Hara had lost count of the years since she’d been banished and had even forgotten why, but her punishment was clear. To exist in a physical body, to see only what was in front of her, to have needs like air, water, sexual intercourse, power – all of it was torture. Every single minute, even as she pleasurably ran her fingers over her skin or felt relief after holding her breath for too long, only reminded her of what she had lost.
But she was clever. She’d learned to manipulate the very universe in which she was imprisoned, enough to where she could briefly separate her body from its shackles and feel at one with everything. A monk had called it a trance, but when had any holy man been able to disappear and then emerge in another location, she wondered. What did he know?
Nothing.
She had to give him some benefit of the doubt, however, as the monk hadn’t shown the same fear of the unknown that every other person she’d met had. He’d accepted his death rather graciously and did not even whimper when she took his life from him. She had cried for days afterward; not out of guilt but at the sheer beauty of his passing. He truly believed that he was headed to where she had been: wholeness with all. Even if he had foolishly trusted this, she felt a stab of jealousy, one that stayed with her like a scar.
When Hara appeared in front of Sturen, he jumped, just. as she’d expected. His book dropped out of his hand, and he nearly feel from his chair.
“My-my lady!”
His devotion to her had been admirable, of course, costing him dearly in ways that he had not yet realized. Losing his brother was just a symptom, even if it was a very visible one.
She waved her hand to clear the residual smoke around her and giggled.
“You have been … dirty, haven’t you?” she asked as she took in her surroundings. The musk of his tobacco permeated everything, and she felt the disgusting urge to sneeze, a bodily function that she still despise, no matter the release it provided.
Sturen scrambled to stand at attention, spilling the fully burnt leaves from his pipe onto the floor. The smoldering embers started to burn through th eTsarkese rug that covered over half of the room, but Hara noticed that Sturen only stared at it ruefully.
“Things can be replaced, Sturen,” she cooed, “and you would just order another if it all went up into flames, like the sweat and energy put into crafting such an artistic masterpiece was a mere afterthought.”
“I did not wish to offend you, my lady.”
“But your rush to respond forced you to do so,” she snapped.
His face twisted in confusion. It was rightly placed, she mused. She had no interest in tangible things; she knew enough about her past to understand that they never lasted, no matter what one might say. That was the way of life in this plane, constant creation and destruction, a never-ending cycle of futility. But he was too simple to know that she was speaking in metaphor. He had no idea was his overreaction to the inevitable death of his brother had caused, and it seemed, as he sat in his overstuffed leather armchair and entertained his mind with the latest Ust-Kurtsan literature, that he did not care. Or simply did not know enough to care. And if that were the case, he ignorance was that much more irritating. How could she have trusted such a man?
She felt her anger rise in her stomach and radiate through her skin. It was oddly sensual. Sturen only stood there, frozen, as she wrapped her arms around his shoulders and lifted her chin to whisper in his ear.
“You are a fool, Sturen.”
She shoved him back into his chair and straddled him as she held his head directly in front of her face.
“You used me,” she said, enunciating every syllable forcefully. “And now, I have the spirit of this world aware of me.”
“My-my-my lady, this was never my intent!” His eyes darted in every direction except directly at her. “My brother! He was -“
“Inconsequential!“
It could have been the flash of white heat that startled him, or possibly it was the notion that his brother – the smart one, as far as Hara was concerned – and the younger man’s death were mere footnotes on the fabric of time. In either case, it was unimportant; what mattered was that he had been stunned into silence. This self-deluded man of means was once again in utter awe of her power, as he should have been. This should have quelled whatever ire was bubbling under the surface, but Hara found that her rage was simply growing and threatening to erupt. She clenched her jaw as she stared at the man’s terrified face and rose to tower over him.
“As you are inconsequential.”
His screams filled her soul with an indescribable joy, and she moaned in ecstasy while he writhed among the flames that engulfed him. An older woman, one that Sturen had introduced as his wife, tore into the study and stopped dead in her tracks when she locked eyes with Hara, but she was already lost. With a flick of Hara’s wrist, the blaze leapt from Sturen’s body and toward his spouse, sending her fleeing fruitlessly flailing back down the hallway. Hara shrieked with delight and coaxed the remaining blue fire to turn the room into a mighty hell, each flame lapping at every piece that Sturen had carefully chosen to fill its place, until the entire room was ablaze.
“Fly, my little fire,” Hara shouted into the din. “May you be satiated!”
As she stood, undamaged by what she had unleashed upon the Ust-Kurtsan underworld’s king, all she could do was laugh.
It was just all so temporary.
a little more juju 