I shook off the bleed through of feeling from my wolf. When my eyes shifted back, I realized how far I had gone. It was a slight flickering. The room darkened back to its original state, and I felt my wolf retreat.
“Shall we begin?” Aradia’s voice was soft. She sounded entranced by what she had just witnessed but I felt dread pull my gut down. But I straightened my spine, I needed to learn.
I nodded.
Aradia explained to the other few that were downstairs that she was going to be teaching me the basics today and that they needed to keep to their side with their more advance practices. Immediately I felt the sting of the isolation. Patricia skirted around us as we moved closer. She kept her eyes on me. I didn’t react. I had already revealed too much.
Aradia came in front of me and again and sized me up. My wolf had been present, but now it felt like something was pushing it back, the space becoming crowded and uncomfortable. Something else was moving itself forward as if answering her glares. I saw a small smile spread across Aradia’s face.
“Equal parts I see. Well if we can bring out the wolf, surely we can bring out the witch,” Aradia said. She acted instantly, not even give me a moment to understand what she meant.
Aradia attacked by flinging a ball of energy at me. She didn’t blink or warn. I tried to jump out of the way, but it hit me squarely in the shoulder and I went spinning to the ground. I landed on my stomach, the wind knocked out of me. All my air rushed from lungs too quickly, causing me to cough and my vision to blur for a second.
One thought ran through my head.
Attack.
I stood up and faced my mother. She looked at me, bored as ever. I wasn’t sure what prompted me to do it, but I bared my teeth at her and, instead of running forward, I felt that energy surge outward. Nothing happened, so far as I could see, but I felt it there right at the edges.
It was going to pull me apart at the seams. Aradia’s smile spread revealing her pearly whites. There was nothing good about that smile. My anger started to fade with my disgust. This is what she was trying to do. Push me to the point so that I would fight back.
I had to learn to control my powers, and I had to learn how to restrain myself. I tried to pull it back, to contain it, but it was unstable. It felt slippery in my mind almost. Too big to hold in my metaphorical hands. A new type of fear started to take over. The fear of complete and utter loss of control.
Aradia whispered a few words and I was pushed back against the wall. An invisible force was pressing on my body. It was steady and didn’t let up. It kept pushing and pushing. The air was rushing from my lungs, I was deflating, and then I was suffocating under the pressure. The foreign energy inside of me was there, pushing against my skin trying to escape. My wolf was howling, but she was trapped deep down. There was nothing I could do. My vision started to blacken around the edges.
The force disappeared instantly. I fell to my knees. I gasped. I looked up at Aradia she was standing with her legs apart. She seemed to be enjoying this way too much.
I stood and waited for her to attack me again.
This was how the rest of the day went with her practically beating me to a pulp until she finally stopped. She took me back to my room and told me I did well.
It didn’t feel that way at all.
Chapter 25 — It’s Expected of You
Almost three weeks of this hell. She would take me to the basement, train me and leave me more bruised then when I went down. But I was learning. I was getting better. The power was somehow being held back, and she was the one doing it. But I practiced the words and motions I saw Aradia make. I would test the results of my actions in the privacy of my room. It was strange though, while the power felt like it came from inside of me, it seemed to have limits. I wondered how Aradia and stretched their power to last so long.