Cycles of Love (Second Cycle: Bleed)
-><-
It was still upon her wet lips, the lingering of his kiss. In his eyes was what he…
Caringly demanded.
She had barely even spoken to Lancelot of it, the fire, feigning poor memory. For sure it had been there at first, lapses of time forgotten.
But slowly it had returned to almost full recognition, coming to her first in screaming dreams, and then in painful tears of reminder.
Without his help…
She would not be here.
It wasn’t the man who had aided her though who insisted the story, but the one who had been too far away to help.
Some of her wayward curls fell against her temple. He brought shaky fingers out to slide them away. As the task belied giving, it was more self involved, his skin lingering within the silky bondage.
With his other hand, he pressed to her cheek.
“Tell me.
Please.”
Together they’d enter the gallows.
At least this...
He could do.
Not be too late.
She seemed reluctant so now instead of pressing a fierce kiss on her lips, he wettened her cheek with a tender one.
Closing her eyes, with his lips continually caressing her cheek, his face hidden by such action, and yet so nakedly loving against her wanting skin, she began to recount it.
The violence.
The horror.
The death.
The scream that resonated from her own…
Lips.
“Hurry Adelaide! Need to get dessert up there before the king sends the knights down to see what’s taking you so long!”
“Oh shut your trap!”
Gwen smiled at the familiar boisterous back and forth arguing. It made her melancholy mood lighten just a little.
It was never easy watching him with another even if she was the one who prodded him that way.
“Oh no!”
Hearing the gasp of distress, Gwen turned around to see Stella looking oddly frightened. The girl was just a bit older than Gwen had been herself when she first started her service.
“What is the matter Stella?”
The girl gestured to her soiled dress, stained from a pot of gurgling pudding.
“Her mistress is going to be livid to have such a sullied servant during an occasion as grand as tonight’s.”
Hearing the non-helpful jibe, Gwen gave Mirabelle a chastening look before lifting her hands to the ties of her white floral embroidered apron. Moving it away from the front of her simple lavender dress, she handed it to Stella.
“Here…you wear mine. Your mistress will not even see the stain then. Dry your tears…there’s nothing to worry about.”
Stella’s thankful smile was bright as the sun. Reaching forward she hugged Gwen enthusiastically. “Thank you so much. You are always so kind to me Gwen!”
Adelaide was watching. From across the way Gwen felt her linked smile.
“Well someone was just as nice to me…when I first started here.”
She winked at the older woman, soon to be reaching a retiring age, when hopefully she would be able to relax some, even with her humble peasant stature.
With a skip in her step now, Stella returned to the pot of pudding, ready to spoon it into the bowls as it was finely finished.
Mirabelle continued ranting. Gwen did her best to ignore it. Her relationship with the woman had been prickly ever since she had first started working in the castle and Mirabelle tricked her into cleaning the prince’s room.
Recalling his youthful, and yet mocking expression then, that day she nearly dropped his ugly boar’s head, Gwen smiled. It had been the oddest and most undesired way to meet the future king, but it hadn’t been all bad. He even ‘saved’ her from making the same mistake again of this time entering the king’s room, which certainly would have led to her immediate dismissal. Instead Arthur had led her to the solid escape route and with Adelaide’s help spoiled Mirabelle’s plan of getting Gwen in trouble.
Giving one last spooning blend of the pudding she was cooking, Gwen stepped away from the stove to add some cinnamon spice for flavor. As she returned to her work counter, her thoughts wandered back to the festive room above, where the prince was celebrating his twenty-third birthday.
This night they, he and his intended, had kissed, regally, royally, and maybe days away from engagement.
Who knew?
She had wanted this. Gwen. She told him there was no chance for them and pushed him to this destiny his father wanted, this suitable woman, but it didn’t take the hurt away. It still pained her to see the two of them together. She’d find herself foolishly watching them sometimes instead of doing her labors. And within those times, catch him staring right back at her.
That was why she had so thankfully fled here to the kitchen to do her work. It was a respite from his strong daylight blue eyes so soberly scrutinizing her every move. It was a rescue from catching them in a sudden royally cheered kiss.
Moving quickly back to the stove, Gwen ignored all of Mirabelle’s still annoying rantings as
IT…
Began to rumble.
Some kind of roaring.
Oh no, was there another dragon?
But then.
It shook.
The floor.
Wait.
The floor shaking?
The walls started pitching back and forth.
Leading to her balance flailing.
She stumbled into another as they too lost their footing, stared with wonder.
It was no dragon.
It was the earth actually trembling.
With rolling tremors.
The earth was moving!
Viciously.
It set every hand to flounder at the wall, the counter, the person standing beside…
Whatever was most near.
Under the forceful vibrations, the heavily used floor rattled, the wood creaking from the unimaginable stress. Thankfully it didn’t give way for there was heavy stone underneath, and yet its sudden movement created no easy path.
To Gwen’s ears came the rattling sounds of metal and wood clanging against itself. She lifted her eyes to see the large cooking utensils that hung overhead being wrenched away from their iron hooks. Some of them had the sharp points of forks and blades of heavy knives. Like shining silver and dark wooded rain they rapidly came down, causing unwilling victims to screech with pain at the vicious contact. Holding her hand to her mouth, Gwen watched with sick wonder as the wounds set to bleeding for those inflicted.
The kitchen she worked in that was noisily and heatedly bustling during normal times, was with each quiver of the land turning into a horrid deathtrap.
Echoing her dark thoughts, boiling liquid reminded too how it was a threat. Gurgling and sloshing around inside heavy pots, pudding and cake batter, thick and running, rippled against the iron sides of their containers. Soon enough they escaped their tall walls with bubbling satisfaction. They burned those who did not move away hastily enough, splattering heavily over too tender skin in thick waving spatters. They raised the hollers of flesh being razed.
It was descending to hell. The kitchen, her workplace for so many years, familiar and even though often hot at least a respite with good friends, was being abusively conjured into…
Purgatory.
Somehow she knew the worst had yet to come, as screams rung out, and the unfortunate slipped upon the wet floor, littered now with sharp turned-to-weaponry objects and splatters of boiling ruined dessert smoldering in waste. The unlucky slipped upon the liquid mess to feel its heated substance char their unprotected skin, or land upon one of the jagged cooking tools that cut through tender skin.
And yet…
One horror remained.
It was almost like a cackle, that the stoves became too rattled by the quaking earth. The thick heavy wooden pillars used to flame the stoves into life rumbled and rolled against the iron doors. They rotated and revolved with ominous foreboding.
“We have to get out of here…”
Gwen whispered fearfully.
Already were stampedes at the two doors, the back and the front. She didn’t dare go to the back now that led outside. Yes, the exterior air in the courtyard would be more welcome, but those stoves were about to give away. They could not hold inside the lumber used to heat them.
All she could see clearly enough through the chaos was Mirabelle and another nearby kitchen worker just a few years past her in age. Gwen grabbed hold of both of their wrists and gestured that they had to leave.
Mirabelle pulled toward the back door
Gwen resisted urgently. “No.”
Mirabelle was frantic as the earth continued to rattle, making movement or even standing still treacherously hard.
“I want to go out the door…outside!”
Gwen yelled at her impatiently.
“No! That way is too dangerous!”
That was when it happened.
Her worst fear came true.
One last fiendish howl and hell opened its gleeful gates.
The timbers of wood that had been so laboriously carried and carefully placed into each stove, hours of work, in just seconds now, rolled away from their iron prisons.
Attached to them, following them, echoing them fiendishly…
“OH MY GOD-
Gwen heard Mirabelle let out in terror.
They coursed down to the already obstacle-riddled floor. They plowed into those who were trying to escape the back way, knocking them down mercilessly.
Gwen too stared for a painful second. The timber had been in the stoves for one reason, to create high temperature fires that could be cooked by. As they burst open the doors, with them came flaming explosions.
The working kitchen was turning into a pyre of no peace…
Just screeching macabre death.
In horror the three of them watched as the bursts of fire quickly climbed up the walls and easily sought out victims who were just too late in vacating through the door that led to the outside.
“AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHH!”
“HELP ME!”
“AAAAAAAAAHHHHHHH…I’M BURRRRRRRNING!”
Gwen’s eyes watered, maybe from the sudden lack of oxygen in the room. Maybe from the horrid heat. Maybe from witnessing those she had toiled through jokes and banter alongside every day…
Alight with flames.
She had been right. The back way was the most dangerous. It brought no relief though to know that she had made the correct decision, not while innocent people…
Breathed and…
Screamed.
Tried to run.
Turned to sickish embers.
Even as the quake was not over, the tragedy, the nightmare seemed would be the fire. As long as she lived she would never forget what she was hearing this night, screams of the dying.
Of inhumanely torched bodies.
Painfully though, she knew they couldn’t wait. Staying here, they would only burn too.
Frantically she ushered them forward to the opposite door, holding both hands tight.
“We have to go!
Now!”
Through the hideous maze, she found the door, hoping safely that it would lead to unblocked castle hallways. If the fire burned there too…then…
She couldn’t think that.
Holding on so tightly to Mirabelle and her other friend, she pulled them both and herself…
To safety.
Although it was rocked by hysteria from the fire in the kitchen, and quake throughout, at least the hallway was not burning too.
Of course it wasn’t pure sanctuary. The shaking hadn’t yet stilled and the long narrow hallway they had retreated to was a scene of pandemonium. Some kitchen workers were horribly injured and along with them were those who just screamed in lunatic fright.
And beyond…
Were the screeches from the kitchen.
Those who lived.
Those who would die if no one…
The knights might come down, yes? But when?
And what if it took too long?
More of those screeches kept shocking her ear.
She couldn’t do it.
She could not wait for help of the knights.
There were too many precious friends who could perish. There were too many screams for that as long as she lived would haunt her sleep.
It just seemed impossible with the earth still rocking back and forth.
Odd.
The moment she thought that, by mere coincidence or some silly fate, it stopped. The shaking of the land simply…
Ceased.
It was such relief and just…strange. As strangely terrifying as the trembling had first felt, so did the end of it feel simply peculiar.
Turning, Gwen noticed it now. She could see others too reacting to the still audible screams. They were assembling. This was her chance. It would be too horribly frightening to go in alone, but together, they could save some. She couldn’t just stand here anyway and listen to those awful howls. She had to do something!
She made her way over as quickly as she could with all the mayhem surrounding. She informed she wanted to be of assistance.
It was the kind of decision you made with not a single thought of the repercussion. It wasn’t her norm, more his, the leader of Camelot’s Knights, but that didn’t matter now. Just the rescue of friends was important.
She didn’t consider herself that brave a person either, but also definitely not cowardly. She’d braved before dangerous situation to help those she cared for.
Just this…
She gave it no more thought, simply prepped.
“Are you mad Gwen?”
She heard Mirabelle ask the question, the woman standing nearby and grasping tightly to the wall as if in fear it would start moving again.
Gwen shook her head, but gave no verbal response as she pulled up the bottom of her precious lavender dress. It was one of her most favorites, so beautiful with material lent from her dear former mistress, her friend, the Lady Morgana. Only now, for months, her Lady had disappeared.
Clenching the fragile material into work stained fingers, Gwen ripped strongly. It would be a hindrance if it remained skirted down to her feet. She kept tearing all the way around until it lowered to above her ankles with ragged ugly shreds.
But it didn’t matter.
Clothing was not as sacred as…
Life.
“Gwen?”
Mirabelle asked again, eyes wide, pulling at her arm with the hand that wasn’t clenching the wall.
“Don’t leave me here!”
Gwen grimaced tightly. There were plenty others around. She’d be fine.
Lifting at the bottom shards of her ruined dress, she hurried along with the others who were courageous enough to attempt the rescue. Then right before they reentered the kitchen, she ripped at her dress again, this time a mostly square shaped piece she could use to hold at her mouth.
The kitchen showed little familiarity now. It no longer was a place to cook royal meals, but…
A fiendish trap.
The usually gray stone walls were beginning to be wrapped in orange, gold and red.
The fire was thickest near the back door, but even at the front where they searched for any persons who could be alive, listening for screams, the flames threatened viciously. The smoke that trailed the prickling flames was densely heavy. It raised hacking coughs that pulled nefariously at the throat.
Sight was horribly impaired by it all, including the sometimes jumping flames that were fiendishly hazardous. The heat was nearly intolerable, instantly giving skin the feeling it was being slowly roasted even without a single tangible touch. The floor was heavily littered with the mess of abandoned desserts and the fallen utensils. And there was one more thing now hindering movement.
One thing that Gwen hideously discovered now.
Against her foot.
She slowly lowered her eyes, feeling one of the men reach her before she could react too strongly. He was a middle aged servant who had been in the employ of the castle for many years. He must have noticed her horrified glance because he held at her arm tightly, whispering in between heavy coughs,
“If it’s too much just go back Gwenny. No one will expect you to stay, young thing like you.”
It was a body her foot had bumped against.
A remain.
Aflame.
Tears hit her eyes, the gruesome discovery so disturbing, but she pushed up with the ripped cloth at her mouth, determined.
“No…”
Noticing it then, she motioned him in one direction, and headed in the other. Dimly through the fire and smoke she could see two who needed assistance.
Horrifically she wondered if she was stepping upon more…
Before she closed down that thought. Enough. She had to stay strong and not think of such awful things.
Getting to the cries, she realized now that it was two kitchen workers in front of her that needed aid. Quickly Gwen grabbed at their arms and hurried out, following the progress of the other brave servants.
Taking count in the busy hallway, she noticed it was six they had just gotten to safety. Some were sickeningly aflame that jackets and aprons were being thrown over their clothing, but at least they were out of that hell turned room.
Hers she had assisted were not too badly injured, just shaking from dreadful fright.
Now would be such a good time for someone like Adelaide to…
Wait a minute. Adelaide. Where was she?
Oh and…
Where was Stella?
Maybe they had gotten out through the back door, but what if not? What if-
Gwen turned to others, those who were not so hysterical or bodily injured to be incoherent.
“Have you seen Adelaide…or Stella? Have you seen them?
Has anyone seen…”
Continuously for the next minute or maybe less, she asked the question, getting no reassuring answer. Not a single soul had seen them.
She noticed it now, how two of the men planned to return to look for any possible survivors. That kitchen was maybe a fiery disaster now, but she couldn’t stay out here if there was the chance that Stella and Adelaide still needed to be found. The decision hasty and out of desperation for finding her friends, Gwen followed the men to where some dim screeches could still be heard.
It was just two of them now…and her. The rest were too consumed by smoke or the flame to return.
The men seemed surprised that Gwen wanted to go back, but they didn’t question too much when she insisted that Adelaide and Stella needed to be found.
Every single kitchen worker knew Adelaide. Every single one of them had some special story they could tell about the boisterous caring woman.
As they reentered, Gwen realized the room felt even hotter, and the flames seemed higher.
Keeping with the men, she carefully weaved through the carnage left on the floor boards and avoided the flaming obstacles. This time the screams were shallow, but they were still able to spot them.
It just sadly wasn’t Adelaide or Stella.
Gwen held at the arm of one servant while the men held at the two others found. Then they made their way to the door as carefully as possible.
As they started to reach, Gwen some paces behind after barriers that were hard to pass for her petite stature, she felt one of the longer rips of her dress get caught on the floor. Anxiously she pulled, but it wouldn’t budge. The men were already nearly out the door. One of them was turning back to her to see if she was alright. Gwen nodded, before directing the older woman she had been helping toward the waiting man. He was coughing heavily and she could tell he wanted to speed this up.
Turning, after the woman was almost to the man, Gwen grasped the lavender material of her once precious dress with blistering fingers. It gave a sheer ripping sound as it viciously tore away from the obstacle.
Freed, Gwen sighed with relief, continuing her descent to breathable air out in the hallway, seeing the last man’s back just disappear through the opening doorway.
That was when it happened.
The earth gave an unexpected violent jolt.
With frenetic energy she tried to hold at the walls, but they were riddled with mazes of orange gold flames that threatened the skin of her vulnerable fingers. The rocking of the castle too caused her body to lose its concentration.
Tumbling down to the macabre floor, she just managed to avoid the large patches that were aflame, but her knee still hit something horribly needle-like. She cried out at the swift pointed pain and flailed for some kind of balance.
The rocking, if frightening and shocking, was short though. Quickly enough it stopped, just a strong shock of after effect.
Her vision slowly adjusting to the cease of movement, Gwen glanced down to see what was the damage to her knee.
Pushed hard right below the bone were the three hard directed prongs of a large fork. She pulled hard at the object, simply wanting to get it away. Ignoring as much as she could the drills of pain resulting from her forced action, she felt it fall away with a heavy clang.
Her skin bled now, but at least that awful utensil was no longer stuck to it.
Hearing some kind of hissing, Gwen looked up.
The injury to her leg throbbed, but her bigger plight demanded attention.
Hell was all around her.
It danced in snarling blood red embers.
In cackling feverish flames.
And she was…
Alone.
The men were gone of course, having departed with that last rescue. She could have sworn she saw one trying to return through the jolting, but it could have just been hopeful imaginings.
She needed to make her own escape, but first, one last try.
Opening her mouth wide, a futile mistake within such a fiery dwelling, she screamed.
“ADELAIDE!
STELLA!”
The hot thick exterior seemed to chuckle with malicious intent. Immediately she felt her throat choke, forcing out a row of hacking coughs that wrenched at her upper body.
Heeeelllpppp…
Heeeeellll…
Hhhhhhhh…
What was that? Was that someone shouting for help? Was it her dear friends? Maybe they heard her. Maybe they were still here!
“ADELAIDE!
STELLA!”
Heaving coughs exploded from her lungs again, but still she tried to hear for any sounds.
Hhhhhhhhhhh…
She turned to it with excitement. There was someone!
Looking in the direction…
She saw…
IT
Her hope instantly started to fade.
There it was.
Flames climbing up a shelf of the wall, eliciting a shallow sound of what she had imagined were cries of…
Help.
It was all just illusion.
It was the fire playing tricks with her.
Shaking her head resolutely, Gwen pushed hard against the floor to get to her feet. She was angry that what she had hoped had been her friends was just this malicious tormentor of the kitchen. Trying to right herself too quickly, her leather worn shoes twisted as they stepped upon more of that slippery bubbling batter. Her legs tangled and once again…
She fell.
“OOOOOOHHH!”
Her weakened muscles clashed with abuse against the wood.
Still she tried to get up, pushed to the floor when…
Maybe the fire had planned this.
Maybe hell wanted macabre results.
Slowly, fully sinking back down to the messy stained floor at the new…thing…that caught her denying vision, she felt fresh tears edge from her already heavily watering eyes.
From her throat came a dull agonized moan.
“Noooo…”
She pleaded to heaven. To any kind of peace.
But the picture was horrifyingly plain.
The body was blackened stiffly enough. Where it wasn’t already burned to near non-recognition, it smoldered with blood red flames.
The futileness of it all drained through her own body. The emotional pain exploded with fiery shocks.
Enflamed hairs of graying oldness.
Oh…no.
That familiar bandana.
Torn through by hell’s way of creating rain.
She felt like her heart was melting into this pyre of wasted bodies. Of friends loved and…
Gone.
Hot wet tears ran down her cheeks as she tried to deny it all.
She was going to retire. She was finally going to rest.
No more work. Just…time to herself.
Gwen closed her eyes. She wanted to pretend none of this was real. Her whole body ached now. Her lungs were so choked. And her heart was silently…breaking.
She just wanted…
All this nightmare to be over.
“No.”
She wanted to pull her away. Precious Adelaide deserved at least to not die in such a place of purgatory. But already the woman’s body was torn into charcoaled remains. It was disintegrating into…
Ash.
“No.” Gwen whispered painfully.
It hurt so badly to have so many lives, so many wonderful lives…
Gone.
In a flash.
With a rumble.
She lowered her head.
IT strongly interrupted her mourning.
Another flashing jolt.
“AAH!”
Gwen screamed what she thought her throat couldn’t even elicit anymore. Adelaide’s death was horrible, but the earth was moving again.
At least…
The somewhat mild tremor was over fast. She relieved a tiny bit as once again, the shaking quickly ended.
Gwen lifted her head with sad resolution.
It was too late for Adelaide.
If Stella had not gone through the back door, it was too late for her too.
All those imagined screams were just that…
IMAGINED.
No life remained in this room that beckoned now at hell’s gates.
Only…
Hers.
Hers that was being solidly threatened.
She stared in horrific amazement as the fire seemed to have in the past few moments made a fiendish amount of progress. It was starting to snap at where she sat.
“Oh my God.”
It tortured her throat to talk, but still she vocally reacted.
“I have to get out of here…”
She whispered.
The fire was in a playful malicious mood though. It wanted to continue the game and keep within its blood red walls…
Its naive victim.
A flame from the wall leapt energetically to the sleeve of her dress. Gwen stared with shock for only a moment before she FELT its effect.
Skin is not meant to feel the boiling liquid tongue of flame.
Its violating contact made her scream in agony.
“AAAAAAHHHHH!”
Her flesh felt like it was being ripped off the veins, the blood churning underneath.
Set on simply putting it out, taking no time to weigh the consequence, she reached out for the first thing she found, a huge thick iron pot. Then lifting it high in the air, she flung it forcefully against her smoldering arm.
It took out the fire almost instantly, but too…
Her mouth opened horribly wide, her pupils deathly round, she let out an anguishing bellow.
A scream that raised the hairs.
“AAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHH!”
A crack hissed against her unbelieving ears. A shock of hideous pain speared through her entire body.
Before it hung lifelessly, the bone twisting at the most horrible angle, broken almost fully…
In half.
“OH MY GOD!
AAAAAAAAHHHH!”
She screamed one more time, having to fight so hard with her good hand to keep from falling to the riddle flamed floor. It hurt like nothing she had ever felt before in her life. It was like lightning tearing through her shocked insides.
With heavily watered eyes she saw it, underneath the sleeve of her dress, her freshly broken arm. Broken by her own devious hand.
This was what the fire did. It turned life against itself.
Shaking hard, she couldn’t find any semblance of peace. The pain of it all was so excruciating. She just wanted to close her eyes and…
Die.
Oh God no.
She had to live.
That would be her new mantra. She wasn’t going to let it take her this way. It didn’t matter that her arm was broken, throbbing. It didn’t matter that her lungs were fully strangled. It didn’t matter that her body felt it had been abused to its extent, that this fire was raping her of her existence.
She would do whatever she had to…
To get out of here.
To live.
It was just so hard to find a safe place.
The walls had no spots anymore where they weren’t being licked by ugly flames. The floor had few of its own. She could even feel it now dully between all her other pain, the hot vicious heat of the approaching ones. The orange red embers were tickling at her shoes. With her good hand, she became a scavenger, finding a less heavy pot that with more gentleness than she had inflicted upon her injured arm, she used to put out the cruel tickles of flame.
“Stop it.” She uttered, like the things were alive.
But maybe they were.
Maybe they were hell’s demons.
Managing to hinder it that way, she resolved weakly to what she needed to do next. Even with her bone brittle and broken, she had to somehow get up. She needed to stand.
Some way.
She tried it two times, but each attempt stressed so hard against her broken arm that she was left to moan with defeat. Her arm was too far injured. Her lungs were too heavily filled with smoke and ash. Her vision was blurring steadily.
She couldn’t stand. She just couldn’t do it.
She had entrapped herself.
She would die here, with all of them.
This would be her last breath.
This would-
No.
Some tiny bit of her spirit still raged. It was furious at the fire and set on life.
Death was of course inevitable someday…
But.
Not like this. Not here. Not this way. The fire wasn’t going to win.
She would fight for her life.
“Not like this…” She whispered, her renewed mantra.
“You’re not taking me this way.”
If her mistress ever returned she would mourn her loss too heavily. Merlin too would be sad.
If she couldn’t stand…
She would crawl to escape.
Pushing down with her good hand, she laboriously struggled. Her muscles stressed hard. Her veins throbbed against her flesh. The force of movement made her injured arm vibrate with prickles of new added pain. Her body slid past objects that wanted to bar her way. Liquid shot against her fingers. Tough tinges of charcoal roughened against her nails. Her good hand would give way and she would have to quickly scramble to rest upon its elbow without touching the raging fire.
She imagined her process brought her over long gone bodies. She didn’t try to identify them.
This was now just purely about one desire.
Life.
Fresh air of life.
She just wanted to live.
She just wanted to breathe.
To feel the arms of peaceful existence.
The mantra didn’t dull. She kept it up strongly.
Her life had never been fully easy. She’d survived the loss of her mother and father. She knew now they would want her to fight for life. Hours upon days she climbed long rows of steps and carried out piling loads of wash. She regularly lowered to her knees to clean soiled floors and stayed like that until standing she would feel the mild bruises underneath her dress.
She was used to hard work. She would let that be her gift now. She would not quit…
It just hurt so badly. Her body felt so…
So…
Heavy.
Like she couldn’t carry it anymore.
All she could do was whisper, that mask she had used for her face, long gone when the bone had broken in her arm.
“I can’t stop.
I have-
I have to---
Get----
Out---
Have---
Gwen kept pushing her good palm against the floor, trying hard to use it for leverage repeatedly. Agonizingly she slid closer to the wall, not stopping to see what the roughness, slipperiness it was that her body slid across. It could be bodies, liquid or…
Once again, she didn’t want to know. She just wanted to live. Get out and breathe. That was all that mattered. She kept it up. That repetitive mantra. In her mind. Voiced in shallow whispers.
“I have to get out. I have to…”
Merciful God…help…”
It just hurt so badly. Her body was wearying. It was so much.
Too much.
“Please.”
She prayed.
“Please give me the strength to do this----
The closer she got to the door of escape, the closer too rained the flames. They would keep hissing at her fingers and shoes. She’d attempt to bat at them with her good hand, but it wasn’t always fully a success. Often she’d have to kick or slap her hand down. It caused more stress and made her moan low in her throat, but at least it extinguished the flame.
“Oh Camelot’s mercy---
Just----
Get to---
The door----
Touch it---
Feel its touch…
Salvation---“
Finally her painful trek, her rough long slide, led to some of that word…salvation. She was at the door, but too her strength was sapped.
Eyes starting to close with fragile screams of enough, she had to battle to keep them open for even seconds. Still, now that the door was just feet away, she lifted her legs. She had to kick it back open.
Horribly at that moment a flame leapt from its earlier perch to the sleeve of her good arm. It hissed at the already ravaged material. The shock caused her feet to fall with shock. Her broken arm couldn’t help. It was too brittle. She slapped her wrist, with the beginning flame at sleeve’s tip, down upon the littered floor. The jolt of it hurt, but depleted the flame at least.
Yet now her stance was weakened even more. She wanted to live, but the taste of breath seemed so far away. It was like the flames were gently, viciously lulling her to sleep.
Hell wanted her to die.
She lay half fallen against the floor, in numbing pain from so many injuries and lungs raped of what made them exist.
Every last substance was stripped.
And yet still…
She kicked.
She wasn’t going to die. Not here.
Feebly.
The force of her feet was too weak.
Nothing.
The door didn’t even budge.
Tears scratched furiously at her eyelids. Coursed heavy down her neck.
Her skin was being exposed to new burning embers.
Burning embers…coming from a dragon. She thought of now. That night he had been with her. She had put out the fires that had started to burn at his precious booted feet. She had…helped him. He had helped her.
Now…
One more attempt.
One last try.
This time she kicked with every last inch of her strength. It made her moan in pain. She ignored it though as she lifted her feet high. Set them to push hard.
As her feet flew through the air…
She knew this would be her last physical act…
Before her body whispered…
No more.
Let me go now.
Even as her head started to fall, as her eyes lost their focus…
As even her injured arm found a resting place…
She saw it.
His face.
Heard it.
His voice.
Hoped for it.
His…
Please come to me, she begged.
As her feet still had yet to find out if they would make the contact.
If that push would be successful.
Her only hope. She needed his saving now.
They’d done it for each other before, right?
Come to the rescue of the other.
Now…
She begged for…
His…
Arms.
Weak whispers, elicited past burning lips.
Dried from the ravages of hell.
“Arthur…
“Arthur…
Please…
Help me.
If you love me…
Help me my prince…
Please…
Pl---------------------------------------------------------
It was the last thing she can now remember. It had to have been the moment exhaustion and too much injury took over. Now though too she knows that the last kick had indeed worked. She got the door open enough for Lancelot to find her. The other servants had already made their way outside or to the further hallway so they never saw as she got part of her body out.
But he did.
Lancelot.
Her saver.
Not...
Her prince.
It was to him though, her prince, that she ended the story now. She had told him most every detail, but one. He does not know in the final seconds she called out his name.
That she called out for his proof of love.
Perhaps he will never know.
She feels him leaned forward against her.
He’s kept his head down against her shoulder and neck for most of the story, fallen. He doesn’t want to betray it, that shamefully hot tears have found his cheeks.
He is ravaged by guilt and remorse that she had to endure that.
He knew she went through horror, but now he knows she was trapped fully in…
Hell.
The woman he loves was in so much awful pain and in such a grotesque environment.
Not right…not the woman he loves.
Not his Guinevere having to go through that hideous nightmare…
Not alone.
He could have saved her.
He could have…
She could have died. She nearly did. She nearly burned-
And all the while he was holding the hand of another woman.
A woman he doesn’t even love.
As his real one nearly…
Succumbed.
This is when he feels sinful and doesn’t want to be king, wishes to be a poor peasant, anything but what keeps him from…
This is when he just wishes he could flee it all, grab her hand and run away, and just be together, love each other, nameless, without all the burden, and without the expectation, the bondage. This is when he wants to fully sin against his destiny, his calling, to just be with the woman he loves, to protect her and feel her give her love back. This is when his heart breaks in two and bleeds out its life because this is his…
Hell.
She feels it now, hot, wet, and burning against her already once smoldered skin.
His tears.
He is crying. Her prince.
Her…
She lifts at his ever so finely stubbled chin that its minute roughness can only be felt by tender touch. As she does her fingers become stained. Water of salt. Water of human suffering.
She stares into his wet eyes. Feels her own tears trace down her cheeks.
“I’m sorry.” He whispers.
Brokenly.
Apart.
He has no stronger words to give. His lips tremble like the weak earth.
Love is trying so hard to break through hell. Its fingertips bleed as it slides painfully, futilely, down the too high walls.
All licked with flame.
Tongued by pure fiendish laughter.
“It’s alright.”
She whispers.
But it is not. She is not. He is not.
Their tears are like blood. Healing is too far away.
Yet still they hold to each other’s shoulders.
They shake and shudder.
They weep past prongs of separation.
This is no hysteria of wails, but that lessens the tears no bit.
Nor the pain.
He begs for forgiveness.
She begs tolerance.
And love just…
Bleeds out.
-><-
To be continued…
Thank you.
Notes / Preview