GRANDORA - Chapter 12: Hurdle (Patreon)

Author’s note: Hey guys.

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To keep you informed I will betray that I have finished the rough version of chapter 1 of "Lament of the Slave". It was blast to write, but it also revealed how much I fail to think things through. However it could be my desire to write it close to perfect (sometimes I find myself overthinking little things), while I know it will be far from it, making things harder for me.

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Well, we'll see how I handle it. Either way, you'll get at least this chapter this month.

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Noe, enjoy the chapter!

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Chapter 12: Hurdle - Link: https://www.patreon.com/posts/100294848

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Chapter 12: Hurdle

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»You SHOULD learn to listen.«

“Eh . . . to stone?”

Ferracore laughed. »To that, too. But FIRST and foremost, to WHAT you were told.«

Told what? What the heck was I told? The hard part?

“That I’m trying too hard?”

»YOU are, child OF mine.«

“But if I don’t try, I won’t learn.”

»Very TRUE. Yet you are DOING yourself more HARM than good.«

My blood ran cold. “H-harm? What harm?”

»Did you NOT feel it, CHILD of mine?«

I felt and sensed so many things, from his might swirling inside me, to the heaviness in my stomach, to an itch that danced from place to place all over my body. If only he’d been more specific.

»My MIGHT,« Ferracore growled, making his displeasure with my utter cluelessness clear.

“T-The way it vanished?” I blurted out, my mind racing for an answer.

»IS that how YOU saw it?«

“Isn’t that what happened?”

Honestly, to say that I didn’t have a hunch about what had happened would be a lie. What kept me from saying it out loud was the fear that I might turn out to be true.

»DOES the snow with the SUN bearing down on IT disappear? Does the lake WATER just recede IN the hot summer MONTHS? Do the ROCKS you melted on YOUR tongue just vanish?«

“N-no.”

»No, INDEED. They have BECOME something else. THAT is the way of THIS world, and my MIGHT is no exception.«

“So . . . it didn’t just vanish?” I voiced my deep concern aloud to be sure.

»No, of COURSE not.«

“Then . . . it became something else?”

There was still hope that his might had turned into steam or something - not that the idea of steam in my body was any more comforting.

»INDEED. My might BECOME something else, IN a sense.«

“But . . . ” There was a BUT.

»Might IS a human TERM, and does NOT quite tell the TRUE nature of things.«

“It is your will.”

»Indeed, AND will is or is NOT, child of mine.«

“Shit!” The curse just slipped out. But I couldn’t help it. His will was constantly searching for a purpose. “When I failed, your will found a new purpose, didn’t it?”

“Wrong.”

“It - it didn’t?”

Could it not be as bad as I feared in the end?

»The WILL has reverted to its ORIGINAL purpose.«

“To live . . . ”

“Yes.”

The strength in my legs left me, as did any will, to keep trying to move the cave wall. The pain in my knees as they hit the stone floor paled at the thought that I had just subjected my body to the pressure of the Grand Beast - essentially willingly.

“Does it mean - does it mean that it has changed me?” I stammered the question, frantically searching my body.

»REST your heart, CHILD of mine, for your FLESH cannot hold ENOUGH of my might to CHANGE you greatly.«

“I-I see . . . but . . . ” I stuttered in relief, just searching the nooks and crannies between my toes. I still had five of them on each foot, the same size, and even with all the nails - bitten as they were.

“ . . . but it can - it can change me.”

I knew it could. My fur, my ears - though only one now - and my tail, though only a stump of it, were proof of that. Granted, it took more than one failed blue flame conjuration. In fact, it took most of my life, all seventeen years of it, up until the Vetrifyr’s might disappeared from the world. Who knows what I’d look like if it were still around? In the four years since, I might have grown fangs, maybe even claws. In the years to come, fur would cover my entire body; I would begin to crave more meat, grow beast legs, and eventually turn fully into a beast. Such was the life of most Foxkin. There was no escaping the pressure of the Grand Fox, and only the strong kept their wits in old age.

Or so most Foxkin believed, and so did the rest of humankind. And not so long ago, I was no exception. These days, however, I was wiser. It was the will to live that mattered. The will that was tested day by day by the hardships of life and withered with age. You felt down for whatever reason, like life had no meaning - well, those were the moments when Vetrifyr’s might have worked its magic on your body.

Yet, knowing that, I still remained foolish, and in my blunder, I opened the door to Ferracor’s will, inviting it to make itself at home in my body.

How many days had it cost me? Or was it weeks, even months? I wouldn’t be surprised if I lost an entire year.

»UNDOUBTEDLY, my will CAN change you,« Ferracore spoke, if anything, curiosity about my desperate body examination coloring his voice. »And NO doubt it HAS changed you.«

“It has? How?! P-please forgive me; I didn’t mean to . . . snap at you.”

The Grand Beast growled, accepting my apology. »It IS good to be AWARE of your missteps, but EVEN better not to TREAD them again. Not SO different from TURNING a blind eye to THE truth. And the TRUTH is, you AND I are not so DIFFERENT, child of mine.«

Biting my lower lip, I stopped myself from urging the behemoth to hurry up with his point, and instead, with a panic-stricken heart pounding in my chest, I forced myself to listen to him.

»NEITHER of us wants to LOSE ourselves.«

Wait, was that it? After everything he said, I expected . . . well, more. Though it was hard not to see the truth behind his words. While his will threatened to consume me, he was fighting Vetrifyr’s legacy.

“Has it changed you, Ferracore?” I asked, pushing my own fears aside for a moment.

»WOULD I know?«

Considering my own failure to find the changes in my body: “No. Not unless someone pointed it out to you.”

»Indeed. TERRIFYING, is it not? It TAKES one to know ONESELF well, or the OTHER to know oneself BETTER than yourself. Can YOU tell me, child of MINE?«

“No.”

»No, indeed. YOU have met the ME you know, not the ONE I woke up as.«

“I’m sorry, Ferracore.” While there was no reason for me to feel bad, I did a lot. Fucking empathy, I guess.

»I SHOULD be the one TO apologize, as it WAS not my intention TO make you feel GUILTY. I merely WANTED to point out THAT I am not BLIND to your fears.«

Well, he did it in a pretty roundabout way. But it was nice of him. It actually warmed my heart. That is, until my mind wandered back to my problem and I started frantically patting myself down again.

»YOU are so thorough, CHILD of mine,« Ferracore hummed after watching me for a while, a hint of amusement in his voice. »Yet THERE is still one PLACE left for you TO check.«

There was? Wait, he didn’t mean . . . ? My heart pounded harder in my chest as a shiver ran down my spine. Ferracore was right. It was a place I subconsciously avoided, a dark place in my memories that fed my nightmares. Throat dry, hands shaking, I reached for my butt and the stump of my tail above it.

As soon as my fingers touched the burnt skin, I jerked away. The memories of my home on fire, my tail trapped under a burning beam, were still too vivid in my mind.

“You can do it, Eirlys’ore.” Strong words whispered in my mind; in reality, a pathetic attempt to give myself courage when there should be none needed. My face was no less scarred, a reminder of the same horror, yet . . .

Did what happened to my face happen to my tail too?

Pushing through the fear, I touched the stump again. It was as I remembered it. Short, barely the length of my palm, covered with burnt skin. Was it a relief? Hardly. My hands shook even more as tears filled my eyes. Did I pull my hand back, though? No, I didn’t. Ferracore said it was where his might bit into my flesh, and so it must have been.

Thankfully, it didn’t take me long to find what his will had done. Just above the root of my tail, the stump of it, the rough, burned skin was covered with four small, soft scales. Yet while the small scale change came as an incredible relief, I broke down in tears, a waterfall of them.

The truth hit me harder than I was prepared for. I was never going to get back the fluffy tail I used to fall asleep with pressed against my chest.

At the very least, I would be left with a stump covered in scales. Alas, hoping that the changes would stop there would be like turning a blind eye to the truth, as Ferracore said. So instead, I opened them wide and looked through the haze of tears at his tail.

His was about as thick at the root as the lizardkin’s - when I scaled it down to human size - but at least twice as long, tapering to the tip and bearing spikes along its entire length. Well, they weren’t spikes exactly, more like growths on scales, but the idea of hugging them didn’t exactly strike me as something cuddly and comfortable. Nor could I imagine tickling someone with the tip of such a tail. In fact, it was not so much a tip as a . . . shovel or the head of a spear, only wider.

To be fair, it wasn’t a bad-looking tail. It looked . . . powerful. The thing was, it just wasn’t my tail.

Sadly, though, no matter how much I wanted things to stay the way they were, there was no point in thinking that one day I wouldn’t be busting Ferracore’s tail. I was no Grand Human, immune to the pressure of the behemoths. The way I looked was proof of that.

I was just Eirlys - Eirlys’ore to be exact - and it was time for me to accept that.

***

»Are YOU sure, child OF mine? Sometimes it IS better to face PROBLEMS with a fresh mind.«

“Yes, I am.” Was it foolish to tackle another attempt to move the rock wall as soon as I had wiped the tears from my eyes and the snot from under my nose? Probably. Was I too stubborn to prove to myself that I had what it took to be . . . well, whatever Ferracore’s kin were? No doubt. Then, would it have been better to stay curled up on the floor and whine about the hardships of life? Absolutely not.

If I ever wanted to escape the nightmares plaguing my dreams, I had to stop clinging to the past.

“I need to live in the present.”

»I SEE,« Ferracore grunted in understanding as I spoke my resolve aloud. No wonder. It was his own words, the full meaning of which had only just dawned on me.

»Then REMEMBER, do not TRY so hard.«

Annoyingly, my enlightenment didn’t reach the necessary depth, and what he meant by that remained baffling to me. I couldn’t move a stone wall without trying, could I? After all, I wouldn’t have gotten this far without effort - a shit ton of effort. Nevertheless, that Ferracore just wanted me to take it slow wasn’t out of the question either. Shaping the stones to his liking seemed to be a piece of cake for him. On the other hand, his advice, or rather hints, were always meant to help me with the issue I was facing. So . . . no, I had nothing.

Scratching my head, I stared at the cave wall for a while, wondering what I had done wrong in my previous attempt, before swallowing my pride. Just because I had made peace with what I was, didn’t mean I was willing to turn into a beast today because of my stupidity driven by stubbornness.

“What do you mean, I shouldn’t try so hard, Ferracore?”

»What I SAID,« the Grand Beast grumbled, his voice, to my surprise, devoid of displeasure at my cluelessness. »Will it HELP get the water INTO the cracks of STONE faster if YOU push harder?«

“No.”

»And THERE you have YOUR answer.«

As a matter of fact, I did. Well, not really. It depended on how one looked at it. Knowing that I was pushing the might to leave my body too hard didn’t mean I knew how to hold back. After all, all I was doing was giving it a purpose. I wasn’t pushing it, was I? Maybe . . . maybe it was my insistence on proving myself to Ferracore, the effort to push myself further that somehow carried over to the might.

Having no better answer, I put my hands on the cave wall, closed my eyes, and did my best to clear my head. Quite a challenge, as it turned out. A few pesky thoughts kept finding their way in, not to mention Ferracore’s stare at my back and an annoying itch that kept shifting from one corner of my weeks-unwashed body to the other.

In my defense, the water in the underground lake was just way too icy.

Anyway, scratching away another itch, this time below my left knee, I shifted my focus back, and once I conceded that I couldn’t get rid of any more insistence on proving myself, I let the might in my body know what to do.

It swirled just as before, ready to do its job. Then it finally moved where it damn well should have - towards my hands.

While my heart raced, I dared not breathe.

The might moved past my elbows.

It slowly crept through my forearms and finally moved to my palms.

“Come on!”

As it touched the wall, I could have sworn my heart stopped pounding for a moment. This was it!

But the next moment, everything went to shit.

The cave wall turned out to be as much of an obstacle for the night as it was for me, and it did the same thing if I were to run against it. The might bounced back.

While a great enlightenment, it wasn’t the reason it took my breath away. The might surged back into the core of my body with such force that I took three steps back as if someone had punched me in the gut.

The worst part of it - a chunk of that might just vanished afterwards..

“By the B . . . !” I screamed, barely stopping myself from finishing the swear. Ferracore, as the Grand Beast, certainly wouldn’t have appreciated it if I uttered it whole.

Nevertheless, judging by the sharp pain just above my ass, it wasn’t hard to tell where the might had bitten this time.

My hands promptly shot to the stump of my tail.

“Shit!”

While I had only myself to blame and was prepared for it, even at peace with it, I couldn’t help but curse my own stupidity when I palpated more than half a dozen scales around the root of my tail.

“Has it grown?” I gasped, gently tracing the sensitive stump.

»Indeed, IT has.«

That such a massive beast could tell the slight difference aside, to have it confirmed was . . . well, it was really hard for me to wrap my head around. For so long, it was just me and my stump, with no chance of getting my tail back. I know, weird how something I was supposed to hate grew on me. But . . . my stump fucking grew!

Suppressing the urge to hug Ferracore, I couldn’t resist doing a little happy dance. Sure, it wasn’t my bushy tail I was getting get back, but it was a tail.

»HUMANS are strange,« Ferracore remarked about my behavior, and I couldn’t agree more. We could endure so much and rejoice over so little. In one breath, I was bawling my eyes out in despair; in the next, tears of joy ran down my cheeks.

»ARE your eyes LEAKING again?«

“No,” I said, promptly turning away from Ferracore.

The chuckle that shook the cave was more than telling. My lie didn’t get past him. To be fair, I’ve never been very good at it - telling lies. A pretty big disadvantage in this damned world. Not that I ever heard of anyone lying their way out of slavery. Still . . . if you were good, it might have saved you a few lashes or shifted the punishment to someone else.

Bad memories!

Hard to do, but better to leave them forgotten.

And so, shooing them away, I wiped off my tears and faced the cave wall again.

»You SURE, child of mine?«

“I finally saw what you meant, Ferracore.”

»Took YOU long enough,« the Grand Beast said, a hint of content and approval in his voice. He did not try to caution me off, nor did he urge me to prove my words.

That attitude was wrong from the beginning. And not just in my current efforts to move the stone wall. Ever since I met Ferracore, I’ve been desperately trying to prove to him that I’m worth keeping around, that I’m not just some criter he should get rid of. Ironically, that desperate clinging to life was what sparked his interest in me, but it also became my biggest hurdle, causing me to bang my head against the wall over and over again without even realizing it.

Ferracore had talked so many times about his might being his will, yet I felt I had never really listened. If my own will was a projection of my desire to live, therefore of myself, then I should consider it as such. The same was true for the might of the Grand Beast in my body. Even though I believed otherwise, I had treated it like a slave, forcing it to do what I wouldn’t do myself.

Whispering a silent apology, I placed my palms on the cave wall again. This time, however, instead of imagining the might seeping into the stone, I imagined myself sinking into it, spreading like a mist - strange as it was - before I passed on the purpose.

Once more, I watched as the might swirled in my body and flowed through my arms to my hands. There it lingered for a few heartbeats, as if deliberately keeping me on edge for my previous handling of it, before instead of bouncing back, this time it left my palms.

The might had soaked into the cave wall.

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