content notes: violence

The surprising thing was that everything ached. Iberto had expected death to be stillness. But every muscle in his body cried its mistreatment, his hands and feet worst of all.

At first, he could see nothing, but then a pair of eyes gleamed at him and he remembered.

Iberto-that-was would have been terrified. He knew that, remembered it. Laughed joyously as he gave chase.

She did not guide him now, as she had the night before. His steps were not sure, his eyes did not know where to look. But she had Called him, called to that part of him which was like her. He could never again be fully separated from her.

He chased her, following the sense of her in his soul as much as his eyes and ears and nose. Out into the hallway, where he jogged after a tail just disappearing around the corner. Only to be knocked over and jumped across when he turned incautiously.

With a grin, he rolled over and launched himself at her. Using the same skills he learned running and dodging to move quickly enough to grab the end of her tail.

Teeth snapped a hair’s breadth from his face and he let go, stumbling backward and falling. Her tail flicked in his face and he felt her pleasure at the hunt, at his quickness. Then she was loping away, turning a corner — he followed more carefully this time, but he saw her nowhere.

A vicious grin split his face at what he did see — a group of monks. A few stared at him with sneering rage. The rest stared in terror at a door opposite Iberto.

He made sure to trip a few of the monks on his way through. As he did, knowledge bloomed in his mind. Prey. The monks were his prey. His to hunt, his to feast on. His to lay at his goddess’ feet.

But not today. The monks were Great Prey. Prey not of body but mind and spirit. Bringing them down would be the work of years, to strip their power, their wealth, their position, without ever touching their bodies.

With a lifetime’s skill in hiding his thoughts, Iberto gave no sign of this. He laughed at the monks he tripped and ran on, focused on the hunt-of-the-moment.

The Great Goddess led his chase through the temple complex. Never so far ahead he could not find her, never so slow to let him catch her. This was play. This was training. This was melding his soul into hers, sinking the claws of the Call even deeper into his being. He could almost feel her paws upon the stone, knew that if he closed his own eyes he might see through hers.

In the beginning, his bare feet slapped loud against the stone floors and skidded badly on rushes and carpets. But as they played, she slipped in and out of his mind, showing him how to angle his feet, bend his knees, to move silently and surely.

He stumbled through private rooms and temple services, kitchens, and meditation groves. The humans scattered before his goddess and he — scared, confused, a very few (other priests secure in their own Calling and the knowledge it gave them) amused. The goddes — many goddes, some still as statues others moving with their priests, or in other forms — laughed and cheered. A few were disapproving — Ertu of the Fields scowled when Ibero skidded in a turn and landed at the god’s feet. But Iberto did not have time or mind to concern himself with any godde but his own.

The hunt might have lasted hours or even days. But he was getting lightheaded, hunger and thirst and exertion after pain and fear and lack of sleep taking their toll.

He refused to give up. The hunt was in his blood, the joy on his tongue, the Call in his mind. But he was weakening.

She brought him down, as he had known she must. Dropping silently down from a beam to knock him off his feet and drape herself over him. “Goddess,” he murmured, relaxing in surrender.

“Called.”

She lay there a time, purring and washing his face like, well, a cat. Then she flickered again and stood over him in her statue form, reaching to take his hand and pull him to his feet.

“You have done well, Iberto, child of Marg and Yulen. Now, what have you learned.”

She guided his steps again, back through the temple to the room he had first found her in. As they walked, he thought. The goddess was not asking about the skills he had honed or their play hunt. No, there was more here.

He had learned a great deal of the temple complex and could find his way around most of it. She had given him names for most of the people he had seen… and he realized that though he had been focused so on her, on the hunt, his memory of those things and people they had passed was impossibly clear. Not just clear, but full of information, and knowledge.

The goddess would never hunt for him, she had her own hunts. But she would give him all the tools he needed. She thought he would need to know the people and goddes of the temple, know them very well.

There was something strange about those people… “There are not enough priests,” he thought.

“Yes.”

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