[ Despite her exhaustion, Julie has barely slept since she saw the root monster. She still hasn't gotten any answers about that thing, and while it's great that Inej was rescued instead of eaten, Julie still watched her almost be eaten. Helpless except for the actions of someone else, someone who doesn't even know she was there.
Julie has been helpless before. This entire thing is bringing up a lot of heavily suppressed emotions and memories, and that's without the Singularity's overwhelming influence.
After she mopes and dozes and eats an entire block of cheese, she has the strength to make it back into the Horizon. She arrives at the Singularity with a totter and a sigh, pulling up the hood on her outfit to cover her hair. It's not necessarily less conspicuous in sitting at the Singularity at all, but at least she might be slightly less identifiable by sight alone.
The white wolf she's left guarding the Singularity in her absence settles down next to her when she sits cross-legged on her pillow. She sets a plate of several hefty, raw steaks on the ground for it before she puts her hands back on the Singularity.
I'm back, she tells it again, unnecessarily. The Singularity has seemed a bit calmer over the days, as she's proven repeatedly that she is not going to leave, as she told it over and over that they can find the lost Summoned, but she needs help. Today, it seems slightly more riled up than it was yesterday, but not nearly how it was in the beginning.
Jesus, it feels like an age since the first of them got snatched. How could it have barely been more than a week?
The Singularity enfolds her again in its own consciousness, makes her feel like she's been absorbed. As she's spent more time doing this, she's learned to ease the sensation, to keep hold of the threads of her own self while their combined connection sends out feelers for what's slipping through the cracks. Their messages, their visions. The tiny pieces that are making it through the gap.
Let's do it, she tells the Singularity firmly, the same way she might say it to her horse back in Cadens. A command, a tug on the reins.
Where she's sent to next is, unfortunately, nothing like she was hoping to find.
"Geralt," says a woman's voice, and Julie sends out thanks that she recognizes it. Ciri, she's seeing what Ciri sees, and that's something that entirely erases the tiny mercy of being in someone she knows.
"Ciri!" Geralt says, and he looks like he's on the verge of collapse. His embrace is so tight, and the two of them stumble to the ground. He worries about Ciri and she worries about him, insisting that she's fine. Julie can't see her to gauge that truthfully, but she certainly sounds better than he does. Powerless to do anything herself, Julie watches Ciri take him in, all the damage that Julie can't even begin to imagine how he obtained.
His arm, the skin dangling like torn meat. It's not the worst wound of his that Julie's ever seen, but it's close. The look in his eyes, though -- that's what makes her want to scream and smash the strange internal cage that keeps her as an observer only.
"A rite. Of some sort. When I struck one of them with the offering, we... Melded. Had to pull apart," he explains, and Ciri sounds just as horrified as Julie feels when she begins to lift him again, to take them somewhere else. She prompts him to continue but he's silent as they move, the effort clearly too much for even basic multi-tasking.
They reach some kind of little camp, sink back to the dirt. "They had an altar. I thought they'd seek a blood sacrifice, but they wanted something else. A vessel. Or a channel," he explains, and Julie's mind and heart race.
Religious. It's religious. A vessel? They're trying to call down some god, or else the Singularity itself. (She really hopes it's a god.) Julie doesn't know shit about the old gods -- is one of them somehow related to all of this mess? Roots and fungus and keys?
She's still watching Geralt's glazed eyes when she's abruptly thrown back into the real world.
Julie is screaming when she wakes up. Not in terror, but despair. She reaches for her notebook with hands that shake so hard she ends up just dropping the pad and pencil. When she fumbles to her feet, her body rejects the effort so strongly that she doubles over and vomits on the rug, nothing but stomach acid and bile. Her throat is raw and it burns.
Falling first to her hands and knees, then entirely flat, she loses consciousness next to her own sick. Outside, the sky has grown dark in a matter of minutes. Thunder sounds, loud, right over the city, followed by a torrential downpour. ]
FIFTH: Ciri and Geralt
Julie has been helpless before. This entire thing is bringing up a lot of heavily suppressed emotions and memories, and that's without the Singularity's overwhelming influence.
After she mopes and dozes and eats an entire block of cheese, she has the strength to make it back into the Horizon. She arrives at the Singularity with a totter and a sigh, pulling up the hood on her outfit to cover her hair. It's not necessarily less conspicuous in sitting at the Singularity at all, but at least she might be slightly less identifiable by sight alone.
The white wolf she's left guarding the Singularity in her absence settles down next to her when she sits cross-legged on her pillow. She sets a plate of several hefty, raw steaks on the ground for it before she puts her hands back on the Singularity.
I'm back, she tells it again, unnecessarily. The Singularity has seemed a bit calmer over the days, as she's proven repeatedly that she is not going to leave, as she told it over and over that they can find the lost Summoned, but she needs help. Today, it seems slightly more riled up than it was yesterday, but not nearly how it was in the beginning.
Jesus, it feels like an age since the first of them got snatched. How could it have barely been more than a week?
The Singularity enfolds her again in its own consciousness, makes her feel like she's been absorbed. As she's spent more time doing this, she's learned to ease the sensation, to keep hold of the threads of her own self while their combined connection sends out feelers for what's slipping through the cracks. Their messages, their visions. The tiny pieces that are making it through the gap.
Let's do it, she tells the Singularity firmly, the same way she might say it to her horse back in Cadens. A command, a tug on the reins.
Where she's sent to next is, unfortunately, nothing like she was hoping to find.
"Geralt," says a woman's voice, and Julie sends out thanks that she recognizes it. Ciri, she's seeing what Ciri sees, and that's something that entirely erases the tiny mercy of being in someone she knows.
"Ciri!" Geralt says, and he looks like he's on the verge of collapse. His embrace is so tight, and the two of them stumble to the ground. He worries about Ciri and she worries about him, insisting that she's fine. Julie can't see her to gauge that truthfully, but she certainly sounds better than he does. Powerless to do anything herself, Julie watches Ciri take him in, all the damage that Julie can't even begin to imagine how he obtained.
His arm, the skin dangling like torn meat. It's not the worst wound of his that Julie's ever seen, but it's close. The look in his eyes, though -- that's what makes her want to scream and smash the strange internal cage that keeps her as an observer only.
"A rite. Of some sort. When I struck one of them with the offering, we... Melded. Had to pull apart," he explains, and Ciri sounds just as horrified as Julie feels when she begins to lift him again, to take them somewhere else. She prompts him to continue but he's silent as they move, the effort clearly too much for even basic multi-tasking.
They reach some kind of little camp, sink back to the dirt. "They had an altar. I thought they'd seek a blood sacrifice, but they wanted something else. A vessel. Or a channel," he explains, and Julie's mind and heart race.
Religious. It's religious. A vessel? They're trying to call down some god, or else the Singularity itself. (She really hopes it's a god.) Julie doesn't know shit about the old gods -- is one of them somehow related to all of this mess? Roots and fungus and keys?
She's still watching Geralt's glazed eyes when she's abruptly thrown back into the real world.
Julie is screaming when she wakes up. Not in terror, but despair. She reaches for her notebook with hands that shake so hard she ends up just dropping the pad and pencil. When she fumbles to her feet, her body rejects the effort so strongly that she doubles over and vomits on the rug, nothing but stomach acid and bile. Her throat is raw and it burns.
Falling first to her hands and knees, then entirely flat, she loses consciousness next to her own sick. Outside, the sky has grown dark in a matter of minutes. Thunder sounds, loud, right over the city, followed by a torrential downpour. ]