Chapter 1019: Intoxicating Power
"Isabell?" Ashlynn prompted gently. "Its all right if you’re a little bit frightened," she said in the most reassuring tone she could manage. "I’ve been frightened of myself more than once this past year. Just take your time," she suggested.
"Think about things that are familiar. You told me once how strong you felt when you learned how to use a crane with a counterweight," Ashlynn said, trying to think of something that might resonate with the master engineer. "Its the same now. You have all of that power at your fingertips to make something impossibly large move as you wish, but you have to work carefully or it will overbalance and fall apart."
"I, I think I understand," Isabell said, closing her silvery eyes as she tried to grasp hold of something that compared to the sensations she was feeling now.
When she took stock of herself, however, it wasn’t something as abstract or intellectual as constructing engineering marvels that her mind latched on to. Instead, she realized that the feeling of power coursing through her body wasn’t that dissimilar from how she felt when she indulged in strong wine.
There was a sort of floating invincibility that left her feeling like she was soaring above all of the problems she had faced during the day and she could sweep them aside with the wave of her hand and another gulp from the bottle...
But she knew all too well where over-indulging in strong drink would lead her, and in the end, no amount of wine could ever blot out the horrors that she’d seen or the screams she’d heard during the civil war in the Emerald Kingdom. Now, as she began to reorient herself to the world around her, she began to regard the power flowing through her in much the same way.
There was nothing wrong in touching it, or even enjoying it the way she still enjoyed strong drink... But it could never become her solution to every problem, and no matter how great she felt at the moment, there would always be a time to come down when the moment passed. And if she indulged too much in the power she felt, she was certain that the results would be a thousand times worse than any hangover she’d ever suffered through.
"I think I’m starting to adjust to it," Isabell said as she picked up one of her feet and began wiping the soil off of it before pulling a sock back on. Part of her wanted to stay barefoot, even if she had to hike all the way back to the ancient fortress while carrying her shoes, but the older, wiser part of her felt like it would be better to cut herself off early until Ashlynn could guide her in her first steps.
"How do I," she started as she stared at the smooth skin of her other foot and realized that the changes to her body extended far beyond her joints and hands. "How do I look?" Isabell asked as she raised a trembling hand to touch the smooth, unlined skin of her cheek. "How much of me changed?"
Her mind flashed back to the way Ashlynn had transformed when she lost control of her power on the night she learned that Jocelynn had been the one to betray her. At the time, Ashlynn no longer looked human as she became something... more. Something greater, like a primal force of nature in the process of shedding her human guise.
Ashlynn had warned her that she might experience some changes, but looking at her limbs and feeling the changes in every bone and sinew of her body, she realized that she’d greatly underestimated what ’some changes’ could mean.
"You look younger," Virve said directly as she evaluated her new sister’s appearance. "More like Ollie’s big sister than someone who could be his mother. It was the same for me," she said as she gestured to her fur where not a single trace of gray remained after the autumn colors of gold and russet had taken hold. "Old wounds that ached for years, gone like they’d never been and I felt like I could run all day with the new recruits," she boasted.
"I didn’t feel ’young’ again," Virve added after thinking carefully for a moment. "I never felt so strong when I was young. Maybe it’s the same for you. Not really younger but... better?"
"Young is definitely the wrong word for it," Ashlynn agreed as she took in the changes to her friend’s appearance. "When we first met, much of your hair was still as dark as Nyri’s, you only had a few streaks of gray that grew wider over the years," Ashlynn said as she reached out to gently run a finger through her friend’s silvery hair. "If you were ’young’ again, then your hair should be dark again, but it isn’t."
"Instead, your hair and eyes are more silver than gray," Ashlynn explained. "It’s more like you’ve been polished and refined than restored to the way you once looked. It gives the impression of youth, but I remember you ten years ago, and you didn’t look like this then," she said. "But you need to be careful," she added with a suggestive wink. "I imagine Casquas will have a hard time keeping his hands off you when he sees you again."
"He would have a hard time keeping his hands to himself if I showed up splattered with drafting ink and smelling like a soldier’s camp," Isabell said with a light laugh as she imagined her reunion with both her husband and her children.
There would be a great deal to explain, she was certain but she had no doubt that he would love her still. As much as she had changed, she was certain that she was still the same woman at the core. There was... more to her now, she supposed.
But all of that ’more’ was just like renovating the defenses of a castle to add parapets and salley gates. She’d grown more capable, to be certain, but the foundation was still the same. As long as that was true, as long as she didn’t allow the new additions to become so large that they dominated everything else about her, then she should be able to realize the dream that she’d only glimpsed in her visions.
Ashlynn had told her that becoming the Hemlock Witch would allow her to engineer a better future for herself, her loved ones, and the people she wished to serve... So long as she was able to keep her new power from overwhelming the person she’d spent more than fourty years becoming, she was confident that she could make that dream a reality.