Riuk awoke with a snarling start, leaping to his feet only to topple immediately again to the loamy soil. His vision swam, the trees before him bending and twisting themselves into a dizzying spectacle. He closed his eyes against their rocking motion and strove instead to calm his thundering heart and ragged breathing. What on earth had happened? There were the echoes of some great exertion in his body, small aches in his musculature that spoke of some strenuous undertaking. The feeling was not unlike that which followed a fierce battle or a long journey. He was exhausted, that much was clear, but he was perturbed by the strange sensation in his head. Not quite pain, not even discomfort, it was more of a prickling insistence, as though something alive there wanted his attention. Opening his eyes and casting a cautious gaze about, he found the trees once more to be standing straight in their proper places.

He made another attempt to regain his feet, slowly this time, carefully, and with standing the strange feeling upon his brow only intensified. He became aware as well of a strange weight to his head, as though something foreign clung to it. He gave his entire body a vigorous shake, to dislodge the bits of forest debris that clung to his peppered coat as well as, he hoped, the vague grogginess from his mind and this phantom sensation from his skull.

He was horrified when, with a dull thud something tangible fell from him mid-shake and embedded itself upright in the forest floor. In shock he leapt back a great distance and pressed his body close to the ground in a snarling crouch. He kept his amber gaze fixed keenly on the unknown shape in the under-canopy gloom, but the thing never moved. As the moments dragged on and still no danger presented itself, he let the warning note fall out of his voice and eventually the snarl to end altogether. He rose stiffly from his crouch, watching the thing closely for any sign of malice. To all appearances, the strange shape seemed dead, and he snorted derisively at his own foolishness. He closed the distance to the thing in a few quick, decisive strides and lowered his head to examine it more closely.

It looked like an antler, though it was unlike that of any beast he had pulled down during a hunt. It was not outsized and showy, like those of the great moose, nor did its prongs radiate like those of the deer. Still, it was clearly the same type of boney appendage, whatever type of creature it came from. Perplexed, he tilted his head to one side, and the motion resulted in a second thud as a second antler fell to the ground, completing the set. He snarled viciously as the realization came to him that he was the creature from which these strange antlers had fallen. Impossible as it seemed, he had somehow sprouted the crown of a prey-animal while he slept. Surely he slept still, for this must be some fevered dream.

But no. He had not been asleep. At once the memories of the preceding morning came flooding back to him. He remembered being called to Glaesfaet by the endless song of the magic, remembered seeing her writhing there within her banks, golden and resplendent. He remembered touching the magic-infused water and the incredible pain that had followed. He had not been asleep. The magic had touched him, and in its fury had driven him to the ground. It was to his dismay that he realized that he had been transformed into one of those strange, mutated wolves he had seen in the forest. His body, too, had been changed by the damnable magic in this forest. His body, like his beloved Spring Grounds, had been ripped through and apart by the magic’s awesome power.

Its snarl renewed itself within his chest, this time with fury directed inward. He had been so careless, drawn in to something shiny like so many of the simple birds he had hunted along the shoreline. And now he too bore the mark of a prey animal, branded for his foolishness. Though the antlers themselves lay on the ground before him, the prickling sensation of the magic remained within his brow, and he instinctively knew that the antlers would return with the approach of spring just as they did to the deer and elk and moose of the forest. He had seen it happen year after year to these meat animals, and now it would happen to him. Forever more he would wear a boney crown as they did, a mark of shame, of carelessness and inattention. He had allowed himself to be swept away by the visual spectacle of the raw magic, and now he was permanently marked by it.

He bent and took the hateful things between his jaws, turning back toward the river. She raged still, swollen by the recent rainfalls, but was mercifully black. No hints of shimmering gold streaked her torrents, no ghostly fish leapt above her banks; the magic had gone. He strode to her, the antlers clenched tightly between gritted teeth, and moved close enough that the cool water splashed upon his dark forepaws. He dared not enter the wild current lest he be swept away with it, but he inched as close as safety permitted. The river had somehow given him these antlers and, though he knew in his hear that it would be in vain, he would try to give them back to her. He did not want this gift of the magic, and with a toss of his mighty head he flung the antlers far out into the water, willing the river to take them back and with them the mark of the magic’s power.

The boney shapes disappeared at once into the pounding torrent and he waited, futilely, for the feeling of the magic to leave him as well. Seconds stretched into minutes, minutes multiplied, and still he stood stock-still on the bank of the mighty river, eyes cast pleadingly downstream.

Take it, he yearned inwardly. Please, Glaesfaet, take it back. I won’t be a monster.

But the river of course gave no answer, and the pricking of the magic remained with him like something alive. It was this feeling of being a vessel, a host to this otherworldly parasite that drove him mad, and his silent plea to the river changed itself from an inward yearning to an outward wrath which he loosed shamelessly to the sky in a deranged, screaming howl.

| . | . | Khett | . | . |