Resurrection: A Dark Fantasy Tale (Kindred #1)

by Zed Amadeo

On the morning of my final ritual, I allowed my thoughts to swirl around me while soaking in a tub of warm water, surrounded by incense and steam. Small red rivulets spiraled out from my torso into the surrounding bathwater from the incisions on my body I had made to mirror the scarred tissue that Joe and Nameless had left on me before. Drawing a new design for my own purpose. I had grimaced at first from the pain as Alejandra had helped me carve into my own flesh. Even sitting in water had made it throb. Now I relished the feeling. Old scar tissue that had been reinvigorated and made anew. All a part of my plan to create a more powerful version of myself. I ran my plan through my mind, eagerly awaiting the moment that I would be able to launch into action.

  I found the sacred basement much the same as it had been the first time that I had experienced its brilliance. Alejandra and I took our places in the same individual circles as before. She clasped her hands around mine as we had done so many days in meditation.

  “You will be granted the power to fulfill your intentions and beyond,” Alejandra said, speaking the sacred language of magic. “But you must remember the sacred bond between teacher and student, indebted to one another for life.”

  “You must show us your intentions for undertaking this journey,” Alejandra said. I painted a clear picture of my revenge in my mind until it filled every fiber of my being, reaffirming my confidence in what was to come.

  “State them aloud for the universe to hear,” she said. I transformed my thoughts into words. As I completed my statement, Alejandra grabbed the knife beside her and cut into her arm, spilling her blood into the circle. I then embraced the weapon and accepted the infliction of pain upon myself, seeing it as a small price to pay for my grander plan.

  Our voices as one, Alejandra and I chanted the incantation that would bring that powerful entity back into our world. My excitement, but not my fear, grew as that wind began to pick up and charge around me in every direction.

  I gained the courage to look past Alejandra’s head at the entity taking on an earthly form in its place in the circle. I could only see a dark expanding mass that didn’t seem to come from anywhere. It remained a fuzzy mass that struggled to exist, never taking on a true shape even after it had stopped expanding. Though I could see no features on the entity, I could feel an intense power pulsing from its mass, enough to force me to turn back to Alejandra’s face as it began to “breathe.” Together, we chanted another set of ancient words. With every inhalation, I could feel more power rushing from the entity and into me, so much power that I felt ready to scream.

  I watched in equal parts horror and excitement as a portion of the dark entity stretched out from its place in the corner and slithered toward my body, coating every inch of my body in its mysterious black mist. I looked into Alejandra’s eyes one last time for support before the darkness covered my face. I found my head pounding with strange, foreign thoughts. I listened to them as the dark coating shrunk closer to my skin.

  The thoughts did not come in words, but images. The entity, whatever it was, was trying to show me what it was about to do to me next, foreshadowing the pain that I would soon experience. Before the pain began, it allowed me to see an image of the end result, granting me the strength to handle what was to come.

  The mist solidified and constricted me until I could barely breathe. It forced my mouth open and began to flow into me. Even knowing what was about to happen did not eliminate the excruciating sensations. My skin felt like it was being torn from the rest of my body, cell by cell, until I emerged from my old skin. I was vulnerable, yet strangely free.

  For just a moment, I felt a bit of pain as my body was exposed to the empty air around me. My body began to shift and change in reaction to its new exposure, my limbs growing or shrinking to new and unnatural proportions while I thrashed around on the floor, helpless against the transformations being performed on my body, until the pain came to an end.

  I looked at my old body from my new perspective. The old Dina was sprawled out on the floor, while I had become this strange, new creature. My new form was yellow and mottled, my fingers replaced with long claws, and wings sprouting from my back. I could only imagine that my eyes had become as dark as the creature we had summoned.

  A saldan.

  “Revenge,” the entity told me, suddenly shifting its form of communication from images to broken attempts at sentences. “Any…form. Free…no shell.” The sound of breathing slowly began to leave the room, and with it, the presence of the entity.

  “Khalas,” Alejandra said, signaling the end of my official initiation into magic.

  I had been granted a new and unexpected freedom. Free to be whatever I wanted. Do whatever I wanted.

  I didn’t want stay in that form for too long just yet. Despite all of the power that I had just been given, I wanted to be surrounded by the comfort blanket of a shell of skin. I scampered back over to my body, taking a good look at my old, hideous self, lifeless beneath me. In that moment, it became everything about me that I wanted to leave behind. It no longer defined who I was. I stood over my old shell and imagined myself taking on its exterior as my own, only a temporary vehicle for arriving at my final destination. Within moments, after only blinking, I was back within it. I pushed myself up, nearly hyperventilating from the experience, and wiped some of the sweat off of my brow. Alejandra was beaming at me with pride.

  “Congratulations Dina,” Alejandra said. “You are now a witch.” She handed me the ceremonial knife we had used in the ritual.

  “Now you shall fulfill your purpose.”