18. Flavia
Flavia
T he standing stones sang at midnight.
I woke on the cold forest floor, their resonance thrumming through my bones with a vibration that originated from the earth itself. With no silk to cushion me, it was mind-numbing. Just earth and stone and the deep pull of ancient magic calling me.
I wandered into the woods until I recognized the wolf-woman’s scent.
She emerged from the shadows, her golden eyes already open and alert. “You hear them.”
“Yes.” I stood beside her, unconsciously touching the black web of scars. They tingled with each pulse of the stones’ song, Ysu’s lingering claim over that ancient magic. “Growing louder.”
“Growing impatient.” She shook leaves from her hair. “The forest won’t wait much longer.”
She paused. “I am sorry for my…cruelty before. I have not dealt with someone as human as you in many years. I forgot the wildness of the forest has not hardened you yet.”
Not much of an apology.
“I can scent the harm you have undergone. I am transformed, just as you are. I walked a path similar to yours many years ago. I should have been more mindful,” she said. “I hope that we can run as sisters, despite my misstep.”
It wasn’t enough, not yet. But as the forest called nearly drowned out all other thought, I didn’t feel this was the time to discuss manners among monsters.
“What is your name?” I asked.
She was surprised by my question. “Names as such are not so commonly used among our kind.”
I bit my lip. There was so much I still had to learn.
“But you may call me Gysgod, if you would like.”
I nodded and she turned away from me. As she did, her braids swayed, and I saw a scar on the back of her neck. A bite mark that I knew went deep.
“Did you have a…” My eyes lingered on the scar.
“A demon of my own?” Something in her eyes twinkled. “Yes, but a long time has passed since then. Perhaps a story for another time. Right now, you have a choice to make.”
I looked at this woman, touched with the spirit of a wolf, and I saw a possible path.
I looked back towards Ysu’s domain, and saw another.
But the future was like a spider’s web, fractured into almost infinite possibilities.
I didn’t know where I would end up, but I knew I could no longer linger in this place of idleness. I needed to take my own step forward.
I wrapped my arms around myself against the night’s chill as I shivered uncontrollably. In Ysu’s grove, I’d never felt it like I did now.
“Will he be there?” The question escaped before I could stop it.
Gysod’s smile held too much knowledge. “The spider is the oldest of us all. He rarely leaves his web. Too proud. Too afraid someone might steal what he considers his.” She tilted her head. “Does that disappoint you, little sister?”
I didn’t respond, but my fresh scars pulsed, as if curious for the answer. Part of me hoped he would come, would see me standing among the others, an equal. Another part feared what would happen if he did.
Gysgod led the way with easy confidence, her pack of wolves flowing around us like gray ghosts. They accepted me, these wild hunters, though I caught them watching me with curious eyes.
The stones stood in a clearing that felt older than Rome, older than human memory.
Thirteen monoliths arranged in a perfect circle, each twice the height of a man and carved with spirals and symbols whose meaning was lost to time, worn down so they would have easily been missed by mortal eyes.
But my eyes were no longer mortal, and I saw how the patterns moved, how they breathed with power that made even Ysu’s ancient web seem young by comparison.
We were not the first to arrive.
At the northern stone stood others. A bark-skinned man whose fingers had become gnarled as ancient roots. Twins who moved with vulpine grace, their amber eyes sly and knowing, moved around the stones with frantic energy.
And at the southern stone...
“Sister!” The voice rang with delight as another serpent-touched woman emerged from the shadows. Her transformation was further along than mine—scales covered half her face, and when she smiled, her jaw unhinged slightly. “Oh, they said you might come! The youngest of us. How brave.”
“Rashka,” Gysgod introduced. “She is also serpent-blessed, claimed by the forest fifty winters past.”
Fifty winters. I studied this woman who might be my future, noting how she moved—always flowing, never quite still. Her eyes held depths that spoke of decades spent more snake than human. But there was something else there too. A power that called to the magic inside of me like a beacon.
“And still sane,” Rashka said, reading my assessment with eerie accuracy.
“Though sanity, sweet sister, is a flexible concept when you’ve swallowed men whole and felt their last thoughts dissolve in your belly.
” She circled me slowly, nostrils flaring.
“You smell of spider silk and sorrow. He marked you deep, didn’t he? ”
Her expression softened slightly. “I had one too, once. A guardian who thought to keep me. But serpents aren’t meant for webs, little sister. We’re meant to move, to flow, to swallow the world one piece at a time.”
Around us, others gathered, and behind them, great spirits watched from the forest’s edge—a bear with eyes like stars, a wolf the size of a horse—whose eyes followed Gysgod wherever she went—and beside the eastern stones, a stag whose antlers glowed like a dying star.
These were the true guardians, the ones who had answered the first call. Ysu’s kin, though he stayed away.
“The children gather,” Gysgod announced. “The moon wanes. The Romans mass their forces to the south, planning to burn what they cannot conquer. The forest has been patient. The forest has waited. But now?—”
The stones flared with cold light, and suddenly I understood.
The patterns carved into them weren’t decorative—they were a map.
A living representation of the land itself, showing Roman settlements as infected wounds, showing their roads like scars.
It showed their steady advance into territories that had been wild since the world began.
The wind rose and I heard the forest whisper, We are the same, you and I.
They have marked us, scarred us, but we will not bow, and we will not break.
“Now we take back what is ours,” Rashka hissed, and her voice echoing with the hiss of a thousand serpents. “But first, youngest sister, you must complete your becoming.”
“I’ve transformed,” I said, though even as the words left my mouth, I knew they were incomplete truths.
“Partially.” Rashka moved closer, and I could smell old blood on her breath, decades of hunts. “You’ve let spider venom change you, yes. You hunt, you feed, but you have not claimed your birthright fully. You have not completed the cycle.”
Understanding crashed through me like ice water. “Tiberius.”
“The one who first broke you. The one whose cruelty opened the door for transformation.” Gysgod stepped forward. “You must consume the source of your pain to truly become. Only then will you be complete enough to serve in the war to come.”
I felt suddenly, desperately alone as every eye on the grove fell to me.
If Ysu were here, he would rage at them for suggesting I serve anyone but him.
Would wrap me in his possessive fury and declare me his alone.
I would have pressed my face into his chest as he blocked out everything but him.
But he wasn’t here, and I had chosen that.
“I left him to rot,” I said quietly. “Bound in web and madness. He is dead already.”
Rashka shook her head. “Finish what you started, sister. You must complete this curse, if you are to ever truly be free.”
From the circle’s center, the earth began to crack.
What emerged wasn’t quite mist, wasn’t quite light, but something between—the forest’s will made visible.
It touched each of us in turn, and where it passed, transformations accelerated.
The bark-skinned man groaned as roots burst from his flesh.
The twins fell to all fours as their forms locked into massive fox shapes.
When it reached me, the pain was exquisite.
My spine elongated with audible pops. Scales erupted across my skin in waves, each one a small agony that built into a transcendent sensation.
I felt my jaw restructuring, bone reshaping to accommodate the unhinging motion I’d only played at before.
The serpent in my belly became my belly, became my entire being.
But this time, no strong arms caught me as I convulsed. No familiar presence anchored me through the pain. I writhed alone on cold ground while the forest worked its will through my flesh, and I understood with crystal clarity the price of the freedom I’d claimed.
When the light faded, I lay gasping on the ground that felt too solid, too limiting. My body had returned to mostly human shape, unable to hold the transformation. I could feel the potential coiled within—the full serpent waiting to emerge when I claimed my final prey.
Soon , the forest whispered through stone and soil. Soon you will be ready. The circle must close .
Rashka helped me stand, her touch gentle despite her monstrous strength. “The transformation is not easy,” she said quietly. “It is never easy. But we endure, little sister. We serpents always endure.”
Around us, the other chosen began to disperse, returning to their territories to prepare for the battle the stones had shown us coming. I stood on shaking legs, feeling more unsure than I had since that first night in Ysu’s grove.
“Where will you go?” Gysgod asked.
I touched my neck, feeling how the marks burned with my transformation, how they called to their maker even across the distance I’d put between us. The forest had shown me my path—back to the villa, back to Tiberius, back to the completion of what I’d started.
It had shown me revenge centuries in the making, of expelling the men who thought to claim and tame something that was beautiful and wild. I knew that well, and I raged for the earth that has suffered in a way so similar to my own struggles, against the same villains.
But my mind kept drifting back to the spider who’d helped make me. Who had seen me, before I had become something strong.
Would he still have me? Could I bear to return?
The stones fell silent, but their promise echoed in my bones: Complete the cycle. Consume the source. Become .
And in the cold darkness, with no web to catch me, I finally understood the true weight of choosing to walk alone. My future was my own, and I had to decide what I wanted to make of it.