Fait Accompli: An Unwilling Tutelage

[Sal]

At once, the soft hairs at the base of Elke’s neck stood at attention. Something dark, something sinister was slithering up her back — an invisible serpent but nonetheless a venomous one.

A replacement for the fallen werewolf? A replacement—

A transformation spell?!

“Nevina?!” Elke cried out, simultaneously leaning over to retrieve her bag and her notebook within. She must have some kind of reversal incantation jotted down. Some kind of item she could use to halt the progression. A protection sigil. Her trembling hands searched. Something! Anything?!

“I don’t want to be a werewolf, please!”

[Seperallis]

From Elke's perspective, colors bled from the ember-cast lighting of the room as the next couple seconds trudged forward through several events in simultaneous and quick succession. Even as she still had full agency, a cozy feeling of being wrapped in layers of blankets enveloped her and eased her out of the chair and towards the witch as the brushing sensations continued to travel up her legs and spine.

As the young mage cried out her name, Nevina reacted almost immediately. There was no time for quip or witticism: while Elke fumbled in fear with her belongings, Nevina violently kicked her chair away with the backs of her knees and stood with flute in hand, its end beginning to warm with a familiar glow of embers as she brought it to bear. She looked away from the witch almost reflexively, eyes widening the entire time, until they locked into Elke's; the elf's eyes visibly glassed over, and the young woman jolted to a stop as an unseen force clapped into her torso and, with all the gentle subtlety of a boulder-heaving giant, flung her backwards.

Mildred rose from the table with Nevina, a growing scowl on her face joining with the beginnings of a rising screech as she unfurled from her hunch. Two grasping, bony talons quickly stretched to impossible lengths as she reached out, one of which swiped at the air in Elke's face while the other embedded itself deep into the base of the elf's neck. Both the chair and the feeble door frame splintered under the force of Elke's projectile body.

The last thing she saw before sailing on a shattered door into the inky sea of night was the fire explode from the end of the flute focus mere feet away from her. The witch's enraged screech raised into bloodcurdling agony that drowned out Nevina's gurgling gasp as a swirling hemisphere of fire blossomed and engulfed the entirety of the cottage. The blast sent a shockwave of force and heat that propelled Elke even further before tumbling uncontrollably into the field of flowers, with the flaming and smoldering remains of planks following behind her.

One thing was clear so far in the glow of the flash inferno; with the creeping sensation in her back and legs now gone, the mageling was not a werewolf.

[Sal]

Grey.

Warm.

Black.

Numb.

Nothing.

Bright.

Hot.

HOT!

Fire!

Flying!

Falling!

And then it was dark again, and the bridge between Elke’s brain and body was reestablished. Disoriented, she lifted her head. She was on the ground, surrounded by flowers that didn’t smell quite right. A fire raged behind her and the tang of smoke made her cough. Her body ached but in the way bodies ache while there is still enough adrenaline to mask real pain.

She looked around. Her bag was beside her, its contents regurgitated around it. Elke began shoving everything she could see back inside - her journal with its singed pages, her pen, a half-eaten piece of fruit....

She looked around. Nevina was lying motionless a few paces away.

“Nevina?” she rasped. With no response from her companion, Elke felt her body move into action as if someone else was still controlling it. She half-crawled, half-walked over the tangles of blossoms and plunked herself down by the slight form of the elf. “Nevina?” Clumsily, she gave the woman a little nudge. She thought she might have heard Nevina make a quiet, wet noise, but in the sharp contrast of shadows and glow created by the fire and through the haze of the black smoke and of her own half-delirious mind, Elke was having trouble determining if she was awake.

The fires were burning closer. Elke needed to move them away. And wasn’t there something wrong with these flowers?

Not waiting around to see if Nevina was capable of walking by her own strength, Elke grabbed the woman up — her chest against Nevina’s back, her arms hooked under Nevina’s underarms — and began dragging her backwards away from the wreckage. She stumbled a few times in the thick foliage as if it was grabbing purposefully at her feet, and each time she fell, it became harder and harder to get back up. Her head and back throbbed, and she longed to sleep until the feeling subsided, but burning to death was not ideal.

The final time she fell, they were well away from the fire and beyond the edge of the garden, and Elke made the choice not to move further. The effort felt as if it had taken hours, but how much time had actually passed was unclear - most likely not hours, though. Maybe minutes. There was no sign of dawn on the horizon, and the trees hid the moon’s position. Elke stared up at the visible stars from her belly-up position and felt the black of something deeper than sleep creeping in around the edges of her vision.

“Hey?” the mageling asked in a shaky voice between deep breaths. “Nevina? Nevina?”


1d20 rolled for a total of: 14 (14)

[Seperallis]

No response.

Nevina's body lay motionless, limbs contorted from the final fall in the unmistakable pretzel-sign of a complete lack of conscious control. Now much further and safer from the fire, she might find it nonetheless more difficult now to discern whether or how much of the flowing crimson sheets falling across the elf's front was hair, or...something definitely not hair.

Nothing.

Passage through the garden had proven uneventful. Whatever the two avoided on the way into the cottage, if anything, clearly no longer posed any concern; whether this was tied to Nevina or Mildred remained unclear, any pitiful moans of agony from the crumpled remains of the immolated witch could not breach the crackling cacophony of the bonfire-cottage, which thankfully did not spread far under the stagnant summer evening air.

Alone.

The endless songs of insects, the imposing feeling of countless eyes upon her in the dark, the scratching of shrub and tree: all the familiar and comforting sounds of a nighttime wilderness remained absent against the crackle and pop of the fires. With them went the voices, forces, the spirits about which she ruminated with Nevina earlier that day and ultimately, supposedly, guided her to Myerleigh. For the first time in her entire season-long journey, lying in a nameless burning field in the middle of an empty wilderness beside the limp body of an unresponsive mentor, a weight of absolute isolation fell upon Elke's prone form and pushed her slowly into the warm, comforting numbness of nothing as the last few stars blinked insistently through her blackening vision.

And then they blinked brighter, before exploding into a blinding whiteness that filled past Elke's vision, behind her eyes and into her very consciousness. As the light burrowed into her the aches in her body returned, only now amplified by a searing pain piercing from the base of her skull through her forehead.

"Wake up." The voice was both firm and gentle, as if rousing someone to bed who had fallen asleep in the wrong place. A familiar voice.

Nevina's voice.

"It is time to wake up."

* * * * *

By the time the brilliant brightness dissipated and the shocking stabbing in her skull began to ebb, Elke was no longer face up among the flowers and grasses of a clearing, but around a somewhat familiar scene. Sat in a chair, an untouched teacup upon a crooked table before her, the warm embers of a fire illuminating rickety cupboards and hanging utensils and her belongings an arm's reach away, the scene looked identical to the moments before the sudden outburst and explosion that had propelled her from the cottage.

No, not quite. Something looked..."off" about it, and the more her vision came into focus, the more the differences became noticeable: the table, chairs, and other furnishings had a bony resistance and leather-like texture, the hearth and all the cupboards fleshy cocoons with gaping holes, the walls pulsing slightly - almost imperceptibly - to an unheard drumbeat. The light wasn't from any fire, but faint orange rays being cast through the veiny, membranous window and door. The hunched woman sitting close by became a bloated flesh-sack with stumped arms and a droopy face, making a barely audible, repetitive inquiry, "Tea? Tea?"

Every surface and thing in this otherworldly room reflected the sheen of a clear, liquidy, slightly viscous substance gave off a sweet smell and taste of nectars, pooling especially thick on and around the flesh-heap and around most of Elke's own form. It pulsed and jiggled in time with the movements of the walls, rolling at once both up and down itself as it gave the room a persistent melting hypnotism, it's cold minty sensation both growing and soothing the persistent aches and pains in the mageling's body.

The overwhelmingly pungent spear of brimstone pierced every sense upon the warm, heavy, humid air.

"There you are," came a soft voice. Nevina stood beside the young mage, hunched slightly as she withdrew her hands from Elke's head. She looked a woman who had just run consecutive marathons through a bog: her hair matted, covered in the sweat of exertion, arms and legs soiled with the clear goop. She forced herself with breathy grunts through sluggish movements as she ran her arms down Elke's body, swiping away as much of the jelly as possible before placing herself beneath one of young woman's armpits. With one spent arm, flute in hand, wrapped around the torso and her other holding the pupil's various belongings, the elf began to lift.

"Hold onto me," said Nevina, "we are leaving."

[Sal]

Too much. The scene was too much for Elke’s sluggish mind to take in. Her eyes, still trying to focus on the — the flesh? The ripped-open cells like a beehive? The veins? The — what was—?

She opened her mouth to speak and instead coughed, and she wasn’t sure whether it was the flame and smoke from an explosion that she was pretty sure had sent her tumbling into an accursed garden, or the now acrid stink of brimstone mingling with something sugary and fermented.

Nevina was there.

In her confusion, Elke hadn’t even noticed. The woman did not look well per se, but she was not dripping blood, not a smoldering heap. She was alive.

“Nevina?” the girl peeped.

Hold onto Nevina? She could do that. At least, she thought she could. Her arms felt so heavy, as if they’d been tied to boulders, but she managed to raise them and wrap them clumsily around Nevina’s shoulders. Something about the way it felt to cling to her this way was nostalgic. Filial. She wanted to lay her head on Nevina’s shoulder and go to sleep, the way she did as a little girl when her dad would carry her to bed.

But the last thing Elke remembered was that Nevina had been gravely wounded, even if she didn’t look it now, and she was hesitant to do anything that would cause her any additional pain. She was also afraid to fall asleep; Nevina’s voice had sounded relieved when Elke awoke, so maybe it was not safe to sleep here now.

In a stupor as she clung to her companion, the mageling asked, “Are we dead?”

[Seperallis]

"Not this time," Nevina grimaced while stifling a short whimper with the exertion of bearing the taller woman's weight. Squaring her stance and strengthening her grip, the elf all but lifted the shakily disoriented Elke from her seat, then swiped the tip of her flute along the membranous "door;" the barrier cleanly split apart, causing the walls to convulse as the two travelers broke into the daylight.

The navy and violet of twilight already began to recede to the orange bath of a rising sun climbing above the trees. Within this clearing, for hundreds of feet all around, purple and yellow and orange buds created an nonseasonal autumnal quilt over a gently flowing verdant sea before tapering off into the shadowy brush of the woods. Several limp, brown, wilted paths wound their way through the foliage towards the unassuming exterior of the living cottage like roots finding their way to a tree trunk. A breeze rolled past, pushing aside the vapors of fermentation and sulfur just wide enough to spread the good news of a day of singed air and cloudless skies.

The birds cheerily voiced their triumphant song of survival across the clearing, and the crimson elf held Elke close as the two trudged away from the cottage and the low, rumbling gurgle that followed them from within.

"We will get you to a bed," she offered as reassurance, "just stay with me a little while longer."


..:: End Lesson Three ::..

[Seperallis]

Lesson 4:

Insistent rays of sunlight finally roused Elke to a scene confusing in its familiarity, bundled as she was within a wrap of soft woven blankets upon a down-topped straw mattress. A wash basin and mirror occupied one corner of this room, beside which sat a pitcher of room-cold water and a gently-used, perfumed lump of homemade soap. One small window with wooden blinds sat open, allowing the dying light of the late afternoon sun and the shy notes of pine tar and wild onions from the nearby forest to spread across the young woman and ground her in the reality that she once again found herself within her room at Forlag's inn. The wilderness was gone and the pain similarly so, as well as any other sign of the woodlands misadventures excepting the soft throbbing of her temples, and her newly-awoken languor.

Not all was the same this go around, as she finally noticed the room's new occupants. Upon a new oaken bedside stool sat her clothes, folded, perfumed and neatly pressed beneath her journal and satchels. Upon a new chair in front of the door sat a crimson-haired elf, arms and legs crossed as she stared blankly into the realm of thought some distance beyond the window.

[Sal]

Few things were as powerful as a cocoon of soft blankets around a weary body, and Elke found that her toughest battle to date came when trying to shuck off the soft layers enough to prop herself up to have a look around her surroundings. Despite the latent grogginess, she readily identified the room as one of Forlag's - her room, in fact.

Elke blinked. Was it all just a dream, then? The trek to the witch's home, the spell that had ensnared her like a bear trap, the explosion and Nevina--

Upright suddenly, the girl's head pounded in protest, but she did her best to ignore it as she scanned the room for--

Nevina. Outwardly, at least, the woman appeared fine, and Elke felt her body sink back into the pillows some. So it was a dream, then? Elke thought hard, but try as she might, her last clear memory came just before Millie had cast her spell. There were vaguer images of the fire, of dragging Nevina's limp form away from it, of collapsing under an assembly of trees who bowed their dark limbs over her like a funeral procession over a casket awaiting burial. Even foggier still were memories of Nevina coaxing her to wake up, to walk, of stumbling through a dark forest by the flickering firelight, of promises that it's not much further, now. But that didn't make sense; Elke had dragged Nevina away from the burning wreckage of the home that was not a home but a beast's den, not even sure if the woman was alive, so how was it possible that Nevina had maneuvered Elke back to the inn?

It must have been a dream, a very long and very detailed dream, but Elke felt something at the back of her mind that told her it was not.

With a ragged voice, she croaked out, "Nevina? How long have I been asleep?"

[Seperallis]

Lost deeply in her thoughts, Nevina started slightly at Elke's sudden upright bolt before relaxing with a sigh. She gathered herself and stood as she replied, "Three days." She paused for a second, mulling over her own reply as she picked up her chair and moved it by the bedside. "To be precise, you have awoken many times since, though always in delirium."

"My apologies for the intrusion," the elf offered as she sat beside Elke before cradling the girl's head in one hand and using the other to examine her face and eyes. "How do you feel? You appear much more lucid today, do you know where you are?"

[Sal]

"The inn," she answered, addressing the final question first. Perhaps because it was the easiest question to answer. "The squirrel's place. Though I haven't the clearest idea of how I got here. And...." Elke paused.

How did she feel? Like she'd been run through a pasta press, and yet perfectly uninjured at the same time.

"I feel alright. Well enough. Tired, though, like I wouldn't be able to lift anything heavier than a book very well at the moment."

Her stomach let out a faint gurgle.

"Oh! And, um, hungry!"