Life underground teaches you a number of things, the biggest being patience. For Lozelle, time is not an illusion it has simply stopped existing. If the tunnel she dug has took years or hours is immaterial. She just kept digging until she couldn't. The earth turned denser, colder, turns to rock and she ebbed along the seams she couldn't break to find the next path of least resistance. And somehow, someway, make for the border.
Another thing life underground teaches you is how deep Barovia's curse goes. Even underground there's no escape, only the toxic grind of the earth turned to stone and impassable. After a while of beating herself against the stones, the thin vampire slowly changes tack and rises through the earth.
She tastes fresh air for the first time since her death and finds herself at the foot of the mountain fortress of Krezk. Lozelle takes in the small pinpricks of yellow light in the stone face of the ancient top, the remote and icy shape of the monastery beyond it, and dusts herself off.
She hasn't talked to anyone by the darkness in so long she doesn't know if her voice still lasts. She's dirty and wan, make-upless with her rawboned face haggard from the endless time underground. With her rusted axe and the worn out sack carrying the last of her and her love's things, she shelters in a copse of trees.
Working silently, her hands and face moving mechanically, she scrubs the dirt from herself and brushes on the soot and spit she'll wear as mascara. She winds the well worn scarf around her shoulders and covers her kinky hair, shuffling her clothes into something tired but conservative enough to be seen in the monastery town. Clearing her throat and keeping her head down, she climbs the road up to the stone town.
2.
Another thing life underground teaches you is how deep Barovia's curse goes. Even underground there's no escape, only the toxic grind of the earth turned to stone and impassable. After a while of beating herself against the stones, the thin vampire slowly changes tack and rises through the earth.
She tastes fresh air for the first time since her death and finds herself at the foot of the mountain fortress of Krezk. Lozelle takes in the small pinpricks of yellow light in the stone face of the ancient top, the remote and icy shape of the monastery beyond it, and dusts herself off.
She hasn't talked to anyone by the darkness in so long she doesn't know if her voice still lasts. She's dirty and wan, make-upless with her rawboned face haggard from the endless time underground. With her rusted axe and the worn out sack carrying the last of her and her love's things, she shelters in a copse of trees.
Working silently, her hands and face moving mechanically, she scrubs the dirt from herself and brushes on the soot and spit she'll wear as mascara. She winds the well worn scarf around her shoulders and covers her kinky hair, shuffling her clothes into something tired but conservative enough to be seen in the monastery town. Clearing her throat and keeping her head down, she climbs the road up to the stone town.