BEEN & BE

There was a thrum in the air as Ivok seemed to accept the words. Whatever bonded Leto to Ivok through his act of naming the entity seemed to grow stronger. Leto felt the rumble of power at the center of himself and slowly wake into a ringing song. Yet the song had nowhere to go, no instrument to play, and no way to express. It just sat in Leto's core waiting to be released. It was uncomfortable and cold but not entirely unpleasant. Ivok's eye circled around Leto twice quickly on the ground before looking to the basin once more. Leto glanced at the yellow amber eye and then at the basin once more. This one showed a slightly more detailed figure that Leto couldn't help but put on Melbore's face, the figure held a knife and cut their hand before submerging their hand into a basin of their own.

The images seemed to shrink as it revealed the line that had represented the ground was a giant eye. The eye seemed to contort and shrink and then go into the little Melbore figure before the two were twisted and turned and then lifted up out of the water together to return top the world. The images started over again and Leto leaned over the basin. "Is that why his skin was... Ok ok. I just have to put my hand in here?" Leto asked the eye.

- Infect yourself with Ivok - the eye said to him.

Leto didn't like the words it used but as before the real meaning of the words was more when he gave thought to them. Infect was the best word when limited for Leto but the idea was more like consume, be changed by, adapt, become, endure, and rise. In the end all of those came from the act of bringing a bit of Ivok into himself and infect just fit best once you stirred all the concepts together. Leto nodded once then held his hand over the water, hovering over the edge of what could be the greatest mistake of his life. He felt his chest rise and fall more and more rapidly before finally shutting his eyes tight and throwing his hand into the grey waters. The liquid splashed out of the basin a bit and the satyr felt his palm press against the cold bottom of the bowl. Then.... nothing.

Leto opened one eye in confusing and glanced back over at Ivok. The eye seemed almost half closed making it seem like it was looking at a moron. Leto hoped he was just imagining that since eyes weren't supposed to be able to give such a keen expression and it would make him feel much better if he'd just made that bit up. Leto lifted his hand out of the basin and waggled it dry while looking at the bowl again. The water once more formed images, lingering a beat or two longer on Melbore cutting his hand before putting it into the bowl. "Oh, right. Right, I knew that." Leto said as the eye continued to stare at him unblinking.

"I knew that. How do I cut myself? I don't have a knife." Let said. He glanced at his wrist where he had been cut before being dragged into the waters but the wound was healed, or never there, or open but sealed. The mark on his wrist was just a white line that didn't touch its own sides. Like most of this strange place the more he tried to think about it the more it hurt his head so he just looked to Ivok for more answers.

- Tear yourself - Ivok said helpfully.

The image of the words from Ivok's mindscape were less than pretty. Ivok seemed to have no concept of how a small fleshy thing like Leto felt pain and was just offering a helpful tip... but the idea of ripping off his own arms didn't appeal to Leto in the slightest. Still, the thought did get Leto to his next idea. Lifting his hand up to his mouth, Leto bit into the meat below his thumb until the pain spiked and he felt blood dribbled down his chin and wrist. Ivok's eyes opened from many places now and Leto felt like he was performing for a great audience. An audience as silent as a grave and as eager as a pack of hungry wolves.

He thought of Adlas and the smell of his gut wound slowly killing him. Leto thought of Raona and their dance together... of what might have happened or what might not have. He thought of all the satyrs he had seen fall on the battlefield and the many more he'd seen crying around barrels of wine and mourning the lost.

He plunged his hand into the basin.

Then Ivok stirred. The ground swirled around him and seemed to flow, the myriad of eyes being pulled along with the blackness to the stand and up into the basin. The waters turned black and Leto felt the darkness force its way into his wound. It surged along his veins and up his arm. He felt the moment that icy cold touched his heart and he thought he would die on the spot. It pumped that black entity through his organs, his skin, his brain. Every inch of him was infected with Ivok. His body began to age and die and live again. Each time his corpse fell away Leto saw his misty spirit not stained grey but dyed black with eyes laced throughout pulsing veins that webbed through his essence. When he was born these veins touched the body and would begin to inflict themselves upon it. Each body made was different, slightly, from the last.

"Ivok! W-what now!?" Leto called even as he felt his jawbone crumbled to dust at the end of another cycle.

-" WE BEGIN "- Ivok told him and when the words came they came in both his thoughts and Ivok's.

The basin and stand twisted and shifted until they formed a long tentacle standing the same height as Leto. Instinctively Leto reached out a hand, laced with black veins that sported red and yellow eyes, and grabbed it. As he did the tentacle wrapped tight around his own arm and pulled. It felt like Leto's skin shifted, pulled, and untimely gave way to this tentacle. And so it did... this tentacle had no suckers but instead many long rows of claws or maybe fangs that dug in. It bit into his arm and pulled and ripped off Leto's skin as if it were a neat bit of cloth. Then it pulled his muscle fibers along in long connected strands. His bones were dragged out with his ligaments and then his nerves and blood vessels were pulled down as well. Soon only the black spirit of Ivok and himself remained and much like the rest of him it was tugged in a strong jerk. The stars beneath Leto cracked and he fell between those cracks once more.

Once more into water.

His body reformed in those waters, combining and hosting the two beings as they slowly melded together. The cracks below Leto sealed and cut the tentacle off at its base, the long deadly thing squirming and twisting until settling into the satyr's hand in the form of a gnarled wooden staff as black as raven feathers. Leto opened his eyes and through the water saw the noon sun up above. He opened his mouth and took a breath but only water flowed through him. It didn't hurt and he seemed to have no trouble lacking air much as he did back in Ivok's realm. Leaning forward the satyr adjusted himself and noticed that the water he was in was not some fathomless ocean but seemed more a small pond. He kicked off from the ground and swam to the edge of the water, pulling himself out with little trouble.

Seeing his hands for the first time, Leto noticed that they were not any hands he had ever had before. They were big and the skin grey like soot from a campfire. His fingers seemed almost too long as his fingernails thick but neatly trimmed. Bits of fur ran the length under his forearm and he noticed that it was all an inky black color matted down against him from the water of the pond. When he turned his head to look at the waves Leto felt and odd sense of weight and stumbled. Glancing left and right he could make out his horns in his peripherals, they were majestically long but twisted in odd ways. They didn't look naturally grown and more seemed like they had been twisted after forming. Their curves wide and then sharply reangling on each side. He stepped to the edge of the water once again and waited for its surface to calm so he could see his reflection.

His face looked longer than before, but not any prettier. The hair on his chin and head was just as black as the fur on his arm and as he expected his skin was all ash grey. Looking closely, Leto noticed that his eyes were a deep amber yellow and his pupils were horizontal just like a goats... no just like Ivok. His legs were still goat legs and despite his hooves being wider and heavier than before and his fur running black all the way through seemed mostly unchanged. He noticed that the metal shoes he'd worn were gone and it came as a slight relief for some reason he couldn't entirely name. Around the same time that Leto noticed he had no metal on his hoof he also noticed that he was stark naked.

He glanced at himself and then looked around quickly to make sure no one could see him. No one was a round and he let out a low sigh at that. He had no clothes... which meant he didn't have Raona's skirt anymore. As the thought came to him he felt the wooden staff in his hand writhe under his fingers, the shadows around his body seemed to shift unnaturally as if the sun had moved several hours in the sky and as it passed the thick cloth of Ranoa's skirt was hung over his shoulders as it had been when he had first fallen into Ivok's realm. He glanced at himself in surprise and then at the staff, a look of near suspicion on his face. He considered the cloth, noting that it seemed much smaller on him than it had before, and tried to imagine more clothes. Something loose fitting since he wasn't sure exactly how large he was now.

What formed from the shadows around him were simple fustanella and tunic formed of blacks and purples around him, the shawl made of Ranoa's skirt still draped unevenly across his shoulders. In a small afterthought Leto raised his hand up to touch as his new longer antler and noted two things. The pain in his wrist, at the point of a long thin scar going nearly completely through his arm, made him suspect his grip with his right hand would be weak... and that the charm Adlas had made for him and Raona had passed along was no where to be seen. Leto glanced a nicked section of his antler and glanced at the scar on his wrist. If he had been cut by that knight and the wound reached that deep to his wrist it must have cut cleanly through his old horn as well... The beads must have come off.

Leto tried to will the charm to his hand using the black wooden staff but even turning the shadows seemed to do nothing. No charm magically formed for him. He let out a long low sigh before seeing something odd. Birds. Many birds. They moved around at such speeds that he could barely register it, his eyes tried to keep up but they seemed to just move too slow to really follow them. Some of the birds even risked flying over to Leto, perching on his horns and then flying off. As Leto watched he saw it wasn't just the birds but the trees seemed to shake and move unnaturally fast as well. The confusion seemed to only last a second before some part of Leto nodded in understanding. He was still thinking of time as he had in Ivok's waters. Leto slowly took in a breath and focused on his beating heart, on the sounds around him, and let himself approach the world fresh. In a sudden snap everything returned to a proper pace and Leto finally felt like he was moving again.

Inside him something seemed to scream in surprised terror but the feeling ebbed and quieted. Leto tilted his head and probed at the place in his mind where the fear had come from but received no answer for his troubles. The feelings were his and he felt them but he didn't know what he had felt them. Everything had happened exactly as he expected it to. It must have been Ivok, yet the entity didn't respond to his metal questions. Some part of Leto naturally thought of course Ivok wasn't responding. They were together now, two in a single host. Leto didn't appreciate the hint of patronizing annoyance his own thoughts had and wondered how much of that was from Ivok and how much was from himself. In the end it didn't matter.

Leto was back.