Fate - First Reply A Corpse In the Blight

[Fraeya]

"Well," she mused and sat on the rocky edge. Fraeya peeled off her socks and boots, risking a dip in the cavern waters that he'd just been swimming in. Just her feet, mind you.

"You don't...look too good," she commented quietly. "But I wasn't sure if people here just look like, um, you,"hand rubbed at the back of her neck awkwardly.

Whelp, this was fun. Talking to a strange stranger with glowey-crazy eyes down in a deep, dark cave. Yup. Story of her life of weird things that happen to her.

She just hoped to god he wasn't fae.

 

[Siraj]

He shook his head slowly. "No."

The people of his tribe had always been attributed with ash like skin, but the cracks and dozens of scars that purveyed his body were not normal. That had been wrought by the sons of Menalus, their torturers, and the creatures they had unleashed on him.

"I was a captive." Siraj said quietly, his voice a croak. "I...do not know for how long..."

He trailed off, looking away from her. "They..."

Lips thinned.

"They were not kind." To say the least.

 

[Fraeya]

She didn't know what to way. She looked closer when he was looking away, seeing signs of his...captivity. She grimaced. She could relate. And while he was now free, she had a long way to go to even know what that felt like.

Eyes turned away as she gently pried off another piece of glowing moss, chewing on it quietly. Her feet moved slowly in the cool waters. Such a foreign world of darkness.

"You're free now," the barest of whispers with perhaps a hint of jealousy.

 

[Siraj]

Siraj did not remember what food tasted like. What they had fed him within the dungeons amounted to bland gruel and not much more. He had barely stayed alive, barely scraped by with any sort of nourishment.

There was a reason he was little more than bones.

"For now." There was no illusion. There was no tricking himself. Siraj knew that the son's of Menalus would eventually come for him. Once they discovered his escape they would want him back. He had never spoken of spots like this.

Never given them what they wanted.

Fingers tightened as he took a breath, but he bit down the bile that emptied his throat. "Who are you?"

He asked finally.

 

[Fraeya]

She didn't look up at him, kept her eyes glued on the waters.

A small huff at his question.

A roll of her shoulders.

"No one really," greens lifted to meet his glowing ones again. "Name's Fraeya. You never told me yours," a gentle reminder.

 

[Siraj]

He did not remember her asking.

He did not remember his name.

A frown touched his lips for a few seconds as he wracked his brain. They had never asked his name, they had never cared. None of them had much wanted to speak of him, just what he had known. He opened his mouth to speak. "I..."

His head spun.

There was a flash of something, a memory. A brief glimpse of a life that had been torn and ripped apart at the cruel hands of fate. A shiver ran through him, the voice of his mother echoing in his mind.

"Siraj." He offered finally. "That's my name."

How had he forgotten it?

 

[Fraeya]

She looked away again. She recognized that pain. His struggle.

She drew her feet from the water and let them dry on the rocks. Shoulders rolled. "Do you have a place to go?" It's not like she really had one other than getting the hell out of this land. Then they'd find her and drag her back. They always did.

 

[Siraj]

Siraj shook his head. "No."

Screams echoed in his ears. The cries of his mother, his father, his sisters. The blood curdling cries of his family rang within his mind, replaying like some horrid song that he couldn't quite get out of his mind. Lips thinned as he took a breath.

"They slaughtered my people." He said softly.

There was a deep pain in his voice. "And they will come for me."

He knew that much to be true, knew it for fact.

"You are not safe at my side." Siraj told her. "It would be best if when we left here we parted ways."

He did not want to cause the death of yet another.

 

[Fraeya]

"I'm sorry," two words was all she could offer. He'd lost everything. Except his life.

At least he had his freedom. For now.

A slow nod in agreement to the ashen-skinned Siraj. "There are people I belong too and they're cruel. You'd also be better off not by my side. When we leave this cave just point me South. I should be able to handle it from there."

She hoped.

Gods, she hoped.

She still wanted to find her brother.

 

[Siraj]

He frowned suddenly.

South.

It was not an idea he'd had before, not a thought that had occurred to him. For a brief second his lips thinned, fingers tightened, raked over his already broken flesh. South was leaving the Blightlands, it was going away from them.

"I..." A cough racked his lungs, a painful agony spreading over his chest as blood spluttered from his lips. A hand came to cover his mouth, half hiding in the dark the crimson that spilled over his chin. "I think we can help each other."

For a time. "South."

He said with a nod.

"South will at least get me away." For a time. They would not go into the Wilds...he hoped.

 

[Fraeya]

She wasn't going to turn him down. She didn't know these lands and he did. She bet he could find them food and water. Never look a gift-pegasus in the face and walk away and all that.

She scooched so her back was against one of the cavern walls. Head leaned back and her eyes closed for a moment. She frowned at the sound of his cough. His voice.

"I'm not sure how I can help you," she muttered. "You need a healer and I'm not one." A weighing look his way as her eye opened again.

 

[Siraj]

Siraj knew well that she was right.

His body was...broken. He could feel it. His bones had been broken, his skin had been marred, his organs were half failing. Siraj could feel it with every step, he could sense it with how he moved and was forced to shift about.

He was a walking corpse. "I know."

There was no denying that fact, no reason for him to say anything to the contrary. Arguing would only assure that he would fall somewhere in the blight.

"There are herbs, plants." He said. "They will help."

At least for a little while.

 

[Fraeya]

She got to her feet.

Hands fell to her hips.

"Well? What're we waiting for? You look like you're about to keel over so let's go find these herbs. Would appreciate it if you didn't die before you could show me the way south."

A small upward curve at the corners of her mouth.

 

[Siraj]

He nodded his head, not necessarily disagreeing with her words. Keeling over in the sands would be...unfortunate. He did not want to die out here after having made it out of those dungeons. Especially after everything he had survived.

"It is that way." Siraj pointed towards the left, treading through the water towards her and making sure to take a few more sips as he walked.

Neither of them had much in the way of...things, but at the very least they would be set for a few hours. "There is a village on the way, though..."

He frowned.

"I do not know if it is there anymore." They paid tribute to Menalus, as did everyone in the blight, but they would not sell him out unless threatened.

 

[Fraeya]

She squared her shoulders and gave him a nod as she snatched one more of those moss thingy's off the cave wall and stuffed it in her pockets. "I'll follow you. If it gets too dark I'll need you as a guide again."

A gentle reminder.

And one she hated to admit.

Needing help or getting it where she came from...always came with a cost. Usually a steep one. She still remembered that one time she'd gotten some food. In exchange, the fae had made her steal a coin purse from a necromancer and a nagai. She'd barely gotten out alive.

She'd follow him, her hand ready to find his bony shoulder again if they plunged into the blackness.

 

[Siraj]

The walk was a slow one, though it was still as fast as he could go.

Again the time within the darkness seemed to melt away, shifting and flowing as though it had no real meaning at all. There was an impossibility to the sense of it, as though one could not quite make out just how much was passing.

Eventually Fraeya would have to grab Siraj's shoulder for a time, the darkness descending once more until a while later pinpricks of light appeared up ahead. "There."

It was the first words he had said in hours.

"That is the exit." His voice was a quiet whisper. "We should be off the plateau now, onto the plains."

Not that it was any safer there.

 

[Fraeya]

Slowly, her fingers uncurled from around his bony-shoulder. She stumbled slightly as her eyes re-adjusted. She definitely didn't like this. She'd grown up around cruel people but in a place full of color and light. She couldn't imagine growing up around cruel people or a cruel ruler...whatever it was and living in darkness.

"Are there more resources on the plains?"

A quiet question as the darkness began to recede.

 

[Siraj]

He blinked for a second, as if he were trying to discern whether or not she had been trying to tell a joke. When it was clear she was not, Siraj shook his head. "No."

A fact that most people would have found depressing.

"The Blightlands is an unpleasant place." Even for those who had lived there for generations. "There are a few plants, herbs, animals...but one must look where to find them."

Slowly he gestured over towards the east as they stepped out into the light, a great blasted plain ahead of them.

One could have called it a desert, but that was not accurate. The earth was too compact, too solid, it was almost as though a thousand years agoa great fire had ravaged a forest and this was the remains. "That way, we'll find a fallen collusses. That is what my parents called it, beneath it is a patch of Frel Root and another well."

He told her without thinking. Information that the Son's of Menalus had tortured him for years for.

 

[Fraeya]

She stuffed her hands into the pockets of her pants. Shoulders hunched lower. It felt strange here. She felt chilled but also warm. Perhaps it was the effect of the constant darkness or near darkness here.

And the wind was brutal with nothing to stop it.

It burned across her face with that soot and ash feel.

"The other villagers aren't going to try and kill me, are they?"

She knew she screamed outsider. Just look at how different she looked than this guy.

 

[Siraj]

Siraj glanced at her for a moment, smiling.

It was the first 'happy' expression that she would ever see on his face. It didn't quite reach his eyes, but...it was there nonetheless. "You don't much look like a blight Orc."

After the fallen Collusses, after they gathered the Frel Root they would walk for another day or so and then come upon the village. If it still held true, they were a kind sort of folk. Siraj remembered them as welcoming, even friendly.

Despite Menalus' best efforts, some folk within the Blight still did their best to help one another.

"So no." He said, that same empty smile on his face.

 

[Fraeya]

She paused even though she didn't like to stop out in this openness. It felt too vulnerable. Still, she made herself slow and stop. She turned to him.

"Well, that's a compliment." A warm smile his way. She held out her hand.

"Do you need help walking? Could always throw your arm around my shoulder. I'm used to walking long distances."

And she wasn't the one who had just been tortured and looked on the brink of death.

 

[Siraj]

He frowned for a moment.

It was a question that he had not expected. Siraj could not remember the last time that he had been offered any help at all. The last time that someone had thought to offer him support. Lips thinned as he looked at her, decisions to be made.

"Alright." Siraj said quietly.

His hand reached out, and he grabbed her palm. Fingers wrapped around hers, and he closed his eyes for a few seconds as he drew himself up and against her.

"Just a little more." He told her. "That way."

That was where they would find the fallen tree.

 

[Fraeya]

She slid her arm cautiously, with a feather's touch around his back, fingers steading his waist on the other side. He was so...light. Alarmingly so.

And she thought she didn't get enough to eat.

She focused on their steps so she could walk in rhythm with his own. "Okay," she breathed, looking ahead at the only object rising up out of the flat land and dull grasses. It was a fallen tree. And it looked pretty massive. And it was strange seeing it alone out here.

Had there once been a large and beautiful forest here?

"Almost there," she said even though she knew he could see. Perhaps she needed the encouragement as much as she'd intended it for him. "Is that something else we have to worry about, um, you said I didn't look like a blight orc, before?"

 

[Siraj]

He looked at her for a few moments, trying to puzzle out what she meant by her words.

Siraj still felt somewhat...slow. His body had born the brunt of his torture, the breaking, but without proper nutrition and food his mind had suffered just as much. He could feel himself ebb away when he thought a little too much.

Yet he was not dumb. It just took him a second to catch up. "No."

Siraj answered eventually.

"Maybe." It was hard to say truthfully. "I do not think they can catch up that quickly, they would have to descend the plateau first."

That would take time, even for the Blight Orcs. "We have time."

As he finished speaking they reached the tree, a small well spring beneath it's shaded reaches lined with odd thistle like rock.

 

[Fraeya]

She held back a sob of relief as they came to the tree. And the water in the well looked clear. "Here," she maneuvered them over to one of the large roots. There was a spot where it created a natural bench.

"Sit," she spoke quietly and would let her hand slowly release around him, only pulling away when he was ready.

There was a long rope, lever, and she hoped a bucket at the bottom of the well.