Ma Grendel's Revenge

(Continued from previous post...)

“What is happening to my body? Why am I reacting to light now like that? Why is my skin crawling with little worms and why am I starting to feel things again? Why the Hell can’t I stay a fucking zombie? It’s so much easier that way!”

“You have taken the easy path for most of your existence. That path has ended.”

“What the fuck does that mean?”

“You lived your life taking the path of least resistance, when faced with choices of between a quick and easy solution, and a hard or challenging one, you inevitably chose the easiest, as most humans tend to do.”

“Don’t piss me off, Tree! I’ve faced plenty of tough choices in my life, took on my share of difficult tasks! I was married, for Christsake! I had two children! I was a soldier and went to war! I was a fucking beat cop in a tough city! Don’t give me any shit about taking the easy damn way out!”

“If you wish to list your littany of life’s choices, I will dissect them for you if you would like.”

“Fucking right, you will. Why don’t you tell me how the easy choice was made when I got married? Her father hated my ass, but we got married anydamnway!”

The Tree actually sighed before it began, the prick, “If you will remember, you were in fact dating more than one young lady at the time. Once you and your future wife discovered that she had gotten pregnant from your dalliances, you made the decision to get married against the wishes of her parents. However, your decision to get married in the way that you did was the easiest solution to the problem of her pregnancy and the dislike of her parents. Rather than try to build a relationship with them, you swept their daughter off her feet and convinced her to marry you, even though you didn’t in fact love her in that way.”

“What the Hell would you know about human relationships? Would you have had us abort the baby? I did the honorable thing!”

“The honorable thing would have been to not be involved with more than one young woman, and to not have engaged in pre-marital sex in the first place!”

“Pah. Like you even know what it is to be human.”

“Indeed, I am but a humble Tree.”

“Humble tree my ass. You’re about the most arrogant thing I’ve met, outside of Drake anyway. In any event, what does this ‘easy path ending’ shit have to do with my present condition? What the Hell is happening to my body now?”

“When you were facing the creature that have called Grendel’s Mother, you took one last, fateful easy way out of a predicament, you surrendered yourself to her Essence...”

“Now wait just a Goddamn minute! The only way I saw to prevent her from winning and taking my body anyway was to sacrifice myself! I figured I was done, but I was determined to take her with me. How was that the easy way out?”

“Had you more fully explored your own abilities before, you would have found the strength to resist her powers of absorption. You made a number of decisions to lead to that conclusion, but nevertheless, that final choice you made, to sacrifice yourself in order to destroy her was merely thelast in a long line of bad choices. Now you must face the consequences of all those bad choices.”

“And just what are those consequences?”

“You have been Called to this exstence to face a much greater foe than that dark spirit. If you had been allowed to be consumed by her at that time, the loss of your potential would have been catastrophic to the Powers that made your existence possible. That is why the Spirit of that blade, Maria Guadelupe de la Paz, was given the authority to try and save you from your own decision.”

“Try, huh? She succeeded, didn’t she? I’m here dammit!”

The damn Tree audibly sighed again, apparently I was testing even the patience of a tree, go figure. “There are limits to all Powers, even those who have chosen to use you as their agent. The attempt to free you from her clutches was not entirely successful. A part of that dark spirit, a very small part at this time, remains within you, looking to grow and take root.”

“You mean she’s not gone, not destroyed, or whatever you call it when a spirit is killed?”

“No, not entirely. Just as you had within you the ability to plant my Seed, she has left her own seed deep within you. If allowed to grow in power and mature, it will take you over as surely as she did in the first place.”

“What the Hell!? Can I get rid of this damn Seed? I don’t want whatever it is!”

Somehow, I sensed a damn ironic smile from the Tree in its next words, “That is what I meant when I said your path of easy choices has come to an end. The easy path in this set of choices will lead you down a path of darkness and destruction that no Power can redeem you from, only you have the power to avert that. But it will not be easy, nor will it end anytime soon. You must learn to master your own Will and learn the skills you will need to control and reduce the influence of the Dark Seed within you. Failure to do so will result in the unleashing of a monster that will be far more dangerous, and far more powerful than Grendel ever was.”

“Fuck me.”

“That is one way of describing your situation, yes.”

“OK, smartass, where do I start? How do I take control of what is happening in my body?”

“The Dark Seed within you will always look to increase your dependence on its abilities. It will heal your wounds, it will restore things that have been lost to you until now...”

“You mean like feelings of pain and pleasure?”

“Yes.”

(To be continued...)