Her hands shook as she held up the small leather pouch. Everyone’s eyes were upon her, watching, waiting. Their hopes all hinged on her. The relic that hummed in the leather pouch. Her ability to perform this ritual. It had not been performed in their tribe – had not been needed – for generations. The ritual itself had only survived in their tribal legends, and passed down as hearsay by the oracles before her.
Soft murmurs of appreciation rippled through the gathered watchers as she pulled the relic from its sacred pouch. The bones gleamed in the moonlight as she held them out in her palm. The pale light caught the relief of the rune carvings on the smooth, pale surface.
She closed her eyes, squeezing them shut with nerves. Breathing deeply, she inhaled the scent of the forest around her. The warmth of the dirt. The crispness of the vibrant moss growing along the trees. She gathered strength from the earth, from nature. The steadiness of it calmed her nerves. The earth had been here for a thousand-thousand years, long before them, and it would remain long after them, regardless of the outcome of their plight. While some would find that discouraging, perhaps hopeless, she did not. It as the opposite; a reassuring steadfastness that calmed her nerves.
Thrusting the small bundle of bones and herbs towards the sky, she began to recite the words of the ritual. She spoke slowly, with careful annunciation. There could be no mistakes, or misspoken syllables, or who knew what she would draw forth from the beyond.
The energy was building in the small grove; the murmurs grew quiet, her kin could feel it, too. It felt like her bones were vibrating; her bones, not the relic bones. Pressure was building in her chest as the relics in her up-stretched hands began to emit a pale, glowing light. A humming echoed through the trees as a pale, smokey mist began to swirl upwards from the ground beneath her feet.
Trees began to groan and dark sky above grew somehow darker. The smokey mist swirling around her began to change from the sparkling white to a beautiful array of colors. As the words flowed out of her, faster now, she watched as the mist looked as though she were engulfed in the nightly auroras that normally resided in the skies above on the coldest of nights.
Her voice faltered in her awe of the colors. Her heart stuttered, realizing what she had done. That briefest of pause was enough for something… anything else… to come through. The energy in the forest changed immediately. The swirls around her went from bright and colorful, to inky and black. The humming became oppressive and painful against her ears, pressing in on her ear drums in the most unpleasant manner.
Word after word that flowed from her lips was wrong; annunciation clipped, vowels too long. Fear wrapped itself around her like an unwelcome lover. But she could not stop. She was no longer in control. Already, another force entirely was driving her, and it was bending her to its will. The ground began to shake beneath them all, cracks snaking along the ground as though there had been drought.
The ground between her and her kin split open with a violent hiss. As something rose up from the abyss, black smoke rose into the air, consuming all light. The shape was monstrously huge, and black like nothing she had every seen. Where the creature was forming, it was as though she were staring into the void, nothing. No light. No color. No texture. No form. There was nothing but fear. And horror. And death.
She strained to look past it, to tell her kinsmen to run.
Inktober 2026, Prompt #2: RELIC🧡🖤👻🎃
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