Being in the deep forest of the Empire stirred something in Woe, as she strode along, her booted feet treading the snow-caked forest floor. Even here, beneath a voluminous canopy, some snow found its way to the floor, which obscured some of the herbal specimens, many of which had long gone dormant. However there were some winter samples that persisted well into Cylus, even in the dearth of light, in utter darkness. They even thrived. Ice mushrooms, and other such fungal growths loved to grow in the dark, and thrived during these trials, subsisting on the plentiful condensation of the icy surroundings.
It was a few mushrooms that Woe had been sent after, to retrieve in exchange for some research that the good doctor in the Imperial Medical Headquarters held over her head.
Yet the further Woe trod from those civilized and paved pathways, the longer her shadow grew, the more she turned to introspection. The past few cycles had taught her much about the nature of civilized life. It was a life that at one point in her life she thought was all encompassing, never appreciating that there was a wild world of natural laws. A world bereft of authority other than the rule of tooth and claw, and bloodied brambles. The past few cycles had taught her that there was a savagery underpinning the machine of civilization. A thin protective layer that concealed corruption that was every bit as savage as the lawless wilds, but had been left to fester beneath the skin.
She wished to experience the wildness of nature, and thought for once to take the form of the mirror wolf, but no. Even the wolves were too close to the social hierarchy she'd just experienced in Yaralon, where slaves were drained of their emotional tangles and made into willing slaves.
She had something else in mind, as she wandered farther into the woods.
Eventually Woe found a cave, where the cold air didn't touch. There she knelt over the softened earth, and produced the totem items of the Oh'deer stag, and the longknife that had been produced of her experience against the ascended mantis. She knew it was possible to alter and mix forms. Llyr had mentioned it off hand a few times, so Woe remembered. Although her memory was fuzzy of the instance where he told her. Perhaps it'd been in a dream that had been forgotten. Perhaps she'd imagined it. Yet deep in her bones she knew it possible.
So she knelt over these totem objects, and dwelt on the image of the creature she wished to produce for her totems. The form, a spindly humanoid covered in thick, ascended chitin from its head to its hind legs. A pair of large antlers, sharp as the ascended chitin and Oh'deer antler, crowing its long visage. Its hands forming knife-like protrusions that were otherwise resembling fingers. and long blade-like feet, covered in thick hide over the chitin. And finally, a pair of eyes, sunken deep beneath a mask of ascended chitin, behind sockets. Almost appearing to be without eyes.
This was the image of the creature she envisioned, a betrayal and rebuke against the civilized.
Why was she doing this? She wanted to feel, if only for a few moments, the newness of brand new life, introduced to the wilds. To hunt, and be hunted.
Woe didn't know why she did it, but as she disrobed, and accomplished that mental metamorphosis of the shadow between the stag and the ascended mantis, she felt a sudden jolt, as the form took hold. She melted into the ground. Bones snapped, skin split and hardened as the form of the Beast was crafted lovingly from her imagination.
Then after long bits of exhausting and painful metamorphosis, he arose. Leaving the clothing of Woe behind, he strode into the wider wilds, to seek and to hunt. To be spotted and hunted.
Trials after the fact, Woe's clothing was found torn and bloodied in the cave, and they were presumed missing or dead by search parties sent after them. Only the mushrooms they'd gathered had been snatched up for the apothecary that had sent her along. It'd be a shame to waste their efforts, afterall.
