[holo | Santuary]

[dustandhope]

One moment, he is awareness and wonder, seeing through eyes that have no form, no jelly or pupil, nothing but pure sight.

The next he is hitting hard flooring, feeling heavy appendages and twitching tendons and the pressure of air around him. His awareness is contracted, uncomfortably small and located and yet a gaping emptiness echoes through his chest where organs and the rest of his soul had sat.

He’s back in his hated body, the twisted, monstrous visage that had clawed its way from the underworld time and time again. He pushes himself upright, sheltering too sensitive eye sockets from the strange, brilliant light that floods them.

He twists, looking for a way out of the chamber he’s trapped in. The walls are white and arcane, nothing he has seen before. He throws his awareness open to throw off his mortal shell, to let the spirit world show him the way out.

The world doesn’t shift. The heavy flesh stubbornly clings to him.

Looking down, he sees his arm. No curling, writhing energy, no call of the Soul Reaver, just a strange, metal band in its place.

He screams. He has no words for what he feels, for the entrapment and the anguish, the loss and confusion. He just screams without sound, curled claws banging on the floor.

01 | Holo: Arrival | Fear Cuts Deeper

[thelonewolf]

“Hello?”

The small, wary voice echoes within the metal walls of the arrival chamber. The little girl—or is it a boy?—stands, now with her thin sword in hand, ready for anything that might jump out at her.  Her eyes are wide and grey, nearly obscured in a face as dirty as her hair, which is short as a boy's and choppy—as if recently sheared off by a dull knife. She’s dressed like a boy, too, in brown breeches, a tunic, and a jerkin with iron studs, and all are muddy and stained with dried blood.  The child looks like a frightened animal, eying every nook and cranny of the unfamiliar room for hint of her predator. “Who’s there?” She swallows, and then--

--All at once, a transformation seems to come over her. The child grasps the hilt of the sword—her very own Needle—as if it were part of her own arm. Fear cuts deeper than swords, she reminds herself. She turns sideways, and her eyes are that of the predator, not the prey. Her face is as calm as still water, betraying nothing. “If you don’t come out, you’re a coward,” she says, fierce as a wolf.

When she looks with her eyes, they tell her there are no doors. She’s alone. The coward mare called Craven is not with her. It even smells funny.  It smells clean. The room is a circle, and there are stairs, and the hand not grasping her sword has some piece of jewelry on it. It’s ugly and stupid looking, and the composed face of Arya Stark scrunches up in disgust as she inspects it, nearly dropping Needle so she can rip it off.

She doesn’t cry, even though that’s something Arya Stark of Winterfell might have done, back when she was that girl. She doesn't know where she is, and she doesn't know who she should be. And wolves don’t cry.

“What is this place?”