primrosella | Quest 228

Quest 228

The blonde girl sits silently at the foot of the bed, her defeated posture echoed in the hollow look that has consumed her eyes. The door has shut, the lock turned with a resounding click; she is trapped. What's more, she is defeated. Her quest ends here, in the tower room that belongs to her husband-to-be, and her failure will be sealed twofold at dawn: with her unwilling marriage vows, and with the deaths of her father and the queen of the fairies. Lolotte has won; she has lost. She has endured dragons, trolls, ogres and hags, zombies and ghosts--

And here, in the end, her ultimate defeat comes from a simple locked door.

She has been sitting numbly for what seems like an eternity, fragile and withdrawn as the exhaustion and bitter realization begins to descend upon her, when the sound of faint scratching at the door rouses her attention. Slowly, as if walking through a daze, she forces her limbs to work and goes to the door to investigate. And there, lying against the floor, lies a red rose with a glint of gold in its petals.

She pricks her finger scrabbling for it, not daring to believe. But the key concealed within the rose fits in the door's lock, and turns smoothly without protest.

Freedom!

No, not yet. Not so long as the witch still lives.

It is the dead of night; the castle is dark and gloomy, and the twisting stone steps that lead down into the tower are narrow and treacherous. She barely dares to breathe as she descends with the greatest of care, making her footfalls as silent as possible against the stones and praying that the sound of her heartbeat thudding in her chest is not as loud in reality as it seems to be in her ears.

The guard sleeping at the bottom of the steps stirs as she makes her way past; terrified of being discovered, she presses herself against the wall, praying that the shadows will conceal her. She holds her breath, and he stirs, but does not wake. And she moves on.

Step by perilous step she goes, past more sleeping guards, traversing the rooms one by one with nothing but shadows and prayers on her side. In the kitchen, she finds her possessions stored in one of the cupboards; as she reclaims them, she touches her fingers to her lips and presses them to the tip of her one remaining arrow--Cupid's arrow--in silent blessing. This is her final arrow, and she has already picked its target. This one has Lolotte's name on it.

More shadows carry her to the throne room, and this is where the voices begin to whisper from the walls. Familiar voices, pleading voices, drawing her attention to the shadows of the room. These are the voices of the people she knows, will know, will someday lose. She nearly stops to listen to them, searching for the source of the sound, but then the sleeping guard shifts at his post and fear of discovery drives her on. On again, on again. On to the other tower, the twin of the one in which she was imprisoned.

Stairs again. The voices whisper more insistently as she climbs them, pressed against the wall, willing herself invisible in the shadows.

Rosella, please.

Oh, god, it hurts so bad.

Don't look, Rosella.

Breathe, Rosella.

Halfway up the tower, there is light through a doorway. A hallway that leads to torture chambers. Here, the guards are awake. Here, she will be discovered.

She must go up. Up the treacherous stairs, up into the shadows. Up to the room at the top of the tower, where the witch waits to die.

The little gold key fits in the lock there as smoothly as it did in her own.

When she moves, it is quick. The door swings open, turning silently on its hinges; she steps into the room, pulls back her arrow, and lets fly in one smooth motion. There is no hesitation as she fires Cupid's arrow straight into the witch's heart, though her fingers are trembling and her eyes are still hollow and dark.

The witch awakens with a scream, sitting straight up in bed as her spindly green fingers instantly go to her pierced heart. "What have you done to me?! The pain! It burns!" she howls, her eyes red as blood as they fix on her murderess, the bowstring still quivering on the bow in her hands. "You! I'll get you, peasant girl! You'll die for this!"

These were once Lolotte's dying vows. But this time, to her horror, the witch does not die. Instead, her bony arms rise and her mouth opens in a vicious howl as six more glowing eyes open in her hideous green face and spider's legs erupt from the bedcovers. The bow drops from her fingers as she recoils backward, as skeletal hands emerge from the walls, as undead lurch from the shadows. They are fast, and they seize her, and the tower echoes with Rosella's screams as the spider-witch lurches forward from its bed, and the room goes pitch-black.

[OOC: All threads will be treated as individual iterations of the dream unless otherwise specified/arranged; visitors, feel free to drop in at pretty much any point in the dream. Also note: visitors are welcome to fight the witch, rescue Rosella, or otherwise attempt to interfere with the dream, just please take it up with me here, on my OOC Dream Thread, first! Also, any type of action is fine--brackets, prose, whatever works best for you. ♥]

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Nightmare number... what number was it by now? Penny feels as if she's been through hundreds of nightmares by now. This one is cold and dark. At least there isn't any blood. Yet. Just stone walls and shadows, and--

And Rosella?

Even in the dark, Penny can make out the blond (did it become lighter, or is this one of those convenient nightmare happenings?). She's up the stairs, yards away from Penny, and in a doorway. What can only be a bow is in her hands. From her vantage point, Penny can't see farther into the room. She creeps up the stairs towards Rosella, careful not to make a sound.

The screams of the witch are more than loud enough to echo down the tower to where Penny is, so there is no missing every curse and threat that is hurled in Rosella's direction as she stands petrified in the doorway, still reeling from the horror of the moment.

She'd meant to shoot the witch. She'd thought--and perhaps it was a foolish thought, hoping to control one as evil as that--but she'd truly thought the arrow would only cause Lolotte to love her as the unicorn had. She hadn't considered that love might be so utterly abhorrent to the witch's very being that it would be enough to slay her instead.

Her face is white as she stands there, bowstring still vibrating from her shot, absorbing every threat and waiting desperately for the witch's inevitable death.

The screams and curses make Penny jump. She shrinks back into the shadows momentarily, afraid to go closer. No, that won't do. Rosella's just standing there. She needs help.

"Rosella?" Penny speaks loudly enough to be heard over the witch, but no louder. She approaches the girl and peers into the room. Her jaw drops. Had Rosella...?

The sudden surprise of Penny at her side is enough to jar Rosella's attention--however momentarily--away from the dying witch and over to her friend. Even so, she doesn't look any less startled than she had before; if anything, Penny's presence here only inspires more panic in her as the spider's legs erupt from the bedsheets and the hands begin to reach from the walls.

"Run!" she cries, grasping Penny's arm and urging her toward the stairs, even as the witch's mandibles begin to snap and the groans of the undead start to fill the air. "Penny, run!"

This is happening too fast. The woman Rosella shot is a spider? There are zombies in the castle? None of this even makes sense. Baffled, Penny stumbles more than runs. Not that she can run. Running never helps in nightmares, and it wouldn't do to leave Rosella, even if there's not much Penny can do.

"I'll run if you run!" But for now, Penny busies herself with a rotted hand that has attached to her shirtsleeve. For a hand without much in the way of muscle, it has a rather strong grip.

Frantic but oddly motivated by Penny's presence, Rosella elbows away a reaching arm and brings her bow crashing down on another that has begun to reach for Penny, pushing her again toward the door--and making every move to follow after her, so long as she goes first. The witch-spider is beginning to advance, still howling her fury, and Rosella knows she is out of weapons. This is a losing battle if they stay, and there is nothing to be gained here.

For all that she hates stone stairs, Rosella makes quick work of these when she hits them, more leaping down them than actually stepping, her hair flying out in tangled curls behind her as she rushes them down into the tower.

The hand lets go after being whacked with a bow and Penny is quick to follow Rosella down the stairs, magically--it has to be magic, because this is a dream--not falling. "How well do zombies take stairs?" she pants, hoping that the answer will be something along the lines of 'not very well.'

"They come out of the--oh, rats," she answers in a rush, her free hand digging in the pockets of her skirt and finally producing a small black shape--a scarab, carved out of obsidian. She shoves it into Penny's hands, her eyes frantic with fear, and continues to hurry them both down the stairs. "Take this. Don't let go of it, it'll--it wards off the undead, don't let go of it, they can't grab you if you have it."

One might wonder, in a less panicked moment, how the amulet can truly be said to work if Rosella had it herself and yet still ended up grabbed, but nightmare or not, this is her dream, and the certainty with which she says it makes it clear that it will work for Penny, perhaps because it didn't work for Rosella herself.

"They'll be everywhere," she adds after a moment, which isn't really an answer, but more of a vague prediction--even as the shadows begin to creep at the edges of the stairs.

"Out of the what?" But she doesn't question Rosella's logic or hesitate to take the stone scarab. Penny clutches it tightly, frantically searching the shadows for more threats. "...What about you? What'll protect you?"

"She doesn't want you!" Rosella fairly shrieks, as the witch-spider finally skitters out the door of the tower chamber, heaving and squeezing to make her bulk fit through the space. "Go! Run!"

"Which kind of makes me being protected kind of dumb! Come on, Rosella." Penny grabs Rosella's arm with every intention of hauling her away. The spider-person isn't that mobile. Surely they can outrun her or squeeze into a space she can't fit in to...

"All the way down," she gasps out, letting Penny take her arm as they continue to go, and gesturing wildly with the hand that still holds her bow. The hallway that leads off of the landing is the way to the torture chambers, and oh, she remembers going there. It's not a place she ever wants to return to, much less when she knows she is being pursued by a vengeful witch. The ground floor won't be much better, she knows, but at least they'll stand a chance; it may not be safe, but it's better than this tower.

Anything is better than this tower.

Penny just nods, out of breath in spite of the fact that she doesn't actually need to breathe. She bypasses the lit hallway and continues moving down as fast as she can, spurred on in no small part by the movements she thinks she sees in the shadows.

"Then where?"

"Out," she answers, seeing the doorway at the bottom of the tower--and, with a wrench of her stomach, the flying monkey guarding it. "Into the throne room and out the front way--hurry!"

How can it be, that there is a spider-shaped shadow lurking over them when there is no light source to cast it? Dreams are strange that way, but so it is.

Penny gets to the bottom of the stairs as quickly as she can, but comes to an abrupt halt when she sees the flying monkey. It looks considerably more menacing than the ones in The Wizard of Oz.

"Rosella..."

"They don't want you!" she cries again, nearly crashing into Penny as she comes to a halt herself. More guards are pouring into the stairwell now, and the shadow is looming larger on the ceiling, and if Penny doesn't get out soon--

"Go! Just run! Go!"

Far be it for Penny to not run from hordes of flying monkeys and giant spider shadows. She's still determined to drag Rosella along with her, however. "What do they want from you?!"

"I'm supposed to--" But she stops abruptly, because explanations of marriage and hunchbacked sons seem ridiculous to her now, with these horrors bearing down on her and the sound of wingbeats beginning to fill the air. "She swore she'd kill me," she answers instead, her eyes stinging with tears--not for herself, but for the people she's failed. She can't bear to let Penny be one of them, not on top of all the rest. "They're all going to die!"

That stops Penny in her tracks... but only for a moment, as running still seems like the most prudent course of action to take. She enters the throne room, looking for the way out. "Who all? Rosella, no one's going to die!"

With the flapping of wings growing closer, however, Penny isn't entirely certain. It might not be a dream. It may not be harmless.

Is there time to explain? It's a very good question, it's true. But a better one is, will it really matter, even if there isn't? Perhaps there is no way out of this. Perhaps Lolotte has won, perhaps it is already past dawn. Perhaps they're all dead already, and soon she'll be dead--or married, or worse.

"Here," she says frantically, rushing for the doors at the front of the throne room, forcing them open as if desperate for a glimpse of the sky outside--how long has it been?--as much as she is for an escape. "Daddy--Genesta--they'll both die at dawn if I don't--oh, hurry!"

Now Penny is following Rosella, still not understanding the situation in the least. It's a relief to see the doors (perhaps they'll lead to someone else's nightmare?), but Rosella's words aren't very encouraging.

"If you don't what? Die?" The logic here is not the sort of logic that Penny can follow. "Come on. We'll both go, okay?"

There is a wooden stable a little way down the path, near the entrance to the castle, and Rosella is running for it like a girl possessed--because while this is wrong, all wrong, and this wasn't how any of it was meant to go at all, she still remembers bits of how it should have been, and there is something in that stable that she remembers. There is something there that can help, she thinks, even as a small green hunchback begins to call her name plaintively from one of the castle windows, and the wingbeats grow louder in the air as the structure seems to shake on its very foundations.

"Hurry! In here!" she cries, wrenching open the door and motioning for Penny to enter, her eyes fixed on the castle for fear that their pursuers will show themselves at any minute.

Much to Penny's dismay, outside doesn't seem all that much safer than inside. She doesn't pause to look back when she hears Rosella's name called in a strange voice, fear getting the better of curiosity. She enters the indicated door with all due haste.

"Rosella, what's going on?"

"I think there's a way out in here," she answers as she follows Penny into the stable, hauling the door shut behind her. And whether or not there is an exit, the one undeniable thing is that there is most certainly a unicorn penned up in here, huge and beautiful and radiating a lovely pink-silver sheen from its horn and mane. When it sees Rosella, it turns its large, dark eyes hopefully toward her, and the love in them is evident. The arrow she shot into its heart is still working, after all, and it is still enchanted by her.

But Rosella is ignoring the unicorn in favor of the rest of the stable, pacing hurriedly and kicking over boxes as she tries to find the exit she thinks is here. "It seems like--like there ought to be one, a way out, so long as we're in here."

Penny is entranced by the unicorn. She has seen the ones at the zoo in the City, of course, but never up close like this, and this unicorn is exceptionally beautiful. She approaches the creature slowly. "Maybe he knows a way out."

He, of course, being the unicorn. It's a ridiculous suggestion, maybe, but the unicorn looks so intelligent and benevolent. It looks like it should be able to fix everything that's wrong in this nightmare.

"He's trapped here, too," she says, shuffling some boxes out of the way as she begins to scour the floor. "I had to capture him for her, so I made him fall in love with me. Poor thing..."

"You had to what?" Penny isn't following this story, Rosella. She gives the unicorn one last look and then begins helping Rosella in her search for something escape-like. "Can we take him with us?"

There is nothing in particular that Peter can think of that would call him to another dream. The last time that this happened it caused a rift between himself and a sorcerer long-gone, a rift that never mended in a way that he could ever settle with. Tonight he finds himself falling into someone else's shadows at a run. It is as if one has woken from sleep only to realize they have been chasing something in it, driven by a single point of light or need; this focus happens to be a voice he knows well or well enough, and by coincidence or fortune or even dreams taking mercy in not letting him arrive too late he only stops once he is in the room with Rosella and the witch. Something in him must have known what would have happened or the nature of it, for he is dressed full in armor minus the helm, Rhindon a mutual possession in waking hours and to a degree always his at any other time.

Assessment of the situation takes only a moment and getting between Rosella and Lolotte is not an action he questions. Considering recent events, or events not so long past, perhaps he should, but some things fall into instinct underlined with purpose. To do nothing is unacceptable and to hesitate is to risk a turning point they can't rewrite or rebuild from. A dream is a dream is a dream but within certain framework it can take any individual a while to recognize it for that. He doesn't address her just yet, looking to deflect the howling creature, who for all her spider-like look reminds Peter briefly of a viper.

Where are we? Who is this? Why---

Questions and half questions for sooner or later.

The presence of someone else at this moment in the nightmare is jarring, to say the least--jarring enough, in fact, that the skeletal hands falter on Rosella's arms, the shadows waver, and both Lolotte and Rosella simultaneously turn their eyes to him, one with her mouth gaping open in surprise, the other with her mandibles snapping in rage.

"What are you doing here?!" one of them screams, but it comes so suddenly and so frantically that it's hard to be certain which uttered it. But only one of them recognizes this intruder, knows him as a savior--and the sight of him has renewed a fighting instinct in her as she thrashes and kicks, trying to free herself from the undead hands that have trapped her.

He can't quite make out which one of them is yelling at him, but it seems unimportant compared to continuing the fight on the proper side, which he does as best he can with skeletons grasping at them from every side that isn't dominated by Lolotte.

"The door!?" he doesn't mean to order Rosella around in her own dreamspace but getting out is more than appealing enough to compensate for some bossiness. Aside from that, he doesn't expect her to be able to read his mind, intuit his questions, or whatever when spider legs keep jabbing out at them and the witch's mouth seems to clutch and claw its opening and closing motions, wholly inhuman. Which isn't new to him. But this is not the kind of inhuman sort he would welcome in any world. Rhindon lashing out, a well honed extension of the rest of his movement and intent, he aims to relieve the witch of at least two of those legs.

It might just be him, but the screeching, howling quality of the monster's rage seems to be getting louder, borderline unbearable.

Again he wants to ask her: what is going on here?

But it has to wait until they are well away from this darkness, supposing they get away at all.

"Yes!" she shrieks--undeniably Rosella this time--but then stops short and fixes wide blue eyes on the monster rising from the bed, snapping at them even as the undead arms hold her back. "No!" she cries instead, fixing her eyes not on those glowing red eyes burning with hatred, but at the red gem beneath it, straining against the place where a neck would be. "The--at her neck!"

One of the hands clamps over her mouth, pulling her back toward the wall, and her stomach twists in abhorrence as she sinks her teeth into it, biting as hard as she can and trying to ignore the flesh that comes away in her mouth as she does, spitting violently as soon as the hand recedes. "It's a talisman, get it off her!"

Rather than make a reply to that direction verbally, he launches forward, the red jewel an easy point of focus even if it isn't an easy mark. Things dull to him shortly in the way of dreams and the half-there quality of real and not real. Still sharp in his awareness: Rosella behind him, Lolotte in front, and a commitment to victory for a number of reasons, not the least of which is because things never happen the same way twice. Somehow, he just knows that.

The task of gouging out the gem is improbable considering the speed he would need to achieve it, as well as accuracy. Peter is good but he's not that good. He settles for a heavy slash just above the talisman, an angled down-stroke that he puts all his gathered speed and half of his weight into, aiming to keep his balance for a second strike to the opposite side at the same level.

It may be a bad idea to chance even the quickest look backward to see if Rosella is managing, but he can't help it. After the second hit, he looks, worried that the hands in the walls might be winning not because Rosella is incapable of taking care of herself but because there are just so many of them.

More than he remembers.

With no arrows left, Rosella quickly abandons her bow and focuses her concentration on fighting off the undead that are grasping at her, trying to pull her into--through?--the wall. She remembers this, knows how it might very well go; unseen hands grab her, strike her head against something, and then Peter is alone to fight, and then Peter dies--

No!

But this is not the underworld, it is not a catacomb beneath a graveyard, and as Peter strikes at the talisman she directed him towards, memories come flooding back--not memories of fear and death, but memories of a time when she did this before, when the arrow slew Lolotte as it was supposed to, when she claimed that talisman and returned it and put back the things she had taken--

When a mummy lurched out at her and was repelled by a scarab in her pocket.

She gasps, and remembers, and this is her nightmare, no matter what horrors it may throw at her, and as the scarab grows warm in her pocket, the hands begin to shrivel, drawing back in fear of the power it holds.

But it won't work on Lolotte, and removing the talisman will only deprive her of her stolen power. Killing her--killing her is something else entirely, and the look on her face as her eyes meet Peter's demonstrates plainly that she is, for once in her life, entirely out of ideas.

Hacking and slashing is bloody, sick business, especially where monsters are concerned, though it is one of Peter's darker observations over time that people seem to bleed more. Some trick of the mind. Or the truth. Depending on the situation -- in battle or afterward and so on -- it's simpler or more complicated, the matter of figuring out which it is. Now's not the time for that figuring however, and Rosella's glance manages to be wholly expressive to him. Whether he would translate it verbatim is debatable but the gist gets through; he draws the blade back as one of the remaining legs sweeps the ground out from underneath him and by hook, crook, or nightmare's bad humor Lolotte still has her head attached to the sorry excuse for a neck-gem-thing. He brings Rhindon up between her gaping face that seems to be entirely made of teeth this close.

But this proximity offers him an opportunity as well, getting enough leverage as he pushes himself up and forward against the gnashing thing in a counter-crash, pulling back only long enough to put more force into driving swordpoint where the witch's heart ought to be. Or a lung. Does she even have those?

This enemy is foreign to him, and only when (if) Rhindon's path remains true does he notice enough of the motion's violence results in a deafening snap that he can't pinpoint. But it's hard to miss the blood-like gem falling as if singularly slowed to the floor.

Even if the fight isn't over (his eyes make quick survey of the walls for hands) his resolve hasn't changed. This dreamspace belongs to Rosella and it would be as much failing her as himself to die again. They will both get out of what he now perceives to be a tower with that uncanny way of dreams to let the walkers know this or that here and there. Both out. Both alive.

What does it matter? Some would argue. A dream is only a dream.

But Peter isn't so sure, isn't willing to take that risk. One needs to earn the right to live, besides, doesn't he or she? The right to wake up is, in a way, a responsibility too, and unless Rosella went home, Peter could not contend with rising out of a nightmare to his friend, still trapped.

It is a strange phenomenon that occurs when Peter severs the gem from the monster's neck--how the room suddenly floods with light and howls, as the source of all the witch's power goes tumbling to the floor, separated from her once and for all. A fairy queen's life depended on the magic in that talisman; could it be that the witch bound her own to it, as well? Rosella doesn't know, but it is an answer made for a fairy tale, and this is Rosella's nightmare--or is it a dream, now, with an unexpected rescuer appearing to save her at exactly the right moment?

His hair would be black, she thinks absently, but it would be right other than that. Alexander. No, Peter.

But the witch is shrieking again, this time raining down her dying curses on the both of them as she shrivels into a grotesque husk of splayed legs and greenish skin, all eight of her burning red eyes slowly dulling into darkness as dawn breaks, and the hands, as if fearing the light, recede.

Rosella barely realizes her legs have given way until she hits the ground, trembling all over, shaking so hard she cannot even bear to speak. When she lived this, it had been a day and a half since last she slept, and she had faced horrors beyond imagining in all of that time. Dawn is here, and she knows her quest is not yet over, but terror has caught up with her now, and she is frozen in place, her face white and her eyes dull as she reels from the horror in the aftermath.

What curses the witch has, Peter thinks, keep them to yourself, because refusing them seems to be the right thing to do, even if there is no handbook for such protocol. He watches as Lolotte sinks in on herself, a mass of all things twisted and seething until even all of that has dried out by a light that seems more than ordinary sunlight. Bluer than blue eyes falling to the gem again, he walks, picks it up and brings it to Rosella's side where he kneels, not knowing what to do with it. Fear and a shell-shocked state seem to have taken over her features, however, so he sets the stone aside and leans in a little, placing Rhindon with natural care to the ground beside them as well.

"Rosella?" Recognition first. The witch gone now, there's no rush that he can see, and he is no stranger to this kind of reaction. Though no soldier, the way Rosella looks now, the way her voice seems stopped up behind her eyes and a tight jaw are all familiar to him.

"Is she--is she--" Rosella chokes out, unable to lift her eyes to Peter's as she quakes in fear. Perhaps it seems strange that she is paralyzed with it now, at the moment when things are finally safe, but this is a day and a half of nothing but near-death experiences crashing down on her head all at once, and this is the moment when they all suddenly become real. And perhaps that makes this as much a part of the nightmare as the rest of it, because she knows that she still has a quest to finish, people to save, deeds to complete, and yet she cannot make herself move. "P-Peter, is she--"

"Dead." He doesn't mean to lie to her and hopes that the dried out shell of an enemy really is as dead as she looks. If she's even still there at all. Nightmares, dreams are funny that way. Unpredictable. Ever changing. Taking things away. Putting them back. Switching them around. When he settles his hands on her shoulders he finds himself unarmored, though in the same state of sweat, blood, and dirt that seems par for the course where witches, swords, and other nightmarish things are concerned. "It's all right," again he doesn't mean to lie, but it's true that more of this statement is what he wants it to be than what he is certain of. This isn't his battlefield, so the rules he knows may not apply, the faith he holds fast to may be quieter in presence. But it's not enough room to question it altogether, so he tells her what he hopes. It's all right.

"Do you want to leave?" It seems, for the most part, a stupid question but still somehow better than pulling her upright and pushing her out the door, which seems normal once again, the walls at rest--just walls.

"We have to--it's dawn," she says, which makes perfect sense to her but is a poor explanation for anyone else, and it takes her a few seconds before that realization catches up with her. "The--where is it? The talisman. We have to give it back. We have to go, she's going to die, she's--"

We're not done yet, she thinks despairingly, but rather than filling her with her usual motivation, this time all the fight seems to rush out of her at the prospect. There is still more to do. It's not over. They could still die, if she fails.

"We have to leave," she clarifies after another minute, dimly recalling how this all is meant to go. "Edgar will be here soon, and--and it's dawn, we have to hurry."

Curling his hand around the talisman, he holds it out to her, not knowing if she wants to keep hold of it herself or for him to do so himself.

"Where? I'm not familiar with...any of this, Rosella," he says not in the way of patronizing sort but quite frank, calm, quiet even. Something about her despair that makes itself almost tangible, and if it had a form it might be made of glass right now. Wherever the sun pools in from, it has a unifying effect on both blonds, or seems to do so from Peter's perspective, which makes him feel that there is at least some purpose to his being there at all. He may not know what it is, but he has been in that position plenty of times before; those times he did not take it quite as composedly, granted, but there is something to be said for taking one's experience along.

She takes the talisman from his hands, clutching it close to her chest as it glows with reddish warmth, less like blood now and more like a warm ember beginning to burn in her hands. This is all so natural to her, so obvious, that it's almost strange to realize that he's lost as to what to do with all this.

Alexander was a bit lost, too, when he'd rescued her. She'd taken him by the hand, back then, and led him home to the sound of cheers.

This time, she doesn't take her rescuer's hand, but she does motion to Peter, slowly getting to her feet and seeming to shake off a haze of uncertainty that has been clouding her mind. The motion sends her hair cascading around her shoulders, golden in the light of the dawn--and yes, dawn, it's important that they go, because things aren't over yet, are they? There are still things to do at dawn.

"This is a talisman that belongs to the queen of the fairies," she explains, heading toward the stairs without looking back at the corpse of the witch, keeping her eyes fixed on the gem in her hands. "She'll die without it, if I don't get it back to her soon. That was the whole reason for all this--coming here--killing her. I had to get it away from her somehow." She pauses, trembling all over, and then adds, "I don't know why it didn't kill her this time. It did before. I didn't mean it to, but--"

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Quest 228

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sleep on the right side of the white noise ][

sleep on the right side of the white noise ][

sleep on the right side of the white noise ][

sleep on the right side of the white noise ][

sleep on the right side of the white noise ][

sleep on the right side of the white noise ][

sleep on the right side of the white noise ][

sleep on the right side of the white noise ][

sleep on the right side of the white noise ][

sleep on the right side of the white noise ][

sleep on the right side of the white noise ][

sleep on the right side of the white noise ][

sleep on the right side of the white noise ][

sleep on the right side of the white noise ][