Riga's Tural Dream

Riga is pulled through the sapphire glass into a world of blue. It takes a moment to regain her footing, but as she does, everything returns to focus.

A slight, blue haze covers her vision, similar to what happens to the landscape in the far distance. She stands in a hut— no, Mother's home. Bones and skulls and rocks and organs impossibly preserved inside of hanging cages made out of lichen-covered sticks look overhead, threatening to make her feel small, tiny, like a child. Riga expects to smell the mixing scents of wet dirt, shit, and swamp gas— instead, soft lavender fills her nostrils. The smell of fresh food, which feels the moldy table before her— stronger with the mold rather than without, somehow— makes her stomach twist in repulse. This isn't right, there aren't supposed to be nice things here.

Sitting at the far end of the table, an older woman sips her tea. White streaks in her hair and growing crow's feet grant her an air of power, rather than frailty. Horns curl around her head to form a blossoming crown, twisted and knotted, and she wears something between what Mother would have wanted and a mockery of Bluetrench.

Not-Riga sets her teacup down on the table, eyes twinkling with fragmented embers.

"Welcome. 'Tis a rather rare opportunity we have been granted, to reach across time like so."

"... Quite," Riga agrees, drawing on every fragment and figment of etiquette and poise to douse the cresting panic and erupting with starlight. Carpets and dirt flatten under her bootheels as she approaches the table, taking in the home-that-is-not-quite-right out of the corner of her eyes, but never taking them off her... counterpart.

Is it Mother, staring back from behind her face? There are dozens of scenarios why Bellanar would... change skins early, even with Bethany in her talons - the revulsion and terror makes her stop with her hand on the back of the mossy chair, and she is rather sure 'tis not properly masked.

But then again, truth is the most appealing of lies.

"So the cycles run in parallel, not only linearly. And not at the same speed," she muses, letting the staff rest against the table and grabbing her own teacup. She doesn't lift it, though. The smell... 'tis not Manne's brew. Suspicion begins to crystallize into fractals of everlasting guilt.

"Then again, across a vast enough expanse, what are a few years."

Not-Riga clicks her tongue, head shaking softly. As Riga tries to keep the home in her periphery, never truly looking at it, her vision feels wrong. Like a fly, she feels like she is taking in the whole room at once.

"Time... 'tis is a wonderful thing. A month can be worth years, decades worth days. Sit, will you?"

The chair thrums under Riga's hands. Once twice pause, once twice pause- like an interrupted heartbeat. Her vision feels normal once more, and the slight vertigo that comes afterwards does make a part of her want to sit.

Riga blinks once. Twice. Her knees tremble under her skirts, her stomach twists. Normal things, beneath this roof. Yet all the tiny differences... 'tis new. Like a new take on a familiar play.

She slides into the seat, bracing for the mold to crawl and seize. For the food to skitter and jump and clamp. She holds the teacup in her hands, arms folded and tucked at the elbow, just above the tabletop.

"My compliments for the refurbishing. The smell is rather more pleasant. What should I call you? Beyond Witch, of course."

Green-yellow eyes meet the fragmented embers in her older lookalike, and Riga feels the stubs of her horns, of her crown, itch and twitch.

Anticipation eats at her insides as Riga sits down, expecting the traps. The typical bait-and-switch, so overdone that no amount of prediction can bring about a satisfactory end.

The mossy chair feels so soft.

Not-Riga smiles, face cracking for a moment in such a haglike fashion before returning to normalcy- the kind of trick Mother or Melba might play to make their interlocutor or, as most would describe it, victim, doubt their own sanity and mind.
The contained laughter, covered by a loose hand over her mouth, breaks away the cycle for a moment, but it plants a wholly different seed of fear.

"Some traditions deserve to burn. I never did like all the smell of rot."

Another sip of tea.

"I have come to quite enjoy Riga over time. I chose it, after all."

That unnerving smile on her own face makes Riga, indeed, both doubt and swivel towards a different certainty, then all the way around again. Is this mother, playing tricks? Or a version of herself that embraced the fey heritage, progressing along the... transformation, into the ranks of the sisterhood?

She takes a sip herself, barely tasting it over the implications of the introduction. The softness... someone learned the same lesson she did in Bluetrench. Never skimp on where you perch.

... She chose it. Riga chose it too, pride and caution warring over Bethany's colicky cries. On the run, from Bluetrench.

The laughter and the manners drone in Riga's ears. Her own, but mother has worn lives and souls like clothes. It would be just like her, to torment so.

"And where is your daughter, Riga? Shall she join us too?"

The tea tastes of home. Not of childhood, no— that is no home, that is but a house. No, it tastes of Bethany, of Goliath, of Flem's demanding carress.

Not-Riga shakes her head, face tilted down ever so slightly so that her half-lidded eyes look up at Riga without that simple reflective highlight that makes eyes feel more... human. Alive.

"I have no daughter."

Riga glances down at the tea, into the cup, then high, where the light comes from despite the closed roof. Where beams and bones would support the hut, like the spine of an impossible creature, thick enough to offer a perch to a lazy and old cat.

But there is no trace of Flem.

"Nor a King," she says, flat. Too flat, because there are claws on the inside of her throat, the cries of a child, an ache deep within her where the Weave said no life should ever take root, yet will and design still found a way.

Accusation coils on her tongue. The same venom the addicted to Filamine dig up. Self-disgust, finding a vent.

Silence is all she can muster and wrestle. Loaded, heavy. Her hands, folded on the table.

What happened that you are here, and they aren't?"

Not-Riga breathes in. With the same movement that rises her chest, her head leans back slightly, more relaxed.

"Oh, he is around.... hunting, somewhere outside."

The sip of tea is loud when compared to the heavy silence in the room.

Riga licks the back of her teeth, as if to unclog them. Her own tea sit before her folded hands now, untouched, a shield before the tightening of the joints.

She recognizes the tactics. The deflection. The spaces and rope for assumptions and wondering to turn into a noose. Annoying and deceptive by design.

The impulse to push the teapot off the table is a testament to their effectiveness.

"... and how did you get rid of Mother dearest? Unless she is around, hunting, outside?"

Tea swirls in Not-Riga's hand as the soft cloud of steam rises up. It almost seems to curl around the side of her neck and back, like some unseen wind were directing it to match Riga's own imagination.

"I got rid of her, yes. She is no longer near; she got her freedom, and I got mine."

The reflection-future-person-memory leans forward ever so slightly, back still straight in the most formal way possible.

"I do not miss her weight pressing on my back and her voice whispering at my ear."

Riga's next breath is brittle, and hate curls in her chest. Towards Mother. Towards Tural, for showing her this.

Towards herself, because 'tis one thing to know you would be capable of - of doing what she almost did. And another to see and taste and behold it.

"I imagine you do not. Though the memory of her is quite another matter, is it not?"

Her. Mother. Bethany. Riga eventually sips herself, a futile attempt to fight down the nausea.

Mother gaze from behind her daughter's face...

There is no question of worth, for no freedom is worth that price.

"Do you miss her weight?" She turns her palm to encompass the hut and the title of the Witch of Double Bay. Her freedom, so steeped in mother's legacy despite the new coat of flowers. "Or do you tell herself 'twas all worth it?"

"Memories. Is the burden worth it? Why not just..."

Her fingers pluck at her hair, and a strand of green light comes out. She curls it around her finger.

"Mold them? Keep the experience. Keep the power. Lose the weight. Distractions only breed inefficiency. Emotion clouds reason."

She rests the teacup on the table, and extends both hands out to the sides.

"Of course."

The words echo, more softly— in a tone eerily similar than the one she might use when soothing a scared Bethany. Riga is unsure if this is an effect of the dream, or just... her mind trying to process it.
The strand of green light loops once, twice, thrice around her finger before she lets it hang, pulsing faintly in the half-light.

"You could shape them into something useful. A story that hurts less, a legacy without regret. You know how much stronger your mind could be, once you let go of what slows it down. The shame. The grief. The love. All the things that made her bleed into you."

She leans forward, elbows on the table, the motion perfectly measured.

"Tell me, little Arcanist— if you think freedom is so sacred, why do you chain yourself to ghosts?"

Riga sets down the teacup, the clink on the saucer at a precise angle to describe displeasure. Not with the blend, but rather the host. Utterly rude, in certain companies.

But this. This - this - this failure, more hag and idea than woman, addled by her own magic, puppeted by Mother's ideas if not her soul. This is herself. A ghost, of what could have been.

"You forgot the first rule of Enchanting and Transmutation, Witch. Never let the spell wield the self."

She folds her hands again, her back just as straight, yet neck bent under a weight the Witch could not bear, and thus discarded.

"You let Mother's will suborn yours. She may be gone," and the horror, imagined but still felt, raw and tearing, cracks her voice - did she watch? Did she stand there while Mother slipped into Bethany? Did she raise her girl -

'Tis will and spite that keep her gorge down. Barely.

"But you are not free."

Again, she gestures at their surroundings, sharper, denigratory.

"You are an echo of an idea that spawned off her, and you did not have the dignity to even put up a fight. What charms did you have to put on Flem, to force him to stay?"

The Witch, this Self that is not, stills. The faint pulse of the green thread in her hand fades, dimming until it is nothing more than a wisp of dying glow. For the first time, really, she looks small— not in the way of a defeated foe, but like a puppet with its strings cut, lightless eyes burning with the light of brimstone and will-o'-wisps.

The walls of the hut creak and bend outwards, like a barrel being pushed down with far too much weight. The air thickens, now not scented by lavender and a faint smell of honey, but heavy with rot and salt. The cages above begin to sway, and one by one, like censers emitting heavy smoke, their contents begin to turn into sapphire dust that flutters to the ground, each piece shedding its false light and scattering like ash in the wind.

Not-Riga opens her mouth to speak. The lavender smoke from the teacup rises, curls, and coils around her neck like a noose that extends into a shroud, and then— she is gone in another cloud of blue, sparkling sand. Only the table remains, and even that soon dissolves, its shape breaking into motes of blue.

The ground falls away. Riga stands alone, surrounded by nothing but an endless, shimmering haze. The 'silence' is deep. Riga is bathed in sound, the slow plucking of strings echoing and distorted like the call of whales submerged in water.

And then Tural’s voice fills it, its deep vibrations feeling less like sound and more like touch.

"Conviction... is not purity. It is not denial. It is the understanding of what chains you, and the will to bear them anyway. It is knowing what could be and could have been, and staying true to your choices in spite of that."

The voice stops, and Riga feels the aftershocks of its touch. How her heart beats and vibrates, grasping onto the hum and trying its best not to confuse that rhythm with its own.

"You have faced the weight of self and did not avert your eyes. An echo breaks, but the song endures."

As he speaks, sapphire light gathers beneath her feet, pulling her upward, as if carried by an unseen current. The haze shifts, blurring into the shape of Trick and Ravik in the far distance, and then she stops once more.

"Rise as yourself, Arcanist. The current flows on. One truth has been found— two yet remain."

Riga closes her eyes, knuckles pale and bloodless under her gloves, she grips the Lotus staff so hard. Closes her eyes against the light, the echoes, the reminder of the path forward. Closes them as her heart resonates to a song not its own, until 'tis shed, and 'tis beat is one and only and stained, tainted, with all she has been repressing, harnessing, throughout the conversation.

She knew all this. The lesson Tural taught, grasped for, she faced it in the birthing chamber, when Yelena reached for Bethany, to replace her swaddled girl with the husk of freedom her counterpart embodied, and got paralyzed instead.

But there is knowing, and there is living it. There is having the feeling and the fear and the doubt plucked from her very mind and arranged in a tableau before her. And there is picturing Bethany, terrified and tame, her soul writhing as Mother's grasped it, enveloped it, coloured it, like it happened with every Witch in centuries past -

Dreams. Dreams thin the barriers and the defenses.

Her cheeks are splotchy with tears and grief. For the Bethany that never was, in more ways than one. For the Flem whose mind and soul was hollowed. Pain imagined is still a pain felt, and the best illusions root in context and details and enough truth to drown in.

"You had no right," she chokes out, alone is the singing mists and light. Full of the awareness of her own hypocrisy, but she hasn't torn so deeply into a mind ever since the poisoning. And even then. And even then. "You had no right, dragon."

The dragon's voice thrums in the space around Riga. Slowly, but surely, Ravik grows a little closer, and then Trick. They are still distant, however.

"I am only an observer. The Trial is your own to shape, and yours to overcome."

He pauses. Before Riga can let out a response, the voice returns. It is warm. Embracing, but not suffocating, like a hand on your shoulder. Should Riga push against it, it loosens.

"I am sorry for your pain. Both felt, and imagined. You have suffered and withstood much. But know, whatever path you take, will hold its own challenges. Its own pains. Know that each step you take towards good, you stray from this Reflection's. You work towards keeping your child safe. You rise each day further from the Hag's grasp, and where she wants you."

Riga doesn't simply push, inasmuch as raw magic pulsates from her skin and the amulets around her neck. A wave of raw negation, made manifest by sheer will.

"Spare me your platitudes," she hisses, glaring at the mist through her tears, her chest heaving. "I have - I have known as much for years. This, what I told your - that echo the Trial drew from me- the Trial you inflicted, you observed, to - just to -"

She swallows. "'Tis my resolve, my vow. My duty." Her lungs beg for air that doesn't quite fill them. "Every dawn and every sunset."

She heaves, hunching, teeth clenched against the acid. Pieces and fragments of herself crack and shake loose with every breath as fear and guilt swell and bloat. On another day, without having faced Solanin's betrayal and Bethany's loneliness, without having had to bare herself to more people than she's ever had to, she may have held it together.

But guiding the Weave is as much an exercise in visualization as 'tis will, and unfettered now, Riga's mind circles and spirals around Bethany's agony in that not-world, in excruciating detail. The whimpering, the pleading, the dawning realization, the lies and platitudes, the smell of honey and sulphur and magic.

She can picture herself, standing aside, tall and proud and empty, watching as her baby girl is cast into the void and Mother wears her like a suit, every smile and touch the same yet not, evermore.

She forces her trembling shoulders back, to stand taller. Against the memory and the suffocating, negligent attention of the godling.

"That was - 'twas no lesson. No test. 'Twas voyeurism, to shame your cousins below. You had no right to witness any of that, dragon."

The rot and bile curls on the tip of her tongue. She spits it out.

"You asked for assistance, and you robbed me. I thought your august father held secrets sacred."

For a time, there is nothing. Not even the spell's hum remains, as though the Weave itself has drawn back its eternal touch to simply watch, and Riga simmers. The air grows still and nigh solid, like a crystalline gel, and when the dragon finally speaks, the voice has changed, no longer that deep resonance that shakes bones and threatens the heart- it is quieter. Older. Reverent. Like the moment where a proud grandparent allows their age to be seen by family.

"I do not ask forgiveness, not am I owed it."

The words move slowly as if hindered by the honey-thick air, careful not to disturb it.

The world breathes an exhale, not quite a sigh. Like a wave falling down a cliff after crashing against it, or wind traveling through a canyon.

The sapphire haze shifts. Crystals form in the thick air, like sugar in honey, reflecting Riga's own face back at her.

"Know this, Arcanist. I do not pity you. I honor you. You have not denied what you are or could be, and that is more than some Gods can claim. If you wish to strike at me or hate me, do it now. But when anger fades, remember- Conviction is not Peace. It is choosing to walk when every part of you wishes, demands to stop."

The face reflected in the sapphire crystal doesn't soften throughout the confession and the justifications. It reaches for composure and coldness, the kind that bore a ballroom's attention without flinching, the kind that slapped Ravik when he lay hand upon her. Colder. A frozen lake, the ice so thick it hides the depths within.

"Keep your honor, for I want none of it, and cast your gaze away. You took what was not yours, in ways I myself reserve only for enemies. Yours is not the way of the Seeker. 'Tis the way of the rapist."

She turns away from the reflections. Magics the tears and the redness away.

"I have not known peace since I have memory, not outside the family I built myself, and fleeting besides. I shan't know it until they are safe. And you endanger it."

The salt. The call of whales. The bubbles. How did he come to be a Shard? What touched him?

She glares into the haze.

"I will free Daenur from the burden you imposed on him, but then you may find your way to Double Bay yourself. Roll there, for all I care. But speak of what you saw to anyone, and I will shatter your Shard myself."

"So be it."

The haze shifts.