The Changing (7 page)

"Why is it you say Lord Seth is not to the north?" Borrik asked. This time Borrik tried a different approach and made sure not to sound too stern or serious, playing the girls’ own game.

"Because he's not," both girls replied in unison. They were enjoying the game immensely.

"How would you girls know where he is, if he isn’t to the north?" Borrik asked. This time he sounded doubtful, hoping to lure the girls into answering his questions as if he didn’t believe them.

"A kitty always knows where their master is." This time it was the older girl who answered, a cocky tone to her voice.

"I see." Borrik answered. "If it is so simple then why won’t you tell me where he is?" Borrik questioned further. It was an odd feeling, but Borrik believed the girls. Cats were mysterious creatures, whose minds worked in puzzling ways. Borrik had watched strays upon the streets of the city of Valdadore for years, and although they always appeared to meander aimlessly, if you watched them long enough you would soon realize that they only and always moved with purpose.

"We can’t tell you, poor li’l puppy," the younger girl replied. She was attempting to set him back on edge.

"But we can show you," the older girl added.

"Why can’t you tell me?" Borrik asked, honestly interested in the answer.

"Because we have never been there, and don’t know where there is," the older girl said.

"Please explain yourself," Borrik replied, realizing this conversation could go on for days.

"We can feel him, and I assure you he isn’t north," the younger girl answered. She had a saddened tone to her voice now, upset that the word game was over.

"Can I count on you two girls to lead us to him?" Borrik asked, his tone serious once again. This time neither of the girls was quick to form a response, and looking into each other’s faces, as if communicating telepathically, they sat silently for a moment before once again turning their attention back to Borrik.

"We will lead you to him, though at a distance," the older sister offered.

"Yeah, you doggies smell terrible," the younger girl explained.

Having his answer, Borrik subliminally gave two orders simultaneously to his men. First he ordered all of his men to collect their things and prepare to leave, and second Borrik ordered four of his men to find the rest of his troops that were scattered across the lands and bring them as quickly as possible to catch up. His orders given, Borrik then relayed to his men that they were changing direction and heading east through the forest, having ascertained at least the direction in which their master could be located. Before he could even finish relaying his orders, Borrik watched as the sisters rose and raced off into the trees heading due east. Borrik was not concerned. He would be able to follow the girls' scent easily enough, and as for their own safety, Borrik did not imagine the girls would race too far ahead. In less than ten minutes Borrik and his troops broke camp and began to give chase. Borrik could not help revealing a wolfish grin when he realized the irony of a pack of wolf men chasing down a pair of feline females.

* * * * *

Seth remained at the ready for nearly three hours. He watched as Sara’s life slowly drained away, knowing he would only get one attempt to save her. Seth felt in his heart that his plan would succeed, and that there were no other possible options for him to choose from. Thus decided, Seth hoped he had a good understanding of what he was about to do. He knew instinctively that there could be unwanted consequences from this course of action, but with no other available options what choice did he have? He had spent all the time available to him perfecting his plan and so lowering the risks of possible side effects to a level he felt was safe for the woman he loved. So he watched, long into the night, as Sara slowly and inevitably slipped from this world into the next. Seeing Sara’s aura draining away, Seth waited until the very last possible moment when her aura was barely perceptible even to his trained eyes. As the last fading morsels of Sara’s own life diminished Seth rushed to carry out his plan.

His hand resting upon Sara’s bare forehead, Seth released the life within him that previously sustained his first altered bat and sent it coursing through her body. Watching nervously for any sign whatsoever, Seth, in the darkness of their chamber, could perceive no change in the dying woman he adored. As he had expected the life flowed into Sara flawlessly, melding with what little remained of her own aura, and as expected it still continued to dwindle. Though he saw no immediate signs of improvement, Seth was still relieved that as far as he was able to distinguish, Sara had not altered physically in any way. With nothing else to do for the moment, Seth simply continued to watch with his vision of the gods as Sara’s newly mutated aura too slowly diminished. Seth did not wait long. Only moments after infusing Sara with the foreign life force, she took a dramatic, though expected, turn for the worse.

Just as Seth had intended, the bat's ability to heal quickly had transferred to Sara. However in her dire state, with little precious blood in her veins and a gaping wound on her neck, Seth had not expected the reaction to happen so violently. Seth scrambled both in fear and excitement as Sara’s aura began to pulse faster and faster as the power within her began to drain at an alarming rate while at the same time her entire body began to give off its own eerie glow. With the glow spreading through her body, Sara’s aura began to dwindle faster and faster, and as if taken by the throes of a fever, Sara began to thrash about the floor violently. Seth tried to restrain her, using his own body weight to press her down to keep her from injuring herself further, but it availed him little. Sara, infused with the alien power, was altering in levels beyond Seth’s understanding, but the results were nearly exactly what he had hoped for. As Sara’s ghostly glow began to fade, blood once again began to flow from the wound in her neck. Then Seth realized his error. Sara’s aura was growing incredibly weak once again, her body having consumed the very power sustaining her life to recreate the blood her body needed for survival. Trying to work around her thrashing limbs, Seth tore from his tunic a scrap of cloth and pressed it firmly into the wound in Sara’s neck. If he could not staunch the flow of blood, her body would be forced to continue creating more and more blood as it flowed out to pool on the floor, never giving her a chance to mend the wound from which the blood escaped. Watching as Sara’s glowing subsided, Seth recognized there was no longer life enough within her to sustain the healing process.

Seth hesitated a moment, weighing his options. Sara’s heart was beating near a regular level again, and after a moment Seth too found that she breathed deep, full breaths. But she was bleeding profusely once again, and without action he would soon find himself exactly where he had begun. His hand covered in blood, Seth continued to keep pressure on Sara’s wound and reached inside himself to extract one portion of his own life that he had already separated for Sara. It was a small portion, a portion equal to that of maybe half a human life. Seth feared if he gave Sara too much human aura at one time the healing effects of the bat's aura would be watered down to an unusable level, though this was only an assumption, a fact Seth had no real way of testing or proving. Seth poured the small portion of energy into Sara and watched as it melded with her own aura. Sara’s aura swelled, then began to deplete rapidly as the glow from her skin returned.

Feeling the flesh actually move beneath his bloodied hand, Seth pulled back his makeshift wound dressing and watched as the flesh and muscle upon Sara’s neck began to mend themselves back together. Though it was dark in the chamber, Sara’s own light, emanating from her healing body, revealed the process to Seth who looked on with both curiosity and awe. Seth reeled back as what appeared to be steam issued out from the wound, and feeling the heat upon his face, he assumed the body's ability to heal must also be able to defeat infection in this manner. Next Seth watched as the small severed muscles within Sara’s neck appeared to crawl and undulate back together as the very fibers reached out to grasp one another. These very same muscle fibers wove themselves and twisted around one another as they began to heal and flow together again as one, as if the injury had never even been sustained. The last of the blood flow ceased and the very skin upon Sara’s neck seemed to blur at the edges of the wound, and without even the slightest scar, the flesh appeared to simply regenerate until the wound was completely covered, leaving only the wet blood that had escaped it moments before as evidence.

Sara had managed to mend herself. So far as Seth could tell the healing was complete. Sara’s thrashing and convulsing had stopped, and the rapid depletion of her aura had subsided. She lay peacefully now upon the floor, breathing calm regular breaths, her heart beating as it should. Seth exhaled loudly, tears of joy brimming his eyes, knowing he had succeeded. Sara was alive and safe, though still unconscious, and she rested tranquilly. Seth was sure she would awake in short order.  Unfinished, he took a moment to appraise Sara’s aura and realized that in his concern for her and his rush to save her, in his idiot mind that seemed so vast and limitless he had made a vital mistake.

It was an error he had already reasoned out earlier, yet he had not thought about the implications of the process he had chosen to save Sara’s life. Seth’s plan was ended, and though successful, it was unfinished and he could not complete the process. He had stolen the life from his altered bat creature and as such it had infused with Sara’s aura, changing it and mutating it, making Sara’s aura more like its own. But the second half of Seth’s plan was to water down the bat's mutation with his own aura by giving Sara a large portion of his own aura. Seth would be giving the power to Sara willingly though, and so it would change to conform to her own current life force, providing her with extended life indeed, but having no effect on the bat's alterations to her. Seth knew he needed to imbue Sara with more power. In her current state she had little aura remaining after consuming it to heal. She had perhaps days, a week or two at most. Seth felt defeated once again by his own actions. He had to give her more life, which would in fact strengthen the mutated aura within Sara, making it grow larger and more profound. He knew he could, at a later date, take the life of many humans to then complete the process, but had no idea when that time might come. So it was that Seth found himself with quite a dilemma. The longer he extended Sara’s life now, the more lives he would have to take down the road to return her to as much human as possible.

Seth was torn. He had no idea how long it might be before he could complete the process, so he knew he must now give Sara more life for her body to feed upon.  But what if, while they were waiting to complete the change, Sara became injured again. She would need the bat's aura within her to be strong so that she might heal to reach the day when Seth could complete her change. Seth knew what he must do, though he did not like it. Again he would be forced to make a sacrifice. Seth reached within himself and extracted energy enough to equal the life spans of twenty men. Watching as it changed and mutated to match Sara’s own current aura, Seth let it pour into her, swelling her aura to a great level. Someday soon, Seth knew, he would be forced to kill several hundred of his own kind to undo what he had done to Sara. He hoped that Sara would forgive him this mistake, and understand it was his love for her that led him to this end. Now all Seth could do was wait until she regained consciousness, and hopefully she would hear his pleas and forgive him.

* * * * *

     Sara, lost in nothingness, felt herself fading. Her tenuous hold to this plane of emptiness was quickly slipping away, and for that she was afraid. Physically she could feel nothing, and in this place she could neither hear nor see anything either. Mentally however, Sara could feel herself slipping away, though where she would go from here was unknown. She clung desperately to the nothingness until her very will trembled with the strain, and when she could hold no longer, the vortex within the nothingness pulling her away, she prayed to no god in particular that Seth would carry on without her and find peace and happiness.

As Sara’s final moment in the plane between life and death was upon her, something changed. It was not a perceptible change in the blackness of her surroundings, but more a change from within. Something alien had entered her consciousness and for a moment Sara could feel it trying to escape her. Then as quickly as it came it vanished. As the new presence dissipated, Sara felt herself renewed, both her energy and her determination to remain redoubled and again she clung to the nothingness, unwilling to relinquish her hold. Then Sara felt the energy. It was something within her yet somehow not a part of her. She could feel it changing her and altering her, becoming one with her, and for a reason beyond her own understanding, it brought her pleasure. For with this new energy within her Sara felt powerful for the first time in her existence, she felt whole. Something about the energy made her more than she was, or more complete than she had ever been. Even here in an abyss of nothingness, Sara felt she could hold on for an eternity with this new power that had become one with her. But then just as the power came she felt it slipping away.

Sara feared that this was to be one of the trials of the plane between life and death. She dreaded an eternity where she would be given the strength to hold on, only to have it taken from her again until she began to slip. Sara feared the process would repeat in an unending, maddening cycle to torture her. As her fear seemed to begin to become reality, something else changed. As the new power within her grew weaker and weaker, the nothingness around her began to gain substance. Not in a physical way where she could see any change, but she could feel her body again, thrashing and twisting, heaving and bucking. Also she knew now that she lay upon her back, whereas before she thought herself floating in limbo. Sara reveled in the moment, feeling for the first time in what seemed like forever a portion of something familiar to her. Then as the foreign power that had joined with her drained away further, so too did her connection with her body. Fear assailed her once again, but this time it was very short lived. As her connection to her mortal body began to wane, Sara again felt power surge through her. For a moment Sara was lost in the ecstasy it brought with it, but as the ecstasy relinquished, she found herself, much to her amazement, free of the plane of nothingness. Sara was finally at home. She had somehow returned to her body, and though she realized that she slept, she could once again feel, hear and breathe. Once again within herself, she felt at peace.