The fire that raged in the middle of the wastelands was beyond control. It towered above any normal burn and snapped at the clouds like it wanted to singe the heavens with its rage. A figure stood at its edge, dwarfed by the massive element, her face streaked with blood as she fixated, trapped deep within the flames. Her claws flexed absently, in and out of her palm, drawing blood after a time as the pressure steadily increased. It hissed as it hit the earth. Predatory animals stood watch in the dark. Their eyes reflected in the light of the fire. Lilith was breaking.
More and more, she slipped into The Dark Mother, became a primal thing, motivations unclear and violent. Sometimes she couldn't shake it, other times she'd slip in and out, like nodding off. She still needed the third seed for her final garden, but it was one she didn't want to collect yet. The cost was too high. She couldn't facilitate its birth without breaking herself further. Like a broken mirror. She couldn't recover all of her pieces in her current state, she was too fractured.
Every time she tried to reclaim her missing pieces, it was like sand slipping through her claws. No matter how much blood she spilled or how many times she ripped herself open, they never came back. Caine had broken something inside of her that she couldn't repair, like a safeguard, keeping her core essence locked down tight. Sometimes, she came back to herself enough to remember who she'd been when she walked the world before Caine's birth. Sometimes, The Dark Mother robbed her of her identity completely. If she could call it anything, it would be madness and rage that ate away at her guts like ravenous dogs while she lay paralyzed. Unable to move. Or scream. Or fight back.
She needed to get into the Tremere Library. She needed to seek out Illyes. He'd known her once. Before Caine had corrupted her. So she paced on the precipice of forward motion, like a hungry Jackal. Anger growing in her belly and chest, a hellish abomination of rage and loss. She was empty. Alone. She'd managed to glue herself together enough to join her blood at the table to dine as a family, she came when they called, when they needed her, but she was an island in a sea of lives that had never known her. The essence of a long and robust line that couldn't see her. She was invisible. Lost to time and memory and design.
Memory... she remember the night she'd freed herself from Caine's torpor. Lilith closed her eyes, raising her hands which in turn caused the fires to flare and the predators to step back a pace. Anxious. When her eyes opened again the blood began to fall, staining her pelt further in that dark shade of crimson.
'The wet earth, more clay than dirt, eroded as a pair of slim hands punched through the surface. Viciously sharp claws grasped at anything that lay above, anything that could hoist her up and out. An arm snaked its way from below, slender, marred, and filthy to the point that telling the original color was practically impossible. Another arm followed. Her claws dug deep into the surface, trying to latch. As she finally gained a solid hold, she pulled herself up from the tomb.. or was it a prison? Was there a difference when it came down to it? Not really. Not to her.
A shock of red hair, long and matted, stuck to her body like a glove. Her eyes wild.were Starved. Tears of blood marred her face, trailing down her cheeks to her throat. She dragged herself from the belly of the earth. And while it wasn't the first time, this time had reawoken something inside of her. Like a lock or a shackle had been broken and released a long dormant truth, as though the core of her being, who she was, had come back. Shattering the waking slumber she'd been forced to endure. But the clarity of this feeling was something she couldn't fully grasp in her current state. She wasn't ready to process it. Not yet.
As she dragged her weakened body from the unforgiving earth, her head turned back to the hole. Dark, empty, vast. "You'll never be free, Lilith. Wherever you go, you will always be beneath someone else's control. Never your own. You will forever be used. A vessel for others gain." The voice hissed from the depths. Her eyes narrowed, a flame igniting deep within her chest. "I am beneath no one. Least of all you." Her voice was strong, but that was the last of her strength. She felt her body give, and she lay there as the ground collapsed in on itself and the hole sealed. Trapping whatever torment lay below away forever. She curled herself into a ball and wept. The blood washing the filth from her face, hints of pure white pelt stained red. There was only silence now. She wept for her loss. For her children. For herself. For what had been stolen from her and what she could never undo that had been done to her.'
Lilith snapped out of the memory, the tears trailing down her face and neck.
How long she lay there, after she'd clawed her way from the womb of the earth, had been a mystery. Minutes? Hours? Days? It didn't matter. Time didn't matter. It never had. She had lain there and wept until she had no more tears to weep. And then she had wandered. Just as she'd wandered when she had been cast into the wilderness.