Sons of the Oak

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Asgaroth sent his consciousness across the stars, past nebulae of flaming gases, past black holes that sucked in all matter, beyond galaxies dying and gone cold, until he stood upon the broken remnants of the One True World before his master, Shadoath.

She appeared to him as a goddess of shadow, a petite woman, sleek and elegant, her supple limbs the very definition of grace, raven hair cascading down bare shoulders, her smooth skin as flawless as perfect virtue, her lips so red that blood would envy it.

A shadow slanted across her face, hiding her features, but her eyes sparkled like black diamonds.

She sat upon a marble dais in a garden, with trees twisting up like thick serpents, their dark leaves hissing in a hint of wind, while among them sweet doves sang their night songs.

In the hollows among the trees stood her guardians, those who worshipped her, those whose love enslaved them. Once, in a previous life, Asgaroth had grown a cancer on his shoulder. For weeks a fevered hump had amassed, swelling so quickly that he could almost watch it. He knew that it would kill him in time, and had watched it with morbid dispassion, until finally one day the skin above it had grown so taut that it could no longer hold, and a rip appeared. From out of it he saw the cancer: a grotesque fleshy head with a mouthful of crooked teeth, a single milky eye, and some ragged hair.

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