No gusts of wind were going through the dense forest, only a slow barely noticeable flow of air. The grand trees that grew above all else were few and far apart, just enough to create a high canopy without any gaps, but between them were many regular trees, looking like frail saplings next to their grand brethren. A soothing green light shone from the trees' hazy crowns upon high, as if clouds made of light hang in the air, granting light to see but denying far sight at the same time.
The girl had walked far into the forest, the edge was long out of sight, when she stumbled upon another person. It was a corpse lying under a tree. Its skin was mostly torn off, all flesh was stripped and the bones had begun to bleach in the grand trees' light. It was clothed and holding a flask of something looking like alcohol. Did the person die because they held on to their possessions? Or did they hold on to their possessions because they were weak and that was the reason why they died? The girl walked on. She would have to find a way through this maze of trees before she ended the same way. Finding a river would be the first step to her survival.
One thing had become apparent to her as she walked deeper into the forest: a tingling feeling, not dissimilar to entering a place of power, but different. It was weaker in a sense, but also stronger. It didn't feel as if she could perceive faraway places, but she felt the presence of the forest itself clearly. As far as she had seen from the outside, the forest was isolated from all ley-lines, possibly to make discovery impossible – she had still managed it, however – and to keep its strength inside. Like a pond without an outlet, the forest must have built up power over thousands of years, resulting in the magnificent place she was wandering now. Animals seemed to hide and live in every corner. She didn't pass a single tree without a squirrel, beetles, or butterflies swarming on or around it. Birds in the crowns sang their songs, in the distance she could see deer and small forest horses. And so, her day dragged on. She found a brook and initially wanted to walk up the slope along its course, but for every step she took she seemed to be diverted, she forgot directions and before she could correct her path, she was heading down the slopes again. A confusing spirit kept her inside. She gave up on her attempt and simply drank from the brook. She would need to stick to it for a while, without water skins, she could not venture far.
She started to get hungry, the serpent told her to use the dark as cover and wait in the shadows until an animal passed her by, but she wanted to hunt, not lurk. And so she set out into the treetops to get a good overview.
The sun's light fled form the forest, the green haze shining from the treetops remained, suffocating the forest with a sort of nebulous bright darkness, snuffing out all light but its own. But The girl was not hindered by that. Now, more than ever, the shining warmth was revealed to her.
It did not take her long until she could find prey. A deer sleeping a bit away from the herd, under a tree. Now it was just a matter of getting closer without being noticed. Carefully, the girl hopped from branch to branch. With every rustling of leaves, another pair of ears twitched among the herd. The girl remained on a branch for a while, waiting for the herd to calm down, but they were alert now. Was it the girl's scent that betrayed her? She was sure it was something like that. Maybe she will take a bath the next morning.
The herd was not calming down and the girl decided that it was time to make her move. She estimated the distance and how far she could jump from where she was. She could reach the isolated doe. She was around three or four paces away from the herd. Even if she landed on it, it could still escape. That's when she had an idea. She pressed her tongue to the roof of her mouth, in that peculiar place she had found quite some time ago. She felt the liquid being pressed out of her upper fangs. Yes, this was what she needed. She pressed out more venom, catching it in in her lower lip, then dipped all her claws in it, so they were well coated and catching a big drop between skin and claw, like a quill soaks up ink.
With her claws readied, she leapt forward. She felt she could reach the doe. As her feet left the branch, a loud rustling could be heard. A few deer lifted their head, the girl's target was among them, but when it noticed the shadow approaching it with claws stretched forward, it was too late.
She dug her claws into the prey's skin, trying to hold on as it struggled and called for help with a high-pitched bawl. Most of the others fled, but two brave ones came to the prey's help. They kicked the girl with their front legs, over and over, but the girl held on. She wanted to bite her prey, put more venom inside of it, but the hooves of the brave deer started to hurt and leave bruises. She let go, letting her prey escape, then quickly scaled the next tree away from the attacks. Now she just had to follow the panicked animal.
She had followed her prey for long when she found it twitching and struggling on the floor, unable to get back on its feet. It was thrashing around wildly when the girl came closer and reached for its neck. Digging the big claw on her thumb deep into the skin, the girl tore open the jugular and lifted the deer by its hind feet, letting all the blood run out of the animal.
With no tools to make a fire or strip down the corpse, the girl decided to just eat her prey raw. She knew of the many nutritious parts of the animal, like liver, heart, and lungs, it was her first time eating them raw however and was disgusted by it, yet she knew she'd have to survive here, and being picky never helped, so she had her fill of raw meat and organs. Sparing the effort to light a fire and cook her meal also allowed her to spend more time wandering, although her belly felt heavy, and so she climbed back up on a tree and took to sleeping on a broad branch, arms and legs hanging down.
And so, her days in the forest continued. She wandered in following the slight breeze. When she was hungry, she hunted, when she was thirsty, she found a brook. She noticed a certain easiness to these things. And when she slept, she dreamt not of foreign lands, but of the forest, even her mind could no longer leave this place.
She wandered on in her dream, soared through the green skies, discovered lakes, small mountains, rocky spires, many different places within the vast valley. All the while, she was drawn, pushed towards a certain point. As if a constant but weak wind was pumping energy throughout the forest. A power lay dormant here, the built-up energy that this valley had accumulated by cutting itself off from the stream of life force, was like its blanket, and the forest was its dream. She knew whatever pumping this energy, this "heart", must be the centre of power. If she could not find the embrace of dreamers there, she would find someone who knew.
The forest had become unreal. A place where impossibilities bled into existence. Occasionally, she would meet other "people", beings of spiritual and mundane nature at the same moment. Some would speak to her like one would to a guest in another one's house, others threatened her, again others simply went their own way again. The longer she stayed, the more these people felt familiar. In one of her dreams, she met Opsherna. He was friendly, but sad. He danced with her for a while. She was skipping around him with a happy tune on her lips, and he stomped the ground rhythmically with his hooves, his voice droning a low pitch throughout the forest and her mind. She didn't know what to make of it, but she had enjoyed it.
At other times, she met weird apparitions, seemingly formed from the haze itself. They waved at her, but rarely spoke, fleeting away from her reality, back into the haze. And if, they didn't say much that made sense. Very few things made sense in a dream after all. "You can never see anything new in a dream." Faan had once told her, while they were still dreaming together. She had to face many memories back then. But with Faan at her side, she managed to relive her past and put it to rest, making way for the future. "Everything you see, hear, do, in a dream is something you already saw, heard, did, just in a new context. That is why everything in a dream feels somewhat familiar." Faan was a master of dreaming, not just because cats liked to nap a lot, but also because in dreams, minds are more permeable, allowing entry to spirits such as him. In a dream, a mind is not restrained of the rules of the real world. It becomes less real, more prone to perceive and accept things from beyond the veil. The veil, that thin membrane separating our world of rules from the world of the possibilities, was weaker here than anywhere else Nannade had witnessed, and in her dreams, it seemed to almost dissolve, her mind dangerously close to non-existence.
After almost a dozen days, she started to sense the heart coming closer ever faster. She had been walking into large depression in the ground for a while, probably the deepest part of the valley, in more than one sense. She could even feel the air and the haze getting thicker, almost as if animals and spirits could form out of them at any moment. The grand trees, that towered above all other, became more frequent as she moved on.
She came to a line of grand trees standing so close together, the bases of their trunks touched. She'd have to climb the trees and squeeze between them where they were further apart. She climbed up one of the grand trees and saw that the area beyond was a clearing about ten dozen feet in diameter, surrounded entirely by grand trees. She could barely see the other side through all the haze. In the middle stood a tree consisting of many trunks twisting together into one, spreading its branches and leaves far over the clearing. The base of all the trunks seemed knobbly and malformed from this distance. She crawled around the tree she was clinging to and slowly, got down towards the ground of the clearing, letting herself fall the last few feet.
As she landed, her mind blinked for a moment. Reality, coherent thought, and logic disappearing around her for a heartbeat. She saw herself in a different place.
It was similar to the clearing, but there were no outwards bounds, despite there not being any more haze in the air. Her sight reached far into the distance, unimpeded, and revealed to her an empty landscape of soft, upturned soil. She still saw the tree of many trunks, twisting upwards, but now she also saw the haze as it flowed from the roots, up the trunks, in the spiralling grooves and through the tree's crown into an unlimited sky.
She took a few careful steps closer. She could hear her every step reverberating from the infinitely far away walls. As she got closer, she started to see the trunks of the tree better. What she previously saw as knobbly turned out to be the shape of human bodies, a trunk growing upwards from each person.
"Are you the embrace of dreamers?" She asked, careful not to speak too loudly, lest the echo might crush her.
"We are many things, young dreamer." A hundred voices like swaying trees answered from the centre. The haze flowing up the tree was pulsating with its words.
"I have come here to seek approval."
Again, the voices blew from the tree, carrying haze and words her way. "Approval for what?"
"That I am still the individual I was before I committed the great sacrilege, I have to pass this test of moral commensuration."
A short while passed before the voices answered. "Individual. Sacrilege. Moral Commensuration." It seemed to contemplate these words. "Such long and heavy words, convenient for crushing a mind with their sheer weight."
"Why are you telling me?"
"Because you accept them."
"It is the task I have been given."
"It is the task you have been told. You have made it here, you have found this place, you have survived this place. Do not carry the words of another here, only yourself."
Were the voices patronizing her? "I have... I have committed a great sin, and I must prove that I am still human... crolachan... a person worth living... that I still am the Nannade I was before, that I have not turned into a monster."
Another moment of silence. "Monster." The voices answered finally. "What a strong word."
Darkness rushed in from all sides, and swallowed the clearing, along with the girl. When it receded, like rushing through a hole in the floor, she saw herself standing in a familiar forest. It was without haze and without grand trees. A small brook flowed down the slope, and there a huge being knelt. She recognized the werewolf. Not just as a werewolf but as the werewolf that attacked Freddy. She saw Nannade and Garetas approaching, ready to fight. Then she heard what the wolf had said with its ethereal voice back then.
"Stay away. This body can only feed." A wailing, crying voice echoed through her head.
Nannade answered in the old tongue, whispered with her mouth, but screamed in her mind. "You attacked my friend. He might die."
"I know. The boy was dear to my sister in law. I knew him."
"Then why did you do it?"
"Because it's what my nature dictates. There is no human and no wolf left. Only the hunger."
Their exchange was almost silent, Garetas was too focussed ahead to listen to what she said behind his back. Their fight broke out, the two slung their spells, fire and fists impacting on the monstrosity, as it wailed in pain and anger. "We will kill you!" it threatened them. "And then we will go on to kill and feed more. Not to survive, but to gorge and for the glorious carnage."
The girl remembered this fight all too well. Whenever she saw her reflection these days, she remembered the beast's shaggy exterior, half human, half wolf, but both crying.
Nannade had started dancing and singing. She sang a lullaby, not in the old tongue, but what mother had taught her. The words seemed alien and weird to her now, but once, it was the only thing her mother could bring forth when Nannade lay in her lap after a long day alone and separated. The girl remembered that Nannade wanted to lull the beast to sleep to kill it softly. But the rage kept it awake. When she had decided on using fire in its lungs, she cried a bit inside, disgusted with herself.
"I wanted strength. But the beast wanted to satiate its lust and hunger. I thought it wanted the same thing I wanted. It didn't. Please don't find out my name. I do not want to be remembered a beast." That was the last thing the soul within that beast said to her before Garetas move to cut the beast's throat open.
Finally, the beast was felled by Nannade's and Garetas' combined efforts. The forest disappeared into haze and the girl was back on the clearing with the tree of many trunks.
"Why are you showing me this?" the girl asked the tree.
"They are your memories. You asked the question, but to answer it, you must know what these words mean."
The girl was starting to get irritated. "Why must I answer it, are you not the ones who must approve of me?"
"If you cannot comprehend the question, you cannot comprehend the answer."
"Then what do I have to comprehend?"
"What it means to be a monster. What it means to be the girl. What it means to be the serpent."
Darkness again came rushing in towards the girl. This time, the darkness receded to be replaced by another form of darkness, one that muffled everything, not unending. She heard a door open, then close. A disgusting stench filled her nose. She heard chains rustling and two voices speaking. Then someone caressed her, softly. She felt something being pulled from her eyes and ears. She saw a stranger kneeling before a child in a cold, candle-lit room. She started to recognize the man. It was Garetas.
She heard the voice of her mother. "It's alright, sweetie. This man will take you away from here. He'll set you free."
She was back in the basement. Young Nannade on the floor in front of her. She heard her mother's last words again. "You have to be strong now, I will be gone, but if you are strong, then I will be proud of you when we see each other again. You are never alone. Remember that. There are always others with you. You are loved." It was so similar to what she had said to her when her father stopped coming home. "Be strong, Nannade, do not let yourself be broken. I love you."
The girl couldn't hold her tears back, but she suppressed her cries and wiped her eyes, because she wanted to see and hear her mother as much as possible; she sank to the floor. She wanted to hold her mother again, but the memory did not grant her more than she already had, memories. The cloth was put back over young Nannade and the girl's surroundings were muffled again. She felt herself being pressed on the ground, her throat tightening, her blindfolds soaking wet, being led by the hand, then Garetas took her blindfolds off again.
The landscape changed. The forest they crossed outside the city rushed her by. Then she saw Garetas again, he knelt before Nannade.
"What's your name? I am Garetas, and I will be your teacher."
"My Name is Fibi." young Nannade replied shily.
Garrett shook his head. "No. I mean the long name. The name your parents used when no one else was around."
Young Nannade was intimidated. She looked around, then cautiously said "Nannade."
"Very good. Nannade. That is your name. From this day forth, no one will call you Fibi anymore."
The girl remembered this. This was the moment, that Nannade was truly born from this womb of a dungeon. When her name became herself. Nannade was no longer a secret, whispered in the dark away from human ears. She could scream it if she wanted to. She could tell everyone. The name she cast off. Now she realized it. To cast it off was to cast this past off. This past that was still with her. Darkness rushed back in and carried her back to the clearing.
The tree raised its ethereal voices again. "Do you understand what the name Nannade means?"
The girl nodded, with tears still on her face. She could not speak; her throat was still constricted with remorse. Finally, she swallowed the lump in her throat. "But who is Ssil? I can't keep the two apart if I don't know both."
"We believe the serpent already tried to tell you once."
Darkness rushed back in. When it receded, the landscape that reappeared was familiar to the girl. She had seen it when the serpent had taken her along the ley-lines. Again, she was in a large pit-like arena, the accused was there with her, but with him was no snake. Guards stood to both his sides, his hands bound behind his back. On the tribune above the pit stood a group of people. All the humans here had dark skin, not entirely black, but a dark brownish-red like she had never seen before. The girl had never seen these outfits, but she recognized them as the judges of a trial. Various horrible crimes were listed that the person in the pit was accused of. Then he was asked how he would plead.
The accused spoke up. "Only in the serpent's eyes can guilt be weighed. I chose the dance of venom."
The crowd cheered, the guards cut his restraints and left the arena. A basked was brought to the head judge and he took the lid off. He raised the basket high and started an invocation to the serpent.
"Frightening Ssila-…" She still could not hear it, the name, but she knew that he said it. "... bringer of just death and mercy, devourer of vermin, and feller of the mightiest, grace this accused with the justice he chose."
With these words, he poured a single snake from the basket into the arena, and the dance of venom began. They danced for long, lunging and leaping at and away from each other. The man needed to subdue the snake, but the snake was guided by the great serpent's spirit, to hand out death or mercy. Both man and snake tired, and luck was no longer on his side. The snake unleashed its last attack. Its teeth sunk deep into the man's calf. The crowd roared in celebration. The man fell backwards. He had accepted his slow and painful fate. The judges rested their case.
It was a spectacle repeated many times, for many years, sometimes the accused would choose the trial, sometimes the accused would win the dance of venom, always the grand serpent was present, watching, guiding, accepting the offerings. Then the temple broke, shifted as if the ground itself had moved. The people did not return. No judges, no priest, no crowd of cheering onlookers, no accused.
The girl was back in the clearing. "The accused was willing. And the accused got a chance to fight. It wasn't a death sentence, it was a duel. A duel that decided who was stronger. The accused was offered his freedom, if he could take it."
Seemingly endless thoughts shot through the girl's head at dizzying speeds. Slowly, things in her head started to come together, but she was still missing an important piece. She knew there had been a promise, she knew it was not the end of the temple and the pit. She knew she had been told of such things before, but she couldn't find the words it was told in. She tried to remember something, but she couldn't tell what it was. Like a thought just before realization, it kept escaping her.
"I can't remember something. Something important."
"The mind locks away many things. Like one gifted to speak with deities and spirits, but yet incapable of grasping their unreality, your mind cannot grasp something it refuses to acknowledge."
"Then how do I remember?"
"You need a push, but also to allow yourself to fall."
The girl wanted to ask what that meant, but darkness already rushed back in. It did not recede, instead the girl felt as if it was grasping her, pulling her down through a watery hole in the ground. She struggled, did not want to be dragged into the depths. She didn't know what lurked there, but it was not something she wanted to experience. Something was locked down there in chains made of pain. She clung to the edge of the hole, but the ground was slippery beneath her clawed fingers.
"FALL" the many voices said.
"NO" The girl screamed back.
"FALL!" It was not the many voices, but instead the voice of the girl. She had not said these words. "STOP TURNING AWAY! REMEMBER THE PROMISE!" The serpent was saying, with the girl's voice.
She was dragged beneath. She could not see anything, but hear a muffled wailing and screaming. She remembered this sound. Then young Nannade took her blindfolds off. She was maybe six years old, maybe younger. It felt eerily familiar to the girl, but she could not remember what would come next, yet she dreaded it.
Young Nannade somehow managed to slip off her chains. Many times, she had heard this sound, tonight would be the night that she would find out what it was. The stable box she was in was closed, but she jumped up the wooden wall to the next stable box. With her claws she barely managed to hold on, but finally got a hand to the top to pull herself over. The girl tried to convince young Nannade to stop, to not peek over the wall, but young Nannade could not hear her. It was a memory, what the girl was being shown had already happened. Young Nannade rested for a short while in the empty box next to hers, then scaled the wall to her mother's box.
She peeked over into the box, and there she saw her mother, forcefully taken by a man, tears ran down her face, blood was smeared all over the ground. Both the girl and young Nannade could see every detail, even in the dim light of the candles. A few moments of shock and horror passed and young Nannade let herself fall back into the box. With eyes full of tears, she stared into nothingness.
"Don't do it!" the girl told young Nannade, but it was of no use. Young Nannade silently whispered a name. The name of a friend. The girl recognized it. It was the same name she wasn't able to understand entirely before.
A short eternity passed and a chill wind came into the basement. A presence arrived, a presence which had come many times before, lulled the girl into sleep with songs from far away, using words she heard nowhere else. It had green eyes young Nannade could see and a voice she could hear even through the blindfolds.
But this time, the presence was called, not sent, to young Nannade. It asked what young Nannade's request was.
"Set us free from this pain. Save me from this life. I don't want this. Ever."
The presence agreed, but reminded her that a price was to pay.
"I have nothing."
Young Nannade was reminded that she had one thing she could offer the presence. She asked what it was the presence wanted and the presence told her of its past. Like a dream within a dream, the girl and young Nannade were shown something. It was the temple; it was still lying broken and crooked and the forest had taken hold of it. The paint on the reliefs had faded and crumbled off, moss and lichen grew on the red and white stone, the roots of mighty trees pressed between the stones, forcing them apart. And coiled around the once grand temple lay the serpent, sleeping, hungering, dying of neglect in a thousand-year-long slumber.
Until a group of people came. The girl recognized them. Crolachans. They made the temple their home. But they did not free it of the vines, bushes and trees, and neither did they bring others with them. A small family, that was it, no judges, no priest, no crowd of cheering onlookers, no accused. The family saw the reliefs and statues and erected a tiny shrine to the serpent. They lit a candle and prayed. The serpent reared its head and flowed away in the stream of life force, to distant lands, until it returned and slipped back into slumber.
The family made the temple their home and they prayed to the serpent. So, each day, the serpent flowed to distant lands and returned. The family grew old and their son returned with a wife, and that family too grew old. But still, even the grandson still lit a candle and prayed every day and still, the serpent was dying, hungering. Without a priest to speak its sermon, it could not remain forever. But neither could it forever leave without a temple. Then the temple faded.
The girl and young Nannade were back in the basement. Young Nannade understood what the serpent wanted of her. To no longer waste away in the darkness, waiting for the end to finally come. Young Nannade felt with the serpent and agreed to the terms. To seal the contract, the serpent asked for an ante. Like she would do much later in the glade, young Nannade followed the instructions of the serpent, and pricked her finger with her own claw.
Then she whispered in the darkness of the basement "A candle is lit in the shrine. As a promise of a priestess, yet to be fulfilled. As a foundation of a temple, yet to be built." The words were so simple and self-evident, even young Nannade could understand them.
The serpent was pleased. It took its taste of the blood, acquired its scent a then it left the dark basement, not to return until much later, when a man with a badly-kempt beard entered the room and took young Nannade's blindfolds off.
Tears and relief were on the girl's face when the darkness returned her to the clearing.
"I made a promise back then. That's why I listened to Ssil back then in the glade. I already agreed to it many years before." She took a deep breath and sat down on her shins to gather her thoughts. High-sister Priscilla was close to the truth when she explained the "living temple" during the trial. "All that followed was by Ssil's design. My rescue, my training, my sacrilege. She had made it happen because I chose it for myself. Freedom in servitude."
The voices of many spoke up again. "Do you know how to answer your question now?"
"Yes. It was never the intention of the serpent to change me, or to come alive as a being of flesh. It did not desire to satiate its hunger, but to gain a new temple. A living temple. The priestess, the serpent and the temple are finally together, in one place. Bound by purpose, but separated in roles, as was promised."
A small fruit fell from the crown of the tree of many trunks and landed in the soft soil. The girl went to pick it up and looked at it. It looked like an oversized acorn and was about as big as her thumb. She looked closer and deep within, she could see filigree patterns of spiritual weavings like she had never seen before. She understood what they meant, and so would any other medium looking at it. She had what she had come for. She stood up, bowed to the tree of many trunks and spoke.
"Thank you for your guidance. I know not how to repay you."
"Nothing here came from us. All you encounter in a dream is already within you. We bring order between the minds of men and the minds of nature. That is our purpose. To leave this place will be your own endeavour, but should you fail to leave or choose to stay, this dream will not rebuff you."
Nannade smiled. "It is enticing, but the world of men calls for the priestess' service, there is wickedness and guilt abound. Dream well."
She turned around and looked into the distance. She still saw only the endless landscape of soft soil, no grand trees encircling the clearing.
No one can leave without waking up.
She closed her eyes. "This place is not real." She whispered. She imagined what the reality should be. She imagined how her body was supposed to feel. This entire forest felt like dream even in waking moments, the difference was minute, but eventually, she could feel her body. She could lift a finger. She opened her eyes.
She lay on the ground, leaning against one of the grand trees. The tree of many trunks stood in the middle, pumping haze up to the vast canopy. Around her, to the roots of the grand trees that lined the clearing, lay hundreds of skeletons. She dared not take a single step towards the centre, lest the dream would take her another time. Nannade climbed back up the tree and left the clearing.