Gratitude

Longer nights mean more time spent chatting with others, drinking, socializing - anything to ward off the Deepfrost depression and danger. Wessex has learned a bit since she’s been back, including the discovery of a shrine to the New Gods, which, given her circumstances, she feels she ought to visit. The blonde woman quietly disappears down into the tunnels of the Underground. Of course the shrine would be down here, of course. Only a freaking idiot or a being with exceptional eyesight and resistance to the cold would venture down here right now. Luckily she’s a little bit of both. The feelings of self-worth are a little wonky at the moment, swinging between a larger than usual ego (she was brought back to life for fuck’s sake) and something considerably smaller (she died, couldn’t handle the challenge, lost, insert word for failure here). It’s unsettling. Wessex is not usually the kind to linger in her uncertainties; that kind of luxury has never existed in her life. Following the smells of the group who came before her, Wessex ends up in a glowing room lit by strands of blue and gold. She pauses at the entrance and takes it all in, eventually focusing on the statue of the girl in prayer. Once again, a tune leaps unbidden into her head and she hums a few notes to herself before stepping up the figure and dropping down to one knee and bowing her head, one elbow on the bent knee. It’s a little formal, but the hard-edged native feels like it is appropriate for her… unique situation. “Thank you,” she begins, “I can only assume it was you who brought me back to life. I wasn’t -” she pauses, shakes her head and switches directions. No, she’s not going to pour her heart out to a statue or a deity, not yet. Not now. Not - well, never say never. “Please let me know if there is any way I can begin to repay you.” Though Wessex has killed without a second thought, she is well aware of the magnitude of what has happened, the size of the debt she owes. WESSEX She whispered back, I am the storm

The shrine pulses with a cool blue light. Inside of her body, Wessex will feel re-calibrated. But the Voice does not appear. Her avatar is...stretched shall we say. Weakened. But she does hear. "Be strong, bright one. Your time is coming." Her voice, the voice that nestled against Wessex's consciousness while she was being rebuilt, radiates outwards, though it crackles, as if coming across a great distance. "Be wary though daughter, they will try and trick you. You are not one of them. You are brighter. You are ascended. Let not their imperfections taint you." The glow faded. The shrine fell silent.

A switch - or something like that - flicks inside her - and it’s as if the voice makes everything calm again, her doubts quelled by the gentle warmth of the voice with a lowercase v. Daughter Bright One Ascended While the warrior feels sorted again, she is, perhaps, a little disappointed. And yet her thoughts do not go there, back to that dark place - they are filled with light, with the promise of a time that is to come. So Wessex simply nods her head and rises, spends a little time making sure the shrine is free of dust, dirt, and cobwebs, and then returns from whence she came: the cold, bleak world above, where the status quo is rapidly changing. her time would come WESSEX She whispered back, I am the storm