107th of Nemulum, 336 EA
Ishikar, Athal
“Livia!” Belmia’s voice echoed through the small room, as though the intensity with she had locked onto her friend’s possessing form had opened up boundless falling space between them. “Why are you doing this?”
“Why can’t I leave, Maia?” Livia cocked the head she had taken.
Svaljna’s head whipped from Mepka to her host. “Belmaia. Stop this.”
“Quiet you!” Livia hissed contorting herself into a horrifying visage that sent Svaljna skittering back against her better judgement.
“She’s right Livia, stop this!” Belmaia began to sob, “This isn’t you, you wouldn’t do this.”
“Why can’t I leave?” She repeated, her eyes slitted through Mepka’s.
“I don’t know!” Belmaia began to sob, the pressure of maintaining the fantasy of life that had been mounting within her since her friend’s death all coming to a head, “I don’t know.”
“Liar!” Livia raged, flailing Mepka’s body around in harm of the self that was not hers.
There was a moment, there, in the pain and the chaos of it all, that Belmaia saw things for what they were. She saw her friend, trapped in this home, trapped with her.
“It’s me.” Her tone was hollow with a truth that had been ground down to the smallest grain. “I’m the reason you can’t leave. I can’t move on, and so you couldn’t either.”
“Ghahhahah!” The catharsis that washed over Livia’s spirit was cathartic, ecstatic even, but it was not beautiful. It was the relief at the end of a mangling that left only a memory of a memory of the original beauty.
“I’m sorry, Livia.” Tears streamed down Belmaia’s face as she lifted her holy symbol aloft. “Elganth, please forgive me.”
Livia’s cry cut out at the invocation of the third god in the Stria, the god of finality and closure that Belmaia had turned from in her pride. Mepka’s body sent rigid as a corpse, and the cleric began to chant her exorcism.
“Savesh T’izet Lisr Kan’tkuiri Rinivlodce Pel’h Melaki Soihs’nunnehv”
It was a prayer that used every word of power that Belmaia knew, and each of them felt like glass running along her throat. Even in the horridness of it, though, she knew it was right. She knew in her heart of hearts that it should have been done a long time ago.
Mepka writhed and contorted. She spewed profanities, she scratched at her own skin. She was lifted into the air, her head snapped back, and out from her eyes and her mouth a sickly red light turned slowly to white. That white light, finally made pure, lifted out and ascended out of that fateful home.
The spirit was released.
Mepka collapsed to the ground, bleeding and gasping for air. Svaljna rushed to her side, began to administer healing.
Belmaia crouched to the floor and cried, as she allowed herself to feel everything that she had been overwhelming herself with slip away.
The Etra Anthology 