OOC: Dream
She was hibernating peacefully in a single chamber of a fortress, completely shelled in a cocoon of ice, asleep and yet, in the back of her mind, completely aware - seeing through a million eyes, still alert as though they were sentries stationed around the walls of a palace, protecting a queen, constantly relaying to her what they saw, assuring her all was well.
She could tell she was metamorphosing, slowly but surely - that's what she was cocooned for, just like any creature. She couldn't tell how, precisely, but that it was all pleasingly according to plan and research - it felt remarkable. She felt it in her blood - every time her heart beat, a sensation surged through her veins along with it, part of it, a burning, a suppressed thrill and strength that was intensifying ever so slightly each breath she took. Soon it would peak, certainly, and neither the cocoon nor the ice could hold her anymore. She knew its name, too, which escaped her, flickering into the edges of her semi-conscious mind and out.
The more intense it became, the stronger she could hold a focus she'd been fading in and out of, or perhaps a conscious dreaming state, and in it, she could see everything - her scattered eyes' lines of sight patching together to create a compound eye effect, or a wall full of monitors. She imagined herself peering into one and seeing a palatial foyer with the double door in the front still sealed tight. Her fortress was still undisturbed - it seemed she had it all to herself.
She then imagined herself stepping into the image like an open window. She walked up the stairs, she opened a door to her left and switched the image she pictured herself in again and again as she wandered through doors and halls. She saw a rough video clip of young girl and her male mirror image playing together projected on a wall to her left; the boy dropped a dragonfly, wings freshly torn off, into a container of ants, and they smiled as they watched the little things swarm to it. In lower levels were lavish laboratories, rather appropriately adjacent to a coliseum of sorts, a large and open room. She spotted an axe embedded in one of the walls. Oh, she couldn't wait for another chance to use those facilities... Even asleep and confined to one chamber, she almost had all she needed through her eyes, and yet she still had to get her hands on it.
In other rooms, she found shelves of books the eyes couldn't see inside, photographs and portraits of the girl and boy some of which included a man, and of others, with their names on plaques below where they were hung, also just too difficult to make out. Jeweled ants were mounted in display cases or fixed to walls. A little deeper in were models of weaponry as well as dolls, china ones in elaborate Victorian dresses, most with intriguingly vacant eyes and the occasional split skull. There were vanities and chests filled with gowns and makeup waiting for her, chosen with the time that had passed here without her and the physical change that could've easily been taking place while she was hibernating. She imagined herself picking up a snowglobe and turning it over repeatedly; inside were the girl and boy again, in front of a manor. She set off a music box at the side of a bed that'd be hers when she could return to sleeping normally, and it played a lullaby from years ago.
She blacked back out of her visualizing, singing it to herself - the words were still clear in her head.
A voice raised over the ending.
It came from outside.
There was another's voice cracking through her cocoon, breaking and breathless, not familiar, but not unrecognizable. It was a man's. He was calling her name. It was still barely discernible ("...a... ...a..."), but that she was hearing it, directly, in her own ears told her it was time.
With that thought, an alarm rang out. The water surrounding her, more and more intolerably cold as her senses were starting to clear, rushed and gurgled as it began to drain.
When she opened her eyes, she saw a figure on the floor, a male mirror image of her - both of them had indeed grown while she'd been asleep - with blood pooling on the floor around him. His face was turned up to her, starkly white in lighting from behind her.
She could still see through the eyes watching throughout her domain, more effortlessly than ever. Now they were showing her outside of her fortress. Two strangers in a snowmobile were crossing the tundra towards it. The four of them were the only humans she could detect, which would mean...
The man on the floor said her name again, reaching out his hand to her, and then fell limp.
Dead.
The fire in her blood instantly burst through her entire body, life, adrenaline, uncontainable power, and now the rush of freedom, insult, and sheer rage. It burned away the last scraps of haze in her head. That was the name she'd been looking for - Veronica.
It spread until it had nowhere to go but out. She felt it rising, and of all things laughter bubbling up along with it. She wanted to throw her head back and let it out, long, wild, mad, but pushed it down - not now.
The intruders' snowmobile exploded instead. She took a long, relieving breath as she sank down beside the man.
The last that crossed her mind before the sound, sight, and sensation of the explosion died down was It's finally time. If only it could've come a little sooner.
The queen had left her fortress and counterpart unprotected. Now she was ready to take back all she could, full compensation for what she couldn't, and expand from a fortress to a true kingdom.