At least she hoped it was so. The Holy Mother was a strict and sometimes harsh goddess, seeking to improve her people through strife and hardship, nurturing them with a strong hand and making them proud and strong for their survival. She had little doubt that the Holy Mother was testing her brother, seeking to place hardship in his path, assessing him in her own way to see if he was deserving of her love and protection. In the eyes of the Holy Mother, the children had to first prove themselves before she granted them her gifts.
This worried her. Tarrin's physical ability was beyond reproach, but his character was not. She loved him, and always would, but she was not so blind as to not understand him. He was not the same young man who had received the brands so long ago. His trials and tribulations had changed him, had shut him away from the world, had made him very much the object of fear some made him to be. He was different now. Harder, colder, more ruthless, maybe even a little evil, and those were traits of which the Holy Mother would not approve. She would not grant him her gifts until he proved himself to her, and that meant that she would not accept him until he faced that part of himself, and conquered it.
Tarrin faced a trial of fire in the lands of the Holy Mother, a trial he would not understand, an ordeal he would not realize was being thrust upon him. The ways of the Holy Mother were subtle, even insidious, and she would come after him in every way she could to try to break him, to force him to struggle on, to make him grow and become better. Not until he proved to her that he was deserving of her respect would she relent, and he would not be deserving of her respect until he faced and conquered the monster within.
Allia looked out over the ocean, an ocean she no longer feared, silently praying to both the Holy Mother and the Goddess of the Sorcerers that her dear brother be safe and well, that they watch over him and help him to be what they wished him to be. But for her, no matter who he was or what he became, he would always be her brother, and come what may, she would always love him.
To: Title EoF
Chapter 8
"Face what you have become," the words rushed over him, through him, strking him in the soul, forcing him to face the wrong he had done in his life.
"No, not again," Tarrin raged within the confines of the dream, raging against the thousands of eyeless shades placed there to torment him. "Not again! I will not fear a dream! You can't harm me, shadow!" he snapped at the face that had become burned into his memory, the pretty young girl with the chalky skin and black pits where her eyes had once been. The dream would not stop, it would not leave him in peace, it was the same thing over and over, night after night, day after day, whenever he went to sleep. Not again! Not again!
"We are yours," she said in that haunting voice, reaching out for him.
He started awake before those killing hands could reach him, gasping for air and sitting straight up, claws out and ready to repel the attack. Then he flopped back down on the leather floor of the tent, laid over sand, breathing heavily. It wouldn't leave him alone! Night after night, day after day, any time he closed his eyes and went to sleep, the dream came to him. It haunted him, infused him even while awake, had begun to consume him. The eyeless face was burned behind his eyes now, haunting him both in dreams and awake, giving him no peace.
He had to get out, to walk around. He left the tent Sarraya had made that evening and walked out into the frigid night air, breath misting before him as the sweat on his body threatened to freeze before it evaporated. The cold air was better than a slap in the face, causing his mind to sharpen from its bleary haze and focus on reality. Fifteen days now. Fifteen days without any real sleep, fifteen days of repetitive torture from the beautiful face with no eyes. He rubbed his face with his large paw, feeling the rough/smooth pad of his palm slide along his cheek, felt the clawtips digging into his scalp just below his ears. Fifteen days without good sleep. He felt so tired, so unfocused, but there was very little he could do. Sleep always ended in the dream. Attempts to meditate, as Allia taught him, ended just as quickly because of the face that stared back at him from the darkness of his mind.
Why? Why now? Why did the dreams have to come now? He needed to seek out this new way to use Sorcery, but the plague of the dream would not allow him to concentrate, would not give him the peace he needed to search himself for the answer. It was always there, always, never giving him peace, never leaving him alone, a constant burning gaze of accusation that made him shudder away from it. It had been making him edgier and edgier since the battle with the little kajat, fraying his nerves, making him even more short tempered. And in his position, being even more testy was not a good thing.
His fear angered him, and that anger festered inside. Why should he fear a dream? It was a shade, a phantom, something with voice and no substance, something that could not do him harm. The Cat did not understand this Human preoccupation, nearly obsession with the image of the girl, and it began to grow impatient, even agitated. The face was unbalancing his Human mind, and that put stress on the delicate balance between his Human and Cat parts, threatened the balance of his very sanity. The Cat took that anger and fed off of it, nurtured it, turned it into an ember bed of seething discontent.
He began growling low in his throat, and it turned into a furious roar. He snapped his paws down to his sides and stared up into the sky, up at all four moons, seeing the ghostly image of the girl reflected back in all of them.
" We are yours, " he chiming voice rang in his ears, taunting him from within the ethereal mists of the dream, burning him with its accusation. " Face what you have become. "
That had come from outside of him.
Whirling, claws out and eyes blazing from within with their greenish radiance, he turned on that voice, fully prepared to destroy it, to get rid of the face haunting him, to be free of the torture.
The face was there, taunting him, but it faded before him and left behind Sarraya, a very frightened Sarraya, who had backed up in the air and was making ready to flee from him. "T-Tarrin? Are you sleepwalking?"
Blinking, coming out of his threatening posture almost immediately, he stood up to his normal height and blew out his breath. It was Sarraya. Had he mistaken her voice for the dream?
He looked away from her. "No, I'm alright," he replied quietly.
"Are you sure? Do you want to talk about it?"
"No," he told her. "I, I can't sit here any more. I have to move."
"It's the middle of the night!"
"Then stay here," he told her in a curt tone. "I can't rest any more. I'm going on."
"Tarrin, you're not being reasonable."
"Like that matters to me," he growled, walking past her hovering form.
He retreived his sword and belt and put them on, then gave her only a single look before turning his back on her and starting to run to the northwest. He meant it. If she didn't want to come, she could stay there and sleep. She could catch up to him later. He wouldn't sit there and endure the dream, the face any more. It was better to move, to engage his mind and give it something else to do.
For almost the entire night he ran, running to keep himself occupied, running because he dreaded what would come when he stopped. He ran beyond hunger and thirst, ran in an almost perfect straight line, even stepping on a deadly imuni and never knowing it, the lethal reptile too stunned that a desert creature had the audacity to tread on it to retaliate before the offending foot was out of its reach. He ran on, running in a kind of mindless daze, running both towards and away from the object that drove his flight.
A beautiful face that had no eyes, whose gaze burned with towering accusation, revealed the dark blight within and forced him to face what he had become.