Search & Scrutiny XIII

Aaka left her jar through the big hole in the cork and squeezed through the folds of the girl's shirt, out back into the open sunlight. Ahead of her lay an endless landscape of mountain peaks, a land of grey and white. The clouds seemed close enough to touch and a howling cold wind pushed them on across the sky at amazing speeds. The mountain, which they had just left, still towered more than a thousand feet above them.

Slowly, the girl got back up. Her trouser legs were completely torn open, her knees and palms were bloody, full of gravel and sand, and blood ran from the side of her head. She wobbled and totted for a moment and finally stood straight again on the uneven ground.

She looked at her hands. "I don't like this feeling. This looks bad." the girl's speech was monotonous and slow.

"Well you took quite a beating. How do you feel?"

"Bad."

"That's all?"

"It's hard to describe. The priestess would know better. I hope she wakes up soon."

"What? What priestess?"

"The one who used to own this body alone."

Aaka tried to make sense of it. Then it dawned on her. The girl had actually lost consciousness in the tunnel. The serpent had taken control of the body.

Aaka remembered the experiments and tests she and Louissos had run on the girl. Telling her to do a task with her left hand while blindfolded. She could not see or describe what she was doing, but she knew that she was completing the tasks as instructed. The girl had given reports of how, while she was fighting with her teachers in the grove, she could concentrate on two different things at the same time, see two different things at the same time, starting an attack while blocking her opponent's. The serpent and the girl were joined in awareness and intuition, only their conscious decisions were separated.

Aaka decided to take care of their shared body first. She inspected the girl's wounds closer. The wound on her head was not too bad, the skull was still intact, not fractured and dented in, but a shred of skin was hanging down and would need proper dressing. Her hands and knees were badly scraped and in need of cleaning before an infection could take hold. Some of her claws were broken and frayed and a few of her claw beds were bleeding. She had several scratches and bruises all over her body. Her backpack had a small tear in one place, her shirt was completely torn to shreds. The hardened leather she wore underneath had protected her chest, back, shins and forearms from the worst.

Their surroundings weren't too dire. They stood on a protruding stone few dozen feet down from the tunnel exit. The girl would be able to scale the surrounding slope and get back up, even without her claws. There was a narrow ledge in front of the tunnel exit that they would be able to traverse, serving as a foot path, but they'd have to get there first. From what Aaka could see from her position, the tunnel exit had completely collapsed again.

The serpent in the girl's body sat down on the almost level stone they were sitting on. She took her backpack off, and searched it for the girl's medical supplies.

"So, what do I call you?" Aaka asked.

"I used to have a long and revered name, but all that remains of it is Ssil." her voice was still monotonous, albeit a bit more fluent.

"The girl used that to refer to herself after she shed the name Nannade."

"She isn't fully aware yet of her duties and responsibilities according to the pact. She keeps me inside and doesn't want me to fulfil my duty as I should. She refuses to answer to her name, as if she could get out of the pact if she pretends to be someone else. She refuses to talk to me, turns her face away, but tells me what to do."

"You seem to comply with that though, the girl is casting spells almost like any arcanist."

"It is better to serve her for now. She cannot avoid me forever."

"Why have we never spoken? You do have an ethereal voice, don't you?"

"There is no need. The girl knows everything that needs to be said and done, even if she sometimes struggles against it."

Their subconscious connection apparently allowed them communicate and find consent without speaking, was it this consent that the girl struggled so hard against?

The snake had lifted the girl's head and stared into the distance. "Everything seems so... hard and... solid... Real. It seems real."

Aaka remembered her own birth as a familiar, it was the first real memory she had. The sensation of reality can be overpowering at first. Just like people from the real world felt a sense of nonsensical possibilities when entering a place of power and tapping into the ley lines, spirits felt a sense of surety and determination when entering physical bodies. Like watching a thrown stone and knowing, even foreseeing, where it will land.

"You should take care of the wounds, Ssil." Aaka reminded her. "I will take care of cleaning first, give me a moment.

In puff of blue smoke, Aaka transformed into a bigger orb weaver, with fine but strong legs and started to clean even the finest dust and dirt from the girl's wound, finishing it by covering the surface with a dense web of silk to keep the wounds closed together, especially the hanging shred of skin on her head. She had done this by Louissos' orders many times. It helped the scab forming faster and made it more durable. After that was done, the serpent also applied gauze bandages for added protection. They decided to make their rest on their stone perch, the girl's body was tired and needed more care. She would recuperate, but her hands would probably be out of commission, unless the girl woke up soon to heal them. The two spiritual entities tried to go through her palm book and find a healing spell, but the girl's knowledge was not available to Ssil at the time, so she could not recognize any of them.

They ate their rations and went to rest, as the sun slowly set behind the snowy peaks in the distance.

Aaka was awoken by the girl getting out of her sleeping bag. She saw her standing on the edge of the stone perch.

"Where are we?" She asked Aaka.

"We made it out of the tunnel."

"I remember running in up the tunnel, to the light, then all went dark."

"You lost consciousness when a stone hit your head. The serpent carried us out."

"What? How?" The girl turned around, scratching her head.

"Ssil, the actual Ssil, took control over your body. She ran all the way out, stumbled down the mountain and landed here. Then we took care of your wounds."

"My... wounds?" She looked at her bandaged hands and knees and picked at the bandages on her head.

"Don't worry, nothing too bad. You should heal up soon, but your hands will need some tending. We couldn't figure out what spell was for healing."

"Why not? Don't spirit know something like that intuitively?"

"No, arcane formulas make no sense to us. We can recognize patterns when they have manifested and take effect, but on paper, it's just scribbles. We speak the language, that does not mean we can read and write it."

The girl raised an eyebrow. "But you can read runes just fine!"

"Because they relate to us, our beings, what we represent."

The girl looked like she contemplated an answer but then dropped it. Instead she sat down, carefully went through her palm book and plucked out a spell. "This one will do, how far is the healing process?" She took off her bandages. "That's a solid scab."

"I helped with my silk. I often do that for Black Surgeon."

The girl felt her wound through the scab on her left hand. "I think I can still help a bit, but it will still hurt and take a while to fully regenerate." She cast the spell, then she peeled off the scab. Underneath was freshly healed, but sensitive and pink skin. Had she cast the spell immediately after receiving the wound, it would have helped more, but to tamper with the body's own efforts at healing itself this far in can have dire consequences.

"You could have left the scab on." Aaka told her.

"I wanted to check whether it had worked. I'll leave the one on my right hand on, don't worry."

She checked her equipment but found nothing missing. A few rations had been crumpled in their wraps, but nothing major. She quickly closed the tear in the backpack with a bit of the sinew and the awl she had bought from Clara and Benny. Then she got a proper look at the countryside.

"Where do we go from here?" She asked herself. "Where even is here?" She got out her compass and checked her bearings. She was looking east, a bit towards south. "Well, this is already the right direction." She looked over the edge of the stone they camped on. The mountain's slope steepened to an almost vertical drop beneath them. She looked up to the ledge above them. "Guess I'll have to try that trail." In the distance, she could see that the ledge quickly ran towards the bottom of the basin, offering a safe way down.

She checked her shirt. It was torn in many places, barely holding together. She still had her hardened leather vest and undergarments underneath, as well as the thick green cloak, so she took the shirt off and stashed it in her backpack. "Just for scraps" she said. She left the trousers be for now. She'd have to repair them later. Going pantsless in the cold, dry mountain air was a bad idea.

They broke camp and moved up towards the path on the ledge. Despite several broken or frayed claws, she still managed to use the remaining ones quite effectively. Their descent into the basin was even easier and eventless. They had been moving east and slightly south, towards a point where the basin opened up to a deeper valley, for a while, when the girl spoke up.

"I think my memories are coming back to me. How I kept on running and took care of my wounds. I know it wasn't me, but the memories... they are different." she was obviously having problems with piecing it all back together in her head.

Aaka tried to calm her. "Don't fret about it. You will find your equilibrium soon enough."

"I don't think that's how it works anymore. Ssil had complete control over my body. What if she decides to... or maybe she already did... when I strangled the bandit, I kind of felt like I didn't have control, I thought, it had to be done, so I gave in to the compulsion." The girl stopped walking "I think... I called myself Ssil. Why would I do that?"

Aaka sensed that something was bubbling up from deep within the girl, but she had no words to stop it.

"I just..." the girl looked at her hands. "...thought I wasn't me anymore. Or that my name shouldn't be Nannade." A gust of wind blew through the basin. "I have to move on. I have to find that damn enchanted forest or whatever it's called. If Elissa and Garetas die, it's all over, doesn't matter who I am or what I call myself." She set out again.

The girl had deeply rooted issues, and Aaka didn't know whether she would be able to resolve them by herself before they got to her too much.

They arrived at the widening part of the basin. Below them lay a valley, covered mostly with grass and a few grazing animals that looked like large oxen, it was too far to tell with certainty. In the distance more and more peaks rose, seemingly endlessly. The valley made a bend further ahead, possibly running further south than east. The descent into the valley was very steep and the slope consisted of loose rubble that flowed out of the basin, it seemed to be a hundred feet to the bottom. If they went down there, they wouldn't be able to get back up again.

The girl sighed. "We won't get anywhere at this pace and we don't even know if that anywhere will be where we need to go in the first place." She sighed and sat down on the ground, contemplating her choices. "Maybe I should have tapped into that place of power. Who knows when I would get that opportunity again?"

Aaka tried to keep the girl's ambition strong. She had been shown to be incredibly resourceful when faced with difficulties in her path. "It was a wise decision to stay out of it. You need to find another way, around the obstacle in your path."

"Obstacle in my path? I don't even have a path! All I have is a handful of rumours and a pointer."

Silence fell again. "I wish I could ask Elissa for help. She'd always find a way. Or Garetas. Sometimes I thought he could walk straight through walls, no place was unreachable for him."

Aaka did not know the two specifically, but the strength the girl described was of a certain nature. "They manage that because they don't give up. And neither must you. Like in the caverns below, you decided to press on. You might have been wrong to attempt to enter the place of power, but your decision to look inward was correct. Look inward and find what gives you strength, not what frightens you." Aaka was starting to think she was helping the girl too much.

The girl looked into the distance in the west, beyond the mountains. "What gives me strength? I think I know what that is." Then she sat down next to the tufts of grass, closed her eyes and inhaled deeply. She started singing.

She drew her voice from deep within her chest, sending it far across the valley below them. The grazing animals raised their heads, the wind turned to bolster her words, even the clouds seemed to change their course slightly, as the girl sang of home, sang of pain, sang of regret, sang of coming to rest.

Then, without warning, the girl lost consciousness.