Opalina (prime)/The Hands That Were No Longer Mine
The Hands That Were No Longer Mine
Title: The Hands That Were No Longer Mine
Author: Opalina Jalcon
From the journals of Opalina Jalcon- 2002
The first thing it stole was my smile.
Not the expression itself—that still rested upon my face—but the warmth behind it. I watched Blizzerdd through eyes that no longer belonged entirely to me, and a cold smile answered him before I had chosen one. Somewhere inside myself I screamed.
No... don't smile like that.
No one could hear me.
The marketplace carried on as it always had. Friends laughed. Clerics healed the wounded. Bards sang their endless songs. It should have been another ordinary evening in Icemule.
Instead, I felt something ancient awaken beneath my skin.
The world dulled around me as my vision turned gray. Voices became muffled, as though I were sinking beneath frozen water. I tried to speak, but another voice rose through mine—a language I had never learned, words too old for living mouths.
My lips moved.
My tongue obeyed.
But they were no longer mine.
I heard frightened murmurs ripple through the crowd.
"Opalina..."
Someone had noticed.
I wanted to tell them to run.
Instead, my mouth declared, "Let those who do not fear the Council, remember this night."
The words echoed across the snow.
I felt every face turn toward me.
I didn't say that.
The thought pounded against the inside of my skull until I forced the words free.
"That wasn't me!"
Panic spread faster than winter wind.
Khirdahn shouted that I was possessed. Others called for clerics. I saw weapons drawn—not against monsters lurking beyond the gates—but against me.
They weren't wrong.
There was a monster standing before them.
It simply happened to be wearing my face.
Then my knees bent of their own accord.
I watched my own hands reach toward the snow.
Slowly...
Carefully...
Deliberately...
They traced symbols into the frozen ground.
I had no idea what I was drawing.
The instant the final line was carved, the world seemed to hold its breath.
The snow bled.
Crimson spread beneath my fingers, soaking white drifts in impossible color while the earth pulsed with decay.
Gasps erupted around me.
Someone screamed for an exorcism.
Another shouted to subdue me.
I couldn't even blame them.
I wanted someone to stop me too.
I covered the bleeding snow with my hand as if hiding it would somehow undo what had happened.
It didn't.
The ground answered the runes anyway.
My body began chanting louder.
My arms rose into the air, urging the earth onward like some dreadful conductor leading an orchestra of death.
Every movement filled me with horror.
Please stop...
Please...
Nothing listened.
Then Lady Morgaine appeared.
Even through the fog clouding my mind, her voice reached me.
"Fight the essence, dear."
Fight it.
I clung to those words as though they were a rope thrown into dark water.
"I will not be used!" I cried.
The declaration tore itself from somewhere deep inside me.
"To destroy the town!"
Those words were mine.
Not the creature's.
Mine.
Morgaine stayed beside me when many others would have fled. She wrapped me in magic, not chains. Around us people whispered of black ice wraiths, of possessed relics, of powers older than memory itself.
She never stopped believing I was still inside.
"It was the essence," she told me gently.
I nearly collapsed with relief.
Someone believed me.
Someone could still see Opalina.
Yet the darkness remained.
Every few moments I felt it watching through my own eyes.
Waiting.
Measuring.
Learning.
Then it whispered.
Not aloud.
Inside my soul.
"Your powers grow... ye will indeed be of much use very soon."
Ice spread through my heart.
I answered before fear could silence me.
"I don't want to be of use to you!"
The words came out as a scream.
Around me everyone discussed the Staff. Some believed it could destroy the evil controlling us. Others feared anyone possessed might hand the weapon directly to our enemy.
I barely heard them.
I knew only one thing.
Whatever lived inside me wanted that Staff.
It wanted all of us.
When Hugemen wrapped me in another reassuring embrace, I realized how desperately I needed something simple—someone treating me like a frightened friend instead of a cursed vessel.
I whispered that I was confused.
He admitted he was too.
For one tiny moment, that honesty gave me strength.
I wasn't facing this alone.
Later, after the terror had eased enough for words to return, I tried to explain.
"It wasn't me."
"I wasn't doing those things."
"It was like a shadow."
"It can't be me."
Even as I said them, I wondered if I truly believed it.
The greatest cruelty of possession is not losing control.
It is wondering afterward whether any small part of those terrible acts belonged to you.
I still don't know.
But I remember one certainty stronger than the whisper, stronger than the runes, stronger even than the bleeding snow.
As long as I could still cry...
As long as I could still beg the darkness to leave my town...
As long as I could still choose compassion over despair...
The lich had not won.
It had borrowed my hands.
It had stolen my voice.
But it never claimed my heart.