The young prince of elves had traversed the swamps, swam the lochs, climbed to the top of the tallest of trees in the Great Glen, navigated the vast Inland Sea, and been to the far-off headwaters of the Abhainn Briste atop the Shoulders of the World. There was not a feat or task the young royal warrior could not complete, no aspiration too bold to endeavor. The kingdom held him in the highest regard, and though they loathed the coming fate of the kind old king, the prince held promise of a new, stable, and temperate reign. Every challenge he faced had been met with intelligence, poise, honor, dignity, ferocity, and valor.

It had recently become known that a small coven of three bog witches, more truly, fae hags, had found themselves stranded on a small island south of the prince's elven kingdom. They had started hunting, hungry and feral, and begun to settle into the rich bounty the river lands and swamps had delivered to their new home. Having crossed from the Fae Realm to the Material Plane through a mycelial portal, a fae-ring if you will, the three hags were both disgusted and enthralled with the rich beauty and wholesome natural magics that had bubbled up and collected in the grand forests of the region. They set about immediately to extract, corrupt and refine the very virtues from the area into their own fetid brand of misery and illness. Their feasting was boundless and quickly sprawling. Their goal was no less than to thoroughly corrupt or consume everything they came upon or that had the ill fate to come upon them.

The prince, hearing of this three-faced wound to life itself, and seeing the blight of three sisters as his next quest, set about to rid the land of this wicked triumvirate. He polished his spears, took the family's ancient shield and sword off of the mantle, saddled his griffon, with only a word to his valet before flying off to meet these foes directly.

What he was to meet was far worse than defeat.

The prince quickly arrived at the filthy hut on the fetid island and immediately found a kidnapped young elven maiden who was, to the prince, beautiful beyond compare. She was bound and gagged, and had placed upon an altar, terrified and alone. He removed the cloth gag, untied her hands and feet. She fell into him, relieved and exhausted, but with a bright hope in her eyes. Eyes that he immediately fell into, so deep and soulful, they whispered to him words his ears had never needed to hear. Whispered that she was here for him alone to save, to protect, and to have, as his love, his lust, or his pet. Mayhap as his queen. Whatever his heart, soul, and body needed of her. She was his.

Immediately, the prince could not endure without her and would eagerly rescue her a thousand times over, only just to see that look from her gaze, stepping into his soul and caressing the very fabric of his ego and shaping it to need her touch, her presence, and her will to possess him entirely. He was lost and living in a dream where they had entwined and been suspended in some arial erotic bliss for what seemed hours, maybe days, circling and enraptured until the final kiss of consummation, bliss, followed by sweet, immediate, and deep sleep.

The prince woke what seemed an eternity later, lying flat on his back on what felt like a cold stone slab, wrapped tightly in thickening darkness to the sound of heavy and rhythmic clicking, his body icy and naked, yet bound tightly with some iron strong strand, some slightly sticky filament that had been wrapped or woven tightly around his head, mouth, arms and legs, leaving his eyes, neck, stomach, groin, hands and feet unrestrained, but fasten very securely prone, a fact the prince was quickly becoming acutely aware of.

A shadow loomed over his body in the dark, the webs keeping him fast in their grip. The maiden he had loved, lusted, and ravaged and been ravaged by, had been replaced by some horror of inconceivable darkness, some flowing nightmare spiderling that had stepped over him, ominous, it's clicking thuds apparent now as the footfalls of the multitude of chitinous legs that surrounded him. It leaned forward, a grim visage of a woman ghastly white, hollowed sockets for eyes, snake-pit nose, and a grin too wide with too many teeth, too pointed for comfortable conversation. She reached an arm from the darkness and pulled the webbing from the prince's mouth.

Immediately the prince squawked, "What have you done with her! You fiend! I will free myself and run you through! My blade will be your bane, I will have your head! My Maiden, where is she! I will bury my spears in your heart!"

The hissing rasp that escaped the creature was nothing more than a solid, graveled whisper, but it held the weight of the Gods themselves when it spoke.

"You have sullied my quarry, and you, yourself, though a fine specimen of elvish fireannachd, is far from pure, though I do so desire your corpse for my own... purposes," she hissed at the prince.

Continuing, she told him, "I have another lover for you though, and she is less fragile and more worthy of our efforts. She may be less appealing but no less in need of your services. Aubery," A wicked and hissing cackle slithered from the blanched and bleached face, the eyes hollow and black, like empty caves at night.

Into the room sloshed a writhing mass of saturated hair and bloated leather, vaguely shaped like a woman, spongy and bruised deep blues and purples, looking much as a waterlogged corpse does after a week traveling a mountain stream only to settle, floating in a briny estuary. The prince's horror and revulsion started to take shape at the thought of what the spiderwoman had proposed, trying to understand how any imagined scenario could render him able to unleash his lust for what appeared to be a walking and bedraggled corpse recently pulled from some salty bog. Nausea and revulsion washed over him in waves and the prince visibly gagged.

The hissing cackle from the night hag grew louder as her sister, the sea hag lurched forward and touched the prince with her cold, wet hand on his exposed leg just below the groin. He winced and drew away the little he could, a tear escaping his eye. The spiderwoman leaned forward into his face and scooped the tear into a small glass vessel that hung from a chain around her neck. One of three such vials.

"I hate you... and I will... kill you both! What have you done with the maiden?" the prince demanded through gritted teeth.

"Ah, yes, your lover and thrall, the missing maiden, I think her name be Glissa" scratched out the spidery night hag, "I do believe she is ready to help our cause. What say you, sister?" as the bruised and damp sea hag slithered forward and began to mount the horrified prince.

"Hold him still, Kiruk!" the sea hag bubbled and frothed.

"Come to us, Glissa, fair one, our sweetly lying lover and lustful boon. Bring your fair flesh to please my captive, so that our next endeavor bares fertile fruits. Gaze into his eyes and steel his heart and flesh, the wedding must be consummated for the child to grow!" the night hag demanded.

The young maiden walked out from a gilded parlor, unharmed and absolutely stunning, radiant to his gaze. Somehow, she appeared to him to be rather pregnant, and despite the disturbing time frame, the prince knew immediately the child was his. The prince's heart swelled at the thought the maiden had not been lost to him, that somehow the fairytale ending could still happen. That someway in all this he could prevail and escape with her, their child, defeating the witches and sometime live with his love, happily ever after.

She drew closer and looked into his eyes, wells of pity and sorrow rising to the pools of her vision. The maiden looked on with loving compassion and a tear slid down her cheek as she locked gaze with the prince, her love changing to something more needful and selfish. She put her hand on him, and it burned with the warmth of her need, and some way, he was instantly ready. With tears in both their eyes, the maiden kept his gaze as the sea hag had her way. The blue and soggy witch let out a wail that shattered glass and unsettled birds from a distance off. The night hag eagerly filled her necklace from his cheek and laughed to her sisters in her raspy and wicked hiss.

"Sisters, do we have all we need, has he given his seed now to all of us? I have collected his tears of sorrow and some of horror, now for the tears of betrayal. Sweet lying bitch, tear out this prince's heart and leave us the scraps," the night hag demanded.

At that, the beautiful maiden took out an obsidian blade, small and sharp as a razor, and silently as always, still looking straight into his eyes, touched it to her scalp above her forehead and slid it slowly down the centerline of her face, between her eyes, down her nose, across those full and red lips, through the dimpled chin, down the neck and between the plump breasts, and at that point the weight of the skin tugged free and the beauty sloughed off and slid down to the floor in a wet and rotted mass. Those same needful eyes lusted for the prince, only now they sat in the face of an odious green hag, the fecund smell of swamp and soil gagging him. The sweet perfumes and soft skin replaced with frog skin and scales, muck and mud, as fertile as any womb need be.

The prince's mind broke and tore at him, rendered his soul, made him sob and gag, vomiting his hopes out with the bile that had replaced it. Devastation and despair wracked his form, the emotional trauma a physical force that hit him like the ground after a fall off of a high and sheer cliff. His eyes filled with rage and flooded with tears as every hope was shattered by the villainy the THREE witches had performed on him.

As he sobbed freely, the dark witch collected the tears she had hunted so fiercely and spoke the final words the young and strong prince would ever hear, "Sleep softly and feed our children well, my prince," as she loomed over him, and the ovipositor shoved the egg sack deep into his chest, stealing his breath and slowing his heart, her venomous kiss leaving him one hair's breadth away from true death. His slumber would nourish much longer the royal line of giant wolf spiders he had fathered.

The prince's eyes stared out at the three sisters as they cackled and shuffled and clicked back to their own vile tasks, his heart, so fierce, beat to the slowing nell of deaths door, but the venom wasn't made to kill, just suspend while slowly being consumed, though his sight still worked. The horrors he would witness.

~

A very concerned valet could only keep a secret so long, and day five saw a contingent of heavy elven fighters and priestly mages marching and ferrying their way to the island the prince had last said he was traveling. The elves had summoned the wilder and darker sprites, fairies, and goblins to assist in the prince's safe return. The prince was their liege, and soon successor to the Fae throne, the same as the elves, and it was the darkest of the fey the prince had gone to contend with. If there was a way to return the prince safely, the king would spare no effort or expense. He would use every tool at his disposal.

The hags were ready, they had settled in and already made the island their home. They had summoned creatures like great eels, hordes of carnivorous fish, bears, massive snakes, alligators, along with darker and more ancient monsters. Phantasmal landscapes, spells that heaved the ground, split the sky, the seas, and then lit it all ablaze as well as drawing down godly bolts of power from the heavens and setting the boats asunder. Plants and trees whipped and clawed at their every step,

The king's army passed by trees with ears for leaves and eyes for fruit, and clearly the shrubbery was paying attention. There was no stealthy approach.

When the elven contingency arrived at Three Sisters Isle the water boiled with giant eels and the ferry could not make landing. Many were thrown from the boat as it bucked and spun from the eels efforts. Anyone overboard was seen for a moment before being pulled to the deep and not seen again. Wave after wave of creature was repelled and the ferry steadied on the water and finally landed. As the force hit ground the soil and rock beneath them shook violently and heaved up in ragged juts. The sparse vegetation grew wildly and entangled everything they touched, vining and wrapping tightly anything the woody tendrils could grasp, rending the life from the unlucky before the branches could be cut. Movement was a particular feat in every direction but retreat, and that was not an option.

The king's elven general gathered a small contingent of troops and gave orders to find the prince at all costs, to raze the island and show no mercy. The darker fae were not so easy to condemn their sistren, as all fae were capricious, and the prince was headed to destroy the sisters. They were only defending themselves from annihilation. At this, the general was puzzled as to how to proceed. The prince was assumed fallen to the witches' foul play and justice would be demanded, yet he was unfamiliar with these beings and would be well outmatched by their magics if the darker fae were to slither and hop back to their dank dens, leaving the general to the whim of the hags.

From the dark fae, an ancient green hag offered a compromise that might appease both punishment and mercy. She had procured a book of binding, and it was to summon an ancient waterborne aberration as a captor and jailor for a named captive. It was forever binding, and the summoned captors were potent enough to keep three very capable hags at bay. It was powerful and dark magic, just this side of too far, as the medicine might be worse than the cure.

The general, watching his contingent of troops and their support falling, as if wheat for the scythe, had no choice but to hastily agree to this dark binding or else feel the very real sting of defeat. The Sisters were well prepared to defend, and the general hadn't even penetrated the isle enough to catch a glimpse of them. If the day were to hold promise, it was not at his hands.

The king's troops stood back and held their position, as the dark fae hag lifted her staff and read aloud from a large leatherbound tome that hung weightless in the air in front of her. Electricity crackled at the tip and foot of her staff as the chanting incantation formed swirling runes of light that danced upon the air in a widening circular path. Dark blue and black swirling dirt and ash lifted from the ground and muck from the shore. A spout of water erupted from the lake surface and joined the forming cloud of muck and slowly, the spinning ball formed an expanding ring with a dark center that crackled and spit as the muck spun around the opening portal.

The spinning circle continued to grow, and as it reached about the size a man could walk through, black tentacles shot through the hole in the sky and gripped the writhing ring of muck and gave a heave to push an enormous mass of creature through. Three deeply red and slightly glowing eyes set above one another, and atop a massive wedge of a mouth filled head, dark and pointed teeth lining the jaw, and a writhing mass of feelers, or whiskers, or possibly tentacles ringed the maw and trailed down the massive length. As the beast slid through it seemed as though it would never end, it's long eel-like body ending in a fluke shaped tail and slithered into the waters of the deep loch.

"Who has summoned Zardok the Eternal?" a voice boomed from within everyone's head. A wave of fear and panic struck the crowd as it was apparent this voice had easily penetrated their thoughts and planted a ferocious image of itself, this creature lurking in the back hollows of their minds, sending cold chills up their spines at the thought of some nightmares come true so easily tucked inside of them.

"It is I, Satya the Bogwitch, and I command you with the words of servitude. You are the guardian of the deep cities, the ancient paths of power carved long before the footfalls of land borne creatures. I ask that you again protect this realm from the destruction my sisters are causing, they have disturbed our powerful kingdom and need to be checked and held accountable. For your pleasure, their suffering at your will will be immense, and each has need and desire to move in this realm freely. I bind you to them, and them to this isle, and until the day passes that your power fades, commit you all to this binding, henceforth and forever!"

Satya continued to chant as layers of faint light shot forth, fell, and wrapped across the island and waters of the lake, stretching out to the forests beyond and fading into the mist filled trees. The binding was complete and Zardok now lurked beneath the lakes surface. Any of the king's troops that had been in the water when the creature was summoned had found themselves enthralled and dipped below the surface of the loch and disappeared without so much as a bubble.

The aboleth went to work and the elves and dark fae fell back onto the ferry, never once seeing the prince or the sisters, defeated and humbled on their own doorstep.

~

Their curse contains them, their magics sustain them, their wits and will, like a vast web, catch and carry prey, as well as discourses of information. Their quarry is any, their peace is none, their scorn immeasurable, they curse the light and the good. Innocence and hope, their anathema, and also their cherished and succulent morsels to devour and corrupt.

The truth, unseen, like the future. The past, unheard in the roaring present, the present, unspoken, even as the events unfold around them. Each reliant upon the next. Each jealous and callus towards each other, paranoid and completely disillusioned.

Glissa is a rare beauty, silent as the night, not even a whisper, with eyes deep and soulful, a darkness you cannot find in the young or innocent, not so much dangerous as needful... lustful. Glissa is also a liar, though she'll never speak a word. She cares only for this moment, rash and selfish. Her gaze imploring the weak and lecherous to inquire. To think. To dream. If her beauty was not a falsity, she truly would be a succubus. Alas, the rare view she offers is literally skin deep. The costume of some rare beauty she had slaughtered, skinned, collected and preserved in her perverse wardrobe of rare humanoid 'coats'. She would wear them until her belly swelled from her ill-conceived spawn, forged from her most recent call to the lost and wayward traveler or fisherman, possibly a sacrifice from the Unseelie Court to keep the lives of their guards protected and their seed from ill gardens. She would appear to a single male and seduce him, feeding both spiritually and physically, leaving a husk to be discarded. Under her glamor and thrall, under the lust, there is only green and fetid spite, jealousy, anger, and hatred. The term comes due, but no one ever mentions births or children. Unable to speak a word, Glissa will never tell. Her sisters taunt her relentlessly, calling her the 'ugly liar' or some other derogatory slight.

Kiruk could not resemble a woman sized spider more if that was what she, in fact, was. Shiney and black, a chitinous carapace covered her form, with the thorax and legs of a spider, spinnerets and web included. Her torso and upper body resembled a woman in the loosest sense and was difficult to focus on the shambles of flesh and fabric, all dark coal black and gently flowing or undulating in an almost hypnotic rhythm. All was tattered and indistinguishable from some ill magic or possible hallucination. Atop the torso sat a woman's head, pale face severe in a gruesome sense, mouth far too wide, teeth far too long, nose flattened and alien, and the eyes were simply missing. Empty sockets holding wells of darkness. A knotted mat of black hair topped it all, and somehow was the most human element of this gruesome monstrosity. Though nimble, her steps were restrained, her sight having been missing as long as time had been. And though she knew every step so well, it did not mean that her sisters wouldn't constantly place pitfalls and hazards in her way, laughing as she stumbles and falls.

Aubery was the slightest of the sisters, though far from the least. She is sun parched leather, wet bones and saturated tentacles of matted hair writhing in a sea that no longer surrounds her. Shades of the darkest aquamarine and lost souls fed to the deep clouded her eyes. Salty water dripped and foamed in her wake. The dull and constant roar of the endless sea followed her, like listening to a shell pressed to one's ear. Almost imperceptible to others, it rang inside Aubery's head so loudly that it blocked most reasonable thoughts, leaving her raw and watered-down, drowning in the sounds of a tide she would never feel rise, though her magic is still locked to this pull of the Moon, tied to Selune's fickle but predictable gaze. At low tide, on a moonless eve, barely a wave, hardly a whisper from her, but high tide on a full moon, and her rage would know no end to its fury, like a summer storm over the Inland Sea, vast and terrifying. The least content of the sisters, her life is one of near madness, her ceaseless aching pull to the ocean, but her trapped in a diluted pool of freshwater. She orders salt by the cart load, boat load, however she can, and fills her tub with the best approximation of the sea she can muster. Her frantic desire and the ceaseless roar in her head make communication a tenuous event at best. Aubery was often times well off the map, but as calmer seas prevail, so reason can seep past the roar of breakers rolling forever in her head, some measure of coherent response can be had. Of course, she'll only read what is written in blood.