THE GLOOMED AND GOUT-RIDDEN [PK]

[milkyi 1504]

Spoiler

 

 

THE GLOOMED AND GOUT-RIDDEN

 

 

 

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Humanity has always been immoral, opportunistic, and self-gratifying. With a mother who’d abandoned her family for several men across the Northern lands of Almaris, it was no wonder that Madalene had lost herself to the very same characteristics that plagued man. While her mother had lost herself in the pursuit of new men to eternally serve as exciting encounters, Madalene struggled with more materialistic sins. Of envy, greed, and pride.

 

Besides her mothers unfortunate habits, the Lady Ruthern knew greed far too well, as she watched it demolish the peoples of many a nation. In her few travels across the land at the behest of her more Noble responsibilities, she had come face to face with what high society did to those entrapped in its clutches. Blathering officials, grown fat from extravagance. Their meaty fingers hardly able to give up the shiny baubles that adorned them. Yet she knew even more to fear the thin ones. Those skeletons in the closets that grew stronger from power rather than avarice. Long ago she had told herself she would not be resigned to such a fate.

 

Despite this, during her tenure as a Duchess, Madalene adorned extravagant gowns, jewelry, and headpieces so as to fit in with upper society. Though she often found herself spending over her allowances, she paid no mind, and her wallet nearly had the worst of it. One of man’s oldest adversaries. The Dread Demon Avarice. Wicked winged beast, stealing into the most private rooms of what was thought as the best of men. Its fangs bared, it sinks its venomous designs deep into even the most stalwart of souls. Madalene held firm to the raft that was her husband, lest she slip deeper into the waters of greed.

 

Alas, most castaways are never found.

 

At her lowest point, Madalene had been left without her raft. A stinging mark on her cheek left nothing to grasp, and the cold waters of man’s sin left her gasping for air. The hand that once held her afloat in the grace of god above the waters of the howling nether, turned against her in wicked fashion. To others a mere slap, to her, a blow to the very foundations of her morals.

 

And so she sank, beneath the waters, frostbite biting at her body as she drifted in the frozen waters of greed. While some might argue that her deterioration began only recently, it was truly this blow that set her upon the path… To death.

 

Though her mind stayed stagnant for the following years, her heart was slowly taken by the dread demon. It perched upon her shoulder like a carrion crow, its beak turned downwards to the feast below. How it wished to peck and feed from every inch of her once god-fearing carcass. But it would savor its feast. It whispered, advised, and poisoned every thought within the woman. Until at last it snuffed out her last coherent thought as a faithful and moral woman.

 

The morning after her husband, her only love, died, the sun didn’t rise. In its place, Avarice took to the skies, flexing its malformed wings. Celebration shook through the dread demon’s boney form. It cackled and japed about, cries ringing into the wilderness, that only one’s ears could hear. As Madalene dragged herself from her achingly empty bed, she saw it there. Perched on the horizon. Heralding her end. And as she stared at its disgusting form, her eyes drank in its most grotesque feature.

 

For the Dread Demon Avarice had no hands of its own, instead it bore those of its latest conquest. Stitched onto its evil clad form, were her hands. Hands which were now lost to the deepest reaches of greed.

 

As she tried to return to her usual life, her hands moved on their own. Or at least that’s how it felt. She wasn’t sure. Since her husband had died she lived life in a partially confused stupor. She felt as if she had no control, as if she was acting simply to act. She had no hold over her own actions, instead she simply lived for the simplest pleasures.

 

She dressed as expensive as possible, had servants decorate her chambers nearly every night, and when the sun fell she retired to her chambers to dine on a new feast her hunters had brought. Days and nights blurred, the line between month and week vanishing. The only constant that held her down was her hunger. She felt it in her gut. She wanted more, always. Sometimes she would awake in the middle of the night in search of more to quench her the cavernous emptiness that filled her.

 

Yet as she filled her stomach with red meats and fine wines, she never did realize that the emptiness was instead left in her heart.

 

As the scholars of our age suggest, the vast amounts of meat she consumed did not leave the Lady Ruthern in pleasant condition. As time went on, she soon developed a condition common of the gluttonous nobles of upper society. Gout. Gout plagued her constantly from that point onward. It attacked her body, leaving her condition almost the same as her soul. Slowly rotting from the core. 

 

Recently, Madalene had been spotted limping. Then with a cane. And finally not at all. Where once a bright and cheery woman stood, now a sickly, degraded relic lay quietly sleeping in her chambers. She still called for her feasts, but even they soon slowed. She would call upon the last of her servants daily, and then every other day. Each week, she rang their bell less and less. Until finally, she stopped ringing at all.

 

The servants, long tired of their lady’s antics, eventually decided to check in on their charge. The creaking, aching steps, ones that the Lady had long since been unable to climb, betrayed their coming. And yet no words or warnings were heard. Instead, silence echoed from her equally rotted chambers. The servants pressed onward still.

 

At the last door, they knocked lightly, then once again a little harder. No response returned, so they pushed forward to enter and entreat with the occupied Lady Ruthern. Their eyes fell upon what was left of her corpse.

 

Riddled with Gout, her heart long ago taken by the man that she loved, and filled by the influence of the foul, unholy nether, her body had fallen still nestled on the chair in which her Husband once sat. No breath passed through her weakened frame. Though she was so hungry for means with which to satiate her greed, she had neglected the simplest of things that even peasants craved. But she was a woman who could get anything she wanted. Such simple things held no pleasure, and as such were invisible to her greed-addled eyes. For even with all the food she could eat, no man can be sustained without water.

 

As she betrayed the holy waters of morality, so too did it betray her, leaving her dry and withering in its absence. Her crusted corpse had already begun to gather dust, and in her sorry state, the servants thought only of how they would clean such a large disturbance.

 

The physicians called to the former Lady Ruthern’s chambers confirmed the cause of death swiftly, and without fanfare, mystery, or questions, her name was struck from the records of living residents.

 

Should her closest living relatives, the daughters she left behind, chose to host a funeral for her, then some light may yet be cast upon the life she had once lived.

 

But for now, her home lays empty. Devoid of light and life. And the Dread Demon Avarice sits perched upon the rooftop, awaiting the next foolhardy noble with which to stalk until the end of their days.

 

[1_Language_1 1671]

      "Shame Ea never got to really meet ve woman that Papej loved, Ea would have liked to know her; what a fool Ea was to stay away." Grigoryi frowned as he fiddled with his tools of craft. "Perhaps be rest of ve family won't be cruel to her anymore, why dishonor a dead mamej? Then again, they did leave her rotting for quite some time.." The black sheep turned his head to his fabrics, before back to the missive. "Ea'll make Angelika a doll, maybe she'd like a doll of her mamej to keep with her.."

[louislxix 3140]

From the Seven-Skies, the former Duke of Vidaus welcomed his wife with open arms, uttering nil as they reconciled.

[PerfectlyPeachy 1382]

For some time since her father's death, the eldest of his union with Madalene had attempted to keep her mother company. Outside she sat, perched upon the very top of the staircase leading to Madalene's room. It was strange, she thought, how her mother didn't reply to her. Perhaps she was tired, exhausted from the grief of her husband's sudden demise, and she had little energy to will a response.
 

She started to notice a foul smell creeping from beneath her mother's door, and yet still, there she sat, speaking to her. She didn't want her suffering from loneliness, now that Stefaniya was gone.
 

She merely had one inquiry once she was informed of the servant's discovery, a question laced with horror, how long had she been speaking to a corpse?

[sarahbarah 5222]

Marie Ruthern, the current Duchess of Vidaus, had always admired the late Lady Ruthern.

Quietly from within her newly occupied chambers did she light a candle in honour of the late Duchess, choosing to mourn her in private.