We now break up the relentless grind and move to a relevant time in the future…

I’ll kill you! I will!

“No, you won’t. I can’t kill our damned Hagmother if you do that. Put the blame where it goes. As soon as she picked me, you were going to die. I’m Forsaken, you were never going to live.”

Nooooo…!

“Yes. I’ve never lied to you, quit lying to yourself.” I reached out, tore away the darkness that was condensing around me. The dreamscape was thick here, but burning as Tremble bit into it, sending it into white flames that were weaving back into me.

“It’s time. I’m coming out. You can feel the Curse trying to bend you, I’m not going to let that happen.” More darkness flamed around me. “Its job is to corrupt the innocent, and it’s working on you. Are you going to let it win? Are you going to let the darkness take you before you go? Who are you going to spite, the Curse and the Hag that doomed you, or the rock that they couldn’t affect?”

You… you… you…

“Yeah, me, me, me. You know I’ll do what I promised. Hagmom is going to die. I’m not going to harm our family, unlike the Curse. You know that, too. You’re dying because you were always going to die. Now, you going to fight to the end, or despair? Make up your mind!”

The end of the tunnel was getting nearer, the walls thick with the Sinful power of the Hag Curse were burning and thinning, sloughing away as my Null just pushed them off. Our real-world physical body had hit a Null of 21. Slowly and steadily, implacably and inevitably, it was pushing off the Curse. There was no stopping it, and no way to stop it, short of our death.

She screamed, and she turned and fought. Fought with herself, because she was part of the Curse. The Curse was urging her to act in spite and scorn, and so she did… throwing herself at the Curse itself, making the tunnel around me flare with veins of light as she held onto what goodness she had, right up until the end.

I burned the Curse away, cutting faster, harder, rending and ripping at its substance as it writhed and convulsed around me. It stank of greed and jealousy and hate and fear and disgust, of pettiness and malevolence, of hunger and callous disdain.

Mithar, I hated it.

Ahead of me was a point of light, light that was not something a dreamscape could ever totally emulate. I raged for it, my soul and sword burning brighter and brighter, vivus thickening around me as I clawed through the cloying mass of the dying Curse that was sucking at me, trying to stop me, trying to –

--------------

-get me to throw myself off a jagged rock cliff, a thousand feet to the rocks below.

I literally kicked back with both feet to stop myself from taking that step and lunge, and slammed down on my chest onto the cold stone beneath me.

My head was over the edge of the cliff, looking down at death below. By the look of the wind currents, I would have been smashed into the jagged rocks multiple times, and never made it to the bottom alive.

I inhaled a breath. This was no sensation based on memory and interpretation. This was out of my control, with a bite and harshness to it no dream had. It was cold, wild, and free, clear and full of elemental life and vigor, instead of the filtered refinement of a dream.

I was totally naked, high up a mountainside, in the biting cold.

I took my hands, drove them into the center of my palms. Blood spilled, razor-sharp ki penetrated the boundary between life and soul, and golden-white light flared in the center of my palms with white-hot agony as I opened the chakra points there.

Essence flowed out of the injuries. The physical wounds closed almost instantly, but the holes to my soul stayed open, and Essence poured out of it and through me, mixing with my ki as it infused every cell in my body.

I watched and felt this process intimately. My soul wasn’t just empowering my body now, it was infusing it. Full-body awareness was one of the best and most essential parts of developing a Vajra.

My insides were in incredibly good health, albeit affected by recent matters. I was covered with scars and cuts, gained through both combat and simple scrapes and bruises. I was skinny, and underweight even for being skinny, and yes, I’d been left with double canines and black nails, the Signs of an Annis Hagchild.

My internal organs were simpler than normal humans. I was missing an appendix and a couple glands that were not essential to the human genome. My intestinal tract was half the size of a normal human’s, my bones were laced with traces of metals from the Curse eating them, harder and stronger than human. My tendons and sinews were twice as thick, giving me considerably more strength than they looked like they could.

No mammary glands. Milking was not something I could do. My chest would remain flatter than most men’s, because I wouldn’t ever develop pecs like they could.

Eh, I could live with it. Androgynous was perfectly fine by me. If breast cancer survivors could do it, so could I.

I had been somewhere between ten and twelve years old, if the puberty onset of the Hag Curse was right. I had no idea what the maturity rate of a Hagborn infused with crazy amounts of ki and Soul was while its Curse struggled madly to suppress its own soul.

I looked like a teenager, however, and I'd be maturing several times faster than a normal human. After all, true Hags instantly became full-grown when they went through this shit.

Probably a first time for the Curse of the Hag. Fuck that Curse.

I took another deep breath, relishing the biting cold, the pure hard reality of it. It thrummed with my Vajra, in synch and in tune, the soul of the world touching the soul of me.

But I was a kid, not even teenaged. I was alone, without supplies, and while I think I retained most of the mental Feats and Techniques I’d clawed back to myself, none of the physical ones. The Masteries and body memory, would have to start over from scratch.

Still, I had brought my Vajra with me. I ticked a lever on the advance schema for Vajra Elemental Resistance, picked Cold, and the chill abruptly vanished as the air about me stayed at a perfectly comfortable body temperature, and my skin refused to release extra body heat and kept my cells nice and comfy, thank you, no heat loss transfer today. Law of thermodynamics, go take a rest to the side, you don’t rate like King Gravity does.

The view from up here on the mountain was pretty impressive; a sprawling valley below, with the tree line about a thousand feet down by the rocks I was almost delivered to. Looking back, I could see the tracks she’d made coming up here in the snow, wavering back and forth, as if not in control, different mindsets of the same Curse at war, and a soul erupting from below that would not be denied.

I was so going to kill Hagmom.

Of course, there were also the wolves there slinking along my trail, looking like they wanted something to munch on.

I was pretty sure she’d still been a Human/1, awaiting the transformation to Hagdom. I stared at the pony-sized beasts as they lifted their heads and looked at me, then quickened their pace.

Flick, Melee/1. Allocate to IUS, Weapon Spec, Great Fortitude. First Level Feat, Toughness, which now returned +10 due to my MAB. I had to pay for stuff I’d already gained, it seemed, but that was fine. I had a lot of time to grow up again, it seemed. Expertise, Int to AC.

Melee/2. Depths of Resolve, Deadly Precision. A big difference this time with +10 MAB powering it. +4 vs Grabs and Trips for Favored Class Benefits, suck this, wolves.

Versatile Inspiration for Weapon Finesse, Combat Reflexes, Riposte, Thorn Stance, Two-Weapon Fighting.

My Foe Hunter was an Achievement Feat, and I had definitely killed more than fifty canines by now, even if it had been in dreams.

Damn mutts.

My stomach growled. Yeah, yeah, lunch is coming, don’t get into a knot for me now that I just got here.

+14 to hit, 1-8 +12 damage, three attacks + attacks of opportunity when they missed me or tried to move around me.

There were a dozen of them. 3 Hit Dice, long-furred beasts with thick necks and lots of muscle.

+10 MAB makes a lot of difference. Muscles tore, bones crunched, hides ripped, wolves yelped in pain, and of the pack of a dozen, four ran for their lives down the stony slopes after less than thirty seconds of screaming combat.

I butchered a black one with a nice coat first, ripping it open. My first meal in my new life was steaming wolf meat, raw and bloody, minced by my fingers and swallowed with abandon.

I could tan the hide using its own brain juices to accelerate and modify the process. Sinews and guts made for decent thread and stitch work. Five Ranks of Butchery and Leatherworking accelerated my progress as the razors that were my fingers worked with the meticulous accuracy of calipers on my task.

Ribs were cracked and then arranged in a carry pack for myself. Nothing in it for now, except a cleaned and sealed stomach for holding water.

Soon enough I’d be Sustained again, and this wouldn’t be an issue. For now, I could just enjoy the sensation of being able to truly eat and drink...

---

I slung the new pack over my shoulder as I looked down the mountain at the forest below.

Survival five Ranks, Perception five Ranks, I’d have no trouble surviving down there, and at midnight, I’d go through my first actual Renewal and take my Monk Level, grab Wave-Skating Lightfoot, and I’d be as fast as a deer.

Of course, the Curse had come up from down there, and who knew what havoc it had wreaked as it ran about, blindly insane and stuck in a half-morphed, underage body.

Too, friends or enemies might be tracking her, and I had no desire at this time to go back to her family and explain just what had gone on. After going through the Hag Morph, I wouldn’t even look like her... or rather, I’d look like she should have looked, as she had looked like I was supposed to look.

On the other hand, that was probably the fastest way for me to track down the Hag that was responsible for all of this, if I cared to do so. Options...

I looked down at what I could see of the scarring that covered my left collarbone, side of my neck, and left side of my face. They weren’t actually scars, because that unsettling feeling I had from looking at them was very real. They were the last gasps of the Curse of the Hag, sticking to me and reacting to the ambient Sin in the air.

If I got my Null to 40, I could force them away and extinguish them as I wished. Until then, they’d dog me, and react to the amount of Sin around me. How wonderful.

Gives a girl something to look forward in her life.

I hefted my crude pack and started back the way the Curse had come. I didn’t really need to retrace my steps per se, but we’d see what would happen.

My gut was actually a little swollen with the amount of wolf meat I’d eaten, but there were going to be a lot of internal changes, so it wouldn’t go to waste. It was raging in there as the digestion went into ki-boosted overdrive to get me back on the proper maturation paradigm, and put on some weight. I really was skin and bones...

How many damn mutts had I killed in that place? A little revenge was a Good Thing.