Aster's ordeal

While Bowen {if@ Bowen Corruption = 1}struggled with Lilith{elseif Bowen Corruption == 1} dealt with Lilith{elseif Bowen Corruption > 1} was corrupted by Lilith{endif}, Aster was fighting her own battle. Hers was not as obvious, on the outside she looked quite normal: just a petite fey, perhaps a smidge taller than her sisters, laid out to dry on a roll of cloth. The drying was quite obviously needed, she was covered head to toe in sticky white goo. Her wings were spread out behind her in a normally unnatural position but she looked quite peaceful. The only indication of a battle waging was the faint spasms that overtook her every few seconds, accompanied by faint whimpering. A particularly strong spasm arched her back, "Noo... no..."

Aster's inner turmoil was much greater than her appearance would indicate. Corruption was filling her, poisoning her pure connection to nature just as it had been all winter through the flowers only this was hundreds of times more concentrated. It wasn't a tingling warmth or an idle thought that crept up on her when she was daydreaming: she could feel parts of herself dying, the very foundations of her being twisting into dark parodies of her former self...

Aster sat, watching the breeze whisper through the flowers of the glade. She frowned. It was peaceful, just the same as her home had been since time immemorable, yet...

She looked up. The sun shone, just as it always had, but something about the sky was off. It was midday but gleaming reds and golds shone down through the smattering of clouds. Black clouds. A sudden gust of hot, dry air swept across the field. The flowers shriveled and died, blowing away with the grass, leaving nothing but cracked earth and scalding rock. Aster panicked, leaping from her stone as it superheated in the suddenly scorching sun. She had to do something! The glade was dying!

The stream! She had to spread the water out to cool down the ground so the plants wouldn't die. Flitting over the meadow, she swooped out over the normally clear water, now the color of mud. She reached for her power, that wellspring of life energy that fueled her magic. Nothing. She tried again, straining with everything she had... but it was no use. It was like her wellspring was as dry as the dirt of the meadow, beginning to desiccate and blow away as dust on the wind. NO! She could still save the seeds! She just had to... to...

An unwelcome warmth tingled deep within her, a flicker in the darkness that filled her, and she latched onto it in desperation. Yanking at the faint power, uncaring if it hurt her, just wanting to save her home... and miraculously, it worked. Power, hot and searing, boiled up through her gut, into her chest, and out her arms. PHOOOM. Waves of **** exploded out of her, the chaotic power source going awry and hurling her backwards, but the energy did what she wanted and struck the water. With a mighty surge, dozens of gallons of muddy water breached the banks of the stream and spilled across the dry landscape. But it wasn't enough. She needed more.

Her head spun and she ineffectually fought to regain her balance as she tumbled through the air. She splatted into the mud left behind by the water she displaced, the stinking goop unpleasantly tepid under the scorching sun. It was almost like her wings- Aster gasped in horror. The eruption of power had reduced her beautiful gossamer wings to ashen stumps! She felt distraught, terrified, crippled... horny.

A husky female voice began to laugh, the sound permeating from all directions and echoing impossibly over the hellish landscape as though the destruction itself was laughing at her. Lilith? For just a moment it morphed into the low, deep chuckle of a giant before Lilith's voice reasserted itself. She could feel it... pushing into her soul, echoing in her mind, the laughter and that terrible presence were pressing in on her. They were trying to get inside her. The awful power she tapped into burned stronger inside, growing from the aching desire she had become so familiar with in the last few days to an unquenchable thirst for-

She shook her head, pushing the unnatural heat away with other, stronger emotions. What was happening? Nothing made sense anymore, it was like the old ways completely failed! Despair reared its ugly head and Aster flopped back onto the mud. What was the point? The glade was beyond repair, maybe if she just lay there the water would rise up and drown her. Nightmares rarely let the dreamer go so easily, certainly not one so delicious as one of the fey. As the laughter continued and dark thoughts filled her with hopeless lethargy Aster thought she felt something wriggling in the mud beneath her...