~~Triss~~
Endlessness, everywhere. The infinite cosmos. Space, the final frontier. What the fuck ever.
Triss gulped as she stared up at the night sky. A quick glance around showed no buildings, no trees, no rocks, and no street either. No floor, no nothing. Beneath her was white, but it had no texture. Just, endless white, reaching out before and around her to endless horizons. Endless endlessness.
"Oh hey, I'm naked. Wonderful." She blinked down at her body, frowning. The tattoos and piercings were there, as they usually were when she dreamed. No clothes though.
She touched her cheeks. Yeap, still gone, replaced with big crocodile teeth. Damn. Sometimes it was nice to dream about being human again.
She stared up again, and smiled. Stars. So many stars, tiny white dots against an endless black. Christ, what sort of infinite fucking universe had her dumb brain decided to invent, for a fucking dream?
She looked down. Below her was her Beast. No need to think about it, no need to convince herself, she recognized its swirling mass of black smoke, and all the strange limbs and claws and teeth and beaks inside it. It was beneath her, in that endless white she'd been in before, when learning crΓΊac rituals. Except now, she was outside of it? Above it?
"Is this... an out-of-body experience?" Last she remembered was falling asleep in the Circle's cave. "Cause I'm pretty sure I should be able to look around and see the real world and shit if I was having one, and I don't see no cave."
"You are half right."
Triss spun around quick and jumped back. She fully expected vitae to send her back a good distance, but all she got for her effort was a small leap, totally mistimed, and fell on her ass. Ok, so, no vitae. Shit.
An old woman stood in front of her, hunched, short, with a cloak of tattered gray covering her body and the top of her head. Long strands of dirty white hair hung down the sides of her face, and warts covered her visible skin. Not much visible skin with the cloak, but her feet and hands were visible, and so was her wrinkly, old, sagging face.
She had a cane in one hand. No, wait, not a cane, a walking stick. No, wait, not a walking stick, a fucking witch staff, considering the dangling skulls on top of it. It was thickest at the top, a crooked branch with a curve where the old woman had tied rope to hook through the holes in the skulls. They jingled lightly, making hollow bone noises.
Triss grumbled as she reached for her vitae again. Not there. Definitely a dream, except normally you had some measure of control in a dream, especially when it was lucid. She squeezed her eyes shut and imagined riding a giant dinosaur. Nothing. Damn.
"You're naked," the old woman said. Even her voice sounded old, crackly, and not sweet.
"Sorry. I--wait, I'm not sorry. This is my fucking head, my dream, and I'll be naked if I want."
The old woman grinned. "If this is your dream, change it. Put on clothes."
"I'm not feeling very zen, apparently, and it's not working."
"Because this isn't your dream." After a quiet, disgusting, gargling chuckle, the old woman waved her stick at Triss slightly. Clothes appeared on her, the shit she'd gone to sleep in, a tank top and jeans and her combat boots.
"It isn't?" Triss gestured down beneath them, at the endless plane of white, and the smoke creature wandering around beneath them, blocked by a floor of glass or something. "Certainly feels like a dream."
"You were dreaming. But I wanted to talk to you without that nasty Beast of yours getting in the way."
"So..."
"So I removed you from your dream." The old woman gestured around with her staff. "You are in between, a place we can talk again."
"Again? I--" Panic jolted through her limbs, and she took a step back as she looked the old woman up and down a dozen times more. "You! I had to sacrifice a bunch of people for a chance to talk with you!"
"You got my attention."
Oh god this was happening. Happening happening, it was happening, oh fucking shit. She took another step back, looked around for any sort of exit to the strange dimension she'd found herself in, and sighed. Don't panic. If the Crone, assuming this was the Crone, actually wanted you dead, she could make it happen, easily. Right?
Or maybe she couldn't? The Crone was a god or something, and the more Triss dug into the world of dark rituals and shit, the more it seemed like there were divine rules mere plebes didn't know about. Spirits had to follow rules, apparently, so why not gods and stuff? Which made her panic again, cause that meant maybe the Crone couldn't hurt her right now, until Triss said or did something wrong. Fuck fuck, how the fuck do you play a game when you don't know the rules?
"I did? I mean, I did sacrifice--"
"Five hundred years ago, a village, remote, even for that time, sacrificed the first born of their chief to me, a girl of ten years. That sacrifice carried with it enough weight to change the landscape in a way that persists to this day. You, and your paltry sacrifice of the unwanted, barely warranted a glance from me."
Sweet fucking christ.
"Well sorry I didn't really feel like sacrificing--"
The old bitch tapped her staff on the white not-glass beneath them, making a quiet click click. More than enough to shut Triss right up.
"I said I noticed you, not the sacrifice."
"Oh, uh... sorry."
The Crone managed a weak grin. "You're smarter than you look. I can see the wheels turning in that tiny little brain of yours."
"Turning pretty slow right now, honestly. Why did you notice me? Who the fuck am I?"
"You're a sad little girl, who's lost her lover. And because you're smarter than most, you're dipping your toe in the water to see how cold it is before you take the plunge."
"You're... talking about Julias, and what I'm doing to... try and bring him back."
"I warned you once to let him go, Beatrice."
Something about hearing a deity use her first name was freaky as all fuck. Slowly, Triss's gaze fell, and she stared down at her boots like a kid caught with her hand in the cookie jar.
"Yeah."
"You ignored my warning."
"Yeah."
"I knew you would."
Triss winced and looked away. "Well, yeah. Black Blood and Jacob told me it was possible, and I believe them."
"I somehow doubt they told you only that."
Doubt? So the Crone or whatever she was wasn't omniscient. Good to know creepy weird larger-than-life creature things weren't watching them through the rooftops with x-ray vision.
"Yeah, it'll be hard. Yeah, there's a good chance it'll never work, they said as much. Yeah, I'm getting deeper into some pretty nasty shit, but... but I have to try."
When she finally managed to lift her eyes again, the old woman was smiling at her, the sort of smile a mom gives her kid when they trip and fall. Which of course sent rage surging through Triss, indignant and bitter. Which of course the old bitch saw coming, and her mommy smile faded, replaced with sadness.
"You should let him go, Triss. You have a good second life now, don't you? He'd be happy for you and this new life you're building for yourself. And that SΓ‘ndor creature might even be interested in you, yes? Julias would want you to find love again. So let him go."