not again! When a man had given and taken and left her alone, naked, bleeding, begging him to come back, it couldn't happen again, couldn't! Yet, she couldn't move.

Gag felt the body under his, the lithe grace so alien to his past life, so right and normal to the new other side of him. He felt his fingers tease her nipple, squeeze her breast. Felt his other hand graze her cheek, felt a stirring between his legs, building in its need. Saw her, one side of him demanding satisfaction, demanding recompense for the torture, demanding completion inside her. The other looked at her and saw himself, saw terror, horror, fear, and pain.

As fluidly as he could he pulled the fur covering from himself. He saw her eyes widen. Saw them fixate on his large swollen member. That like every other part of him seemed freakish, but in this case, it clearly sent a fresh spike of terror through her, fear of its bulbous head, the size of his fist, fear of its girth and unnatural length. The enormous engorgement of him made it difficult to move quickly when combined with his oddly shaped body, so he didn't. He slowly moved over her, positioning just so.

No... it was going to happen again, and with this monster. This terrible, twisted thing, this, something clicked in her mind, a door opened. She remembered the day her rage, her desire to twist and destroy, the couple, their love, the child of their body, she saw in the grotesque creature above her, herself. Her rage had created this, this thing, her hate, her twisted desire for revenge had crafted the enormous thing that was set to be her second, the final finish to what the Prince had started so long ago. She the naked twisted body, the gnarled hand holding his pitiful fur covering, hideous face, and enormous manhood hover above her and she laughed.

~To Be Continued~