Divine by Blood PC Cast

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.Faintly, she could see his spectral form.“Help me,” she moaned.The beating drums were getting louder.Within the resonant sound, she could now hear chanting, though she could not make out the words.Pryderi’s form flickered and, with a horror that mirrored the pain that threatened to tear apart her body, she watched his beautiful face ripple and reform.His sensuous mouth was seared shut.His nose became a grotesque hole.His eyes were no longer smiling and kind.They glowed with an inhuman yel ow light.Then, before she could take another sobbing breath, the apparition changed again.The eyes became dark, empty caverns and the mouth ripped open to show bloody fangs and a slavering maw.Rhiannon screamed in fear and rage and pain.The drumbeat and chanting got louder and closer.Pryderi’s image shifted and he was, once more, the inhumanly beautiful god, only this time he was barely visible.I cannot always be beautiful, even for you, Precious One.“Are you leaving me?” she cried as the terrible pushing urge abated for a moment.Though his changing visage terrified her, she was even more afraid to face birth alone.Those who approach are forcing me to leave.I cannot battle them tonight.I do not have the strength in this world.Then his eyes blazed into hers and his body almost solidified.Rhiannon MacCal an, I have sought you for decades.I have watched your unhappiness multiply as you were shackled to Epona.You must make your choice now, Rhiannon! You have seen al of my forms.Wil you renounce the Goddess and give yourself to me as my priestess, my Chosen and Incarnate?Rhiannon felt light-headed with pain and fear.Her eyes flicked wildly around the grove, searching for some sign of Epona, but she saw nothing of her divine light.She had been abandoned to the darkness—a darkness that had been pursuing her for years.What choice did she have? She could not imagine existing were she not the Chosen of a deity.How would she live if she did not have the power such status afforded her? But even as she made her decision, Rhiannon could not bring herself to openly renounce Epona.She would accept Pryderi.That would have to be enough for the god.“Yes.I wil stil give myself to you,” she said faintly.And your daughter? Do you pledge your daughter to me as wel ?Rhiannon rejected the warning that whispered through her soul.“I give—”Her words were broken off by the high-pitched battle cry of seven tribal Elders as the men entered the grove, tightening a circle around the two oaks.With a roar that made Rhiannon’s heart tremble, Pryderi’s spirit dissolved into the shadows.Pain bowed her body again and al Rhiannon knew was that she must push.Then strong hands were supporting her.She gasped and opened her eyes.The man was ancient.His face was deeply furrowed and his long hair was white.There was an eagle feather tied within its length.His eyes…Rhiannon focused on the kindness in his brown eyes.“Help me,” she whispered.“We are here.The darkness is gone.It is safe for your child to enter the world now.”Rhiannon gripped the stranger’s hands.She pushed with everything within her pain-racked body.Then to the beat of the ancient drums her daughter slid from her womb.And as she was born, it was Epona and not Pryderi to whom Rhiannon cried.2T he old man used his knife to cut the cord that linked daughter to mother.Then he wrapped the infant in a home-woven blanket and gave her to Rhiannon.When she looked into her daughter’s eyes, it seemed to Rhiannon that the world shifted irrevocably.Deep within her soul she felt the change.She had never seen anything so miraculous.She hadn’t felt like this ever before in her life.Not when she’d first heard Epona’s voice—not when she’d experienced for the first time the power of being a Goddess’s Chosen—and not when she’d seen Pryderi’s terrible beauty.This, Rhiannon thought with wonder, touching her daughter’s impossibly soft cheek, is true magic.Another round of contractions racked her, and Rhiannon gasped.She held her child close to her breast and tried to concentrate on nothing but her while she expel ed the afterbirth.Somewhere Rhiannon heard the old man cal ing orders to another, and understood the urgency in his voice [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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