62nd Day of Frost, 339th Year of the Age of Sundering
The snake stared blankly up at Masagh from its place on the simple wooden chest he used to store his belongings. It’s mouth was ajar and its yellow eyes did not shift. It was dead, and it had only its head left. The snake had been his to care for for the past three seasons. He had caught and fed it mice, he had studied every scale on the thing’s body. All in preparation for this day.
Masagh stared back at the cobra head, frowning slightly.
Soon Cynfael, the old Weaponmaster, would come to etch the his second Cardinal Rune upon Masagh’s flesh. The Reaving Rune and the preparation for it had drove Masagh to anxiously training each day with obsessive excess. But the Animus Rune was not like that. It would be a wholly new experience, and one he could never suitably prepare for.
He was truly afraid of losing himself here. The sword had been familiar, it had been simple. Do what you have been training to do and you will survive. This was different.
Animus was somehow more ambiguous. Remember your way back to yourself, Cynfael had said yesterday. Masagh was still unsure what that meant.
The snake gave no answer either, though with its mouth open like that it almost looked like it just might.
“I don’t even want this Rune, to be honest with you.” Masagh muttered to the cobra head. “Sorry you had to die for it.”
The snake only stared. Masagh rubbed his chin.
The door opened and jolted him out of the reverie. Cynfael was there with the needle and hammer and the vial of Cardinal ink. Creth Runes were given with a special golden ink, and had been since the ancient empire. Cynfael himself had a number. He did not have the short sword with him, thank the spirits of fate.
Though Masagh had not wanted the rune, it made him feel better about the prospect that such a capable and respected warrior as Cynfael had born the same Rune for hundreds of years without complaint. Clearly he had found use for it.
“You ready for this?” Cynfael asked, leaning against his doorway. Masagh stood.
“As ready as I can, I suppose.”
He nodded knowingly. “It is the the more jarring of the two, but I wouldn’t agree to it if I thought you could not find your way back.” He stepped into the room and glanced at the cobra head. “It’s a good form you know, I have a snake. Not my first, but a good first.”
Masagh glanced at his face. “Nothing like my normal one though.”
Cynfael smiled softly. “True, but that doesn’t matter for this.” He placed a bracing hand on his shoulder. “You just need to know who you are.” Cynfael leaned down and made eye contact for a long moment.
“Alright, let’s do it.”
Cynfael nodded and uncorked the ink vial. “Take your tunic off.”
Masagh’s sternum was much less painful to etch than his sword hand had been. Cynfael seemed more competent with the needle and small hammer than with the short sword when it came to rune carving, understandably. The ink would grow with Masagh’s knowledge of the magic, spreading out across his skin without the need of the needle and hammer. Spreading like ink on wet parchment, coiling in whatever direction his journey with the magic took. He glanced down at the Reaving Rune on his hand. How many more times would he go through this process, how much change would he endure for the power to act on his oath?
“Almost done.” Cynfael said calmly sooner than Masagh expected. Startled, Masagh stared up at him, but Cynfael did not turn from the work.
“How long did it take you?”
“A few hours if I remember correctly.” Cynfael muttered. “Although it was a long time ago. Maybe it just felt like a few hours.” He paused, looking up into Masagh’s eyes briefly. “Don’t concern yourself with that, just think about the journey back.”
The journey back.
“Done.” Cynfael stood and stepped back. He and Masagh both gazed down at his handiwork. The golden ink shimmered from the flesh of his chest. Even as they looked the minute wounds of the needle healed and the softly glimmering ink shone through. “You should do it now, Masagh.” Cynfael was watching him.
“Right. Of course.” Masagh stood, rubbing his hands on his trousers as he did so. “Right.”
He could not back down after receiving the rune. The next bit of creature he touched would be what he transformed into. If it was anything but the snake he would be at a dire disadvantage.
“Be seeing you, then.” He muttered, trying to keep any nerves from his voice.
“I’ll watch over your door.” The words were a small reassurance.
Masagh stepped forward and picked up the snake head.
For a brief moment nothing happened. He looked up at Cynfael, confused.
Then the vertebrae in his spine began to pop with blossoms of pain. Gasping he fell to his hands and knees. Next his arms seemed to shatter from within, drawing back into himself. Masagh felt his face hit the flagstones, watching Cynfael step outside his cell and close the door. Suddenly he needed to find shelter. Pain racked his torso as his ribs seemed to be bending, his gut growing. Moaning with the torture of the process, Masagh could no longer think. He needed to find shelter, to find a dark place with something overhead to protect him.
His eyes blurred and then focused on the space under the bed. It seemed somehow larger than before. Spacious, inviting. He tried to crawl to it, but his limbs no longer worked. Ignoring the twisting sensation happening in his lower body, Masagh willed himself towards the bed, which was now huge in his view, looming overhead.
He succeeded in nothing but straining himself.
The purpose of caring for the snake had been to learn of it. He had fed it, observed it move and kill and eat. That had all been for this moment, so he could mimic it. Masagh struggled against the growing instinct to hide and recuperate to dredge up those moments from his memory.
The snake had bent and when he observed the tracks in the sands of the training ring, only those bends left marks. He coiled his body, aware yet somehow not alarmed that he no longer had arms. Forming a serpentine shape with his body he flicked his tongue out. When the forked appendage returned to his mouth he tasted the the room at the roof of his mouth and a more complete mental picture formed.
He pushed outward with his own coiled body, on both sides. The two simultaneous movements canceled out the other’s sideways momentum and sent his head further towards the bed. Sloppily he repeated this process to attain the cover he had sought. Vaguely he was aware that the room had grown. Before he would have never fit underneath the bed, now it was quite spacious. Sloppily the black cobra slid under the bed. It too was decayed, with ribs poking out in places and dead, milky eyes. But the forked tongue still flickered and the body still moved.
In the shadows under the bed he was comforted and content. He coiled about himself and stared out at the huge space, tongue flicking. He saw no heat in the room, not even himself, which seemed vaguely odd to the snake. Why did he not give of the heat?
Dead. Only dead things don’t. Was he dead?
The thought brought up a vague memory in his mind. He was dead. But dead things did not think, or move, or hunger like he did.
The tongue flicked again and his mind’s eye pulsed with clarity. How did he, a dead thinking snake, come to this room? He had some purpose he had forgotten. Beyond the hunt and the safety. He had a complex and neigh unthinkable purpose. Too complex to come from the mind of a cobra.
He pondered it a while longer. While he lay coiled under the bed he could not shake the feeling of another purpose. Then eventually his milky eyes alighted on an interesting object leaning against the wall opposite. He flicked his forked tongue out at it. Nothing.
Then he slithered further out from under the bed and stared at it.
Sword. The name came to him with a jolt of surprise. My sword.
What was it for? His mind pondered. He was a dead snake that thought such odd things, and in possession of a relic certainly no snake had possessed before.
To safeguard. And with that answer breaking a crack in the snake mind, more came with it. He was a son of a house, and sworn to safeguard it. He wielded the sword as a tool. With his hands. He looked down at the coiled, scaled body and was surprised again.
Where were his hands? For the first time he could remember he thought it was odd they were not there. He remembered them, grey and leathery. Claw-like nails at the end, he looked up at the sword again. He remembered the weight of it, the motion of it in the air before him. He remembered the feeling of impact when he crossed blades with Cynfael, or Sabrione.
Like syrup his mind caught up to the idea of Cynfael and Sabrione. Ghouls, with arms and legs and swords. He had been like that once. The crack in his mind grew. He had been one of them, he has carried the sword. More flowed in.
He had sworn an oath to his house, House Creth. He had studied the sword and the snake in preparation. Then he had killed it, he had cut the head from its body.
Now he was it?
No, he had been given a Rune, and had become it. A moment ago? A day ago? A year? He could not tell. But he knew, deep in his gut, that he was not a snake. He was a ghoul.
With that realization Masagh felt the pain coming back. His body began to change. The tail split with excruciating slowness. His torso shrunk with the dreadful disorientation of losing his ability to twist and move. The fear was fleeting, because of course he was supposed to have legs and arms to move with. He blinked and groaned in pain as the bed shrunk and the room shrunk. His chest pressed uncomfortably against the frame of the bed. He felt the odd sensation of familiar and yet new fingers press against the cold flagstones.
Masagh turned and gazed at the familiar form. The fog of the snake mind clearing with jarring quickness.
“Cynfael?” He croaked. Aches covered him.
The door opened and someone else stepped in. Sabrione.
His sister smirked down at him and let out a shake of laughter, relief plain on her face. “He’s back. He did it, mother.” She said over her shoulder.
Emerande Creth swept in and her pale face broke into the faintest smile. “Masagh, I knew you would find your way back to us.” She said. “Come help him out from under there.” Emerande herself moved forward to help Sabrione pull him out from where he was wedged under his bed. Masagh struggled to sit up and looked around at them. Emerande was ever the composed matriarch, but he could see the worry and relief in her eyes.
Cynfael stood in the doorway watching.
“How long was I… gone?” Masagh asked.
“Ten hours, just about.” Cynfael said, grinning softly.
“Thought you’d scurry off to eat rats forever.” Sabrione teased.
“It didn’t feel like more than a few moments…” Masagh rubbed his head. His returned vision was giving him a headache.
“Yes, well that can be a bit odd in the beginning, but you will learn to be more comfortable with the changes. Soon enough the cobra will feel like putting on a different set of boots.”
“I hope so.” He got shakily to his feet.
Emerande was regaining what computer she had lost. “Sir Masagh, it appears you have attained both the Runes I demanded of you with as much ease as could be expected.” Then her glowing eyes softened slightly and she reached her hand up to touch his cheek. The cold tips of her claws brushing against hollow skin of his face did not make him recoil. “I am proud.”
“Thank you, mother.”
