Mask & Veil Ch. 00 Prelude

[Author's Note: While the prelude isn't so much erotic as it is "scary", the story will merge the two more closely as it goes on. If you liked this story and want to read more, please comment. I love hearing comments and am interested to know what people would like to better steer the story in a way that will make people want to read on. Thanks, Seth.]

Prelude: Darkness Overcomes A.D. 1243

The very night ascended, splashed with stars and villagers locked themselves in their cottages, knowing that this was not just any night. This was the night Darkness reigned.

It reigned first on the woods that surrounded the tiny village. Unnatural moans and screams became a chorus of nightmares. Trees whispered and crackled, it's smell changing from the fresh aroma of green life to the stench of rot and decay.

It reigned, then, in the street alleys and in dark stables, frightening the horses and scaring children who were out too late to return home as quickly as their little feet could scamper. It beckoned, but everybody knew not to listen. All they could do is shut their cottages tight and pray that the Darkness wouldn't come their way.

Then the Darkness reigned out in the fields, creeping up on doorways. Most everybody feared checking the windows, terrified of what might be trying to peek through their shutters.

***

Keira Bryn Davan was twelve the night her Romani caravan, what they called a *kumpania*, settled near the small, nameless village. The Romani were new to the area, just coming from Ireland to escape one of the Kings of Connacht. Keira was their little Irish orphan, given to them by a dying tribe of those who followed the Old Ways. The King hunted her in order to make sure this future "priestess" wouldn't revive the Old Ways in a growing Catholic country. Things became dangerous, so the Romani decided that they better go as far from Ireland as they could.

The Kingdom of France was the only thing their Seer, Katalina, could think of for the moment. She did a special reading and the cards pointed here.

But as Darkness began to reign around them, Keira was out too far from the *kumpania*. Enin, the boy who was helping her look for kindling, heard the noises first. He stopped, if struck suddenly.

"What is it?" she said.

"Shh. I think I heard something," Enin said, trying his best to whisper.

"What? Wh- What is it?"

Keira looked around her, trying to see far enough into the Darkness to see something that might be making noises. Whatever it was, she thought, had frightened Enin. Enin, usually, wasn't afraid of the dark. And his reaction was making her nervous.

"I think... we should... go back to the *kumpania*," Enin said.

Then they heard something.

Something BIG.

Scared, the two began to run, dropping the wood they had collected. Keira was a little faster, running without the regard of her friend, but when she realized she couldn't hear him anymore she stopped. She couldn't let Enin die. She was supposed to be his protector.

"Enin!" she shouted back. But there was no sign of him. "Enin!"

Then the noise was behind her. Keira wasn't sure how something that sounded so big could move around her without her noticing, but it was behind her and it sounded like it was moving closer.

Keira turned and looked up...

...and screamed.

***

The girl they called Wraith was standing next to Hegan. Both had just turned 18, so they stood in the woods, nude to the crisp air and the Darkness around them. They stood hand in hand, holding the hands of other girls who had all come to form a circle. They chanted together, repeating whatever Hegan chanted. They called on Hallawes, the goddess of the Old Ways, and they waited for something to happen.

When night fell, Darkness rose to reign on them, and they could all feel it.

Wraith was excited. She had never before felt the smooth wind caress her whole body in such a naked state before. She was attracted by the scent of the trees, the others that were around her - all of whom were showing a strange confidence with their naughty bits exposed to the sights of their peers - and gazed at the other's lips, breasts, hips, legs and vulva. It excited her so much that she could feel her pussy twitching and begging to be touched.

But the raven called, cracking it's voice to echo through the woods. The girls waited and Hegan began leading them through another chant. They began to circle the warm bonfire that had a forked, dancing tongue at it's peek, acting as though it wanted to pleasure their bodies.

Then Hegan told a few girls to stop chatting. Hushed, they began to hear it. There was a loud splitting of trees and the ground thundered once. It was, at first, a distant thunder, but with each passing moment they could hear it getting closer. The splitting grew louder. The thundering ground began to send shivers up their legs.

"She's coming," Hegan said, whispering.

Wraith was beginning to feel nervous. What if Hegan didn't know what she was doing? What if the Black Annis swallowed them whole?

*Push those thoughts from your mind*, she told herself. Wraith was Hegan's best friend and they never had any reason to not trust each other. With that thought locked tight in her heart, Wraith tightened her grip on the girl that was holding her left hand. The girl was trying to pull away, break the circle to run away from what was about to happen. But Wraith wouldn't let her. They were all in this together now and there was no turning back.

Then a tree beside them cracked, splitting their ears. Wraith saw claws, giant gnarled fingers with bits of rotting flesh and blood stains all over them. Then the tree crumbled to the ground as this gigantic crone came out of the Darkness, her teeth stained yellow and green - ivory tombstones, mossed over and crumbling to pieces with age - and her eyes were blacker than Wraith's imagining of limbo.

Some of the girls screamed, but Hegan was the first to react. Letting go of another girl, Hegan pulled Wraith away from the crone, who began to snatch the girls up in her giant hands...

Wraith allowed Hegan to pull her away, but her eyes were locked on the girls that were mashed to bloody pieces in the giant maw of the Black Annis. All the girls were gone, all six of the others, except Wraith and Hegan.

"I can't believe it," Wraith said. And she couldn't believe the stink that wafted off this wrinkled, gnarled giant with blue-green flesh.

Without saying a word to her, Hegan took a good deep breath of bravado and walked out to stand before the Black Annis.

"I am Hegan," she said.

The Black Annis's eyes poured down over Hegan, who to Wraith, looked like a doll at the foot of a parent mother. Frightened that her friend was about to be devoured, Wraith called Hegan's name, but neither the crone nor her friend answered her, or even gave her the slightest attention.

"*Annis thanks you for the sacrifice*," the crone said, her voice not unlike crackling branches and grinding stones. "*Now why would a foolish wee youngster like yourself brave my summoning?*"

Hegan began to tell her and Wraith listened, unable to believe what her friend had planned.

***

Darkness reigned the full of the night, lurking around the village, taunting with it's smells and sounds, prodding at shutters and doorsteps. But when the day broke, the darkness retreated, but never forgotten. One day it would come back, darker and more forceful. It would take it's victims and it would reign with a cruel heart.

But next time, it would have it's minions. And the dwellers without would be reborn within.

Or so say the prophets that have passed the story on...

[to be continued...]