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There was a body in the woods.
Thrice now this thing has crawled its way out of the earth’s loins, birthed from such vitriol and hatred that no living mother could have harbored it. Once, it had been a great and powerful thing. A swarm upon humanity, a bleached stain upon the fae. It had been a ravenous thing who knew no love. No care. No empathy.
The second time it was brought forth, it came as thick moss. Dwindled down to something more physical, clawing at the earth and screaming in a tongue that had not yet gained meaning. This thing, this rotten, vile thing, had attempted to swallow the nation whole. It cried its tears of acid and expelled foul beasts to aid it. Still, it was cut down all the same.
And now it was born thrice— it was born dead.
How pitiful an existence! To be born from the will of an isle’s self-destruction, from the malice that brewed war. How pitiful it was to be forced to life again and again, how pitiful it was to be so grotesque on the inside, yet so beautiful on the outside.
This was the only time it was given human visage. And the face didn’t even belong to it.
You see, the faefolk are amazing creatures. But there are reasons why they are separated from humanity. They weaved their words with glamour and built courts upon the expense of others, purely for their sickened entertainment. There were those who were beautiful. There were those who were fair in the way a maiden might be hiding a dagger beneath her dress. And there were those who were grotesque and unhinged, who did not even think of hiding themselves behind glamour— after all, why should they?
Those who fit into no court, who did not earn the title of seelie or unseelie, were cast into the furthest reaches and left to dawdle out their own petty little squabbles. Into the forest of Wales, where the bastard children of vermin roamed, a body had been dumped by the world.
It belonged there. He belonged there.
He’d had this done to him twice now. The third time need not be that much different— yet, and yet, that woman! That woman, she had tampered with his name. And soon that led into the daunting realization that he was experiencing free thought. Free will.
Vortigern’s name had overlapped with a rotten, all too real name. He shared this identity. And at first, that terrified him.
For when a doomsday device is given a mind to think and a body to pilot, it is never an easy or smooth transition. He did not know what he was supposed to do. He lay there, pale and naked in the grass, tucked between a pair of bushes and laying beneath the dappled shadows of tree leaves. He recognized the earth. He recognized the smell of the wind and the feeling of the grass. But this was the first time he ever thought about it.
What happened to him?
He had not yet been introduced to the concept of time. It was unclear how long his body had been laying there. Perhaps weeks, or months, crawling into years. He was not familiar with the way the dead decomposed. He could feel every part of himself, every agonizing brush against bare skin, every clench of his lungs attempting to will air within them. But he didn’t know how to use this body.
He was so agonizingly alive as he decayed. Slowly, piece by piece, little by little.
But dead things attract vermin.
It wasn’t many, not at first. They looked just like insects. But they had this way of moving, this sort of intelligence no mere insects should be able to have. Granted, compared to the grander sort of fae, these things were no smarter than toddlers. But they still crawled to him, fluttered towards him, and looked upon him with a reverence that made him want to vomit.
The butterflies, they would perch upon his skin in the mornings. Their little legs tickled his arms as they crawled up and down his naked, decaying body. They spoke in a language he understood like a second tongue. He did not remember learning it.
“King? Our King?”
King. Nasty word, he thought.
After the butterflies came the ants. They were attracted to the smell of his rot and were equally surprised to see such a beautiful thing, especially in the place of shunned beings. “Oh, King! King! What are you doing? Why are you just lying there?”
He did not answer, because he did not yet know how to produce sound.
As the butterflies and the ants gathered, next came the flies. The flies always loved dead things. They adored him, too, as they swarmed his head and tangled their tiny feet in his pale hair. “He has been through much,” they whispered. “Oh, dear King... please, wake up soon.”
“Perhaps he needs guidance from his court,” came the raspy, crooked tones of the centipedes that dragged themselves forth. “We must aid him. We must show him how to rise.”
“Yes, we must,” the butterflies agreed.
“We love you, King,” the ants praised.
“Come back to us,” the flies begged.
And Vortigern, who had never once known the feeling of love, could not belt out his screams of disdain as the swarm came close. Worms breached from the ground and wriggled towards every hole he’d rotted into himself, trying to close the gaps with their bodies. Thousands of legs poured over him as mandibles chewed through whatever skin was left in an attempt to reach his bloodstream. He felt the mites gnaw through his veins and inhabit his blood. He felt everything.
He laid there, and his dead eyes looked nowhere. Glazed over, pale. He bore no reaction as he felt the swarm wriggle through his intestines, chewed at his kidneys to make them work, brutally gnawed and stung at his heart in an attempt to stimulate it into beating.
“Please, get up,” the bugs sobbed for him. “King Oberon! King Oberon!”
Oberon? He pondered. That is who I’ve stolen the face of?
He wasn’t sure what it was. Maybe it was that thought that suddenly kickstarted everything, some sort of daunting realization. Or maybe it was from the efforts of the vermin. Maybe it was a mix of the two. Because suddenly, his heart gave a painful clench, and the bugs inside of him all gasped as they felt a warmth begin to seep into his cold chambers.
One beat. Two beats. Three.
The sickly pallor that had overtaken him was beginning to recede. His blood began to flow again, pushed by the straining effort of his heart. “King Oberon!” The bugs all cheered, a cacophony within his own soul. They wept with joy as their King began to open his mouth and breathe for the first time. How foul the air he inhaled was.
Slowly, his eyelids came down, wetting the eyeballs and taking away that pale sheen of death. Instead of muted white, his eyes came open a deep silver, shining like the stars themselves. He took another breath, feeling bones crack back into place, mended by the efforts of the bees and wasps who built nests out of marrow.
The body in the forest had forced itself to live. Oberon was a King— he was infested by what loved him.
His fingers twitched, open and shut. Behind him, the translucent membrane of his wings began to shiver. Slowly did they unfurl, catching on moonlight that had filtered in through the trees. It hurt, being born. The first gulps of air, the feeling of a tongue moving in his mouth like a caterpillar trying to make itself a cocoon. It hurt.
And yet, and yet, and yet... why did he dare move?
Despite the pain and the cacophony that filled his ears, he made his first bold movement. He stretched out an arm and slammed his palm against the grass, squashing a putrid group of grasshoppers beneath his palm. But it didn’t matter. Their deaths weren’t heard among the cheers and screams of Oberon’s awakening. In fact, he was partially convinced they had revered such a death.
Oberon Vortigern turned onto his stomach, gasping for breath. And as he slowly pushed himself to his knees, his wings gave their first flap, a buzz so loud in his ears. The moonlight caught on the intricacies of the silver veins, every part that made him so painfully real. He was covered in dirt, and he was infested with life. He turned his gaze to the stars, the moon that he could see in the big black veil.
“Filthy,” he mumbled, the first word he ever spoke. “Atrociously filthy...”