“Umbra, great queen of darkness, answer our call!” The leader thrilled, his voice rising over two dozen chanting worshipers.
Three concentric rings of fire surrounded the cultists as they bowed before a burning heart, their chants and ritual straining to keep it afloat.
The night was moonless and heavy with silence, all twelve moons of the realm dark. A celestial alignment seen once every twelve hundred years.
“We break the cage which binds your heart, so that you may find it.” The fire wreathing the heart flickered. Suddenly it became clear; the efforts of twenty weren’t keeping the fiery heart afloat, they were extinguishing the flame.
“Hear us, oh great queen, your heart is with us—”
The speaker choked on the words as the blackness descended. The stars vanished. The three great conflagrations dimmed, barely illuminating the suddenly silent cultists, while the fire burning the heart of darkness winked out, drowned in the inky blackness.
“Why, thank you,” the silent gloom echoed with a sweet voice, which tormented the spirit with luscious hallucinations. “I’ve been looking for that little thing for ages; ever since Sunspear knocked it out of my chest. Look, there’s even a ring of salt around it.”
The silky, honeyed voice shook the cultists’ to the core; none daring utter a word. The rocks of salt lay hidden six feet underground, a trap meant to bind the elder fae to their brotherhood.
“Now that I am once more whole, festivities are in order; and then there’s the traditional wish fulfilment… Am I forgetting something?” The darkness focused; a shadow more solid and more real than the rest tapping Her lip in thought as She observed the gathering.
“I know! The wish part is easy — I wish for My King.” Umbra eyed the gathering of men and women. “You resemble him the most. I am very sorry, but you can only be born through great pain, My King. And I just remembered what else we are missing — candles.”
Umbra waved her hand and the flaming circles, the mortals’ bastion against the living darkness sung of in the sagas, shifted. Their fuel, enough wood to burn for days, crumbled to embers and flared all at once, engulfing the cultists.
She turned the women to ash instantly, for Her King must not be born the wrong sex.
Then the leader burst into flames from within, cursing the moment of his birth; and the moment he dared consider trapping an elder fae.
As he flaked to ash, the others paid for their scheme painlessly; all save for one.
Umbra’s chosen still lived, burning and screaming. He could not die from a failing body, but from a soul escaping torment.
For Her King was born of death and agony.