48th of Frost, 120
Continued from here.
Again the rath continued down the hall and proceeded down a flight of stairs. His feet were wet, stained with blood, which he tracked down the proceeding hall. More windows happened before him, all depicting their own unique animal. A yellow peacock, a winged lion, and a condor. One by one, he broke their windows by the guide of the moon, and sunlight returned to the abandoned hallways. More and more nature reclaimed the mile he walked. With every shattering, Arkash became more and more drenched in blood. Eventually, it became so thick that he could not see through his eyes. He tried to wipe it away, but it dripped and draped his vision.
The hammer he carried wasn't the rusty tool he once knew anymore, it had become something ornate, majestic to behold. The steel ha turned to gold, and the edges of the weapon were bejeweled with sapphire and emerald. He himself had changed. He was tall, strong, and warped in ways that he could not understand. The screams were loud, deafening. The sound and smell of burning filled the rest of his senses as he dragged his tail down the last remaining flight of stairs.
Ahead of him, at the foot of the flight, was the end of the hallway with the final window embedded in stone. Blood-red light shone through, but he still recognized the guide of the moon beyond. With his bloodied hammer in tow, he approached the last display. When he last stood before it, with a trail of sunlight and gore to mark his path, he lifted his hammer overhead and brought it down upon the black griffin that was depicted in the stained glass. It was destroyed, and yet more vines and roots poured through the space created in its absence. The whole hallway rumbled and broke away from the ceiling. The stone shattered and poured upward into the sky like some sort of vortex, but with no such powerful winds present. He looked to behold the sunlight that bled through the cracks, then lifted his gore-caked arm to shield his eyes as the wide-open, amber sky beheld itself to him. The light burned away the blood on his scales, and he stepped forward over the crumbling ruin of the long hall to stand steadfast in an open, sun-soaked field of flowers, decorated with fringes of tall oaks. It was done, and he was whole again.
He woke with a start and coughed hard into his balled fist as the vision burned away. Again, he was small, malnourished, and weak. With a groan, he breathed through his mouth, and swallowed hard at the bitter aftertaste. His misty eyes lifted as he fought the residual effects of the smoke, and he found Dorn, Sharok, and Tavlin all in the room with him, watching as he swayed.
Arkash caught himself with one hand as he fell back, then looked to the smoking firepit in the middle of the room; it had long since been extinguished. "...What just happened?" he asked with a testing blink of his eyes. The blood was gone, he could see clearly.
"What did you see?" Dorn asked with a tilt of his head. "Where did your spirit take you?"
Arkash rubbed at his eyelids, then shook his head. Something was wrong, he didn't feel right. "...I" he squinted. Did he recall what happened? Darkness? Blood? Vivid images span through his mind while he considered the depictions and their meanings, and he shook his head again. "I don't remember," he lied.
Dorn exhaled through his nose, then nodded. "In any case, it looks as though your ceremony is complete."
"...What do you mean?" Arkash asked with a furrow of his brow.
With a bow of his head, the goose produced a small hand mirror, and offered it to the newly-realized rathor. He accepted it with a reach of his... tan-skinned hands and widened his eyes at the realization. He hesitated and began to shake, though he subconsciously knew what had happened. As he lowered the mirror to reflect his features, he gasped and covered his mouth. he didn't look like himself, not at all. He was a human with a small nose, hair, eyelashes, eyebrows... His eyes were at the front of his face, and his mouth no longer extended outward. A flex of his tongue in his mouth found a set of duller teeth, but still partly sharpened due to the dranoch curse. His jaw was lighter, easier to open, and warmth laid present beneath the cold layer of his skin. A flex of his fingers affirmed that his claws were gone, replaced with harmless little hard pieces on top of his digits. Nails?
He looked over his legs put the mirror down while he breathed quickly. At once, he pulled his furred boot off and beheld his oddly-shaped human feet, devoid of claws. They were soft and without traction; how did humans walk? With shoes, that was right.
"You'll get used to it," spoke Tavlin with a grin.
"Try not to think of it too much; you still work the same, so don't try and re-learn talking or walking," Sharok assured with a turn of his own claws.
"It's..." he started, and opened his mouth to breathe off some of the excess heat to no avail "it's so hot, I'm overheating..." he complained. His armpits were damp, his forehead was getting there too. He swallowed hard when he realized that he was sweating, and he quickly became disgusted. But it wasn't entirely hopeless.
With a little effort, he promptly forced his bones to shift and realign in their original shape. Skin peeled and flipped over like panels to reveal his basalt scales while his face elongated and his heels drifted. His claws returned and his tongue shifted and narrowed in his mouth of sixty teeth. Only after the transformation was complete did he realize what he'd done, and he blinked in surprise.
A hesitant sniff of the air confirmed the stink of sweat, which clung to his armpits and other places. A glance at his claws confirmed he was once again in his true form, and he shuddered in disgust. What a nightmare.
Tavlin and Sharok both took a moment to laugh and chuckled between themselves; had they experienced similar feelings in their ceremonies? Arkash furrowed his brow on them, but he soon brought himself to smile and shook his head. Dorn's feathered arm came to rest on his shoulder, and he looked to the goose expectantly. "...Well done, Ark," he congratulated, and though he was unable to smile given the hardness of his beak, Arkash could see such glee in the bird's eyes. "You're now mature in mind, body, and soul. Where you got from here is up to you and you alone," he spoke with a bow of his head. "If your purpose allows, and you're willing, we can arrange to have you join our kinship..." he offered with a turn of his other wing.
A companionable silence fell between the four, and Arkash watched the goose's wing before he lifted his gaze to the goose's eyes. Join their kinship? Stay among their family? Some part of him, a more impulse-driven need urged him to accept, but he held fast. The majority of his being ached to return to Mornoth... He wouldn't be complete in Tyrclaid, not for long... He couldn't say such things though, not outright. He had to at least consider if he could make something like that work; if his newly realized purpose would allow for such a thing.
"...I don't know," he spoke, at last, then lowered his gaze. "I still don't know what my purpose is; I need to think on it," he spoke a half-truth.
Dorn's hand fell from his shoulder then, and the goose bowed their head in a sullen display but came to nod in understanding. Even if he wanted the rath to accept and join the kinship, he couldn't force him outright. He had to respect the purpose. "Very well," he returned with his nod of acceptance. "Take the time you need to reflect and think; I'll continue to teach you of our ways in the coming days," he affirmed. "For now, go and enjoy the last of the celebrations; help yourself to some drink if you're so inclined. You're a man now, boyhood is behind you."
And like that, he helped the rathor to his feet. Arkash was wobbly, and his head ached a little from the effects of the drug, but he was lighter, more whole inside. He did indeed return to the party with Sharok and Tavlin, and the room welcomed him, when they realized his presence, as a fully grown rathor. He did sample some of the drink there, and though it made him dizzy and giddy, he pieced together the fragments of his purpose's direction and the visions he'd undergone. By the end of the day, he couldn't see or walk straight, and he realized in his drunken haze that Lorien had to fall, that he had to restore the natural balance and banish corruption, manipulation, and oppression. The monarchy, the nobility, and all their facets of control alike had to be destroyed, and true freedom had to return to the land.
