The Pact

While she had landed her own retaliation- the bone of his forearm tightly ground between her teeth, she had not been prepared for his ability to shake her entire body with his hold. With each back-and-forth movement- she felt the flesh of her scruff further tearing- the puncture deepening as bone scraped bone. Her own hold loosened as he ripped her away. Aurelia cried out in pain, but mostly rage, as it felt like her brain was rattling around in her own head. And as she made a desperate attempt to curl around, and aim a blow at his own neck with her splayed jaws, he suddenly released her- and she immediately felt nothing at all.

The girl hadn’t realized she had been falling until she hit the snow in a heap of herself- rolling a time or two with the momentum of his throw. She was disoriented, but somewhere in the back of her mind knew that this was her opportunity to run- but that would mean abandoning the altar. In a slow, uncoordinated effort to gather herself up, the girl propped herself up on an elbow to look for the centerfire- and what he was doing to it. She watched as he raised a single paw over the blaze- the one that she had damaged herself. “NOOO!” She screamed as she attempted to launch herself forward- though she simply couldn’t get her own tangled limbs underneath her. All she could do was watch helplessly as he raked his wounded appendage through the alter contaminating her sacrifice with one of his own- intentional or not.

In that moment, she grieved as the pure terror and anguish overwhelmed her. She no longer had words- the cry that escaped her lips was unintelligible paired with the flow of tears streaming down her face. As Sephiran scattered the altar, a sudden gust of wind raged around them- kicking up snow flurries across the clearing. The remaining four perimeter fires were extinguished at once, leaving them bathed in the light of the Cold Moon with only the warm glow of recently burnt embers to indicate there had been a fire there at all. What had he done!? “What have you done!?!” Aurelia attempted to launch herself up off the ground to make another attempt at fighting him. She wanted to keep fighting him. Though her legs buckled underneath her once more. But instead of attempting to force herself upright again, she lay there. Curling into herself as her mind raced to process what had just happened. Soulbound. How could she have possibly been soulbound?


"Aurelia Veratti"