Possessed
A steel chain, a machine snakes its way from the shadows, slipping beneath the second skin. It slithers up her torso and wraps around her neck, biting its own tail as it sleeps there. Feeding off the energy within. The flow of blood, the warmth of flesh. It’s cold touch comes with a heavy price. Weighing on the mind of the wearer.
She blinks in alarm, making to stand, she instead rubs her brow, where spell and source mix. Her skin comes alive, hyperaware for intrusion. The snake bends, hinging at the mouth. Sure enough, it wasn’t over.
Cobwebs rise around her. Cotton clouds rising above her knee while her ankles are secured.
Oh the ankles… Deep restrictive pressure builds, rolling as vines root her in place. The cotton melts against her skin, transforming into sheets of shifting nettle. Never scratching. Never catching so much as liquid flowing over stone.
Yet it weighed. Yet it moved and weighed. Shifting her attention to the cloud, she did indeed rise to her feet. Striking her knee with the aim to pin it in place, Her eyes rolled as her palm sank into a blanket. Soft. Like jell, yielding, yet indomitable resistance. Mind and body shuffled like cards as she made to take stock of her surroundings.
Rooted, yet mobile. Her legs rose in answer, but so too did the gripping vines. Lancing from heel to mid thigh, they squeezed. Her veins stalled and shifted in protest, yet her feet never felt so alive. Sinking and shifting, she was swimming in place. Breath caught, and furiously drawn the next moment.
Might and Mettle bore down on the invasion. Ransom reservations, and fate savvy scorn. Her strength surged through the vines, ripping, rebounding and rivaling the forces that held her.
With them in her wake, she knew her time was limited. Skirting around the edge of her limits, she approached the source. At her neck now, the fibers dove beneath her hairline, brushing her scalp and tussling her bangs, they rose apart in two points. Two triangles that bent and swiveled. Her head tickled at the tug and tap seeping into her mind. Her jaw clenched, shifting with the count of every heartbeat. Every cube of breath. Every drop of sweat and speck on the air, held above the ensuing mass.
The Ouroboros, lie still. Cold and impassive. Passion would not sway it, nor would grief. Of all the things about her person, one thing remained untouched.
Not an enemy then. An anchor.
Placed between her and the rind of steel, The chaos became little more than a memory.
Arms drawn wide, crouching down, the nettle spread out in the shadow of her arms. Rising. Pivoting around two eclipsed moons. She rose. Flying into the air. Training vines beneath her. Looking down, she closed her eyes and with a deep breath, expelled from her belly the will to walk. To leave that space in the dust.
And a second stalk did emerge. Launching down toward the ground. Fanning out to break her fall, and levering against the ground. The hind leg wound until earth or flesh would tear, springing free at last.
Swinging on stilts, soaring down toward the horizon, with assent and swallow, she drove on from one ridge to the next, dancing into each arc. Where numb libs would fail, she settled and spun.
Like a hawk, like a panther, like a falling queen. She made every moment anew. Crashed through branches, swept through binds. Her voice was the herald to reshape mountains.
And when again she found momentum in her past, she looked down from the top of the world and saw the edge. The beginning and the end.
“I want to try again.” She turned to the forest, “Show me. Give me everything you’ve got.”
