Reality slips in and out of focus.
Spread your wings before they fall apart,
Home is where the hurt is, darling,
Follow your heart.
Is this reality? It must be; fantasy couldn’t hurt this much. Aura presses her hands to her eyes, forcing darkness to envelope her, and when she takes them away the world has focused and righted itself. She’s sitting with her back against the red rock wall of the cave, her head at an angle so that she’s staring into its dark mouth. When she turns her head the other way she can see a young man with black hair and scars on his wrists looking like he’s in a similar state as her, sitting in between a giant sabre-toothed tigress and an equally large golden lioness. The tigress seems to be unconscious, but the lioness is looking directly at her with glittering yellow eyes and an amused expression on her face; as Aura struggles to her feet, ignoring the pain wracking through her body, Lauma makes no effort to help her.
A quick look at the young man tells her that he’s not about to attack her (he seems to be only semi-conscious, if at all), so she stumbles past him towards the entrance of the cave. One breath of fresh air (it’s always rather stale in the Shrine) revives her somewhat and, leaning against the rock wall for support, she sifts through her memories of the last three weeks. The very hypnotic nature of possession makes remembering exact details difficult, but with a little prompt from divinity she’s able to recall everything that happened while Freya, Joel and Patrick were in control of her body. For now, she has no opinion of their deeds – she’s too busy trying to get readjusted in her body – but later, when the memories have registered properly, she may have something to say about it all.
As she slowly regains control and composure, the old feelings and memories which she hadn’t had a chance to acknowledge before her forced possession begin to trickle back. First and foremost is the loss of her phoenix familiar, Anneliese, whose death she has not yet had an opportunity to grieve. Accompanying this sense of hollowness is her old despair at being such a useless deity (the pain of Mallos’ tyranny is her fault – all hers), the pain of knowing her daughter doesn’t care for her and the fear and trauma provoked by the two times she’d been raped – first by Mallos and second by Adonis in werewolf form. Coupling the memory of Adonis’ rape is the heavy weight of the knowledge that he had successfully impregnated her, and in a fit of anger she had transferred the pregnancy to Draco who, since Poppy had frozen the transfer, has no idea about the whole thing. Adonis, too, will have no memory of the rape, and Poppy will be unaware of who was trying to attack her husband and how. Only Aura knows the full story, but the burden of having to tell them all the truth had been so great that she hadn’t had the strength to do it at the time. Now it’s over a month on and time is pressing.
Feeling slightly more settled (if a little overwhelmed), Aura gazes out at the warm blue sky and frowns in bemusement. The Omniety has been cut short; each switchover has thus far been at midnight, but Patrick’s time has been shortened by a good ten hours. Why? The only one who could forcibly remove Patrick from Aura would be Omni, the little man who hosts the Omniety, but why would he do such a thing?
The answer comes soon enough, and makes Aura wish she had never asked. Far across the trees to the left of the sea – the area which leads to the Inner Border – vast clouds of smoke are billowing up into the air. An ominous feeling prickles in Aura’s bones as she stares at it, trying to work out what it could possibly be; there’s too much smoke even for a forest fire, and there are large bits of solid mass which look as if they have been hurled skywards by some incredible force. Looking paler than usual, Aura reaches out towards divinity and panics for a moment when she finds a gaping hole where the magic should be. Something warm and furry brushes her hand.
“You cast out too far,” Lauma growls gently, “calm down. The hole you’re sensing is Epitome Jungle – the fairy fort at the Sky Citadel has deactivated and the magic there is beginning to fade. The resident divine has found a new home.”
Aura sucks in a deep breath, forcing herself to relax, and casts about inside herself for her divinity. Frighteningly, it takes longer than usual to coax out, confirming her theory that she hasn’t much magic left. Using the trickle of divinity she reaches out across the land of Shaman, trying to find the source of the problem.
As the realisation hits, her worst nightmares awake. “Oh no,” she gasps.
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