The building heat started coalescing around her neck, her grandmother’s pendant feeling as if it threatened to burn her.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Pendant. I didn’t mean to bring you here,” she tried to say, desperate to convince the inanimate object not to harm her, unable to move her hands or feet as they had become entangled in the sticky purple grass.
Her mind was in shambles, fluttering around any little thing that caught its attention. The heat was uncomfortable, but she seemed unable to do much about it, so she turned to explore the changes happening around her.
Distant flashes of purple light and geometric patterns became more common as if building up to something.
Suddenly, her attention was stolen by a fractal appearing in the sky. The repeating shapes had somehow taken the spot of the storm, and her mind began to fry at the sight. She couldn’t comprehend what she was seeing, but she felt something in her both yearn for it and be repelled by it.
As the heat kept building, her very self threatened with nonexistence, Dorea felt a tiny piece of what she saw be revealed to her, understanding with emotions and feeling things she had no frame of reference to put into words.
Still, it was too much, and she was scared she would be subsumed by the weight of the world pressing upon her.
Desperation made her look around, no longer afraid of whatever was lurking in the colours. She turned without moving any muscle, her attention captured by a scene happening outside herself, but it felt as if it was inside her mind.
Rupert, the boy she had been speaking with just a few minutes before, was shifting in colours like a bird trying to attract a mate.
It didn’t make any sense to her how she could tell that he was doing it wrong, that getting that much attention was very bad, but she knew it all the same and so she tried to shout at him, but her mouth refused to open.
She had no idea how he had managed such control over his own form but knew this was not the place to experiment.
The thing that had just passed by may be the only inhabitant of this dream-like space, but it could very well not be, and Dorea really didn’t want to find out if the others would be as disinterested in her as it had been.
He was trying to swim towards the streams of light, apparently having decided it was the way to receive their powers, or maybe simply out of curiosity.
Whatever his intention was, Dorea would never know.
Suddenly, the heat she could still feel that threatened to scorch her multiplied, her entire world becoming light, and Dorea felt deep in her bones that Something was looking at them, a thing greater than anything she had ever known.
Whatever this thing was, it was much greater than the earlier encounter. Its mere existence threatened her own with the weight of its attention.
Dorea knew they needed to get away from it, frustrated beyond words by her inability to do so. The halo surrounding her flared up, blinding and disrupting her sight, saving her mind from collapsing.
In what could have been a second or a year, Rupert vanished, turned into light in front of her mind’s eye.
He was simply gone; no trace of him remained.
The heat kept building up, reaching a crescendo that made her scream without her mouth.
Then, the thing shifted its attention elsewhere, and Dorea was again whole. The pieces of her that had been fractured in that terrifying encounter returned to her and were reforged thanks to the excessive temperature that surrounded her.
The terrifying energy surrounding her had been twisted by the thing and made unrecognizable from what it once was. Most of it was dispersed into the ether, but bits and pieces stuck to her, slipping between the gaps that had formed and were now coming back together.
Knowing without the need to be told that allowing such an influence inside of herself would be a monumentally bad idea, Dorea focused on trying to expose the corrupted energy to the incredible heat that surrounded her.
She shifted around, moving without a body or senses to orient herself, desperate to remove the taint she could feel probing the cracks in her soul.
Luckily, whatever was causing the heat wanted it gone just as much as she did because it became much more focused on specific places, no longer in the form of a halo.
For a while, there was a struggle between the two forces, the heat trying its best to burn away the corrupted energy while the latter desperately clung to her soul.
Dorea tried her best to push what little energy she had available to her to the aid of the heat, as it seemed to be acting in her favour.
Suddenly, it seemed as if both had expended all their power and with one last flash, they vanished, leaving her with gaps in her form that started to absorb her surroundings in an attempt to become whole once again.
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The energy available at this point was neither the thing’s corrupted mana nor the streams she had observed earlier but something less defined.
Dorea, desperate not to return to her body with gaps in her soul, did her best to grab onto it and pull it towards herself.
Slowly, oh so slowly, it started to move in her direction, but it didn’t seem to do much more other than aimlessly circulate around her.
Through the haze of her thoughts, Dorea realized that she needed to focus on the little power available to her and use it to coax the surrounding energy.
While she worked on exerting her limited control over her soul, the mana around her kept shifting, transitioning from a formless state towards a more elementally charged one. Dorea could feel it behaving more like a fluid, subject to invisible currents and lightning streaks.
Instinctively, she knew that letting it change entirely would render it unusable for her purposes, so she redoubled her efforts to absorb it to fill her broken soul.
Though her thoughts were muddled, something within her knew how to do what needed to be done, and finally, Dorea managed to plug the cracks with what she was sure was the storm’s power.
She pulled in as much power as possible, as it seemed that her soul could take it without swelling into something else.
She drank deeply from the power surrounding her, using it to seal the cracks where the corrupted energy had tried to slither in and more, feeling something in her rejoice at the largesse.
Dorea knew that she had gone so far from the normal process of passing a Trial that most of her preconceptions wouldn’t apply anymore, but she had no other choice beyond becoming things she didn’t want to think about.
Still, the storm’s power was becoming hers, and she wouldn’t give it up now that she knew just how much more one could be.
Even though it felt a bit sacrilegious, taking what should have been given to her by the Mother as a reward for passing the Trial, Dorea very much preferred it to going around as a shell of herself, never entirely whole as she knew she would be had she not repaired her soul.
With her soul reforged, Dorea felt a sense of relief wash over her. Had she been able to, she would have slumped, but she contented herself with not being in danger of becoming an abomination anymore.
I suppose that will have to do. She thought sarcastically, startling herself with her ability to have a coherent thought.
It seems that whatever I did, I did away with most of the confusion that comes from drinking the potion.
She turned her attention to her form, now better able to distinguish it. The properties she had observed in the energy were now evident in her soul, though she guessed it wouldn’t usually be that easy to see.
This is so freaky.
The knowledge that she had changed something fundamental about herself didn’t scare her much, having been ready for it to happen even in the best-case scenario. However, the way her most intimate place had been influenced by everything that had happened to her was still a bit much.
Dorea felt more present now, still not in her own body but at the very least capable of logical reasoning. I haven’t processed everything that happened, but I shouldn’t have survived.
Her grandmother’s pendant had saved her, first from the eye’s attention and then…
Dorea recoiled from the thought, feeling as if she would get much worse than a headache if she tried to remember what had transpired fully.
That felt horrible! My head is too small for the thought it was trying to have. This is the weirdest feeling ever!
Wary of provoking whatever effect had caused such discomfort, Dorea returned to her previous exploration of her changed soul.
There’s not much that seems to require my immediate intervention.
She felt a new power course through her, separate from the flavours she had just experienced and wholly her own. Her attempts at integrating it into her soul seemed at least somewhat successful.
There are better places to experiment in.
She thought the memory of whatever had befallen Rupert made her unwilling to attempt anything in case it attracted any attention.
And so, she focused on herself, trying to connect back to her body and finally end the Trial.
Considering my thoughts are no longer scrambled, I should be able to get out of here.
Dorea decided that an excellent way to do so would be to try and apply Voggo’s teachings about finding oneself.
It’s probably not the exact intended use, but it should still apply here, right?
She pictured her body in her mind’s eye, from her blonde hair to the growing bust and widening hips; she tried to place every mole in its exact spot, concentrating on the feeling of opening and closing her hands and curling her feet.
Her mind usually tended to wander, not liking being forced on a single task for too long, but desperation and sheer grit worked wonders. Slowly, she regained feeling in her limbs, able to tell that the grass was tickling her feet.
The air started to rush back into her lungs, breaking whatever spell had taken her into the dream-like world and finally waking her up.
The sun shone upon her brow, tickling her nose and making her sneeze. The air felt crisp, untainted and more alive than she had ever felt. Half her left leg was in a puddle, the water embracing her like a long-lost lover.
Dorea opened her eyes to see a painfully ordinary and incredibly changed world. Birds were chirping, the sun was shining, and the sea was calm. Beyond that, she could feel a phantom extension towards all the puddles around her, the air she was breathing and, weirdly enough, the buzzing in her own head.
It took her a few seconds to conclude that there was no audible buzzing; it was simply her brain trying to tell her that she had control over something inside it. Wary of messing herself up, Dorea decided to leave testing her newfound powers for later.
Looking around herself, she saw the bodies of her friends and companions and was initially alarmed, but the same weird feeling that connected her to the air told her that they were alive.
I can feel the air they are breathing as it enters them.
It felt surreal. She was momentarily worried that she was still in that indefinite place the potion had brought her to, but this felt too real.
I definitely didn’t have this much control in the dream. I suppose I could be in a different one, but that kind of thinking is not very productive.
Jonah’s face was scrunched up as if frozen in an argument. Beth was relaxed, dreaming of something peaceful. She turned around, curious to see Rupert’s sleeping expression, only to find an empty depression in the grass.
She stared at the spot for a while, all her senses, newfound and old, telling her that nobody was there, but her conscious mind refused to bridge the gap between what had happened in the dream and what was in front of her.
Dorea stood up, pushing away from the white rock she was propped against and shuffled towards the place that should have contained her friend’s resting body.
Her right hand reached forwards, trembling in a desperate hope that maybe something else was going on. Perhaps he was just invisible to her eyes. It found nothing but empty air, just like her new sense had told her it would.
Abruptly, she twisted around, straightening and moving with purpose around the cliff.
Maybe he has been thrown around by the storm! It would be weirder if he didn’t move at all.
As she stalked around the other kids’ bodies, absently noting that more than just Rupert was missing, dread started to build up. Everybody had known that some of them wouldn’t make it, no one had ever heard of a whole group surviving the Trial, but they had all hoped that they would make it together, be it Voggo’s potion or their sheer grit.
It then started to sink in that what she had seen was not just a dream. Maybe they woke up before me and had already left. She desperately thought.
Dorea ran to the cliff's edge, hoping to see someone on the beach below, only to find it empty. Again, she quickly moved towards the path that brought her back to the village, just to see it mostly intact but entirely empty.
I can still see the storm moving towards the hinterland. It’s too early for them to be already up and back in the village. No one has even gotten out of the shelter yet.
Weakness filling her limbs, Dorea collapsed on her knees, tears streaking down her face as she finally realized that some of the kids she had grown up with, the boy she had a crush on and that had teased her for it not too long ago, was simply gone.
She wept for their loss, curling in on herself as the emotions crashed through her.
It was not the first she had encountered death, their lives were not that lofty, but it usually happened to the elders or the hunters who ventured too deep into the forest. It should not have happened to kids her own age, barely beginning to live their own lives.
And so, Dorea mourned, looking back up to the sky to stare at the retreating Wrath, feeling something take shape within herself. A resolve to find a reason and meaning for her friends’ death.
Because there has to be a reason. I refuse to believe that it’s just how the world works!