Light glistened off the waves, the golden light of afternoon twinkling on the unfathomable expanse of brown water.
The woman stared across the gulf of water as one might look across a vast crevasse in the mountains. It was as effective a barrier to her progress as a wall or an ocean would have been. She had never seen an ocean, either, until coming to Alliria, but even that city was behind her now. Far behind her, as was her home and everything she had known before. Never had she thought she would come this far into the land of the traitors and betrayers of eld, so far that even the scent of the Sea of Grass had long faded and been replaced by other alien things.
And still she could not escape. Still, the cold and reptilian creature coiled in her head, round her soul. Still it radiated disinterested amusement at...well, at everything. The undead beast had spoken of a past that had not been - could not be!! - but it had not begun its residence in her head then. Oh, no, that had come before, while she was imprisoned.
Aeyliea Tiel'an - that is not my name - of the Kel'tin No'rei. And once an adherent of Ty'rath. Once, but no more.
"Those bonds thou hath built are as naught, child. Thy kinship is with me, now." Terrible, implaccable, remorseless. Words that ran contrary to...to...
"<Enough,>" she muttered raggedly in her own native tongue, and turned away from the waters. There was no way across here, where the water was a quarter of a mile across at best. A native of the Sea of Grass, where the ground greedily took in any rain and the rivers, such as they were, only ran seasonally and briefly, she had no ability to swim. This body of water for which she did not even have a name forced her to turn back. In the near distance, the range of the Spine marched north to south, jagged peaks streaked with clouds and snow and ice.
A wall on one side, and an impassable obstacle on the other. There was nothing to do but try and pick a way across, perhaps move further north. She did not know how one would flee a demon that had already curled its claws around her soul, but there was no rationale in the face of superstitious fear. Or in the dissolution of everything she thought she knew of the world. The singular desire to run, farther and farther from home, was all that remained...and this water would not stop her from escaping.
The woman definitely looked as though she had seen better days. The twisted, crippled limb that was her left arm still pained her a great deal, but at least it had become bearable over the preceeding months. Her clothes were travel stained and spattered with mud - mud, much of it drying, clung to her thighs almost all the way to her crotch and coated her arms in a dried crust of clay that she had ceased to try cleaning off after the last several attempt to find a way through bogs and sloughs and oxbows. Her pants were tattered to the point that they barely qualified as keeping her decent, and all that remained to cover her top was a winding of half-rotten cotton and leather scavenged from an abandoned wagon some weeks before.
Which left the small tattoo at the middle of her back exposed, the scales along her spine and shoulder blades and the back of her neck and arms all gleaming dull blue-grey. What flesh wasn't caked in mud was instead welted by the bites of the ludicrous number of insects that lived in this humid-as-hell swamp (another thing she had no words to describe).
In short, she was walking case-study of human misery, even though she was very definitely not human. All she carried with her were a couple of short stabbing spears and one longer one for throwing and one battered and splintered buckler wrapped in rotting leather. Even as frazzled as she was, even as superstitiously terrified as she had been, she still moved with the remnants of the hunters grace that had come so effortlessly in a different land than this.
A stranger in a strange land, she moved forward. Forward, and away from that which she feared.
The woman stared across the gulf of water as one might look across a vast crevasse in the mountains. It was as effective a barrier to her progress as a wall or an ocean would have been. She had never seen an ocean, either, until coming to Alliria, but even that city was behind her now. Far behind her, as was her home and everything she had known before. Never had she thought she would come this far into the land of the traitors and betrayers of eld, so far that even the scent of the Sea of Grass had long faded and been replaced by other alien things.
And still she could not escape. Still, the cold and reptilian creature coiled in her head, round her soul. Still it radiated disinterested amusement at...well, at everything. The undead beast had spoken of a past that had not been - could not be!! - but it had not begun its residence in her head then. Oh, no, that had come before, while she was imprisoned.
Aeyliea Tiel'an - that is not my name - of the Kel'tin No'rei. And once an adherent of Ty'rath. Once, but no more.
"Those bonds thou hath built are as naught, child. Thy kinship is with me, now." Terrible, implaccable, remorseless. Words that ran contrary to...to...
"<Enough,>" she muttered raggedly in her own native tongue, and turned away from the waters. There was no way across here, where the water was a quarter of a mile across at best. A native of the Sea of Grass, where the ground greedily took in any rain and the rivers, such as they were, only ran seasonally and briefly, she had no ability to swim. This body of water for which she did not even have a name forced her to turn back. In the near distance, the range of the Spine marched north to south, jagged peaks streaked with clouds and snow and ice.
A wall on one side, and an impassable obstacle on the other. There was nothing to do but try and pick a way across, perhaps move further north. She did not know how one would flee a demon that had already curled its claws around her soul, but there was no rationale in the face of superstitious fear. Or in the dissolution of everything she thought she knew of the world. The singular desire to run, farther and farther from home, was all that remained...and this water would not stop her from escaping.
The woman definitely looked as though she had seen better days. The twisted, crippled limb that was her left arm still pained her a great deal, but at least it had become bearable over the preceeding months. Her clothes were travel stained and spattered with mud - mud, much of it drying, clung to her thighs almost all the way to her crotch and coated her arms in a dried crust of clay that she had ceased to try cleaning off after the last several attempt to find a way through bogs and sloughs and oxbows. Her pants were tattered to the point that they barely qualified as keeping her decent, and all that remained to cover her top was a winding of half-rotten cotton and leather scavenged from an abandoned wagon some weeks before.
Which left the small tattoo at the middle of her back exposed, the scales along her spine and shoulder blades and the back of her neck and arms all gleaming dull blue-grey. What flesh wasn't caked in mud was instead welted by the bites of the ludicrous number of insects that lived in this humid-as-hell swamp (another thing she had no words to describe).
In short, she was walking case-study of human misery, even though she was very definitely not human. All she carried with her were a couple of short stabbing spears and one longer one for throwing and one battered and splintered buckler wrapped in rotting leather. Even as frazzled as she was, even as superstitiously terrified as she had been, she still moved with the remnants of the hunters grace that had come so effortlessly in a different land than this.
A stranger in a strange land, she moved forward. Forward, and away from that which she feared.
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