18 June 2012
Something inside me had cracked. My dead, blackened heart began to beat. Blood rushed through me, yet suddenly I was aware of the cold night air.
Water droplets fell from the sky and spiked me as if they were already ice. Damp moss clung to my bare skin where I lay naked on the forest floor.
I could not remember my name. An ancient instinct made something inside me reach towards the nearest living things. Trees did not feel my touch, I shivered, wondering why I expected them to know me.
The body of an owl lay dead, but still warm, not far from where I lay. A whisper of a name floated near the edge of my consciousness. A powerful name I could no longer voice.
My long, charcoal hair was tangled with twigs and leaves. I looked up from where I lay, smelling smoke on the air. A bright emerald-flecked fire crackled and danced in the night. My body drank in the warmth, yet stayed chilled.
"Nicola?" A voice drifted from behind the fire, I recognised it but could not find its name.
The loss of names in my mind angered me. Even the ant that crawled across my hand, I should have known her name - but a wall had been thrown around a part of me.
"Nicola, are you awake?" He murmured.
I blinked, a motion that felt alien, and sat up. The atmosphere seemed to press down on me and long, dark shadows seemed to stare. I suddenly felt trapped, mortal, banished... Rejected.
"There's a wolfskin there," His voice resonated within me while flames and smoke hid his face.
My fingers reached out to the silver wolfskin and then recoiled, feeling something lost and broken.
"Who are you?" I asked the man, my naked form shivering in the cool night air, but it felt right to be exposed, vulnerable. Something about this body felt wrong, perhaps revealing it to the night would change it.
He is here to kill me, I thought, looking over at the dead owl and wondering. He is a Hunter, I could feel that, at least.
"Do you really not know me?" His voice seemed saddened, blackened, tainted with old runes and tired magic.
I let my long, pale, moonlit limbs crawl around the red-emerald fire towards him. Then I saw his features lit up by the snaking flames and dancing moonlight.
A brick seemed to fall from the mental wall in my conscious and his name flooded into my mind.
"Alex?" My low voice whispered, my chest tight with apprehension.
The shadows seemed to close in around us and a bat swooped down from the sky, catching a moth that had been attracted by the flames.
He reached a hand out to touch my cheek, hot fingers lingering on cold skin. Memories flashed through my consciousness, bringing pain and despair and tragedy. Darkness enveloped my mind.
I launched myself at him, pinning him down into the moss, "What have you done to me?" I hissed.
His form was broken, I sensed, and not just from the agony in his dark eyes. I recoiled a bit, realising I was the source of his pain somehow, but that only filled me with a demonic rage and hunger.
I let my red lips touch his. A tender, passionate kiss as I curled my long, cold fingers around his throat.
"No-one hunts me," I whispered, my mouth now pressed against his ear, my hands squeeze tighter around his trachea. I wanted to feel his life leave him, watch his soul desert this mortal form and take its place in the stars.
With a sharp intake of breath he looked me dead in the eyes, and smiled. Words whispered from within his strangled breath, "Good to have you back."
Demon Awakening • Opuss № I