For those of you who don't know who Melantha is, she's the Scerae (i.e. a goddess) of Chaos and Insanity in a fantasy story that M and I wrote together. She is known as the Black Flower, born of the Cruel Shard, and she is the best thing I have ever written.
Here's how she first appeared:
M: (As Rant nears the Hole, fire crackles around him, burning the air and twining about his body like a caress, leaving lines of ash along his clothing. He puts one foot through, stepping on the ruined earth, and the vast, terrible shape of Varisoth the Destroyer instantly converges on him, forces his mouth wide open, and pours into him like a thick fog. Rant screams, a raw shriek of pain and terror that echoes across the scorched landscape around him until he can no longer hear himself and the only sensation left to him is the terrible burning of Varisoth's power)
R: (Leandra moans, her sobs intensifying. Lights flicker around her wrists, black warring with white, coils of power repulsing and attracting each other. The woman stumbles backwards, away from the Hole, clutching her head in her hands, spinning circles of light dancing around her.)
M: (Fenaard watches the girl expressionlessly as behind him Rant throws out his arms and gives voice to one final shriek before staggering back and falling silent, blood dripping freely from his mouth and fingernails, fire blazing in his eyes. Rant's body turns and straightens like a puppet on a string, scarlet eyes staring at Leandra) You...what are you?
R: (The lights blink out of existence, leaving Leandra panting and exhausted. She stares at Mordin in horror.) I... The great Goddess, what did you do? (Her face pales.)
M: (The voice that laughs darkly at her is not Rant's. It is far huskier and deeper, a voice to make small children quail and whimper beneath their covers. A voice out of nightmares) Oh you're in it up to your neck, sister, aren't you? Can't fight one of our own inside the girl... (Rant's body, moving more fluidly now, steps back through the Hole, which closes behind him. Smoke rises where his feet fall on the dry ground)
R: (Leandra shivers, drawing back from him, though a dark flush creeps up her neck. She reels dizzily.) What.. what are you talking about?
M: (Varisoth forces Rant's face into a gruesome imitation of a smile, more a baring of bloodstained teeth than anything else. More smoke drifts from inside his mouth as he speaks tauntingly) Say something, little sister, tell me how I've betrayed our purpose, how I've become an abomination. (Rant is suddenly standing with his lips next to Leandra's ear, his voice a furious whisper) Tell me why our brother still lives when by rights he should have died at my hands.
R: (Leandra stiffens, then goes lax, dark laughter bubbling from her throat as her eyes film over, dark and glittering in smokey amethyst light.) You think you're the only one angry about that, Varisoth? (The girl nearly collapses with laughter, holding her stomach and blinking back tears of mirth.) Your little sister is so violent with anger about it that she forgot to guard her Repository properly. (Delight and merriment shine in her voice.) Imagine, me, the Black Flower, a proper Goddess at last. Deonilde is weak; Alsedar was right. The old gods should die and be reborn anew.
M: (Varisoth withdraws, a crooked smile on Rant's face. He ignores Fenaard, now scrutinizing Leandra closely with a grim expression on his face) Alsedar doesn't want us back, sister. He's been saying for centuries that we're finished, that we're corrupt and should retire from godhood. He wants...the reins of history back in the hands of men, I think it is. Dangerous nonsense. We should have killed him for it long ago.
R: (The young woman's laughter seems to spill into everything she says, coloring her words with a certain light apathy.) Agreed, Alsedar has always been a fool. I never understood why you suffered his pretenses. Alsedar, the Voice That Sang... (Her giggles overwhelm her for a moment, then she sobers slightly, grinning like a fox.) But Melantha... The Black Flower... That is a name for the ages, Varisoth. (She presses Leandra close to Rant, her smokey eyes soft and dancing with the light of reflected fire.) Men will catapult me to fame without a second thought. What do they care about free will? None of them understands it. The right word in the right ear... (She flicks her tongue against his ear, then withdraws, melting with laughter.)
And she only got better from there. M and I are rewriting Rising (the name of the story) and plotting a sequel (Descent). If you're interested, I might post more about it.
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