Project Progeny: Awake ((WIP))

[echidna]

An endless field of cold stretched before and behind Eliza. The sudden chill of it cut into her like daggers, and she had no protections from its chill. She was alone - the realization of this was a deeper chill than even than the below-zero frost of the deadened expanses for Eliza Gaian of Amria. Something in her knew this place though - the grey skies, the bottomless chill, the coating of snow on... everything - it wasn't perfectly flat, she noticed, the expanse of grey light broken by... shapes - they were deserving of the italics. She was in the frozen reaches of Asphodel, and it was every bit as... silent as she had heard it was.

As she began to walk among them, she looked - these were souls who did not make themselves worthy, either for the torment of tartarus, or the peace of Elysium. These were people who lingered... and froze, in the endless frost if Asphodel. Fear gripped her in a fist every bit as frosty as the snow that crunched below her bare feet. Certain shapes called her to them - not with words, but by the merit of their forms, and she felt inexorably drawn.

As she grew closer to them, her breath stopped in her lungs, and her feet would move no longer. Eliza recognized these. Tears froze instantly on her cheeks as she forced her legs to move, snapping loose from the snow as she broke into a run.

"No!" she shrieked, her voice lost in the stygian winds "NO!!" she clawed at the ice until her fingers bled, wept bitter tears that froze her cheeks to a glisten, but it was... no use. As her eyes plumbed the full depths of her horror, she saw many shapes around her like this one.

They were Wardens - her sons. They were all... her sons, frozen in the fields of... nothingness. And she was freezing too. She looked down. Already the Broodmother's legs were frozen in place, her skin as pale inside the tomb of ice as her sons, and it was climbing... very fast now. She managed to give one final cry of penultimate anguish before it sealed her away as well.

Eliza sat up in bed, the scream still rising in her throat in the darkness of her room in the Maw. She frantically scrabbled at the Brood, and found a very surprised multitude rushing in to fill the gap she left for them in her heart. She was not alone. She was not... alone. The dream had been so real... so distinct to her. It ate at her, and drove away her will to sleep even though the clock let her know she'd only been asleep for maybe four hours.

This hadn't been a dream.

The knowledge and memory of that endless expanse was enough to drive her from bed and out her door. Already doors were opening elsewhere as her mind reeled and spun on all cylinders from the nothingness of sleep.

[echidna]

The Maw wasn't what it used to be. Once, it had been a long-forgotten, massive old train graveyard far underground where old railway equipment was stored, but from the look of it, it was from the 1930s and on. That was then. Now, cool underground air hit her face with a fragrant sort of mustiness. There was gloom... But it was a living gloom. Lights shone in windows, greenish and bluish, where plants were being grown in great hydroponic gardens.

She was proud of her sons - the gardens were making a serious dent in the food shortage, and did a great deal to decrease her sons' reliance on humanity (or more specifically, on theft) and a few of her boys were getting... Quite thoughtful about the whole business. Magic was afoot! But more than that, so was agriculture. The lamps that gave the plants life gave the dark a kind of texture as well, shapes even a human could easily see by.

Eliza strode purposefully down rows of 'buildings' - the constructions were... Diverse. Her sons had taken an interest in the idea of a personal space all their own, and the structures that were born were a mish-mash, often little more than a place to sleep and store things they'd felt it worthwhile to keep. Some were small and private, others were where squads bunked together, but all were their own - and that was the important detail.

Eliza slowed her pace, and gradually became aware of... Presences. She looked up and around, and at least six of her sons were trying to figure out how to go about comforting her. The nightmare had shaken them too, and their mother's apprehensions had done nothing to keep them from worrying.

Just a nightmare

But it wasn't, and they sheepishly trailed after her entirely because they knew better.

Bitingston stepped forward, clutching his bother's bag and wearing an expression of concern as he materialized from clinging shadows. He knew his mother.

Others made themselves apparent - Lambada's metallic headdress glinted as he stood half-concealed, Haimish, one of the more thoughtful Wardens who had been with her a long time and was taking up the study of magic, an others, too - this dream. As she felt out to them through their common bond, she felt ashamed of herself - she really had spooked them, hadn't she? And so soon after her Amity, too.

The wound was still so fresh in all their hearts. She hadn't had a lot of time to ruminate on her pain, thank goodness... She'd been injured rather badly too, like so many others in the Brood - it could have been so, so much worse, couldn't it?

She'd lost a fifth. A fifth of the Wardens and Viverns. She'd been unconscious for two weeks on and off, and...

...well, it could have been so, so much worse.

"I have work to do." She said in a voice that was as small as she felt. There was a ripple of motion among her sons, both in the boys she could see, and the boys she could not see.

[echidna]

"What can I do to help?" A Warden said, his metal headdress distinguishing him as one of the Tacticians. His voice was deep and smooth, laced with great affection, and Eliza could not help but smile at him.

"Nothing, Really." She said, and noted just the hint of discomfort in her gifted son's expression, the faintest note of keenness quelled. "The extra company is enough." She added, and he tilted his head just so very slightly as he watched her.

In fact, he was already being a help. He was her eldest son to take on the Trust, the sort-of oath her trusted sons took to protect their brothers. In fact, it was Lambada who wrote it, with her guidance.

Bitingston, a larger Warden in his scarf and old bowler hat, sat cross-legged beside him, the firstborn's massive hands folded neatly in his lap as his warm darkness swallowed all light in the room but the stuff Eliza was feverishly drawing with, cane at his side. He said nothing - he simply watched, still as a statue.

"It wasn't a dream." Lambada mused miserably after a few moments. Bitingston turned his head so his muzzle faced his distressed younger brother with molasses slowness and focused on him, still silent as the crypt.

Lambada returned that stare for a moment, then looked away, giving a little strange, deep rumbling sound Eliza had come to know as high stress. He was with mother - the iron mast was down, but after the gentle reprimand for speaking as Mother worked, he said nothing further. The Firstborn returned his stare to the drawing pad and his mother's tiny white hands.

This was important.

Eliza, still drawing madly, glanced up at him, and extended her bare foot to grip a few locks of his black coat in her toes, a somewhat silly gesture that nevertheless saw him crack a little smile.

"No..." She began, distracted "It was... A warning... I think." She continued and held up her work for inspection, shifting her pencil to her lips so she could turn it this way and that at arm's length - Bitingston didn't at all mind, his face behind the notebook. He'd been her company during these sessions many times now - mother focused on her task.

"Don't fret." Mother said, briefly muffled by the pencil.