Fleeing and Falling
There once was a witch who lived in the woods. She was a mighty witch indeed, bringing a storm to her home during a drought, making the little creek overspill its bounds. She steered all the animals to shelter before she began the storm, carefully organizing every one. After that, her home was safe from privation, and she restored the animals to exactly the same states they were the day before. But that was before.
Now, she was running, fleeing. There was something hunting her, fires burning bright in the pitch dark forest. She had to arrive at the safety of her hut before the sun set. She scrambled through the brush, all but blind but for the minute glimmer of radiance through the foliage. She was getting away, growing the distance between her and the thing in pursuit. She forcibly arrested the thought of what it was, as it might hear her. She restrained her power, desperately fighting reflexes to learn where everything around her is, to fly, to flee faster than feet allow.
She desperately scrabbled down a gully, somehow not slipping as she sprints up the other side. She knew now, where she was, and how far she had left to run. She was a mile from her house, a scant ten minutes in an open field. She could not afford caution as time slipped away from her hourglass, the reaper behind her honing its blade. She ran, running as though there were no obstacles, no low-hanging branches to stop her or roots on which to trip.
She stumbled.
She breathed heavily, panicked, finally giving in and pouring energy into her broom. Her last mistake, it seemed. The light behind her narrowed and beamed forth, casting illumination like a child with a magnifying glass into her broom. The broom shattered with a crack and flash of brilliance, illuminating the dark forest with a cold, sunlit flare.
Her pursuer now knew where she ran, could follow wherever she might hide. The beam of angry light slewed through that darkened wood, bringing dawn to such a primeval place as had not seen since before the trees had grown. That focal point of that terrible light was growing behind her, consuming her forest, her home. She must flee, or it will consume her in turn. The light behind was the light of a god. An angry one, whose wrath was well known by all those that haunted this forest. By all one of its residents, now that all her friends had been consumed.
She knew, now, seeing that light, that she could not escape this as herself. That light will burn from her all that she is, leaving her but a husk of herself. It is inescapable. It is inevitable. The outcome of this pursuit was set before it ever began. She had known that if the gaze of that light was turned upon her that she would be destroyed. But here, at the end, she found that she must have more time. She panicked, when she hoped for acceptance.
She found a new burst of speed, of energy, the destruction of her tool of escape naught but a spur at her back. She was running, and she did not need the light that was cast behind her, nor the faint and brightening glimmers before her. She knew her woods and did not need light to know when to step, now that she could use her gifts in full, could use her magic without risk of drawing the beast. After all, it’s already here. Already following her with its focus, its beam of light. So as she ran, she knew where the old rattlesnake basked in what it thought was the golden-hour radiance of sunset, where the grouchy bear made its lair, where the mountain lions prowled and where the mice scurried. This familiarity did her no good, as what was coming did not need to find its way like a human might. Her path was its path. Her trail, its beachhead in the wood.
She panted and slowed, unable to keep running. Gamely, while catching her breath, she walked onwards, ever onwards. She would make it to her home before she was consumed. She set herself to that task, at least. She could feel the soul of the forest screaming behind her, hear the terrified rattle of the snake, the whimper of the mountain lion, and the resigned sigh of the bear. She stumbles, ankle giving out. She cannot move past this point. Her race is finished. The chase, concluded. The fight, lost.
The light behind her glowed brighter, brighter, and bigger, and bigger, and brighter still, and it spoke in a voice that was as all consuming as its light. “Mooch waepyng and waylyng and gnaeshyng o’ taeth acoompanyed ye eskaype, Waetch.”
She cries out, putting her hands over her ears as they start to bleed, as a strange black fluid begins to leak from her eyes and ears and nose. In desperation and rage she channeled what remained of her power into her voice, bellowing, screaming, pleading, “WHY?! All of this?! Wh–” But she cannot finish. She collapses onto the ground, searing, burning, brilliant radiance eating into her. She hears it speak one last time as she is wracked with agony in the hands of an angry god.
The light spoke, as she had bound it to, as it must, now, voice shattering the witch’s ears. “Wae? Beecaus Aye caen. Ayt is mae ryte te cole the waek, te byrn from Alessia awl uwnwyllyng to Aecksept chaenge.” And as it spoke, it grew brighter and brighter, all consuming, more and more radiance concentrated in the witch’s eyes as she let out a final, hoarse scream and was transformed. Her eyes went dark, ears became unhearing, nose now closed, leaving only her mouth to proclaim the horrible truth of that terrible light. The truth of that angry god.