lirael (clayrschild) wrote in the100, @ 2015-05-31 00:43:00 |
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Entry tags: | !narrative, lirael |
WHO: Lirael, the Dog, & Mogget (brief mentions of Eddie Carmichael being in the general vicinity)
WHAT: arrival!
WHEN: Saturday, afternoon-ish.
WHERE: medical -> her room -> wherever the nearest portal is -> dreamscape
WARNINGS: feeeeels. tears. crying.
One moment she had been reaching out for Sam, had barely caught a glimpse of Nick on the ground and the cat beside him. The next she had been waking up in the strange medical facility under the mountain, nowhere near the Lightning Farm.
Lirael immediately noticed that the Dog was nowhere to be seen. Strangely enough, Mogget was at the foot of her bed, asleep. He didn't move when she shifted to get out of the bed, trying to be quiet, for she could hear the sound of voices and footsteps nearby. Then the Dog appeared out of nowhere, and in spite of the urgency she still felt — there was so little time, she must get back to the others, how had she ended up so far away from them? — she took a moment to throw her arms around the Dog's neck, burying her face momentarily in its fur.
She still felt a little bit drowsy, groggy from the unconscious state she'd been in. She didn't have time to stop to wonder about that, but forced herself almost instantly back up to her feet and asked, "Where are we?"
"I don't know," the Dog answered, which scared Lirael more than any other answer could have. How could she not know?
"You must know," she burst out, fraught with tension and urgency. She was now fairly certain of who the Dog really was, although she was trying very hard not to think about that, but it crept through in this moment, because a being of that much power would have to know. Wouldn't it?
The Dog didn't answer. She just looked at Lirael, as if she was supposed to be able to figure it out.
Maybe she could. She took a few deep breaths to steady herself, and then tried to listen to what her instincts were telling her. She was in Life, although her death senses told her that there had been violence here. Not so recently as to be a terribly strong feeling, however, and she could not feel any Dead or Free Magic at all. That should have been a relief, but instead it made her feel even further away from the silver hemispheres, the army of the Dead that Hedge had conjured, and the Destroyer that was about to be unleashed upon her world. And that only made panic rise inside her again.
There was something else, too, something nagging at her. The Charter — she could barely feel it. It was there, enough that her magic did not feel entirely numb, but dulled enough to be troublesome. Even in Ancelstierre, on the other side of the Wall, there had been enough magic for her to be able to feel the Charter more strongly than this.
She looked more closely at her surroundings, then. But she hadn't gotten a very long look at them before the Dog said suddenly, "People are coming. We should go." She nosed at Mogget, but he was still asleep, under Ranna's spell — or, Lirael realized, perhaps something else. Whatever it was that had rendered her unconscious, suddenly and out of nowhere. "You'll have to carry him."
Lirael looked at the cat, and then, encouraged by the push of a cold dog nose against her hand, she picked him up. Hopefully he wouldn't wake until she was in a place where she could set him down.
She didn't manage to leave the room unseen. The Dog disappeared when someone else approached, seemingly friendly, and tried to put something into her hand. Lirael took it without looking at it, and then made her escape from them as quickly as possible. Thankfully, she wasn't stopped, even though she felt that she must stand out here as much as she had done with the Clayr, and amongst the people of Ancelstierre. People here seemed far more accustomed to strangeness, however, or at the very least, less inclined to shoot at it.
The Dog didn't reappear when they were in the hallway. Uncertain where else to go, Lirael followed the directions she had been given, hoping that the Dog would either come back to direct her elsewhere or find her somehow. Of course, as soon as she arrived at the door, the Dog materialized out of nowhere.
"We may as well go inside," she said to Lirael. "For a moment, at least."
Lirael didn't want to, but the adrenaline she had been carrying was starting to wear off, and all the emotion she had been shoving aside was threatening to come to the surface. She was afraid of what she had to do, worried that she didn't have enough courage to see it through, terrified that they were already too late. Then there was the grief she'd been shoving aside, for the half-sister and brother in law that they'd been told were dead, who had just arrived by Paperwing. They were there, and she was here. Too much time had passed already, though exactly how much, Lirael did not know. Enough that it seemed very likely that they were already lost, and the rest of the world with them.
Except for Lirael, for now. But this world could easily be next.
She entered the set of rooms she'd been directed to, looking around cautiously, and then her emotions overwhelming her for a moment. She gave a great sob — and then almost immediately realized she wasn't entirely alone. She caught sight of the man in the room with her, and for a moment she looked for all the world like a wild animal frightened by a predator. Then, barely even realizing that her cheeks were wet, she fled through the nearest door, which thankfully turned out to be the one she'd been directed to. She locked the door, contemplated trying to reach into the Charter to make a locking spell to make it even more secure, but then stopped, reaching her senses out toward the man in the other room. She felt some kind of power, but it wasn't Free Magic, even if it wasn't the Charter either.
Mogget brought her back to her senses by waking up suddenly and springing from her arms. Her arms free of his weight, Lirael suddenly became aware of the strange object she was holding in her hand. She examined it for a moment, but then gave up, exhaustion getting the better of her.
"We'll never make it back in time," she said, defeated. "We can't stop the Destroyer." He would be here next, or maybe he would choose another world first, but those would end up just like the last. Lirael had watched it happen multiple times, before the Seven had stood against It. They'd had everyone they needed to bind It again, but without Lirael there, all of them would be dead. By herself, even with the help of the Dog and Mogget, she'd stand no chance against Orannis. Any world It chose would be destroyed, too.
"We might." This, surprisingly, came from Mogget. The cat had settled on one of the beds, his tail flicking idly. Lirael looked to the Dog for confirmation.
The Dog gave a small woof of agreement, and sniffed the air. "It's true. Time is... different here."
Lirael waited, but she didn't elaborate upon that. The way the Dog kept sniffing the air, and then the rest of the room, made Lirael think that perhaps the Dog did not understand it either. But she had already gotten a taste of how time could move differently in different places, between the Old Kingdom and Ancelstierre, and she felt a little bit of hope. Maybe they did have time, still.
Which meant she suddenly found herself with time to feel everything. It had been threatening to overwhelm her for a long time, and it rose up in her now. Lirael sat down heavily on the bed, near Mogget, and found herself bursting into tears.
She felt the Dog come to press closely against her side, but she couldn't seem to stop herself from breaking down. For Sabriel and Touchstone, and the grief that she had been watched Sam carrying for them, for all the dead that she hadn't been able to save, for the living that she might yet fail to protect. She had been putting all of those emotions aside for a moment when she had time to feel them, and that moment had come.
Eventually, her tears dried up. She felt somewhat hollow, but with that came a lightness, and a renewed determination to find her way back. She felt the Dog lick the salt from her cheeks, and she wiped at her face, once again becoming aware of the object in her hands.
It must have some kind of purpose. Lirael did not know half of the technology they had in this place, but if she tried, she knew she could figure it out. At least it gave her something to do, while her mind worked quietly in the background, trying to come up with a way to get herself out. "Alright," she said finally. "Dog, you... go and look around. Try to find something that can help us get back. I'll... work out what this is."
The Dog nodded, and jumped down from the bed, disappearing almost instantly. Lirael glanced over at Mogget, but he had fallen back asleep. Sleep sounded good for Lirael's weary bones, but she settled herself more comfortably on the bed — no easy task with her armor and bells still on, but she was not ready to take those off just yet — and hunched over the object in her hands, determined to make it give up all of its secrets.