Free The Spell of Binding (Part One) by Glen Johnson

the light of day. He thought that was ironic, considering what some humans thought she use d to be.
    Tonight was possibly one of the most important meetings he would have since returning to this world. He had been waiting hundreds of years to hear what she would say. It all seemed an anticlimax. Maybe he should be following a musical procession, or all the House Heads. Walking down silently and alone seemed wrong somehow.
    Vorr could hear a low droning as he approached the next corner. The heat started to get stifling, and considering he was a demon, then that mean t it was getting extremely hot.
    The walls were dripping with pale goo; bubbling and rolling down the heated rock, as if the stone itself was crying. Small beetle type creatures scurried about underfoot. He dared not step on one, that would make her angry . And even though technically he was king, he didn’t think that really mattered to her. Down here, she ruled.
    Vorr rounded the last corner, deep, deep down under his throne room. The chamber was vast, but cluttered. She ha d hundreds of helpers –feeders.
    Vorr came to a halt, right on the edge of a cliff that dropped down into a fier y pool of magma that ran off in to the gloomy distance; always churning, bubbling, rising and spitting. And there, hanging above the superheated rock, surrounde d by protecting, feeding mini ons, hung the Great Prophetess.
    She hung upside down like a hug gluttonous sack, with hundreds of her young moving constantly over her body.
    Vorr could understand how an ancient tribe (ancestors to the Egyptians ) upon seeing her began to worship her, and how thousands of years later, in Egyptian mythology, she was still looked upon as a Goddess –Khepri, the Great Scarab beetle –The Sun. Even after she, along with all the other dark creatures, had bee n banished to another dimension .
    The p rophetess noticed Vorr’s presence. Without a word all the smaller creatures started to spread their wings and fly off her body. Others were scurrying up the huge tethers that connected her to the roof of the cavern, all disappearing from sight, shooting down holes that doted all the walls. A small collection landed by Vorr and started to scuttle in to a pile, r esembling a nightmarish, living chair, a ll controlled by her hive mind.
    He hated sitting on it, but it would make her happy. Slowly he lowered himself into its grasp. He hated how they moved under his weight; always shifting, clicking and rustling.
    Now they had removed themselves off her, she was radiant. With the heat from beneath her wing casings glowed with an inner power – she shone like the very sun. Her two powerful, immense wings opened, revealing an oily, reflective body. A small head twisted in Vorr’s direction.
    “You have come for the prophecy?” Her hoarse voice reverberated throughout the chamber. Grit and small sta lactites fell from the ceiling.
    She doesn’t get wiser with age , Vorr thought to himself. “Yes, Great Prophetess.”
    “An age I have waited to impart my vision. Worlds have come and gone.” She shifted; a tether broke, falling to the magma, it boiled around it, consuming it.
    “I will describe my vision, our king…”
    Vorr stood. He had been protecting and feeding her for a millennium, preparing for this day.
     

Chapter Eleven
    OLD MEMORIES
     
    S imeon woke up cold and aching from every joint. He lay still, his mind was confused. For a few brief moments he didn’t know where he was. He went to move his head off the cold stone flooring. Where am I ? he wondered .
    His head fell back to the hard flagstone. Darkness returned .
    His confused mind jumped to the past.
    An image appeared in his minds eye, an image of the first elf he had ever saw ; glorious and radiant – beautiful. He remembered the story of how they had first appeared. A t first there was just glimpses, flashes in the night. What could they be? Rumors spread quickly. Maybe it was a mutated form of a human-type biped that had been