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[hr][hr][center][h2][color=696969][i]A Darkness in the Light[/i][/color][/h2][/center][hr][hr][color=696969]It took about five hours before Jocasta was feeling the effects. She lay in bed, tangled in her covers, legs [i]somewhere[/i] beyond her senses, as they always were, head only now emerging from the haze of an evening that had been immensely rewarding. As was proper, Yalen did not share her bed, and it was excuse enough for her to avoid an intimacy that she both craved, on some level, and that... she was not ready for - might [i]never[/i] be ready for. Yet, she had changed. The guardedness, the paranoia, the vindictiveness that had defined her for years returned in fits and starts: nasty thoughts about people like Maura, Ingrid, and even Abdel, though she was no angel herself. Yet, she was letting go, an it felt [i]good[/i] when she did not think of the Academy, the Volti, and the shadowy operatives of the Quentic Church - when she did not consider the Mad Avatar who, even now, walked the grounds of Ersand'Enise: all of them forces that tried to either control her or kill her. 

She was sick. She could feel a rough cough in her chest, and so she turned immediately and almost prefunctorily to the magics that had always dealt with such a nuisance. She purged it from her body and took a moment to reach down and untangle her legs. Then, she rolled over onto her side, closed her eyes, and dosed herself with the right chemical spell to knock herself out.

Jocasta awoke with aches and pains, an upset stomach, and that cough: that cough she had purged. Sitting herself up in bed, she concentrated and tried a different spell to rid herself of it. She levered herself into her wheelchair, collecting the fringe of her nightgown so it might not get in the way, and tried to take a deep breath. She ended up hacking and wheezing and [i]now[/i] her heart pounded in alarm. she could feel her pulse in her temples and the adrenaline pushing through her, light and electric and making her hands tremble as she put them to her wheels and... Where was she going to go, really?

Jocasta paced, instead, stopping to cough again: the sort of deep vicious one that strained every muscle she could feel and left her head heavy and reeling and her vision starred. This, she knew, now, for while it was not the sort that she used, it was poison all the same. She had let her guard down. She had paid the price. There was no time to waste or she would be dead, just like that, when she had finally started actually [i]living[/i], when she had people she cared about. Briefly, she considered taking the way out. She might've, a year ago, so long as she could find and obliterate whoever had done it. She'd been an empty thing before Yalen, before Ayla and Zarina, and Marceline. No. She would live, [i]and[/i] she would find who'd done this. Systematically, she would eliminate suspects, find the culprit, and then she would tear them limb from limb.

Forcing back another wretched cough and settling her roiling stomach, Jocasta reached out to seize the reins of space and time. Her heart - that poor, mistreated little organ that had kept her alive for twenty-odd years - thudded within her chest. No. She would not let it down. She focused and reeled: back about a day, for very few poisons took longer than that to act. The world glowed and skewed and stretched for a moment, like a tunnel of light. She set hands to wheels and started to push forward -

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Black tendrils wrapped around her waist from nowhere, bleeding black nothingness into her white nightgown. With a concerted burst of power, Jocasta tore them to shreds. She cast about herself. [i][color=ffdead]What the fuck [b]are[/b] you!?[/color][/i] she screamed inwardly, wheeling faster, racing for the opening at the other end that she knew to be a place and time one day ago.

The broken blackness simply recongealed, and she knew it for a knower. An irresistible force spilled her from her wheelchair, and the tentacles seemed to reach out from everywhere, lashing and binding. She tried to rise into the air, but was brought crashing down. They had wrapped themselves about her legs. [i][color=ffdead]Useless things![/color][/i] and, presently, constricted around her waist, her shoulders, and her neck. 

Jocasta superheated herself and her surroundings, blasting and burning, and the tentacles fell away, but for one wrapped around her ankle: one that she couldn't feel. She was brought low again. Now, they were merciless. They stabbed and sliced. They battered her fragile body and smashed her head into the ground. Her world swam and she clawed for consciousness, for some power - this thing was unfathomably strong. Her efforts were not enough.

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She awoke from her sleep, rubbing her eyes, and immediately took notice of the cough. It wasn't gone. Her earlier magic hadn't purged it. Groggily, Jocasta sat up and rubbed at her eyes, only to be met with a wave of dizziness and nausea. She shook her head to clear it and her world swam. Something was wrong. This was... a bad illness, out of nowhere. Before her paranoia could build, she tried a new spell to clear it. Levering herself out of bed, she settled into her wheelchair and waited, breath shallow, hands trembling. [i][color=ffdead]No improvement.[/color][/i] If anything, she felt... worse than she thought she should've. Something, in general, was 'off'. 

Anxiously, Jocasta glided across her room over to the tall mirror in the corner. There were no outward signs of affliction yet, but the magic, she could soon tell, had done nothing, and her head felt heavy and strange and... Someone had been inside of it. Someone had tampered with her memory, just as they had when she'd been a girl, just as they had when they'd removed the first nine years of her life. That was when she knew this for what it was: it was poison and there was an ongoing attempt on her life.

She reached for the threads of space and time, quickly, angrily. She would find this hidden enemy and reduce them to a blood heap, begging her for mercy. First, she had to live. She had just begun pulling herself into the space between time when she felt it: a presence. Somehow, she knew to look for it and she knew it for an enemy. Jocasta created five of herself, but it was not fooled. Deadly black tendrils shot out at her, and the girl did not even bother to try wheeling away. Calling on all of her kinetic abilities, she rocketed away as they seized her wheelchair and crumpled its sturdy frame effortlessly. 

To be caught, she knew instantly, was death.

So she raced for that exit. She raced with all that she had. Tentacles licked and snapped at her heels and she felt a tug, stalling her momentum. Without hesitation, she obliterated the tangled foot. Blood spilled from the stump, but it was a blessing right now that she could not feel any of it. A great dark presence loomed behind her and, on instinct alone, she rolled to the side, narrowly avoiding a massive crashing stalk that shook time itself. She just needed to make it to the far end. She was almost there. Another one of those wicked tendrils dug into her side and she bit back a scream, nearly dropping to the ground. A third seized her remaining leg and this, too, she tore free. If she could just make it. If she could just...

Then, somehow, she was there. She had passed through and the nightmare was over. It was... morning and she was in bed. Frantically, hands searched her body. They reached down and felt two useless feet and she'd never been so grateful for them. They patted at her side and there was no blood or wound. Soft, golden daylight was streaming in through the crack in the curtains and there was her cup of water on her nightstand, undisturbed. There was her wheelchair, whole and in its usual spot by her bedside. She took a deep breath, and then another and tears spilled down her cheeks. They were free and easy: how easy!

But... she still did not know who had poisoned her. Were they working with the knowers somehow? Or was it something more mundane? The church? The Volti? The Academy? The Mad Avatar. Jocasta swung herself out of bed. She would not repeat any of the day's original actions. She had a witch hunt to undertake, and so help her Shune, she would find her witch.

She began to shrug out of her nightgown, to prepare for a day unlike any she had experienced in quite some time. That was when she looked down absently. That was when she saw the thin black marks: three painful black lashes about her willowy waist. They had stayed with her. They had marked her.[/color]
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