Anyway, enough about me. Things are starting to hot up a little in Ascension, don't you think? The ceremony is about to start, so our heroes are on the verge of undergoing some rather interesting changes...
Chapter 6
The initiates had
been arranged into rows of ten. They were faced by ten priests of the Faceless.
Mari and Shan were in the third row back.
Mari craned her head to the side, looking round the back of the boy in
front of her to watch the first row. As one, the Faceless placed their hands
above the heads of the children. A few of the initiates let out muffled groans,
or tensed slightly, but mostly they remained still. After a few moments the
Faceless lowered their hands.
A girl at one end of
the row let out a muffled shriek, holding her hands up in the air as her skin
flushed a deep shade of purple. A boy diagonally in front of Mari sunk to his
knees. The air was filled with the sound of ripping cloth as a pair of bat-like
wings burst from his back, sending arcs of blood through the air. A pair of
healers were beside him in a moment, gently raising him to his feet and leading
him away through the crowds.
Mari bit her lip. The
rest of the row seemed unchanged by the experience. Of course, appearances
could be deceptive. Only the Faceless new the transformations that were going
on under the skin of the teenagers.
By now the faceless
had begun the ascension of the next row. Mari clenched her fists; it would be
her turn next. The girl in front of her rose a few feet above the air as the
priest withdrew its hands from her head. She floated there for a moment, before
falling to the ground in a heap. A ripple of laughter rant through the crowd as
another healer helped her to her feet. Mari heard Shan’s snort of derision
above the noise.
And then it was
Mari’s turn.
The hooded figure
placed its hands gently on her head. Mari braced herself for the intrusion of
another mind into her own. It was something that they whispered about in the
village; the older children revelling in the looks of horror on the faces of
the younger ones as they described the experience. The physical pain of
Ascension was one thing; the rapid transformation from a body that was almost
human to one that was so much more. But having your very soul exposed to
another person, having that force rip into the depths of your mind in order to
tease out the spark of divinity and ignite it. That was something else
entirely.
But when it came Mari
hardly noticed at first. It was a slight pressure, a feeling of grogginess,
like the onset of a headache or a cold, and then she felt it. A gentle probing.
Mari was in the
kitchen. Her mother stood at the stove, stirring a pot. The cupboard opened,
and a pot gently floated through the air until it reached her mother’s elbow. She
turned, and saw Mari watching her. She smiled, reached for the pot-
The vision faded, and
Mari felt the alien mind retract slightly. The apology didn’t come in words. It
was more a gentle feeling of regret and embarrassment. Mari did her best to
think positive thoughts.
And then something
clicked. Somehow, along the way, the mind of the priest had found what it was
looking for.
Mari’s mind turned
inside out. She could see everything, hear everything, feel everything around
her. It wasn’t just that she was aware of her surroundings. She knew how thick
the wall surrounding the courtyard was. She knew what the temperature was like
in the corridor on the other side. She knew how wide it was. And that was just
one direction of space. Mari could feel all of the spaces around her for a
hundred metres, two hundred, a kilometre.
And then her mind was
shrinking again, retracting back to the single point of her body. It took her a
moment to realise that it was the priest that was drawing her back, wrapping
her expanding conscious tightly round her physical body.
Mari felt the mind
retreat from her own. She opened her eyes, and looked into the empty hood of
the faceless. It nodded slightly, and stepped back. The whole experience had
lasted for little more than a minute.
‘No, No!’ the cry
broke through the peace that had settled on Mari mind. For a moment the panic
didn’t fully register. What could possibly be wrong, after all, in this
wonderful, beautiful world?
And then she saw Shan
sink to her knees out of the corner of her eye. The other girl held her hands
up to her face, a groan of horror escaping her lips. Shan’s skin, which moments
before had been a healthy, glowing olive colour, had become a pale grey,
covered in a smooth, hard surface that cracked with every moment. Shan let her
hands drop from her face, revealing a surface like an unfinished statue; a
vague sense of human features hidden under harsh lines and irregular cracks.
Shan let out a cry
that echoed around the courtyard, and began to tug at the rocky flesh of her
arms in a desperate attempt to peel it off. Within moments she was surrounded
by healers and members of the Faceless, and her cries soon faded to whimpering
sobs, and then to silence.
Mari’s last sight of
her cousin was only a brief glimpse as she was carried away through the crowds
by the healers.
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