"...!"
The white-haired savage sat bolt upright from a dead sleep, and did so quickly enough to stir the dust on the ground with her rising. Fragments of the dream still swirled in her head, haunting things that made little sense to her while sleeping and were now too fragmented to even attempt to interpret. The only thing that came through clearly upon waking was a disquieting sense of betrayal, heart-wrenching loss and grief.
Flashes of gold eyes, inhuman and incomprehensible...but filled with the same pain.
Aeyliea waited until her heart had slowed to a normal pace and her breathing with it to get to her feet. It was very early in the morning, and a mist clung to parts of the grasslands, obscuring the signs of civilization clinging tenuously to the land. This far east, the Sundered had much more of an impact and a greater claim to ground that did not belong to them. The wild herds that roamed in the wilds did not do so here so easily, and often under the watchful eyes of man.
The Seer bent to pick up the spear and bow from the ground, tossing the latter on her back and carrying the former in her right hand. She turned and looked westward, back towards home. The clouds that marred the horizon from one side to the other looked as bleak as ever, and even at the distance of a hundred miles she knew that the storms they represented thrashed the plains with uncharacteristic ferocity for the time of the year. She frowned and made a sign to ward off evil with her free hand - frail and weak, much like the arm was deformed and twisted by an injury.
The storms were not natural. Couldn't be, when they stayed near the horizon when she headed east, but if she turned to head west in any way, they blew up from nowhere and threatened to finally unleash their fury on her.
Aeyliea was a Seer of the No'rei, and no stranger to the arcane. The shamans of the tribe, the Seers were those with whom the Seven would treat and, if persuaded to, grant their power to. She absently touched the bone of a hawk that she had woven into the loose braid of her hair, one of the few totems and charms she had claimed since the disaster with the Vel Aniri some months prior. With that bone - or the feather in her hair, or stone beads, or braided grass, or a mouthful of water - she could treat with the Seven and use their power.
Aeyliea was also something else. The People believed in reincarnation, after a fashion - they did not call it that, of course, referring instead to the fact that skies overhead with their multitude of stars in fact represented the Sea of Souls and that, on death, they would return to the heavens to look over the endless sea of grass once more. All souls were that of the ancestors long gone come again.
In fact, it was one of her tasks as a Seer, the naming of a soul. A child born to the people would be visited by a Seer such as herself, and the name of the soul gifted to that child ascertained. Later, at the ritual of adulthood, that soul would be confirmed and it was then that the ritual markings would be applied, forever naming that man or woman and setting their place in society. Her own markings, intricate tattoos on the sides of her neck, marked her as who she was - Aeyliea ap Tiel'an.
A hero out of time, from an age long passed.
Mine own child, I bid thee listen...
She shivered as though someone had walked across her grave. The memory of that aetherial voice, seeming to drift across the span of time from the very beginning, filled her with a primal dread that no enemy with a blade in hand ever could. Mortal threats meant very little to her or her kith and kin, after all; death was but payment for a return to the stars, to a place where time did not exist in any meaningful way. Only the wait to return to the world, as she and others had countless times.
It was just that being a Seer meant she dealt with things that warriors did not. You could not fight what was in your head, and you could not grapple with things that existed between the Seas - the Sea of Souls, and the Sea of Grass. In the place between, horrors that defied understanding or logic dwelt, eager to destroy the souls of the People and deny them their rebirth, now and forever.
That eldritch voice had warned her away from her people. That eldritch voice had hinted that she open her eyes and see the truth.
Looking to the east, the only route given her, she saw that the settled lands began in truth. This was the border, as between the seas, between the savage lands of the cities and their men in iron...and those that kept the faith on the arid grass. She stared that way, not liking the path set before her - not one jot.
***
Stray was one of those frontier towns so romanticized in popular fiction that, in the gritty real world, was as far from romance as it was from a bar of soap, let alone a bath.
The rutted streets were not cobbled, and manure was left in the streets wheresoever a horse decided was a good place to relieve themselves. The buildings were all of mud brick with thatched roofs. Raised wooden walks lined both sides of the main street of the town, which hosted a hotel and a saloon, not to mention a general store and other assorted businesses. And the business of this place was, quite naturally, trade.
Cattle driven in from the ranches on the edge of the great open mingled with all manner of goods bound over land to Vel Anir and Elbion, heading to Alliria and Dornoch and Oban and all points beside. Stray was but a wide spot in the road, a watering hole and a place to hold over for a night before continuing on to better places - which was to say anywhere but there. To call Stray a den of thieves and villainy would have been flattering it with words too kind to be deserved.
She looked distinctly out of place among caravanserai guards in their steel and leather, among cattle drovers and the various followers and, ahem, servants for such people as populated Stray. She wore traditional clothing, but it was worn and stained from weeks on the road, and it had been ill fitting before she had started on this journey to begin with. Bow on her back, unstrung, and short spear beside it, she could almost be taken for one of the guards. Almost. Here, though, the No'rei were certainly known of, and the scales on her arms marked her as clearly as carrying a sign would have.
Or would have, had she been anywhere other than here.
She looked round at all the oathbreakers, and scowled - which earned more than a few stares from the people here. Standing in the middle of the road, she stood out like a sore thumb. It wouldn't be too long before she started attracting the wrong sort of attention from a place like this, and there was no telling what kind of trouble would follow after that.
She had no idea what she was supposed to do, only the idea that she was supposed to be here.
The white-haired savage sat bolt upright from a dead sleep, and did so quickly enough to stir the dust on the ground with her rising. Fragments of the dream still swirled in her head, haunting things that made little sense to her while sleeping and were now too fragmented to even attempt to interpret. The only thing that came through clearly upon waking was a disquieting sense of betrayal, heart-wrenching loss and grief.
Flashes of gold eyes, inhuman and incomprehensible...but filled with the same pain.
Aeyliea waited until her heart had slowed to a normal pace and her breathing with it to get to her feet. It was very early in the morning, and a mist clung to parts of the grasslands, obscuring the signs of civilization clinging tenuously to the land. This far east, the Sundered had much more of an impact and a greater claim to ground that did not belong to them. The wild herds that roamed in the wilds did not do so here so easily, and often under the watchful eyes of man.
The Seer bent to pick up the spear and bow from the ground, tossing the latter on her back and carrying the former in her right hand. She turned and looked westward, back towards home. The clouds that marred the horizon from one side to the other looked as bleak as ever, and even at the distance of a hundred miles she knew that the storms they represented thrashed the plains with uncharacteristic ferocity for the time of the year. She frowned and made a sign to ward off evil with her free hand - frail and weak, much like the arm was deformed and twisted by an injury.
The storms were not natural. Couldn't be, when they stayed near the horizon when she headed east, but if she turned to head west in any way, they blew up from nowhere and threatened to finally unleash their fury on her.
Aeyliea was a Seer of the No'rei, and no stranger to the arcane. The shamans of the tribe, the Seers were those with whom the Seven would treat and, if persuaded to, grant their power to. She absently touched the bone of a hawk that she had woven into the loose braid of her hair, one of the few totems and charms she had claimed since the disaster with the Vel Aniri some months prior. With that bone - or the feather in her hair, or stone beads, or braided grass, or a mouthful of water - she could treat with the Seven and use their power.
Aeyliea was also something else. The People believed in reincarnation, after a fashion - they did not call it that, of course, referring instead to the fact that skies overhead with their multitude of stars in fact represented the Sea of Souls and that, on death, they would return to the heavens to look over the endless sea of grass once more. All souls were that of the ancestors long gone come again.
In fact, it was one of her tasks as a Seer, the naming of a soul. A child born to the people would be visited by a Seer such as herself, and the name of the soul gifted to that child ascertained. Later, at the ritual of adulthood, that soul would be confirmed and it was then that the ritual markings would be applied, forever naming that man or woman and setting their place in society. Her own markings, intricate tattoos on the sides of her neck, marked her as who she was - Aeyliea ap Tiel'an.
A hero out of time, from an age long passed.
Mine own child, I bid thee listen...
She shivered as though someone had walked across her grave. The memory of that aetherial voice, seeming to drift across the span of time from the very beginning, filled her with a primal dread that no enemy with a blade in hand ever could. Mortal threats meant very little to her or her kith and kin, after all; death was but payment for a return to the stars, to a place where time did not exist in any meaningful way. Only the wait to return to the world, as she and others had countless times.
It was just that being a Seer meant she dealt with things that warriors did not. You could not fight what was in your head, and you could not grapple with things that existed between the Seas - the Sea of Souls, and the Sea of Grass. In the place between, horrors that defied understanding or logic dwelt, eager to destroy the souls of the People and deny them their rebirth, now and forever.
That eldritch voice had warned her away from her people. That eldritch voice had hinted that she open her eyes and see the truth.
Looking to the east, the only route given her, she saw that the settled lands began in truth. This was the border, as between the seas, between the savage lands of the cities and their men in iron...and those that kept the faith on the arid grass. She stared that way, not liking the path set before her - not one jot.
***
Stray was one of those frontier towns so romanticized in popular fiction that, in the gritty real world, was as far from romance as it was from a bar of soap, let alone a bath.
The rutted streets were not cobbled, and manure was left in the streets wheresoever a horse decided was a good place to relieve themselves. The buildings were all of mud brick with thatched roofs. Raised wooden walks lined both sides of the main street of the town, which hosted a hotel and a saloon, not to mention a general store and other assorted businesses. And the business of this place was, quite naturally, trade.
Cattle driven in from the ranches on the edge of the great open mingled with all manner of goods bound over land to Vel Anir and Elbion, heading to Alliria and Dornoch and Oban and all points beside. Stray was but a wide spot in the road, a watering hole and a place to hold over for a night before continuing on to better places - which was to say anywhere but there. To call Stray a den of thieves and villainy would have been flattering it with words too kind to be deserved.
She looked distinctly out of place among caravanserai guards in their steel and leather, among cattle drovers and the various followers and, ahem, servants for such people as populated Stray. She wore traditional clothing, but it was worn and stained from weeks on the road, and it had been ill fitting before she had started on this journey to begin with. Bow on her back, unstrung, and short spear beside it, she could almost be taken for one of the guards. Almost. Here, though, the No'rei were certainly known of, and the scales on her arms marked her as clearly as carrying a sign would have.
Or would have, had she been anywhere other than here.
She looked round at all the oathbreakers, and scowled - which earned more than a few stares from the people here. Standing in the middle of the road, she stood out like a sore thumb. It wouldn't be too long before she started attracting the wrong sort of attention from a place like this, and there was no telling what kind of trouble would follow after that.
She had no idea what she was supposed to do, only the idea that she was supposed to be here.
