Clara 2

Clara

The cold numbed her mind. The black night had swallowed her. She held her eyes closed hoping to feel the emptiness that would become the trance-state. She couldn’t feel it. Couldn’t move her fingers. Couldn’t feel her feet. She had not eaten that day, her clothes were thin, for what did it matter to one who could simply create fire from the air? She saw her idiocy because she saw the truth that she could not create fire from the air. She couldn’t do anything. Her body seemed to belong to somebody else, a body kneeling beside her mistress, black cloaked figure slowly being covered with white as the snow fell, and the figure sat unmoving, freezing to death. She didn’t want to look at her mistress, to see the coldness of death as it settled on her beautiful face. Her arms and legs began to lose feeling. She felt a different darkness falling over her mind, soft and warm. She heard a voice in the darkness.

You can still live, it said, you can be powerful. The voice was a soft whisper, yet it spread through her mind like a blanket, covering her hopeless feelings, quieting them. The voice was not in her mind, she realized, coming out of her lethargy.

“What is this?” she asked, speaking to the air, her voice a hoarse whisper.

This is your life, or your death. The voice had a feminine quality to it. Sensual.

“Who are you?” Clara asked.

Call me, the one god.

“The god the White Men and Women?” Clara felt herself becoming slower, her energy draining away as she spoke.

Yes and no. That is not important now. You will die soon. Do you not want to be powerful? To be alive? To heal your mistress?

“You will give me the trance-state?” She felt confused, she wanted to go to sleep.

Forget the trance-state, there are other paths to power. You can be more powerful than her this night, rather waiting a hundred years to perfect your pitiful trance-state.

“I do not understand,” she said, her mind sluggish, wanting to shut down. “What other path is there beside the Way of the Elements?” Her head slumped down onto her chest.

The power of your thought. I can open you to power that is always there, readily available to be shaped by your will. I can make you a source of power. You will not need the trance-state. Your eyes will not glow, none will be able to tell how powerful you are, for none have this power. But you can, Clara. Or, you can die this night.

“What must I do?” she mumbled. This was not the way she had ever expected to become a magi like Kether. She had expected the long years of building. A spark within her gave her mind power. Her body could do nothing, as it slowed toward death. “What do you get from this?”

I am a god, what do I need? All you need to do, beautiful Clara, is accept what I have to give you. And remember the one god that gave you this new life.

The tiny spark that gave her a moment of clear thinking vanished. “I accept.” No clear words passed her lips, only a breath of air. She fell over onto her mistress, unable to hold on any longer.

Very good, then. The presence paused, smiled, looking for openness in which to plant the seed of power in her. You will, of course, feel a little different after. Clara heard nothing, unconscious, her body slowing, stopping. A ball of white light descended from the sky, casting white light on the snow, throwing hard shadows through the forest as it fell. It moved towards Clara, entering her body near the base of her spine. It sank into her center, spread throughout her body, glowing, heating the limbs. Clara’s body convulsed as her heart beat again. Her head whipped back as she drew in a long, shuddering breath, her eyes wide open staring out toward nothing. Her skin glowed as the new power diffused throughout her body, but her eyes saw nothing, covered in blackness. The black orbs of her eyes drew in the light that was in her body, absorbing it. As the light bled into her eyes, the blackness shrank until her eyes where black dots on white, no colour in them any longer. She fell to her side breathing normally. Clara’s hand fell on her mistress’s arm, and her mistress breathed normal again as well, her body settling into its proper form.

It is done, the voice said, excited. My beautiful slave.