What if who you thought you were was only a drop in the ocean of time?
What if your existence was fated to follow a predestined path?
And you hated that path. And you fought fate.
Katya Luschkova longs to break free from the suffocating hold of he...
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I felt detached from myself. It was as though this entity I hadn't known I harbored was now the dominant part of my psyche. And I was merely looking on, in the background. I thought it would be easy to give my consciousness up. But it was the most disconcerting feeling I've ever had —like I was being sucked into her, absorbed until I couldn't remember who I was in the moment. It felt like that was what she wanted. I had little control over what she was doing. I could feel her attempting to overpower me —to drown out my voice. I hated the feeling, and so I grasped what little control I had tightly.
As the fire blazed around me, I panicked. I wanted to run out again because I feared the burning pain I expected to feel. But I felt nothing.
The exterior was a haze, as though everything I witnessed was from within a bubble. To an extent I figured I was right. A large burning branch fell from above and I thought for sure I'd be crushed. But the branch rebounded off me as though something had pushed it away. I felt a ripple as the power reverberated through 'my body', but that was it. The power was out of my reach, a wispy thing she seemed to hold, molding it to her desire.
She walked us through a wall of flames and nothing happened —my eyes didn't burn from the smoke, I didn't choke from the lack of oxygen, my skin didn't burn from the heat. It was surreal. And empowering. I had never felt so invincible in my life. And so helpless at the same time. I wasn't in control of whatever was happening to me.
She kept going, searching for a trace of Xander. Logic said that he might already be ashes. But my intuition said otherwise.
I wasn't exactly sure of where we were. This part of the forest was hard to recognize now. But I noticed a clearance up ahead that seemed to reflect the whipping flames.
Water.
She took off, not caring what stood between us and the little pond. My gut told me that Xander was there.
I saw him surface, gasping for air, just before I noticed the burning branches above the pond. He didn't see me and dove under again. The flames ate away at the branches and one by one they began to break, dangling precariously. If Xander only came up at the wrong time, he would be seriously hurt. I prayed we would reach him fast enough.
Bubbles rose on the pond surface and sure enough Xander emerged. As though every bit of benevolence had fled for the night, a branch came loose over his head. The boy panicked and froze. We wouldn't make it in time, I realized.
'Let go!' She bellowed.
Horror made me give in to her completely. I rescinded all control over my consciousness to "her" and faded further back into the recesses of my mind, a silent entity —with no voice. Is this what she felt all these years? Had she even been with me that long? Perhaps that was why even now that she has full control my own consciousness there is only an eerie quiet. My wrist pained, the mark searing again. I felt a pressure building in my head, the blood drumming at my temples.
