Ravik's Malachite Dream

[Narrator]
Ravik's eyes open into pure whiteness. The sound of howling wind covers his ears like mufflers, and the bitter, biting cold threatening to frost over his uncovered skin would make most in Ytesh beg for a hearth and more layers over them. But this? This is the cold of home.

He finds himself on a slope, snow covering the horizon in every direction. The sun, hidden behind the cover of clouds, offers little warmth in compensation.

He does not recall what he is doing, or why. But one thing, he knows.

He must climb.

[Ravik]
Ravik looks around. It is so familiar, though it is all featureless planes of white. The raw, open vastness calls to him, in the way that his legs hurt with the ghost of weariness from climbing, the way he automatically squints to avoid the glare of mellow sun on crystalline white. The wind tears at him in a familiar way, threatening to turn him to ice if he stands too still too long.

He looks up the slope that stretches ahead and above. He nods. So be it.

As he takes the first steps upward, he acknowledges in the far reaches of his mind that this is a dream and that this should not bring him the calm that it does. But it is just a distant thought as he begins to climb and he pushes it away. He wants to know what is at the top of that slope.

[Narrator]
Ravik braves the icy expanses with the calmness of the very mountain he stands on. With each step, snow gives way to the might of his legs and crunches beneath his feet, until becoming just as solid as the stone beneath.

The crystals falling down from the sky continue to grace his skin, their burning cold serving as yet another way to stay awake. Though they will eventually numb and need to be wiped away, they now serve as a reminder that he still feels, a reminder that he still lives.

Melting. Ravik feels a crawling drop of water run down from his scalp, its warmth disturbing in this temperature. Then his back, from beneath his armor. His shoulders. His chest.

[Ravik]
Ravik frowns and wipes a hand at the trail of warm that runs down his scalpt. Water? his body heat should melt some snow, yes, but not from the most exposed and least warm spot on his body. He looks up into the sky, looking for snow turned to rain, wiping away droplets as they run down his scalp and cheeks, feeling slightly uncomfortable with the rivulets of water that tickles as they travel down his body.

It is worrisome. If he becomes wet in the freezing snow he will not last long. Even a Goliath is susceptible to hypothermia in those conditions.

[Narrator]
As Ravik wipes his scalp and cheeks, he glances down at his fingers. It's... not water. It's black, with small sparkles in between. Ink.

[Ravik]
Ink? he asks. Out loud and not out loud. Ink?

Ink

His heart starts to thrash. Ink. His ink?

He holds out his arms, looking at the trails of tattoos that should move from shoulder down his upper arms. Is it disappearing?

[Narrator]
Ravik looks down at his arms, and sees it. Trails of black and glitter flow down from his skin, seeping out like tears of a mournful family. His history. His inheritance. His achievements. His failures. His past, and someday, his future.

The snow begins being painted by the oily mixture, the stuff of memories itself. The pool seeps, crumpling the snow with the very weight of their importance, and recedes away from Ravik, leaving him in a wide clearing in the snow.

The rock below is green. Waves mark its flesh.

[Ravik]
NO! Ravik tries to catch the drops of black and glitter, tries to stop their escape, holding a hand over the ink visible on his arm. No, no, no, no he whimpers, desperation and horror in his voice. You can't do this. It is mine! MINE!

Tears form and mixes with the black ink running down his face. Why would you take this from me?

He looks down on the ground, the green ground of Malachite. Dream. It is a dream. the voice at the back of his mind, the one aware of this as a fiction of his mind whispers. Just a dream

But the panic doesn't release its grip easily. He bends down, then drops down to his knees.

WHY ARE YOU DOING THIS? he roars in a voice to rival Rai'Voa's. His inheritance, his history are tainting the green rock black and red and blue and silver.

[Narrator]
No answer rings out in the cold expanse. Looking down through tears that hurt in their flash-freezing, Ravik sees the green move. His arms, touching the ground, have become a bridge. Waves, much like the ones on Walleh's hands, rise up through his arms. Like many worms carving their way just under his skin, the waves grow on his arm, shifting and moving like ripples upon water. His history, taken over. His destiny, once left to himself, now being written in front of his eyes.

He feels his muscles twitch and move, standing up against his will. But only partially. He feels he has to move, he has to climb, he has to keep going. Through more tears, Ravik breaches the snow. Each step feels uncertain, as though walking upon a bed of fluid.

[Ravik]
Like a robot, he moves as he is bidden, legs heavy with the drag of desperation and despair. It is just a dream the voice says, but it is getting harder to believe as his life is trailing out behind him. Seradez, he says as he trudges along much like a war forged machine without independent will. I wish I knew what you wanted from me. From us. From this world. Why are you okay with the world you created with your brothers and sisters. With Sardior, to become this broken ruin of what was good?

[Narrator]
Ravik's thoughts drift out into the world. If they are heard, there is none willing to reply.

Soon, the ground begins to shake. Ravik sees snow crumbling in the climb ahead, beginning to fall. Towards him. Desperation sets in, and just in time, his muscles seem to return to his control. He hears the clanging of a hammer on metal, and a ravine tears itself in the ground beside him, and the rock making it up seems normal. Granite. The only way out.

[Ravik]
Taking the freedom given back to his limbs Ravik abandons the snow and malachite, heading towards the sound of metal on metal. He almost runs down the ravine, gaining too much speed in his haste, arms flailing to keep him on his legs.

At the bottom he continues his now-run, towards the sound. Away.

Deep in his mind he makes a promise to himself. To Sardior too, maybe.

I will keep her imprisoned. I will not free her. If her stone is tainted I shall not work it. Nor break it.

And on he runs.

[Narrator]
Ravik runs down the ravine, stumbling on rocks both loose and solid. It is as though gravity shifted, the fall beneath him becoming the path forward while the walls become ground. With each step, the world grows warmer, until he feels the lines of malachite burning upon his skin and peeling off like ash in the air.

Mosses grow, expanding to cover the entire surface of the cave. Small berries glow like flame, gemstones punching through vegetation to remind Ravik of who truly owns this place. The cavern starts to expand, grow, until the rupture is as large as the world. At the center, Ravik sees it. A pool of pure darkness. It calls to him.

[Ravik]
Ravik stops at the edge of the vegetation, eyeing the pool of darkness. To give himself time, he bends down and plucks a couple of flaming berries. He keeps them in his hand as he walks closer to the darkness, as if the light in his hand can somehow soothe the worry that the darkness wakes in him.

But he cannot deny the call. If this is salvation from malachite and the evil that lurks there, then he will have to trust it just as surely at he trust the sound of hammer on an anvil.

He steps to the edge and looks down in the darkness, trust warring with the need to know.

[Narrator]
The darkness is just that. Darkness. The faraway sound of dripping carries soft ripples through its surface, and Ravik cannot be sure if it is water or ink.

Soon, he sees another movement on it. Within it. A creature, no larger than a fish, swims closer. Not towards him, but nearing the rims of this underground lake.

A carp.

Its scales a mottled mix of dull blue, shining gold and gleaming burgundy. It swims in soft circles near Ravik, as though only half-aware of his presence.

[Ravik]
He sits down at the edge of the pool and puts a finger tentatively into the inky darkness. Testing the feel and luring the carp closer.

[Narrator]
The fish continues swimming, its path growing both closer and further from Ravik. Slowly, his fate-marks faded, the lake's ink-water begins climbing up his arms. It snakes onto his back, chest, and scalp. Ravik feels warmth on the Soul upon his chest. The carp glows. The voice of the mountains themselves speaks through the ground around him.

"Your work is not over. Wake up, child."
Ravik feels that shift of consciousness, like when Rai'Voa takes over. The Soul rune glows at the far wall of the cave. And then another. And another. And another. They glow and grow and overlap one another until the wall becomes a rectangle of light, and shatters. Rock falls out, as though gravity went forward, and Ravik sees a scenery of a pure sky above snowy mountains.

"Home. Home may be something granted to you, beyond your choice. But it may also be forged. Do not give up. Light the forge."
The cavern becomes colder, but it feels comfortable. Like a great warmth brought upon by a fur blanket. Ravik blinks, and he is back in his new room, facing the ceiling.

[Ravik]
Ravik lies there, completely still except for his eyes that blink over and over again as he tries to grasp what just happened. His eyes feel dry, and there is little doubt that the tears he shed over the loss of his tattoos were not just shed in the dream.

His tattoos. The thought sparks the desperation again and it breaks his stupor. He looks down himself, on his shoulders. His chest. Looking for the lines that is as much part of him as his thoughts, body and his breath.

His relief is immediate and it almost makes his eyes well up again. Just a dream after all.

He turns over in the bed and kisses Trick's shoulder before disentangling himself from her.

Home. Home may be something granted to you, beyond your choice. But it may also be forged. Do not give up. Light the forge.

Light the forge. A tangible goal. But where? How?

He sits on edge of the bed for a little while before he decides to get up, get started on the day while he mulls over the dream in the back of his mind. With a last look at Trick, still sleeping he tiptoes out of the door and goes in search of Thallium's room.