Liz Sherman (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
walking_napalm) wrote2012-03-04 05:11 am
walking_napalm) wrote2012-03-04 05:11 am
(no subject)
Liz was not thoroughly briefed on what this would entail, before she agreed to it.
After about a day's sleep, some food and coffee and aspirin, and one tremendously satisfying shower, she'd thought she was as ready to go back to fighting a rock demon under a Patagonian mountain as she was ever going to be; especially since she waited even longer after that for Raven to start sending their little crowd of refugees home.
She knows now: she was not ready.
She isn't entirely sure what she has been magically turned into, but whatever it is, it's small and is being carried within the crook of Raven's talons, and somehow, that's not the worst of it.
The worst is the cold.
Liz has never been good with cold. She gave more than a few doctors startled fits, as a kid, when they checked her temperature. She likes fire; she likes warmth. If she's going to have to be cold, she wants a parka, a hat, a pair of gloves, about fourteen layers of thick winter clothing, and maybe some of those chemical handwarmer things. Given that she's currently some tiny creature with what feel like wings and antennae, a scarf is not gonna happen.
This isn't normal cold. It's the cold that comes to her in dreams, in drowsy half-memories of her life draining away in a wintry Russian mausoleum. What she remembers after that, in those several long minutes that Red and Myers say she wasn't breathing during, is two things: unending darkness, and unending, unnatural, crushing cold. That's what this feels like.
Her fire doesn't like the cold; not like this.
Stop! She has no idea how she's saying it, given her current lack of anything resembling human mouthparts, but she pushes it with all of her flagging strength. Then they're out of the stifling blackness and Raven's wings are beating above; her eyesight is coruscating and blurry and all wrong, but she recognizes a flash of dark cave walls. Enough; seriously, just put me down!
"As you will have it, yes?" says Raven's voice from overhead, and then she's falling -- falling (Raven is laughing, and then the sound is abruptly gone) --- falling ----
When Liz hits the water, it's with all of the correct limbs. She knows because she feels the icy shock in every one of them.
It actually takes her a half a second to realize that she has hit water. It becomes clear once she's several feet under; when she hasn't struck anything solid yet and gravity isn't behaving the way it ought to. Lungs burning, she snaps her eyes open to solid blackness. She lights up her right hand, and -- with a few kicks -- uses spectral unearthly flames to follow the trail of bubbles up.
When her mouth breaks the surface, she takes a huge, shuddering breath in, using one arm and kicking hard (stupid boots) to stay just barely afloat. She holds her other hand above the water. Light bounces back off slick cavern walls; the cave is deep enough that she can't see its ceiling. The black water stretches as far as her fire's light can reach in every direction except for one -- it's lapping against a rocky shore some 50 feet away.
Liz treads water in the middle of an ice-cold subterranean lake somewhere under the Andes.
Hopefully somewhere under the Andes.
Hopefully in the right dimension.
"God damn it," she hisses, and then she starts swimming.
By the time she hauls herself out of the frigid water (the coldest she has ever been in, every stroke sapping her strength, and that includes an ill-advised dunk in the Atlantic Ocean in February), she is perfectly happy to lie there on the cavern floor, just for a minute, as soon as she has dragged her feet out. Her brain feels sluggish. She sighs, shivering convulsively, and mutters, "Okay," to herself, and -- with her cheek still pressed against a sharp rock -- she concentrates.
Her skin lights with fire first, and then it blooms up and out of her; a quick burst that scalds the rock she's lying on and dries her disgusting clothes, warming her to her toes. She reaches down to her belt and fumbles the switch on her locator beacon; it immediately glows red, the way it's supposed to. The Bureau builds its equipment to withstand seriously tough conditions. The locator survived the apocalypse, being lit on fire multiple times, being turned into a grasshopper or possibly a cricket, a long fall, and three minutes in freezing cold water. She'll have to congratulate the guys in R&D the next time she sees them.
Unfortunately, she discovers when she finally drags herself to her feet (Christ, she feels like one giant walking bruise), her gun didn't fare nearly as well. Click, it goes, when she points it back at the water and pulls the trigger. Click, click. The water must have done it in.
Liz huffs a sharp breath, holsters the useless gun, and lifts her flaming hand. She's got a team to find.
After about a day's sleep, some food and coffee and aspirin, and one tremendously satisfying shower, she'd thought she was as ready to go back to fighting a rock demon under a Patagonian mountain as she was ever going to be; especially since she waited even longer after that for Raven to start sending their little crowd of refugees home.
She knows now: she was not ready.
She isn't entirely sure what she has been magically turned into, but whatever it is, it's small and is being carried within the crook of Raven's talons, and somehow, that's not the worst of it.
The worst is the cold.
Liz has never been good with cold. She gave more than a few doctors startled fits, as a kid, when they checked her temperature. She likes fire; she likes warmth. If she's going to have to be cold, she wants a parka, a hat, a pair of gloves, about fourteen layers of thick winter clothing, and maybe some of those chemical handwarmer things. Given that she's currently some tiny creature with what feel like wings and antennae, a scarf is not gonna happen.
This isn't normal cold. It's the cold that comes to her in dreams, in drowsy half-memories of her life draining away in a wintry Russian mausoleum. What she remembers after that, in those several long minutes that Red and Myers say she wasn't breathing during, is two things: unending darkness, and unending, unnatural, crushing cold. That's what this feels like.
Her fire doesn't like the cold; not like this.
Stop! She has no idea how she's saying it, given her current lack of anything resembling human mouthparts, but she pushes it with all of her flagging strength. Then they're out of the stifling blackness and Raven's wings are beating above; her eyesight is coruscating and blurry and all wrong, but she recognizes a flash of dark cave walls. Enough; seriously, just put me down!
"As you will have it, yes?" says Raven's voice from overhead, and then she's falling -- falling (Raven is laughing, and then the sound is abruptly gone) --- falling ----
When Liz hits the water, it's with all of the correct limbs. She knows because she feels the icy shock in every one of them.
It actually takes her a half a second to realize that she has hit water. It becomes clear once she's several feet under; when she hasn't struck anything solid yet and gravity isn't behaving the way it ought to. Lungs burning, she snaps her eyes open to solid blackness. She lights up her right hand, and -- with a few kicks -- uses spectral unearthly flames to follow the trail of bubbles up.
When her mouth breaks the surface, she takes a huge, shuddering breath in, using one arm and kicking hard (stupid boots) to stay just barely afloat. She holds her other hand above the water. Light bounces back off slick cavern walls; the cave is deep enough that she can't see its ceiling. The black water stretches as far as her fire's light can reach in every direction except for one -- it's lapping against a rocky shore some 50 feet away.
Liz treads water in the middle of an ice-cold subterranean lake somewhere under the Andes.
Hopefully somewhere under the Andes.
Hopefully in the right dimension.
"God damn it," she hisses, and then she starts swimming.
By the time she hauls herself out of the frigid water (the coldest she has ever been in, every stroke sapping her strength, and that includes an ill-advised dunk in the Atlantic Ocean in February), she is perfectly happy to lie there on the cavern floor, just for a minute, as soon as she has dragged her feet out. Her brain feels sluggish. She sighs, shivering convulsively, and mutters, "Okay," to herself, and -- with her cheek still pressed against a sharp rock -- she concentrates.
Her skin lights with fire first, and then it blooms up and out of her; a quick burst that scalds the rock she's lying on and dries her disgusting clothes, warming her to her toes. She reaches down to her belt and fumbles the switch on her locator beacon; it immediately glows red, the way it's supposed to. The Bureau builds its equipment to withstand seriously tough conditions. The locator survived the apocalypse, being lit on fire multiple times, being turned into a grasshopper or possibly a cricket, a long fall, and three minutes in freezing cold water. She'll have to congratulate the guys in R&D the next time she sees them.
Unfortunately, she discovers when she finally drags herself to her feet (Christ, she feels like one giant walking bruise), her gun didn't fare nearly as well. Click, it goes, when she points it back at the water and pulls the trigger. Click, click. The water must have done it in.
Liz huffs a sharp breath, holsters the useless gun, and lifts her flaming hand. She's got a team to find.