To Imagine...

Chacda: Ketani

Pounding drums. Overwhelming darkness. Heavy voices reduced to incoherence beneath the crashes of the percussion. My body moved with a fervor between the waves of a tribal music, intense, fast, racing my heart, vibrating in my chest, making the air itself shake and tremble before my eyes. Smoke mingled in with the invasive tang of alcohol and dirt, the air red with the glowing Camat along the walls and floor, pits of fire and torches scattered sparingly across the wide expanse, save for the growing bonfire in the center. The moon was full but the dust and the smoke and the drink made it impossible to see. The life in the air frolicked, rolling through my body, stomping in the dirt, howling something animal and indigenous as we danced with it. Hundreds of bodies oscillated around me, around the fire, in the red glow of the rocks, in the darkness. The music picked up and it lifted me with it, my drink chasing away the few thoughts that desperately clung to my conscience. I felt it spilling across my arm as I raised the cup and my body moved, but I didn't care--bodies pressed against me, crowds of Andhérak flocking to the darting shadows created by cavorting men, women, children, all dancing around the fires.

This was what I lived for: this feeling, the adrenaline, the heat--the smoke, the burn, and the aftertaste; energy, fire, the old spirits rising from the earth... and blood. Sharp, metallic, piercing: the first scent of the night, and it spread like wildfire. My skin lit up with an excitement unique to this moment, all of the tiny hairs lifting before a hard, scale-like black skin crept up my limbs until it covered me. Twisting horns rose from my scalp and I realized that I had lost my drink at some point as I clasped my arms above me, rocking my body, so close to the fire that it might have scorched me. Nothing rivaled this moment. My body moved. The fire burned. The drums were like a fist beating in my chest and claws sliced like blades into my arms.

Shit, I was doing that.

I let go and the blood flowed. Down my arms, but I didn't stop, over my chest and then I felt someone there--touching me, purposefully, hand sliding across my chest, smearing blood and sweat. A new pulse of excitement grew above the dozens inside of me, something more animal, more sexual as he continued to touch me. His hands were like fire despite how the flames had burned me, and I loved it--his body pulsed with mine, the drums pushing us together, and his hands began to guide me into his dance. Quick, precise--a hand in my hair pulling me back, and I bent with it, placing my hands in the dirt and flipping behind him. He spun and another arm caught me behind my back, catching me from falling and pushing me upright.

He took control. He couldn't get enough of it--the blood spread across my body, guided by his hands that disappeared and appeared as quickly as they had gone. He grabbed my wrist and I reeled beneath it before spinning around it into his chest. His hips moved against me, behind me, with me, and he released my wrist, his hands travelling somewhere lower...

Or was that imagination?

I opened my eyes and found hundreds on me. I was panting, frozen suddenly in place, silhouetted by the fire licking my skin. The drums had stopped, the Andhérak did not dance, the children were quiet. Sweat dripped down my arms and burned into the cuts but I couldn't focus on it, on anything--so many eyes, so many stares, red and... very precarious. I didn't know what would happen now; I stood alone by the fire, where no man had danced with me. My eyes swept slowly across the crowds, the drummers quiet where they sat, as if a mutual agreement had ordered them to stop.

It was the chinking of glass where the drink was served that ended the silence. A man in the crowd spoke:

"Ketani." It was a whisper, but then he spoke again, loudly:

"Ketani!"

He shoved out from the first row of the crowd and they began to whisper, the man approaching me, a grin wide and the smile in his crimson eyes even wider. He approached slowly, and a chant built in the crowd's voice:

"Ketani! Ketani! Ketani! Ketani!"

I realized then that they were chanting for me. Ketani.

Demon. Devil. Deity. The interpretation was unspecific but very clear.

Not Human, not Andhérak. A deity, more than mortal, to be worshipped--and the man stood merely feet away from me, sweat dripping from his body in the heat of the high flames, an arm outstretched to me. He wished me to come and take it, as I stood nearly inside the flames. A step forwards, and then another, and my blackened hand reached out to his, grasping his seemingly-white arm while in comparison. The drums began to beat, slowly at first but then picking up speed, chasing out the anxiety their alarming stares had found in me. My barbed tail whipped through the air behind my legs, the flames following it snuffed out as they found no purchase on my scales. A cheer erupted and he pulled me back to the crowd, where suddenly hands moved all over me, touching, holding, grabbing, and I was lifted up above the crowd and their roars.

Delight extracted a grin and then a torrent of laughter as they thrust me above themselves, dancing me around the fire and then I felt a bottle in my hand--I turned it up and drank deep, coming up for breath and staring out at all of the people. My eyes fell on a man in the crowd, but he was walking away--our eyes collided, and then he turned and was lost in the mass of people. I was on my feet again--or the ground. Arms hauled me upright as I had promptly fallen, the dizziness and the drugs dirtying my senses, but still they laughed and shoved the bottle back into my hands. And I drank, and drank, and the laughter of the men and women around me only grew with each passing bottle. Astonished and excited faces came and passed, Ketani the only word I could discern from each encounter.

I could sit no longer. I had to move. The roiling bodies of those not near me danced and thrummed, possessed by that same energy I felt, and I stood--only for the man to catch me again as I began to fall, bringing a new chorus of laughter above the drums. I was laughing too, unable to steady myself, and he lead me away, our backs to the fire. My arm was draped over his shoulders and my feet stumbled, but his hold on me was strong, and as I looked up I could see the happiness in his smiles. Hands and incoherent shouts reached me as we moved by the sea of people, excited eyes and laughter following me as we went. We walked away from the crowds and into the light of the Camat, the red rocks glowing around us, and ducked into a passageway forged into the wall.

I had remembered coming here for the festival, the official establishment for the tournament--what was it called? A small... venue... but a... rich one... shit, I had spent all my coin...

My jumbled thoughts began to fight back into my skull as the pounding of the drums faded and the bright light of the fire disappeared. Instead, only the glow of the Camat, and the thump of my dead weight as it hit the mattress. A breath escaped my lips and I sucked in another, deeper one, reigning in the spinning world around me. The end of my tail flicked around my legs occasionally of its own accord, though now I've noticed it because it's the only part of my body that I can move. It's difficult--I try to raise an arm, but then a grasping pain pushes my wrists into the bed. A man's face, above me, and then it moves down, releasing me, moving past my bare chest to my legs, where he stops with a hand pulling on the hem of my...

  A/N: Not necessarily in this time frame. For a bit of backstory, mutations are rarities that are regarded almost religiously but are, again, very very rare, and are often a mark of outstanding power, as I touched on in previous chapters. This case is a very intense, full-body mutation that was actually more of a transformation instead of a mutation (most mutations are non-retractable, such as horns in most cases, but not all). He was previously any regular person and then experienced a drastic change, all while dancing (very entrancingly) in fire covered in blood. Even those who may control flame, it will still burn, making this an unexplainable case by mortal standpoints, hence they refer to him as a deity. The Andhérak are not incredibly religious but some do worship deities and all are very aware of said deities. They are said to have manifested as mortal-like beings with extraordinary powers in the past, and those with mutations are said to be descendants of deities, explaining their mutations and powers. People of this time would never have any reason to believe that the deities are real aside from spoken word, but they are widely believed in.