dream 1 ❆ open

[ice_echani]

The wind howled around her, kicking up snowflakes from the utterly flat ground. Not a plain, but a plateau--she could see where the edges dropped off into the papery-white sky. The chill did not bother her; her grey robes were quite warm and somehow the wind did not pull the hood down.

She soon found what she was looking for, the goal she had been seeking: a great oak tree in the middle of the plateau. The wind dragged at her now, pushing her back, tugging at her legs as she made her way towards it. She would not be stopped. Everything depended on reaching the tree.

Finally she entered a network of roots that reached up and around her head. With a hand clamped over her left eye, she climbed and squeezed through the tangled mass. Just a little farther... wood creaked around her, and she halted. With a hiss of pain, she wiped away red tears and found that she could only see from her right side, no matter how hard she tried to blink the blood away. Was it going to be like this again? --No, it wouldn't. She had a lightsaber. She had built a lightsaber and she was going to use it here, regardless of what this vision intended. She pulled it from her belt.

Soon enough she had cut her way through the last of them and stepped back into the snow. The oak tree stood in the center, like a building ringed by a tangled wall. She pulled out her ruined eye painlessly and tossed it into the snow; it was just getting in her way now. Then she reached into the tree and pulled out a book. Finally.

...No. Opening it revealed burnt-out pages. The ones that remained were scorched black and too smudged with soot to read. She tucked it inside her cloak. The second book dripped with black ink, staining her sleeves. The third projected holograms, but they were all of rainbows, apples, and dancing mannequin-droids. "Look behind you~" one of the apples sang. She whirled and activated her lightsaber at once. There was a choked noise and the vacuum-like sound of a stealth field deactivating. A male figure, masked and wearing dark grey shades, fell headless. She searched the body for anything useful... an eye! Unfortunately, it didn't fit. She turned back to her work.

Goop dripped out of the next book. There was no way to unstick the pages. A taste revealed it to be cocoon fluid. Another assassin decloaked. She stabbed him through the heart and pulled out a book that practically snowed glitter. And then a Perry Mason DVD... that she tucked in her robes with some embarrassment. Another book was full of pictures: Medium, Paper, Eyepatch, West. Then her side exploded in electrified pain. With a surprised shout she staggered against the tree and found that it had wrapped several vines around her. She snarled, swinging her lightsaber with her free arm and messily bisected the assassin.

The vines evaporated, and she returned to her work.