Another prize story from my recent mini-contest!  mookyvet spun a fantasy yarn of badger possession that I just couldn't resist, and even gave me some dialogue to get me started. As before, the stunning art is by  reddyeno5.

Seera's Tale

Seera awoke with a start, gasping for breath. There were a jumble of images in her mind…the nightmarish flight from the Naressan Keymen, the woods closing in around her, and the agony of an arrow-wound. Not just any arrow-wound, either. Seera had worked in the House of Naressa infirmary; she had seen Keymen carried in with arrows sticking out of every part of their anatomy, from the embarrassing to the horrifying.

It had been a fatal arrow wound.

Seera should have bled out on the forest floor as the Keymen closed in on her. Somehow, though, she was alive. Inspecting herself, Seera found the arrow, and the wound, gone. Her clothes were gone too; Seera burned with embarrassment as she found a ratty old hunter's tarp to cover her slim body, pale with privilege and easy inside work.

As to how she had survived, there were no clues…save the lifeless body of the badger at her side. Touching it, she had a flash of memory.

"That's right," Seera murmured. "I found you caught in a hunter's trap, just after the Keymen found my trail." It had seemed like a stupid and sentimental thing to do when people who wanted to kill her--or worse, sacrifice her to the goddess Naressa, Lady of the Water. But the badger had moaned so pitiably, and when their eyes met there had been such a sudden common understanding…two creatures both hunted by more powerful foes.

She'd freed the creature and watched it scamper off, fearing that its unsteady gait meant its wound was fatal. And that had given the Keymen a chance to catch up, to nock and arrow and to loose it.

Seera swayed unsteadily, leaning on a tree for support. She remembered the Keymen gathering around her prone form as darkness started to creep around the edges of her vision. What was it they'd said…?

"I'd hoped to merely strike a crippling blow to her," one had said. Seera could remember the small golden key around his neck, symbolizing the instant access he would have to the Oasis of Naressa if he died in her service.

His companions had circled her body crumpled on the forest floor. "The girl's been fatally wounded and'll likely die soon enough," another Keyman had said.

"Master Irving will not be pleased that we failed to return his sacrifice," one had muttered as Seera panted for breath, unable even to summon the strength to draw her boot dagger.

"He'll just choose another sister as a sacrifice in her place. Plenty of sisters almost as good as her." Seera remembered straining for her weapon anew as the Keyman had made light of Master Irving's rank betrayal.

"So, leave here there to her end let's be back to Khaimar."

"No, we can't take the chance. You two stay here and make sure she dies. If not…bring her to Irving. Another sacrifice for another bit of the Lady of the Water's power." That was the last Seera could recall. Everything else was just a dark blur.

Seera was confused and disoriented, but she somehow regained her composure enough to leave the clearing where she'd awoken. The nearest large city aside from Khaimar, Tevmuk, was a two-day hike. There was probably little chance of making it, but she had to try. Seera had only made it a little ways, cursing at the seemingly endless branches and brambles poking at her, when things started to get weird.

Among the House of Naressa's sisters--lower-ranking members who were just beginning their association with the Lady of Water--Seera's hair had been legendary. Long and dark auburn, it had been her point of pride for many years, especially given the way it framed her angular features and bright blue eyes. But the ex-sister had noticed that it didn't seem to flip properly when she moved her head, and that indeed her head seemed very light. A quick grasp closed on only air. Seera's hair had been cut short, now extending barely to the base of her neck. What's worse, the strands she held before her eyes were black as night, with none of the familiar darkest of reds that had been their hallmark.

"What in the Lady's name is going on here?" Seera muttered, shivering at the thought of a Keyman cutting and dyeing her hair while thinking her dead. It was true that often the pay, rather than devotion to Naressa, brought recruits to the Keymen, but one would still have thought that any such deviants would have been rooted out.

Naturally, Seera had also thought that Master Irving was an enlightened mentor, the first and greatest among the Maidens and Masters of Naressa. Then he'd tried to use her as a human sacrifice, with only a timely warning from a friend keeping her off the Lady's altar, and set out the Keymen to retrieve his runaway prize.

Not long after, Seera came across a vale that was thick with flies and the stench of death. Investigating the odor, she found the remains of two Keymen who looked like they had been mauled by a bear. Something had torn them apart, opening their cuirasses like tin cans and snapping their spears like kindling. As tempting as it was to try and take some of their equipment--like shoes for Seera's tender feet or a cloak for her freezing ears--everything was just too slick with gore for her to even consider touching it. As tempting as it was to spit on the bastards, Seera figured they'd suffered enough and hoped that she'd finally see a little luck and encounter no more oddities in making her escape.

That was when Seera begins to hear things. A voice, of completely alien timbre and tone, began speaking to her.

They were short phrases at first:

"Poison," when Seera moved to pick a berry she had never seen but desperately wanted to eat to assuage the grumbling pain in her stomach.

"There's a cliff," when she wandered near an innocuous-looking thicket on her way down a steep hill. A hasty detour revealed that the tall grass ended in a 50-foot drop onto rocks that meant business.

"Safe cave east," when, as nightfall approached, Seera contemplated sleeping unprotected under the stars.

And then longer ones.

"Can't you walk any faster?"

"Who's saying that?" Seera demanded. She had been willing to accept it as providence, perhaps even the Lady of Water herself trying to make amends, but when the voice became insulting and petulant…it certainly didn't help her trying to kindle a fire inside the "safe cave" she'd been led to. The twig she'd been using snapped, and Seera threw it against the wall in a fit of frustration.

"No wonder they almost killed you. You're a weakling even for a two-legs."

"I'll show you who's a weakling," Seera grumbled. Taking up the next stick, she ground it on another until her hands were rubbed raw, bringing forth the spark she needed to get a fire blazing. A little fuel, and it was burning brightly, with the natural airflow of the cave drawing the smoke outside.

"Well, perhaps not so weak as I had thought," said the voice.

"You're too kind," said Seera, rolling her eyes.

"…but still a two-legs, with none of the scent or the skill or the claw to be of any real use."

"That's it," Seera said, hurling down a fresh load of fuel. "I have been scheduled for an illegal sacrifice by a man I thought was a friend, chased from my home and my city for having the gall to believe in Naressa's affirmation of the sanctity of life, and I took an arrow in the chest right when I was starting to feel good about myself for doing a noble deed. It has been a bad day. This will be written in gold ink in the great Book of Bad Days. I do not have the time, or the patience, to go insane right now. So either you start bandying words with me, voice, or I will eat those poisoned berries and throw myself off of that cliff just to spite you."

"Oh, there's a little fire in this two-legs! That makes me feel a little better, I suppose, though Maiden Agatha did say you were chosen as sacrifice because of your 'innocence' and 'transparency,' so I have to assume it's only stress and bluster, not genuine steel."

"H-how did you know that?" said Seera. When Maiden Agatha had come to warn her of Master Irving's intentions, she had said as much, but... "Am I truly going crazy?"

"Ha!" said the voice. "Two-legs has never know true insanity, has never been caged or trapped or skinned for her fur by those who can't grow their own. You should consider yourself lucky to share the same body as me, two-legs, that you might finally learn something."

"I…beg your pardon?" said Seera. "Share your body?"

"Just like a two-legs, always claiming to be smart when in fact you are as a babe in the woods. The badger you saved earlier, remember? The one that you've been blaming for your arrowing, even though the Keymen would have caught up with you anyway?"

"Oh, my Lady…" groaned Seera. "You must be joking."

"I am doing no such thing, two-legs. All creatures have spirits, the same as you, and like you we often know when our wounds are mortal and the time to depart from our bodies grows near. While I do thank you for freeing me from that trap, my time was nigh--I was dying. I beseeched Malor, the God of the Wilds--who I doubt you've even heard of, being so myopic in your pursuit of that salty slut Naressa--to allow me to repay my rescuer for the kindness I had been shown, even if it meant I must die."

"I've…heard of Malor," said Seera, smarting from the insult while touched at the idea of asking to help a good samaritan in one's final moments.

"I could comb through your mind to see if that's true, but it would interrupt the flow of my riveting tale," said the badger spirit. "On occasion, Malor has been know to reward four-legs and two-wings who have been sincere in his service or selfless in their actions by raising that departing lifeforce to the level of a patron spirit, bound to an area to aid all that would hunt and range there. Out of wisdom--or as a joke, for Malor is a noted trickster--he granted my request."

"So you're the…spirit of this forest? Helping me like you would a hunter or ranger?"

"Close, two-legs, but no pine cone. I'm the spirit of YOU."

"What?" Seera cried.

"Yes, instead of binding me to the forest, the great Malor honored my wish by binding me to you. Our spirits individually were too weak to hold onto our bodies, but together, in your body? We have power overflowing. That's how you survived that arrow.

"I…that's so…thank you," said Seera, speechless.

"Ha! You've the better end of this deal, make no mistake. And now, because of a momentary kindness, a minute lapse in judgment as I lay dying thanks to the actions of your two-legged brethren…I'm stuck with your bother and your wretched form to fulfill the desire for the hunt that wells up in all the more noble creatures."

"What…what should I call you?" the former Sister of Naressa's head ached from the revelations (and hunger).

"You two-legs, always so obsessed with names. I don't have one; you may deal with that as you see fit."

"I'll call you Badge," said Seera.

"Ooh, so creative. But if you must assign me a name, I suppose that will do as well as any other."

"Thank you for saving my life, Badge. I'm sorry I yelled at you earlier," said Seera. Then after a moment's thought, she continued in a much less grateful tone. "Wait a minute! Did you get rid of my clothes and cut off my hair?"

"I am and have ever been a spirit for the god Malor, and I don't really give a damn what you vain two-legs think of your head-fur. It was a bother so I got rid of it."

"And my clothes?"

"I laugh at your ridiculous two-legged notions of…what's that you call it? Modesty."

"What abut my hair?" said Seera. "It's not the right color!"

"Do you really think that the eternal life force of another being can be joined to you without some changes?" snapped Badge. "That ridiculous color stood out like a sore thumb, and I needed all the camouflage I could get in order to put those Keymen to bed."

Seera shivered at the thought of all that blood. "You…you killed them? That's horrible!"

"I just did to them what they were going to do to you. To us," said Badge.

"But how? I'm no fighter; I abhor violence. It's against the nature of Naressa; it's why I wouldn't allow myself to be sacrificed."

"Oh yes, the goddess of the sea must love life, that's why she makes storms and floods and tidal waves," said Badge. "But we are two spirits within one body, and I can…rearrange…it a little bit to suit my taste so that I can bless you with the thrill of Malor's hunt."

"Why?" Seera asks. "I am no hunter."

"But you have those that need hunting," the spirit replied. "Here, let me show you."

"What are you…urgh!" Seera doubled over in pain, clutching at her stomach which had just turned into a lake of fire as surely as if she'd eaten the poison berries.

"Yeah, this is going to suck for you, at least at first," said Badge. "You were unconscious before; no such luck now."

Seera's body was crisscrossed by burning ley lines. She felt like fire ants were marching down every inch of her body, biting as they went, and in the places where the concentrations were the highest…she saw thick dark hair forcing its way out of her follicles. On her arms, her legs, everywhere there was exposed skin, it was fire-anting its way to patches of fur.

"What…what are you doing to me?" shrieked Seera.

"Shh, two-legs, you'll break my concentration. Let's just say I'm making you better."

The nails on Seera's hands seemed to jump away from the rest of her hand, darkening as they reshaped, clay-like, into animalistic claws. The skin on her palms didn't sprout fur itself, instead becoming a series of thick, rough pads. The fingers were still long, still vaguely human-shaped, but they were changing into something that could disembowel an armored knight. Seera's toes underwent the same change, spasmically clenching and unclenching as thick pads emerged and claws where born from toenails--if nothing else, it wouldn't hurt so much to walk in the forest anymore.

Seera rolled onto her side in agony as her spine painfully extended itself into an emergent tail--short, stumpy, but powerful. It served to anchor the powerful new muscles swelling up along Seera's arms and legs; beneath the still-spreading fur, her limbs twitched with the insistent beats of a just-completed workout. Seera's breasts heaved, changing little except their covering but still recognizable. Her shape was the same; it was just a more powerfully-muscled version thereof.

The girl could only watch, slack-jawed, as her nose and mouth fused and cracked into the beginnings of a snout. Her ears prickled insistently as they got larger and hairier; her teeth danced about in a scramble to assume needle-sharp points. And then, starting first on her still-lengthening snout, patterns and colors emerged in the fur. It had been of a grayish consistence on fist sprouting, but now there were highlights and dark patches forming, streaks in Seera's newly dark hair, dark patches around her eyes, the tip of her nose as it ground into its final place…there was no mistaking the pattern and coat of a badger.

Most distressing of all, moreso than watching her human body change into something only vaguely human, was that Seera's mind seemed to…recede. She was fully conscious, could feel everything, but one by one her limbs went numb and dead. It wasn't until they started to move of their own accord, when the metamorphosis was complete and her body began pulling itself upright, that Seera realized what had happened.

Not only had she transformed into a badger, but she was now the voice in Badge's head.

"Not bad, eh?" said Badge. The badger-like lips of the new form moved, though the voice that emerged was feminine, like a huskier version of Seera's normal speaking voice. "Let's make a few more changes, shall we?"

With a single swipe, Badge tore the flimsy covering off of their shared body and threw it on the fire. "Wait! Don't do that!" cried Seera, in her own mind.

"Worthless vanity," sniffed Badge. Seera watched as it examined its claws and new form. "I'm disappointed by how much two-legs is left in this husk; if it were up to me there would be plenty more changes. But this will have to do."

"So…is that it? Am I stuck back here forever?" Seera cried.

"No, of course not," said Badge. "Our spirits ebb and flow in their energies just like any others. Yours ebbs, mine flows. Eventually, I'll have to rest and then you will rearrange your body to be all ridiculous and pink once more. But not until I've gotten you a good start on hunting down the people that put us in that position, naturally."

Seera was too exhausted to argue. "So…what now?" was all she could manage.

"Now? Now we hunt."