If you show potential through the promise of entertainment and danger on deserted racetracks long abandoned through roaring lava, searing ice and treacherous environments - The Vessel will happily cheer you on, but it will never let you back.
Just so you know, the music is intended to play as you read. I find when I do that it sets emotional tone very well.
Thank you so much for a warm reception to the prologue. I really want to bring you into this world and immerse you in it as completely as I am in my dreams. Hehe, this chapter introduces our main character. Finally, the crowd cries!
I will be adding images as I collect them through either commissions or finding and creating them myself. 💜
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The machine hummed with a comfortable, cool tone as it continued its job without fail through the years. If one had given it sentience, they would find an aged soul, accustomed to repetition, proud of its work and continued loyalty to the being it held. As it was, it was simply a machine, and the being inside of it had been asleep for so long that one could argue that sentience was something at this point you needed to be worried about not for the machine, but the girl inside of it.
The first thing she realised when she opened her eyes was how warm it was, suddenly. It felt like stepping out of an air conditioned room right into one heated by a fireplace, the heat creeping over every inch of her skin slowly, as if spread with a butter knife, leaving the underside of her skin still cool. She realised the temperature before any visual stimulants because there was nothing to actually see. It was darkness without the absence of light. She simply couldn't see anything.
Rather than panic, she simply laid there. Breathing. Feeling the wave of heat slowly wash over every inch of her, spilled paint on a blank canvas.
Then there was a sound, although completely unplaceable. It moved inside her head, pitchless, and flew over her mind, trying to find a place to land. This happened several times until the shapes took meaning and began its journey of significance.
"But is she truly awake? Her eyes are open, and she breathes, but is she here?" Questioned a being that sang beautifully, the most enchanting melody she'd ever heard. Her head ached to experience it again, and the top of her body shifted towards it.
"She turned her head, she turned her head! Oh, what a revelation!" Trilled a different song, higher and younger, and there was a pressure, somewhere, suddenly. "A cause for celebration, surely!"
She wasn't sure this was cause for celebration, although it was a relief to grasp the concept of happiness to further deconstruct language. The next sound she heard was low, rolling gravel on a harder surface.
"Be careful to touch, Faith." It chided gently, but there was a mirroring pressure on the opposite side now.
They were touching her. Ever so gently, two people were holding her hands.
"You did well, Jeralt."
"Of course I did. There was no other alternative."
The first color she saw was green. Then, the soft peach of skin. After those two colors it was too much to handle, millions of hues and hundreds of textures. She shut her eyes. If she had not been lying down, she would have fallen.
