Dipak turned away and walked into the shadows of Enaid. She could feel Gaia’s magic working to change her own flesh and she wasn’t sure she could trust herself to be around anyone right now. Jacob had such blind faith that she wouldn’t hurt him, but he was naive and foolish the way children always are. If she lost control of the darkness growing inside her, no one would be safe, not even Jacob.
She pressed her hands between the folds of shadow and opened a door to a place few could follow her. She stepped into Erebos, the realm of darkness. This place felt more like home than Aer did right now. She did not belong in the realm of the mortals. She had never been one of them. Yes, she died like them, but she never returned to Gaia. Only back to the darkness of nothingness before being reborn.
Stripping away her clothing, she shoved it into the Aether. She had always stored her things in the Aether. There was a time that had made sense to her. Now nothing did. There was only this fragmenting despair. She ran her fingers over the cracking flesh on her chest. Black oozed from these wounds. How much longer could her flesh contain the Darkness? If she broke before she could bind the next Mother Tree would there be any hope for growing the Seed? She didn’t know.
All the world was insanity. She could feel it crumbling. A chunk of her flesh fell from her hip and a tendril of the Darkness reached out. Absent-mindedly, she petted it. She shuffled through the shadows, ignoring the creatures that crouched and stared at her. They could cause her no harm now. She was filled with more darkness then they were.
Dipak lay naked, huddled against a dark tree in Erebos. Most of the skin had sloughed off her back, leaving blackness coiling out in fine tendrils. The underlying tissue was black with an oily film. Everything felt disjointed and unreal. Why was she taking on a new form? Why hadn’t she been born into the form that Gaia needed her? Nothing made sense any more.
Raking her long claws against the bark of the tree, she howled out her pain. Spasms racked her body and she could not hold herself still. Things crawled beneath the surface, digging their way out. She could feel their tiny legs at work against her flesh, undoing her. A chunk of skin peeled back from her shoulder, revealing the writhing mass beneath. Black muscle with black busy worms; crawling, digging and chewing. Slime oozed out of the fresh wound.
She pulled the lump of skin off and tossed it away.
“There you are,” Jacob said as he knelt down next to her.
All her eyes rolled so they could stare at him.
“Leave me alone,” Dipak said.
Jacob picked up a small piece of flesh from the ground and looked at it a moment before saying “You’re falling apart.”
“I am the physical manifestation of decay and destruction,” Dipak said. “Did you expect that to be pretty?”
Jacob cocked his head to one side.
“Is this what you are going to bring to the world?” Jacob asked.
“If the Mother Tree cannot be planted, the world will be renewed,” Dipak said.
“Come back to Enaid,” Jacob said.
“I cannot be trusted,” Dipak said.
“We need you. You’re the back up plan if the next Mother Tree isn’t planted,” he said.
“We cannot count on plan B,” Dipak whispered, closing her eyes.
“Horse, what is happening to you?” Jacob asked.
Dipak sighed.
She gently ran her claws along his face, leaving a trail of black ichor behind.
“I am losing myself in the Weave,” Dipak said.
Jacob laid down next to Dipak and wrapped himself around her. It was like holding onto a bag of miscellaneous maggot infested meat bits wrapped loosely into a leather pouch. Everywhere he touched her either slimed him with black goo or shed off onto him. There was nothing solid within her.
“Is that why you are changing?” Jacob asked.
“I don’t know,” Dipak confessed.
Jacob watched the worms working within the muscle of Dipak’s shoulder and felt his stomach churn.
“I have never changed forms while alive before. I have always come into being as Gaia needs me to be,” Dipak said.
“Do you recall your other lives then?” Jacob asked.
“No,” Dipak said. “There are just things that I know about myself. Rules that I wake knowing.”
She shrugged weakly. There was no good way to explain the way that she knew things about herself without remembering her previous lives. That was just the way that it worked. It was some part of the magic. Perhaps it was Rachna that told her these things while she was being reborn.
“So you’re sure this has never happened to you before?” Jacob asked.
Dipak nodded and opened her mouth to answer, but then paused. Was she sure? How could she be? There was no doubt that her knowledge of herself and her past lives was incomplete.
“It is against my understanding of the rules,” Dipak said.
Jacob nodded.
“What are you thinking?” Dipak asked.
“I was just wondering if Gaia might have protected you from this,” Jacob said.
“What do you mean?” Dipak asked.
“If this was something you had to go through every time you were the Aspect of Wrath, it would be kind for Gaia to not give you all the details of it,” Jacob said.
Dipak considered. The idea that Gaia had not told him everything about himself within the rule set was unsettling, but it would not be the first time that the Gods had not given him full disclosure. Dipak looked over her shoulder at Raven when she thought this.
“Do you remember becoming the Life Spark?” Jacob asked.
“Yes,” Dipak said. This was one memory that he had kept every lifetime.
Jacob silently watched Dipak who was now gazing off into the distance as if seeing another place.
“It was a long time ago,” Dipak stated. "A different me."
She laid her hand over Jacob’s. She could not keep herself from trembling.
Dipak felt the memory pulling at her mind. The threads of the Weave spun about her and tugged at her. She closed her eyes and did not resist. The fall back through time felt like it lasted both forever and only a moment. Thousands of faces flashed past her as she moved back. All the people she had once known or who she had once been. All long lost. Dipak did her best to tell Jacob what she was experiencing as she moved through this strange flow of time.
The Aether was young in a time before such things were understood. The realm of light had birthed the first Life Tree and from it all the fruits of existance. We were immortal. Erbos came next, for every light casts a shadow. Where these two realms touched Aer was born. Within that realm, mortals. The concept of death and decay was new to me then. I watched so many humans die without ever understanding what death really meant. How could an immortal know?
But the tendrils of Ebros reached the Life Tree and a once immortal being became corrupted with death. I was so afraid, watching those leaves of light fade and fall. The tree gave us one last give, with the final magic it held. A seed. So that we could plant another Life Tree. But this new tree would be a mortal tree. And if I were to find it, I would have to become mortal.
Twelve of us stepped out of Aether and into Aer, accepting the gift of death. We were bound to the seed. Required to serve it and fight for it for all time. Each life, reborn knowing our purpose. The Life Spark that ensures the tree is planted.
The threads spun and pulled again. Dipak let them move him through the weave. She was too tired to resist them now. There no longer seemed to be any barriers to hold back the flood of time. She watched as Selanar died, old and surrounded by their loving family. A thousand such deaths paraded themselves out for Dipak’s view. Some were peaceful deaths and some violent. There were times the life had been long and other times that it had been cut too short. Dipak had even held this soul as a dying infant.
She screamed and clutched at her head, pulling away globs of hair and flesh.
“Dipak,” Jacob whispered, holding her as tightly as he dared.
