II - Sigh of Smoke

Chapter 10 - Obstructions

-Aleksandra Bane-

Fire crackled at her heels, licking at her ankles and her knees. So used to it, she had given up on running from the scorching heat. On either side of her was a burning field, stretching into the horizons and causing the world to glow like an enraged hearth. Her skin itched, her hair stuck together in oily clumps, and her back was drenched in sweat.

She swiped at her mouth, hissing as she adjusted her breeches. 

Dreams were such a hassle.

Aleksandra knew very well that her dream plain was very much chaos. Atlanta had a calm desert, Dareon had a gorgeous, serene, lush valley with a lake and beautiful trees and mountains framing the horizon. She even knew that Lucan had a vast expanse of ice for his, which was quite the opposite of her own. Boread had once told her that these dream plains reflected their bloodland, but Aleksandra was very certain that her home was not a land on fire.

She glanced up and sighed. The sky was an endless black void at the moment, unnaffected by the glowing expanse of burning grass below it. Sometimes, the sky was filled with voices that spoke in different languages, ancient or common. Other times it was filled with images and memories that weren't hers, mingling and mixing until it was difficult to differentiate one from another. When she first met Lorthrain here, the dragon had descended through that black haze, parting it like smoke. Yet, not even the dragon's wings could beat out the inferno around her.

Aleksandra hadn't spoken about her ethereal plain with the other Dragon vessels. What good would it do? She was awfully envious theirs actually resembled something they called home.

Aleksandra paced among the embers, her calloused feet causing sizzling whispers to rise from the ashen floor. Her memory was a little faded, but she could easily recall showing up in Lucan's dreams, interrupting his peace there. She had gone there, using her own abilities, but it seemed she couldn't anymore, no matter how she tried. She wasn't even sure why she was in Lucan's dreams in the first place. Perhaps her inability to enter another vessel's dream could be attributed to the chains on her wrists, chains and shackles she would see if she woke up.

Pain bloomed in her forehead and she winced. 

Here, in this ethereal plain, she was left to her own devices, her own demons. All the thoughts she kept from herself during her waking hours haunted her here.

Nearly distracted, she almost missed the images that began to fill the sky above.

She could see Willim on the floor before her, chest empty and eyes vacant. Then an Ambassador with a cruel smile that with lithe fingers undermined an entire kingdom. That villain had thanked her, thanked her for her help in annhilating two Queens, one of grace and beauty, the other of wishes and demands. Aleksandra then saw the lives she ended, then her fingernails embedding themselves into a man's ankle, then her shoulder slapping her balcony wall as a man tripped over her and landed in the Bitter Sea. Mayhaps he was impaled by rocks, she couldn't remember.

Or she just didn't want to.

She remembered Dareon's anger at her false spell, her lies. He had felt the pain of torture because of her. She remembered submerging his head in bathwater. She vaguely remembered strangling him. She even remembered leading him down a stairwell to find a scroll that they would have never read, much less looked at. Aleksandra, now thinking about it, could not even forgive herself for that, though back then it seemed so absolutely necessary.

"Live for us." Willim had said.

Live for whom exactly? 

Aleksandra, for the life of her, couldn't think of an answer.