And Shalt Be What Thou Art Promised....



Lady Macbeth lounged back on her four poster bed and watched lazily as the messenger who bought word of her husbands return silently left the room, closing the doors behind him as he did so. She sighed in almost sexual pleasure as she thought of the new lands and titles her husband had been awarded by their king, and the wealth that would come with them. For if there was one thing that Lady Macbeth adored above all others, her husband included, it was money and the feeling of power that came from having money. Thane of Glamis already and now too Thane of Cawdor, and if those terrible sisters were to be trusted at all the best was still to come. Lady Macbeth hardly dare even think of such a thing, but goose pimples appeared all over her body as she did, King of Scotland! Queen Macbeth she decided had a nice ring to it, a slow smile spread across her face as she thought of all those richer than her, all those who had looked down on her in court soon having to kneel in her presence. But then another thought intruded upon her silent reverie, how was this great thing to come about? The present King was in good health, indeed he was staying that very night in her castle...And there it was. A solution so simple she wondered why she hadn't thought of it before. Many things can befall a man in the night, and who is to say that the king doesn't have a weak heart or is prone to maladies of the head. It would be so easy, she thought to herself the smile back on her pretty face, the cooks keep rat poison in their stores and the guards could be bribed or, if necessary, killed.
Macbeth, she knew, would not approve of her schemes, but there were ways of persuading him to her, their, cause. But what if he still would not do the deed himself? Lady Macbeth knew that she too must be prepared to carry out bloody murder on the king, but deep down she also knew that she was not capable of such a thing. This thought angered her above all others. How could those witches place such a prize before her and then snatch it away as quickly as it was given? Lady Macbeth thought of the witches and the strange powers they possessed, that perhaps they had it their power to help her? To give her strength? Lady Macbeth prostrated herself on the bed and prayed out loud....

"Come, you spirits that tend on mortal thoughts,
Unsex me here;
And fill me, from the crown to the toe, 
Top-full of direst cruelty!
Make thick my blood, and stop up the passage to remorse
That no compunctious visitings of nature should shake my fell purpose,
Nor keep peace between the effect and it!
Come to my woman's breasts, and take my milk for gall,
You murdering wherever in your sightless substances
You wait on nature's mischief!
Come, thick and pall thee in the dunnest smoke of hell, 
That my keen knife see not the wound it makes,
Nor heaven peep through the blanket of the dark,
To cry hold, HOLD!"

This last was shouted as Lady Macbeth's ambition and desire came flooding out. Physically drained and sweating Lady Macbeth settled her arched body back onto the soft bed and waited silently for a response. For some minutes all she heard was the heavy rain and the odd rumble of thunder from far away. Then suddenly a flash of lightning blasted through the glass of her window showering the room with lethal shards and lighting it so brightly that Lady Macbeth was forced to cover her eyes. She winced as a piece of glass raked through the flesh of her forearm, then opened her eyes quickly upon smelling smoke. She found it difficult to focus in the gloom of evening but thought she could see an expensive couch smouldering in one corner of the room. As her eyes slowly adjusted once more to the dark she also spied a dark shape looming just beyond the couch...no, three dark shapes huddled together. One of them slowly raised its head and as it's hood shifted slightly Lady Macbeth saw in the fiery, orange glow the ugliest face she had ever seen on any woman. Her face was deeply lined and grime covered, her head barely covered by brittle strands of dirty white hair. Drool slowly trickled from one corner of her smiling mouth. But her eyes were the worst of all, they were completely white and yet Lady Macbeth knew the hag was staring right at her. Lady Macbeth ran to the window still clutching the silk sheets in her hand, trying to get as far away from this apparition as she could. All thoughts of murder fled from her mind to be replaced by fear. The leading witch slowly raised her right arm and pointed it directly at the shaking woman, closely followed by her two companions, until all three were just stood there silent and pointing. They spoke quietly, each in succession, and Lady Macbeth thought that if the dead could speak it would be in tones similar to theirs.

"You requested power"
"Power we shall give"
"And a our price shall we take"
"Done"
"And done"
"And done"

Lady Macbeths mouth was opening and closing but no words would come such was her fright, but it was too late. The witches' hands began to glow with an unearthly green light, a glow that slowly increased in size until the witches were once more just shadows. Lady Macbeth fancied that she could see in that strange glow another place, a place full of strange landscapes and even stranger creatures. Beasts so large that they dwarfed even her husband's plough-horses. But then the witches whispered a word and the orb of light moved forward, of off their hands and towards Lady Macbeth, who, seeing that which shouldn't have been possible, had stood and was trying to fend of the magic with her hands. But the light continued onwards until it completely engulfed the still struggling Lady Macbeth and then slowly lifted the woman off her feet. Lady Macbeth reached a height of three foot from the floor before the glowing ball exploded in a fury of green fire, flinging her burning body out of the window and into the dark and stormy night beyond. 

Mercifully she landed in the stagnant moat surrounding, but doing little in the way of defending, Glamis castle. The cold waters extinguished the magical flame. Deep in the murky water it took Lady Macbeth some time to realise which way was up, but soon she was kicking as hard as she could for the surface, not wishing to drown after all that she had been through that night. As soon as her head cleared the water she took a deep breath and started swimming for the shallow bank of the moat. It wasn't long before she was using clumps of grass to pull herself out of the water up the muddy slope, the worsening rain making her task all the more difficult. When she was safely away from the waters edge Lady Macbeth turned back and, pushing wet hair out of her eyes, looked back up at her window. For a brief moment she saw three shapes silhouetted there, but then they were gone. Just vanished, and Lady Macbeth cared not at all to where. She stood up ready to begin the long trek to the other side of the castle when she noticed something peculiar, despite having been set on fire she was in perfect health, even the cut on her arm had healed. She held her arm up in front of her to get a better look and noticed that some moss or lichen from the moat had attached itself to her there. She used her other hand to move it off, or at least she tried to. As she rubbed her arm with her hand she felt nothing there, and yet her arm definitely had something green on it. Lady Macbeth frowned in confusion, perhaps this was the witches' idea of power: turning her skin green or, more likely, her wits were addled from the previous events of the evening. She just shrugged and began the trek to the drawbridge, wanting nothing more now than to get out of her wet clothes and into a steaming scented bath. As she walked Lady Macbeth noticed that her legs were not suffering the from the exertion she normally felt at having to walk through the woods, in fact she felt stronger than she ever had before and even broke into a run for a short time. Lifting her skirts to do so she saw that her legs were now massively muscled giving them the appearance of a man's limbs, except for the absence of hair, power indeed! Within a short time Lady Macbeth could see the light from the torches at her castles gate and stopped suddenly when she realised she had no explanation for her being outside soaking wet at this time of night. Standing just outside the ring of light she examined her arm once more, hoping the green substance had come off in her flight, but instead it appeared to have spread covering now everything below her elbow. Lady Macbeth noticed also that the colour had darkened slightly, apart from the palm of her hand, which was yellow. Was it her imagination or were her fingernails also slightly longer? Thoughts of explanations forgotten Lady Macbeth thrust the offending arm inside her clothing and walked straight for the door, ignoring the guard's alarmed cries she strode on into the castle heading straight for the guest bedroom. She was still not ready to return to her own room with its memories of hooded witches and their green fire.  Lady Macbeth slammed shut the door behind her and walked straight over to the mirror savagely removing her clothes as she went, and not noticing the deep rents in them that she was causing. As she finally saw her reflection before her she let out a tiny gasp. Far from being confined to her arm the green stain now covered most of her body, but her legs were the worst of all. They had swollen up to monstrous proportions, baring little resemblance to the well-formed feminine appendages they had been only minutes before. And yes, her fingernails were longer, much longer than they should have been, on both hands. Lady Macbeth ran both her hands through her wet hair as she tried to understand what was happening to her, but as she did so it came away from her scalp in great soggy clumps. Lady Macbeth let out a scream at this new humiliation and ran to the bed, intending to throw herself upon it, and hoping to wake up and find that this had all been some terrible dream. Yet despite her revulsion at what was happening to her body Lady Macbeth was strangely unafraid, curious even. She opened her eyes once more and glanced at her arms spread out on the bed. In contrast to what was happening below her waist her arms appeared to have shrunk slightly, and her skin had, in parts, taken on a scaly appearance. Lady Macbeth took a deep breath and stood up, leaving what was left of her hair behind on the bed. Her back stubbornly refused to accommodate her however and she was only able to stoop semi-erect. In this fashion she staggered back to the mirror determined now to see the witches work through to its end. She barely recognised the woman in the mirror, for all her body hair was now missing and her whole body was a deep green. Lady Macbeth giggled when she caught herself thinking what a lovely colour it was. As she watched more and more scales grew all over her body until she was covered in them from head to clawed toe. Lady Macbeth's mouth suddenly felt incredibly cramped. Opening it she saw that her teeth were slowly growing outwards, pushing out of her bleeding gums and becoming wickedly sharp. She remembered as a girl when she had marvelled at a large striped cat in a travelling circus, and had thought at the time that she would never again see fangs so large. Now here she was with teeth much larger. Her mouth was pushing outwards seemingly to accommodate her new fangs, and also becoming wider until it seemed to stretch half-way around her enlarging head. Lady Macbeth tried to reach up with her hands to feel her new head but found that her arms had become so short that they no longer reached far enough. Glancing down at her arms she watched the four fingers on each hand slowly fuse into two with incredibly sharp claws, her thumbs disappearing into her wrists. A similar thing was happening to her feet that now bore only three claw-tipped toes each. A stretching sound brought Lady Macbeth's attention to her back. The skin at her back was straining against something that was growing out of the base of her back. Lady Macbeth knew she was growing a tail even before it burst forth and extended out four feet behind her helping her balance now that her cramping spine had forced her into an even greater stoop. Lady Macbeth looked in the mirror at the strange beast she had become and remembered having seen something like it in the witches fire, only much larger. As she thought this she began to grow, slowly at first, her whole body expanding. But as she grew something even more terrible then her physical transformation was occurring. Lady Macbeth was losing her humanity, becoming a beast in mind as well as in body. Just as she got larger her memories vanished and with them the fear of losing herself. Before long she was fifteen feet tall and thinking of nothing more than escaping from the tiny room and looking for food...

The king had never even heard of Tyrannosaurus Rex, let alone seen one. Which was a shame because when the feast ended and he went up to the guestroom for the night he was eaten by one. 

Macbeth was crowned as the new king of Scotland one week later.