A bulgeappeared in her navel and it formed the shape of a bird’s egg thenit cracked open and out came a silver chicken, which began dartingaround attacking and swallowing the maggots. The remaining maggotssuddenly turned into mist and it formed around her head againwhispering obscenities into her ears and laughing in a horriblyderanged way.
The mistfloated over her body and this time hundreds of small red fire antsfell out of it onto her body and began stinging and biting her.Each sting or bite felt like a small drop of molten metal burninginto her skin. She screamed and writhed and pulled against therestraints but they didn’t yield.
The silverchicken started pecking at them but they swarmed over it completelycovering it stinging and biting at it. It reformed as a silver egg,which cracked open and out climbed a small silver spiny anteater,which rapidly grew, to the size of a small cat.
It squatted onher stomach shooting out its long warm sticky tongue sweeping upthe fire ants and swallowing them by the dozen. As the ants beganto thin out it licked her skin soothing the irritation of thebites. The remaining ants suddenly evaporated reforming into a mistabove her and it rained small spiders onto her body and theanteater.
The spiderslanding on the anteater ran around and over it releasing sticky webas they ran and soon it was bound up tight. The ones landing on herbit into her skin injecting a dark poison that formed black oozingblisters which itched like crazy. She screamed in pain at eachbite.
The anteatershrunk in size and reformed as a silver egg, it cracked open andout of it came a small silver gecko lizard. It immediately beganshooting out its sticky tongue at spiders, pulling them back intoits mouth and swallowing them. Spiders jumped onto it and tried tobite into it but its tough skin was immune to their bites and theirpoison. They tried to spin web around it but when its tonguetouched any web, the web evaporated and it kept munching onspiders.
Once there wasonly a few left the remainder evaporated again reforming the mistabove her body and dozens of little black snakes the size of herfingers fell out of it. The snakes slithered over her body andmerged into a larger black snake coiled on her chest, which staredmalevolently at the gecko. Suddenly it struck and to her horror thegecko was swallowed whole. It turned and looked her in the eyes andthen darted towards her groin. The tattoo glowed and the snakeburst into silver fire and evaporated back into mist.
The mistreformed into a deranged leering face like that of the statue. Itfloated down next to her ear and whispered.
‘Howdelicioussss. I was only expecting a day or two of entertainment.With you I might get a full week but first we need to remove thatnasty tattoo don’t we. Then we might have some real fun don’t youthink. Hehehehe. Watch the spider bites.’ And the cloud of mistflew back into the mouth of the statue.
She lay therein a dazed horror looking into the mirror watching the itchingblack blisters on her face and the rest of her body wondering whatmore could possibly happen. The blisters began moving like they hadsomething in them trying to get out. She desperately wanted toscratch them but her arms were retrained.
She saw ablister burst on her face and out crawled an insect. It looked likea small black wasp. It crawled over to her nose climbed on it andturned looking into her eyes. She went cross-eyed trying to see itthen shook her head and blew air at it trying to dislodge it fromher nose.
Other blistersburst open all over her body and out of each crawled a small blackwasp, which stood fluttering its black wings. Five minutes laterwhen all the wasps had emerged they took flight buzzing around herhead and formed the leering mad face of her tormentor, whichwhispered.
‘You have threedays then it will hatch and we shall take great delight in yourscreams.’
The cloud ofwasps merged into one large wasp with white bands around itsabdomen. Her mother had scared her with tales about these when shewas a child. It was a Bog Wasp, one of the most feared creatures onMoonmist. It was a magical creature that hunted all the largecreatures on Moonmist including the Elendari, Llanlleans andTrixies.
It paralysedits victims and injected an egg into them. It then guarded thevictim while the egg hatched and the emerging grub ate the victimalive eventually emerging from the victim’s body as full-grownwasp.
The wasp flewdown onto her chest, strutted casually down to her navel turned toface her and thrust a long needle like tube extending from itsabdomen through her navel into her intestinal cavity. She saw aslight bulge move down the tube from the wasp as it deposited anegg inside of her. It withdrew the tube, took flight andevaporated. Then she passed out.
They awoke hertwo or three times forcing her to swallow some of the swill throughthe tube and then subjected her to the madness of the leeringstatue. Each time she called on the Lady the tattoo seemed toprotect her from the worst of the depredations of the mistywhisperer.
Suddenly sherealized she was really awake and she was afraid. Had she forgottenanything? No it all seemed clear as day. She could still rememberher mother, Aquitain and last night. It was horrible. She wanted toforget last night. Maybe this was part of the treatment. Abuse her,heal her and then repeat the treatment over and over again untilshe really wanted to forget it all. Then they would graciously helpher lose it. It made sense.’
She rememberedhow once years ago she had wanted her mother to bring her here. Shewanted to meet the Elendari people. Her mother had told her of howhorrible they were and pleaded with her never to come here. She hadnow met them and these were supposed to be the nice ones. MercifulLady! ‘What were the bad
