Yautja

Yautja,

No matter how many may curse her name, called her the bringer of loss. The reaper of despair, culling hope under the guise of a ruler of such affliction. Bearing a crown of wilting blackened gold apon scales of misleading deep glimmer. Where a single star of blood lay beside her weeping eyes of shadowed sins.

Her name alone is shunned, as if speaking those cursed notes should summon her gaze from below. From her home within the shadows of a cursed cave of illness and shade. Where unearthly darkness swallowed the brightest lights, and overwhelming silence rings out over any sound. Not even a echo rings up from its depths, nor a glimmer of light.

For it is within this realm of bloodstained darkness she wanders. Relinquish she did of the bindings of light. Within this unearthly delight by her eyes of burnt out stars. Lays her castle, her towering walls if blackened stone and soot laid paths. There it stands, deep within the twisting labyrinth that holds only the deaths of those who shan't walk with her shadows. Those who ran with light in their steps, songs of wind in their lungs, arcane eyes guiding their mistakes and the sea swarming their mind. How the shadows swallowed them all whole, all but their queen and her followers.

Rows among rows of eyes craned to see their queen masked in the shadows. To watch as her own illumation came forth, spiraling from her false glimmers of deepened blue and red. Caressing her form in darkness kissed light as if she was truly a goddess of the shadows dwelling among the walls. Old rotting bark pricked at her wings, long tassels of deep overcast fading into red circled her chest. Trailing down her wings and back and spreading behind her like the darkness itself given form at her command.

She need not speak words, for her followers cry to her. Plead for their queen, their goddess among mortals to command them. To bring them towards despair to prove their worth to those who lurk above their own lives. But yet their feverious pleas stop, the chanting of her followers being silences so quickly by the raising of her singular jeweled claw.

Within it she held a long soot stained cane adorned with a sphere of glowing red. Her followers dare not speak, even the young and dim craned to hear their queen's voice. Like a starving hatchling promised food if only they should listen, and listen they shall. Every eye trained on her majesty as her cruel jaws open, and came her voice. Soft yet royal, even the quietness of it all soon grew into a booming command of echoes down towards her subjects.

"You bring me good tidings my friends, and to your devotion I reward you. May you cast aside your hope and honor me with your loss of tidings."

With a breath, she spoke once more. Her words dripping with alluring despair.

"Today you may roam my halls, find your shadows and let your deepest miseries become reality. Tomorrow, break free of your chains. Those who can shall taste the fruits of their laborious misery. Those who cannot shall fuel their Queen's shadows. Come my dears, come to me!"

Her command rung out, and as if clockwork dragons began to move. Started towards the gates of hell. Willingness in their hearts to grasp the fire of true pain and misery for their cause. The cause of servitude to their ruler.

Those above curse her name as a pestilence of despair and loss. Where her marking lay in blood and demise.

Those below speak her name with feverish fortitude. As if her title brings them life alone, where her marking lays the evolution of their strengths and the breaking of weakness.

Those are her spiders of the deep, her Huntsmen and Widows. The dancers of the hunt and alluring traps. They are her children, her spiders. Within her safe haven of tests and misery they will rise, and with comes the fall of the light. Who harbor the weak minded and frail.

She builds strength in the darkness. Now how could that be oh so cruel?

(Writing by @JinglePringle!)