jaskoleczka | { pfsb } a test

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{ pfsb } a test

Avallac'h was meant to follow me, but something went awry...

It's a quiet night, and the Scottish skies at the end of the universe are filled with to the brim with soft gray clouds. The waters of the little inlet and around the lake lap lazily at the shore. Deep in the lake, the giant squid cruises idly for food, trailing its tentacles like smoke through the water. In the stables, the horses whicker quietly to each other. All is peaceful, and perfect.

Until some of those soft, contented sounds turn sharp, and anxious. Wood rattles as nervous horses begin pawing and kicking at their stalls, tossing their heads, wide-eyed and alarmed.

And then a flash of light splits the clouds with a horrible sound as of a great deal of air being displaced all at once, and then: nothing.

The horses calm. And somewhere, far out in the lake, there is a splash.

***

Ciri surfaces with a splutter and gasps for air as she turns her head, taking stock of the situation.

This is...not Velen. At least, it's nowhere in Velen she recognizes. "Avallac'h?" she calls, her voice echoing strangely over the water, but just inflating her ribcage to project her voice has her wincing. The water is too dark to see through, but she knows what she would find if she could: a faint dark cloud that is seeping from the wound in her side and the tear in her shirt.

"Wonderful," she says to herself, and eyes the distance to shore. It isn't far – fifty yards, perhaps – but she's exhausted from the ambush, the flight, the portal, and she's already lost a lot of blood.

But there's nothing for it: she grits her teeth and strikes out for shore, hoping against hope that this lake is not home to drowners...or worse.

In the end, she almost makes it. There's the shore, only twenty yards, ten. A few feet. Everything goes black, and when she comes to, she's washed onto a sandy beach that makes no sense with the cold lake water she's just escaped – but that's all she has time to determine before exhaustion and pain told firm hold of her reins, and she collapses into a heap on the shore at the end of the universe.

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"Good!" she says. The magic he'd done – the spirit he shared, it hasn't healed her fully, but she feels almost good enough to be on her way. A little food and companionship should get her the rest of the way there; she doesn't have time to sit here in this inn at the end of the universe and convalesce. The longer she stays, the more she endangers not only herself but everyone around her.

But she really can't go without food and water, so when she finds an empty table and takes a seat, she looks for a server.

"Where are – oh!" A knee-high rodent has appeared next to her; it bobs its head politely and watches her expectantly. She glances to Lan Wangji.

"Is this...a server?"

"Yes."

He sounds resigned.

"I know it is strange. But they are very polite."

This one is, certainly. It even has a crisp white napkin hung over its forearm and is waiting with the very soul of manners.

"Very well," says Ciri, and turns her attention to the rat. "Bread, cheese, and soup, if you have it; a mug of ale and glass of water for me, and some tea for my friend Lan Wangji, please."

The rate bows, and scampers off, leaving Ciri laughing in a startled sort of way before she turns back to her companion. "This place grows stranger and stranger."

"It takes some getting used to."

There is something incredibly dry about that simple sentence.

"You said you had traveled to many worlds. Have you not seen another place like this?"

"Not...precisely like this, no."

She looks around as she speaks, absorbing as much as she can, curiosity alight in her clear green eyes. "I've never seen a nexus like this before. The only thing I can think of that's even remotely similar is the Conjunction of the Spheres – but that was a catastrophic event that led to the slaughter of millions."

The waitrat has returned with the requested ale, water, and tea: she offers the tea to Lan Wangji and drains the glass of water in a single draught. "I assume you hail from elsewhere as well. Is your world anything like this?"

"I do," he says, as he accepts the tea and takes a sip.

"I have only known my own world, before here. It is different. I expect that is because of the many influences of several worlds that are felt here."

"Mm."

A small sound of agreement, before she wraps her hand around the mug of ale and takes a long swallow from it. "And how did you arrive here? I gather not everyone falls from a portal directly into the lake. At least, I hope not."

"Not everyone," he agrees.

"The portal I came through led from a cave in my world through the front door here."

He nods toward the door. Whether or not she can see it will be telling, he knows.

"It was-- a surprise."

She turns, casting her glance along the direction he'd indicated, and frowns.

"Door?" she asks. There's a familiar feeling beginning to bubble up in her stomach, and she tries to push it away, keep it from her voice. "What door?"

Ah.

"If you do not see a door," he says, very steadily, "there are two possible reasons for that."

"One is that the powers which run the inn have decided it is your fortune to remain here for a time."

"The other--"

Is far worse, of course.

"-- I am sorry. I must ask you a difficult question."

"Ask," says Ciri; no stranger to difficult questions she. She tears her eyes away from the wall with no door and tamps down hard on the panic beginning to push adrenaline through her system.

"I will not hold it against you."

Very gently, he asks,

"Is there a chance that you could have died in the fall from what you were fleeing?"

"Died?"

Startled, she looks again at the occupants of the room around them. They all look hale enough, but...

Eredin. The Hunt. Fleeing for the portal. A flash of light.

She shakes her head. "How would I be able to tell?"

"If you do not know--"

He looks around, but does not see either Wei Ying or Harrow, the two who would be most likely to be able to discern the truth.

"-- the healers here might be able to tell."

"Right, then," she sighs. "A healer it is."

She doesn't understand how she could be hungry or thirsty if she's – but Lan Wangji hadn't mentioned it as a way to tell, so perhaps the ghosts inhabiting (haunting?) this place look and act just as if they were still alive.

The waitrat has come with her food; she picks at a piece of cheese, moodily, and presses a hand to her side to see how her wound is feeling.

(Still sore. Very. It will probably need stitches.) "Is there one nearby you could direct me to?"

"After you eat," he suggests. "I will explain, while you do."

"My--"

How to explain Wei Ying to someone who does not know him, and all that they are to each other?"

"--dearest friend," he settles on, for now, "Is here. And is dead. But in all ways appears as one living. It is something in the nature of the inn."

She offers him a tight but grateful smile, and digs into her bread and cheese, washes it down with soup and ale as he talks. None of it is completely familiar, but it's all very good: the soup is more like a stew, thick with meat and vegetables in a savory broth; the cheese is pale and creamy and the bread crackles as she breaks off sections.

"I'm sorry," she says, genuinely sympathetic. "It must be good to be able to spend time with him again. I would never have believed it possible, but then it seems the strangest things are."

Edited 2020-11-02 19:35 (UTC)

"It is," he says, simply.

"And yes. Here, more than most places."

She thinks of Geralt and Yennefer, left on the shores of Avalon, and forces a smile.

"Are there many people here like your friend?" she asks, tearing the last part of the bread in two and using it to sop up the stew.

"Who have died? So I am told."

He is just glad that none of them seem to be inclined toward becoming fierce corpses or angry ghosts in the inn itself, although the grounds are a different matter.

"Enough so that it is seen as commonplace."

She shakes her head in disbelief. "Strange indeed."

She has eaten perhaps a third of the stew and cheese and most of the bread, and the ale is cold and bitter against her throat, but it's hard to enjoy when a rapidly-approaching appointment with a healer might turn her whole world upside-down. She sighs and pushes the dishes away, appetite gone.

"I'm sorry," she says. "I don't think I can eat another bite until I know for certain if I...what I am."

He nods, and stands.

"I will take you to the healers."

He had made a point to find out their location, after what had happened before.

"Follow me."

She pushes herself up a little stiffly, but pride and determination keep her back straight and her head up as she nods to him.

"Thank you, Lan Wangji. I feel I'm going to owe quite a lot to you tonight."

"You are welcome. But you do not owe me anything."

He bends down to one of the rats and requests that it keep an eye on Ciri's meal, then leads the way across the room to the hallway, and the infirmary beyond.

With relief, he sees that someone he knows is looking after things at present.

"Ford-daifu." He bows, then steps aside for Ciri to enter. "We have need of your assistance, if you do not mind."

This time, at least, Kim Ford doesn't jump nearly out of her skin.

"Lan Wangji! Oh, it's good to see you - and see you well," she adds, with a cheerful smile.

Kim shoves a lock of white hair behind her ear and looks back and forth between them.

"How can I help?"

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