​“There is nothing here, just darkness.”

“Try not to use your eyes.”

“Try not to use my eyes?”

There was a snicker in the darkness.

“Don’t worry,” he told her.  “We’ve got this.  Just like always.”

“Don’t worry, he tells me,” the man’s wife said through a smile he could hear.

“I have loved you since before time was even a thing.  Nothing can change that now.  What do I have to worry about?” 

His wife crowded closer in the darkness, but still he could not feel her, only sense her… as it were.

“I will love you no matter what,” she informed him again, for the millionth time.

“You say that as if you expect the worst,” his voice sounded from nearby, yet she could not feel the comfort of his breath on her face the way she very much wished she could.

And for a moment she was thankful for the darkness that separated the two halves.  Because she had seen glimpses of what was to come.  The pain he’d have to endure.  And the way that pain would twist him.

“This was your idea,” she said provokingly, because their relationship was built on a love that continually challenged each of them to be the very best version they could be.

For a moment she didn’t know if he would laugh or cry.

But oh, how she longed to reach out and weave her fingers into his hair one more time.

“I couldn’t be prouder of you.”

“I haven’t done it yet,” he informed her, and in the doing revealed in his voice all of the emotion he couldn’t put into words.

“If you can imagine it, you can do it,” she informed him.

“What if my fear gets the better of me?” he asked, wanting nothing more than to rest his forehead on her chest, so he could once more listen to the sound of her beating heart.

“Then I’ll just have to wait for you.  No matter how long it takes,” she told him.

“What if it’s years?” the sailor asked his wife.

“What if it’s centuries?” she joked, already missing the feeling of his lips pressed tightly against hers.

“I will wait for you because I believe in you.  I believe in your dream.  I believe in your destiny.”

“There is no destiny without you,” he whispered through a thick rush of emotion, his kryptonite.

“Let’s just hope you remember that,” his wife whispered in reply, so softly she secretly hoped he couldn’t hear.

“No matter what…” he began, but then a rushing at his feet made him pause.

“I think we’re here,” he replied when it finally stopped.

But his wife, of more lifetimes than he could count, did not reply.

“Evelyn!” he screamed, but her essence was suddenly nowhere to be found.

“Evelyn!” he cried, and then there was a rush of lights and screaming…

“It’s a boy!” the doctor cried in happiness.  

“Oh joy,” the boy’s exhausted mother replied.  “Another fucking boy.”






© Raena Exe 2022

*All characters, places, and events are completely fictional.
*All rights reserved.

​Lyons at the Gate
 
 
Part 1
 
 
“Ever hear of Æsop’s fable, The Lion & the Mouse?”
 
“Pardon?”
 
“It’s an old wives tale, about a mouse trapped by a lion.”
 
“Oh?” the bored and cold sentry asked with little interest.
 
“Please don’t eat me’, the mouse begged the lion.  To which the lion just laughed.  But then the mouse said something quite unexpected.”
 
“Yeah?” the slight man asked, as his narrow eyes scanned the unusually dense darkness.
 
“Yeah.  This tiny little mouse caught in a giant’s claws simply looked into the lion’s cold and calculating eyes and said, ‘Some day I will surely repay you’.  So, of course this makes the lion laugh.  But something tells the lion to listen to this little mouse.”
 
“Let me guess…” the nervous man quipped, “the next day the mouse does just that… he saves the lion.”
 
The larger, more experienced soldier chuckled, then spun his head around quickly at a snap of a twig not too far off.
 
“Yeah… you see, the mouse chewed through the ropes of a stupid trap the lion had quite ignorantly fallen into, setting him free at once,” he said softly, and around a matchstick he had just popped into his mouth.
 
Dean MacDonald, the smaller of the two sentries, had heard the sound too, along with a rather destressing sound that had followed.  (A slow, half-shuffling / half-dragging sound, that seemed to come from the dense patch of woods directly in front of them.)
 
Despite his lack of experience however, Dean knew his cohort was just as rattled by the sound as he was.  He could tell by the way Richard had bristled at the unexpected noise.
 
Under his breath Richard slowly said, “It’s here.  Talk about the weather while I get a better look.”
 
Dean, a new recruit, swallowed hard and then started talking quite quickly about the upcoming forecast, and his disappointment in a cancelled fishing trip.
 
It had all been pre-prepared dialogue, part of his training for this station.  To be able to talk for ten minutes or more, about absolutely nothing – as calm as could be, while scared totally shitless.
 
But Dean’s shaky voice wasn’t doing him any favors.
 
“You thinking of asking that girl out again?” Richard asked, with a slight smile, as he recalled the first time he’d been asked to guard Delphi’s dungeon.
 
“What?” the startled, and now confused sentry asked.  His nervousness suddenly forgotten, as images of his recent conquest came springing to mind.
 
“You two ever do the nasty?” Richard asked, calmly, as he closely examined the life signs detector in his hands.  It was a crude beta model, but it had worked at other sites around the world.  So, Richard held out hope this time would be different.
 
“Nah, man,” Dean said with a blush, as he brushed a hand back through his slicked back hair.
 
“But she laughed,” he said with a degree of pride and a genuine smile.
 
“Well,” the tall man (with the thin personality) began, “that’s something.”
 
And then it was on them.
 
“Feed me,” it said.
 
“Wha… wha… WHA????” Dean stammered louder and louder, as the banshee’s wail grew louder and louder, as it approached the two men who had been guarding its lair.
 
“Yes ma’am,” Richard said with a small bow, as he shoved the smaller man at the ghostly figure of a woman dressed all in black.
 
“Where would you like to go?” the wraith asked the calm soldier, after she’d finished with his offering; the smaller man’s corpse curled at her now more solid-looking feet.
 
“The Devil’s Churn,” Richard told the woman, as he’d done on every trip before.
 
“There is no return trip,” she informed him, through slightly parted lips, though she seemed not to move them at all.
 
“Oh, there is.  If you know where to look,” he remarked, as he always did.
 
“Perhaps, but that is of your concern, not mine,” and then, with a slight wave of her hand, the former soldier turned private security disappeared.
 
 
Part 2
 
 
     “Perfume is the soul of the flower, and sea-flowers have no soul.” 
 
     Jules Verne
 
 
“Where am I?”
 
“At the bottom of the sea.”
 
“But… how did I get here?”
 
“Time and destiny.”
 
Dean looked into the watery seafoam green eyes of his companion.  But the unshed tears made him quickly look away.
 
“How did I get here?” he asked politely, as he looked around a magnificent looking cavern full of shimmering shells and lush growing things.
 
It was lit by a softly glowing green lichen.
 
“I brought you here.”
 
“Why?” he asked, daring another peek at his hostess, a lovely looking woman with flowing red hair, and an ancient smile.
 
“This is where I bring all of my sacrifices…” she said, and in her watery voice the echo of the sea, as if you’d held a seashell to your ear.
 
“But…” Dean began, but then he stopped.  Because he had seen his body crumple.  He’d seen the deal his boss had made with this woman - for his life.  He knew… he was dead.
 
“Not dead,” the banshee informed him, as she flitted away to the other side of the large underwater cave.
 
“But without a body,” she informed him with a sad smile, as she pulled a large conch shell from a packed shelf that housed a number of petrified corpses of several odd-looking sea creatures.
 
Dean looked wide-eyed at his hands; touching his fingers to his face, he sighed.  He felt real enough to him…
 
But the banshee just smiled another sad smile, as more unshed tears crowded into the corners of her large eyes.
 
“Only here,” she told him, and then she handed him the shell.
 
“Only here will you feel the form you used to know,” she informed him with a more determined sort of grin spreading across her lovely face.
 
“What’s this?” the former homeless kid turned soldier turned private security sentry asked, his trust at an all-time low.
 
“It’s a chance,” the somewhat-solid looking woman replied.
 
“A chance for what?” Dean asked, as he inspected the large white and silver shell.
 
“Revenge.”
 
© Raena Exe 2022

*All characters, places, and events are completely fictional.
*All rights reserved.

​Hayden stood a good distance away from the swirling vortex that was known as Thor’s Well, a place just off the Oregon coast where the entire Pacific Ocean seemed to drain into an eighteen ft. wide hole on the rocky shore, yet still she could feel the spray.
 
High tide was just beginning, and the well was at its most dangerous.
 
Especially now, ever since the military had sectioned it off for quarantine.  It along other random sites all over the US.  Sites now thought to be portals to other places.  Possibly other dimensions.
 
Of course, none of that mattered to Hayden.  No, she was here because her mother used to bring her here, back before any of the current nonsense.  Back when the world was still asleep and dreaming it was awake.
 
“I should throw you in, and me too,” her mother used to tell her, from as far back as she could recall; always the scent of brandy thick on her breath.
 
“Throw you back to your father.  He didn’t want you.  Why should I?” she’d ask, as she petted Hayden’s long silver hair.  Petted her like some kind of rag doll, or mutt she’d happened to find on the street.
 
“Nothing about this place makes any sense, yet here I am… supposed to make it all work, and not just for me.  Nooooo….” she would say, as she wobbled closer and closer to the churning hole.
 
Hayden had never known if her mother was actually going to throw her in, as she so often threatened, and so she’d always just hung on, clinging to her mother like one of those toy monkeys in the shop. 
 
She’d always wanted one of those silly monkeys, until one day the similarity dawned on the young girl, as she sat there in her mother’s arms, clinging to the deranged woman for all she was worth.
 
After that, young Hayden couldn’t even look at the toys in the drug store window without being reminded. 
 
“This section is closed, ma’am,” a voice had called to her as she had hiked out onto the jagged rocks that surrounded the large phenomenon; a former sea cave that had collapsed and had become a place where the ocean could swirl around itself, before falling twenty feet, only to be sucked back out into the thrashing sea.
 
Yet Hayden hadn’t paid the voice any mind, as she hadn’t really planned to stay all that long.
 
“No one would even care if you died,” her boyfriend had told her, as she held the gun to her temple.  “No one cares about you,” her husband had screamed at her many years later, the time he’d beaten her into the closet.
 
And it was all true.
 
No one had cared if she lived or died. 
 
Not back when she was a child.  Not when she was married.  And certainly not now.
 
Hayden looked down at her stomach, at the place a child now grew… despite all of her best efforts.
 
And then she stared out onto the answer to all of her problems.
 
“At least it should be quick…” she told the stars, as they were just then beginning to peek out from behind the setting sun.
 
Hayden had thought the location of her self-righteous suicide was fitting, you see.  As it was the same place her homicidal mother had threatened to murder her more times than she could count.
 
Closer and closer she crept on broken and bleeding feet.  But Hayden paid it all no mind.
 
Because death is like that, when it sings its sweet serenade of love.
 
Because death is the lover that never denies you, never rejects you, never refuses your kiss.
 
Just then a large wave crashed all around her, threatening to pull her down into the rushing water as it flooded the one-time cave.
 
Hayden’s toes dug stubbornly into the sharp rocks, as she fought against the massive force of the oncoming water.
 
“Not yet…” she breathed, when it looked like the waves had settled again.  Because life is like that, holding you fast to your suffering because it’s all that you know.
 
But then she sighed, looked down once more at the child she could not save, and jumped.
 
You see, Hayden didn’t like not being in control. 
 
Because entirely too much of her life had been like that, one mountain dumped on her after another, and even though she’d climbed them all… it still hadn’t been enough.  Would never be enough.
 
Because she just hadn’t been built for this kind of world.  With these kinds of rules.
 
Down into the swirling water she sank, the icy waters of the Pacific closing in above like some kind of funeral shroud.
 
But just as the darkness closed all around her two large arms encircled her.
 
“Hey now, that’s not as good an idea as you might suspect,” it said, soft and sure in her ear.
 
And then a moment later she was once again on the Oregon coast.  Only this time she was being held firmly in the arms of a god.
 
“Wha… who…” she stammered, and then she fell asleep.
 
 
#HaydensDream
#ComingSoon
#RebelSunSeries
​
 
© Raena Exe 2022

*All characters, places, and events are completely fictional.
*All rights reserved.

“Kaleb was asking again, about Odin’s Well.”
 
“What did you tell him?” a small woman with large purplish-translucent wings inquired.
 
“I told him they’ve begun to sing the songs.”
 
“That’s not really an answer,” the sprite with the extra-large emerald eyes and the pouty lips said.  Though she didn’t really sound as if she were scolding the large, well-framed man.
 
“Do you know why they still speak the old tongue?” he asked, in such a soft voice you’d think he’d never a day in his life been mad.
 
“Only the old tongue carries the scars, of what used to be.”
 
The large man with the kind smile looked down at his pixie friend, though he’d never think to actually look down upon her. 
 
No… he’d walked these roads far too long, and far too many times to ever think the less of any of his companions now.
 
Tho… Allistar was slight, and had such a peaceful way about her, you’d almost swear she was almost a wisp of air, a spec of light, come to dance in the shadows of our world for a time.
 
“Kaleb will take us to war.”
 
“I know,” she told him, at the same time her folded wings gave a shiver, sending a shimmer of light out across the opalescent sea they were standing next to.
 
“We could put it off,” the man said, as he wrung his hands, and then looked once more out upon a thrashing waves.
 
“But they will only grow more powerful,” the man who had lived more than a four-hundred-thousand lives remarked truthfully.
 
“Humans are like that,” the pixie said with a degree of disgust, mixed with an almost nostalgic revere.
 
“Still miss your flapper days, eh?” the King of the Fae asked of his life-long friend.
 
“That was one of the best assignments I ever received, I will admit,” the pixie remarked with quite a devilish grin.
 
“Your hair was darker then, if I remember correctly,” the man who wore time like a cloak said, with such a delightful chuckle you really would want to melt into his arms, if only you dared.
 
“Didn’t that Hitler fella ruin everything?” she asked him with a sigh, and a small shake to her curl-covered head.
 
“You don’t think Kaleb…” the giant of a man began, but then let his eyes finish.
 
His lips though… danced in such a way you’d think he was silently calculating the odds of such a thing.
 
“No.  But even a warming fire takes a match,” his tiny friend said, just before she kissed his hand and flittered off to see how the refuges were coming.
 
“No one would fault you, for closing the well.  Not after what happened last time,” a thin figure who had remained at his side said.
 
The King of the Fae, a man who had gone by more names than he could ever recall, stood facing the West, and the setting sun, thinking for a very long time.
 
And then the man who had never asked to be King simply said, “We have asked for change, and so it is change we must accept”.
 
“How long ago did their probe land?” the King inquired of his second in command, a very angry looking elf named Zetian.
 
“Two hours ago, our time.  Two months their time.”
 
“They’ll send more now,” the King said without any emotion, though it danced in his eyes as the two moons overhead cast their glow in his icy pupils.
 
“Yes,” Zetian said.  “They will.  It is their way.”
 
The humans had tried sending probes before, but always they had been destroyed in transit, or the fae had destroyed them before they’d had a chance to respond.  But human technology had finally caught up with the magic of what they called ‘Planet X’.
 
“If they understand the time dilation, they will be able to breach the barrier,” Zetian said, as if the King didn’t already know.
 
But the King only nodded and agreed, because he’d come to know by long years of working by the elf’s side, roughing her ego would only hamper her brutal effectiveness.
 
“Kaleb wants to use lethal force,” Zetian reminded her Captain, her King, a man she’d lay down her life for, without a second thought.
 
Just then a loud explosion rocked them both backwards on their feet.
 
“A time bomb?” the King inquired, though it was more a declaration of rage than a question.  Because both knew immediately what had happened, by the way the sea spray had frozen mid-air and then had fallen straight down a half-tick later. 
 
As if gravity had reached up and grabbed ahold of it.
 
“Are they through?” the King of the Fae barked at his men, as they began to land all around him in great droves.  “Kaleb has sealed the well,” a woman with smokey grey eyes and long black hair informed him, just as her golden tipped wings alighted her onto the ground next to him.
 
“What?!” the hulking fairy demanded, as his own wings bristled behind him.  Sharp, sharper than the most finely crafted swords, the King’s wings were made of an alloy that could only be found on Terceira, the world the humans called Planet X.
 
It an alloy that could withstand the hottest of temperatures, even contact with the surface of the sun.
 
“I told him not to,” he growled, showing a bit of his large canines in the process.
 
“Zetian, go untie your pet… we have some hunting to do.”
 
The tall, slender elf with the large pointed ears and the diamond crusted knives, smiled a limp, yet coy smile that was packed with implications the King didn’t really understand, and then she was gone, running faster than most of the fairies could fly.
 
“Take a party and collect Kaleb’s family, and have them meet me in the Cave of Sighs.”
 
For a moment the well-armed fairy at his side quivered, but then he leapt into the air and was off, blowing some kind of horn as he went.
 
“We could send the probe to another realm, to another…”
 
“It was fate.  Humans and the Fae have long been destined to learn of one another,” the King began.
 
“Well, we’ve known about them for eons, and we’re no better off for it,” his brother remarked, chiming in has he’d always done, on things he’d spent less than a half second thinking about.
 
“We have not,” the King said with a laugh, and in such a coy way even his older brother scoffed in fun.
 
“No, I guess we’ve only watched, from the outside.”
 
The King’s older brother was a gentle man with broad shoulders and zero imagination.  Still… he’d been the rock that had kept their world together whenever the King had to leave.
 
Ten minutes later the King stood at the entrance to a large cave. 
 
His soldiers had managed to get his rival inside.
 
“Honestly, I didn’t really think you could do it,” he said, patting the startled commander on the back.
 
“Don’t worry… I’ve got it from here,” the noble man with the shaggy beard and the bright blue eyes said with a relaxed smile that said ‘I totally got this’.
 
“Thank goddess,” his commander said, dropping his wings by half-an-inch.
 
“Are they all in there?” 
 
“Kaleb only has his sister.  And yeah, they’re both in there.”
 
Kaleb had been the Master of Spells so long there weren’t many creatures on Terceira who didn’t respect the man’s innate powers.
 
However, everyone also knew it was his sister that was the true threat.  The real dark horse in this tale.
 
“You’re not going in there… alone?  Are you sure, sir?” the soldier asked in such a way as to both make the King chuckle, and a little nervous.
 
Still, the generous man smiled, and patted the nervous soldier with the long sword on the back and simply said, “You don’t get to be King by doing the easy stuff.”
 
And like that, he walked straight into the cave.
 
Down into the darkness he went, descending rapidly down a long narrow corridor that was only lit by strange orange lichen that grew on the damp rock walls.
 
Finally, after a bit of time, the King emerged out into a vast opening, with a small lake in the center.
 
“You missed me… admit it…” a strange voice called out from the dark surroundings, just as a bright light was birthed on a small island at the center of the lake.
 
“I did,” the King said, as he turned and swooped down on top of an amazingly beautiful fairy.
 
“You still can’t tell them we’re working together?” Kaleb’s ‘sister’ asked of the heavily muscled man, as she coiled her supple form around his waist and arms.
 
“They wouldn’t understand,” the King purred, as he nuzzled into the woman’s long hair, taking deep whiffs of her scent as he went.
 
“Will we go to war?” she asked in a whisper at his ear, her candied breath like honey to his senses.
 
“We will.  For you,” he told her, as he wrapped his long supple fingers around her throat and squeezed, tighter and tighter, until she closed her huge eyes and titled her head back and let out a wicked groan.
 
“Don’t forget about me,” the lithe man who suddenly appeared at her side said, as he reached over and grabbed the back of the King’s head and then kissed him, so deep and so passionately you’d think they had been lover all of their lives.
 
“Who could forget about you?” the King asked, as he took in the sight of his secret family, his secret life.
 
“I’m going to go through the well, so I can assess what’s coming.  And you two are to stay here and prepare everyone for war.”
 
“And what?  Keep pretending to be siblings?  Cuz that’s getting pretty old, mate,” his best friend asked, just before he grabbed a handful of female fairy and pulled her into his arms.
 
The King smiled a knowing smile that was so full of hurt and sadness and loneliness both of his companions reached for him and pulled him into an enormous hug.
 
“We’ll find her, I promise,” his best friends told him, as they both kissed his lips and his cheeks and then pulled him even closer into the both of them.
 
“That’s why I have to go.  We can’t afford this war without knowing the child is safe.  We have no choice.  We can’t wait for prophecies any longer.  I have to go…”
 
Thistle and Nolan, AKA Kandra and Kaleb, both looked at the man who had saved them from a hell nobody could ever understand.  But neither said a word.
 
“They are a deadly race, full of hate and apathetic violence,” Nolan told his friend.
 
“And BDSM…” Thistle said with a small smile that implied many larger things.
 
Then she turned to the man who had saved her and asked, “Who will you love while you’re there?”
 
But the King only smiled.
 
“You can’t spend the whole time alone…” the wild-looking Thistle stated in such a way you could tell she was already missing him.
 
“They’ve got good drugs tho…” Kaleb said with a smirk.  “Thought I saw a talking giraffe once.  Turned out it was just Stephen Merchant.”
 
Both the King and Thistle laughed, even though neither really thought it was true.
 
“No one else can follow me through the well.   And no one must know where I’ve gone.  Do you understand?  If I fail… If I don’t come back… You’ll have to tell them what we tried to do.  You’ll have to fight them alone…”
 
“We can’t just seal it off for another thousand years?” Nolan asked, already sad from the answer he already knew.
 
“We asked for change, and change is upon us.  But we can at least try to direct the rising of the tide.  We can try… to find a place for all of that energy to go.  Rather than let it simply let it consume us.”
 
“But first…” Thistle said, as she let her long dress fall to the ground around her.
 
“Oh, yes… first…” the King said with such a hungry look in his eyes you’d have thought he hadn’t had sex in years.
 
“We will miss you,” Nolan reminded him, as he slowly removed the King’s shirt, and then trousers.
 
“Oh!  And… and we’ll certainly miss this…” Thistle said, as she freed his large cock from the laces of his underclothes.
 
“Then let’s make a memory that will last!” the man with silver tipped wings, and a halo of gold said, as he took both of his friends into his arms.
 
“Let’s make this a memory to last a lifetime.”
 



© Raena Exe 2022

*All characters, places, and events are completely fictional.
*All rights reserved.