Steelfated, p.4
Steelfated, page 4
“The world is ever changing, Tidsear. That is why it is so vibrant, and it is what makes life worth living. Old wisdom should enhance new experiences, not limit them, as is so often the case.” Her quote was almost simmering with its irreverence. The elf smiled at this. Rhaelan, her fellow initiate seated in the northernmost position, snorted, her white blonde hair plastered damply about her head in the drizzle of rain that had been falling over them for the last few hours.
“You’ve got a bit of shite on your nose there, Mor-” A small rock thumping into her forehead cut her off. Morgain didn’t see who had thrown it, and then had to consider if anyone had thrown it at all, or if a druid had tied the rock to Rhaelan. The elf’s response to her quip was dry.
“Those are the words of youth and easily spoken. You are not yet twenty, unless I miss my guess.” The druid said calmly. Morgain’s lips curled up slightly at the reminder.
“You do not. My seventeenth name day is only a few days away.”
“The equinox is a good time to finish the binding.” Cuilada said from the center, her red gold hair bobbing excitedly as she nodded. “It makes for the strongest of bonds. We will all be highly skilled druids some day.”
The other two initiates laughed once, and Rhaelan scowled slightly.
“The equinox and the solstices are the ONLY times that this works. Balance between night and day- summer and winter and whatnot? As for future strength- speak for yourself, C,” Rhaelan said. “She is about to die.”
Morgain sobered and looked down.
“When you die, I’m claiming the bedroom in your tower in Iannemrir!” Cuilada laughed. Morgain turned and stuck her tongue out at the woman, who laughed harder.
“That room and bed belong to me. I’ve no intention of sharing either of them with you.” Morgain replied archly.
“Why not? You shared it with him not so long ago-” Cuilada started, motioning towards the south at Dremhin with her chin, then cut off with a yelp as the Druid who was binding her rapped her across the cheek with the stick. Cuilada stuck her tongue out at the woman, then turned back to Morgain.
“Well, it’s not like you’ll be using them. If you are dead and in Vandalore, such things will no longer matter, and when you return for your Marathe Itanea1, you will lose your memories of this cycle before you can speak. Besides, it’s only stuff. Marvelous stuff that it would be a shame to let go to waste.” She finished. Morgain smile widened slightly.
“The vast majority of wars are fought over ‘stuff’, you know.” The final initiate of her group, Brine said in his reedy voice. Cuilada rolled her eyes.
“Really?” she drawled, her lips close to a sneer. Brine was not likely to pick up on the sarcasm, though.
“Oh yes. One group of people looks at another and says, ‘Hey, they have stuff, and we want it, so let’s kill them and take their stuff.’” Dremhin quipped, coming to Brine’s rescue. Cuilada stuck her tongue out at the pair of them, then looked pointedly at Morgain.
“He’s nearly as much of a know-it-all as you are. Is that why you chose him to share your bed?”
There was a collective gasp, and more than a few uttered oaths as the druids stabbed the back of the students’ hands simultaneously, just as full twilight filled the sky.
The now all too familiar stab and burn of the thorn seemed amplified and extended to Morgain this time, as it drove the woad beneath her skin. A flash of blinding light whited her vision out. Then a wave of heat-like one would feel when opening an oven door- washed over her entire body. It started at the tattoo on the sole of her left foot, and followed the knotwork of the tattoos, rising with a strange juxtaposition of speed marked with an agonizing slowness. It was intense, but not painful. She closed her eyes, still unable to see as the warmth reached her shoulder and climbed up her neck.
She could feel it reach the end of her hair, then slowly retreat the way it had come. Once it had retreated below her neck, the white light faded and her vision cleared, the colors returning slowly. The strange heat trickled back down her tattoos, feeling like nothing so much as a drop of hot water following her skin. The sensation made her shiver slightly. When it got back to her heel, and had almost faded away entirely, it began again, and she opened her eyes and found that the color of the world around her had returned to its proper quality.
She wasn’t sure what she expected to see, more colors that she hadn’t known existed or the fabric of the air itself, or something else entirely. She noticed nothing about the world that seemed new, although her vision slowly spun as if she were drunk.
“How long will the waves of heat last?” Morgain asked as the wave climbed past her knee. Her swimming vision settled a bit more. The wave of heat cycled again and her vision finally settled fully back into her control. She looked around more pointedly now.
To her dismay, there seemed to be little difference in how she saw the world, if anything was different at all. Things were sharper, perhaps more in focus. Off in the distance, near the lip of the grove, she could see a faint white glow that she hadn’t seen there before they completed her binding. The arch-druid answered her, finally.
“That is the pulse of Archenarium herself, bandrui. It will never stop, not completely. However, when you are not using the magic, the waves are so slight you can hardly feel them at all. They are only as noticeable as your own heartbeat most of the time.” The elf said with a smile. “Release the magic, and the feeling will subside.” Morgain looked at him quizzically.
“How?” The druid smiled and raised his hand. He leaned forward, placed the back of his hand on the earth, and spoke a single word.
“Eirias.”
Morgain repeated the gesture and the word. The waves of heat stopped washing over her, almost. They were barely perceptible now, as the druid had said, and given a day or two of their continuing, she probably wouldn’t notice them much, if at all.
She drew on the power again, and the waves of heat intensified.
“Be mindful of what you do. There are limits. Eventually you will accrue a debt that must be repaid before Archenarium will allow you to draw power again.” The druid told her. “But you are highly unlikely to reach it today. We’ll perform some tests in a few moments to see what your particular talent is.”
“Limits such as?” Morgain asked, thrilling in the power’s feeling coursing through her. Her body seemed hypersensitive and energized as she held the power.
“For example, unless you are a Purger, one thing that is written into the knotwork of your tattoos is an inability to cause direct harm to a living creature with the earth’s magic. A Purger can use their power to cull, but not to kill.”
“How are they different?” Morgain asked. The druid narrowed his eyes slightly.
“Intent, mostly. Do not interrupt me again. If you have questions, hold them until the end of my speech.”
“Now, there are many workarounds, both for Purgers, and those of other gifts- but you cannot simply use the knotwork to close off the blood from reaching the heart, just because they annoy you, which is something that many of the ‘Gifted’ Northern mages can do. It’s also why the people fear them in a way that they do not fear druids.”
“Why would I-?” Morgain started.
“Sometimes death is a mercy, bandrui. Sometimes an animal or person is so sick and in pain that the only thing we can do is move them on to their next cycle. Pinching a blood vessel to the heart off is a quick and relatively painless way to go. From what I understand, the pain is comparable to a muscle cramp, and it only takes a moment to work. But, unless you are a Purger, it is not your place to judge if something wishes its life to end. Not with the magic of living things.”
“You could use a knife, or your own hands, or even a rock to do so, but not the magic.” Morgain rubbed her chin thoughtfully as the knowledge percolated through her mind. After a moment she nodded, then leaped to her feet, releasing the power and face, breaking into a huge grin.
“Can I see my reflection now?” Morgain exclaimed, forgetting everything she had just been thinking of. Cuilada grinned and held a hand out for Morgain to pull her to her feet. Morgain helped the smaller woman shakily rise to her feet and unsteadily wobbled towards the reflective pool beside the southern standing stone.
“I want to see too!” The newly bound druids began shedding their clothing quickly and efficiently, excited to see how their new tattoos looked. The three women had gotten to their feet more quickly than the men had.
Behind them, Brine barked out in surprise.
“Wh-hey! Damn it, you goat begotten bastard!”
Dremhin laughed. Morgain turned to look at them. Brine was trying to remove his shirt from his face and having great difficulty. Dremhin was laughing uproariously. He had used the magic of Archenarium to knot the fabric of Brine’s shirt to the hair of his eyebrows. It was immature, true, but it was funny. The druid that had been tattooing Morgain shook his head.
“Without fail.” he muttered, an amused grin spreading across his face as he stepped back to watch the shenanigans unfold.
Dremhin’s laughter continued loudly, even after Brine untied the magical ‘knots’ holding the shirt to his face, and threw a glare at Dremhin. Dremhin laughed until Cuilada knotted the legs of his trousers to his ankles, then knotted the seat of the trousers to one of the standing stones about five paces away.
The effect was as instant as it was dramatic.
The power of the knotwork ripped Dremhin from his feet, and jerked across the ground, towards the stone. He landed flat on his back, hard, and his breath exploded from him in a loud whoop, before getting dragged across the grass until the seat of his trousers was stuck to the side of the stone as if someone had nailed them there. Cuilada untied the knots and grinned mischievously. Dremhin’s trousers fell off the stone, as they should have naturally, and his feet hit the ground a second later.
Morgain thought, at least momentarily as she folded her clothes neatly into a pile, that she might escape from the shenanigans without involving herself.
That illusion only lasted until Dremhin tied the leather bracelet on Cuilada’s right wrist to the bare skin of Morgain’s backside.
The result was Cuilada slapping Morgain’s rear like a randy tavern patron might a poor, overworked serving girl. After giving a mortifying yelp of surprise, and jumping almost two feet in the air, Morgain stooped to their level and joined the shenanigans, eager for some payback.
A few moments later, once they had called a truce, they approached the reflecting pool slowly. They were all covered in welts, bruises, and more than a little dirt, and Morgain found two leaves and a stick in her hair, while Rhaelan seemed unaware that she still had a large leaf tied to her shin.
The newly bound druids gathered by the reflective pool of water to examine their tattoos in reverent silence, or at least in reverent near silence. Morgain looked at herself in the reflecting pool.
Her skin, though pale, especially next to the dark tinted tattoos, had a healthy glow. Her coal black hair, when not caught up in a ponytail as it was now, tumbled about her head in loose curls, and would fall nearly to the small of her back if she let it. Emerald green eyes, glowing with excitement like back-lit gemstones, looked back at herself, not caring in the least that she was standing naked in the middle of a group of nearly twenty people. All the other new druids were naked as well. At less than an inch shorter than six feet, she was tall for a woman from the Tuathan Highlands, who averaged around five and a half feet, but not so tall as to be taller than any but the shortest of the men, who had an average height of over six feet. She towered over both Cuilada and Rhaelan, who were both about five and a half feet tall. She was taller than Brine- by an inch, but Dremhin was nearly six inches taller than she was.
The knotwork tattoos wound across the entire left side of her body like colorful vines. Starting at the ball of her foot with a representation of the tree of life, which was, in reality, an enormous Striftwood that stood at the center of the Caldorian Capital, Talys Rae. That tattoo, whose roots extended across the underside of her toes, while its trunk ran the length of her foot, had been there the longest. Four years ago, when the druids had deemed her group of initiates ready to study the actual knotwork of the magic, they had spent a few miserable days putting that one on. Its completion had allowed her to see the knotwork, but not to do anything with it. Now, the branches of the tree turned around her ankle, wrapped across the top of her foot once, then started up the back of her calf. They continued upward, wrapping around her leg twice before it reached her knee. Above her knee, circled her leg twice more before reaching her hip, where it turned again. It wound its way up through the valley between her left thigh and her groin, then rose around her hip bone in a graceful arc. It straightened to climb up the side of her stomach until it reached her ribs. The knotwork darted between two of her lowest three ribs to her back, then back across the side of her chest, three ribs higher up. From there, the knotwork circled around her left breast, the outside of which was tattooed, then went to her back where it spiraled up and around her shoulder blade and up her nape. It climbed up beneath her hair to the crown of her head, where it reappeared as a single branch curling down from her hairline down around her left ear, with a single leaf design on her earlobe, and another just in front of it on her cheek. The tattoo darted back into her hairline, then paralleled the first line of knotwork that crossed her neck before it turned to travel down the top of her shoulder to her arm. It wrapped two times around her bicep, and twice around her forearm, before ending in a tree of life on the back of her left hand that matched the one on her foot. The branches climbed each of her fingers individually, while the roots encircled her wrist.
She smiled and willed the magic to come from the earth through the bottom of her foot. She felt the heat pulse through her again; it followed the path of her tattoos, but washed across her whole body, rather than just outlining them. After a few seconds, she released her draw, feeling her own reservoir of power fill.
She examined the bands where they wrapped around her leg, trying hopelessly to decipher them.
She stepped away from the pool. The drizzle of rain stopped, finally.
She examined the tattoos directly from her own view for a time before she grinned and looked at the arch druids.
“I can shape-shift now?”
“Yes, into certain forms. Another limit worked into your binding. There are a dozen to choose from various parts of the food chain. You should have a predator form, a prey form, and a scavenger form from terrestrial creatures, as well as from aquatic creatures, and those who spend the bulk of their time in the air.” The elf said. “And some combination of each of them, land and air, land and water, and water and air. Go on, see what you can do.”
She backed up to give herself some space. enacted the magic required to shift form.
The tattoos gave her some basic idea of what particular creatures she could change into, but nothing specific.
She bound herself first to her land based predator form, and was pleased to find that she was a bobcat-quick, lean, and deadly, though not overly large. Notably, her fur was darker than usual, and the spots on her side followed the basic outlines of her tattoos.
She shifted back, grinning widely, and shifted to the next form. Her prey form she found less impressive, but that did not surprise her. She ended up being a floppy-eared, dark furred rabbit. Her scavenger form was that of a raccoon whose tail rings looked faintly like knotwork tattoos in their design. Her hybrid form of land and water was that of a large snapping turtle. She would be slow and ponderous on land, but graceful and strong in the water, if not so fast as a sea turtle would be.
She stood after the fourth shift, looked around her and grinned. The druid who had finished tattooing her gave a “go ahead” motion, and she shifted into her aquatic forms.
Her predator form was that of a leopard seal, as prey she was that of a salmon. She quickly realized her mistake as she flopped onto the ground and suddenly couldn’t breathe. She shifted back quickly and stepped into the water of the pool before shifting again. Her scavenger form was a catfish, and her hybrid water/air form was that of a black swan.
Finally, she shifted to her air based forms. She backed away to give herself some space at this point- she was unsure of what the shapes were, but she had the vague sense that her hybrid form of land and air, at the least, was rather large. Also, she really wanted to fly.
The first form she took in the air was a harpy eagle, her predator. As prey, she was a pine marten. Her scavenger form was that of a hooded crow. The mechanics of flight between the three were vastly different, and she crashed into the ground or a tree more than once. She stayed within sight of the standing stones as she flew, and she took to the differences between them smoothly enough that within five minutes of taking each form, she was flying competently, if not easily. She landed as a hooded crow, and by the time she stood upright again, she was back in her natural form. She grinned wildly, her excitement written as plainly on her face as the tattoos were against her skin.
One form left, the hybrid. She backed up again, still getting the strange suspicion that whatever she could change into was rather large.
With one last glance at the druid who had tattooed her, seeking encouragement, she shifted into the form of a dragon- with bronze colored scales and green eyes.
In her dragon form, from nose tip to the base of her tail, she was twenty feet long, and half as tall. Her tail was almost as long as her body, and it curled about her legs sinuously as she stretched her wings. The sudden appearance of a young dragon, and its subsequent exuberant roar, caused the other druids nearby to scatter back from her in shock.
She leaped into the air and beat her wings.
Take off was extremely cumbersome, but once she was airborne, and a couple of hundred feet off the ground, flight as a dragon was much easier than it was as a bird.
After a few moments of circuitous flight, and more than one exultant and unnecessary roar, she spiraled back in to land on the edge of the clearing.
