TRANSCENDENCE 11

The day is bright and cheery but Savannah moves with a certain dread in her stomach. Moving takes an effort foreign to her, and the hustle and bustle of Valmasia's cities hold no allure to her. Not now. Her head was pounding and her ears were ringing -

she needed to be alone.

So she distances herself. Wychwood is as vibrant as the city - birds chirp and bugs flutter, dancing around the blooming heads of flowers. Deer rustle and flee at her arrival, and the ponds are alight with the business of frogs and fish.

But when Savannah reaches the center of her favorite clearing, something is different.
(Savannah)
For something great to happen, a sacrifice needs to be made.

It's as if, in this focal point of the forest, all life has been drained. The smell of occult lingers in the air, causing Savannah to wrinkle her nose. Purple tinges of corruption drip and drain across the flora. Something depraved has been here.

And, laying in the middle of the bed of broken flowers is a corpse of a hare. Strangely, it's untouched save for a gash on the neck. What twisted predator kills prey just for the fun of it?

Savannah leans down to run her fingers through the velvety fur. The concept of death has never bothered her - from the first moment she could remember, she was accepting of the deaths of her parents.
(Savannah)
It's freshly dead. The blood surrounding it's neck has yet to dry, and occult-tainted saliva is wet and thick across the wound. Savannah wipes the blood on the grass around her.

There's some beautiful allure the dead holds - the hare is statue-esque, frozen in its fear. Lifelike, but never quite there.

Unless Savannah wants it to. The sudden realization shocks her out of her trancelike stare, and she is now focused on the rabbit. Necrcomancy had always been described as a complicated art to her.

But what if she could do it?
(Savannah)
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She could heal woulds. She could reverse time - to an extent. And if the rabbit was freshly dead, certainly she could reverse it too, right? She falls into thought, planning and plotting. How would she go about this?

The easiest way she knew how. Savannah's hand moved back down to interlock with the matted threads of the rabbit's hare. She presses her fingers against the flesh, and begins to focus.

She could imagine it now - Savannah visualized the flow of this scenario in her head.

The yokai ambles up, wriggling its nose. The scent of hare is fresh in the air, and it's enticing. He craves a chase, something to entertain him while he searches for actual sustinence. He surely couldn't live off of a rabbit - the meat did nothing for him.

He was in it for the chase. The drip of occult from his claws stain the ground and the rabbit hears the splash -

it whips its head around, but it's too late. The yokai charges across the clearing and the rabbit is dead before it can take its last breath.
(Savannah)
It unfolds before Savannah in clear vision. She fixates on the rabbit, alive and fleshy, and thinks about this point of time. If she could return the rabbit to this state in this moment in the timeline...

She wished for it. Willed for it. Willed for the gash in its throat to mend; for the sinew and muscle to snap back in place, for the skin to regenerate. She could envision the musles flushed with blood, the heart beginning to beat, the neurons in the brain firing and exploding in the sudden sensation of life...

But when Savannah opened her eyes, she saw something completely different.
(Savannah)
The wound in the rabbit's throat had mended but her attempt at restoring life was futile. Surely enough, the muscles under the rabbit's skin were moving... but they were twitching at a frightening, alarming rate. Violently, its feet scampered and moved and the jaw opened to let out a guttural yowl.

The function of the body was irregular. Something was wrong. Something was missing. Savannah could feel her mana draining at a rapid rate - she was powering the body of the hare, and it was working completely wrong.

It wasn't alive. She could feel it - there was no life energy inside the rabbit. Something was wrong. Savannah felt it deep in her gut - she messed up.
(Savannah)
And then it struck Savannah - it was missing a soul. The rabbit was dead because it had no soul. There was some irrevocable point in time, she discovered, where you can't go back. You can't fix it with time magic, no matter how hard you tried.

Time wasn't endless. Death was the end, at least, for this rabbit. For now. Her mana's grip on the rabbit's body fell, and at once, it's neck re-opened and it fell limp.

It was dead, and it all unfolded once more.

The yokai in the brush. The drips of occult energy. The fear in the rabbit's eyes when it turned around - death. When her hand hovered over the rabbit's body, she could see it all, feel it all, hear it all.

And Savannah grew even more fearful of death. It was finite unless one wanted to break the ultimate laws of the lifestream. It was the end.
(Savannah)