Day 1.2: Humans are difficult to mind control

An eerie sound pierced the stillness, waking me up.

It began as a whisper, a faint ripple in the dark, growing into a serene melody so exquisite it seemed to weave itself into the fabric of my being. Heavenly humming, absolutely captivating, alluring, perfect. Each note shimmered across me, pulling me from the depths of unconsciousness with an irresistible grace.

My eyes shot open as the song enveloped me, its beauty so profound it bordered on pain.

I attempted to locate the source of the hum in the gloom.

Yellow-gold eyes slowly emerged from the darkness, unblinking and predatory.

I swallowed nervously.

A ray of violet moonlight cut through the clouds above and my breath caught in my throat as an inhuman silhouette emerged from the shadows, a massive, monstrous fusion of human, dog and giant bird. Its feathers glinted with an oily sheen of midnight hues, sparkling with green shimmers atop lithe, elongated limbs of a humanoid figure. Large talons clicked softly against the frozen ground as it approached and began to circle the boundary of my newfound domain.

The monster’s wolf-like dark head tilted. Its wingspan must have stretched four meters at least, each feather ending in a knife-like point.

Mad, bubbling laughter interrupted the hum.

Then the jet-black canine face slowly folded into itself… becoming human and distinctly female. Her lips opened.

“Come, sweet child of Zemlya’s embrace, Flesh so tender, soul misplaced. Step beyond your ring of earth, Join me, no longer be alone.”

The words of her song struck me like a blade pressed to my throat. Curves of breasts revealed themselves between black and emerald feathers.

Pretty. She’s so pretty. The prettiest face I’ve seen in my entire life.Maybe I should go say hello and represent the human race? Attempt first contact biz?No. Wait. Focus. Predator! DANGER!!! Grandhilda had mentioned night predators!

“Feathers soft shall cradle ye, Golden eyes shall set ye free. Why dost ye resist my call? Earthbound one, so frail, so small.”

She sang on, drawing all my attention towards her excessively captivating voice and face.

The Biochemist-me desperately attempted to analyse the creature to figure out a defense against the alluring song flooding my system.

Her features resembled a… wolf and a peregrine falcon, apex predators with specialized killing adaptations. Her primary wing feathers had the asymmetrical structure common to birds of prey, designed for swift, silent diving attacks. The oily sheen on her feathers suggested the presence of specialized preen gland secretions, perhaps water-repellent like those of waterfowl.Her proportions challenged my understanding of biomechanics. The creature’s respiratory system must be extraordinary as there was no visible panting despite the obvious muscle mass that would require tremendous oxygen exchange. Perhaps she possessed an enhanced avian air sac system? The golden eyes showed no tapetum lucidum reflection. Instead, they emanated a consistent, hypnotic golden glow from within.

Focusing on these details seemed to help anchor my racing mind, giving me something concrete to cling to beyond the pull of her voice.

“Taste the sky, the wind, the flame, Speak to me, whisper mine name. Sirin waits, her heart alight, Come, my sweet, into the night.”

‘The night’ word stretched on unnaturally, opera-style doing something unwholesome to my head, scrambling my thoughts.SIRIN! FUCK! This was definitely the monster Grandhilda mentioned, a dangerous creature that ate witches and heroes!

The monstress, twice as tall as a man, stalked the perimeter of my glade, massive, star-like wings folding and unfolding with a rustle like wind through dead leaves.

The song definitely wasn’t simple animal vocalization nor parroting of sound… The lyrics were structured, with meter and rhyme schemes. They contained abstract concepts and emotional manipulation. The song demonstrated syntax, semantics, and rhetorical devices.Damn it, why were the most attractive women always the most manipulative?More echoing, wild laughter. Yep, she was definitely planning to snack on me.

I tried to plug my ears with my fingers but that didn’t block the sound in the slightest. Sinking deeper into excessively rational analysis seemed to be the only thing preventing me from abandoning the safety of my domain to rush head-first into her claws.

“Moonlight dances on pale skin, Forest witch, let me in. Cross the boundary of your fear, My song will dry each bitter tear.”

The next stanza struck me, somehow tugging at my limbs, urging me to rise, to step forward, to surrender to her warm, alien, feathery embrace.

I rapidly mentally catalogued her features, assigning tentative classifications as if preparing a scientific paper:

Homo avianthropus sirinium. Order: predatory. Family: avoid-at-all-costs.What sort of neural structures could generate song-style communication?Birds on Earth possessed remarkable intelligence; corvids could use tools and recognize themselves in mirrors even though their neural tissue was organized very differently from that of mammals. Some birds like parrots could easily emulate human speech and random noises.How did a being like her develop? What evolutionary processes shaped this surreal combination of humanoid, canid and avian traits?

“Through veils of mist and shadow deep, I’ll guard your soul while you sleep. Why resist my golden call? When stars above begin to fall?”

Yaga Grandhilda’s warning echoed in my mind: “Remain in your glade and do not move, do not breathe.”

How was I supposed to not breathe?! Breathing was essential to human life? Was breathing optional for witches? Wait… was it?

I stopped breathing.

My body obeyed, halting in place as though I were one of the barren trees rooted to this patch of frozen earth. The air grew cold and heavy, pressing against my lungs, but I clenched my jaw and held my breath, willing myself to become as still as possible.

The Sirin’s golden, glowing eyes narrowed, the song rising in pitch.

“I’ve watched you from my realm divine, Your solitude echoes mine. Feathers of silk shall be your bed, My wings… a shelter for your head.”

How nice, she promised an escape from my current state of unfortunate affairs of lying on the ground like a sack of expired potatoes.

“Ancient powersss course through my veins, I offer freedom from your chains… Forests whisper of my might, Creatures tremble at my sight.”

Was her song operating on specific neurochemical pathways… Stimulating my dopamine and oxytocin release while suppressing amygdala activity to reduce fear? Sort of like… how the Toxoplasma gondii parasite made mice attracted to cat urine? Could this be the same principle, except weaponized and conscious, projected through unknown means?

My finger dug into the icy soil.

This is my domain, my sanctuary! I will not be lured out of it like some idiot prey!I am a HUMAN! Part of an ancient lineage that had been outwitting and hunting predators four times their weight since their homeworld was covered in frost!

“Leave behind your forest throne, No longer shall you walk alone. My talons gentle on your face, My kiss shall leave eternal grace.”

The words dripped with sweetness masking the shark-like teeth underneath. There was madness in her eyes. She was definitely on the wrong side of the “hot-crazy” dividing line.

“Surrender to my Sirin song, Come to where you have belonged all along…”

The song seemed to tighten around my neck like an inescapable noose.

My lungs screamed for breath, body trembling from the effort of staying still. I held on, rooted to the earth.

I should have been on the verge of passing out, and yet I was not.

If only my brain would take the hint that apparently air was optional and stop inflicting pain in an effort to force me to breathe and us both to be eaten by a towering bird lady.

She stepped closer, talons sinking deeper into the snow-crusted ground.

“Please?” She howled, an edge of lonely desperation creeping into her voice. “Come on, come on, COME ON! LEAVE THAT CIRCLE!”

I realized that her eyes were looking past me into the darkness.

She couldn’t actually see me… she was hunting blindly, sensing the magical signature of my domain but somehow completely unable to pinpoint my exact location! Yes! The domain’s protection was working!

“Just come home!”

The song cut off with a deafening howl cascading into more mad laughter.

Then the Sirin cocked her head, panting and listening intently. With unnatural speed, she darted to another side of my domain.

“You are here… somewhere nearby,” she uttered. “I feel your soul in the Astral abyss… a fragile, young life bound to the earth by unplottable chains of the dead.”

She prowled closer to the edge of my domain, head tilting in a distinctly canine-like manner.

“Yesss,” she crooned softly, “You are Grandhilda’s handiwork. The old crone has created another witch… here amidst the ruins of Svalbard.” She let out a mad, bird-click laughter. “How desperate she must be… to chain so many pradavarian souls forevermore to this dead, cursed town.”

The Sirin’s knowledge of the Yaga was… concerning.

Then she resumed her humming, not bothering with any lyrics, the human face plastered atop the massive, canine-avian monstrous frame now looking irate and tired.

I fought to analyse the nature of her hypnotism as it once again attempted to hijack my body.

The song somehow bypassed neural pathways, targeting deeper, more primitive brain structures.

Mundane hypnosis typically required a receptive subject, operating through suggestion, not compulsion. Unlike it, the Sirin’s hum was deviously invasive, almost like it was somehow rewriting my neural connections in real time.

I drew on my knowledge of neurochemistry to produce countermeasures.

Hypnosis states involved shifts in brainwave patterns, typically from beta to alpha or theta frequencies.

I tried to increase beta wave activity, the state of alertness aka focused consciousness.

I began to silently perform complex calculations, deriving biochemical equations, mentally balancing oxidation-reduction reactions… basically doing anything and everything to keep my prefrontal cortex engaged and dominant over the limbic system.

I mentally recited the Krebs cycle, tracing each metabolic step: citrate to isocitrate to α-ketoglutarate. Then I recalled protein folding simulations, visualizing complex three-dimensional structures assembling from amino acid chains.

With an unexpected lurch that made me flinch inwardly, the Sirin grabbed a rock from the ground with her lanky, clawed hand and hurled it across my domain. It thrummed through the air, passing mere inches from my head and struck a distant tree with a loud thunk.

I didn’t move, didn’t breathe, didn’t blink.

“Clever,” she tutted. “But how long can you hide from me, little witch?”

The alluring humming intensified as she circled my domain.

I continued my silent battle against her seductive influence by recalling studies on auditory entrainment.

The brain naturally synchronized with external rhythmic stimuli, a phenomenon called ‘frequency following response’. If her music created patterns designed to override my neural oscillations, entraining my brainwaves with the rhythm of her hum… Then, to counter such I could create an irregular mental pattern!

I started randomly jumping between memories of chemical formulas, snippets of scientific papers and YouTube Kids tunes like “Wheels on the bus go round and round”.

The Sirin started to circle faster, humming louder and angrier.

As I refused to breathe, my lungs burned with increasing agony, oxygen deprivation making my diaphragm spasm.

Was the Sirin playing a waiting game?

She paused the circling, large, fluffy, dark canine ears swaying left and right like radar dishes.

The night predator’s frustrations mounted visibly. Sparkly-green feathers bristled, rising along her body like hackles.

With a thrust of her massive wings, she suddenly launched herself into the air, leaping above my domain. Her shadow passed over me, the downdraft of wings sending icy air across my face.

I felt my consciousness wavering, the edge of a blackout creeping in.

With another angry snarl, the Sirin resumed her hum.

As my brain once again began to melt into submission, I came up with yet another approach to fight her allure: cognitive dissonance.

If there was one thing besides relentless curiosity that humans excelled at, it was holding onto multiple conflicting beliefs at once. Science and religion. Love and hate. Desire and abstinence.

Hypnotic suggestions worked best when aligned with existing beliefs or desires. I started to deliberately think as many contradictory thoughts as possible.

I yearned for absolute safety, yet craved maximum possible wanderlust. I wanted warmth but embraced the cold of winter as a challenge. I projected extreme rationality and calm yet was terrified of my current predicament in an alien world.

The array of my mental techniques seemed to help form a layered, mental fortress defence against the Sirin’s supernatural lure. The influence of her voice weakened, unable to find purchase in my deliberately fragmented thoughts.

“You’ll die… freeze alone,” she let out. “I order you to leave your domain.”

I didn’t move.

“PLEASE!” The plea was a wild, ear-piercing screech. Gargantuan, green-black wings snapped open, beating furiously against the air.

“Arghhhhh!”

Nope. Not a chance, bird lady.

Snow and ash exploded in a blinding flurry, gusts battering my face.

The Sirin’s silhouette blurred, feathers whipping like dark blades, golden eyes flashing with a manic fury. She lunged forward, talons raking the air right above me.

For a moment, she simply stared past me.

“Why…” She caught herself, her chest heaving, wings sagging at half-mast. “Why hasn’t she come out? Prey do not… do not out-wait me. Nothing, no-one out-waits me!”

Then, she composed herself. Her feathers smoothed, her posture straightening to its full, imposing height.

“Tonight… I shall grant you respite,” she uttered. “But know this, little witch, I have tasted the Astral echo of your earthly prison, found the edge of your domain! I feel its pulse. I will not stop until I… free you!”

A thin trickle of ichor-like, green-gold fluid dripped from the corner of her mouth, glimmering with an unnatural phosphorescence.

Was it saliva? Venom? Some magical substance produced in anticipation of feeding?

The ichor failed to drop to the ground, simply converging into a glowing sphere of fluid, hovering in the air and defying gravity.

She extended her hand, dragging a taloned finger through the fluid, then used it to draw a complex symbol in the air. The mark too hung suspended, glowing with a sickly light that pulsed and undulated between gold and green.

“I mark you as mine,” she stated, the symbol suddenly shooting forward, stopping at the boundary of my domain where it hovered, rotating slowly. “This hex is thus imprinted upon your domain and will grow in power with each day… until I am able to see you. My millennia-old tree versus your less-than-a-day old domain. Who do you think will win?” She smirked deviously.

I kept still, somehow still not breathing.

Why was she telling me all of this? Did my fear or belief in her words increase the potency of her magic or was something else at play here?

“The Winter brings long nights,” she continued, eyes sweeping the area, searching in vain for any sign of me. “And in the coldest hours of darkness, your will shall falter. Loneliness and misery will be your undoing… And I will be waiting, patient as the stars. Singing until you submit.”

She lowered her voice, as if sharing a secret. “Your maker Grandhilda is a fool, made a terrible mistake in permitting you to root here. This village is cursed by flames aligned with death. Over time your glade will succumb to such and perish. You are doomed by your maker to suffering, little witch. I will not stay here all night, for the air here is vile and claws at my breath.”

Her reference to cursed flames… presumably ones left by the dragon, was concerning.

The Sirin spread her magnificent wings to their full span, the moonlight catching each feather in a breathtaking display.

“Farewell for now, little prisoner of Zemlya. Dream of me. Dream of flight. Dream of the moment when your will breaks, and you step beyond your circle to join me in the endless night.”

Her face stretched out, became canine.

Then, with a final, resentful, inhuman wail, she thrust her wings downward, launching herself into the sky. The force of her ascent sent a shockwave rippling through the glade, bending the skeletal trees and scattering snowflakes about.

The floating hexagram she left hovering in place began to fade away, dissolving into the air.

As her silhouette disappeared into the night sky, I remained still for several more minutes, wary of a potential feint. Only when I was certain she had truly departed did I finally allow myself to breathe.

The first breath was agony, like inhaling broken glass. My lungs spasmed, desperate to compensate for the extended oxygen deprivation. My vision pulsed with each frantic heartbeat, black to red to normal and back again.

I retched violently, my diaphragm cramping from the sudden exertion after prolonged tension. Flecks of blood appeared in my spittle.

Shit, had I damaged something internally?

I reflected on what had just occurred.

I might have succumbed if she had sounded more rational. Thankfully, the local education system didn’t seem to teach crazy bird women how to sound like they weren’t actually planning on eating your liver.

Hmm.

My understanding of human psychology had actually worked against an overtly supernatural attack. If hypnotic suggestion could be countered with neuroscientific principles, what other “magic” might be understood and potentially defended against through rational analysis?

I pressed my trembling hand against my chest, feeling my heart going well over 180 beats per minute.

Tachycardia from stress and oxygen debt.

If this continued, I risked cardiac damage. I forced myself to take slower, deeper breaths, fighting against my body’s panicked breaths.

Calming myself, I thought of the Sirin.

Beautiful, psychotic… and deviously clever. An exceptionally dangerous combination.

A predatory thinking being with memory, spatial reasoning, pattern recognition, and language. She grasped complex social dynamics, recognizing the relationship between Grandhilda and her “created” witches. She even demonstrated theory of mind: the ability to understand that others have different mental states and knowledge than oneself.

Did her brain use the same neurotransmitters as humans? The same ion channels? The same cellular structures?

The night stretched on as I stared into the unnerving darkness, flinching at every rustling branch and wind whisper, half-expecting the Sirin to return at any moment.

She did not.

The forest loomed dark and eerie, dead trees swaying in the frigid wind.

Wolves, or perhaps something worse, howled in the distance with eerie, echoing harmonics.

My body trembled with exhaustion and adrenaline, chest heaving with shallow breaths. I felt weak and beaten up, unable to move.

This is definitely how I die. I thought blearily. Hypothermia.

Strangely enough, the cold sensation passed. A rather distinct sensation of warmth and belonging pulsed from beneath me like a hum of a generator.

I took several minutes of half-dead pondering to sort out what I was sensing.

It was as if… the concept of “promise of safety” was somehow woven into the subatomic waves of the soil itself.

Whatever power I gained as a newly forged witch, it was tied to the patch of earth below me, and it somehow kept me alive, and didn’t allow me to simply freeze to death.

My eyelids grew heavy. I wanted to stay vigilant, to watch the shadows for more abominable monsters, but was failing at such. The distant howls faded away, devoured by the vastness of the night forest. My thoughts slowed, fragmenting into disjointed static.

The last thing I saw before sleep claimed me was a dark gray sky thick with clouds shedding large snowflakes. They spun and glittered like slowly falling stars in the rays of unnaturally bright, violet-blue moonlight cutting occasional lines through the gloom.