The Witcher: The Never-ending Cycle

Part 1: Dreams of Bone

The elves have many proverbs dictating things from the common to the abstract. One such proverb says,

"Rivers and oceans do not mix but for a moment."

Rare is the intersection of that which is most hidden and that which is public. Of all beings elves had become the closest to mastering their emotions, controlling what their faces and words exposed. No one is infallible though. When the ocean and the river of your soul touch, for but a second, both show.

Ciri is laying in a bed. Really more so of a straw stuffed blanket on the floor, but when included in a room with a door that locks, bed became a plenty apt description. There is another girl in the room with her, their legs draped across each other and tiny drops of perspiration, otherwise invisible, forming at their points of contact. The church bells chimes 10, although its really 10:07. The priest in charge isn't the rule following sort and often pretendsthat his adjustments to time are but gods wish. The lunch hour in the town frequently ran long and the early morning hours late as Ciri had learned over the past week spent at this inn.

Ciri shifted and shuddered, and the girl besides her remained fast asleep.

She was running across the dry cracked earth, feeling her toes dig into the crumbly dirt, and the occasional hidden rock pierce the thin skin of her arch. She couldn't see anything behind her. But she knew it was there. The feeling curled in her stomach and reached up her throat, tightening it with every second.

In the waking world her head tilted and her fingers twitched.

Now the cracked earth dissolved into sand, sucking and pulling at her feet. The blurry darkness around her took on a yellow hue, and sound seemed to seep away from her, pulled into a distant storm.

She shifted to the side and curled up into a ball displacing the legs once on top of her. A sleepy snort was the response.

Suddenly it came. A wave of thorns and vines whipping and licking at her calves. She didn't stand a chance. No amount of dexterity or speed could evade them. In seconds she was on a nest of sandy bristling branches, arms held back, and thorns making her blood drip-drip-drip down. But unlike any vines she had ever seen, these were white as bones. Through the sand a shadow approached and her already endless fear grew.

Her limbs began to flail, instincts making her reach for the knife she always kept under her pillow. But it wasn't there. She had moved it onto the floor the night prior for her unexpected guest. While this flailing of arms and legs didn't awake Ciri, it brought the girl besides her joltingly awake. Taking in the scene and deciding that it wasn't the shaking of demons (the name the village priest had coined for what was elsewhere called seizures), her irritation started to grow. Hours of sleep lost, she thought angrily. She got up and grabbed the water basin off the small table in the corner.

The man grew closer, but his face was still hidden. His build showed strength. She could see his crossed arms and sensed he found her lacking somehow. Her blood felt boiling hot as it trickled down her limbs and into the thorns. Hotter and hotter it went. In the bone white nest, a red drop fell, and a spark started.

Her eyes couldn't leave the shadow of a man though. The flames rose through the vines, acrid smoke curling. They were reaching her feet now and the growing light from them showed the edge of the mans jaw. Tight muscles twitched there, and she couldn't tell if he was frowning or smirking, but the feeling of hatred was like waves against her.

Back in the room the other girl studied Ciri's limbs thrashing back and forth, still fast asleep. Her lip curled.

The flamed grabbed at her clothes and leapt so fast, blistering her skin. She could smell it now. The light slowly revealed the face in front of her. Her eyes rolled in terror like a horse, whitter than the bone white vines.

She took aim and threw the whole basin over the girl. It was a perfectly calculated arc, well-practiced thanks to pesky brothers.

The instant came. Her very being burning, her nerves and her veins, white hot, ice and lava all at once. It was an explosion. The big bang. And in that fraction of a second she saw the face in full, and let out a scream that tore through her burning corpse, as everything went black.

The second the water hit her, she sat upright, stiff as a board, eyes wide open, and let out a scream.

And it wasn't just any scream.