Transmutation
Identity claimed and reclaimed - a new name
Coria’s back arched further. This was poison, deadly and administered deeply. She had at most, minutes to react. She fought the panic that raced through her, speeding the poison to her brain and heart. They had trained her for this, even though they didn’t tell her why she must stay in this position and go deeply into trance.
She thought of Sceawk and Heart, reaching out for their minds, for the answer to what to do. She called to them from her own heart, from her own body and mind, as she felt the venom burning through her veins. Her whole body burned like it was being covered with lava. But she breathed deeply and kept her mind steady.
“Yes,” Heart breathed, “go deep into trance.”
Coria could hear her words like a voice in her head. Coria made herself breathe deep in the rhythm of the music. She relaxed her back and her limbs, and she spoke mentally to the healer pair, “Help me.”
She could hear Heart’s voice speaking and Sceawk’s trills, but she saw a vision of red fire becoming a green liquid, refreshing and life-giving. Coria focused on the flowing green fluid that ran through glass tubing and from there into her veins, quenching the fire and healing her body where the venom had seared it. As each minute passed, she heard more voices in her mind, voices that encouraged her, like hands holding hers, stroking her as they would a female in egg-laying.
Next to her, someone screamed, but she put that from her mind. She had no antidote to the venom, and would not know how to use it if she had it.
“You cannot help her,” Sceawk trilled. “She must do it herself, and if she cannot, we will put her out of her pain quickly.”
“Listen to all of us. Use our energy,” Heart said.
As Coria reached out to her healers, she began to see the whole community, the names and the energy signatures of each priestess, including the giant Monarch, who in this energy space seemed only like an old human woman, one who cried for her great-grandchildren who were dying in the circle. She saw the heart connection of Heart and Sceawk, the bond that the Chelovitsa needed to survive provided by the Circle. She heard the mental cries of her sister initiates, and called out to them, in her mind or by her voice, she did not know.
“Use their energy. Change the poison! Change it in your mind!”
The Beanath beside her stopped writhing and lay limp below the dark purple veil she wore. One by one, the voices of the initiates joined the Circle, encouraging the others, or dropped out, never to be heard again. In an hour, all the initiates were Sisters of the Beanathar.
Or they were dead.
Keening started in the Circle around the dais, lamenting their lost protégés, keening for the loss of life, wailing in release of grief and banishment of the spirits of the dead to the Beryl. The dais raised further, the columns supporting it set apart to reveal a chamber of lava below.
Each dead initiate was taken by her supporters, her throat cut and her now blackened blood caught in a bowl. The body was wrapped carefully in the veil, like a child in the egg, and then dropped into the lake of fire below.
The blood in each bowl, four of them, was poured together into a large chalice. The sponsors of each initiate put a finger in the bowl, first touching the middle of their foreheads, then licking the blood with their forked tongues. The new sisters, raised to their feet and braced by their supporters, did the same, and then the chalice was passed among all the circle. What was left was drunk by the Queen herself, writhing against the poison she had herself injected into the initiates.
All the priestesses wailed and moaned, hissed and clapped themselves into a trance, sending energy through each other and to their Queen, to help her and them transmute the venom.
At the Monarch’s signal, all sound stopped, and the cavernous pod echoed with silence. No one moved, not a finger, not the tip of a tail nor the fluff of a feather.
“My daughters,” came the words from the mind of the Monarch, “my new daughters and those who have survived the ritual yet another time. We are here together. Let us remember our Mother, she who leads us and guides us, never leaving us alone as we are never far from our sisters. We have returned to Her our sisters who could not stay with us this time. May they be blessed and return soon to us, strong in the ways of the Circle.”
The Monarch continued, after another minutes of silence. “Let us now name our new sisters, so that we can share with them our knowledge and ways, while we share with them our meat.”
Each team of sponsors led the new sister to the front of the dais where the Monarch, Likes to Laugh, could inspect them as their veils were removed. The Queen spoke a name to each one aloud, in the hissing speech of the Beanathar, but each sister heard it in her own head.
Coria’s new name was Gives More Than Was Taken. She inclined her head in acknowledgement.
Monarch Laugh did laugh, her fangs retracted and her tongue wriggling like a worm. “Your spirit is very strong, Gives More. No one has ever offered energy to someone else while she herself was not out of danger. We are honored to have you as our sister.”
“I too am honored, Great Grandmother.” Coria said, in her mother’s native Halsan tongue, using the honorific for the eldest female in the tribe. “May I have permission to list myself in your lineage under these two who have brought me here?”
“Yes. Now go eat, and prepare yourself for your first assignment. There is much to be done, and you will be our ears and eyes in places we cannot go unnoticed.”
“As you wish,” Coria said.
She knew the Queen’s heart, as she did Heart’s and Sceawk’s. She would never be alone again, and while she would never repay them what they had given her, she would never be obligated to another again.
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