Beth Lyons

In Which Indira is Possessed

Posted on August 17, 2009 by Beth

I don”t have much time because I”m pretty sure she”s just about found her way back. So… I guess I”ll try and stick to the important details. You can call me Pel if you want a name. That”s what the Divas did.

<img class="alignleft size-full wp-i

mage-1012″ title=”comet” src=”https://bethlyons.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/comet1.jpg” alt=”comet” width=”122″ height=”162″ />I was out playing with some of the other guys in the rougher areas that surrounded my solar home. We were riding some of the smaller, safer, solar waves and having a good time.

We got to showing off and I jumped a huge swell and the next thing I knew, I was being swept thousands of miles into space. It wasn”t great and I was probably going to get into a lot of trouble, but at least I didn”t get caught in some planet”s atmosphere.

Until, of course, I did. It was a small planet with some really primitive natives and I figured they weren”t going to be able to help me get home. So I decided to wander around a bit and wait for the natives to grow up a bit and learn enough magic to help me get home. At least I hadn”t run afoul of any of the native spirits around the place. Until, of course, I did.

So, long story short, not too long ago there was a lot of upheaval and the cage the magma elementals had trapped me in finally broke and I managed to escape. And wow–a lot had changed. The natives were all talking with big words and everything, they didn”t live in caves anymore, and they had far less hair than they used to. I was pretty weak and insubstantial after all that time underground, so I was able to move about and observe them without being noticed. And then I saw it–a doorway home. It had to be–it shone brightly with the sun”s energy and it even smelled a bit like home. Excited, I dashed towards it and leaped through.

Only… it wasn”t a door. It was one of the natives. It turns out that I had entered a priestess of my great great great grandfather, whom these people called Pelor. And when I jumped into her I sort of, well… dislodged her. A little bit. So I figured I”d just pretend to be her for a while until she got back. What could go wrong with that? I did an awesome job of it too. Nobody, and I mean nobody caught on at first. For example–people kept looking at her and using this word, “Indira,” so I quickly searched her mind and figured out how to respond completely appropriately. I even fooled the little Ian named Gnome and something called a “Myntilly.”

But Myntillies, as it turns out, are pretty smart. This one sent a pale little grub-thing to get a piece of paper and when it returned, she used it to look at me. I mean really look at me. Luckily, she was pretty impressed, which just goes to show that Myntillies aren”t too smart. I mean–if she thoughts I was impressive–she should get a load of my big sister! Anyway, this Indira I was inhabiting and her friends were really worked up about something called a Drakthar and some demons that were going to open a portal, or something. I suggested we just wait a few thousand years and let it all pass, but they didn”t much care for that idea. So, I offered to help. I figured anything the Indira could do, I could do too–probably better. I mean, Pelor is my great great great, etc.

The Myntilly asked me if I knew the difference between good and evil. I wasn”t sure what she was talking about, but I covered pretty well and reassured her I knew all about good and evil. I wondered if this was some new thing the natives had come up with. Anyway, convinced that I”d be super-helpful, they started making plans. As they researched caves and debated about their next step, I got to thinking about the grub-things and portals. The grub-things were good at running errands, evidently, and a portal wouldn”t be a bad way to get home. So I sent four of them off to fetch me some sand. I figured if I could make a big enough glass lens, I might be able to project myself home. If I could safely get out of this Indira, that is. I could tell her mind was still in here, but it felt pretty far away still.

We decided to go to someplace called the Fiery Sanctum by swimming to the bottom of a lake… well, no we didn”t. We decided to have a grub-thing swim to the bottom of a lake first, so we could skip the swimming and just teleport in. We cast a lot of spells on him first–so many that he was barely recognizable as a grub-thing anymore–and off he swam. Something happened while he was swimming and everybody was gathered around the scrying bowl watching intently. I didn”t pay much attention because I was a little nervous about going underground again. What if the magma elementals were waiting for me?

The rest was a bit of a blur. The grub-thing reached an underground cavern, we teleported in, there was a big door that Gnome used some little chime-thing on to open it and the next thing I knew, we were fighting some big and terrible thing in a room that made my face hurt.

When I saw this thing–I suddenly knew what Myntilly meant by evil. You see, most things–like me and the Divas–consume some light, but we turn it into more light that we release back into the world. I do this literally (when I”m not trapped in an Indira), but for the Divas and the other natives, they did it more… um, metaphorically. This thing, however, consumed light and kept it. There was no light emanating out of this thing at all. It was dark and more than little creepy. And I knew we had to free the light it had consumed by cracking it open in any way we could.

The Divas were already at it–shooting it with arrows and such. They didn”t seem to be slowing it down much. So I commanded it to stop. I”m related to a god, after all, it”s rude to rush me when I”m still getting the hang of being mortal.

It didn”t listen to me, unfortunately, but kept rushing across the room.

Now I was mad. So I made it stop. And it did. Completely.

The Divas tied it up and took its weapon away. They also took away some jewelry and little round bits of metal it had. They seemed to know this creature and were debating about whether to kill it, or talk to it once it was able to move again. I watched it and realized that there was only going to be one way of setting its light free. I was going to have to bash it open. So I took this heavy bit of metal the Indira carried and hit it in the head. Several times.

It didn”t work. No light came out–just lots of red liquid and little chunks of pale meat. Was it possible that this thing was so corrupted that it could no longer even consume light? I couldn”t bear to think of it. When it finally slumped over onto the floor, I had a terrible ache inside me. It was like someone had been hitting me in the stomach while I hit the thing in the head. I turned and was violently ill, spitting up something from deep inside the Indira. It would be a while before I could bring myself to do that again–if I was even going to have the time. I could tell the shock of the experience had weakened my connection to the Indira and she was rising rapidly. Maybe she could take over for a while and I could rest. I imagined she was much more used to this sort of thing than I was.