running from the past

She was already breathing heavily. 

She never stopped being able to easily navigate through a densely wooded area. She grew up among the trees. Grew up among the rough terrain. Leaves and branches smacked her in the face as she moved, bounding through the forest. She ignored them, she ignored the searing pain in her chest as she inhaled. She ignored the pain of briars and thorns and the splatter of mud and dirt on her calves. 

She had to keep running. She couldn’t stop. If she stopped for a moment it would be over. He would have her again. 

Arithari would do whatever she could to keep out of his grasp. She didn’t dare look behind her as she ran for fear that it would slow her down.

She’d felt his presence before she saw him. Maybe it was the markings covering her body or just her body itself. A chill had run up her spine as she knelt in the meadow, gathering some elf root and other herbs. She’d known he was back. She’d known he was whole. The moment the world warmed past normalcy. The moment the heat had built to the point where cities were burning, she knew. 

She should have ran then. 

She shouldn’t have thought that maybe he’d forget about her for a while, that he would have other plans and machinations he would be focused on. She thought she would have more time. That she could come up with a plan on her own. It was stupid. It was too optimistic. She knew better. 

She knew he would come back for her. She knew the vines of his obsession, his desire for control, his need to use her… to own her… would find her and entwine around her until she was a withered husk under his suffocating thorns. 

It didn’t mean she would have to make it easy on him. It didn’t mean she would have to fall at his feet and give him what he wanted. If Elgar’nan wanted his prized slave back he would have to drag her back to him. 

She’d loved five years without him. She’d managed on her own. She didn’t need him in the way he had made her believe. She wasn’t afraid of being away from him. Arithari knew she could survive on her own. She knew he was lying to her when he said she couldn’t. He was wrong. 

She was getting out of breath at this point and she knew she couldn’t just keep running. She needed to find a place to hide. Her eyes darted around as she looked for somewhere, anywhere, to hide.

Though he tended to take perverse enjoyment in all who fell to his mercy, he was not without his favorites and not at all ashamed to make it known. There were perks to being King. Namely the obligatory deference of others to do his bidding no matter the nature. Questioning a royal was generally handled with tact if at all, but the questioning of the All-Father himself was practically a death sentence. But that was only part of the fun. Once he was able to track her whereabouts to a general region, it was then his great honor to pick up her trail personally. His body and soul hemorrhaged with a mighty need for her at his side. She was integral to his power, the embodiment of his true achievement and victory over Mythal. 

Because she would never belong to her parents. She was his the moment he decreed it so, the moment her soul trapped against his. 

So it didn't matter to him that she rebuffed his presence, that she ran from him, that she hid from him. In an eternal life, mortal dilemmas such as these faded in with the rest of existence, indistinguishable from the rest. When Arithari ran, he would find her. It didn't matter how far or how long, he was patient in her regard. Where she experienced desperate panic, he portrayed a stoic composure, walking at a slow pace along the path of her scent.  

He could hear a very distant rhythm of her heartbeat. Either she was physically far or she had found a way to dampen her pulse in order to remain hidden. This is a waste of our time together Arithari. He said as he reached out for a twig full of thorns drenched in her blood. He closed the barbs in his fist and allowed them to puncture his own skin as he continued walking along his path. You must be tired. Rest Arithari, let me help you. A calm dulcet tone aimed to slipped past her barriers of resolve.

She could hear his voice as he spoke to her. Taunted her. She didn’t know how close or how far away he was, there was really no telling. She knew his tricks. Knew his abilities. She was trying to mask her own sounds as she ran. She needed to be smarter than this. She needed to push the fear down and try to pull something else out. So, she took a moment to pause, inhaling, and closing her eyes. There was a fallen tree nearby, hollowed out and dead. If she could make it to that and make it inside, it might buy her some time.

She changed direction, dodging thorns and ducking under branches. The tree was in sight and she paused. She couldn’t approach it straight, it would be too obvious so, she decided to climb the tree nearest her. Climbing trees, traversing in a forest, it had always come naturally to her from her birth and time in the grove. She jumped from one set of branches to the other, trying to leave as much behind to make him think she was in the trees. The fallen hollow log was leaned against the tree she was in so she was able to maneuver and lower herself into it.

The closed her eyes, attempting to conjure up enough magic to make her own breathing and heartbeat as quiet as possible. It wasn’t perfect. She didn’t think for a second it would work for long but she knew this wasn’t about evading him. She couldn’t do that. Not forever. This was about proving to him that she was not going to just bow down and give him what he wanted. She wasn’t going to fall to his feet. It was proving to him that after thousands of years under his control she still wasn’t broken. She still wasn’t his permanently his and would never be.

She would fight and continue to fight. Until her dying breath or his.

She always did have a way of amusing him in ways others could not. It wasn't even truly unique, her running from him. But it was the way she chose to run, the desperation she clung to after all this time. She'd never fully given herself to him and in a way he preferred it that way, he liked the fight it made her all the more special to him. Her resistance only fueled him, propelling him forward over land and sea, over every mountain and through every valley. She would run and he would follow, time and again, like a dance between lovers. 

He stopped at a large tree, leaves newly disturbed. Ari, he bench to put up one of the leaves, movement sleek as he crushed the same leaf to ash. is this you? His eyes examined the tree, his senses attuned to the monument before him. He ghosted a hand along the edge of rough bark. He was quiet, seemingly deep in thought when he stopping his hand and held his breath, like he was listening for a pulse. 

And then, if she was keen to his movements, she would hear him simply walk away, deeper into the forest. 

Life flooded back in his wake, birds chirped, breeze rustled, sunlight danced. 

Seconds later in an explosion of rotted wood, he pulled from the hallowed log by a handful of her hair. He held her aloft, bringing her face level with his own. I expected better

She didn’t trust it. Arithari knew better than to trust anything when it came to the so called All-Father. Even as it sounded like he was walking away. Even as it sounded like the animals and the birds and the breeze had returned. Arithari knew he could manipulate anything, including the calmness of the forest. She would remain in this husk of rotting wood, bugs and what all else crawling against her skin. Her hand clamped shut over her mouth to stifle her breath.

Not that it mattered as his hand shattered through the wood and tangled into her long black hair, making her cry out audibly in shock and pain as he pulled her up from the hollow log. Her chest heaved, face and arms covered in scratches from the exploding wood. She felt blood dripping from her temple down her cheek as she looked into the face of her worst nightmare.

Still, she didn’t freeze. She was a wolf child. Feral, never tamed. The daughter of the Dread Wolf. Rebellion and resistance ran through her blood and even when she felt broken the spirit of her father’s legacy never let that last strand Her hands reached up, fingers curled so sharp nails could dig into the skin of his wrist to try and cause him some pain even if he didn’t release her. Her legs kicked out as well, a snarl on her face. If he thought she’d roll over and show her neck just because his hands were on her then he must have forgotten who she was in the time they were apart.

She cursed him in their native language, every single curse in the book she knew and then some new ones she had learned from the humans in the area she had ran into. Eyes glared with fierce anger and hatred and determination.

Still, when he expressed his disappointment in her there was a part of her that cringed in both fear and shame. Elgar’nan had millennia to drive into her what would happen if she were to be disappointing to him. She felt it coming to the surface, fighting the desire to continue to fight him and she knew the longer she was in his presence the harder it would be to fight that part of her.

So she ignored it for now and spat directly into his arrogant face.

There were any number of reasons for his unyielding possession of Arithari. Reasons that defied conventional understanding. Reasons that transcended even the sharpest of memories. Reasons that defined everything he represented as the God King of Vun Anor. To some of course, his reasons were salacious, abominable, savagely cruel. They were correct, for Elgar'nan himself shared the sentiments. The difference being that those sentiments encouraged his persistence rather than deterring him. There was no obstacle, no means by which to thwart him from what he considered to be his greatest and most precious trophy. 

The bargaining chip made flesh. A temptation wrapped in a love of a parent for their child. Still, he was amazed that even in all of this, Mythal remained stalwart. 

Not even the threat of losing a daughter, however precious she was, would force her to relent to him and it was deliriously maddening. 

Arithari, reflecting much of the spirit of her accursed sire, came out with a flurry of feral anger and desperation. A caged little wolf, with nowhere to go but down swinging would fight to the last. Her resilience was a marvel to him still, something he almost envied were it not for his own recent feat in the reincarnative arts. 

So, in a sense, they were far more alike than he was sure this wriggling hellhound snapping and snarling before him wanted to admit. 

She spit at him, the wad of saliva hitting with suspicious accuracy at an eye. His grip on her faltered slightly but the surprise was fleeting. Stoically he wiped away her slight, his eyes narrowing. In any other moment he might've laughed it off but he was fresh out of patience when it came to his pet. Far too easily he lifted her up and away, hands maneuvering so that he could hold her by the throat while he shoved her unrelenting into the trunk of a neighboring tree with enough force to knock splinters of bark and wood to the forest floor. 

His body was not far behind, as it crowded against hers ensuring she could not slip away. I see you haven't lost that venom since we last met like this, little one. It certainly wasn't the first time he'd held her life in his hands. He pressed his nose to her cheek as he continued to speak, Currently however, I haven't the time or the patience for your daily tantrum. So unless you would prefer to learn your lesson the hard way, I would suggest retracting your claws. He growled, his free hand once tangled in her hair, dug deep trenches into the flesh of the oak beside her, his nails having since grown into formidable blades. I enjoy your company Arithari, for many reasons, but you mistake that for affection at your peril. History will tell you all about the other toys I've tired of over the centuries. I'll break you all the same.

She exhaled when his grip faltered, the spirit of hope that had been her longest companion, fluttering to life for just a second. But then his hand was around her throat and she was slammed into the bark of a tree. The force of it caused her to lose her breath. She didn’t stop clawing at his wrist. Desperate to bring blood, just like she had that night so long ago when he captured her the first time.

Warmth flushed unbidden through her as she her wedged her between his body and the tree. She whimpered as his face pressed in against her cheek. His closeness to her making her body tremble. She thought she was ready to do this, ready to die rather than belong to him again. A tear fell from her eye and she swallowed, able to feel her throat press against his hand as she did. Thoughts started welling within her and she came to the realization that death would probably not be what happened, at least not with any quickness. She felt what he could do. The pain he could cause. He would make it last. He could make it last for thousands of years if he chose. She watched out of the corner of her eye as his nails dug into the tree.

Survive now. Escape later.

Survive now.

Escape later.

It wouldn’t be easy. It never was. Her spirit companion pushed a sense of warmth and resolution. This time would be different. The world was changed. The humans and kossith and dwarves had more power. They wouldn’t roll over and show their belly to Elgar’nan.

She breathed out, it was shaky, and she didn’t hide her fear. Didn’t hide her upset. It wouldn’t serve her in her capitulation. I’m sorry, she said quietly, barely audible, Please Master… I’ll behave. I’m sorry…

The words tasted like bile on her tongue. Her stomach churned and she had to fight every fiber of her true desire, which was to attempt to claw his eyes out with her bare hands. She pulled her hands back, holding them up in surrender. Her face matched her words. Her body matched her words. But in her eyes, as always, a fire continued to burn.

His little dove. So defiant, so stubborn. So much like her mother. She was far greater a prize than any he'd taken. She was his by virtue of who her mother was, simple as that. In a way this was all Mythal's fault. While the reasons behind his obsession with her had changed, the fact remained that she would forever be apart of his soul. Where her legends flowed so too did his own. A pair of gods torn apart by millennia and thrust back into a world they didn't recognize. So if Arithari wanted to blame anyone for her strife, she need only look behind her. Of course, he knew she would blame his regardless. She was too much her father to surrender completely. 

It made dominating her all the sweeter. 

He bit back a chortle, his lips curling sardonically in his depraved amusement. His eyes locked with hers, a silent war spanning between them. Maybe her soul would never truly belong to him, but her body and every speck of her will power would forever remain his to control. Spectacular He rasped against her, his mouth nuzzling by her ear again as his sharpened claw stroked her cheek affectionately. 

You will be sorry. Run from me and you will be very sorry Because it wasn't just her live he planned on threatening her with. Oh no. She was too much the martyr for that. 

Just as if he hadn't just threatened her within an inch of her life, he stepped back from her. It allowed her to stand on her own feet without a care for whether she could remain standing with the sudden swell of gravity pulling her down without his support. He released her completely, retracting his claws and smoothing them over his face and along his scalp to the nape. 

Kneel before your king