The Devil's Dance—Eternal Flames

• COURT OF WHISPERS, THE CAPITOL

The fey Queen, GISELLE VAN IMPERIA sat in solemn quietude in her magnificent throne room. She was locked in thoughts as she played with a fireball at her fingertips. The sheer nature in which she had mastered control over the Fae [Ethereal Light] amazed the handmaidens flowing out at both sides of her opulent ivory seat. They watched her spin the fireball in her open palm and tried to keep their fear from reaching their eyes.

Giselle was a blondie with some nice fucking tits, but she also would scorch a man to ash in a second.

Her victory against the Nephilims and conquest of their crusade had reached far beyond the citadel and crest of the Capitol to further realms of the Cold Sea. She'd had to say no to several proposals of marriage over the course of the feasting. However, Giselle knew she alone could not have combated the horde of Rumbrun and shared the glory and spoils of war with the Atlantean queen.

Giselle abruptly closed her palm and the flames winked out, the fireball extinguished.

"Romulus?" She addressed the gallant knight who served as her trusted lieutenant. "By Freyja, this hall is too demure for my liking. If that is the last of my suitors for the hour, I would very much like some private time. Has it stopped snowing?"

Ser Romulus bent close to her ear.

"Yes, Your Majesty."

"Good."

Giselle rose from her throne. Her golden robes scattered the entering light on the dais at her feet. Ser Romulus continued speaking, "but if it is a sight to quench boredom which Her Majesty seeks, there is a wilding fest in the forest trails behind the castle. They celebrate the appearance of something the Eternal Flames. I don't know what it means but it may provide necessary entertainment to Her Majesty."

Giselle stopped in her sashay out the throne room and looked back to Romulus.

"Did you just say Eternal Flames?"

The appareled knight nodded and Giselle grabbed handfuls of her flowing gold skirt. She ran the rest of the way out the bright hall. This was something ...finally, Giselle pondered, her legs quick under wondrous archways. She made her way through a middle court framed by the royal gardens, sidestepped a couple of running epiphyte vines, and didn't stop till she reached the first marker on the woody trail.

Fae were forever wild and it was a long running legacy among her family to keep a part of the natural world just within reach from the grandness of the palace: a thick forest made white by snows.

Giselle padded bare feet through powdered sleet into the clave of tall, dry-branched trees. The pines whistled like the hull of a tired ship. Giselle walked in deeper, meandering along a tricky path she knew by heart. She had played in this very woods as a child. Eventually, she pushed aside a falling mesh of chestnut vines and stared into an open area. It was marked by softer trees.

The red and brown barks bore the wiccan markings of wildling territory.

Giselle's brave eyes went wide on the dancing gypsies just a yard before her and the gold in them moved about with her pupils.

Romulus was right. The clearing was full of her people. The unsightly Fae, mostly those less than three centuries old. The Elden ones didn't do the Devil's Dance anymore—for this was what the other factions called the intricate motions of pyre delights her kind often loved to indulge. To Faefolk, dancing around fires was tradition. Culture. And to some among, prayer to the Old gods. Giselle had cousins who still believed in the nudist way, whom at certain ages took to the western fronts where the trees were an endless stretch, living liberally and running about naked.

Giselle looked now to the riptide of humping, gyrating, moaning people flowing and slithering into each other in very serpentine moves. Out of their opens mouths came heavy whispering and breathing. It was like a weird cult fiesta or something. Giselle briefly thought about how it must have looked to Ser Romulus when he'd spied them doing the Devil's Dance.

The youths were locked in erotic poses, limbs and heels everywhere, interwoven as the strangest union.

Giselle didn't have anything against the Devil's Dance, but she always refrained from joining whenever her kind took part in the eerie communion. An orgy might not be weird to her, but this was. Sighing at the throng of panting folk, Giselle entered the clearing.

The young men and women made some ominous shrieking and began clapping and running around the flaming embers in their middle.

"Fuck."

Giselle gritted her teeth and tried to get closer to the bonfire. The circle of skitting dancers made it hard. Giselle frowned behind the tumultuous lot. She recognized a few. Some high emissaries of her Court. A few of the coven. Shockingly, even the Highfather was present. The bald monk who was Arch Cardinal of the Templars was openly grinning and kangaroo hopping in circles with others in white frocks.

The flames of the bonfire cast strange unearthly haloes on their chanting forms. In the luminance, Giselle could see clearly that not a single one of them wore anything underneath the simple gowns. Boobs and peckers bounced around like they were fucking barbarians.

They looked like some sort of creepy angels.

A rangy boy with pink hair deviously fondled the buxom mama he was behind as they began running in a continuous circle around the fire. He feigned it by clutching at her hips, but Giselle caught the frequent slipping of his hands to the curvaceous woman's jiggling ass.

"Good gods," she whispered under her breath.

The happy folk attempted to pull her into their hypnotic dance but Giselle avoided their reaching hands, diving under their grasps and crawling into their circle from the shining bonfire. But this was no ordinary fire.

As the fey Queen stared into the scarlet hues on her knees, into the thousand and one lapping fiery tongues, as she felt the heat of being so close and smelled the burn and ash, she knew she stared into the [Eternal Flames]: a gift from the Old gods to the first native Elf of Eldoria. The fires had been burning for a millennia.

The Eternal Flames didn't burn—at least not openly—unless more than one [Divinity] was present on the mortal plane.

"Gods are amongst us," Giselle stared into the flames, whispering. The gypsies dancing around stomping to a crazy rhythm.

She only knew of one [Divine] entity: the Apollyon and her beloved paramour, Lord Israfel BlüdThïrste, present in the realms of her rule. Until now. . .

Her people misunderstood the appearance of the [Eternal Flames] and praised the gods for sending some sort of sign. It was a sign alright, but Giselle knew it didn't serve the purpose in their hearts. Her father had told her the real significance of the ethereal fire, one in the long line of secrets and compromise she guarded in her heart. Secrets that belonged in the head of whomever wore the crown, and none other.

"...and if the primordial pyre appear on the morrow, the presence of more than one infernal dweller thou must know," so the sacred texts said.

Giselle framed the burning flames with her hand, caressing its orange glow.

"Bless me, Ancient Ones. I have seen your sign. Grant me wisdom."

She breathed these words in a murmur that the pounding footsteps of dancing wildlings around her drowned out. Giselle pulled away and crawled back under their conjoined arms. She let the [Eternal Flames] keep burning and her people, she let keep on dancing. This was a warning. Ser Romulus didn't know it. The entire fucking world didn't. Only she did. And that thought alone to her was scarier than the omen it brought with it.

The last time more than one of the Divine: [Rank S] of god-tier abilities, entered into the mortal realm, it wasn't long until the moon had turned red, the sun blotted out by blackness, stars falling right out of the sky, and blood rained from the heavens.

Giselle Van Imperia knew that as Queen she had a new job; to find out what the hell the Fallen wanted with her kingdom?

Far, far away from the dancing wildlings and the castle, Rafel was occupied in the caves of Apophis with Hèla, goddess of war and Lilith, Queen of the Night. More than one [Divine]. He had no idea what horrors had begun by their entrance into the mortal world. If both powerful females knew however, only time would tell.