Sorceress: Eternal Watcher of Power by Jade Gretz

https://www.deviantart.com/jadegretzai/art/Sorceress-Eternal-Watcher-of-Power-1301752577

The Amber in the Throat

The forest did not recognize the woman in the feathers of a hawk. To the Sanguine Thicket, she was merely a pulse—a rhythmic, thrumming warmth that disrupted the ancient, cold silence of the moss. Teela Na, the Sorceress of Grayskull, walked where the sunlight died before it could reach the soil. Her boots, soft leather stained by the damp loam, made no sound, yet the woods shivered at her passing. She was far from the jaw-bridge of her fortress, far from the emerald mists that guarded the secrets of the Elders. Here, the air tasted of copper and wet fur, a primordial soup that predated the arrival of kings and even the forging of the Power Sword.

She paused, her fingers trailing over the bark of a weeping willow that bled a translucent, milky sap. Her wings, folded tightly against her back beneath a cloak of woven starlight, twitched with a phantom wind. She felt the gaze before she heard the breath. It was a heavy, humid pressure against the nape of her neck, a scent of musk and rotted cloves that spoke of a predator who had forgotten the meaning of mercy.

“The hawk has flown too low,” a voice grated, sounding like heavy stones being ground together in a dark well. “The sky is a vast, empty thing, Sorceress. But the earth… the earth is full of teeth.”

Teela Na did not turn. She closed her eyes, visualizing the ley lines of Eternia, seeking the golden thread that connected her to the Spirit of Grayskull. It was faint here, muffled by the sheer density of the primal wild. “The earth is also where things go to rot, Beastman,” she said, her voice a chime of silver in the gloom. “Is that what you are now? A scavenger in the shadows of the Unmaking? I expected more from Skeletor’s most loyal hound.”

A low, guttural chuckle vibrated through the floorboards of the forest. Out of the murk stepped a nightmare draped in sunset-orange fur. He was larger than the legends suggested, a mountain of knotted muscle and matted hair, his eyes two burning coals set in a face of simian cruelty. He held a whip of living vine, the thorns weeping a paralytic ichor. He didn't look like a henchman; he looked like a god of the mud, a king of the red hunger.

“Skeletor is a ghost who plays with bones,” Beastman said, his lip curling to reveal yellowed fangs that could crush a helmet. “He seeks a throne of cold rock. I? I seek the heat. I seek the amber in the throat of the bird that guards the gate. You look different without your stone walls, Teela Na. You look… edible.”

He moved with a terrifying fluidity, circling her. The trees seemed to lean inward, their branches interlocking to form a cage of bone-white wood. Teela Na turned slowly, keeping him in her sights. Her skin glowed with a faint, iridescent pallor, the bioluminescence of a creature not entirely of this world. She was beautiful, but it was the beauty of a jagged diamond—sharp enough to draw blood before you realized you were being cut.

“You speak of hunger as if it were an ambition,” she said, her eyes tracking the twitch of his whip. “But you are merely a leash looking for a neck. Why have you followed me here, into the heart of the Sanguine Thicket? Even your master fears this place.”

Beastman stopped, his nostrils flaring. He leaned in, his face inches from hers. She could see the parasites crawling in his fur, the raw power radiating from his massive chest. “The Thicket is mine. It was mine before the first stone of Grayskull was laid. I didn't follow you, little bird. I called you. I sang a song of dying stars and broken spells, and you came to investigate the silence. You’re curious. That’s the tragedy of your kind. You want to know why the dark is dark.”

He reached out a massive, clawed hand, not to strike, but to brush the line of her jaw. The gesture was shockingly intimate, a predatory seduction that made the air grow thick with tension. Teela Na did not flinch. She felt the heat of him, a furnace of animal instinct that threatened to overwhelm her celestial calm.

“You are a creature of the wild,” she whispered, her hand moving toward the hidden talisman at her belt. “But even the wild has a master.”

“I have no master here,” Beastman growled, his voice dropping to a seductive purr that rattled her bones. “In the Castle, you are a statue. A myth. But here, in the damp and the rot, you are flesh. I can hear your blood singing, Teela Na. It’s a frantic, beautiful song. It says you are tired of being a ghost. You want to feel the weight of the world.”

He lunged.

The movement was a blur of orange
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