Elva Rackthorn and the Tears of Azrael

Binding, Part 2

First there was the darkness of her closed eyes, and then they opened to a new sort of nothingness, a heavy white mist sprawling endlessly in every direction. The Betwixt. The realm between worlds, the source of all the vix that powered sigilmancy. The end destination of every soul, if certain sects were to be believed. And only a waypoint in her journey.

Elva wanted to reach her hand out past the slight glow of her cynlindrical pentacle protection, to run her finger through the mists, to feel whether it was silky or grainy, wet like fog or dry like sand. Would she float, if she wasn't sealed inside her pentacle? Was there even a proper up or down here?

She giggled, then raised a hand to her mouth, horrified. All her books cautioned first-time travelers to be wary of the soporific effects of the Betwixt, how the pressure of the realm could deaden the limbs and lull one to sleep. But she was punch-drunk, not sleepy. Her eyes felt watery, as if from mirth, like she was so over-full of energy that it had to leak out. To her horror, she saw snakes of mist creeping into her small cylinder of safe space. That— that shouldn't happen, right?

She wanted to reach for her book, tucked into her bag, but she felt weak from giggling, and her hands wouldn't move quite right. One flailed and landed on her chest. If she stayed still it should pass, pass pass... Elva hiccuped, and her body contorted with the violent sound, knees coming up to her chest and chin snapping down— and they stayed there, she stayed there as if suspended in something more viscous than water. Her hair was floating around her head like the curls of mist pushing past her pentacle wall like hungry snakes.

Elva's fingers fumbled onto her necklace, the one Mother had just given her, and gripped it so tight the pain seemed a shard of heat in her fist, or maybe a shard of ice, and she focused on that, on her heartbeats, not even counting beyond one-two, one-two. All you could do in the Betwixt was wait for your runework— one-two, one-two— to carry you through to the Night World, and even if her alterations for the wyrms had made her pentacle— one-two, one-two— more permeable, or if this was, somehow, related to whatever had happened to her three years ago to turn her hair white while disrupting Mother's near-fatal summoning, there was nothing she could— one-two, one-two— do but wait.

An impossible amount of time to judge later, the formlessness outside darkened, swirled and coalesced, forming pillars and spirals until with an unexpected yank Elva found herself on her knees in a beautiful forest, the air suddenly crisp and a shock to her lungs. Elva coughed and spluttered and wondered if she was imagining the white mist that seemed to disappear into the air with her breath.

When she finally steadied her breathing, she began to notice the forest around her, to hear the lively movements of the forest-creatures, to smell the damp bark, to feel the dirt smearing into her knees and the grass tickling her thighs. She saw the faint glow of the pentacle surrounding her, currently keeping her hidden from the creatures of the forest, and wondered if it would take her safely back home like it was supposed to if she failed in finding and binding a familiar. Or if she would have to endure the intoxicating, suffocating invasion of the mists all over again.

No matter. She didn't plain to fail.

Elva lifted herself carefully to her feet, careful not to break the pentacle. She spun around slowly, eyes sharp and searching. She didn't see any of the hollowed out trees that would suggest a tangle's nest, but that would be too easy. The forest canopy above was thick, with vines braiding between branches, but Elva thought she could see strands of sunshine threading through. The world around her was moist and mulchy in the way of shaded forests, but not wet like after a storm— she would follow her nose, then, looking for the ozone scent her books said a tangle exuded.

Elva pulled the asperbell from her bag, felt the sloshing of her blood still in its chamber, and put it snug in the pocket of her cloak so she could have it easily on hand for the binding ceremony. Mother had used this asperbell to bind Reginald, had held its polished mahogany handle, filled its brass chamber with her own blood and heard its ringing as she had shook it around a lionhound pup.

Fingers curled tight, Elva pulled at her cloak. It was a little warm in the forest for the cloak's heaviness, but no matter. She needed all its pockets. Hidden away in the cloak she had innocuous materials, like chalk and twine and her tracer in its metal case, and her various mischievous inventions for capturing her familiar too. She was particularly proud of the paralytic foam bomb she had made from river piksie slime and forest snake venom.

Elva smiled, and allowed herself a moment before she left the safety of her pentacle to appreciate the beauty of the Night World around her, the fluttering of jewel-bright insects from tree to tree and the hum of the harp-flowers quivering at the base of wide cracked-bark trunks, and a moment too to appreciate her own power, to have gotten here by her own brilliance and resilience, to be about to bind a familiar with her own inventions and ingenuity.

A deep breath, and Elva managed to take two steps into the forest before there was a flash of light, a tug at her neck, a rush of colors, then a dizzying thump as her head hit something hard and the world rushed into darkness.