Chapter Text
Cold. Cold. Cold-
What?
Macbeth struggled to orient himself as the black murky water muted his senses, making him unable to tell if he was drifting down into the depths or into the open air. Air! How was he breathing down here?
He struggled in the direction he sensed as up and fought harder when light started to pierce his vision in streams of salvation.
When water broke, Macbeth gasped for air and was met with rushing water in his lungs and immediately starting fighting the rush as he clawed his way to the rocky shore, even as his hands bled on the rocks.
"..."
He couldn't speak, couldn't scream. What happened? Where was he? All he could remember was fighting a bloody battle, Banquo... Banquo! Where was his friend, his man in arms? Macbeth glanced side to side with heavy difficulty and tried to recognise the water he had woken to. This... This was the loch that travelled by his castle! One bit of luck then.
He groaned as he crawled onto the shore and took a chance to breathe before he fell to muted terror at his black and writhing body that shook to imitate a horse. He must have been dreaming.
This couldn't be true.
Macbeth fought to scream for help but all that came out was a distraught but powerful neigh of a nightmare horse. He tried to remember the stories his parents had passed down to him of the fair folk... surely this was what he had been cursed as. Cursed! The witches had cursed him! He could only bring back spots of his argument and downfall but he continued to try and remember.
The weird sisters. The hecate. They had met him and Banquo upon a hill and told him of his power to come.
Banquo had warned him but he continued to tred close and demand more, even as the sisters had grown weary and disgruntled by his greed and ambition. Banquo.
He remembers a distant threat he had made and how he had felt as if the world had sucked him whole as a distant scream followed. He remember grimly it was his. What happened to Banquo? Banquo.
The memories were fleeting and his panic rising as he realised he did not remember how a kelpie, the thought of what he had obviously become weighing on the heat-stricken mind, changed to and from their monstrous nature into a human form.
Mother always said they could do it at will, so he must be able to do the same and he tried. He tried and tried. Macbeth was getting frustrated, he was a soldier for christs sake, he should be able to do anything! Even if it was to change back into who he truly is, or was.
He started to think of his wife and friends. Did they know where he was, or what had happened? His worry gnawed at him and began to make him anxious to change and travel to his castle, to be with Lady Macbeth and to check on Banquo.
He needed to.
Macbeths need to be with them took control of him and he started to feel warm inside, as if nothing else mattered. He started to fight his way further onshore as his body shifted and adapted from the black and deadly body of a kelpie into soft and pale flesh that was wrapped in soaked fabric that luckily survived his transformation.
He pushed onto his legs and leaned heavily against a tree to keep himself upright as he gained his bearings. He needed to get to his castle, now. He spotted a looming stone giant hanging onto a wooded outcrop and immediately fixated on the sight. It was home, and it was safety. He would get there no matter who or what.
Macbeth would get there.