Soul Driver – Marto Copperkettle – 27.04.2022

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He is in the Forest with No Name. The one that abutted his familial home. The one that stole his sister away.

The one he felled in her memory.

Except this Forest with No Name is back in abundance. Trees tower over him oppressively, looming down from their soaring heights. His brow is covered in sweat, his breathing is ragged and laboured, and his arms ache from the endless days of hefting and swinging his axe. But it is all for naught. Each tree he takes down grows back taller and wider and older than it was before. It doesn’t matter how quick he is. It doesn’t matter if he stays looking at the jagged stump, the smell of fresh sap tickling his throat with wood chips dusting his legs. The trees always grow back. They always return.

The forest is unending.

Through the branches and around the thick knotted trunks, always just out of the corner of his eye stalks the tall, dark shape of a black friesian stallion. His breath hitches as the sweat begins to steam off his brow. Part of him feels like he should try to run, but where could he go? The forest went on and on and on, forever. Wherever he ran to the stallion would follow. Nowhere he went would be safe. There was no way to escape and nowhere to run to. All he could do was continue to swing his axe and try to end the Forest with No Name.

Then the dream shifts and he is no longer in a forest but in a familiar desert. The sky, dark and purple with stars dusted across it, is pregnant with stormy clouds, thunder rumbling in the distance, matching the roaring in his ears. The air, even hotter, more humid than last time, clings to the nape of his neck and the dip of his stomach. Then an all too familiar voice, low and rich and filled with dark promises drifts into his mind with words that find their way to the hollow of his chest.


Marto barely has to turn his head; Adhyël is already so close, his tall, muscular body lounging beside him on the grey sand. He takes Marto’s hand, twining their fingers together, pulling him in closer and closer-

He attempts to divert Adhyël’s attention with questions but what Marto was really doing was trying (and failing) to distract himself. He wasn’t ready to face this. Not after realising that what he felt for Adhyël was licentious desire fuelled by anger, hatred and unbridled lust. Back in the devil’s presence, the controlling grip he had over these feelings was slowly but surely loosening.


His stomach was in knots. The well of emptiness inside him was the deepest it has ever been. His head was swimming, the heat was drowning him, and he was barely holding on.

“Why are you here? I don’t remember what I was-” Marto starts, but Adhyël places one long clawed finger over his lips, burning his words into silence.

“I wouldn’t be here if you didn’t want me to be,” he drawled in a low voice.

Marto hated that he was right. His desire to be with Adhyël was so strong, something that came up from that deep, dark well of the emptiness inside him. The only way to stop the call was to fill it. To have Adhyël’s hands on him, holding him down or pulling him close. To cut open Adhyël’s heart and see the blood pour out to form words of love and passion like the poetry he keeps whispering into Marto’s ears.

“Do you want to die without knowing what my name tastes like when you scream it?”

It was with that question looming up like a vaporous smokey darkness in his mind that Marto let go and gave himself over to Adhyël completely.

The air in his lungs turned to ash and Adhyël stole it through burning kisses on his lips that made Marto breathless. The blood in his veins burned into lava as Adhyël rocked the earth of his bones, all the better to suck that nectar from deep inside him. Their tongues became the flames that leapt between the forge of their passions as Marto moaned, cried and screamed Adhyël’s name in uncontrolled ecstasy as the friction of their skin became the match that consumed his body with living fire. Just when Marto thought he was done, that he couldn’t possibly continue anymore, Adhyël would begin again. He knew no rest for he wanted none. Never before had anyone given or taken as much as Adhyël. It was just them, coming together over and over, hour after hour, day after day, year after year, century after century. Each time he lost is voice, and each time Adhyël made him find it again. Their passion was all consuming and unending, like the words that began it all.


There are no clothes. They all burned away. All that remains is just smoke and skin.

“Do you regret it?”

The question is softly spoken into the nape of Marto’s neck, chased by a kiss that sparks the fire again. It is a long time before he finally answers.

“I don’t know…”

He looks up to the sky. Suddenly he’s standing up and walking away, looking out at the vast desert with not a single living thing in sight. He doesn’t know why the thought occurs to him but somehow it feels like he is inside Adhyël’s volatile, internal landscape. On the heels of that thought, Marto realises the emptiness he had been feeling isn’t there anymore. He’s not sure what to make of that just yet.

Slowly returning to the naked, lounging fiend, he sits down next to Adhyël, taking his massive hand in his, entwining their fingers together.

“I am still going to kill you,” Marto says, the casual tone belying the vow of his words. It makes Adhyël smile.

“As I will you, my love.” He kisses the back of Marto’s hand. “You never did answer my question from the forest,” he continues, pitch black eyes glinting as Marto tenses. “There is one- No, there are two women you have not told about us. Merla and Zola.”

Marto gives Adhyël a hard look. “I haven’t told Merla because this is my problem, not hers.”

“Ah…” Adhyël sighs.

“If she knew about you then she’d really fuck you guys up and then there’d be nothing left.” For me.

Adhyël’s grin is wolfish. “And Zola?”

Marto looks away. “Zola will survive this. She’s strong.”

Will she though? She’s marked, just like him…

A clawed finger leaves a burning trail down his arm. “But will you tell her about us?”

“When you’re dead,” he says flatly.

“What if you die first? How would you feel knowing you’ve lied to her?”

Marto looks Adhyël dead in the eyes. “Sometimes we tell lies to the ones we love in order to protect them.”

Adhyël doesn’t respond to that, but does seem to study Marto more closely.

“What about this?” Marto asks, gesturing to his left side where the inky black and purple tattoo is. “Will this all end in fire and death for me because of this mark?”

Adhyël reaches out to touch it and Marto shivers from the sudden spike of cold. The devil smirks and pulls the halfling knight close, brushing his unkempt, tousled blonde hair back as he tilts Marto’s face up towards his. Just as his heart begins to beat against his ribs, Adhyël stops a hair’s breadth away from Marto’s half parted lips.

“It was over for me after the first kiss,” he whispers.

“Then I’d best gather my friends and head on down to Phlegethos to seal the deal,” Marto utters softly.

Adhyël tilts his head to the side, a surprised smile quirking his lips. “Who told you? It was Ophanim wasn’t it? Damn him, can’t keep his big mouth shut.” The change is subtle, but it is enough to break the spell a little for Marto. The halfling decides to stay tactfully mute on where he heard the information.

Adhyël didn’t really answer his question though and it makes Marto worry about a thought he had earlier. He doesn’t know if anyone else other than Zola has been marked, however…

“Remember last time you were in a good mood,” he begins slowly, “You said you would spare people?”

“Oh, now we’re having a conversation,” Adhyël coos. He sits up straighter, still holding onto Marto but his attention is different now. “Go on. This is about Zola, isn’t it?”

Marto hesitates. “Well…”

He suddenly remembers what the Wise Guy at the Temple of Selûne told him and is thinking it would be better if he’d kept his mouth shut.

“Ophanim is totally obsessed with Zola but…” Adhyël says, picking up on Marto’s uncertainty easily. He pretends to think for a moment. “Yes, I could help with this.”

It was interesting seeing the light of hunger change from something sexual into something a bit more busienss like. It was a different kind of alluring and Marto did not want to be drawn down into that particular hole.

“No, no I- I shouldn’t have said anything.” He gets up and begins to pace back and forth.

“All you need to do is give Ophanim, something bigger and shinier to chase after,” Adhyël offers, watching Marto’s naked form as he walks around, a new kind of smile spreading across his face. “When you do, I can make sure she is put into a box and shipped out of harm’s way.”

Marto doesn’t stop, nor does he answer. He wants to leave, to wake up. But if this is a dream then why does he body ache like he’s just had the most mind-breaking sex he’s ever had, probably ever will have, in his entire lifetime? Not to mention all of these “love marks” in places that he never thought he’d-

A hand grabs his, stopping his movement. He is then pulled down into Adhyël’s lap where he wraps his arms around Marto’s smaller muscular form, holding him still, holding him close, as he looks deep into the halfling’s blue eyes.

“I can make it so Zola is safe. She doesn’t have to die. All I need is-”

There is a sudden jolt in reality, almost like Adhyël, the desert, the sky, everything, skips a beat. It’s undeniably jarring and Marto looks around confused. Adhyël’s pleasing expression twists into one of extreme annoyance – the kind of vexation someone gets when he knows a child has done something incredibly wrong.

He looks up and says, “I am going to k-”

Reality is suddenly tearing apart. Streaks of light and lightning shred across the sky as the ground and everything around him falls away. Marto is thrown across dimensions before abruptly stopping in a vast open space. His friends – Zola, Velania, Pipper, and Sorrel – are there, as are their enemies – Orphanim, Rahmiël, Zah’Ranin and the silent fiend – all standing in a circle. Adhyël is across from him, stark naked, just like he was a moment before when it was just the two of them. Marto looks down at himself and sees that he is similarly unclothed.

“Hi Marto!” Pipper shouts across the way at him, waving.

“Marto?” He turns at the sound of Zola’s voice. “Why are you na…” she trails off as she sees Zah’Ranin. The drow paladin scowls in sudden anger.

Then the fiend that really loves fire, the one they faced in the Cave of Selûne, Rahmiël, looks between him and Adhyël, says something Marto doesn’t quite catch over the increasing noise from everyone else, before waving her hands.

Pain. Sudden and excruciating pain tears into his spine. From the base of his neck to the middle of his back it feels like someone has reached into his body and is crushing him from the inside. He doubles over, bile rising up as he lets out a cry. Just as he’s about to throw up, Marto suddenly awakens in his room at Fort Ettin.

It takes him a moment to orient himself. Marto feels his body aching in the exact same way it did when he was supposedly dreaming. When he is finally able to stand – the pain rocketing through him forces him to lay still for a few minutes – he goes over to the mirror, takes off his clothes and sees all the same marks he had in his “dream” are there on his body. Then, carefully and full of dreadful certainty, Marto tries to get a glimpse of the new mark he knows is on his back.

It is cold to the touch and the symbols are different, which means Marto does not know what it says. He tries casting identity on it but all he gets are the same answers he got with the first mark. It’s going to take finding someone who can read it and the only place he knows who has people who can is in Daring Heights…



Continued in ‘Nightmares & Dreamscapes’ ❤️‍🔥

*Bitter Sweet Love by Michael Faudet
**A reworked passage from Dirty Pretty Things by Michael Faudet Pretty Things by Michael Faudet
***The Bones Below by Sierra DeMulder