Blind Trust

The Realization weighed heavy as lead on her. Impossible that she could prevail against the guard all alone, but I didn’t had the power to stand aside her. All I could do was watching how this bear-like creature carved deep gashes in the stone stairs with its laterally protruding horns, while the young elf clung to the third horn coming out of the Adumbratos‘ forehead, her lips compressed in a tense frown. Eyes white as milk stared blindly through her, but the other senses of the guard were in much better shape. Grumbling, he threw his head from one side to the other.
With a shriek Attinka lost her grip, fell in between the horns and clattered down the stairs. Immediately she got back on her feet. Her glinting green eyes looked defiantly up at the growling creature. Blood was dripping from a wound on her temple to the dust on the ground. Quick as a thought I was by her side.

“So, is it true?” Attinka asked under her panting and looked me over. It was difficult for the elf to distinguish a face in my mist-like body from which she could gather any hints about my thoughts. The wind, blowing through the tree tops of the Holy Forest did not quite make it easier for me to maintain my human shape.  

“Trust me” I Implored, noticing how the doubt was patent on her. Yet the abstruse crossbreed of bear and bull hesitated and stamped up and down in front of the temple entrance.

Attinka swallowed thickly and sought for her knife. The blade gleamed like a light of its own. She looked at the steel, wrapped her slender fingers over the grip cluttered with characters, then nodded vigorously. I sighed in relief.

“Because it’s you” She said and tried to cover up her insecurity with a lopsided grin.
She pushed the knife back in it’s sheath and closed her eyes.
Blindly, she allowed her soft feet to find the path upwards. Although the guard was roaring and spittle drops splattered on her face, she walked up the stairs determinedly.

Step for step, she paced up.

I looked out for her way and her nervously twitching eyelids. She couldn’t bring everything to waste by failing in the very last moment and opening her eyes.  But we were lucky. Attinka had confidence. When she went through the treshold and entered the inner temple, she turned around and looked outside.

The guard was gone. Relieved, she exhaled. The tension abandoned her and she remembered why we had come to this cursed place. Fascinated, she passed along the walls and gazed at the stony faces, patterns and reliefs. Beaming with joy, she turned to me while touching the stone scales of a lizard creature with her fingertips, whose face was similar to that of a cat. One could almost recognize the fine whiskers. Attinka hurried to one of the pillars and moved around them.

“It’s so beautiful!” She whispered and winced guiltily. “That wasn’t very sensitive, was it?”
She found it obviously difficult to turn away from all the magical animals in the stone and to focus on her task.
Could I blame her? I smiled gently.

She was like a child, so vivid and interested in everything she didn’t know. I would gladly have given her more time to look around and explore all these animals, whose existence she craved for but instead I had to hurry her kindly along. Almost immediately the expression of serious conscientiousness returned to her face and her gaze wandered over the ground, which was crossed by fine grooves forming an intricate pattern, still dark-stained, where the blood had soaked into the stone. She followed the lines, as if she was reading the way to the long sought aim out of it. In front of a large slab, the searching came to an end.  
Amazed she looked at stone being, whose body had been wrapped around the sacrificial stone and was firmly connected with it for eternity.

“It’s a worm, bound to the earth he has risen from. A shadow creature, crawling through the sludge on the ground, never able to fly. This is your last chance, Attinka. You can still return!”

Spotless white teeth flashed between her lips, forming a big grin.
“Look again! These claws, sharp and deadly as those of a tiger, the body of a snake, the horns of a proud deer and the scales of a fish, all combined in a huge creature!” Attinka said softly. “There are no wings, but once I taste your blood, I’ll ask the birds how it feels like to fly” She promised and fondled the stone nostrils of the lindworm as if it was a well-known friend.
My heart did what my body was prohibited to do: It smiled.

„Let us begin.“

Attinka pulled her blade out, bowed before the great stone dragon’s head and placed the tip between the two horns in the middle of it’s forehead. She carefully drilled a hole in the stone, as if it was made of soft butter. The inner light of the blade flickered slightly but it withstood the dark magic of the temple. Quietly the elf began to sing her magical words, collecting the magic she needed with her voice and released it with one last loud and clearly spoken word:

Rastejarco. My name.

A slight tremor rocked the temple and for a moment the darkness of the shadows seemed to grow deeper and blacker, as if to get ready to cast the invaders out of the temple, before the accident happened. Suddenly something pulled on me and tore my ghostly body away. The next second I felt a slight vibration. Something buzzed in my ears and heat shot through my still numb body.

I opened my eyes and for the very first time I actually stared in Attinka’s. The young elf succeeded. She had turned dead stone back into a living being. The feeling returned with my mind into the long abandoned body. I hissed in joyful excitement. My throat was dry as if I had tried to quench my thirst with sand.
But I felt again! I was again! I was alive. Thanks to the young elf I’d got my life back.

Fascinated, she watched my transformation, how a stone element turned to a mighty lindworm.
For a split second we exchanged grateful and loving glances. Then I shook myself to finally regain my freedom. The last part of my body, my dragon tail, which neded in a jagged triangle, detached from the wall of the sacrifice stone. Slowly the grey pallor which had settled on my skin like dust disappeared.
In the incident light of the moon my scales gleamed in the colours of the rainbow.

At the same moment I got my freedom back, Attinka let out a caw.

She stared wide-eyed at her outstretched arms. The soft elven skin puckered and turned ashen pale.

„You’ve betrayed me!“ She yelled at me. There was fear and despair in her voice. I was sorry for the young elf, but it had been her choice.

She had been longing so much for the gift of talking to animals which she could have obtained through my blood.  Had there been even given the slightest chance - I would have granted her that. Now her trembling, warm body transformed to rigid, cold stone, while I regained my former shape and power.

One last time I looked back.

Attinka’s strengh lay in her unbending pride. She was still standing upright. Maybe her legs were already completely solidified, but I knew from personal experience how painful the body contracted, such as the intestines writhed and everything in one fought against turning to stone.
Attinka wore her fate with bitter dignity. She didn’t go down on her knees.
I couldn’t help but admire her for her life force.

A fresh wind blew through the temple and played with the gaps and cracks in the walls, as if they were the pipes of an organ. The stony hideous faces of monsters long forgotten groaned and crunched, as if they wanted to give the elf bitter-caustic solace, saying: That happened to us all.