Callisto

The Harrowing

Instantly she felt herself a little girl again – a mewling babe crying out for a mother that would never come for her, being watched by the Elders who scoffed at her sorry state.

"Weak," Elder Ragged-Brow had said.

She watched the Stalker's great tongue wrap itself around her waist. She felt the oxygen leave her lungs as it squeezed her ribcage and dragged her forwards, bound for its gaping maw.

As she struggled, she saw Ragged-Brow's face in its mouth.

"A child," he spat. "A child with no respect for our ways. A child who believes her own will is enough. Mark me, Hanakh, the Harrowing will unmake her."

She pictured his face as her dagger flew from her side, and she sliced clean through the tongue of the Stalker that held her.

The wounded creature backed off with another feral scream, and she threw herself forward, tearing her blade through its right eye, drawing a deep gash of green across its face.

She backed off and fell to the ground as it struck back at her, barely avoiding its slashing limbs. With a wail of both fury and triumph, it pinned her with one grasping leg to the ground of the canyon floor and bellowed in her face, throwing the fresh blood from its gaping wound across her eyes. Her breath came in stuttered rasps, taking in the dead air as she watched the deliverer of her death open its broken maw one more time to consume its prey.

Then its remaining eyes went wide, its head twitched, and it rolled over onto its side. Its limbs shot out and began spasming violently before finally it stiffened and let them fall.

She looked at it blankly, struggling to control her breathing and not moving an inch from the canyon floor for five minutes. Slowly she rose and plucked her arrow from the creature's side. She inspected the tip against the sun of high noon, seeing the tell-tale glint of black ichor glimmer on the arrowhead even through the oozing blood of the Stalker.

She smiled to herself.

"It is fruitless, child," Ragged-Brow had said before she had departed the village. "A serpent cannot eat a demon of the Great Canyon."

She bent down and kissed the snake tattoo inked into her palm. Then she cut the soft flesh below the Stalker's neck and took its head as her prize.

"You forgot, Ragged-Brow," she said as she decapitated the beast. "A serpent's poison lingers long after its bite."

...

Her journey home was mercifully uneventful. She'd stuck to the base of the canyon walls, sequestering herself within the shadows of the looming giants and creeping to a low crawl when she spotted Stalker activity above. The head of her prey was her greatest burden – and she'd done her best to season it with the aromatic scents of Vakka-Chun blood and Karleva root she'd packed with her. Their pungent odors had been enough to mask the stench of the creature's death from its companions, but still, she waited in the dark to let any warriors scurry from their nests, prospect their domain, and then return. To most hunters, it would have been seen as overly cautious. But to Rain-Born, the words of Father-Mother reigned supreme in her mind: the patient huntress always gets her prey.

When she began her ascent up the mouth of the Great Canyon, she did so under the cover of darkness. The winds of the night were cold and bit at her flesh as her muscles rippled under the pressure of the climb. There were times when she was sure she'd fall. There were times when the weaknesses of her childish mind were made apparent to her – she thought of the stories shared within the yurts of the Snake House – tales of her Sisters who had undergone their Harrowing and failed at the final hurdle. To ascend the Great Canyon, unaided was the waking dream and thought-devouring nightmare of The Hanakh hunters. But to Rain-Born, it was her destiny. She'd had to swallow her fear, her trepidation, and the prattling of the other Sisters and Elder Ragged-Brow, who led the great warriors of the Tribe. She was no crying babe suckling at the teat of her dying mother, no farmer of the House of the Turtle or spirit speaker of the House of Ash. Their worlds were not hers. They occupied realms both beneath and beyond her ken. Her world was this – the real world. A world of pain and broken souls. But a world where glory was defined and specific.

She gritted her teeth as these thoughts swam through her mind, and she clawed her way up the canyon with her charge, and winds of The Deadlands dashed themselves against her.

This was her world, she thought again, barely clinging to a loose foothold carved into the canyon wall above her. Her dark skin was marked with the Snake. She bore the sign of the huntress. She would be a huntress. No matter what Ragged-Brow said, she would survive. Survive and –

Her hand reached out to grip a loose stone, and it fell away, sending her flying downwards. Without blinking once, she tore the dagger from her belt and jammed it into the sandy tower of the wall till her descent was halted, and her arm trembled under the pressure of holding up her body. She growled like a wolf in the night. She howled out her pain and defiance against the backdrop of the wailing winds.

Then Rain-Born began her ascent anew, never looking down, never once closing her eyes. She crept forward with the slow, mechanical dedication to purpose as the ant that must return food to its lair. And only when she climbed over the lip of the great wall did she let herself fall forwards and hit the sand-caked path to her home. She lay there feeling empty – a vessel devoid of life or the compunction to carry on, watching only the cloudless sky above.

"Even on its back, a snake can still crawl."

The voice that spoke those words came from above, behind her head. Though it took all the remaining energy she had left in her pounding muscles, she flipped herself over and looked upon the face of one who walked with Gods.

In the wrinkled folds of their face, there was wisdom. In the deep, penetrating gaze of their hazel eyes, there was conviction. In the long strands of silver hair that spilled down their back and kissed the desert sands, there was beauty. And in the gilded patterns on their ceremonial dress, displaying the antlers of the Great Spirit and his lesser animal saints, there was knowledge of the world that lay beyond all mortals of this earth.

Father-Mother had come to bear witness to her victory.

"M-my...Elder," Rain-Born whispered.

The living voice of the Gods answered her with a smile.

"Not so formal, please, my little Huntress."