She crept through the underbrush, pistol in her right hand and her left reaching up to keep the spear on her back from snagging a low hanging branch. The tracks had become confused here, shallow malformed hand prints crossing over each other from multiple comings and goings. The smell of rot was overpowering and the struggle not to gag took a step forward in her list of priorities to just ahead of keeping her heart from beating out of her chest and just behind the frantic scanning of her surroundings for motion. She could do this. She would do this.
She snapped her head to the left towards the sound of branches cracking. Just in time to see a large rock thud into the trunk of a tree twenty feet from the patch of snakegrass she crouched concealed in. The chimera slammed into her from the right and sent her tumbling as pain blossomed across her face. She landed on her back in time to see it rushing her again in a blur of scales and all too human hands. With her spear underneath her and the pistol no where to be found she drew her belt knife and stabbed out as it landed. She felt her wrist break as sparks and coruscating blue light against its chest let her know that its shield was too powerful for her to pierce.
She finally got a look at its face through a haze of blood. All too human except for the large hooked gray break in place of its mouth. She had time to notice it was shaped like a hawk’s. A predators beak. One of its too many fists connected with her jaw and stars and streaking colors combined with the blood in her vision. All but blind she heard more than felt the next few blows. Then its hands were on her neck and her thoughts were coming too slowly. She pulled her legs in against her chest and kicked out once, twice, and it was off of her, stumbling backwards but already recovering.
It leapt again but she was ready this time. It was lighter and smaller than her, so she launched herself upwards to meet it head on. At least, she tried to. Her foot slipped and she almost fell. With a bent over stutter step she neatly ducked its outstretched hands and clipped its lowest set of arms. It tumbled to the ground behind her as she spotted her pistol a few feet in front of her on the ground. She lunged for the pistol but the chimera was somehow already on her. Clinging to her back and choking her with one arm it was raining blows on her face and torso with its other arms. She fell to her hands and knees. She couldn’t breath, couldn’t think. Her entire body was screaming in agony. But the pistol was in her hand. She reached around and jammed the barrel into what she hoped was its neck and pulled the trigger.
The pistol grew warm in her hand for a half moment while it charged. It let out a high pitched whine and white light blossomed in the corner of her vision as the energy from the pistol exploded into the creature. The weight left her shoulders and she turned to see it lying on its back clutching a bloody crater where half of its jaw should have been. Blue light streaked rhythmically across its body as its shield attempted to reboot over and over and failed each time. It stared silently at her and she could see fear and hatred and pain in the ruin of its face. She realized she was screaming, her voice hoarse and uneven and full of rage. The spear was in her hands, painful and awkward with her left wrist hanging limp and her hand only just able to grip it. There was something wrong with her vision. As she drove her spear into the chimeras chest she felt a moment of pity as it spasmed and gurgled, but she stoked her rage with the image of her sister’s body and twisted the spear.
She woke slowly. The forest around her silent except for her own ragged breathing. There was a gurgle in her chest and she could hardly move for the pain in her wrist and face. All over really, but especially her face and wrist. She turned to the creature and it seemed diminished in death. Smaller than she remembered, it only had six limbs when she would have sworn it had been ten or more without the evidence before her eyes. Covered in light brown scales it looked almost human except for the beak, extra set of arms coming out of it’s midsection, and the fact that it had another set of hands where its feet should have been. A twinge of pain in her eye brought her mind back to her situation. She realized she couldn’t see from her left eye, and a quick touch showed it was both swollen shut and leaking a clearish white pus. It had taken her two weeks and most of her rations to track the monster down, but the path had been winding and she estimated half of that to return if she was in good health and not dragging a corpse. Nothing for it but to get started. With only one working hand it took longer than expected to rig a splint for her hand and a litter to drag the chimera’s corpse. She found a stream to drink and wash from, ate half of her few remaining strips of coro jerky, and passed out. When she woke again it was night and she felt far more clearheaded. After another quick stop at the stream she picked up one end of the litter and started walking.
Right foot up. Forward. Left foot. Up and forward. Another step. And another. And another. And another. The pain in her stomach had faded weeks ago. Her whole body throbbed and she was fairly sure she was sick. She had tried eating grass and tree bark, too weak to hunt and too disoriented to find any edible plants, but she had simply thrown it back up an hour later. Her one good eye was unfocused and the packed dirt of the path was a blur before her. Wait, the path? She was so close. But the ground grew large in her vision. When she woke next she was on her stomach. She had long since tied the litter to her waist and shoulders. She would have disconnected it if she could but couldn’t manage the knots. She couldn’t stand up, her legs too weak to support her. So she crawled. She dragged herself inch by painful inch. Which wrist was broken again? Didn’t matter, it took both hands to pull herself forwards anyways.
Eventually she couldn’t crawl. She tried to turn over so she could die looking at the stars but couldn’t manage it. Her parents house was in front her, the outskirts of the village but she had made it home. The light of a lamp spilling out of a window and illuminating a small garden. She tried to call out but a whimper emerged from her throat. This was enough. She had returned to her people with a corpse of the enemy. She was an adult and a blooded soldier now. Her soul would feast in Sarraka for eternity and her sister would be proud. She felt the world grow dim and gave in to her exhaustion. The world was dark even before she closed her eyes.
When she next opened her eyes it was to raised voices and a searing pain in her eye and chest. She hurt. It took a few moments to calm herself and listen. The raspy voice of the head priest rang out.
“She isn’t ready. She has not been cleansed or initiated. An offering is simply out of the question. She disobeyed the commands of the elders and myself. Her current condition is likely the direct result of the Mother’s wrath, and I will not risk the further anger of the Goddess.”
“The wrath of the Goddess!?” That was her mother all right. Voice rough from an old throat injury, her mom’s indignation was clear in her voice. “Gods damn man, she-”
“Do not blaspheme.”
“This is my daughter! You can take your blasphemy and shove it up your-”
“Watch. Your. Tongue. One more word and I will have it cut out, along with the hearts of your remaining children.”
A silence fell. She was in a soft bed in a small room with one window and a bedside table covered in medical devices and small totems of healing.
“I apologize great one.” Her mother again. “She is the top of her class of hunters. She has demonstrated clear signs of external essence control since fifteen, and has now slain a chimera at twenty, the youngest in living memory. She is blessed by the mother. She will lead us to glory if given the time to grow-”
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“Her possible future glory is irrelevant. She has not been scanned. She has not been cleansed. She has not been initiated. The offering site is not available regardless of circumstances-”
Her eyes drooped. But this time she was falling asleep instead of passing out. She was hurt, but now in a warm bed with her mother outside the door she knew she was safe.
She slowly opened her eyes. It was dark now, a slip of moonlight illuminating the plain wooden door and little else. It was also quiet. Silent even. By her best reckoning she was in a side room of the village lodge. The absence of the familiar murmur of warriors drinking and singing made her uneasy.
She managed to sit up without issue, but when she tried to stand her legs folded and she fell to the floor with an audible thump breaking the silence. Every breath seemed to ring out against the night now, the lack of sound between exhale and inhale a heavy presence. On her feet, legs weak but holding now, she made her way to the door and fumbled with the lock. The hallway was almost pitch black but she navigated from memory and found the stairs down. Blindly groping for the rail something squelched against her palm, wet and sticky. There was something important about that, but it eluded her grasping thoughts.
The stairs bottomed out into the main hall. Empty. Shapes hunched against the darkness, splayed across tables and slumped against the walls but her eyes skittered over the outlines and were pulled to the open doors. The moonlight blinding against the shadow, an outline of white that shined brighter than any night she could remember. Her bare foot kicked into something warm and she almost fell, but she managed to regain her balance and stepped carefully over the unknown obstruction. The light was beckoning to her now, drawing her forwards as surely as chain and shackles. She stumbled to the door and the village blossomed in front of her in black and white and shades of both that were not gray. It was both dark and disturbingly bright. No details could be made out, but the outlines of the world were somehow defined more starkly than she had ever experienced.
She saw her mother lying on the grass a few feet in front of her and with a straining of her will managed a moment of confusion before the shape faded into the shades of ever deepening contrast that encompassed the world. Her feet led her forwards and she was on the path to the temple. She passed through the courtyard of prayer to the foot of the mountain path. Her feet had moved from memory so far. A lifetime of familiar ground. A foot placed just so to avoid an errant stone or creaking stair, her balance shifting to adjust for an expected divot or rise hidden beneath the grass. But now she was staring up at an infinite expanse of steps cut in the mountain towards an unknown. No one was allowed up the mountain until thirty. Until deemed safe and holy, any suspicion of defilement allayed. She rebelled. Everything in her tried to turn itself to resistance but too much of herself was grief, grief and a dark distant fascination. She raised her foot and let it fall onto the first step.
The upper section of the mountain was bare and windswept. Solid stairs had given way to winding jumbled scree bordered by the smooth reflective black glass of the mountain. Lights shifted in time with the stars upon the visible faces, but something in her knew they did not truly match the stars, and that there were hidden folds of space just beyond the rotted path, ready to swallow whatever wandered. At last the peak revealed itself in a wash of cold light so bright it hurt through the closed lids of her eyes. Her hands reached out to touch the solid obelisk in front of her. Her eyes snapped open but could see nothing before the blinding expanse of the moon filling her vision. A series of chirps struck out against the silence followed by a voice. A roaring filled her ears and molten ice invaded her body. She noticed the familiar warmth of blood flowing from her eyes and ears. She was being hollowed out, scoured through with light. After a time the roar became bearable. It had not diminished, but she was both less and more than she had been and now had room to contain it. The voice slowly took shape from the previous chaos and the Goddess spoke to her.
“-so sorry. [I/We/Them] am/are not omnipotent. I am powerful but I am limited. The defiled encroach further every year and I am [abstracted] with [error] and defense. I am so sorry. They bring [Me/Us] pain and to avoid it would bring much greater calamities. You are the last. Take what I can give. [????] and feed. You are my final arrow. I invest you with the authority of my office. Fly true and-”
Something heavy landed on her shoulder, sharp points digging into flesh. She flinched, and the connection was broken. Stumbling backwards on legs too weak to hold her she glimpsed a snow white owl flapping away into the night. Then her foot landed on nothing but air and she toppled off the side of the mountain. Flashes of the illuminated black of the glassy rock face alternated with views of a starry sky and bright moon, faster and faster, a blur of impacts against stone and moments of weightlessness and light. One of the slips in space, razor sharp against the night, made itself known in a spray of blood. Eventually the slope lessened and she slowed. She was splashing through mud now on mostly level ground. She rolled to a stop on her back half submerged in swamp water.
She was broken. Everywhere. Her spine twisted in an unnatural angle and her right arm was gone past the elbow. Something with too many eyes and too few limbs approached from the darkness, brought by the sound of her fall. As the creature loomed over her she felt the moonlight fill her and with it a terrible hunger. She stood with a grinding of bones and a sucking fleshy sound that set off alarm bells somewhere in the back of her mind. But those thoughts were far away, indistinct and drowned out by the overwhelming imperative to eat. A smile lit her face as her prey charged. Something sharp and clawed dug into her shoulder and wrapped around her collarbone, the burning of a corrosive flooding into her bloodstream. Her meal was too close to escape now and she reached out and broke the creature without thought. She bent to feed.