Estimated reading time: 9 minutes
'You have no control. You need no control. Surrender it. Find out who you are.'
The aurochs fought again to relax the tension in her face. It just moved deeper into her shoulders instead.
The high, mossy platform should have been a point of calm, a place to breathe, rest and recollect herself, a small, private island above the forest overlooking the shelter she'd claimed beneath it. But a familiar thread of doubt ran through her spine, as always, and one she was sure had become entwined with her nervous system.
Feeling that itch down her back, she straightened herself in determination rather than comfort, and sat a little taller beneath the single, gnarled rowan tree. It seemed just as uncomfortable and out of place here as she was, growing out from a rocky cleft on the side of the cramped platform, and had too lost its identity in the faded runes in its bark. The dulled carvings of her own horns rolled through her mind, but she didn't raise her hand to them. She didn't need to check again how shallow they were. She knew. She knew.
Once more, she failed to relax her muscles.
The dying light of dusk leaked in between the encircling standing stones. Amethyst bled into the sky. The cold air didn't move. Crickets chirped below, an owl hooted. Twilight was descending.
A deep and forced breath lightened her body, thick with juniper smoke and the scent of recent rain. But in spite of it, the thread of conflict burrowed deeper into her system.
The need to run was overwhelming. Adrenaline surged, pure power, enough to flee this place and its purpose and return to hiding down below where everything was safe, and the strange, new world was shut away.
But her rational mind was still there; escape had brought it back to the surface, and as it slowly broke through, it reminded her that her familiar little shelter held nothing for her but stagnation and exhaustion. She didn't want this towering isolation, but she needed it. This was how she would truly reclaim herself, how she would shed her perpetual defence and become One again. Another deep breath. The smoke began at last to soften her mind, and finally, her shoulders loosened.
'Give up control.' She'd been surviving for so long, an endless state of fight or flight. But now, finally, she could ease. Finally, she could drop her armour. No more wasted energy. No more stifled breath.
Again, she forced the tension in her face away.
Smoke swam in her head. She fought the panic of lost control and concentrated. 'Look inwards without turning.' Don't move. Don't slip. Just look.
She closed her eyes. Her fingers dug into the moss, grounding herself to her surroundings. 'Stay in the Now.' Reflect, don't revert.
The soft grunt of the sleeping bear down below acted as a gentle anchor, and the flap of swan wings on the reedy lake. Allies the both of them, and the knights passing in the distance, but none of them could help her now. This, she had to do alone. And each of them knew that; not one tried to intrude.
'Breathe.'
Smoke filled her.
And darkness rose to her surface.
Terror snaked around her throat, but she continued taking breath after careful breath, separating herself from it and letting those wretched shadows rise. Higher and higher they came, and with them the growing suffocation, moving deeper from throat to chest.
The aurochs steeled herself. She remained grounded, eyes closed. The darkness had to come out. She couldn't rid herself of it until she faced it, and merge with what genuine light remained.
The high, mossy platform should have been a point of calm, a place to breathe, rest and recollect herself, a small, private island above the forest overlooking the shelter she'd claimed beneath it. But a familiar thread of doubt ran through her spine, as always, and one she was sure had become entwined with her nervous system.
Feeling that itch down her back, she straightened herself in determination rather than comfort, and sat a little taller beneath the single, gnarled rowan tree. It seemed just as uncomfortable and out of place here as she was, growing out from a rocky cleft on the side of the cramped platform, and had too lost its identity in the faded runes in its bark. The dulled carvings of her own horns rolled through her mind, but she didn't raise her hand to them. She didn't need to check again how shallow they were. She knew. She knew.
Once more, she failed to relax her muscles.
The dying light of dusk leaked in between the encircling standing stones. Amethyst bled into the sky. The cold air didn't move. Crickets chirped below, an owl hooted. Twilight was descending.
A deep and forced breath lightened her body, thick with juniper smoke and the scent of recent rain. But in spite of it, the thread of conflict burrowed deeper into her system.
The need to run was overwhelming. Adrenaline surged, pure power, enough to flee this place and its purpose and return to hiding down below where everything was safe, and the strange, new world was shut away.
But her rational mind was still there; escape had brought it back to the surface, and as it slowly broke through, it reminded her that her familiar little shelter held nothing for her but stagnation and exhaustion. She didn't want this towering isolation, but she needed it. This was how she would truly reclaim herself, how she would shed her perpetual defence and become One again. Another deep breath. The smoke began at last to soften her mind, and finally, her shoulders loosened.
'Give up control.' She'd been surviving for so long, an endless state of fight or flight. But now, finally, she could ease. Finally, she could drop her armour. No more wasted energy. No more stifled breath.
Again, she forced the tension in her face away.
Smoke swam in her head. She fought the panic of lost control and concentrated. 'Look inwards without turning.' Don't move. Don't slip. Just look.
She closed her eyes. Her fingers dug into the moss, grounding herself to her surroundings. 'Stay in the Now.' Reflect, don't revert.
The soft grunt of the sleeping bear down below acted as a gentle anchor, and the flap of swan wings on the reedy lake. Allies the both of them, and the knights passing in the distance, but none of them could help her now. This, she had to do alone. And each of them knew that; not one tried to intrude.
'Breathe.'
Smoke filled her.
And darkness rose to her surface.
Terror snaked around her throat, but she continued taking breath after careful breath, separating herself from it and letting those wretched shadows rise. Higher and higher they came, and with them the growing suffocation, moving deeper from throat to chest.
The aurochs steeled herself. She remained grounded, eyes closed. The darkness had to come out. She couldn't rid herself of it until she faced it, and merge with what genuine light remained.
"Horn of Uruz,
Hold of Algiz,
Infuse me, force and flame,
As darkness seethes
And devils rise,
Weave blood and bone with steel.
Bring heart and soul to heel."
Her voice trailed off. She finished the third iteration before the suffocation became crushing, and barely controlled her panic as her eyes tore open.
Darkness spilled before her.
Her already thundering heart almost burst.
Oily black smoke hung between the standing stones. Long, grey, gnarled fingers clawed out towards her from the clouds, turning the moss black where they touched like the creeping stroke of death. Once-effeminate silhouettes hunched and lurched where the darkness thinned, bodies too long and heavy for their limbs, and huge, white, glowing eyes stared back when the moonlight caught them, like ghastly pools of nightmare. Nightmare.
Countless mara crept into the circle beneath their cloak of shadow, their blind sights fixed on her. She could hear them wheezing, smell the nightshade, taste their malice. She fought to keep calm and let them approach, in spite of every fibre of her being screaming to get up and run.
But she'd survived so much. What was one more struggle?
Getting air into her lungs had become a challenge of its own, but still she sat, tall and determined, watching each demon's slow advance. She didn't flinch even as one of them screamed a guttural hiss and leapt onto her chest, nor let alarm get the better of her as the cold, heavy paralysis set in. But she was not unarmed. The stones, the smoke, the rowan tree, all worked against the mara, and the mara themselves were desperate. The night hadn't yet set in; they were not at full power. This time, the aurochs would face them on her own terms.
In a single, smooth movement, she reached out and seized its bony wrist, and with that tight clutch, another scream, air-rending and ear-piercing, ripped from the mara's throat. The demon immediately disintegrated into a pile of twigs.
Then the next came, as if blind to witness, and suffered the same fate.
The third was quick to learn and changed its attack, climbing upon her shoulders instead, and another followed on the other side. Neither made it. One she speared calmly with her splintered horns, and the other she grasped just as smoothly by the throat.
Her solid touch eradicated every mara as they came, and her mind stayed as steady as she could make it despite the constant battle for breath until the smoke and suffocation finally dissipated, and the foetid mara were no more.
It took a long moment before her hands ceased to shake and the race of her heart began to slow. But that battle, brief as it was, was only the beginning. The worst was still to come, and that knowledge hitched a snarl in her lip.
Again the aurochs steadied herself, even as she gasped for breath - not even the dust of her demons would get the satisfaction - and her eyes sank to the shadowy twigs scattered around her.
Hesitation pinned her hands to her knees for only a moment before she reached out and gathered them. Some, she threw into the juniper fire; others, she clutched in her hands. She hesitated again as the noxious smell of darkness, a strange odour now not of nightshade but of too much aniseed, twisted her face.
She closed her eyes as sour tears filled them, sat straight again, and sang.
"Bone, shadow,
And echo shorn.
Discard the dead to Ing,
Reforge the ashes,
Rise through flame.
Through sacrifice I soar.
Through seed I restore."
She raised the two handfuls of twigs to her mouth, clamped them between her teeth with resignation, and bit down, hard. The pieces scattered. Much stayed on her tongue. She didn't spit them out. Instead, she reached out for the flask set on a stone before her, unstoppered it, held her breath, and drank. It took all of her strength not to heave it all back up. The flask suffered instead.
Shards of glass dropped from her hand as her muscles loosened, and she gave herself over to the magic.
'Let it go. Surrender to it.' Everything she'd held onto so tightly, every black and white thing she'd held for so long, was released in that single draught.
Pain set in quickly. Her throat burned, her stomach, her fingertips, her eyes. She hadn't expected it to be this strong.
Then panic flashed in, or something more potent, wiping her mind clear while alarm ripped her eyes open. All she could think of was escape. But it was too late. She knew it was too late. It was too late the moment she'd sat down beneath the rowan's shadow. By coming here at all, she had committed.
She stifled a cough in an attempt to regain control, but it tore its way out anyway. Flecks of blood spattered her lips and the heat in her chest redoubled.
'You have no control.'
The words swam in her mind, and she fought back another cough and the maddening spin of her head. She had committed. Committed, knowing there were only two ways this could go.
'You need no control.'
She slipped off of her knees and fell to her palms, bloody saliva streaming from her lips, stomach churning with the threat of purge. She barely felt the small hand resting on her shoulder, or registered through burning, teary eyes the shadow of elk antlers on the ground before her.
'Surrender it.'
But it was enough. She seized the wrist for comfort just as her stifled, desperate cough became a choke.
'Find out who you are.'
Thick blood splattered over the moss. She lost the hand, lost her balance, tipped head-first to the ground. Her broad horns speared the moss, sparing her a face full of dirt as she suffocated in shallow, bubbling breaths.
Her skull hurt. Something was trying to break out of it.
Her skin tingled. Something was trying to rip free.
Her head rose from the ground, pushed higher as her horns began to grow. And in that moment, between broken breath and a screaming agony she couldn't express, she felt relief.
It was happening.
Haze set in.
The roar of the bear, the honk of the swan, the horns of the knights, all of it played distantly against her eardrums.
And she convulsed.
'Surrender.'
She let the change happen.
It was the only way she could be One again.