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Something cold and damp sprays across the side of Yasha’s face. She does not know where she is. It is dark, and everything around her feels blurry. Voices are yelling. There is ice on her skin. She blinks water from her eyes and can see only a little bit more than before. It is dark where she is and the world is kept from her behind bars. On the other side of the bars, a very tall and very bald man draws back his glaive and impales Mollymauk.
Most of Yasha’s dreams go the same as this one. She has not seen Molly die before, but all of her dreams are about death.
In her dreams, she is always bound by chains. She can feel them around her wrists now. Like she always does, Yasha rages and strains against bonds that do not break. She is never able to break them and in this dream it is difficult to even try. She screams with everything in her and not a single sound comes out. There is a gag in her mouth and her throat does not act the way she would like for it to act. She is on her knees, her arms are locked behind her, and there is no way for her to reach her friend. So she watches, useless, and Molly lies on the ground and bleeds and dies.
She is not surprised, even though she does not like it. This is normal in her dreams, except that the person who killed her friend is not her.
Nearly every night, Yasha watches her own hands swing down the sword that kills the Skyspear, even as Yasha fights against chains holding her back. Or she herself will kill Zuala. She will be trapped, like she is in this dream, and she will be also standing out there. Her sword will be bloody and her wife will die at her hand. Or she will watch herself cleave through a village. She will see Yasha cut down anyone who stands against her because they are in the way of—she does not remember who, only that she does it.
Sometimes the people she cuts open with her sword do not have faces. But she will know anyway that they are her parents.
Her dreams are horrible things. She does not want them. They are fractured things that run together and do not make sense. When she wakes up, she will be upset and confused. In her dreams, she is Yasha, chained and grieving. And in her dreams, she is Yasha, uncaring and violent. The marsh smells like brimstone and someone’s hot breath is on the back of her neck.
She has killed Molly. But she is here.
She knows she must have killed him, because she is always the one that does the killing. It is what she is. It is what she is good for. But she does not know this man who must be her. He does not feel like her, even though she does not know who else he could be.
It is difficult to see. Her body is too heavy. Her eyes will not focus. Usually she is more aware than this. There are unfamiliar shapes near her in the dark. She hears sounds around her that she does not understand. Voices like their new friends. Has she killed them too? She told them she would not leave again and now she does not know where they are.
Fire. A flare lights up and wreathes the man who should be her. This is also normal. There is a lot of fire in Yasha’s dreams, at the edges of her vision where she cannot feel it. Or she makes it herself and leaves villages burning in her wake. It is different that she can only see the flames this time. She feels no heat on her skin. There is only the chill.
She prays, like always, for the storm that will extinguish the fire.
She does not see a storm, but she is having more trouble with seeing at all. She is slipping from this dream into the next. She does not have the strength to pull any more against her bonds. She sinks deeper into her own chest.
The world begins to move.
Molly does not.
Molly is on the ground, still and lifeless. Just like all of the other people in her dreams. There is a lot of blood on his shirt. His coat is getting dirty from the mud. Blood oozes out of his mouth. He is dead.
The world moves and Molly with it, carried off by whatever can pull the ground away. She tries to watch him through the window with the bar but he is gone. Now she cannot see him and her face is wet and she is very tired.
She hopes she will get enough rest tonight. She hopes she will wake up soon.
She does not like any of her dreams but she thinks she likes this one least of all.
Yasha prays as the dream shifts and goes black again. She prays to the Stormlord, who saved her once from things that are real. She cannot speak, but she thinks very hard and hopes he hears. She knows that he probably has better things to do. But if he could, she would like to never have this dream again.