Amara

She saw the girl reach out to the shadow.

She saw their hands clasp together as the storm of darkness began to recede, and her own fingers twitched with the desire to unleash a torrent of flame at the sight.

But she watched them closer. She saw the girl cock her head as though in surprise, and she saw the thing staring back at her do the same. It was like they were seeing something in each other that they’d never seen before.

It was like they were too long lost friends reuniting after a long separation.

Outside she heard the voices of the Gnolls and the thief-man Marius try to call them back to the world of the Sands. But she ignored them. She stood, and she watched.

And when the hands of the Argent met those of the Shadow, she watched the two become one. One body. One mind.

Then the girl fell, and the dark realm dissipated just as soon as it had been belched from Lokar’s mouth.

With its departure there came a scream – the scream of a soul writhing in agony. She saw it, too, as the shadow-creature left the body of Lokar to expire in the sands beneath its feet. It was the screams of the Gnoll, and it was the screams of someone else – someone begging to be given another chance. To do things right…

Then the scream was cut off, and she felt sand beneath her toes again.

FOE SLAIN: Desert Gnoll (POSSESSED)

EXP GAINED: 350

“Yelena!”

The thief ran to catch the girl as she fell, face first, into the bloodied sand beneath her. But Amara didn’t move an inch. Her twitching fingers had suddenly abated. What she was watching now was not the form of the girl, but of those who approached them both like they were a pair of wounded animals.

She watched the thief check the girl’s pulse – her heart – and sigh with relief when he realized she was alive.

Then, almost as though he noticed everyone surrounding them, he shouted to the terrified creatures that stood gawking:

“Well don’t all move at once! Someone sober enough to help us out here?!”

They looked on warily, eyeing the body of their hollowed-out brother who looked like nothing more than a burnt husk of what he once was. His skin was flayed away. Not a hair remained on his body.

Amara…her mother whispered in her mind. Tell me what you saw.

That’s when she realized with sudden shock that her mother had been kept from the tornado of sorrow. It had been something meant for her and Yelena alone. Them and that being that was now living inside her…

She was beginning to realize that there were a few powers that could match her mother’s, though she tried to keep this fact from surfacing in her mind.

The dark, was all she said to the voice within her. And something familiar.

Her mother regarded her words carefully, like she was prospecting a newly polished weapon.

Do not tell them this, she said. We shall speak more, my child. Till then…

“What…what in the name of Ty’Kella happened here!?”

It was the venerable guardian Verdus who spoke first in the waking world. He had approached the smoking, burnt-up form of Lokar sheepishly, sniffing him to get his scent and smelling nothing but crisping charcoal.

“The death of a traitor,” another Gnoll spat. She knew who that was, of course. As she turned to see his snarling face streaked with perspiration and froth, she saw Mendax glowering down at the whole spectacle from the busted roof of one of the hovels.

He must have come during the fight, Amara reasoned. The voice she had heard trying to reach her during her plight must have been his. Of course it was.

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“Lokar betrayed his clan and his mission!” Mendax roared to the sky. “He trafficked with a Voidspawn! He tried to kill me and the Lightbringer both!”

“We have heard your reports, Brother,” Verdus replied. “But we never thought…”

“Never thought what?” Mendax interrupted, swinging his bloody axe wide so all the younger Gnolls below were struck by his strength. No doubt he wanted to repair his reputation after the Argent girl had beaten him so soundly.

“You never thought this war would come to our doorstep, wearing the face of one of our own?” he asked the venerable guardian. “Look around you – all of you! – if this is not a sign that we must strike at the Blackbird now then I ask you what is?

The crowd took in the sight, most of them clenching their fists and laying them on their chests. Amara felt instantly swallowed up by the crowd. Mendax was instilling anger that she’d seen before. She’d felt it before on the surface world.

She’d felt it when she’d watched that Tigran burn on a stake while a crowd of ignorant mortals looked on that which they couldn’t understand.

“Hellooo?” Marius was shouting. “Anyone wanna, I don’t know, help the wounded girl here?! Chivalry? Heloooooo?”

“This is a sign that we must strike now!” Mendax continued. “With one fell swoop we can cut the head from the servants of the evil bird. The one who brought this ruin to us all! We have the Lightbringer. We have a shot at victory!”

The crowd cheered with him. A crowd of conquerors – no longer beleaguered citizens hiding for their lives. Amara watched their eyes change from sorrow to anger in what seemed like mere moments.

And yet the fire in her remained still.

“What you see before you was no Brother of ours,” Mendax spat. “It was a servant of evil, just like all those who dwell in that Golden Palace. I say we stop waiting around. I don’t know about you, but I’m done with celebrations. It’s time to get this war started. It’s time to –“

“You think this merely the work of the Blackbird, Mendax?”

A new voice added to the mix. A voice that cut through the crescendo of the crowd with ease, though it sounded like nothing more than a whisper on the winds.

The Elder One and her veiled Sisters stood on the high steps of the stronghold, their hands linked, with the Red-Woman the two Delvers had brought with them.

The crowd bowed their heads instinctively. Mendax, however, was seemingly defiant.

“My Elder, the signs are clear. This was the work of the Blackbird. Only he would have sent one of his minions here to put a knife in the heart of our revolution before it even begins. The two new arrivals spoke of a shadow that came for them as they fled the Blackbird’s layer. By my honor, I swear to you: this was that selfsame shadow, wearing the skin of our weak Brother.”

He turned suddenly to the thief cradling the unconscious Argent. “Or do you deny that, little man?”

Amara watched Marius turn his face from the crowd. Ashamed? Probably not. He didn’t seem the type to feel emotions. Maybe acting then?

“Whatever,” he said, looking up at the Red-Priestess for some reason. “It’s dead now, right? I don’t care about your holy war. Just help her, alright?”

“Don’t touch her!” Verdus boomed to some Gnolls rushing to Yelena. “We don’t know if the Ida’Mallock yet lives…”

Amara watched the blank face of the Elder sweep over the whole scene. Then, much to the dismay of the crowd, she unlinked her hands with those of her sisters and began a slow descent down to the blasted ruin that was the courtyard. She swept through the parting crowd like a spectre gliding eerily over a graveyard, her face meeting any who dared look upon her form except, Amara noticed, those of the two mortals from the surface.

When she reached Lokar’s charred form she slowly raised her hands and stroked his smoking cheeks, her withered, veiny skin caressing his featureless, dull face like a mother cradling her deformed child.

“Rest now,” she said. “For you have walked to the end of your Path.”

“My Elder!” Mendax howled. “You sully your finger on the flesh of this vermin!”

Now her gaze shifted abruptly to Mendax’s anger filled maw, and he instantly dropped from his high ground and stood before the lady. It was almost like a compulsion, for though he clearly bowed his head in respect, his chest oscillated violently, as though he was resisting the urge to wail at the dark heavens above them all.

“Warrior Mendax,” the Elder said. “You traveled with this Rogue. You ate beside him, shared his fire, and forged a bond with him that brought you both – and our lost brother Kimon – to the Lady whom you were destined to find.”

Amara saw Mendax’s lips quiver.

“He was weak,” he said quietly. “Not like Kimon. Not brave, not loyal, not worth the respect of even the lowest dung-eater amongst us!”

“But still a Brother,” she Elder said, her hand reaching out to touch his face. He resisted. He moved away. Amara saw that the hate within him was not to be so easily quelled.

“You think the Ida’Mallok all serve the Blackbird?” The Elder asked his downcast face. “They are nothing without a willing host. All they are is the promise of greatness. The promise of strength. The stroking of ambition. Can you look upon us and say that your resolve has never wavered on your Path, Mendax? Can you look at your Elder and say, with confidence, that you have never heard the voice that calls in the night?”

Amara watched him meet the blank gaze of the Elder’s veil and shiver. She did not hear his answer. No one did. What he said to his Elder was apparently for their ears alone.

But she knew the answer herself. No, Mendax. You wanted to give up too, didn’t you? But you didn’t. You took all the pain and all the suffering that dungeon threw at you, all for me.

She looked down at her balled fist.

I hope it was worth it…

“Do not hate your Brother, Mendax,” the Elder said. “Instead, mourn the weakness that exists in all of us, and meditate on what can be done so your feet do not waver when the time comes. Save your anger for the war to come. Do not let it consume your being.”

He grunted. His eyes flashed over Amara for a second before returning to the ground.

This night really was just a night of constant humbling for him, it seemed.

“But what of this one?” Verdus suddenly shouted from the crowd. “We saw the shadow emerge from Brother Lokar and consume her. How do we know this Ida’Mallock has been defeated? How do we know the Argent girl hasn’t just become its new host?”

“Bollocks!” Marius spat back. “You all saw this girl fight that big brute who’s crying to his mama right now. You really think she needs any advantage some two-bit shadow could give her?”

Mendax’s rage looked like it was about to return, but once again the Elder’s raised claw silenced everyone.

“There is one who knows this thing you ask, Brother Verdus” she said. “The one who was consumed by the same prison. The girl whom we place all our hopes in.”

And just like that, all eyes turned to Amara.

“Tell us, Lightbringer,” the Elder said. “What transpired within that sphere of darkness crafted by a thing of blackest night? Does this Argent bare the mark of possession?”

Marius looked at her, still holding the girl, with everyone around giving them both a wide berth. The Elder’s gaze was upon her, she knew it, as were those of the Gnoll crowd who she knew were still gunning for blood. Even within Mendax’s humbled eyes she could see his own desire to expel the Ch’alokk. He might have begrudgingly accepted her – but then, he had to, didn’t he? Verdus she didn’t know, but she saw that his face was filled with trust in her judgement. A trust she still felt was misplaced. What had she done, really, to deserve it, apart from live?

Then her eyes met those of the human Red-Priestess.

Amara, her mother said. Remember: she is dangerous.

She looked down at Yelena and watched her chest rise and fall with dim life.

She knew what her answer would be.