Chapter 279 - The Angel Of Pathways And Mournful Melodies[Bonus Story]
The love of a mother knows no bounds, even so, willing to cradle another life at the expense of her or any other. To nurture, to care, and to offer all that she has, is but scratching the surface of what it means to a life's bearer. A mother in spirit Melicia was much the same from the day she picked up her first straw doll.
Eldest of three, she took the role of their mother the very day her father left his girls by a brothel. Huddled up in heavy rain, she sheltered her children under a wood carton. For days she kept her arms upheld to prevent her daughters from getting wet. The skies, however, cared not for the child's sorrow, as nature wasn't cruel but indifferent to their suffering.
"What's there?" At the height of the flood, a man stood blocking the lighting illuminating the gap between the brothel and another building.
Like a feral cat, Melicia moved before her daughter and growled like a feline. Taken aback, the man stepped back but didn't leave just yet. The haunting state of the girls was too horrid for him to ignore. The water merged with scum, dead carcasses, and bugs had rotten the skins off of Melicia's arms, while the girls in the back seemed perfectly okay.
Drawn by the scent of blood critters, rodents, and even small fishes tore away at Melicia, and in turn, Melicia tore them away before feeding them to her daughters. At this point in time, her memories of what it meant to be human had completely faded away, but to her fortune, the man onlooking her was familiar with such despair.
"Come with me," he offered, holding in his hand a kind of fruit Melicia had never seen.
But that bribe wasn't enough to draw her out of the cramped space. In an attempt to gain her favor, the man offered her food every day for the rest of the season. And thus on a night ever so fateful, Melicia crept out of the gap with her twin baby daughters in her arms. Sneaking a peek at the stone path right before the place she'd been living in, she made sure nobody was around as she made her way into the brothel where the strange man lived.
Even through the night, the place was lit with lanterns but for reasons peculiar to her the hall was empty, yet the rooms sounded lively and rowdy. Far too innocent to make sense of the strange sounds, Melicia jackaled around the place trying to find the man. Cuffing around like a cat she peeked into the room to find the strange man, but the only thing she saw was far too strange for her to make sense of.
After checking in from room to room, she was caught by a surprised few as she peeked inside. However, her skinned arms and legs had her mistaken for a sickly ghost. Howling in fear, the men and women rushed out of their room, and before long the oblivious Melicia was caught by one brave adventurer who was lodging in for the night.
"Who are you?" He asked calmly, unsure what to make of Melicia and her daughters.
His grumbling voice woke the twins, something Malicia couldn't forgive. Slashing the man's face, she left deep grooves from her claws on his pretty face. Letting go of her as his skin began to burn from the poison in Melicia's nails, the adventurer fell to the ground foaming out from the mouth.
Horrified, the onlookers were about to flee away, but as the strange man appeared out of nowhere, Melicia hid behind him and began to appear much more humane. Casting a spell, and making use of plenty of potions at his own expense, the stranger man who happened to be the owner took responsibility for her action and assured the guests that nothing of the kind would ever happen again.
At first as the news about the incident made it around the city, none dared go to the brothel, but alas the desires of man needs to be sated. The next time the adventurers arrived, Melicia had learned to greet them by the door while the two of her daughters were being gently cradled by the owner's wife. In return for the damage and to earn some gold herself, she helped around the place in all places a kid can without getting too close to the adults.
Even the man she'd slashed unconscious soon came to forgive her, but these days of good weren't going to last forever. The poison in her arms continued to grow, and by the time she was an adult each never in her body was pulsing with dark blood. Even her eyes darkened to the core appeared like the devil, and the red in her iris terrified the new customers.
Bandaged away her arms were still hidden, but its poison had stretched so far that it even began to ooze from her sweat. To which one day, the owner perished, and so did his wife and so did plenty others who ate the stew brewed by the witch. And as if that wasn't enough means for sorrow, her sister distanced themselves from their cursed mother.
Left behind in a building that once brimmed with more life than any other place in the city, Melicia stayed confined in its basement trying to come up with ways to get rid of her poison. Through arcane she tried to condemn it, but it had no effect, through her holy magic she tried to heal it off, but it only weakened her from within. As time went on, even the brothel 's walls crumbled over her from the creeping poison. Soon enough even the streets were no safer, and as time kept passing, the very kingdom had to step in to lay rest to the corruptive witch.
But by some misguided effort to lure the witch out from her hole, they did something that would bring down the whole kingdom. The twins, the moment they laid their hands on them, the moment they captured the two as means of bargain, became the last mistake they were allowed to make.
In her struggle to free the two, Melicia let her malice take form and poisoned the very air, which with time merged with the rivers, and even the skies rained blood from the effect of her bleeding heart. To put an end to it all, the king of the land brought her daughters to light and cut off one's head, and kept the other alive as a warning. But instead of a retrieval, this only fueled the witch's rage, and thus she condemned the king with knowledge of the arcane. He bled for a thousand days from every orifice of his body, his sons suffered the same and so did his daughters and wives.
At the end of it all, the poison in her heart grew so potent, that even her last daughter succumbed to it the moment she was about to be rescued. Inches away from her, the witch watched as her sister begged her to go away, but her instincts as a mother wouldn't let her abandon her in the cold decrepit walls of the dungeon.
In mourning for her family, Melicia cried for a thousand years, and so did the angels, the devils, the human, and any who wished to live. For to not mourn along with the witch meant a flood of blood that would rot your kingdom's cities and valleys. Even the heavens bled from her poison and to appease the grieving witch, the creator halted any and all plans of progress.
By the time the witch rose from her knees, the world around her was drenched in blood tears. And the closer to the witch the place was, the more of the land would soon turn into the land of Scorchen Gaia. With her tears covering every inch of land, the witch of poison came to be the witch of pathways and soon enough she became the witch of mournful melody.
From a spirit of a mother to a monster that even the gods feared, all because of her love for the two who could never love her back as much as she did. Thus fearing another heartbreak in her future, the lord of the world outstretched his arms to welcome her into heaven so she could no longer hold the world hostage.
"I'll end up poisoning the heavens, creator, why would you need me there?" She asked, referring to the creator of all.
The lord sighed with a hint of exhaustion.
"I have no answer, but ones that you would not like," with a grumble in the skies, the lord continued. "However, you staying here would only strip countless other children of their mothers."
Unaware of her own strength, Malicia was hit with the realization of her own atrocities that have been committed against countless others. And even though she cared not for any adults, but the children suffering because of her, she decided to agree to the creator's offer and slumber in the heavens to keep the effects of the poison to a minimum.
When Melicia finally agreed, the lord let out yet another sign for he knew more than any other, just how terrifying the expanse of her strength was. As for Malicia herself, the next she would wake up, the lord would have perished long before, and yet for some obscure reason, her demise was yet to come.
"I wonder…If my father knew and that's the reason he left me to die?" Returning to sleep with that thought, Melicia lay in wait for death to creep over her.
However, as if fate had some other plans, she heard the voice of a demon calling out to her. Peering down from the heavens, she saw through her bloody eyes a field of war with a handful of demons trying to gain her favor.
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