Crescent (Old Version)

+ Part 18 +

The next day, we took the same muddy path we had the day before, down to the bottom of whatever cliff the manor had been carved into. 

Saren wore a thick layer of thermal clothes and had instructed me to wear a similar stretchable fabric. Though the cloth was virtually less than an inch thick, as soon as I'd put it on, I started sweating.

That changed the further down we went. The cold air was like ice against my skin.

She said nothing as we came upon the same shuddering door we'd passed through the day before. I imagined the witch would be on the opposite side, but when Saren pulled out one of the large skeleton keys and unlocked it, I found that the door opened directly into the snow outside. As if the room had never existed. As if hearing the witch's voice in my head had all been a figment of my imagination. 

Something inside me told me it was all real.

Come back and play soon, Perdita.

"Where are we going this time?" I asked as we trudged through the snow. One look upwards revealed the snow storm raging at the cliffs above. I could see the lone stone bridge that connected the castle to the forest beyond it, the bridge I'd now crossed more than a month ago. Snow flurried against the cliffs wildly, and only some fell in soft sheets that now sprinkled us.

I didn't expect a reply, but I was surprised as we crossed the rocky cavern, our steps echoing off the stone walls, when she said over her shoulder: "Lord Shawcross expects you to train like every lady once did. You'll shift. You'll learn the basics of combat, sword play, etcetera." 

My feet hit something hard, and I nearly tripped when I glanced down and found I'd run into a thick metal rod that protruded from rock. A rod two feet to the right lay in parallel, and I followed the two bars all the way around the curving end of the grotto until they disappeared from sight. They looked like train tracks, and it was as I stepped over them that I saw the blackened ropes and pulleys and rusted metal pails left abandoned around the perimeter. 

"Get moving," Saren called behind her, and I took one last look at the mechanisms around me before I caught up to her.

We walked around the bend of the cavern, that seemed to cut a full circle around the castle, to an area where the outer wall of the crevasse cut off and instead sloped upward as an angle that we would likely be able to climb, if not with great effort. 

Her hands found holes in the ledge and she heaved herself upward in one swift movement and was atop the slope, waiting for me to follow. "Shawcross says you have no experience. So, we'll start from the basics upward."

Annoyance flared in my chest as I remembered every sweaty summer afternoon I'd spent with a gun in my hand, my father's voice at my back. I'd learned to hold a gun from the moment I could walk. And, I knew my way around a knife too. Dad had made sure I'd know what to do if it ever came down to it. 

If I had a pistol in my hand, I knew I'd be able to make her say differently. 

But, I looked at the white world around me, at the long sword braced at Saren's hip above me, and remembered all too painfully that this wasn't home. 

No gun, no distant memory of the way life was could help me here.

I grabbed hold of the same ledge she'd used and not so gracefully face-planted into the snow at Saren's feet. I heard her sigh, and the snow crunched beneath her feet as she scaled the side of the cliff upward without me. I followed her much more slowly, each step heavy and my breath hot as we crossed over to the top of the bluff to where trees finally started dotting the landscape. Her steps slowed, and through the maze of evergreens, I spotted our destination.

There was a hut in the clearing with untidy wooden shingles falling down the side of the roof. From the rotted wooden planks and crumbling stone chimney, I knew it was not lived in. We continued toward the door anyways, pine needles covering our tracks.

"This is where we'll train- every morning until the gala." Saren stopped in place next to me before the door. "You will not come here unless you are accompanied either by myself, your guards, or Lord Shawcross. Do you understand?"

I nodded in understanding, and before I could reach for the handle of the door, Saren uncapped a syringe she pulled from the lining of her suit and injected the needle into the nape of my neck. 

My blood felt cold for a moment, and then a wave of heat pulsed through me as I stumbled backward into the snow. "W-What the fuck-" My voice grew hoarse in my throat and I finally collapsed onto my knees as the world started spinning. 

"I know you've shifted before, but Ceth said you might need... a little bit of help."

My vision went cloudy and then cleared, and my hand whipped the the tingling spot on my neck. My brain felt like jelly, like unyielding waves on the sea, but my body felt alert, normal. The converging sensations alone nearly made me sick. "You fucking drugged me??"

"Oh, don't worry. The pain will still be there. It'll just help you be more... receptive."

My skin felt hot all over again, and I clawed at the clothes glued to my skin. "To WHAT?" 

I felt it then. My ribs shifted downwards. I felt my limbs crackle beneath my skin, I felt my bones brace in place, and I knew what was coming next. I was shifting, and even worse than before, I had no control over stopping it. Panic rose in my throat, my heart hammered, and somehow, the process just sped up. I felt my mind crack into two and my body splintered at each individual vertebrae. 

I think I was screaming. Whatever she'd injected me with had kept me awake- aware- longer than I had been before. I felt hair sprout from my skin and my body crushed in on itself as I morphed, as my body changed, as the other part of myself finally took over. 

My mind failed me. 

I became something else.

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"Took you long enough."

Saren's voice was shrill in my ears when I finally woke. The world was all sideways. My eyes opened and snow fell over my lashes gently.

My skin still tingled, an unwelcome burning, and I grit my teeth as I forced myself upright again. The hut was gone. I'd shifted and had ended up in some other lonely portion of the woods. Saren must have shifted and followed me because she stood just behind me in mortal form and tossed the suit I'd been wearing at my back. 

I don't remember taking it off. 

"That was pretty good for the first day. You shifted four times."

My body ached like I'd thrown myself off a cliff a couple thousand times. My bones had likely broken in every place a hundred times over, and I had no doubt I'd shifted that much. But, I had no memory of it. No recollection of the time in between. "Why are you doing this?" I whined, but she walked out in front of me and crouched in front of my naked body.

"You did it all on your own." Her eyes were indifferent, but she looked at me for any sign that my bones might still be out of place. "This will make you stronger," she told me. There wasn't an ounce of empathy in her voice, but I believed that that's what she thought she was doing.

She thought she was helping me. Making me stronger, better, all at Ceth's convenience. 

Resentment, pure red hot hated, burned in my gut. But, not at her, not at Moira, not at Jackaby or anyone in this court. 

I hated Ceth- for what he'd done to me, for what he'd done to my family, for what he'd done to our home- our life. But, mostly, I hated that it wasn't the thought of getting my family back that would get me through this.

I held onto the feeling with all my might as Saren started walking through the snow back toward the castle. I knew that feeling, that hatred, that was slowly becoming a pit inside me, might be the only thing getting me through the next few months.