“Our hands are not our own. Our hands are the hands which serve Holy Mazana.”

“All glory to Holy Mazana. May our hands perform your divine work.”

“Our tongues are not our own. Our tongues are the tongues which give voice to Holy Mazna.”

“All glory to Holy Mazana. May our tongues speak only your divine words.”

“Our eyes are not our own. Our eyes are the eyes which watch the world for Holy Mazana.”

“All glory to Holy Mazana. May our eyes keep watch for your enemies, always and everywhere, till Garden’s End.”

“Till Garden’s End. Amen.”

– The Recitation of Unity spoken at every service to the “divine tree”.

I wasn’t sure what I’d reached out to and I didn’t care what dark power I’d opened myself to. Not in that moment. What was happening to Pulia, my classmate who should have been my role model, was an abomination. It wasn’t just that it shouldn’t be happening. It should have been impossible. It shouldn’t ever have been a part of this or any other world. It was wrong, and the power that I’d called into myself through rage and fear was more than happy to destroy it.

The power took the form of flames, because what else could it be, and the flame was merciless.

It was gleeful.

It raged and hated with an abandon that pushed the entire class away.

Against the power of the Holy Tree it should have been nothing more than a dying candle spark. I should have been nothing more. Just a flickering, insignificant wisp, powerless to even be noticed by something so vast and eternal and godly.

But that wasn’t the story the flame told itself.

The flame didn’t care about how weak it was. It simply burned.

For all the roaring madness at the heart of it though, it didn’t burn out of control. It wasn’t wanton destruction. It had a purpose and a focus. Its searing heat devoured the vines and branches which were breaking Pulia. Its maw of blistering fire opened wide and tore the warped projection of Holy Mazana first into pieces and then into ash.

But it never touched Pulia.

The flames were rage against what was being done to her. To injure her further was unthinkable.

It felt like we baked under the glare of the flames heat for hours but in real time I’m sure it was less than a minute before they subsided leaving Pulia fractured and crumpled on the ground but free at last.

Once again, someone with more sense than me – Delia, I had at least enough awareness this time to notice who it was – commanded us, “She’s free! Healing! Now!”

That was all that almost two dozen Aspiring Ministers needed. We knew how to heal. We were good at it. And Pulia was one of us.

The damage she’d sustained was considerable, but the restorative power that over twenty healers can bring to bear when we do not care about exhausting ourselves was frankly as frightening as the flames had been.

Pulia wasn’t just restored to health. We raised her up in a column of verdant light, pouring so much rejuvenation into her that she literally glowed for a moment.

And then we brought her down to rest.

Delia was there to hold Pulia as Pulia descended and we turned from invoking our gifts to fussing over our formerly injured classmate to make sure we didn’t need to hit her with even more healing.

We did not. She was fine.

Well, except for the part where she was sobbing uncontrollably into Delia’s shoulder.

We’d healed her body. She was in perfect health, probably better than when she’d walked into class in fact.

Healing a body and healing a mind are very different things though. Magic could restore bones and muscle, could close wounds and restore lost blood. Taking away memories however? If there was magic for that, our instructors had never breathed a whisper of it and Holy Mazana had never gifted any of us with anything even vaguely in that domain.

One of the few wise choices they ever made.

Thanking my demon was impossible. Demons didn’t want our thanks, only our destruction.

But I was still grateful. I shouldn’t have been. Using that power had definitely damned me. But I was already damned, and it had saved Pulia, so…

So I didn’t care. 

It was worth it.

Even thinking that made my stomach tumble end over end.

“We should get back to our seats,” Delia said. “Instructor Garvas will be back with assistance soon and will want to see us in proper order.”

Of course. Of course. Put the mask back on. Be good. Be composed. Everything was okay. We didn’t have to be a problem at all.

I watched as a sea of expression shifted from shock and concern mixed with relief to silent, inoffensive, placidity. It was easy to do. Well, easy for me. I’d spent a lot of time working on my mask. It was simpler to put on that my night linens were.

How did the others manage it so well though? None of them had a lifetime of practice at hiding who they were? Right?

Not an easy thing to talk with someone about.

But why would anyone have needed to hide like me unless they were possessed too?

Did you learn to hide your emotions the moment we met?

Or had I been practicing that already…

Had that been what I’d been taught to do my whole life?

I cast my eyes down, like many of my classmates were doing, adopting a demeanor of prayerful introspection and calm, as ideas I’d always discounted loomed large enough to cast a shadow on all of my memories.

Had I ever known my classmates at all?

Did I know anyone at all?

I’d been focused on making sure no one knew me. Dedicated to carefully monitoring my behavior and reactions. Had I failed to notice the women around me doing the same thing?

An image of my father flashed through my mind. Sitting in prayer. Or was it “prayer”. Did I have any real idea what his thoughts centered on while we were praying together?

My mother seemed so clearly who she presented herself to be. She was so consistent in her demands that we be ‘good Sylvans’ and in her unwavering faith in the Holy Tree and the Tenders.

But she’d had so much longer to practice than I had.

Were they possessed like me? No. I knew when and how I messed up and I’d never seen them make those kinds of mistakes. And it was ridiculously unlikely that they’d have run into a demon like I had. 

They didn’t need to be possessed though. All they needed to be was afraid. Or ‘devout’. We were taught to ‘love and fear’ Holy Mazana and that always seemed strange to me. What was there to fear in the Divine Tree when we loved it and it loved us? It cherished and nurtured us. It kept us safe from the enemies beyond the Thicket Wall. It was what kept our fears at bay, it was what we prayed to for deliverance from all evils. Our devotion was supposed to be based on love.

It was because of our love that we gave our bodies, our hearts, and our lives to the Holy Tree, so that we could be judged a pure and worthy and given shelter under Holy Mazana’s boughs.

Always with the love though, there was fear.

Fear that we wouldn’t be able to give enough. Fear that what was offered would be deemed worthless. Fear that something we did would reveal us as impure to everyone.

Long before I became demon possessed, I’d known that fear. That if I was a bad Sylvan, if I disagreed, or asked to many questions, or failed to be what other people wanted that I would be denied a place in society. Shunned and cast out. 

Being tossed over the Thicket Wall was a physical representation of that but even people who hadn’t committed an offense worthy of that punishment could face others turning away. Could lose the very conditional respect which separated those who had a future and would live well from those who would be at best barely tolerated and even then only if they found some means to be useful to their betters.

My musings on the possible hypocrisy of our entire society was cut short by the return of our instructor, more than a few minutes later, with several other instructors in tow.

He looked stunned to find the class in order (Pulia had managed to compose herself and was seated with her head bowed in ‘deepest prayer’). The other instructors looked both relieved and incredulous, as though seeing our calm serenity made a lie of whatever report they’d heard.

“What happened here?” our instructor asked, looking at the Blessed Circle where he’d probably been expecting to find a girl torn to pieces by the ministry’s newest piece of divine vegetation. 

He hadn’t indicated which of us should answer, so we all dutifully waited to be called on specifically.

Or, the other girls probably did that.

I was wracking my brain for anything I could say other than “I burned a manifestation of the Holy Tree to ash when you ran away like a coward”.

“Delia. Recount.” Why he chose her I couldn’t say for sure but it wouldn’t have surprised me if she’d looked up and made eye contact with him.

“There was a miscast of the True Vision gift. After you left to bring assistance, we moved to use our healing gifts to buy time. Holy Mazana intervened and sent us a gift of Fire which countered the miscast True Vision spell and allowed us to restore the damage which had been sustained with our combined healing gifts. With the crisis past, we returned to our assigned seats and have prayed for guidance while we awaited your return.”

That…that was such a better story than any of the ones I’d been cooking up.

Even better the whole class seemed to be complete agreement with Delia.

It wasn’t that one of us (me) had summoned fire to destroy a spell of nightmare that “Holy Mazana” had granted to Pulia. No, of course not. The casting of the spell had been what was wrong and Holy Mazana had intervened to save us.

Huh. And you’re not buying into that? Will wonders never cease. Maybe “sooner” actually is coming.

 I would be saying a bajillion prayer tonight to make up for today, but for the moment I wasn’t going to care what sort of blasphemies my mind was embracing.

Good.

Which it wasn’t, but for the time being I wasn’t going to argue that.

We’d saved Pulia, and if my being a bad Sylvan had been responsible then…

Then I had no idea what that meant.

“Yes, well, in light of mistakes like these, it seems that none of you are not ready to share in this aspect of Holy Mazana’s grace. You are all dismissed for the day. Leave here and spend the day in prayer and purification so that tomorrow you might be worthy to bear the burden of seeing what must be seen.”

It took us all a moment to understand that we were being given the day off.

It was weird. It was unsettling. It was unprecedented.

Normally if we failed a test (and they didn’t simply expel the failures), they confined us to the ministry’s chapel where we were supervised for at least a few hours of silent prayer. Or a few hours of exaltant hymns (until our voices gave out). 

Letting us go though? Home? Where was the punitive bite to that?

Unsurprisingly, no one waited around to find out.

In calm and orderly formation, we rose and left the classroom, exiting exactly as we would have at the end of the day.

But this time we had hours and hours open to us.

Time without any greater restriction on how we spent it than to seek a greater oneness with Holy Mazana.

The other girls peeled off, heading towards their homes, but I knew what was need to bring me oneness with my deity.

Prayer wasn’t going to help and meditation was waste of time.

I needed action.

I needed to find my Intruder.