Metamorphosis

The sun was blinding.

Its rays shone harshly over the fields, radiating heat off the ground. The crops were empty; the farmers had all retired inside to avoid the searing blaze.

It was in Kainneth's eyes as he pushed and scratched at his older brothers' fingers, which were clamped around his arm. Feet trailing along the ground, Kainneth ran to keep up with Abe's long strides as he was dragged forwards.

"Stop! Get off!" Kainneth shouted, but to no avail. His foot caught on a rock, and he tripped as his arm was yanked forward while his knees hit the hard earth.

"C'mon Kai," his other brother, Keith, drawled, grabbing Kainneth’s hair and ripping it upwards. Kainneth yelled out in pain as his hands instinctively went to his head. Keith pounced, wrapping Kainneth's thin wrists into a tight, tense lock. Kainneth arched his back in pain, looking over his shoulder into his older brother's harsh, narrowed glare. So predatory, like a hunting animal toying with its food.

"Please, stop." Kainneth hated the way the words bubbled out of him in a sob. Keith only laughed, and continued pulling him along. He released his grip on Kainneth's hair, and the scrawny boy fell to the ground in a heap before scrambling up again, hands pressed to his scalp.

"Da says you need to pitch in more. Says you aren't strong enough to be helping on the farm," Abe called over his shoulder.

"He's left it up to us to get you strong."

As they walked, the crops and fields began to fade away to plain, yellow grass and infertile land.

"Wait," Kainneth mumbled to Keith. "Where are we going?"

"You'll see."

They continued walking for another fifteen minutes until they began to approach the forest - overgrown and leering, the dense woodland possessed an eerie quality that Kainneth had always feared. As soon as they crossed the forest's threshold, the sun hid away, as if it too feared whatever lurked among the trees. Kainneth started to regret his disdain towards the sunlight only moments earlier.

They kept walking, and Kainneth realised that his brothers were much more familiar with the forest than he was - they walked as if along a familiar path, and the notion made Kainneth's pulse quicken.

Abe grabbed Kainneth's arm again and pushed him in front, and Kainneth realised that they were now approaching a deep slit in the earth. Kainneth paused at the top of the sharp sloping incline, which curved downwards for about five metres before steeply giving way to sheer rock and below that, darkness.

Kainneth's blood was pulsing before, but now his heart thundered in his chest.

"Wait," he said, turning back to Keith, but before he could say anything else a boot met his chest and he toppled backwards. Kainneth's back hit the dirt first, then his legs went over his head and he rolled. The world was blurry and dark, and he had no time to scramble for purchase on the slippery mud before he dropped over the edge and was swallowed into the dark. For a second, he was sure that he would fall until he cracked his head on the ground a hundred metres below.

He hit the earth with a thud.

It was cold. Slick with mud.

He wasn't dead.

His back ached, and there was a sharp pain on his shoulder. Groaning, he gingerly sat up, opening his eyes to the surrounding darkness. Looking up, he could see the top of Keith's head staring down at him. It wasn't a massive drop, but the distance from the slope to Kainneth was a little more than twice his height.

"You alright Kai?" Keith called down to him.

"Get me out of here!" Kainneth yelled back, still sitting. His knees and side were covered in mud, and his shoulder was beginning to throb with a dull, pressing pain.

"Oh relax," Abe called mockingly. "When you climb out of there, Da says you can come back home."

Kainneth's stomach dropped.

"No-wait!" He shouted. The wall in front of him was sheer, and behind him the cavern descended into shadows. "I can't get out!"

There was no response.

Kainneth scrambled to his feet, ignoring his shoulder and the thin scrapes and cuts on his hands and knees.

"Keith! Abe!”

He could no longer see Keith at the top of the pit. Putting his hands up to the wall, Kainneth tried to find purchase on the cold, slick rock. He found one grip, and pulled himself upwards, but there was nothing else to reach for. His palms – slick with sweat and blood – were soft and delicate, and his nails split as he desperately pulled at the stone. His vision was obscured by the swirling mist, which drifted above and around him, making it seem like the wall stretched on forever.

"Keith! Please, please I'm sorry," Kainneth's voice broke sharply, like glass. Tears welled up in his eyes, and warmly slipped down his cheeks. Pressing his forehead against the cool rock, he bit back the sobs that bubbled up his throat.

***

Kainneth sat there for hours, his back against the stone. He only attempted climbing the wall a few more times, but knew it would be a fruitless effort. His hands were already bloody - nothing like the course, tough, farmers' hands of his father and brothers. He couldn't see much above him, but the sun no longer filtered down through the trees, and he knew that it would soon be dark.

And then what?

Kainneth knew his family well enough to guess that they would not come back for him until he found his way out. He wondered what his mother was doing at that moment; had she known? And had she, as always, done nothing to stop it? Leora was a kind and gentle soul, but she lacked the spine to stand up to her husband. Although she would always wipe Kainneth's tears and whisper consoling words in the aftermath, whenever his father berated and struck him, she would only watch from her rocking chair in the corner of the house. Always just watching, with those grey, hollow eyes, like a wiry doe stood frozen, watching the forest burn around her.

As Kainneth stared out into the darkness ahead of him, a thin, raspy voice echoed into his mind. He blinked, pulled out of his thoughts.

Closer.

Immediately alert, Kainneth pushed himself up against the rock wall and stood. The slope surrounded him on either side, and even the shadows could not trick him into believing there was something next to him. No, the voice came from further down.

The next phrase pushed through the murky blackness with force now:

Closer.

Kainneth swallowed deeply. The darkness ahead of him was massive and all-encompassing. A voice in his head – was it his mother’s? – told him to stay, not to obey that blackness.

But he pushed the voice aside, and took a few hesitant steps forwards. The mouth of the cavern yawned ahead, like maw of some great beast waiting to swallow him. He took a few more steps, waiting for his eyes to adjust to the darkness, but knew instinctively that there was no light that could enter this place.

Turning to look over his shoulder, Kainneth looked at the sheer wall. He knew he couldn’t climb it.

The voice rumbled through him once more.

Enter.

And so, the coward surprised even himself as he took one more step, then another. Entering the mist, Kainneth swallowed sharply as the shimmering fog turned into utter pitch. Every hesitant step he took, a voice inside him screamed to go back, but he knew that there was nothing to be done back against the rock wall. At least here, he could go forward.

He kept close to the wall on the left, letting his fingers trail across the rock as he pressed further into the darkness. The silence pressed heavily all around him, and he began to question if the voice had been a mere conjuration from his exhausted mind.

Then, a glimpse of light.

Down, close to the ground, there was a gap in the wall and the faintest, turquoise light emanated from it. Getting to his hands and knees, Kainneth saw that the gap was a small tunnel that led to… some kind of cavern.

Enter.

The voice rumbled through him with incredible intensity this time, and with that Kainneth somehow steeled his nerves and lay flat on his stomach. The earth smelled of the damp, and although Kainneth was small, the tunnel was cramped. He felt the jagged rock cutting his elbows, back, legs, but continued forwards because he knew that whatever lay in front was better than what lay behind.

The turquoise light grew brighter as he crawled closer, and eventually his head was in the cavern, and as he pulled himself out of the tunnel he took in his surroundings.

Glowing blue gemstones covered the rock walls, which stretched high above him. He couldn’t see the ceiling, but stalactites dropped out of the darkness, backlit by the glowing walls.

To his left, at the back of the cavern, there was an altar. When Kainneth noticed it, his breath stopped. On the wall behind it there was an enormous stone tablet, illuminated by the soft blue-green glow. Walking closer, Kainneth saw that there were intricate carvings across the stone; as his eyes made sense of the basic shapes, more and more detailed scenarios and imagery realised itself. He saw a shining crescent moon at the centre, atop an ornate pyramid temple. At the bottom of the tablet there were hundreds of people; worshipers, priests, people splayed upon sacrificial beds, others kneeling before the shining light from the moon. As his eyes trailed up the tablet, Kainneth saw figures that stood out from the rest. Masked men and women standing atop pedestals, wielding glowing orbs in one hand and swords in the other. The masks were all the same; heart shaped and symmetrical, with two almond-shaped slits for eyes and a ridge in the centre. Almost like an owl. At the top of the tablet was… Kainneth frowned. A gigantic shape. Incomprehensible. Both geometric and organic, a creature of overlapping patterns and limbs. There was that mask again, repeating over and over around the shape. There were wings too, feathers poking out at every angle from the… being? He couldn't make sense of it.

Kainneth had stopped in front of the altar, and he now turned his attention to what lay upon it. There rested a pristine broadsword with and in front of it, a chalice. The sword had some kind of runes carved into the blade, while set in the pommel of the hilt was a glowing, aqua-coloured gem. Even before he checked, Kainneth knew the chalice would not be empty. When he picked up the goblet, a black fluid reflected his pallid face back to him.

Once again, the voice pressed into his mind, and he knew what it would say as the rumbling echoes formed that eerie voice.

Drink.

Later he would not recall that he was so enraptured by that liquid, enthralled by that voice, that he could not have possibly sipped the foul fluid of his own compulsion. As he pressed the cup to his lips, Kainneth’s last thought was of Leora in the rocking chair, wasting the years away.

He swallowed the liquid, hardly aware of the disgusting taste as it slid down his throat. There was a beat. Nothing happened.

Change.

The voice reverberated through him with such intensity that he faltered, and when he held his right hand out to stop his fall it shattered on the stone ground. Shattered. His hand. There was no pain, but the horror overcame him as Kainneth stared at his own crumbling limb that was falling away like loose stone before his eyes. Kainneth screamed, but his throat was full of liquid; not vomit but that vile black tar that spewed from his mouth like thick foam. His hand, his hand was gone, and where it had broken, he could see his own muscle and bone. There was no blood; it had crystalized. As he tried to fathom what was happening to him, he became aware of the black liquid flowing out of his eyes, his ears, his nose. It was everywhere, choking him, and suddenly he was surrounded by pure, inescapable darkness.

Grow.

The voice resonated through his mind in an echoing rumble, louder and louder. There were dissonant whispers too, but he couldn’t make sense of them. Words filled his mind, repeating over and over power, grow, learn, change, punish and at once the whispers merged into a piercing shriek. The sound tore through his body and he was certain his very being had fractured. As his eardrums burst, he clenched his jaw until his teeth cracked, and all he could see was that mask – an unblinking owl – and those figures, ornate and glowing with radiant power. The scenarios from the tablet flashed before him so quickly they were incomprehensible, and then Kainneth’s mind was flooded with scenes he would never understand. Imagery from before humanity, before time itself, before the pantheon, before every existence conceivable. As the shriek continued, its source was unclear; was it the owl or his own screaming?

***

Silence.

A bird call.

Light filtered through the trees.

A shape glided through the canopy above, silent and graceful. An owl, searching for a place to roost to wait out the daylight hours.

As dawn broke, Kainneth sat up, and noticed the weight of the sword in his right hand. It was heavy, but balanced. The gem in the hilt was no longer turquoise, but glowed golden instead. It was beautiful.

He had changed.

Something other than blood was pulsing through his veins and he felt it dance through his body like static. He stared at his forearm and for a moment saw his veins become illuminated, like they were filled with liquid gold.

The sword gleamed and he felt it speak to him with an insatiable fervour.

Grow. Learn. Punish.

As he got to his feet, a smile crept to his lips. He had escaped the pit, and he was ready to prove to his family just how worthy he was.

He was transformed.

He was Aurelian.