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Description
The girl opened her wide silver eyes. They were met by grey skies and a drop of freezing rain.

She flinched and blinked away the water before dragging herself up in the slippery mud. The feel of her cold, sodden clothes clinging to her body was shocking. She was dressed in some kind of shift, which offered no protection from the elements whatsoever. Only the shoulder area was left untouched by the cloudy brown puddle she'd been lying in, the bright white apparently its original colour.

Her bare feet had little purchase on the saturated earth, but eventually she managed to stand, and looked up at the towering black oak doors before her. The imprint around her suggested her body had been thrown from this portal, and the spiked wrought iron bars lining the doors projected a strength that suggested she wouldn't be passing through them again so easily. The whole edifice woke within her an animal terror, an irrepressible desire to flee. It seemed to be clawing up the cliff. She could hear the sound of the sea far below, but there was no way to go but backwards, inland. Black, thick pine forest circled all around, but the dark doors lurked behind her. Gulls wheeled above, their screams sounding like a warning.

She scrabbled through the mud to get away and plunged into the forest and down a slope, rivulets of dirty water chasing her. The wet tree trunks she grabbed to steady herself shed wet bark and slimy creatures, covering her hands in filth. She kept running, even as it became apparent that she wasn't ready for the task, her body weak and unresponsive. The tendrils of the forest whipped her and clawed her, branches catching on her dress, tearing it and pulling it. She was soon aware that she was wearing nothing underneath, she was cold and unprotected. Nevertheless, the rain carried on lashing down, driven by a merciless wind. Her skin was soon torn and grazed, and her wet skin made the blood bloom upon her.

Gradually, the terrifying lightness she felt, almost an intangibility, was replaced by weight and darkness. Writhing shadowy veins crept in at the edge of her vision, her body began to twitch, responding to ghostly signals. Her panicked scramble slowed to a lurching struggle as strange forces pulled at her limbs. The raindrops sizzled on her skin. Eventually it was all she could feel. She headed for the sound of running water before it was drowned out by vicious whispers. She stumbled forth, her mind barely able to reach her body. Soon she'd lost all of her senses. When her strength was entirely drained she toppled forward. There was a splash. She felt the cold water envelop her, and her vision cleared. She saw copious amounts of something inky and repulsive ooze through her skin and diffuse in the river, and then she surfaced, gulping in air. She was shaken by the theft of her body, but taken in aggregate with the fear she already felt she wasn't much more scared than she was before. Something within her understood the situation even if her conscious mind didn't.

She was energised by the water, and began to feel life flow into her. Her chin length silver-blonde hair was flat against her head and dripped onto her shoulders. She clambered up the rocks on the opposing bank, her ragged white shift cleaner but much the worse for wear. She coughed up some water and a startled Avocet burst from the reeds down river and sailed away into the curtains of rain. She decided to follow it, towards the ocean.

The journey took about an hour, and all the while the sky churned and twisted, growing more and more intense until it tore open and thunder spilled out across the forest. The rumble was low, an accompaniment to the pattering rain. At one point the girl came across a disturbing object. A large obsidian orb stood on a plinth in a clearing bare of life, inexplicable and frightening. She hurried on. Occasionally the girl would feel a malicious will apply weight to her, and she would step in the water and watch the black cloud dissipate around her ankles. Soon she arrived at a beach.

The storm was immense, boiling the sky and charring the clouds. Bolts of lightning struck down all over the horizon, and left afterimages glowing behind the girl's eyelids. She approached the sea.

The sea was wrong.

It was calm, small waves lapping pathetically at her toes. The storm raged at its wrongness, its unnatural stillness, imploring a dead thing to live.

From out of the clouds tumbled a small silhouette, darting and spiralling between electric spears in its descent. It resolved from a flickering dot into a beautiful blue-grey swift, which alighted on the girl's shoulder and rubbed it's head against her cheek. She didn't know what to do, and stroked its head gingerly, to which the swift responded with a soft chirrup and a disappointed look at the ground. It took to the air again and headed along the coast, circling back and forth to indicate she should follow. What else could she do? She set off after the swift, and the ground began to rise on her right, growing into cliffs. She waded along the shore, leaving a thin curling trail of ink in the still water, and tried to find reassurance in the caress of the breeze. She stopped at the sight of the black fortress clinging to the cliff side, but the swift came back to her and urged her on. The horrible creeping building just hung there, as if it had emerged from the rock one hellish night.

The swift soared up and landed on the lower layer of the structure, a tapering tail hanging down, ending in a small balcony. The girl wanted to run away as far as possible, but she trusted the swift and had a dim perception that her only purpose as things stood was to enter and unravel what had happened. A gale whipped up around her, kicking white sand into the air. Her shift rippled and her hair ruffled. The wind began to whistle, scouring the rocks, and the girl felt herself picked up as if with a divine hand. She rose into the air and met the gaze of the swift. It gave her a small nod as she was drawn upwards. She felt strangely at home suspended in the ether, and when her bare feet touched the cold black steel of the balcony she was touched by a faint sadness.

The two of them ventured into the dark tail of the awful temple and climbed a spiral staircase. When they at last reached the top they were in a circular hallway, the walls of which were decorated with a mural. Something disturbing pulsed through the black veins of this place, and the air felt thick and claustrophobic. It smelled of incense. As they followed the curving path, a shiny black marble floor which reflected the light of the orange oil lanterns, the girl traced the inner wall with her fingertips and investigated the intricate pictures. She saw a man, a hunter, pierce a bird with black feathered arrows. The bird was picked out in gold and radiated an aura. It appeared to be flaming. Further on, the man netted the extinguished bird and travelled with it to a black gate. The girl knew that gate, it filled her with fear now, as then. She stopped when she came to the next picture. The man bowed in front of a gargantuan black orb, presenting the dead bird for its judgement. Images stirred in her head, of being helpless and alone before that terrible void. Of being split into two. She found the swift staring at the final picture, an avian skeleton burning in a cage. As she studied it, tears began to spill from her eyes, but she couldn't fathom the reason.

The evil whispering from earlier returned on the edge of hearing.

They came across a doorway in the inner wall and stepped inside. At first it was pitch black, and small blue dots seemed to mark out a vast spiral descending into infinity. Eventually it became clear that they were lamps lining a large stairway, and that they had entered a giant shaft. They journeyed down, and as their eyes adjusted a mystical glow became visible, emanating from the bottom of the deep pit. When they neared the bottom, the swift alighted on the stair wall and peered down. The girl joined it and looked over the edge to see the centre of the floor was dominated by the dark sphere. She squeaked with terror, but didn't leave. Pacing around the sphere was a man in a waistcoat, holding aloft a birdcage. A beautiful tern was perched within, stoic and silent. The man glared at it with intensity.

'Perhaps I should have kept it for myself' he said, a cruel smile playing across his lips. 'It'd be too dangerous though, an empty shell. By now it'll have been taken by twisted, hellish things. Full of ravenous, terrible ghosts.'

'You deserve it' he growled. 'I loved you. I really and truly loved you. But you used me. Every full moon, you disappeared. I'm no fool. It took me two years of marriage, but I saw you for what you were. I saw what you were doing. With him.'
He shook the cage, and the tern struggled to stay upright.

'Was I not good to you? We were happy! I'm more than good enough to keep you fulfilled, I did nothing wrong! You destroyed me and you didn't even have a reason!'

The tern cowered, and the swift watched, unblinking. The girl was confused and nervous. Her fingers began to twitch. The whispering in her ears got louder. She had the feeling she was part of this exchange, but couldn't quite decipher it. She edged further down the stairs, hiding behind the hideous gargoyles hunched on the balustrade. From closer up the man looked drawn and ragged. He appeared handsome but for the shadows on his face and the mad look in his eyes.

'I should have been good enough!' he shouted, and flung the cage against a stone altar where it crashed and rolled in a semi-circle, the tern splayed inside in pain. The man approached it once again and crouched, bringing his face right up to the silver bars.

'But I know who he is' he whispered, his eyes wide, a toothy smile splitting his face. 'And you're going to take everything from him the way you took everything from me.'

Suddenly he stood up and slammed the cage onto the altar, switching from insane to grim in an instant. He glared into the tern's terrified eyes.
'Your spirit is caged, your body is being violated by a thousand banished souls, and your lover is going to burn. Because of you.'

He turned his back on the altar and began to whisper to the cloudy obsidian orb in the centre of the room, and the swift leapt into the air. It swooped down and crashed into the cage as the orb awoke, its cold stillness shattered by an orange incandescence, seemingly breaking out of the sphere, smashing layers of murk inside. Soon, it had become a swirling ball of pure bright flame, rich and alive. The swift was desperately pulling at the cage and the tern was flapping it's wings, screeching and panicking. The man leapt at the swift in fury, shouting unintelligibly. He squeezed the bird in his fist, which was being pecked and scratched frantically.

As all of this happened, the girl began to run down the stairs. She knew she needed to stop whatever was happening, and her confusion had mixed with her anger and fear in an overwhelming maelstrom of emotion. The violent whispering in her ears had become screaming. Her body brimmed with rage, it wanted to fight.

The orb shined blindingly and shook the building with an unearthly roar. The altar opened up, revealing the sad skeleton of the phoenix, glowing with heat and spitting sparks. Individual bones began to catch aflame.

The girl reached the floor and charged at the waistcoated man, lunging and tackling him to the ground. The swift sprang free, and conjured a whirlwind in order to extinguish the fire, which remained burning and continued in flaring higher.

One thousand bloodthirsty voices shouted at the girl, telling her to tear at him, to rip him apart. She fought them, she wanted only to free the tern and escape. She tried to reason with the man but the voices spilled out of her mouth, a malicious spew of violence, bile and the awful, empty sound of madness. The voices took her arm and struck him. The voices took her teeth and bit him.

The man didn't recognise her immediately. The girl straddling him, howling and sinking her nails into his face, had eyes of pure black and moved like a thousand separate impulses were trying to pull her in different directions. She'd changed so much, it was shocking. When they first met, she'd been so pure. She'd always worn beautiful white dresses, and her hair had made him think of the last light on the sand of the beach as the sun sets. Her flawless skin was luminous, as if she was glowing from the inside. He'd loved Amelia as soon as he first looked into her silver eyes. They'd glittered when they'd got married that summer in a church on the edge of the forest. They had an oily sheen now as she crushed his skull against the hard marble.

The swift pulled the cage from the flames, and tried ineffectually to open the hatch. The shell of the girl crawled towards them, snarling, and the swift blocked her way, landing in front of her in a futile gesture of protection. The tern in the cage, the spirit, met the girl thing's eyes, and the blackness receded. The voices didn't stop, but the girl's body was her own again, for as long as this clarity lasted. She reached to the cage, and gently unclasped the door. She saw her arms, laced with blood to the elbows, and was silently horrified. The birds perched on the shoulders of the kneeling girl, and nuzzled her. The tern closed its silver eyes and she thought she heard the word 'sorry' before it was lost amongst the demon voices, building in intensity, growing in volume, until they flooded her mind.

The birds fluttered away, leaving the shell girl.

Amelia skimmed low across the waves, the swift flying close by her, wingtip to wingtip. Their souls were entwined, and always would be. The form of a woman was a poor vessel for the sea, and she'd welcomed her freedom every full moon, but when she'd been unable to return to it, the body severed from her spirit, she'd been sorrowful. She was a good person.

The black ritual was a clawing grasp at the reins of the world, but in the end it had freed her from her imprisonment, a punishment for her mercurial nature. Now they would fly together forever, the bonded souls, the sea and the sky.

Amelia's shell wandered the halls, shrouded in shifting shadows. Its movements were wrong, its shape inconsistent.

Once, a pure voice chimed clear through the discordant screams. The shell climbed into the altar cage and curled up with the bones, which hissed and popped and then burst into an infernal tangle. The shadows were obliterated, and all that was left was the glow. The phoenix was reborn in Amelia's body. It climbed unsteadily to its feet, naked and beautiful. It radiated magnificence.

It padded past the orb, which stirred somewhere deep inside. The phoenix girl trailed blazing footsteps. They spread slowly.

As she climbed the spiral stairs, the bottom of the pit filled with licking flames. At its heart the orb was immolated.

She walked through the great oaken doors, which turned to ash and then to nothing, inches from her skin. The temple was eaten away by fire behind her. She closed her eyes as the embers floated in the air.

Description
The girl opened her wide silver eyes. They were met by grey skies and a drop of freezing rain.

She flinched and blinked away the water before dragging herself up in the slippery mud. The feel of her cold, sodden clothes clinging to her body was shocking. She was dressed in some kind of shift, which offered no protection from the elements whatsoever. Only the shoulder area was left untouched by the cloudy brown puddle she'd been lying in, the bright white apparently its original colour.

Her bare feet had little purchase on the saturated earth, but eventually she managed to stand, and looked up at the towering black oak doors before her. The imprint around her suggested her body had been thrown from this portal, and the spiked wrought iron bars lining the doors projected a strength that suggested she wouldn't be passing through them again so easily. The whole edifice woke within her an animal terror, an irrepressible desire to flee. It seemed to be clawing up the cliff. She could hear the sound of the sea far below, but there was no way to go but backwards, inland. Black, thick pine forest circled all around, but the dark doors lurked behind her. Gulls wheeled above, their screams sounding like a warning.

She scrabbled through the mud to get away and plunged into the forest and down a slope, rivulets of dirty water chasing her. The wet tree trunks she grabbed to steady herself shed wet bark and slimy creatures, covering her hands in filth. She kept running, even as it became apparent that she wasn't ready for the task, her body weak and unresponsive. The tendrils of the forest whipped her and clawed her, branches catching on her dress, tearing it and pulling it. She was soon aware that she was wearing nothing underneath, she was cold and unprotected. Nevertheless, the rain carried on lashing down, driven by a merciless wind. Her skin was soon torn and grazed, and her wet skin made the blood bloom upon her.

Gradually, the terrifying lightness she felt, almost an intangibility, was replaced by weight and darkness. Writhing shadowy veins crept in at the edge of her vision, her body began to twitch, responding to ghostly signals. Her panicked scramble slowed to a lurching struggle as strange forces pulled at her limbs. The raindrops sizzled on her skin. Eventually it was all she could feel. She headed for the sound of running water before it was drowned out by vicious whispers. She stumbled forth, her mind barely able to reach her body. Soon she'd lost all of her senses. When her strength was entirely drained she toppled forward. There was a splash. She felt the cold water envelop her, and her vision cleared. She saw copious amounts of something inky and repulsive ooze through her skin and diffuse in the river, and then she surfaced, gulping in air. She was shaken by the theft of her body, but taken in aggregate with the fear she already felt she wasn't much more scared than she was before. Something within her understood the situation even if her conscious mind didn't.

She was energised by the water, and began to feel life flow into her. Her chin length silver-blonde hair was flat against her head and dripped onto her shoulders. She clambered up the rocks on the opposing bank, her ragged white shift cleaner but much the worse for wear. She coughed up some water and a startled Avocet burst from the reeds down river and sailed away into the curtains of rain. She decided to follow it, towards the ocean.

The journey took about an hour, and all the while the sky churned and twisted, growing more and more intense until it tore open and thunder spilled out across the forest. The rumble was low, an accompaniment to the pattering rain. At one point the girl came across a disturbing object. A large obsidian orb stood on a plinth in a clearing bare of life, inexplicable and frightening. She hurried on. Occasionally the girl would feel a malicious will apply weight to her, and she would step in the water and watch the black cloud dissipate around her ankles. Soon she arrived at a beach.

The storm was immense, boiling the sky and charring the clouds. Bolts of lightning struck down all over the horizon, and left afterimages glowing behind the girl's eyelids. She approached the sea.

The sea was wrong.

It was calm, small waves lapping pathetically at her toes. The storm raged at its wrongness, its unnatural stillness, imploring a dead thing to live.

From out of the clouds tumbled a small silhouette, darting and spiralling between electric spears in its descent. It resolved from a flickering dot into a beautiful blue-grey swift, which alighted on the girl's shoulder and rubbed it's head against her cheek. She didn't know what to do, and stroked its head gingerly, to which the swift responded with a soft chirrup and a disappointed look at the ground. It took to the air again and headed along the coast, circling back and forth to indicate she should follow. What else could she do? She set off after the swift, and the ground began to rise on her right, growing into cliffs. She waded along the shore, leaving a thin curling trail of ink in the still water, and tried to find reassurance in the caress of the breeze. She stopped at the sight of the black fortress clinging to the cliff side, but the swift came back to her and urged her on. The horrible creeping building just hung there, as if it had emerged from the rock one hellish night.

The swift soared up and landed on the lower layer of the structure, a tapering tail hanging down, ending in a small balcony. The girl wanted to run away as far as possible, but she trusted the swift and had a dim perception that her only purpose as things stood was to enter and unravel what had happened. A gale whipped up around her, kicking white sand into the air. Her shift rippled and her hair ruffled. The wind began to whistle, scouring the rocks, and the girl felt herself picked up as if with a divine hand. She rose into the air and met the gaze of the swift. It gave her a small nod as she was drawn upwards. She felt strangely at home suspended in the ether, and when her bare feet touched the cold black steel of the balcony she was touched by a faint sadness.

The two of them ventured into the dark tail of the awful temple and climbed a spiral staircase. When they at last reached the top they were in a circular hallway, the walls of which were decorated with a mural. Something disturbing pulsed through the black veins of this place, and the air felt thick and claustrophobic. It smelled of incense. As they followed the curving path, a shiny black marble floor which reflected the light of the orange oil lanterns, the girl traced the inner wall with her fingertips and investigated the intricate pictures. She saw a man, a hunter, pierce a bird with black feathered arrows. The bird was picked out in gold and radiated an aura. It appeared to be flaming. Further on, the man netted the extinguished bird and travelled with it to a black gate. The girl knew that gate, it filled her with fear now, as then. She stopped when she came to the next picture. The man bowed in front of a gargantuan black orb, presenting the dead bird for its judgement. Images stirred in her head, of being helpless and alone before that terrible void. Of being split into two. She found the swift staring at the final picture, an avian skeleton burning in a cage. As she studied it, tears began to spill from her eyes, but she couldn't fathom the reason.

The evil whispering from earlier returned on the edge of hearing.

They came across a doorway in the inner wall and stepped inside. At first it was pitch black, and small blue dots seemed to mark out a vast spiral descending into infinity. Eventually it became clear that they were lamps lining a large stairway, and that they had entered a giant shaft. They journeyed down, and as their eyes adjusted a mystical glow became visible, emanating from the bottom of the deep pit. When they neared the bottom, the swift alighted on the stair wall and peered down. The girl joined it and looked over the edge to see the centre of the floor was dominated by the dark sphere. She squeaked with terror, but didn't leave. Pacing around the sphere was a man in a waistcoat, holding aloft a birdcage. A beautiful tern was perched within, stoic and silent. The man glared at it with intensity.

'Perhaps I should have kept it for myself' he said, a cruel smile playing across his lips. 'It'd be too dangerous though, an empty shell. By now it'll have been taken by twisted, hellish things. Full of ravenous, terrible ghosts.'

'You deserve it' he growled. 'I loved you. I really and truly loved you. But you used me. Every full moon, you disappeared. I'm no fool. It took me two years of marriage, but I saw you for what you were. I saw what you were doing. With him.'
He shook the cage, and the tern struggled to stay upright.

'Was I not good to you? We were happy! I'm more than good enough to keep you fulfilled, I did nothing wrong! You destroyed me and you didn't even have a reason!'

The tern cowered, and the swift watched, unblinking. The girl was confused and nervous. Her fingers began to twitch. The whispering in her ears got louder. She had the feeling she was part of this exchange, but couldn't quite decipher it. She edged further down the stairs, hiding behind the hideous gargoyles hunched on the balustrade. From closer up the man looked drawn and ragged. He appeared handsome but for the shadows on his face and the mad look in his eyes.

'I should have been good enough!' he shouted, and flung the cage against a stone altar where it crashed and rolled in a semi-circle, the tern splayed inside in pain. The man approached it once again and crouched, bringing his face right up to the silver bars.

'But I know who he is' he whispered, his eyes wide, a toothy smile splitting his face. 'And you're going to take everything from him the way you took everything from me.'

Suddenly he stood up and slammed the cage onto the altar, switching from insane to grim in an instant. He glared into the tern's terrified eyes.
'Your spirit is caged, your body is being violated by a thousand banished souls, and your lover is going to burn. Because of you.'

He turned his back on the altar and began to whisper to the cloudy obsidian orb in the centre of the room, and the swift leapt into the air. It swooped down and crashed into the cage as the orb awoke, its cold stillness shattered by an orange incandescence, seemingly breaking out of the sphere, smashing layers of murk inside. Soon, it had become a swirling ball of pure bright flame, rich and alive. The swift was desperately pulling at the cage and the tern was flapping it's wings, screeching and panicking. The man leapt at the swift in fury, shouting unintelligibly. He squeezed the bird in his fist, which was being pecked and scratched frantically.

As all of this happened, the girl began to run down the stairs. She knew she needed to stop whatever was happening, and her confusion had mixed with her anger and fear in an overwhelming maelstrom of emotion. The violent whispering in her ears had become screaming. Her body brimmed with rage, it wanted to fight.

The orb shined blindingly and shook the building with an unearthly roar. The altar opened up, revealing the sad skeleton of the phoenix, glowing with heat and spitting sparks. Individual bones began to catch aflame.

The girl reached the floor and charged at the waistcoated man, lunging and tackling him to the ground. The swift sprang free, and conjured a whirlwind in order to extinguish the fire, which remained burning and continued in flaring higher.

One thousand bloodthirsty voices shouted at the girl, telling her to tear at him, to rip him apart. She fought them, she wanted only to free the tern and escape. She tried to reason with the man but the voices spilled out of her mouth, a malicious spew of violence, bile and the awful, empty sound of madness. The voices took her arm and struck him. The voices took her teeth and bit him.

The man didn't recognise her immediately. The girl straddling him, howling and sinking her nails into his face, had eyes of pure black and moved like a thousand separate impulses were trying to pull her in different directions. She'd changed so much, it was shocking. When they first met, she'd been so pure. She'd always worn beautiful white dresses, and her hair had made him think of the last light on the sand of the beach as the sun sets. Her flawless skin was luminous, as if she was glowing from the inside. He'd loved Amelia as soon as he first looked into her silver eyes. They'd glittered when they'd got married that summer in a church on the edge of the forest. They had an oily sheen now as she crushed his skull against the hard marble.

The swift pulled the cage from the flames, and tried ineffectually to open the hatch. The shell of the girl crawled towards them, snarling, and the swift blocked her way, landing in front of her in a futile gesture of protection. The tern in the cage, the spirit, met the girl thing's eyes, and the blackness receded. The voices didn't stop, but the girl's body was her own again, for as long as this clarity lasted. She reached to the cage, and gently unclasped the door. She saw her arms, laced with blood to the elbows, and was silently horrified. The birds perched on the shoulders of the kneeling girl, and nuzzled her. The tern closed its silver eyes and she thought she heard the word 'sorry' before it was lost amongst the demon voices, building in intensity, growing in volume, until they flooded her mind.

The birds fluttered away, leaving the shell girl.

Amelia skimmed low across the waves, the swift flying close by her, wingtip to wingtip. Their souls were entwined, and always would be. The form of a woman was a poor vessel for the sea, and she'd welcomed her freedom every full moon, but when she'd been unable to return to it, the body severed from her spirit, she'd been sorrowful. She was a good person.

The black ritual was a clawing grasp at the reins of the world, but in the end it had freed her from her imprisonment, a punishment for her mercurial nature. Now they would fly together forever, the bonded souls, the sea and the sky.

Amelia's shell wandered the halls, shrouded in shifting shadows. Its movements were wrong, its shape inconsistent.

Once, a pure voice chimed clear through the discordant screams. The shell climbed into the altar cage and curled up with the bones, which hissed and popped and then burst into an infernal tangle. The shadows were obliterated, and all that was left was the glow. The phoenix was reborn in Amelia's body. It climbed unsteadily to its feet, naked and beautiful. It radiated magnificence.

It padded past the orb, which stirred somewhere deep inside. The phoenix girl trailed blazing footsteps. They spread slowly.

As she climbed the spiral stairs, the bottom of the pit filled with licking flames. At its heart the orb was immolated.

She walked through the great oaken doors, which turned to ash and then to nothing, inches from her skin. The temple was eaten away by fire behind her. She closed her eyes as the embers floated in the air.