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Chosen

Chapter Ten

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Written by Arian Mabe (Amethyst Mare)

Commissioned by Chirmaya Nashaar

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Tayna rolled in a deep slumber, tossed on a tide that controlled her waking and retained her sleeping. It clung to her, a deep fog swamping her mind. She was at the bottom of a pit, flooded, and peered through the mental gloom, limbs loose and free. She laughed, bubbles bursting from her lips and swam upwards, kicking off strongly to take her slim form up and up and up.

For up was the only way out of the pit. There was no other explanation needed for her taken mind.

Returning to the world of the living, she blinked, clearing mist from her eyes, until a clear blue sky appeared above her as if painted by an artist's brush. Fluffy, white clouds drifted serenely along on an invisible breeze, far higher than she could ever hope to be even if she stood on her tip-toes atop the highest of mountains. Lips parted, the vixen mewled softly and tried to lift a paw to catch one of the clouds.

Her paw didn't move, however, and her eyes widened - the only part of her body that currently seemed to be under her control. She concentrated, brow furrowing, and managed to wriggle the very tips of her fingers. It wasn't much but it was enough to reassure her that, at the very least, she was not paralyzed.

"I never thought you'd wake up again."

The vixen rolled her head sluggishly to the left, seeing nothing but a bare expanse of tan, scorched earth and a pair of booted hind paws. Her gaze tediously travelled up those black, dirtied boots to a muscled set of legs and a grey wolf's tucked in midriff, concerned eyes staring back at her with wrinkles in the corners that had not been there before. Tayna would have giggled, but shooting pain cramped her stomach and she groaned, abruptly aware that all was not well.

Curling in on herself, she dragged her limbs to life and wrapped her arms around her knees, shuddering pain swelling with every breath she took. Her eyes watered and she twisted her head back and forth. Yet it was bearable - if only just.

Reline crouched by her head, licking a pair of dry, chapped lips. Tayna groaned and opened her mouth as a water skin was pushed between her lips, sipping weakly from the slow trickle that entered her muzzle. Pressing her paw flat to the hard ground, she tried to push herself up, head swimming.

"Don't move too quickly." Reline put a paw on the vixen's shoulder, forehead creasing as she prevented Tayna from rising. "You have been there for..."

"A good while, I guess?"

Tayna groaned, letting her head slip back down to the worn sleeping sack - just where had that even emerged from? - Reline eased beneath it before her head dropped fully to the ground. The wolf shook her head and opened her mouth, closing it again without voicing what she had to say. Tayna looked at her strangely. Were there two wolves now? Her vision dipped and blurred.

"How long have I been unconscious?"

She rephrased the question when Reline did not reply. The wolf scratched the back of her neck and barked sheepishly, tail wagging.

"I counted nineteen days."

Tayna laughed, a raspy chuckle rising painfully from her throat. When the wolf shook her head solemnly, she gulped, opening her mouth for another sip of water.

"You're serious...aren't you?"

Reline nodded.

"I thought you would never wake," she repeated, a shudder running through her body. "It was horrible. I thought..."

The wolf trailed off, pressing her lips together tightly as if she could seal her words behind them. If she hadn't been so drained, Tayna would have pressed for more details but could not secure the energy in her current state. She curled her fingers weakly around the wolf's wrist and Reline let them stay there, nose twitching.

"I don't know how you've stayed alive. It seems strange to put it down to magic." Reline wrinkled her nose. "For most of that time, it formed a bubble of energy around you, like a shield."

She hefted her own, still slung over her arm, as if Tayna needed an example.

Lifting her head slightly from the ground, Tayna took in the circle of trees, although the ground around her was perfectly bare and devoid of any vegetation as if fire had burned everything right down to the ground at some point. There were not even any fresh, green shoots.

"Where are we?"

"I'll know soon enough, when I can find a landmark a bit further afield. I didn't want to leave you here on your own in case something happened to you."

Tayna smirked, although she couldn't hold the expression for more than a second.

"Aw...you do care then."

Reline rolled her eyes.

"Marginally."

The wolf shook herself, hair fluffing up from her head. She cursed and flattened it, adjusting her clothes. It was an annoying instinctual behaviour that she had loathed even during their time on the estate.

"Anyway, you have been here for nineteen days, as I said. The shield kept you safe but I couldn't get near you to tend your wounds." She winced. "They've healed the best they could without any attention. I can't say they're looking pretty though."

Reline looked down at her paws, sinking back on her heels as she squatted beside Tayna.

"I wrapped them in bandages as soon as I could but the flesh had already begun knitting itself back together. You're lucky it was a clean slice. The blade came clean out your back."

Tayna shuddered, twisting her head away as Reline went to tug up the hem of her shirt.

"No, thank you... I think I'd see my breakfast again if you showed me that."

Reline chuckled, the sound breaking the heavy tension cast over them like a ray of sun shining through the clouds.

"You haven't had breakfast in days, Tayna. The most I've been able to get down your throat is water since your shield dropped."

"I am starving," Tayna admitted as her stomach rumbled, perfectly on time. "Do you have anything to eat?"

"We'll see if you can keep plain food down in a little while. I'm afraid hunting hasn't been good around here." She eyed the vixen reproachfully. "Your magic may have frightened all the game off."

The vixen's ears slipped back and she threw her friend an apologetic look, surprised that she even thought of Reline as a friend now. But it was difficult to consider her anything else after fighting alongside her in the valley. As she recalled, it seemed like such a long time ago. And what had happened to Fayla and Tuck?

"Sorry. Hopefully that will no longer be a problem."

She paused.

"What about Fayla and Tuck?" Tayna chanced. "Did they make it out?"

Reline held up her paws.

"I don't even know where we are, Tayna. I can say that they were gone when you were fighting your mother." She turned her head and spat. "I saw them disappear into the trees. That horse seems wily enough to keep himself safe."

Tayna nodded.

"We shall have to find them."

Reline tilted her head to the side, one ear flopping halfway down.

"Why? They are probably safer without you."

Tayna growled, though the sound was as weak as if it came from a cub's lips.

"They were the only friends I had, Reline."

She couldn't stop the note of bitterness that entered her voice and moved on to her next thought so swiftly that she stumbled over her words.

"And my mother?" She fumbled with the words and pressed her tongue to the roof of her mouth. "Did she survive? What happened? It all went black when the magic just got too much."

Reline's shoulders slumped as she sighed, rolling forward as if she carried a great weight between her shoulder blades, pressing her down and down and down.

"I doubt she died, Tayna, but I can't imagine that she escaped without injury..." Reline shuddered. "That was some magic. Something big."

The wolf rubbed her fingers over her temples, pressing her knuckles into the pits of her eyes. Tayna licked her lips sympathetically, aching to wrap her arms around the wolf. She wasn't sure she'd even accept the gesture of comfort.

"The magic... Your magic seemed to go into teleporting us here." Reline laughed and rubbed the back of her neck. "Teleporting! Well, I never thought I'd be saying that sentence aloud back on the estate."

Tayna tried a grin, ears flicking forward.

"You're just jealous."

"I am, a little," Reline admitted. "But it seems to come with so many pitfalls that I'll take my chances as a bog-standard normal wolf, thank you. I know what's what this way."

"I agree, it's not worth it."

"So..." Reline eyed her sceptically. "How are you now?"

"I feel like a thousand horses have stampeded right over me and left me for dead."

"That sounds about right. But I meant..." Reline tilted her paw from side to side, holding her palm horizontal. "Your mother was barely hurt when we spilled her blood. Aren't Chosen supposed to be able to regenerate?"

Tayna gulped and looked down at the bloody bandages around her midriff, brown blood staining them with an acrid scent. Reline shrugged apologetically.

"I opened the wound a bit when I was cleaning it. Sorry."

Tayna winced.

"I've never hurt myself badly enough since waking up in the Alliance keep to really know," she admitted. "I suppose I never had any lingering effects from training once my magic started coming back to me... I mean, nothing magical, not stamina or something physical like that. No headaches or anything, nothing draining. Though my physical conditioning may have hidden some of it..."

"You did more than that." Reline scowled good-naturedly and tapped her on the side of the head, so gentle that Tayna barely felt it. "You put all of us to shame! You acted like a seasoned fighter. No one else could have run as many drills as you did and still dragged their tails out of bed the next morning to break their fast."

Tayna huffed, ears slipping back, and cautiously put a paw flat on the bandages. If she could heal herself, maybe they wouldn't even be necessary. Would raw essence, twisting into something useful, do the trick? There was only one way to find out.

Reaching into herself, Tayna delved deeper and deeper, searching for that inner skin that separated her inner store of essence. But as deep as she went, it simply wasn't there. She tunnelled deeper and deeper, desperation clinging to her soul, and lost her sense of self, forgetting where she was or even who was with her. All that mattered was finding her inner store of essence. She cursed herself, wishing she had stored some like Tuck was trying to show her how to do before everything turned sour.

The world reeled and Tayna swallowed bile, a low groan rising unbidden from her lips. Panting, she relinquished her search - too depleted? - and fell back, pressing her paws over her lips as if she could keep the last remnants of her stomach sealed within. Her belly gurgled, nausea rolling and swaying.

Tayna slumped, head lolling loosely upon her shoulders. Muttering, Reline supported her shoulders, letting Tayna half sit up against her thighs, knees pushed lightly into her back.

"What are you doing?" The wolf grunted, her paws on Tayna's shoulders.

"Trying to use magic..." She slurred. "Find essence."

Tayna mumbled and shook her head, blinking until her vision, blessedly, cleared. Reline frowned and scoffed.

"You shouldn't be trying to walk right now, let alone trying something like that!"

"I'm..." Tayna shook her head. "I'm like I was before... I'm hurt. I don't know how badly. I can't do it. I can't use my magic."

She swallowed, the sense of loss yawning.

"I have no magic."

Fear tickled her stomach and she gulped, suddenly acutely aware of the pain throbbing just below the surface. It was only through a monumental effort that she managed to keep talking, tongue dry and heavy between her teeth.

She didn't realise how much her magic had meant to her.

"So..." Reline gulped, eyes wide. "You can't heal yourself like your mother did?"

Tayna shook her head, eyes fixed on a cloud drifting oh-so-slowly by in the clear sky above. It would have been more pleasant to be a cloud in that moment.

"No... It seems not."

"Tayna!" Reline slapped her shoulder - more gently than she would have if the vixen had been in full health. "You could be dead! No one should have simply healed from a wound like that."

"It was a clean wound, as you said," Tayna mused. "No chance of infection from a blade like that... I cleaned enough wounds on the farm to know what sort would be a lingering danger. And I suppose I had the last vestiges of my magic protecting me from anything outside that may have hastened my demise."

The wolf's lips twitched.

"You're getting formal again."

"I am?" The vixen laughed weakly. "Sorry."

Reline studied her, eyes flicking up and down the full length of Tayna's body.

"Why are you nervous?"

"I just..." Tayna hesitated. "I got used to it. Magic. It's a part of me now. I don't want to lose it now that I've had it and...maybe I could even use it for good."

Tayna sighed and rolled her shoulders, though the weight she carried there could not be so simply shrugged off.

"I don't even know what I used my magic for in the past but I do know that I only want to take the good forward. I'm sure that sounds overly simplistic but it's true. Hurting others isn't something I ever wanted to do."

"But you'll do it if you need to. I've seen you with a sword in your paw."

Tayna's lips twisted and she pressed them tightly together, refusing to let a word of her thoughts pass them. Reline put a paw on her shoulder and squeezed.

"Well, there's no reason you can't get it back." The wolf wagged her tail, eyes brightening. "I may even say that it's come in handy, considering recent events."

Tayna giggled, the sound surprising even her.

"You - the magic hater?"

Reline rolled her eyes.

"Oh, of course, make fun of me now that I've had a change of heart."

"Perhaps it is not wholly true."

Tayna considered, rubbing her jaw.

"You would have gone after any traveller with an ounce of magic, back on the estate, who had even the faintest sliver of potential to change your stars in this world."

Reline tilted her head to the side, blinking.

"To change my stars?"

"To change your fate and improve your status in the world. You were never happy, were you? Not as a servant." Tayna smiled and gestured at the wolf. "And now look at you! I would never have imagined that you'd come so far!"

Reline coughed into her paw and tugged at the neck of her jerkin.

"I'm not really of any higher status," she muttered, the insides of her ears pink. "I've only changed where I stand in the world. Maybe I chose the wrong lot."

The wolf's shoulders slumped and she sat heavily back on the ground, crushing her tail beneath her body. Reline didn't even wince. Tayna gave a tiny sigh, hiding it from her friend behind a yawn.

"You chose to fight for what you believed in - I can admire that, if nothing else."

The vixen's eyes twinkled with a rare flicker of mischief.

"Just don't even think about going to drag me back to the Alliance!"

Reline yelped and shook her head vehemently, eyes wide as if she would never, ever have considered the option. When she cottoned on to the fact that her friend was joking, the corners of her lips twitched up and up until a wide smile broke out across her muzzle like the first rays of sunlight after a storm.

"It's almost like the old days again."

"Except that we are Church knows where in the middle of a scorched clearing," Tayna commented dryly. "Apart from that - yes, of course. Just like any other day on the estate."

Reline clicked her tongue against the roof of her mouth, shaking her head at the vixen. Tayna was surprised she didn't wag her finger too.

"Always so quick with your words."

"Yet your tongue was always quicker, without the words."

"I had plenty of excellent quips and comebacks!"

"Of course, I would never question that," Tayna chuckled, wincing as her ribs ached. "But could we move off this patch? It's rather hard and I have been lying here for...what was it...eighteen days?"

"Nineteen."

"And the day makes all the difference. Come on. Can you help me up?"

Reline's forehead creased.

"Do you think it'll be okay to move you? You were badly injured, Tayna."

The vixen snorted and pulled her paws up beside her torso, palms flat on the gritty, dried out soil.

"What are you - my mother? Help me up! At least we can get out of the clearing and into some cover." The vixen shivered, although she tried to stop the reflex. "This is far too exposed. I can just see others sneaking up on us through the trees."

Glancing back over her shoulder, Reline put her paw to her sword.

"Maybe you're right."

Easing her paws carefully under the vixen's armpits, Reline hoisted her to her paws, Tayna's weight nothing in her strong arms. The vixen dug her teeth into the inside of her cheek, ignorant to the drawing of blood, as pain lanced through her as if she was being carved into all over again. She ground her teeth together and waved off Reline's look of concern, tail tucked down over her backside.

Every step proved agony as she hobbled like a cripple across the clearing, the ground beneath her bare hind paws - when had her boots disappeared? - changing from raw, yellow soil to crisp, green grass. She sighed softly as the grass poked through her toes, wriggling them in the shade. She hadn't realised quite how hot it was out in the open and raised a shaky paw to her forehead, teasing away the pressure with the tips of her fingers. The ends of her ears were burned and she swallowed a whimper: she had greater pains to worry about than a little sunburn. But it was easier to focus on a little pain rather than the greater pain.

Tayna's breath came in short, sharp gulps, the fingers of her paw that wasn't gripping Reline to stay somewhat upright curled into a biting fist.

"You handle me like a rag doll," Tayna grumbled, the tip of her tail twitching anxiously.

The wolf smirked and winked. Tayna welcomed the distraction from the pain as Reline deposited her gently just within the tree line in the hollow of a fallen log. Animals had long ago carved out a resting place - perhaps a badger or a lynx - from the noonday heat, which was quickly building to a sweltering simmer.

With a huff of breath, Reline gently lowered Tayna back until her shoulders touched the log, roots arching protectively over her head. The wolf grinned and wagged her tail.

"Hey, I need to be strong for when I finally get a man in my life. How else am I to carry him over the threshold with my sword still at my hip?"

It was cheesy and cliché but made the two of them laugh - and laughter was much needed. As they settled themselves, Tayna let her head slip back, staring up through the twisted roots at the flicker of sunlight through the leaves high above.

"I've never seen trees this tall."

Reline absently chewed a blade of grass.

"Neither have I. This is new country to me."

The vixen mused as the pain subsided into a dull throb, eyelids falling lidded. Birdsong warbled above - kinds of feathered friends that she had never before heard the songs of. Perhaps there still was beauty to be heard in the world. Her vision darkened as she squeezed her eyelids together, stomach pulsing with a vicious heat where her wound still healed, too slowly. It was hard to see the good when her world had become so narrowed.

When Reline pressed a bundle of herbs into her mouth, insisting that they would help the hurt, she didn't complain and only chewed the pulp obediently. It was all she could do and, despite the sour taste, she murmured her thanks through gritted teeth.

But it was not in the vixen's nature to be still in one place when she could be exploring. Visions of the Alliance and the Church bearing down on them - wherever they were - pushed themselves to the front of her mind, battling with one another for dominance. Blood spilled and storm clouds rolled as sweat darkened a line across the vixen's forehead and she twisted her head back and forth, clawing at a vision she could not escape. A cage surrounded her, sealing her in, and then she was back on the battlefield staring at Fayla and Tuck's lifeless bodies, eyes glassy as their souls deserted them.

And, above the cacophony, she saw her mother's smirking muzzle, raising her sword high as she drove it through her daughter's stomach yet again, no longer the kind, old vixen she had been.

Chosen didn't love those from the past they didn't remember.

Tayna's eyes snapped open.

Growling, Tayna struggled away from the log, trying to drag her hind paws beneath her body from where they were kicked out in the cool dirt.

"Tayna." Reline scowled. "You really shouldn't be getting up."

"Does it look like I'm going to listen to you?"

The wolf sighed and offered her arm, muscles tensed to provide support. Perking her ears up, Tayna nodded and smiled her gratitude, biting down the flare of pain.

"I'll have my power back," Tayna growled, leaning heavily on Reline's arm and using the wolf to haul herself awkwardly, painfully, to her paws. "And then we shall see what the Church and the Alliance are truly made of."

"How will you do that?" Reline nosed her cheek anxiously, arm wrapped around Tayna's waist to support the majority of her weight. "Tayna, we don't even know where we are."

"But we will. And I know exactly where to begin."

Reline looked at her with her ears trembling. It was as if she didn't even want to know the answer. Tayna did not wait for confirmation either way.

"I will find my mother," she said, determination lacing her tone. "I would have searched for my father...but there is little chance that my mother is lying about his death."

Reline's mouth opened in sympathy, forming a small, dark 'O'.

"Oh, Tayna..."

"It doesn't matter," she brushed her off. "Well, it does matter but only in going forward. We find out where we are and then we travel on to the nearest city to find supplies. But I will have my moment against that Chosen bitch and see them burn."

Her eyes watered but she blinked away the moisture.

"I'll see them burn for all they've done to me and my friends."

Reline licked her lips, barking a short, humourless laugh.

"Harsh language for you."

"I picked it up from you."

Reline chuckled.

"I suppose I've got nothing to say to that. We've got a big task ahead of us."

"That's putting it mildly. But we must do what we must do."

Tayna hesitated, tongue flicking up to the roof of her mouth.

"That is if you will join me, Reline." Her eyes widened pleadingly, panic fluttering in her chest as she nuzzled into the crook of the wolf's neck. "I couldn't have got through life on the estate without you or being locked in the keep or the fight against my mother and the Church and everything else!"

"Have no fear." Reline held her close. "You're stuck with me now."

Tayna relaxed, tension slipping from the small of her back. It was hard to think of what lay ahead as bleak with a friend by her side. She inhaled deeply, drawing her strength from Reline. Yes, they would be okay. They would survive.

She smiled, hope rekindling. They would even win.

Looking through the trees, the vixen shivered in anticipation of the adventure ahead. It was time to change what they could and become everything they could be. Just like the stories her mother had read to her as a cub.

She shared a grin with Reline, the wolf's muzzle tipping back to loose a small howl, excitement breaking through her calm, reasonable facade. Tayna laughed and threw her fist into the air, arm around her closest friend and greatest ally.

"It's time to find out who the real Tayna is."

Only the future would tell.