Welcome!!! Happy Friday!
"when hostile eyes appear" for solavellan hehehe
jfghsdlfjs blue thank you ily 💚 for @dadrunkwriting
She supposed she was dreaming.
It was either that or she'd had some bad hooch again. This world wavered and spun just like camp had that horrible night, but instead of angry hunters keeping her from stumbling into the campfire, there was instead the odd support of hazy, green nothingness. She pressed against it with both hands, as if pushing against the canvas of a collapsed tent.
Hello? she called. The effort it took to speak was enormous, and nausea rose, prickling and hot, in her throat. What is this?
Silence. Then, it was as if the space itself took a deep, shuddering breath — it began low, deep, nearly nothing, and rolled forth louder, louder, until it trembled under her skin and pulsed against her eardrums. It released, fading into a tired sigh.
A voice came forth then, beginning as a murmuring at the edges of her consciousness. Words formed inside her skull, deep and alien and cutting in their cruelty.
A more compelling question, it said, is this: who, or what, are you?
Pain. Sharp, piercing, like a knife slipped between the battle-hardened bones of her left hand. The world around her flickered greener and greener still in the darkness, until through the haze of pain she registered that the source of light was her.
The pain grew, consuming, and reduced her thoughts to animalistic nothings. There was only the urge to flee, or fight, or freeze. She chose to fight.
Virelan, she spat out. I am Virelan.
Ah, the voice said. Walker. A stumbling child, muttering words in its wooden tongue that mean not a whit. Walker of what, hmm? I suppose that remains to be seen.
There came a snicking sound, like that of the flats of blades running against each other, or of the smack of parting lips. Though pain still thrummed through her fractured self, she registered the sudden glow of a light besides her own — blue, from a pair of almond-shaped points just above her head. That same snicking sound cut through the air again as another pair appeared, then another, and she gasped.
The six eyes of a Pride demon, narrowed and huge and all-encompassing in scope, stared down upon her. The darkness around them deepened, swallowing up the green light that shone from her body, until nearly all there was were those eyes.
They blinked, one after the other. That thrumming sigh rolled through the space again, feeling now more like the low, threatening sound a wolf made before it leapt. That sound like the parting of lips fell upon her ears, and a row of glistening fangs emerged from the darkness. They formed a deathly smile beneath the proud blue eyes.
Enough, the voice said. The teeth did not move — though she knew the voice came from this creature, it did not emit from its body. It rang through her skull instead. You have lingered here too long already. Its time for you to —
"Wake up."
More of the same darkness. More of the same pain. But this time Virelan focused on a stone floor, then on the moisture that dropped on her face from the ceiling. The pain in her hand paired with the pain of cuffs around her wrists. But just as she'd convinced herself that she was really and truly awake, her left hand sputtered — spat — as if possessed of its own guttering green flame. She closed her eyes and clenched her teeth against a grunt of pain.
Still dreaming, Virelan thought. Still dreaming.
But then the door swung open, and a woman wearing the armored vestments of the Chantry tromped through. It wasn't until that same woman dragged her up the stairs, through the building, and out the front door that she felt truly awake and alive.
Virelan stared, stony-faced, up at the sky — at the Breach that matched the sputtering green bit of magic trapped inside her hand. That voice from before rang through her skull, as clearly as if it were being said anew.
What are you?
