was supposed to go. She was supposed to be at Silvas’s side as they destroyed the monster. He would have been a force which Cacus would not have been able to contend with. Wiping her tears with one hand, she turned forward just as Raskyuil stumbled, her fingers biting into his shoulder as his arms bound tighter around so as not to drop her.
A golden yellow woman, her body stained with inky veins running through her, her green hair laying limp around her face at broken, brittle lengths, stepped out of the shadows, unseen by Iktan. Her red lips parted in a wide grin as Raskyuil shouted a warning. The male turned, his eyes widening just as the dryad’s hand morphed into a thick branch. It struck him through the neck with such force that he was pinned briefly to the wall, his body trembling and tail swishing wildly as he gurgled and attempted to draw in his last gasps of breath. She giggled and pulled her arm free, her hand reforming as she stepped forward.
“Alseida, you were banished from the palace… What…?” Raskyuil snarled.
She laughed and stepped over the body of the troll. “And you thought I would just take it lying down? You threw me out to wander the depths of the forest alone, and he found me. He showed me what delights he possessed and promised my place. I am the queen of the Eternal Forest. Me. Me!”
“You are not the ati,” Borbekel hissed. “You are death, a plague on the forest. You always have been. Your greed has warped you. Your kind is meant to preserve the forest and yet for centuries you have been an infestation and rot that invades the trees of this woodland, dryad,” he sneered.
The smile fell from Alseida’s lips, her face darkening with rage. Her hair lifted around her, the locks twining and thickening like layered vines, the tips tapered and lethal as they snaked through the air, growing longer, reaching out for them.
Borbekel let out an ugly, hair-raising scream as he leaped forward, releasing from his pouch several bundles that flashed upon contact, their magic slicing over the dryad, burrowing in an attempt to dig deep within her with their colorful fiery tongues to infest her. Alseida shrieked angrily, her claws digging at her flesh, stripping chunks away as she attempted to root out the magic, more of the blackness from her skin flowing into the open wounds, burrowing into her with dark, surging tendrils that made her scream louder.
The goblin pounced again, but Alseida snarled and snatched him out of the air. Diana cried out as the other hand gripped into him and the dryad smiled grimly at her. She knew by that smile that the goblin was about to suffer because of her. Diana sobbed in denial, silently begging the dryad not to follow through.
Alseida’s smile hitched wider and a cruel laugh left her at Diana’s grief. Seconds later, Borbekel screamed as the long needle-like thorn claws dug in into his flesh, tearing through flesh, muscle, and bone. She laughed as he screamed, and even as he fainted when the pain became too great, she still laughed as his innards dripped from his body and splattered on the ground with one last rip, tearing the male nearly in half, held together only by his spine. She shook him in Diana’s direction, his eyes staring out sightlessly, before throwing him to the floor. Long, curving thorns protruded from her body as she stepped closer.
“I will have my crown, but first I will destroy my rival,” she snarled. “There will be no ati, only me as the consort of the dark lord of the wood. My power will be absolute, and death will fall as I will it.”
“Madness!” Raskyuil shouted, shifting Diana’s weight in his arms to safely draw his enormous ax and heft it before them.
Alseida eyed it and smirked. “Do you think I shiver at the sight of your iron, troll? No ax will fell me. Cacus has made me more powerful than you know.”
Her arms raised, her lips widened once more to a grin as she turned her arms like a magician, showing one side and then the other. Before their eyes, the limbs lengthened and became as two great thorn-covered spikes that she held out threateningly from her sides. They bumped and scraped against the walls as she strode toward them. The inky veins slid over her like rapidly growing rivers, making her skin bulge as