Chapter 333: Shaken
Heila was dimly aware of Ashlynn’s energy sinking into the mud and earth along with hers, but much like Ashlynn, while she felt the brush of the other witch’s energy, she followed her own path as her consciousness sank into the earth.
More than the roots of the trees around her, Heila’s mind traced along the roots that connected to trees long fallen, stumps beneath the gentle waves on the surface of the lake. Here, there were a few trees that held on to life despite being almost completely submerged beneath the lake, but if she extended further out, beyond even those hearty trees, she could feel the roots of trees that had stood in places that were once dry land and now lay beneath the water’s surface.
A feeling of calm peace enveloped her, nurturing her body with the gentle power of water that collected in the soil and roots of trees for hundreds and thousands of years.
Heila always felt small. It was the fate of everyone in the Horned Clan to feel like people from most clans towered over them and some, particularly the imposing giants like the Tuscans, made them feel so small that they dared not move for fear of being crushed beneath the feet of the powerful giants.
The lake also made her feel small, but this time, it wasn’t a threatening or imposing kind of small. Rather, she felt connected to something so deep and so vast that she could never possibly contain all of the power it offered. The energy that flowed through her strengthened and nurtured her body like the waters of a river nurturing crops, but the power wasn’t hers to keep and she couldn’t take it away from here if she tried.
For the diminutive Willow Witch, it was enough to allow the waters of the lake to offer up what they had kept waiting for someone like her to claim. Not all of it, but a large enough portion that the Heila who emerged from the mud hours later felt as though she had grown to more than twice her previous size. Before, if she could have held a single bucket full of magical energy and put it to use for her, now she could manifest an entire bathtub. Moreover, she felt that if she repeated this process after some rest, she could make even more progress!
"My lady," Heila said as Aledia helped to pull Ashlynn from the thick, cloying mud. "We should return here when... My lady!" Heila cried, stunned by the boneless and limp appearance that Ashlynn presented when they pulled her from the mud. Worse, when Aledia wiped away the mud from Ashlynn’s face, her complexion beneath the mud was pale and sickly.
"Dis, dis isn’t right," Aledia said in a trembling voice. Moving quickly, she emptied a bucket of water over Ashlynn’s body, abandoning courtesy in her haste to wash the mud and the glyphs beneath it from the skin of the Mother of Trees. "I, I don’t know what dis is..." she said, giving Heila a panicked look.
Without thinking, Heila reached out toward the lake. The power she’d absorbed during her meditation thrummed through her body, making her feel larger than her diminutive frame. With a grasping motion of her hand, she felt the water rushing to meet her will, almost like an eager hound wishing to please its master.