Shadow In The Woods

The Girl- Prologue

The girl felt a cold shiver run through her body, it seemed to take it's time winding up each individual vertebral body like an icy serpentine creature. She shuddered in fear.

Her body violently lurched forward pulling on the leather restraints that kept her strapped to the surgical table under the bright, florescent lighting. She was airborne for a brief second before she fell back onto the table a tired, broken heap. The icyness around her spine was replaced by a jolt of white hot pain. She moaned, her vision turning hazy for the briefest of moments. She loved when her vision would become foggy due to pain or anxiety. It would allow her to momentarily believe that her whole existence was nothing more than a dream, a painful illusion from which she would soon awake. She floated in a cloud of hopeful oblivion and denail.

She wanted to hiss in annoyance when the surrounding sights regained their sharp, clinical edges due to her vision returning to normal. Her own personal nightmare was indeed a reality. 

She stared at the mirror fixed to the ceiling not recognizing the girl that stared back at her. Whoever had decided to fix the object to the ceiling, had one sick mind. It was one thing to slowly feel your body weaken and waste away. It was quite another thing to see your soul turn to dust before your very eyes.

She was thin, possibly malnourished, her hands raw and bleeding from where her grisha power had been forced out of her by means of various chemicals and tools. Her eyes were what startled her the most, her brown eyes had always shone with such vitality and hope, they now looked so empty and lifeless.

"No..." she mumbled desperately trying to edge away from the the figure bringing the syringe toward her upper arm. She knew any begging would be pointless, but somehow she couldn't help but hope that this time might be different. That she would penetrate their humanity, that they would hear her and listen, that they would see her as more than sub-human. She let out a startled gasp as the needle entered her arm.

She felt a thick liquid enter her veins...

The liquid slowly moved throughout her body seeking to claim her... She could feel it enter her every cell, every muscle fibre. And then the world seemed to explode in waves of green. She could smell the soil surrounding the building she was being held captive in, hear the bristle of every leaf in the wind and feel the pulse of the earth itself. 

The next moment she was convulsing. As her body violently tossed her about, she was distantly aware of the panicked babbling of the Shu scientists.

Hands grabbed at her trying to keep her from knocking her head against the table.

As suddenly as the convulsing had started, it ended. The girl lay dead still, completely serene.

The scientists nervously crowded around her, too scared to touch her.

Finally an older man stepped towards her from the midst of the fearful crowd. His greying hair was almost as white as the lab coat that loosely clung to his old frame. He roughly grabbed her hands and turned them over in his own. "Summon." he said looking down at her unconscious form expectantly.

Nothing happened.

The other scientists started to nervously whisper among one another. "What if she had an air embolism?" one more to the front of the group said. "She could be dead." another scientist agreed.

"Nonsense." The older scientist growled. He grabbed handfuls of her hair and slightly lifted her off the table. "I said Summon, you insolent girl." Another figure shoved a sad looking potted ivy plant under her nose.

A smile broke out over her serene face and the room fell silent.

"Oh, but I am." she said calmly.

Her eyes suddenly flew open and the older scientist stumbled back startled, dropping her head in the process. The other figure gave a shocked gasp and dropped the sad looking plant, the pot shattering on the floor.

In the mirror above her she saw what had startled them. Her eyes shone the brightest, most impossible green she had ever seen. They were the light, lively green of the new leaves that sprouted on trees in spring with waves of deep, rich green appearing and disappearing in waves. Her eyes seemed almost luminescent. Little flecks of pure sunlight dancing between waves of chlorophyll.

"What do you mean ?" The older scientist asked, having recovered from his shock.

"Maybe we've finally broken her and she's gone mad" the same scientist from earlier chimed in.

With a slight move of her index finger her leather restraints snapped like tiny twigs and she sat upright.

The scientists started edging away from her. She felt a cruel smile contort her features. She was no longer the pathetic, sniffling heap, begging for someone to make the pain stop. She knew pure, primal fear and she saw it in their eyes.

The next moment the ground erupted as large tree roots pushed up from the ground, throwing tables and counters over and sending the nervous cluster of scientists scattering. A large root made a wall break into two, revealing a cold, winter evening. The night air howled through the opening.

The girl slowly got up from the table and walked toward the older scientist who was by now hysterical. "This... how did you ? This wasn't supposed to happen ! We needed you because of the Unsea, the leech. But this !? What have I done ?!"

Green waves rolled off the girl as ivy started to crawl up her legs and wrap around her thighs. She closed her eyes and laughed, a pure sound that seemed to dance through the air and seemed completely out of place in the chaos.

"Oh dear Lord, we've done it, we've broken her." the annoying scientist spoke up from where he was hiding behind an overturned table.

The girl stopped laughing and started heading towards the growing crack in the wall. At the last second she looked over her shoulder and spoke to the petrified group of scientists anger and determination dripping in her voice.

"I am not yours to break."