Private Tales Behind enemy lines..

[Sorai]

The growing darkness was palpable, the silence around them felt heavy, like a living, growing thing that slithered closer crawled over her, fear wrapping around her throat like a scarf of ice.

"Katyr.." she shuddered, her adrenaline surging and her entire body singing with the urge to run. She let out a sharp cry as she stumbled over a rock, the sound of her own voice bouncing back to her louder and louder as it echoed off of the crumbling walls.

 

[Katyr]

Katyr immediately reached down and caught Sorai before she could hit the floor. His hands wrapped around her tight, drawing her half against his chest as her voice echoed through the empty ruins.

Then suddenly it called out again.

"Katyr."​

It was Sorai's voice, but not her word. Not this time. It echoed within the Ruin, coming from all around them and yet sounding as though it had been spoken from ones lips. The Elf tensed, clutching Sorai a bit more tightly for a few seconds as he leaned down. "Run."

He whispered to her.

"Get to the bridge." His voice was surprisingly soft, quiet. "Don't look back, don't look at anything else."

The Elf gently placed her on her feet. "Just run."

 

[Sorai]

She never thought she'd have ever been afraid of Katyr telling her to run, but the word terrified her as much as something that could unnerve him should. Her pulse played a staccato in her chest, another wave of adrenaline coursing through her veins from her near fall.

Katyr ...

Hearing her own voice ringing in her ears caused a shudder to race along her spine, the echo twisting the word into something far colder and more sinister. Her brow knit into an uncertain frown, and she nodded in answer to his instruction.

She looked up at him as he steadied her, her eyes wide with worry as she nodded again.

Just run.

And so she did, keeping her eyes on the bridge and the bridge alone as she bolted as fast as she could, hoping he'd be right behind her.

 

[Katyr]

There was a pulse, a rush, and then Katyr quickly followed after Sorai.

Steps echoed out within the empty fortress, the sound reverberating and resounding. Each footfall was like a clap of thunder, pushed over them and echoing outward. The sound seemed to wash over them, extending far more than it should have.

Shadow twisted, wrapping themselves forward and lashing out towards the pair as they ran.

Their shape was formless, eldritch. Drawing across every broken rock and surface until they pooled themselves together. Flashes of face appeared within the dark, hands rushed out from pools of abyss. They reached towards Sorai as she ran.

"Help me!"​

The voice called out, the sound of it painfully familiar.

"Sorai! Help me!"​

It called out again to her, and from the Abyss Sorai would see the face of Rhea. Blood speckled her features, and her hand desperaretely extended towards the fleeing noble.

"Please, Sorai...it hurts...please!"​

 

[Sorai]

Her breaths were audible with little whimpers in fear as she ran as hard as she could, trying her best not to stumble over piles of rubble and debris. She was acutely aware of the shadows and refrained from looking at them like he'd said, but she let out a scream as hands reached out, trying to grab hold of her.

Help me!.....Sorai! Help me!

She knew that voice, but it couldn't have been real...

Please, Sorai...it hurts...please!

What if it was real? She stopped and turned toward the voice, her hand covering her mouth at the sight of Rhea's blood-spattered face, tormented by pain. "Rhea?" Sorai frowned, lowering her hand from her mouth and slowly reaching out toward the Dreadlord's.

 

[Katyr]

"DON'T!" The word thundered through the ruin, Katyr rushing to step up behind Sorai and snapping her up from the ground.

The Elf pulled her into his arms, dragging her away from the figure and sweeping her from her feet in one quick stride.

Almost as soon as she was carried away Rhea's face seemed to shift. Her features shifted, dragging away from the color of flesh and turning into a black abyss. Her mouth opened in a great maw of white teeth, and her eyes turned to a blood red.

"SORAAAAAAAAAAAAI!​

It screeched, screamed.

"COME BAAAAAAAAACK! Come BAAAAAAAAAAACK!"​

The shrill sound was enough to pierce the ears.

 

[Sorai]

Her fingertips had only just grazed Rhea's outstretched hand when she was grabbed away. She let out a shriek and fought against the elf's hold. "No! Rhea! Let me go, she needs my--"

Sorai stilled in his arms as he ran, her eyes growing wide with horror at what she was looking at, what she'd almost touched. Whatever it was, it wasn't her friend.. Of course it wasn't her friend. Katyr had killed her.

Katyr had killed her.

A rush of emotions clashed together in her mind, the fear and panic, the confusion, the anger and grief. For a moment she clutched hold of Katyr as tightly as she could, and the next moment she was fighting him again,tears bursting from her eyes as she slammed her fist into his shoulders and chest.

"Let me GO!!"

 

[Katyr]

Katyr managed to carry Sorai to very precipices of the fortress. His steps thundered through the air, echoing outward as he rushed faster and faster.

His gaze did not sweep over the shadows, did not look the corners.

He knew what he would find there. Friends, family, those whom he had left behind. Those who might now be dead. Those who humanity had likely captured and wiped from the face of Arethil. It would have been painful to look, impossible not to go towards them.

So all he did was look ahead. All he did was run towards the gate bridge. Sorai was still clutched tight in his arms, his muscles flexing around her as he rushed forward.

No light cast upon them as he stepped out onto the half fallen bridge, no reprieve was offered. The screeches echoed out from behind them, yelling, demanding, and yet Katyr ignored them. He rushed forward, dashing onto the half fallen rock to move across the bridge...when Sorai screamed.

Her fist landed against his chest, pushing, shoving, and throwing him off kilter. "Wai-"

As he spoke his foot landed too far to the left, one of the stones cracked and suddenly fell out beneath them.

Katyr twisted, and then the two began to fall.

 

[Sorai]

The sensation of free falling was surreal, like falling in a dream without being jolted awake. She let out a scream as she felt gravity pull them down, and her eyes closed as she waited to hit something, uncertain of what that something would be.

Water. Freezing, deep and fast water. It felt like knives, and then she was being dragged by the tenacious currents that for a long moment would not allow her to surface for air. Her lungs burned, her hands clawing desperately at the water until she could finally force herself up.

She coughed out the water she'd swallowed and pulled a deep breath into her lungs, her feet kicking ferociously.

"Ka--" she tried to call out though the water continued to wash over her head and she coughed again. "Katyr!" she cried desperately, her arms flailing in attempt to keep her head above the surface.

 

[Katyr]

Katyr slipped beneath the rushing rapids.

The sting of cold water. The rush of air that fled his longs. The shock to his system as he was submerged and felt Sorai tumble away from his arms.

He did not struggle like she did. He did not try to fight. Instead his eyes closed. His body went limp.

How long had it been since he had felt the touch of a river? How long had it been since the waves swelled and rushed over him? How long ad it been? His head roiled, rushed, a dozen memories churning over in his mind as pieces of himself that had been lost fell back into place.

Then he struck the first boulder.

Katyr could feel his rib crack as the stone was forced into his side by the rapids, his body tumbling against the rock and then quickly forced over. A rush of air brushed into his lungs, forced there by surging pain in his side.

"Katyr!"​

He heard his name called, and his eyes snapped open.

Glacial eyes searched out Sorai, watching for the figure floating within the water. His hands now moved, darting forward, steadying himself, trying to gain any sort of purchase. "Get to the edge!"

The Elf shouted desperately, his mouth half filling with water as he spoke.

 

[Sorai]

Her limbs were weak with terror. She tried to call back to him but was dragged under once more, twice more. Another loud gasp and choked breaths came when she resurfaced. She tried to grab hold of boulders, low hanging branches, anything she could grasp but she had not the grip nor the strength to hang on to it.

She was going to die. She didn't want to, but her flailing limbs were doing nothing to keep her head above water for long. She could hear her heart pounding frantically in her ears, could feel the cold eating into her bones and stiffen her muscles.

"I c-can't - Katyr!" she pleaded before her body was thrown down a short waterfall and she was dragged back under.

 

[Katyr]

Katyr's hands grappled at whatever he could reach, trying to pull himself with vines, low hanging branches. Whatever could come his way he tried to take, and yet it was all for naught.

The torrent of the tide was too strong, pulling at his body, wrenching him free and continuing the surge. Lips turned blue, his body began to feel numb. The water was ice, colder than ice even for Katyr. His eyes closed, and the odd black lines on his body surged.

A pulse ran through him, fingers tightening.

Desperately he breathed in, taking what air he could into his lungs. Then he lashed a hand out into the water.

The water seemed to burst around him suddenly, and then suddenly stopped. As though frozen in time the raging torrent of the river came to a complete halt. Katyr and Sorai stuck in the middle of it, The Elf floating within the suspended water.

"G-go." He said through grit teeth, the lines etched on his flesh burning, aching, pulsing within his skin.

 

[Sorai]

Sorai coughed up another lungful of water. She had no strength left and she was barely conscious, and so when the water stopped, she simply floated there for a moment, assuming that some sort of delirium had taken her mind.

Katyr's voice dragged her back to reality and she realised that somehow, he'd stopped the river. She tried to move through the water, but it was like trying to swim through sand. Every muscle in her body ached and shivered with fear and cold. Luckily, there was a branch almost within arms reach, and with one last feeble kick she managed to grasp at it with her trembling hands and pull herself slowly along it to the river's edge.

The moment she felt her feet touch land, her body collapsed into the mud and darkness quickly fell.

 

[Katyr]

His head spun. His blood seemed to boil within his veins. The mark's upon his flesh singed away at his skin. Fingers curled, aching, hurting. His body thrashed, every muscle in his body suddenly tensing and stretching to it's very limits.

Eyes barely remained open, his vision hazy as he glanced towards Sorai.

He watched as she grasped a branch, reached up and pulled herself to the edge of the river. The water parted in her wake, remaining an open wave as she collapsed onto the bank. A small trickle of elation floated through him, and yet it was not enough.

His hand's twitched, his arm seemed stuck.

The Elf tried to move, tried to reach up, but the pain was too much.

It was a collapse. A falling wall that let loose a torrent. His arm snapped up, desperately reaching towards a branch, but the magic within him shattered. With a powerful brace the water swept forward once more, and Katyr let out a half muted cry as the waters consumed him and swept him down the river.

 

[Sorai]

She had no idea how long she'd been passed out for. The sun had been setting when her eyes had last been open, and now it was set. It could have been minutes, or hours.. Her head pounded, and she grimaced as she rolled onto her side and pushed herself up to sit. The moon was bright enough that she could see trees silhouetted by it, it's light dancing on the rushing river and casting her in a ghostly light.

"Katyr?.." she called, her throat raw from coughing. When he didn't answer, her head whipped around, searching the long grass of the river bank frantically. "Katyr!?"

Everything hurt, but she pulled herself unsteadily to her feet, turning to search her surroundings. "Katyr?!!" Her chest rose and fell quickly in panic, puffing silvery plumes into the freeing air. She was shaking fiercely now, her clothes stiff with the ice that'd formed and her arms wrapping around her doing little to warm her.

Had he got out of the river?...

She looked back upstream, toward what they'd seen, she thought of everything that was unwise to think about when finding oneself alone in the wilds at night, and she decided to stop shouting. She had to move, or if she didn't already have hypothermia, she would soon. She forced herself to walk, following the river downstream, her eyes frantically searching through the darkness for any sign of him.

 

[Katyr]

The river had carried him for a mile, perhaps more, until the rapids had finally slowed.

A bruised and broken Katyr lay upon a rocky bank, still half submerged within the waters. Bruises had already formed on his ribs, blood spilled from his lips, and his eyes were all but sown shut. He did not move, his chest barely rising and falling as the light cast over him.

The marks in his flesh were bright red now, scars dug deep into his skin instead of Tattoos. The river had beaten him, but it seemed that his own magics had done more damage.

Were he of the race of man it was clear that he would have been dead.

It was only the gift of his species that still kept him alive, if only barely. His clothes soaked with blood and water, his body a bare shadow of the man who Sorai had found with a dozen dead Dreadlord's surrounding him.

In some distant memory he could hear her voice calling him, could hear his name shouted into the abyss. It was there that he dreamed. Not of home. Not of some pleasant view, but of the tortures he had endured. In his unconsciousness he was brought back to that cell.

Brought back to the pain, the hurt. All the way they had tried to drown him.

 

[Sorai]

Sorai stumbled along, her mind drifting in and out of focus as she searched for him. She was certain she saw him several times, though it turned out to be boulders or moss-covered trees long fallen. Shadows moved here and there, the breeze whistling through the trees, sending their leaves fluttering to the floor around her.

Her legs felt like iron as she dragged them through the grass, and she'd all but given up for the night when she noticed the white blonde hair by the edge of the river. "Katyr!" she barked, a sudden rush of adrenaline giving her all the strength she needed to fumble a few extra paces to him. Her icy hand pressed against his throat, barely able to feel his pulse but huffing in relief to find one at all. Even in the darkness she could see the blood on his clothes.

She shook him, patting his face, but when he wouldn't wake she furled her fingers into his shirt, trying her best to drag him by the shoulders to the closest shelter, a small copse of trees and a few boulders. Fire. She had watched and learned and she could start a fire on her own. She gathered what she needed as quickly as she could, but the cold was settling quickly into her bones and they rattled violently, her hands shaking too hard to strike a spark or keep hold of the rocks.

Sorai shrugged herself out of her cloak and stumbled back to Katyr, pushing him in against the face of a large rock and settling down against him, rubbing at his arms as she tried to keep up both his circulation and her own, but her consciousness was waning. She settled down in front of him, tugging his arm over her and getting as close to him as she could for whatever warmth was left in them.

 

[Katyr]

The night wore on. The moon climbed higher within the sky.

Wolves howled, owls played their nightly songs, and time crept by at the pace of a snail. It was impossible to tell how many hours passed, with every minute feeling like an eternity. Yet through them all Katyr kept breathing.

Shallow as it was, his chest rose and fell. He shivered against Sorai, his fingers clutching at her skin. Whatever thread of life he clung to, whatever piece of him was left, it clutched to the waking world like a man on the edge of a cliff.

Then he stirred.

He didn't jump back to life.

The Elf's eyes barely slid open, his body barely took a deeper breath. Every inch of him hurt. Muscles had been torn, bones broken. He could feel an ache deep within his lungs, a pain that stretched into agony. Panic thrust through his heart as he found himself for a moment back within that cell.

His body seemed to twitch, his vision shifting, and then he noticed the warmth of Sorai's body pressed against him.

Katyr seemed to shake, this time with relief. "S-sorai."

The word was a bare rasp, a whisper.

 

[Sorai]

Sleep took her, dragging her back into that water and twisting it into thick, black shadows and clawed hands tearing at her and pulling her under. Under it she saw the faces of the dead, like she'd seen Rhea, with wide, crimson eyes and sharp white teeth. Amongst the faces were her friends and family, all screaming at her in that same high pitched sound that rattled her eardrums to the point of pain.

She twitched and groaned and muttered, her fevered mind unable to tell dream from reality, not now that she'd witnessed a reality she'd never dreamed possible. Rhea's abyssal face would forever be burned into her nightmares, as would the rapid river that had almost claimed her life, that might yet still.

"S-sorai."...

In her mind, the black river came to a halt and those grasping hands seemed to freeze too. The wailing ceased, and she realised in that moment that she was dreaming. Her heart jolted and she gasped as her eyes opened shock-wide, instantly shaking. She turned her head slowly, praying that the the face she'd look at would be flesh and bone and not whatever hellish horror had plagued her sleep. It was flesh and bone, and he was alive, if only just.

"I t-tried to star-start a f-fire." she chittered, her dry lips as blue as his were.

 

[Katyr]

"G-g-good you di-d-dn't." Katyr managed to barely choke out the words, his head swaying back against the rock she had put him up against. A shallow breath pulled into his lungs, fingers tightening ever so slightly against her skin as he tried to steady himself.

Someone had been following them, could still be following them.

He took in another breath, still shivering. The cold had flowed into his veins now, skin blue and patchy in places from more than just bruises. Slowly Katyr looked down, frowning at himself, the marks within his flesh.

The last of the life he had taken was gone, used to save them both from the torrents of the river.

A small part of him cursed himself for not having stolen more, for not having seized those soldiers and drained them for every bit of what they were worth. It would have saved them now, would have let them survive. Now...now he wasn't so sure.

Slowly his gaze swept upward, looking to the trees around them. "N-need shelter."

Katyr whispered. "C-c-can you m-move?"

 

[Sorai]

"Why good?" she asked in a shuddered breath, her brow furrowing in confusion. Her entire body was shaking, and she was quite certain she had never been so cold in her life. Even breathing hurt, and her lips had turned a ghastly shade of blue.

"Mh-mm.. I can t-try.." she whispered, though that was before she realised how little energy she had, and how heavy her limbs felt. Still, she forced herself to sit up with a groan, her nails scraping into the rock as she used it to pull herself up only to fall against it.

"Where?" she asked as she looked around, her visible breaths short and sharp.

 

[Katyr]

Slowly Katyr pulled himself up, drawing against the rock and taking a shaky breath. The cold felt like it had set into his very bones, a deep ache he couldn't seem to chase away.

Sorai slipped besides him, half falling against the rock besides them. A weary look passed over her for a moment, the Elf wondering if she would make it past the clearing. Wondering if he would make it past the clearing. "S-someones following still."

"Fire's easy to s-spot." He reminded her, though the words brought him a thought. Slowly he looked around, a small smile touching his lips.

"A-at least we're on the r-right side of the river." It was a small victory in the the face of it, but a face nonetheless. A breath shook his lungs, his arm wrapping around the small of Sorai's back so they could support one another. "Th-that way."

He pointed towards the ridge in the distance. "C-cave, or boulders...anything to trap heat."

Slowly he pulled her towards himself, hobbling forward towards survival.

 

[Sorai]

"Still?..." she asked in a whisper, having assumed the man looking for her would have been long gone by now. Surely he wouldn't get this close to the Falwood for her sake..

She couldn't help but let out a breathy laugh as he made light of their perilous predicament, and she was grateful for the support and slightest warmth she felt as his arm wrapped around her once more. Her arm snaked around his back too, pulling herself against him as tightly as she could whilst trying not to stagger or trip over a root or rock. She let go of him every now and then to lift branches and twigs into her arms along the way.

A walk that likely took ten minutes felt like it'd taken hours by the time they reached the ridge. There they found a shallow cave surrounded by a few boulders and a copse of trees. She wasted absolutely no time in shakily creating a small fire pit in the cave mouth, but still her hands shook too much to be of any use.

 

[Katyr]

"Still." He confirmed with a nod. "B-but they would have to c-cross."

Something that was likely impossible now, at least for a few miles.

There were ways of course, but none of them were subtle, and most would likely draw some sort of attention that Katyr would be able to catch. That was something at least, something small.

As they reached the cavern Katyr could practically feel himself fall into hypothermia. The cold had well and truly set in now, and he could barely feel his feet as Sorai set him down. A shiver collided through the whole of him, breath shaky as he watched Sorai build a small pit with twigs.

Her hands shook violently as they clutched the flint, shivers running through her.

With a strain the Elf came up behind her, gently wrapped his arms around the girl and clutching her hands with his own. It was enough to steady them, if only just enough.

 

[Sorai]

Shaking so violently was exhausting. She felt her eyes grow heavy with the need to sleep, but she knew that she had to stay awake or risk never waking up again. Her clothes were thick with ice and hanging heavily on her. Several times she dropped the flint, her fingers numb as they picked it back up again without feeling it in her hand.

She glanced at him as his arms wrapped around her, watching his hands as they took hers and realising what he was doing. With another few strikes, the spark finally caught and ignited a small flame which quickly grew in the cold breeze. She let out a croak of a sound in relief, taking hold of his hands and holding them out toward the little fire along with hers as she leaned into him.