Niama. That was the only word that they g to as they were trapped in the Lich’s dark garden. Niama will save us, each of them whispered to each other, like the frightened sisters they were.

  No one was ing to save them, though. Only Lunaris tried to visit them the on that desperate pce, but before she could even whisper whatever message it was she’d dared e to deliver, a whirlwind of inky bck barbwire sprung up out of the hateful thing that was the circle that bound them together, and she was forced to take flight lest she be caught alongside the rest of them.

  It had been the only moment of hope that the three of them had experienced sihey’d been stolen from the moon, and now it had turned only into a bitter stone in all their hearts.

  After that, the only visits they ever received were from that terrible shade. Sometimes, it came in the body of one of its servants, but more often, it came as a dark thunderhead billowing with wicked powers.

  Sometimes their captor tormehem words, but it always tormehem with pain as it cut away at who they were and pruhem into its desired shape. They had no idea of what that was, of course. All they could see were the bleak walls that surrouhe dead courtyard, and the leaden sky above them as the goddesses slowly fot everything they’d ever known.

  They had all had names oarieneian Vale. Verdant Gde. Thornwood. Now they often had trouble remembering ho, and when they spoke they were no longer sure if they were talking to themselves or each other.

  It gaiher things, though, while it lost so much. Sometimes, that would be a strange new power maing, but mostly it was hate. The monstrosity that had been three Goddesses slowly became ed by hate more with every passing day as everything they’d loved about themselves faded away. It hated what the darkness had doo it, but it could not stop or protect itself. It could not even fight back.

  One day one of her voices just stopped, and a few weeks ter a sed one followed. The corrupted nature spirit didn’t know if those two parts of itself had died or finally merged. Si couldn’t remember which of the three it had been and which two were the ohat had vanished, it seemed to be the ter. That realization wasn’t enough to keep it from feeling alone.

  That was when the Lich finally brahem with their new identity. By the time that dread creature showed up that fateful night wielding a darkly glowing wand with a sm tip, they had long since fotten who they were or even what they were. The monstrosity that had once been more was bound to its tree like an anchor, but that did not stop it from pag around the ring that was the boundary of its existence as it slowly mutated from something more pnt than animal to something more animal than pnt in a desperate and almost unscious attempt to be free.

  “There’s no escape for you,” the skeleton rasped when it finally stopped before it, just outside the line.

  “No?” she asked, shing out at the mohat had taken so much from her even as she khat the thorny vines could’t cross the boundary any more than the rest of her. “Then e in here with me and I will settle for revenge.”

  As the natural monstrosity spoke, she grew terrible cws from her six arms, but the Lich showed ion. Instead, with a few muttered words, she felt something gripping her heart even as it tried to beat in her chest.

  “The only revenge you shall ever have is mine,” it intoned as she fell to her knees. “You will tear apart the Gods and Goddesses you once called friends—”

  “Never!” she spat, but the Lich ignored her.

  “You shall be their undoing,” it tinued. “And when their souls are mine, I shall give you a gift.”

  “We… I want nothing from you!” the thing that had once been a woman, no, several women, spat.

  “A you shall have it just the same,” the skeleton whispered. “I shall give you dominion over all of the natural world that you e so that no one else rise up to take the pce of those you sy.”

  That was when she finally uood that she was being offered the ce to serve this terrible thing. She ughed at that, disturbingly, in all three voices.

  That ughter came to an abrupt halt as the fist in her chest squeezed tighter. She colpsed to the ground, and then, as she y there, a dozeal hands came up from the cursed earth and held her tight.

  She reached for the tree to try to return to the safety of its wood, but it was ioo far away, so when the Lich began to carve terrible words into her very soul with its evil-looking wand, all she could do was scream.

  She had no idea how long the process took or even if it was finished, but by the time dawn began to color the edge of the sky, it was gone. She was alone again, with nothing but the pain of the darkness’s test atrocity to keep her pany. She could only y there as the vines and brahat made up her body writhed in pint.

  When she finally made it back to the tree, she didn’t e out again, not for more than a season. There was no point. There was only pain out there, and though the Lich could still hurt her in here, it was slightly more protected.

  That tht have gone on forever, except for one spring day, she realized that her strength was returning. For many months, she’d fused the weakhat winter imposed on all their kind with the weakness caused by all of these surgeries and experiments.

  As the sap began to flow, though, and she felt herself grow revitalized, she realized that she might be able to finally dig through the stone far beh her. It was a slow, methodical pn, but day after day and week after week, she made progress. Once she finally felt the stohat had barred her way for so long crack, and she peed to the deep earth and pure water beyond it, she tried to drink deep of it but was almost immediately sied.

  Too much of a good thing after starving for so long be almost as bad as the starvation itself, she reminded herself as she began to tunnel blindly toward the edge of the city.

  It took weeks more to find some hearty climbing vio link to, and ohat was dohings moved quite quickly. So far, no one had discovered that she’d slipped from her cage, ae how deep her roots had dug, she was determined not to give that away. If she could just reach the foliage beyond the city walls, she could flee to the forest, and Niama would take her into her loving arms and fix her.

  She was sure of it. There was nothing the goddess of nature could not do.

  Two days ter, while the red and the white suns were high in the sky and the Lich’s forces were all hiding from their gaze, she finally made tact with the weedy, rown irrigation ditches he walls, and fled. Ihereal form she raced along from o of roots to the . The fields had long since gone fallow and were being recimed by nature. That only helped her move faster.

  Less than an hour after she escaped the city, she made it to the nearby woods only a dozen miles away. She would move farther tomorrow, and in time, she would reach even Niama’s court itself, but for now, she desperately o rest.

  She tried to feast on nature's bounty here, but found the essence almost tainted. Could the darkness’s reach really extend so far? She wondered as she began to search for allies so she could expin what happened.

  Shortly after noon she looked into a pond at her refle and she immediately regretted it. What she saw was a horror. The left and right side of her face clearly beloo two different people, and even if she had reized whose body it had been inally, the fact that she had six arms made her look anything but natural. She was a monster, a nameless monster.

  She trated, and after a few seds she was able to bee something close to what she thought that she might have one looked like. Even the indistinct features and curled vihat were only vaguely man shaped were better thaernative, though.

  It was almost twilight when she found a small encampment of the children of the forest. She trated, and with some effort, she forced her strange, new body to return to a form that they might find more pleasing.

  “Greetings wanders, I e in—” As she spoke, the elves drew their ons, obviously sensing something was wrong about her.

  “Who are you?” one of the ageless young men demanded in the musiguage of his race, pointing his bck gss dagger at her. “You stink of evil. How did you find your war through mours.”

  She wao tell him that the gmours, and the way they glowed in the deeping gloom were the reason she’d found them at all in the first pce, but even as she opened her mouth to expin how she’d been captured and tortured by the evil gripping the nd she felt the Lich smoothly slide into her mind.

  “Such a good huntress,” it whispered in mock praise. “You’ve only just been released into the wild, and already you’ve found some of my most elusive quarry. Make sure not to let them get away.”

  “I would never!” she hissed, trying to resist the and, but even as she did so, she felt her disguise ing undone aher arms slipping free as their cws extended.

  “By the goddess,” the closest forest child whispered, bag away as the ones farther from her started to scatter and run for their lives.

  “You ot escape me,” the Lich tinued, ign the growing chaos. “Even if you could, you would soon starve to death because the light is forever lost to you. So, my Queen of Thorns, it is time to cim your destiny. Feast on the flesh of your allies by the time the sun rises, or I shall call you a failed experiment a on your soul instead.”

  After that, the Lich was gone, but it didn’t matter. As he said that terrible name, Queen of Thorns, the profane symbols he’d carved into her very soul sprang to life and began to burn inside her like a forest fire. She now knew who she was again, for the first time in months, but she did not like it.

  It became harder to think after that, and as her body began to shift with every move, and the bloody thored through her bark colored skin, she didn’t even try. She felt the hunger now, and she sted her prey, and that was enough.

  A few minutes ago, she’d been a mutited goddess looking for allies to save her, and now she was a thorned, eight-legged hunting cat bounding down the fading trail to rip those same allies to pieces. Part of her screamed in horror at this turn of events. She never even suspected that the Lich would let her escape, but now it was too te. She was gaining on her quarry rapidly, and any sed, she’d be able to rip out his ageless little throat and drink the sweet taste of elder blood before she started looking for another corpse.