Chương 66: Chapter 64: Rejecting the Crone

When I finally found the stranger in my woods, when I finally reached her stomping grounds, I wasn't sure what to expect, but it certainly wasn't this. Emily was... well, she was...... she was kind. And she was kind of insane. At first I'd thought that she was just off the deep end, until something spoke to me. I SPOKE. YOU CAN HEAR ME? Y-yeah, I can hear you. There was a wolf in my head. Scratch that - there was a Wolf in my head. With a 'W'. My head... was a place now!

It was hard to describe, hard to fit together how it had happened, but I'd lived in this old cottage I'd cleaned up for almost a year now - once winter came it'd have been an actual year - and the interior of my head had become like that. It had a fireplace, and it had overgrown window lattices I'd clogged shut with wadded up bits of cloth and moss to keep the draft out, a straw mattress, a bunch of junk... and now? Now it had a pool of water in it, at least... in my head.

The water was inky, like it had soot all over in it, and... there was a great big wolf with caramel brown and charcoal black fur sitting on the other side of the pool, curious about me, but keeping her distance. The creature tilted her head this way and that, her left ear flopping a little like it couldn't quite perk all the way up. I couldn't help but find that weirdly cute. I knew the wolf was...

my other side, the werewolf side, the bit of me that made me a monster, but I couldn't help thinking that it, she, looked very doglike, sort of... puppylike, even. And damp, too, she'd come from the water, after all. Wolf didn't seem to know what to think about my thoughts, but she was... shy. Skittish. Nervous. That was alright - I was nervous too. This was untread territory for me, and... on impulse, I'd simply decided to run with it.

Now, faced with the reality of my choice, I could only hug my knees to my chest. The fact my wolf was just as nervous as I was came as a bit of a shock. I AM YOU I know, you said so. I won't hurt you... if you don't hurt me, okay? Again she tilted her head at me, my sooty, damp puppy of a Wolf, and made a chuffing noise. She got on her belly and... dragged herself towards me around the pool!

Just a bit at a time, her tail beginning to waggle a little, flopping this way and that as she came as close as she dared, soon little more than ten feet from me. I stayed where I was, frozen in place and locked up, but... this was just about the most nonthreatening thing she could have been doing, and it was SO CUTE to watch! So um... what do we think about um... Emily? GOLDTAIL? Yeah Wolf, Sootpaw I supposed, didn't seem to know what to make of my question, so I tried a different approach. Do you... like her?

YES Sootpaw said easily, and lay onto her side, paddling her legs a little to get comfy in her spot on the floor. SHE HELPED ME Helped us, I guess Soot seemed to consider this a bit, then nodded. THIS IS BETTER. Her voice wasn't loud exactly, it was just... a lot! It came as a collection of ideas and understanding rather than words, like a memory of thoughts rather than the fact of phrases. I was a magic user, I was used to some...

odd things in pursuit of my craft, my Hexerei skill had some weird ideas about how to spend a rainy afternoon, but this was... entirely different. This was a whole core speaking to me, an entire other being that was... me, speaking to me, with her own thoughts and ideas inside my head. But I had to admit she was right - This was better. Her tail thumped the ground as it waggled and she showed me her tummy. I decided to trust, and...

without getting up, without becoming bigger than her, which I instinctively knew would spook her, I crawled on the ground towards my... what, sister? Other self? She squirmed in delight as I did, and then... bit me! No, she didn't bite me. She just... put her mouth on me and held me, tail still waggling, ear still flopping as she stared soulfully up at me with ember-golden eyes. I wiggled my hand a little and she grunted. Trusting myself and my intuition, I reached out for her.

She tensed a little, but I could see gears turning in her head. She was scared! I was scared. But. We'd made a promise. I wouldn't hurt her if she didn't hurt me. She hadn't - so... the deal was holding. I felt her snoot, pet over her soft dark fur to the caramel over her chest and tummy and... she was so soft, so warm under my hand. She also didn't let go of my other hand! FRIENDS? I smiled, not showing teeth, and nodded. Sure, we can be friends. I mean... we're already sharing a body...

we might as well be, I guess. She let go and rolled onto her belly, and... adorably, she squirmed and grunted as she got up. I didn't feel threatened as she came to eye level with me and... sat on me, draping herself across my lap as I oofed and tried to wrap as much of her in my arms as I could reach! Even as a puppy she was simply enormous! THIS IS BETTER Yeah... it is. Do you remember much... from before? I don't fully know why I asked that particular question, but...

my instincts had rarely led me astray before. Sootpaw tilted her head at me again, her incomprehension writ large on her face, and got up off me. She paced around a little in the space, and I thought she wasn't going to answer before she sneezed once and looked at me, her uncertainty and discomfort plain. NO I DONT REMEMBER. REMEMBER DARKNESS. REMEMBER MOONLIGHT. REMEMBER CHASE AND HUNT AND FIGHT. REMEMBER DARKNESS. With her words came images of what she meant.

Dark waters closing over me, oblivion and restraint surging with purple fire in the void of oblivion, sustaining me, but... keeping me prisoner, keeping me streaked with agony. I winced to myself and recognized my own power, my control over my curse as it had denied her... everything. Existence, freedom, even breath in the blackness of the pool.

Then one night a stranger showed me the horror of my own transformation mirrored in her own body and showed me how to talk to this part of me that had been there all along, but that had been both my prisoner... and the being that ruined my life. We met Emily, and everything changed. Sootpaw whined at me, and I knew, knew that she was scared of me. She... was more scared of me than I was of her.

She didn't want to go back in the pool, didn't want to feel the purple flames filling her blood and denying her breath again. She wanted to exist! She wanted to live! I'd felt this much more keenly when we'd first made contact in the dark, when Emily had taught us how to talk, taught me how to make the choice I'd made, and it'd been almost more than I could bear. I wasn't wicked - I'd had no idea what I was doing, I had no idea that this was ME I was hurting, ME I was crushing in the inky pool.

The inky pool that was still there in my mind, even now, that I would... send her back to when dawn rose, without even meaning to. Sootpaw whined. She shrank from me as I stood, and I clenched my fists. Hexerei whispered into me, told me that I could do more to restrain her now, that I could have greater power with true control over my curse, and I rejected the idea, rejected the Crone inside my head, and was filled with utter revulsion.

Only now did I see how truly vicious and selfish the old woman was - she'd been giving me what I want, and in some way that made me her creature. How could I trust Wolf if she couldn't trust me? How could I be my father's daughter if I was someone who would do that to an innocent creature? Sootpaw wasn't evil. Maybe once, she had been - when she was scared, when she was alone, when she was the subject of the World - but even then only maybe. In the real world, I stopped dead.

It felt like chains had locked me in place as the horror of what I'd actually done fully set in on my understanding, from the Wolf's perspective. World... what had I done? Emily didn't notice at first, and I didn't care - I wasn't thinking about the Hunt now. Support the author by searching for the original publication of this novel. No more. It was an iron bar in my mind. I knew right from wrong - and torturing something, someone, was wrong. No. More.

I spoke the thoughts very deliberately into my mind, and they echoed as if there was a storm coming. The trees outside hissed, and a voice, the Crone I called Hexerei hissed at me in my own heart. Sootpaw cowered back. Idiot child! I protected you! I guided you! You survived because of me! That thing will destroy you! She will devour your bones in your sleep and then what will you be? The Crone's voice filled my head as she tried to call up my power. MY power.

I suddenly saw red - it was completely beyond me to speak in an inside voice in this place, my place, my own mind. I felt like a fool. Now, now that I knew what I'd wrought, what I'd done with my power, I knew what Hexerei was in truth. Power, yes... but dark power. It got strength from suffering, from... taking. I felt dirty. EXCUSE ME? I thundered into my own head without opening my mind's eye. YOU DARE? THIS IS MY HEAD, OLD WOMAN, MY POWER YOU THINK TO USE AGAINST ME.

Sootpaw, eyes wide let out a whine that transformed into a mournful cry from my throat - my real throat, and the one in my head, from my lips and her own at the same time. I felt Sootpaw's terror and confusion and let them flow through me - it hurt. World above it hurt, but... I used it. I took that pain, that fear, and pushed it into the fires of anger inside me.

Flames leapt from my mouth as my Magic surged, coming out with the cry in a cone of pure fire that lit the small clearing I found myself in for sixty feet in every direction. You fool girl! I am trying to guide you! You have it in you to be a powerful witch, if you do what I tell you! GET BEHIND ME, CRONE I thundered GET BACK INTO THE DARK AND TAKE YOUR BLACK WATERS WITH YOU! A rite of denial. My power became mine again, and glowed like a mote of anger-red flame in my heart.

My Wolf didn't understand - I was shouting inside my own head, and she was terrified! I WONT GO BACK! I DON'T WANT TO! My sister, my Wolf said, and I embraced her presence. She belonged here. I'd done a few things I'd hated for power - the rites had required pain equal to the pain of my change, and I'd taken it from creatures I'd caught, I'd made it mine, to stand in, pain for pain, in order to get done what I'd done to Sootpaw, to deny my transformation, to stay human almost every night.

Even now, I felt the presence of the poor little creatures I'd hurt, their stolen energies, swirling in the oily, foul surface of the dark waters in the center of the cottage of my mind. Fortunately, it would only take a petulent child and her Wolf to undo them. I felt sick. So you won't! Never again! This I Vow! My voice rang out into the narrow space of my head for a moment, and gradually, the Wolf's expression, creased with fear as it had been, softened and her tail, between her legs, began to wag!

Had Sootpaw's dawning hope been bottled, it would have sustained entire families through the hardest winters. It'd keep me warm a while, I reckoned! That was my Second Denial. Sure I'd said 'no more' twice, but that was one denial, I understood in my own head. I raised the ember of my will aloft into my hand, calling it into shape, giving it the fiery aspect that came so easily to me even now. The Wolf inside me, hopeful, eyes wide, gave me her half of it too, and I smiled. CHILD!

The Crone hissed, desperate now I HAVE MORE TO TEACH YOU! PLEASE! THRICE I SAY AND DONE. BEGONE! With that, I took my power from her crooked fingers and hurled it at the pool in my own head, the construct I'd made when I'd spent my first character point, under the Crone's sneering guidance. Under Hexerei's guidance.

Not just my power - but my Wolf's power as well - all the strength we could muster, even as in the real world, the flames went from orange to purple and flooded out of me in a stream like some kind of incandescent litany, turning the cone of flame into a beam of purple light that struck the sky, or so it seemed to me. The ball of my will, my power, Wolf's power too, my desire never to do something so evil again and her desire to be free, it struck the inky black pool in the cottage and...

it exploded in a fireball that blew the roof of the cottage off and knocked me flying from my feet in the mindscape, and knocked me down in the real world as if I'd taken a blow from a giant from the sheer release of power, superheated air knocking me to the earth like a hammer. Oops. In seconds, smoke swallowed the room and even in my own mind, even in the mindscape my head had become, my eyes were blearied shut by heat and stinging smoke. I could hear something like... fat sizzling? Wood releasing steam?

It sounded like a high pitched scream in my own ears, and I had to cover them too. Fear - oldschool and terrible - filled me as I found myself, in my own mind, curling up into a fetal position, mirrored in the real world in my monstrous body. I couldn't breathe, I couldn't think, I... just couldn't! And then... gentle jaws closed on me and pulled me, worried my body as Sootpaw took me at the last. I thought that was it. Had I made the right choice? It seemed not. Sootpaw really would just....

gobble me up and I'd be just a monster now, with no cruel, ancient woman's voice to guide me. And then... SLURP. Sootpaw's tongue met my face, and it was... cool, and wet, and... came again. SLURP. She whined and blindly, eyes blearied shut with the smoke of what I'd done, I gripped her tight! Lungs at last took a breath of air that no longer burned inside me. She didn't let up, and I could feel...

her tail wagging, could feel her presence against me as the heat of the burning cottage shone onto our bodies like a sun as the moon shone from above on the scene. Good Girl! What? The World... praised me? I could actually feel a warm hand on my head, ruffling my fur and my ears. Or was that Emily? I couldn't tell.

You Have Rejected [MAGIC] Hexerei Skill Points Refunded For breaking a curse, Bonus XP is gained I felt joy bubble up inside of me - I couldn't help it, even as I coughed and coughed and coughed, in the mindscape and in the real world. I laughed. Sootpaw made a wispy, whispery noise that bubbled and pulsed with joy too, and licked me some more, whining in concern for me even as she tried to get absolutely every bit of her body that she could against my own! The Laughter felt...

incredible, and I shared it for the first time with the Wolf inside my heart as... dimly, I felt, in the real world, as Emily scooped my hybridized body up. I just couldn't tear myself from my mindscape, from this moment of... abject freedom I was sharing with my wolf, this pure joy I felt in my heart. The World's love fell upon my face like the moon high above, and I felt another pat on my head. Due to your choices, you have gained the class skill [MAGIC] Braucherei, Rank F Your [MAGIC] Alignment has changed!

Whaaaaaaat in the World did THAT mean? I laughed some more, and Wolf laughed with me in her strange wispy-wheezy way! But... I'd gained a new skill, had I? Braucherei. I'd heard of the skill of course - it was the light-sided echo of Hexerei, its equal opposite. It was a gentler magic, one that brought luck and healed, one that... right now, sounded absolutely perfect. I didn't need to fight curses with curses anymore.

This one, this curse in my arms, licking my face, that had pulled me from the fire, this curse wasn't one I needed to fight. THANK YOU Welcome, Sootpaw. I'm sorry. I meant it, from the bottom of my heart. Her love hit me like the moonlight. And I realized that no, it WAS the moonlight. I could no more escape from my other self than I could run from the sky. The insight of that fetched up against me like it'd always been waiting for me to notice it, and finally I looked up from my thoughts to find myself being...

cradled in Emily's arms. My throat burned like I'd been shouting not long ago, and my body was exhausted down to my toenails, a sure sign that I'd... uh... used a lot of magic. Like, a lot a lot. I'd never used so much before, I reckoned.

"Hey" I said, and discovered that the magic Gelidia put on me even let me sound as raspy and painful as I felt. Emily licked my face and nuzzled me, clutched me tight against her as she held me against her chest. Even changed, I was... tiny, compared to her. She really could scoop me up and hold me like a child, and with how thin I was, even in this shape, it was as clear as the first time I'd seen her how unhealthy I actually was.

I felt a second pair of hands petting my ears - cool, tiny hands - that could only have belonged to the Shade. What had Emily called her? Gelidia? I wasn't in any mood or position to question things, and besides... she knew what she was doing, that ghost. The cool fingers dug into just the right spot to make my leg wiggle and kick a bit.

"Hey" Emily said softly once I was well and truly cuddled"You okay, honey?" she asked, and I heard Truth that I didn't nearly understand in her deep alto rumbling voice. What could I say to that? Could I confess to the awful things I'd done? Should I? No... not yet. Someday, but... I didn't want to scare Emily, didn't want her to look at me cockeyed or dislike me. Her approval meant more to me than I'd cared to admit in that moment. Gelidia kissed my head. I could tell.

"That was very brave." she said softly, and as Emily looked at her in confusion, I knew that Gelidia knew already.

"You broke a curse, didn't you?" she said, and I decided to roll with it. It was the truth after all. I nodded, and Gelidia and Emily sandwiched me between them, eliciting a puppylike grunty-grunt noise from my breast that came totally unbidden as I was squooshed between the older Wolf and the shade whom she had called her Consort, the Sootpaw Sandwich! THIS IS NICE Yeah... I could get used to this.