Zara Dawnheart
I cried silently. My tears formed a wet patch on the silky linen while I shivered, the night air a cold caress against my bare skin. Only in between my shoulder blades, where the outlines of an intricate mark still oozed droplets of blood, did it feel soothing, like the numbing kiss of death. I couldn't even muster the strength to slip beneath the covers. I felt empty, hollow… broken and alone.
Gods, why? Why had I trusted a spirit? I should have kept her at my side… or at least tried to. Maybe… probably she would have killed me, but death didn't seem as daunting anymore when your life had turned into agony and orders, the shackles carved into your very own skin. With a shudder I remembered the last days…
After I had released her, the glowing, winged creature vanished without a trace, leaving us behind, twiddling our thumbs in the middle of a spent pentagram and then, the door burst open revealing one of the two people on Gaya I truly hated. My soon to be husband and his faithful lapdog had appeared, for all intent and purposes worried sick at my disappearance and while they managed to keep up the facade, they also immediately recognised the charred runes for what they were. A summoning ritual and an immensely powerful one at that. His eyes hardened when he looked at me and the fake, benevolent smile he tried to present us with couldn't hide his consuming anger. He knew I had meant to defy him and in turn, he would make my life even more of a living hell than it had already become. I just didn't know how thoroughly he'd be able to do just that.
We were escorted back to ours rooms in the academy, superficially examined to ensure we hadn't taken any permanent damaged, and ordered to rest for the day. Defeatedly, but with a lingering spark of hope, I went to bed and when I woke up, my world had changed. Truly and utterly changed. Martial law had been invoked partially, our people preparing for war against they fey. With their new powers, the royal family had revived an ancient, cruel edict. The forceful binding of familiars to strengthen the royals and their abilities in the battles to come. Each family would have to send at least one volunteer and with me being the last survivor of my line, that dubious honour was irrefutably mine. Even worse, with our pending marriage, once it'd be consummated, chances were the seals would transform and bind me to that monster for as long as I lived.
I searched for my friends desperately, the few people who actually knew what had happened, but I wasn't able to find them. Their rooms were deserted and no matter whom I asked, the answer always remained the same, uncaring lie: with war looming on the horizon they were undergoing the necessary training at the hands of the prince himself, preparing them for the responsibilities they'd have to shoulder soon enough. Superficially, it made sense. They were in their last regular year and would only be able to stay for another, joining me in choosing a speciality. If we were really going to have to fight, they probably wouldn't be allowed to waste their time in school, while battles waited for us. Too bad no one else had been taken out of class or had even heard about any form of extracurricular training. In essence, they were either held as a means to make me comply quietly or they were already dead.
I was devastated and I didn't even have the time to regain my balance before the next, debilitating strike had landed. In preparation for the coming challenges, the familiar's binding was to take place barely two days after I had woken. Deep within the palace I was strapped to an alter, my limbs bound by magic, and while my blood was slowly trickling down my sides, the abominable sigil on my back bloomed until its magic evoked and the connection to my royal tormentor snapped into place. I hadn't been able to cope and lost consciousness, only to wake up again in my room, in the middle of the night, with an alien, overbearing presence hovering at the edge of my thoughts. Disoriented and scared I wasn't able to understand much, until the first, excruciating wave of pain had shot through my mind, setting my very being ablaze. Ever since, I was forced to endure tides of agony, whenever my demon of a master had played around with one powerful spell or the other until I didn't even have the strength left to move my aching limbs. I was empty, hollow… broken and alone.
A week, she had said, a week I would have to survive but as it stood my chances were slim, negligible. I could feel my heart stutter through every beat, my lungs quiver arduously with every breath, my only, meagre hope the fact that I wasn't betrothed to the royal family, just yet, and they wouldn't want to kill me before they had gained control over our estates. For while I might be bound by magic, my assets were still mine, even though I couldn't control them, not with the safeguards in place to ensure I couldn't inherit fully until I had come of age. Which wasn't until my next birthday and consequentially about as useful as a third leg.
My depressing musings were interrupted by another assault. This time it felt like a hole was being drilled through my skull, deep down until it reached the seat of my magic, which was then ripped from me excruciatingly slowly, as if the will on the other side was deliberately trying to prolong my torment. I didn't even have the strength left to scream. All I could do was bury my head in the drenched pillow and bite down on it as hard as possible until it'd be over. My sensations dimmed, the cold night air, the quiet song of a nightingale beyond the walls, the smells of evergreen and lotus, it all vanished behind a curtain of burning pain. I lost myself, caught between desperation and mutilation, I hovered at the edge until… the storm abated from one second to the next and a soothing, earthly warmth spread through my shivering body, returning strength to my trembling limbs. Something had changed.
Blearily I opened my eyes and looked around but nothing seemed out of place. The same nightly silence, the same small room, the same curtains, billowing in the breeze, the same cupboard and table with the same flowers on top… except they were moving ever so slightly, as if beckoning me to come closer. For a second I thought I was hallucinating, my tired, overburdened mind grasping for anything that could have helped me but the longer I stared, the more I knew I wasn't mistaken. The white roses were moving, almost dancing, waving their petals and wriggling their leaves like dust in a ray of light. Groggily I pushed off the wet covers and slowly made my way over to the vase. I wasn't particularly worried, whatever was going on, whether benign or hostile, couldn't faze me anymore. I didn't have much to lose, anyways.
I felt old while I limped my way across the room, like an elder in the middle of winter. Finally I tumbled into a chair and closed my eyes for a moment, the tiny exertion almost too much for my exhausted body. When I opened them again the movement had slowed down, but the largest flower was… transforming ever so slightly. With every passing second the blossom itself took on the resemblance of an archaic, female face, rough and craggy, like an unfinished sculpture. Yet it seemed… peaceful, almost kind, when deep, green brown eyes opened at its centre. Well past the point of amazement I hesitantly extended my hand and brushed against the petals with the softest touch I could managed, barely disturbing its lazy movements.
A wave of pure, undiluted life force thundered through me like lightning, suppressing the sigil on my back and clearing my thoughts in a storm of nourishing heat. Trembling from excitement instead of pain and fatigue I whispered the first word that had popped into my mind: "Gaya?"
The eyes blinked slowly, a spark of recognition and amusement igniting in their fathomless depths but there was no reply, to be honest, there was not even a mouth to reply with. I didn't need to hear it, though. I knew what she was, just as much as I knew my own name. Mother Earth had come to me in my darkest hour. Maybe I wasn't as alone as I had feared.
Questions rang through me in an unending flood. I wanted to know what she was doing here, why she hadn't come sooner, why I had never even heard of anyone meeting her before and, above all, if she could help me escape form the trap I was stuck in. If the apparent ease with which she had blocked the engraved runes was any indication it wouldn't pose much of a challenge to her to set me free, but I was still dying for some kind of assurance, some kind of acknowledgement. And thus I began babbling, voicing every doubt, every thought that fluttered through my mind.
Unfortunately the sprit of our world wasn't very talkative, her only reaction to my unending pestering the brightening glow in her eyes while she listened. She listened until I felt the weight of my burdens lighten, just as if I had confessed them to the stars. And then something in her gaze changed, her eyes turning into bottomless tunnels that invited me to… step through to see with my own eyes what she couldn't tell me, for the way us short lived creature communicated was as alien to her as she seemed to me.
I took a deep, calming breath, which didn't help much, but I had already decided to jump at any chance I'd get and this, whatever else, was a chance. One that wouldn't return, should I squander it. I nodded, once, and from one heartbeat to the next the dark pathways widened and I felt myself fall from my chair and down a long and warm tunnel. At its end was… nothing. A confusing cacophony of scenes, smells, sounds and impressions form all over the world, some even showing warped images of times long gone, but while I was still reeling to make sense of this new, brave world, my heart hammering in my chest with equal parts of fear and hope, the scene shifted and became quite clear.
I saw the very same spirit I had tried to bind, but the perfect mask it had worn to hide was flaking away, revealing something… terrifying. A creature towered above me, uncaring and beautiful like the sun, its face hidden behind the reflection of its infinite wings, steaming from its back in an eternal dance of light and darkness. I cowered, the terror I had been subjected to paling in comparison to how insignificant I felt, even though I knew she wasn't here. But yet I was convinced, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that I'd wither and vanish instantly, should see truly see me, perceive me lurking close by. The power of her gaze would kill me just as easily as I'd kill a fly, but her attention was directed elsewhere, somewhere beyond the confines of this small space. In the shadows, other beings lurked, not quite her equal, but there were so many, hundreds of them, and they were closing in, her spread wings the only barrier between us and the nightmares from beyond the stars. But she wasn't alone. A second creature, made of fire and flame, stood at her side and together they kept the encroaching horrors at bay, protecting what I came to understand was our world. And with that knowledge I had another epiphany.
I had to chose. Gaya couldn't help me, a minuscule part of her own essence was what kept me shackled, but those two… they were different. To them the chains I had been cast in were nothing more than a thread they could break with a thought, annihilating, consuming it with their own powers. I simply had to decide if I preferred being tied to an abominable elf or one of those two… titans. And while it might not sound like much of a choice at all, I also knew that my current predicament impacted my life, while the one I might rush towards might impact who I truly was… forever. And once formed, that connection wouldn't break, it would hold for all eternity unless they decided to set me free. Oh well, in for a copper, in for a gold, my mother had always said and judging from our last meeting, one of them wasn't too bad, maybe even benign.
While it might sound straight forward, it really wasn't. My perception didn't work as usual, my mind was mostly occupied with making sense of the unending tides of chaos, changing and warping the little space I called my own and the jumbled up mess time had become, my emotions were oscillating between amusement, at the absurdity of it all, anger and despair, every time I remembered where I had come from, and a growing spark of hope that I might yet find a way out. A way that most likely went straight through a being so much more powerful than anything I had ever dreamt of that it made me dizzy just thinking about it. And to top it all off, I even had a decision to make. I didn't know why, but I was convinced that all I had to do was touch either of them… and I would change, or at least the horrendous magic on my back would. And while I was as sure as I could be that I'd try, the question remained: which one?
A tiny voice in my head kept whispering: stick with the devil you know, but I wasn't convinced, not by a long shot. Seeing them both before me… didn't help, either. I just couldn't comprehend what they were, who they were, the glare of their power obscuring anything I could have understood. In a way it felt like deciding between which way to turn at a crossroads in a darkening forest. There wasn't much to go on and even if I tricked myself into believing anything else, it would still amount to a leap of faith. In all honesty, if I had been able to, I would have tossed a coin, but unfortunately I wasn't even really here, at least my body wasn't, never mind my purse. All I had was the brief encounter I had already lived through and whatever I might make of it… which, come to think of it, wasn't as little as I had believed.
The lines from the book I had stumbled across fluttered through my thoughts. A spirit of freedom, which can be called upon when opposing an unjust fate. The shackles of fate… freedom… nothing had changed and I had already summoned her once. I felt my resolve harden and I took a metaphorical step toward the creature wreathed in silver and blue but then I hesitated again. The closer I got the more I felt her power thunder against my weak shell, threatening to tear me apart in the maelstrom of inconceivable strength. I stumbled and paused, hand already reaching out toward the closest torrent of energy, but I didn't take the final step. Instead I whirled around and focused on her counterpart, on warm, burning flames that reminded me of the first light of dawn, just peeking over the horizon.
She felt… less intimidating, warmer, younger and inadvertently I had already changed my direction, limping on like a drunkard, my back turned on the silvery cataclysm. Both were made of unfathomable light and infinite power, but one seemed warm, welcoming and the other… cold and distant. One was the beginning and the end, darkness and light all wrapped up into an enigmatic presence, while the other was… everything in between, alive, bright and full of hope and that was what I needed. I needed something alive to cling onto, not the distant comfort of a star.
Before I could change my mind again, I closed my eyes and ignored the whispering voices of eternity around me. With a leap I catapulted myself forward, my fingers reaching until they closed around soft and warm feathers, the caressing touch all I needed. A smile bloomed on my face and while the imaginary world around me crumbled, spewing me back out into a brutal reality, I felt safe for the first time in months. Just as safe as I had felt when my mom had picked me up and carried me home.
I took a deep, shaky breath, my instincts telling me that I had been under for far longer than I had believed, but before I could puzzle over the past or the present the sigil on my back manifested before my mind's eye. The name cartridge at its centre, which designated the master, was gone, replaced by a depiction of four fiery wings, burning brightly on my skin. I wasn't his anymore.