"Yes, Baba. What must I do?"

She outlines most of the ritual in broad strokes. He'll sit on a stump in the middle of a circle she's assembled, several tools and fetishes hanging off him and his hands tied behind his back with an unusual cord. She will chant and channel energy. It will take at least an hour.

"But above all," she says, "You must not use your sight. Keep your eyes open, but blocked entirely by the onion mask, and do not touch your witch-sight. Done properly, this will hurt; done improperly, it will cripple you in more ways than the spiritual"

He gulps. "Yes, Baba. Will it disrupt the ritual if I cry out in pain?"

"Don't distract me. But as long as you keep yourself under control you should be unobjectionable."

He nods, and they continue. There are a few places where he needs to say part of a ritual formula. But mostly his responsibility is to sit still and not screw it up. A challenging task, but he can manage to restrain his curiosity.

She checks him over a few times to be sure that he's not using his sight, and fidgeting seems to be fine. Then it's time to start the real thing.

The onion-mask is weird. It's thin enough he can see light and dark through it, but not details. The individual pieces hooked together are just large enough to cover his eyes and peripheral vision. It's like trying to see during a moonless night, only he can't give up and close his eyes.

The bound hands, by contrast, don't bother him much after the first few minutes. Being behind his back is uncomfortable, but he can manage.

Still, he hopes this will only be an hour.

Baba Ostankya walks the edge of the circle, muttering in a singsong language that sounds almost like standard Gospodarinyi. The old Ungol tongue, maybe? She interacts with one of the talismans every dozen steps, picking up one of the eight laid out at the points of the wheel of magic and star of Chaos.

After a while, a sense of light and heat start coming from one side, and trickles of mist touch his skin from the other. If he knew more about the winds of magic, or opened his 'eyes', he would probably deduce something from that.

Nope, nope, not doing that. He will see what he can work out of the language, how about that? That's something safe to be curious about. Unless it's the Dark Tongue but if she's chanting in the Dark Tongue he's screwed anyway. And so is Kislev because it means the hags are corrupt.

Then he will be okay until the sun gets about as close to overhead as it's going to, when she starts raising her voice and he starts hurting. A lot. His hands are burning from the inside. His legs, too. His stomach is dancing. He has a sudden splitting headache and it feels like someone is playing war drums on his back teeth.

(He probably won't notice that the headache and assorted other pains are staying entirely clear of his eyes.)

That is correct he will not notice that. He is busily making loud noises! Loud noises of pain! This is awful!

However he is a son of Kislev and it's not like he hasn't been in enormous pain before. He will calm down. In a minute.

A few minutes.

Certainly not an hour.

Yeah okay he is no longer shouting, screaming, moaning, or otherwise making Loud Pain Sounds. It still hurts, but he is coping. It's a lot more uncomfortable to have his hands tied behind his back when they are also on fire, so coping involves some undignified wiggling and shaking, but he's coping.

(He is aware that this fire is almost certainly not literal. Unfortunately, he can't check that because he has a mask made of onions he's not supposed to look around.)

Sure hope this ends quickly.

Quickly is probably an overstatement. But the pain gradually fades from his limbs and concentrates itself toward his heart over the next fifteen minutes. This reduces the total amount of pain as it goes... not as quickly as it's concentrating it, though. How does he feel about severe heartburn and his stomach jumping around even more?

He is not a fan and neither is his breakfast. Not looking past the onion mask while keeping his eyes open may be tricky while he is throwing up but he does not seem to have volitional control here.

"Nepodkikzeni!", she barks, which probably means something like 'quiet, you!' in old Roppsmen or something. He freezes involuntarily and so does his breakfast, even heading back down where it belongs.

Then there is a bucket pressed against his chin and lower face.

Oh good he can do that now.

Right. Dry heaves still suck and he definitely blinked hard a few times, but it's getting less bad. Probably he hasn't screwed up the ritual?

The chanting goes back to normal, so at least Baba Ostankya is unconcerned.

And it's only another five minutes or so before it's basically faded, and the mask is removed.

"It is done. Well endured, young man."

He is going to be blinking in the light for a while, but he manages to say "Thank you, Baba." in there somewhere.

And then he open his other eyes as well, and they still work, too. He can see the traces of each of the eight winds sitting on the points of the circle, blowing into the background but still there. He can still see!

On the other hand he's just been in severe pain for a good chunk of an hour and then lost his lunch. And he's out of adrenaline.

So he may be collapsing a bit.

He will be pushed into a chair to lean back against, and another bowl of stew pushed into his hands.

"Eat. You need it."

"Uh...? Yes, Baba," he says, and accepts both.

Yeah that was a good idea he's ravenous. Is he going to be offered more? He hopes so because he can't ask.

Good news, he is. Fortunately he slows down for the second bowl.

"The curse took hold, as expected. You have a strong will and a strong body, young man."

"Thank you, Baba Ostankya. Is there anything more I should do?"

He sets down the bowl and spoon on the stump.

"Only what any man should do - serve the Motherland well and wisely, against all its danger. I believe you will."

"Of course, Baba."

"Good boy. Now, go, with my blessing," she says, and hands him his pack.

"Thank you, Baba," he says, as he looks down and takes hold of it. When he looks up, he hears a whinny, and Lovkiya is just behind him... at the last camp they made by the river's side.

Well, that kind of thing does happen, when you're in a story about great hags. He thinks this is one of the ones about what you should do, though perhaps he'll return and find three hundred years have passed and his stanitsa was destroyed by another Great War Against Chaos.

No, the camps he made with the headman still look only a week or two old, and all his comrades from the rota are still waiting in Sanyza.

And they have a lot of kvas.