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Never did Rivka think something could be worse than a hospital, but the path that brought her towards destiny proved otherwise. Winding through level after level, deep underground past checkpoint after checkpoint was a single white, sterile room where she would be forged. 

Dear God she hated it.

The doors closed behind her and something changed when they did. She felt it at once, a crawling feeling in her core that she had become something other than a person to her caretakers. That she was placing her life in the hands of people who had in that moment classified her as not a person but raw material; the ingot that could, if they did their job correctly, be crafted into a weapon. The critical component of a system known as an Ars Magi, the vessel that could produce a soldier. Through their hands passed her life, and though it was precious its value came from [i]what[/i] she was. The quirk of genetics, or environment, or fate that let her use Nox without becoming like the creatures that had assailed her. 

What came next was out of her hands. As soon as the sedative hit her bloodstream she was out, and anything that happened after that was beyond her awareness let alone her power. The needle slipped through her skin easily, with practiced precision secured in a single motion to her skin with an adhesive. The antibiotic came first and she had never known that her veins could burn from the inside. Her warning was curt and cursory from the anesthesiologist, and she could see at the edge of her vision her heart rate tick up on the machine that monitored her vitals. The white coats prepped the tools of their trade around her, gleaming in the cold light and she wished more than anything for company. Someone to speak to her, even about something mundane and foolish. To acknowledge her existence and provide the reassurance that she would still be herself when she awoke.

But they were as cold as the light when the sedative hit her system and seemed simply to switch her off.

[hr]

Awareness felt like rebirth, a renewal born of will alone. Like pulling the disparate fragments of her being together again when she had feared, deep inside, that she might never wake again. Her own essence felt strange and unfamiliar, her hazy thoughts registering the return to her mortal form a step removed from the sensation as though her own frame was that of a stranger. She felt [i]wrong[/i], a revenant born from science and not from magic, helpless in her own body. In her mind’s eye she saw a monster with her face, sickly, corrupted eyes where her own should have been. Her breath caught in her throat.

And then it passed.

The next breath found its grip, air cold and sterile that felt still more refreshing than any before filled her lungs. Fear cleared not with chill but with warmth. A warmth that had settled into every fiber of her being, not burning like the IV before it but nourishing. As though every cell was refreshed, forged anew in the primordial fires of creation. At the center of it all, at [i]her[/i] center, she could feel it. It drew her focus like gravity, a single point within her that seemed contained the same fire that had remade her into something… More. She was still Rivka Sokolov. But she was something else now, too, and curiosity blazed within her. The gem filled her mind, and she was tempted, so tempted, to feed it the fuel that would transform her again. The strength within her craved release, craved manifest so as to proclaim to the world that she had [i]arrived[/i]. Make reality recognize the new strand that she had become, the new melody in its midst. 

Her body ached, her mind struggled to free itself from the lingering fog, but she felt [i]good[/i]. Better than ever. There was no fighting her elation, but she channeled it instead into testing her limits. Pushing her recovery. She moved her fingers first, then her toes, and slowly but surely she felt her dexterity returning. Not at her core, she would avoid undue strain until she was cleared. But her body responded to her without complaint, pushing against a fatigue that promised the sweet elation of victory when she emerged the stronger for her aches. But the most important came last. She began humming quietly, starting deep in her chest with the lowest reaches of her range and increasing in pitch with every passing second until she had worked through every register that she could reach. Then she began to test her volume, filling the still air with soft, unrefined melody that blended and changed as she labored to ensure nothing untoward had befallen her voice.

[color=8407c2]”I cannot complain about the anvil’s treatment, for how else might I be a sword?”[/color] She queried aloud at last, after the untold infinities that her ascension had taken. [color=8407c2]”Though perhaps the smith's mercies might have been more tender.”[/color]

…

Ah. The painkillers hadn’t totally expired within her. Alas, no wonder she felt so poetic.