02 February 2009

Walking the Pattern

I am writing this having just left Caercorran. I wait with interest to hear how my other family react to the little gift I left them. The bastards will know I am coming back for them, and that I know how.

These days I know a lot more than that it seems... Know, or remember. It is hard to separate new knowledge from old memory, and the whole thing is a bit of a blur. I had walked it before, bent shadow before... killed before. Power once lost is coming to the fore again but I hazard it will be a long while yet before it returns in full. For now, through remembrance and pushing myself I am merely finding my feet anew.

It has been a strange few days - from unwitting minor noble in some backwater province that was not even real, to close to godhood and the memories of a prior existence. From overwhelmed and undecisive fool at the banquet to an awareness and impulse born of Fiona's "gift". Her attentions unnerved me before, but now they intrigue; I can only assume she knew - nay, knows - something I yet do not. To hand me a trump of the Pattern... well, Roland's reaction to it told it all: who would make such a card?! This was not chance, it was planned - but to what detail? That the first two cards I picked were identical, her brother I believe, and the third - the charm - being the pattern itself. Hah, and dead central too - of course it was no chance.

I can only imagine what she was thinking when I took the bait, but the betting is that things have worked out as she desired - I would not give myself the credit to match an elder, and particularly not one I had been expressly warned about. Still, the impulsiveness felt good - the first trump contact I initiate, and it is to the Pattern room itself! Oh, the look on Roland's face must have been priceless when I made that connection. The sense of power, of belonging, when I realised that I was afoot the Pattern itself after the transport - and that (and I'm sure Malice will be disappointed) I was not "goo" - that feeling was to be treasured. The rest of the journey, on the other hand... it is a mixture of pain, pain and more pain. Some of it delicious, but more of it excruciating. Funny how it was only after the self-mutilation and impalement that the memory of how to walk the Pattern returned! Hah, and to think I nearly did not make it - Roland, bless him, must have helped, else why would he have been at the centre with me? Otherwise why put yourself through that for a second time... unless you had forgotten!

The horrors and specifics I will leave out here, but I trust that this time I shall carry them always in mind, for to put myself through that a third time would be foolish indeed! I found the immediate aftermath a bit of a nightmare, albeit an empowering one - I recall simply bloodlust, the need to hunt, and feeling envigorated and energised but only for as long as it took to find raw meat. Not such an alien feeling, that - the imagery of claws, fangs and the taste of blood have been common these few days, but that the first thing I saw was not elk, nor deer, nor game but wolf... well poor chance. The urge needed sating however, and so it had to die. That it's terrible head now adorns my "father's" throne, well... I wager the note I left my "brother" promising his come-uppance will hold as great an effect. And neither of them will be pleased...