Once upon a blade, p.1
Once Upon a Blade, page 1
Once Upon A Blade
Kailey Alessi
The Whumpy Printing Press
Collection Copyright © 2023 by The Whumpy Printing Press, L.L.C.
Cover Design and Interior Illustrations Copyright © 2023 by Nicole Alessi
All rights reserved.
No portion of this book may be reproduced in any form without written permission from the publisher or author, except as permitted by U.S. copyright law.
To all those who love the darkness
Contents
Introduction
Proditum C. M. Clarence
Interemptor C. M. Clarence
Melting Away Leanne Albillar
Words Cause Trouble Archer L
Venom Puck
Blue Dress in a Bower Bird Nest Breanna Bright
Earthly Knight LadyWallace
For the Queen’s Honor Aiden E. Messer
In Bloom Vanessa Roades
Dance To Death Puck
Have Mercy Archer L.
The Nutcracker Prelude Puck
Weep for my past Aiden E. Messer
The Little Android Ruth
The Dragon Mark Lif L.
The Huldra Hunter Amie
Three Times Over Zi Trone
Worse Than Death Ari (withalittlebitofwhump)
In Search of Shadows Jayde Layne
Acknowledgements
About the Editor
Also By The Whumpy Printing Press
Introduction
Mythology, fairy tales, and folklore are in many ways the original whump. These stories are often dark and brutal and violent and gory. That's why I chose the theme of "fairy tales with a whumpy twist" for this anthology. I thought it would be cool to see how the whump community interpreted these traditional tales, and I was not disappointed. Collected in this book you will find nineteen stories by fourteen incredibly talented writers. Be warned: this anthology is not for the faint of heart. Expect lots of blood and pain (and maybe a couple tears). Each story begins with a list of content warnings. Now, we'll begin our tales as so many stories have before us.
"Once Upon a Time Blade"
Proditum
C. M. Clarence
CW: Suicide
Whumpee: Man, women, Whumper: Man, women, Caretaker: N/A
Psyche restlessly waited for her husband to drift off. She could not turn over to check, the room was black as pitch, as it always was when he came to her, so she listened for the sounds of his breaths becoming calmer and more shallow as sleep took him in. The raging sea of confusion and pain that had swallowed her up since her sisters’ departure sat to crash her against the sharp rocks of indecision. Was her husband truly a monster? That was what she had been told by the oracle of Apollo, and that was what she had accepted as she sat weeping atop a lonely mountain, dressed in mourning black and awaiting her fate. But then she had come to a treasure-castle of jeweled floors and glowing golden pillars. She had bathed in elegance and supped as though she were one of the Gods, the flavors making her realize that what she now tasted, both of the morsels in her mouth and the expansive room around her, was pure beauty in all its forms.
Despite all of this, she had felt fear at what awaited her that night. The winged serpent beast that was to be her husband. She knew he would come. And as she lay alone in bed, in the dark, in the silence, consumed by terror, suddenly a heavenly voice had whispered sweet words of comfort into her ear. She had known from that moment on that who she was now tied and drawn to was no beast, but the love she had been looking for all her life.
But then her sisters had come at her request, for though she was fulfilled with romantic love, she still yearned for the close bonds of her family.
Those words ... whispered urgently in fear and concern by those two she loved dearest of all. The scales had fallen off her eyes then, and she saw her mate for what he truly was: the winged beast she was forewarned of.
At first, Psyche did not want to see this blatant truth. But her sisters had implored her for the sake of her unborn child. They begged and pleaded with tears in their eyes that not only would he devour her, but the being growing within her.
So, they made a plan ... and now it was Psyche's duty to carry it out.
She lifted herself from the plush bed that pleaded for her to stay within its warm confines, to ignore everything her sisters had warned her of, and to instead indulge in the lie of a happy marriage and true love.
Psyche placed a hand upon her growing stomach and set her heart in stone, resigned to her task. She fished the blade she had concealed under her pillow and fetched the lantern with a cloth cover, filled to the brim with oil to cast the greatest light upon the mystery that was her husband's true form. Though she had felt him, she had never seen him, forbade as she was to do so by his own word. Nor was she to ask anything about him or his appearance. She agreed with her sisters that this could only be for nefarious reasons.
Though as she walked around the bed, feeling her way in the dark, she could not help but think, “I love him.” For she did. Even now as she planned to dispatch him from this world forever. Her stone heart began to crack and she felt tears come to her eyes. Tears of sorrow at losing the sweet caresses and gentle words she had experienced every night. Tears of fear for what she would see when she finally unveiled the lantern and laid eyes upon her husband for the first time. And lastly, tears of rage for the unspeakable plans this beast had for her and her unborn child.
Standing at the edge of the bed on her husband's side, she trembled slightly as she lifted the cloth from the lantern.
What she saw brought her to her knees.
Before her lay not a slumbering serpent, but a man. With rose-colored cheeks and soft auburn hair that curled delicately behind his ears and against his forehead, he was the very form of beauty. She gazed at him, heart filling up so intensely with such love and such regret at the actions she almost took, that she wanted to take her blade and plunge it deep within her breast, if only to find some semblance of relief from the sensation that her heart might burst. But she did not, too fascinated by who lay before her, a man she had known most intimately and then again not all.
She thanked the Gods and rose to her feet to examine her lover once more. That is when she noticed the bow and arrow at his feet and the pearlescent wings draped on either side of him. Again, her breath was stolen from her lungs as she realized not only was this the most handsome man she'd ever laid eyes upon, but that he was in fact not a man, but a God. The God of love: Eros.
Mesmerized, she drew a finger along the tip of a glowing arrow, accidentally pricking herself. The effect was instant.
Suddenly overcome with passion, she draped herself over his sleeping form, placing gentle kisses along the skin of his exposed face and chest. She feared to wake him and cast away the spell of the moment, but could not control herself. Though she had loved him before, more after seeing his beauty, she was now mad with it.
In her wild ministrations, she forgot she held the lantern. Perhaps in envy, or out of a want to join in, the burning oil spilled forth, splashing with a sickening hiss onto the skin of her beloved.
Eros woke with a cry of pain, causing Psyche to jump back in shock. She dropped the lantern on the floor, causing its flame to dance about wildly. She was in agony over what she had just done, that agony echoed in her lover as he grasped at his face and writhed upon the bed, image flickering in and out in a sickly manner with the lantern's confused light.
It took several terrifying moments for him to realize someone else was in the room with him. He sat up and scrambled back against the jewel-encrusted headboard, unseeing and afraid of more torture.
“Psyche,” he gasped, and Psyche recoiled at the sight of that beautiful face now marred with burns. He seemed confused for a moment, pain hindering his ability to think. But then he noticed the blade in Psyche's hand, which she tossed the moment his eyes graced it, as though his very vision had made the metal too hot to touch. However, it was too late, and he had realized the betrayal for what it was. “What have you done!” he shouted at her.
Guilt crashed into Psyche with the force of a thousand horses stampeding into her very soul. It was not just from what she had done to his face, now an angry red and hosting hot blisters, but from her betrayal of his trust. She had promised time and time again that she would not look upon him. And yet, twisted by the words of her sisters that she now recognized as poison, she had done just that.
Without another word, Eros fled, Psyche giving quick chase. She screamed after him to stop, to let her beg forgiveness. But he would not yield in his escape.
All around them echoed the wails of those invisible servants who had seen to her every whim since she first stepped foot in this place, screaming at Psyche for what she had done. The wails grew louder and louder until Psyche felt a sharp pain in her ears and then the wet trickle of blood.
They exited the palace doors out onto the front gardens, darkened by night, twisting juniper trees casting ghouls and demons in every shadow. They reached for her with clawed hands and gnashing teeth as she pushed her body to its limits to catch up with her lover. They tore at her dress and flesh, leaving deep gashes upon her flank, but she would not be stopped.
Eros took to the sky, but not before Psyche, close behind, found his thigh in an iron grip.
Either Eros did not notice in his agony of both body and mind, or he simply no longer cared. Regardless of the reason, he continued to climb high into the sky. Beautiful wings beating the air as though it had bee
Though she scrambled to hold on, Psyche found herself waning quickly in strength. She clawed at his flesh in her desperation, leaving long bloody marks, and when she saw what she was doing, that she was hurting him even more by holding on, she let go.
She fell through the sky, white dress billowing in the wind like a dove that had been struck down midflight.
Her heart pounded loudly in her ears, blocking out the rushing whistle of wind as she fell. She felt it might seize her and declare her dead before she had a chance to hit the ground. But it did not, and as the ground approached, she closed her eyes.
The hard unforgiving earth came up to meet her, and it was not kind.
Landing feet first, her right ankle snapped, and she dropped to her side with a painful thud, finally feeling some of the pain she had caused her partner. It was a white-hot agony, and she felt herself scream before she had given her voice permission to do so. Psyche looked down to see her foot at an unnerving angle. She reached for it, but at the mildest of touches, it sent throngs of pain up her leg that then radiated throughout her whole body, like knives scraping across her skin.
The sound of wings approaching distracted Psyche from her torment. She looked above to see Eros flying overhead before landing a short distance away in a cypress tree.
“Psyche, are you—” But he stopped himself. His ruined face turning cold before he continued on, words just as frigid. “I went against my mother for you. She would have seen you end up with a true beast, and not just one of my fictions. I left the heavens for you. I pierced my breast with my very own arrow so I may love you.” He sneered then. “I must have blinded myself. I thought you ... But no, it no longer matters. You believed me to be a monster, despite my loving words and affections. And for this crime, you aimed to cut off my head!” His voice rose sharply at the end, making Psyche flinch.
“No!” She sobbed, “My sisters—”
“I warned you not to heed their words! I told you it would spell ruin for us both!”
“I know, I know!”
“They will get what they deserve. As for your punishment ... I—” His voice broke. “I still see you through that most damned haze of love!” His breaths came heavy for a moment before he settled once more. “I cannot bring myself to do any more to you than withdraw my presence.”
“No!” she shrieked, the very idea leaving her in more pain than anything that had befallen her this night. “Please!” she begged.
“Never again shall I give in to the indulgence of love, for it is a poison! That I see now.”
“I love you!” It was all she could think to say.
Eros turned away with a look of disgust on his face. “Keep your venomous words. They only aim to cause me more pain.”
“I would never hurt you willingly—!”
“Enough!” Eros bellowed, and the winds blew harder to carry his voice more forcefully into Psyche's breaking heart. “Just ... enough.” And with this final, awful goodbye, he took to the skies once more.
Psyche screamed as her heart was torn in two. “Eros!” She called out her lover's name for the first time. But it was to no avail. He did not stop his flight.
Psyche let her pain out through voice and action, as she pounded at the earth and screamed at the skies. She hated everything then. The land, the sea, the very air, and the people who breathed it. But nothing did she hate more than herself. For she carried the burden of blame. She had let the corrupting words of her sisters enter and twist her mind.
After a time of seemingly endless suffering, she began to notice the color and light bleed out of everything. A world of monochrome greeted the broken Psyche as her gasps settled and her sobs quieted and she began to feel nothing at all, just an emptiness she had no desire to fill. Like a hunger that you no longer cared proved fatal.
She got up on her broken feet, heeding not the pain as it meant nothing. All meaning having left with the colors of the world.
She began to limp forward, dragging her more damaged foot behind her.
It did not take her long to find something to pique her interest: a violently running river, waters white with their rage.
Psyche dragged herself up to its grassy shore. She gave one last look to the skies, in hopes of seeing that beautiful winged creature once more, but when she did not, the last of hope died within her.
She flung herself into the rapids below.
Engulfed in the freezing water, breath knocked from her lungs at the shock of it, she let her body be tossed here and there, waiting to crash her head against a rock or for the need for air to overwhelm her so she would be forced to drag the frigid waters into her lungs.
Perhaps hope was not gone after all. The hope for death still lingered.
But even this was denied her, as the waters carrying her took pity and gentled themselves. She floated for a moment in their embrace, confused, before she was deposited onto the shore once again.
She lay there on the bank, drenched to the bone and shaking from the cold of the water that had delivered her. She sobbed against the grass, clutching it in her fists of rage and sorrow.
“Oh, my child,” a voice whispered in the gentlest of ways, and suddenly there were hands on her, helping her to sit up.
Tears and pain blurred her eyes, so it took a moment for her to recognize the being in front of her. With horns upon his head and the furred legs of a goat, it could only be Pan.
“I saw what you did, and I know why. You bear all the markings of a heart greatly in love.”
Psyche did not respond; her only movements were the shallow rise and fall of her breaths and the tears that slipped down her face.
“Please, do not try and harm yourself again. I may be rustic and rude, a simple herdsman, but know that in my great age, I have gained the wisdom of a thousand mortals. And this now I impart onto you, sweet child.” He brushed a damp lock away from her face. “Take heed and pray to the God of love. Surely Eros will see your pain and come to aid you in but the time it takes to beat his wings only once.”
At her husband's name, Psyche felt speared anew. Her heart caught in her throat, making her unable to respond even if she could get her voice to work, hidden away in her mind as it was. Eros had seen her pain and had felt it much deserved. This was her punishment for trying to slay the love of her life. And now, unable to slay herself, Psyche had nothing left.
Psyche stumbled to her feet with the aid of the hooved creature and looked around at where she had washed up. Flowers grew here along the river's edge in an explosion of color, young goats grazed upon the green further up on the shore, and the stars blinked overhead, giving the only light now that the moon had abandoned them to make way for the sun. It was beautiful, but it did not fill Psyche's heart as it might once have done. For she had now learned of true beauty, and how easily it could be lost, like water leaking from the cupped hands of a man desperate with thirst, like the blood that now poured freely from Psyche's broken heart, no shell of flesh left to contain it.
Psyche moved then, body and mind numb to the world around her. She limped off into twilight, not knowing where she was headed and not caring in the slightest. What was there for a soul without the light of love? Nothing could be illuminated. Nothing could matter. Nothing did matter. Psyche dragged her broken body forward, alone, and sent out one single prayer with all the will she had left, for any God that would listen. She prayed that if there was any mercy left in the world, she would not have to endure this silence alone for long.
About the Author
