Amara

With her Gnolls now falling in step behind her, Amara led the way into the cavernous depths of Bhashera’s final level. Here, an otherworldly light illuminated the dark with burning azure power like the sconces she’d seen miraculously change above. She stood for a moment, trying to resolve the images she saw before her – of great walls more ancient even than those corridors above, and fallen pillars crushed and ruined after what looked like centuries of conflict. Here and there she saw fleeting shadows play across the side of each strange, twisted building – like the architecture itself held some mischievous ghosts that played across their surfaces. It was only when the Gnolls caught up to her that she took it all in – the fallen structures, crumbling buildings, streets pocketed with debris and dust – and realized what it was she was looking at:

A city.

“Bhashera,” the elder Gnoll, Kimon, coughed behind her. “Once the pride of our people, now the haunt of Voidspawn.

She turned to him, forgetting the power of her tiny flame that caused him to shiver away from her. “Voidspawn?”

He gave a grave nod. “The beasts you have fought above,” she said. “Those beings born from the evil dreams of the old ones who came here long ago, cast out by the one called Amarata.”

She felt her mother’s life hum with activity. But whether this creature spoke the truth or not, her mother wouldn’t say.

“Where’s the exit?” she asked.

“Through them,” the hulking Mendax growled as he rose beside her, pointing to a seemingly empty space in the city’s narrow streets.

She followed his hairy finger and strained her eyes to pick out the distinct shapes moving around amidst the ruins – long, angular, scaled beasts, each one roaming with stalker-like stealth through the deserted alleys and streets, intent on sniffing out some morsels left over from this city’s desolate carcass. She saw one near the entrance to the ruins look up, eye her with the slitted, amber-clad eyes of a predator, and issue a low growl to its shadowed companions.

It was a beast of a whole other caliber from that which she’d seen above. Claws like a bear, feet strong and supple ending in tough, frayed nails like those of a cockerel. Eyes gleaming like lambent lanterns in the night – the only thing casting a spotlight in the whole dark edifice they stalked through. Jaws with protruding teeth gave their prey the impression of the painful, agonizing death that awaited them. Their elongated heads gave them the impression of always leaning forwards, and Amara wondered if perhaps ramming their prey was their main means of attack – considering their form seemed practically engineered for the activity.

But as she met the needle-sharp gaze of the one that was prospecting her, she came to realize how wrong she was.

The creature’s tail rose above its head and began to rattle uncontrollably. Then, without breaking eye contact once, the being stabbed at a tiny scarab by its side, pumped a welt of poison into its little body, and brought it to its salivating maw.

As it turned away, satisfied with presenting its threat, she saw the dripping pincer attached to the end of its sinuous tail.

Then a spark went off in the depths of her brain:

Appraisal: Success

Morphology: Scorpirex

HP: 35/35

RES: BLDG, ERTH

WK: ???

“The true challenge of Bhashera Temple, Lady Amara!” Lokar shouted behind her, so that she actually turned and watched him flinch. “I – I mean – surely not challenging enough for you, Great One! But formidable opponents, still! They bar the path to the Dominion Lord, and must be contended with should we wish to-”

“Enough screaming, oaf,” Mendax growled. “I spot five roaming as a pack below – vanguard at the front, three hiding in the remains of the residential district. One at the back, nesting in the ruined church.”

Amara followed his eyes as they flit around the city with exceptional speed. His ‘appraisal’ was clearly far more potent than hers…

“Orders?”

“We trust in the Lightbringer, Amara,” Kimon said, stroking his straggly beard. “We may fight them, or we may attempt to bypass them.”

Amara felt her fists clench, new threads of flame weaving themselves round her fingers. Yet, she closed her eyes and let thought be her guide – they were outnumbered and possibly outmatched in a straightforward fight.

“Okay,” she said. “We will go around.”

“Hmpf,” came Mendax’s bark of restrained approval. “A wise decision. I’d rather not lose any brothers this day.”

She looked at him with anger at his implication, but Lokar broke through her pure fury with his shrill, animal voice.

“Allow me to take the lead, mistress!” he purred. “I am gifted in the art of stealth.”

Amara sighed, drawing a strained laugh from Kimon. “As much as I hate to admit it, you’re right.”

Mendax stiffened. “Form up on Lokar?”

She noticed he was looking past her towards Kimon, directing the question to him.

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

“It is the will of our Lady,” Kimon nodded. “She walks the prophesized path, and will sure-“

“Alright,” Mendax cut in massively. “Cut the mystic crap right now. Let’s just get this over with.”

He nodded towards Lokar who bowed like a sheep before a wolf. “Don’t fuck this up.”

“I-I would not dream of disappointing out Lady!” he stuttered back, sounding like he was close to tears. “I will be her most favored servant, unlike you and your part-“

A steely, death-like glare from Mendax stopped him mid-sentence, and he instead shuffled dutifully to the front of the group.

“One day I’ll gut that cretin,” Mendax whispered under his breath.

“I may just do it for you,” Amara quipped, noticing the slightest of smirks the statement drew from the bulky hyena-man.

“Ok,” she said. “Let’s do this.”

And without another word from any of them, the running began.

“Be keeping behind,” Lokar whispered (she’d have thought him incapable). “I have a little trick that will confuse these basic beasts.”

Amara watched him shake his hands and make a symbol she did not recognize with his thimb and index finger, and under his breath he muttered a word that struck at her chest with its power:

“Dhu’mat!”

She didn’t stop running. Didn’t see anything change at all at first. And yet, as they neared the first of the long-necked Scorpirex, the creature paid them no heed at all.

“What has he done?” Amara asked Kimon as they left the beast behind.

“An incantation of cloaking,” the old one answered. “Seeker-level Void.”

Amara knit her brows as she came to understand. She remembered the levels of her own pyromancy incantations: all Seeker level, like his.

“The lowest level,” Mendax growled beside her. “Lokar here is an expert.”

Amara ignored his condescension as they rounded a corner of the entry-level street and hugged the cold walls of two ruined houses. She spread her fingers and palmed the air in front of her to find that, yes, there was now a smoky, haze-like shroud that had been draped over them – the results of the thief’s Glance:

Appraisal: Success

Incantation: Voidcloak (Seeker Level VOID)

Effect: Pass-Without-Trace for 5 minutes in area: 40ft.

Targets affected by condition cannot initiate combat

“That is…a great ability,” she murmured.

Even from behind him, she could see the thief-hyena bristle with pride.

“Nothing but the best for the guardians of the glorious Ligh-I mean- the Amara. Praise be.”

Through her sigh she whispered a question to Kimon as they all crouched low at a junction, waiting for an inquisitive Scorpirex to sniff the air, grow bored, and move on to join the rest of its pack.

“So, thieves can learn Glance spells, too?”

“Quite so,” the old one nodded. “Not as many as those born with the Gift, as yourself and I, and not nearly with the same potency, but the Mysteries of the Doors are not blocked to those who follow the path of the thief. I have even known some of our older acolytes to have devoted themselves fully to studying the Mysteries, and neglecting their roguish ways. Why, I can recall-“

“Can it!” Mendax spat, bending down to a crouch as they came to another blistered fork in the road. Amara registered fear in his voice as he whispered, “Look.”

In the center of the long, winding street that stretched before them, a humanoid shape stood motionless, hunched over, staring at the barren ground. Its forms were lithe and translucent – barely solid – more like black silhouettes pantomiming life. It looked up once to see the new arrivals in its street, and its drooping, oval eyes contained an expression more sorrowful than Amara had ever beheld in her life. As the pack of gnolls stood motionless, the shadowy figure simply shrugged and went on his unmerry way, slowly fading into the very walls of a nearby house themselves.

“What was that?” Amara asked when it had gone.

Kimon replied hoarsely as they hurried up the street towards the main building at the end of the city. “Since the time of Bhashera’s collapse, some say the souls of the Lost Ones still wander the streets. Mothers trying to find their children. Brothers seeking after their sisters. Sometimes they call out, in pain or in anguish, and their voices echo off these old walls. And sometimes,” he added, looking back at Mendax who had barely moved an inch. “Sometimes they are faces we recognize.”

The old Gnoll took Mendax by his burly arm as Lokar insisted they press on.

“Come, Brother,” Kimon said gently. “Just an echo from the past. Nothing more.”

Mendax eyed him with world-weary eyes and gave a gulp that did not become him. Looking at him now, he seemed the complete opposite of what her appraisal told him he was. A warrior? This Gnoll was big, sure. Strong. Confident. But he was scared, right now. She knew all too well what that looked like.

So, amidst Lokar’s increasing cries of “M’lady!” that she was going to pretend she didn’t hear, she walked up to the giant Gnoll and touched his arm gingerly.

“The past can’t hurt us,” she told him. “Only the future is what matters.”

She said it with such confidence, such assurance, that when he looked down and spat at the ground between her feet, she barely even registered the complete contempt in his voice as he addressed her.

“What do you know of our past, Lightbringer?” he said with disdain. “Keep your words for someone who cares to listen.”

And he brushed past her with little more than a bestial bark, so that her hand raised on impulse, ready to spray a gout of flame that would show him just-

Amara, her mother’s voice cautioned. We don’t waste our energy on blunt instruments.

Through her mother’s internal speech, however, it was Kimon’s calm voice that she listened to.

“Please pay him no heed, Amara,” he said. “He is young, brash, and too full of anger at those who have left our world in ruins. He has lost much in our war for survival. Even his Bonded – what you would call his ‘wife’.

She looked towards the ragged back of Mendax and allowed her nascent fireball to die in her hand. Loss was something she understood, of course. But how could she make him see that?

Then a voice, her own this time, assailed her: why do you care? Like mom says – he’s a tool, nothing more.

She shook the thought from her head and let Kimon lead her back to the others, Lokar pointing a tired finger towards the desolate church that they were about to enter.

“Here, we shall find the entrance to the Dominion Lord’s lair,” Kimon said beside her. “The ancient being who was once worshipped on these hallowed grounds. Though we would prefer to save our strength for the conflict against our true enemies, the Lord must be contended with ere we return to our stronghold where you shall meet your destiny.”

Amara admitted to herself that she was more than a little excited. She’d slain countless foes in this dungeon alone – and if mother was to be believed, this was only the start. Indeed, this was apparently once of the easier delves. But as she followed the twitching Lokar into the remains of the dilapidated old church, watching Mendax huff out the corner of her eye, one question gnawed at her, burning more than even the power gathering at her fingertips:

“You said you have been fighting against an enemy,” she asked. “But it’s not this ‘Dominion Lord?’”

Kimon double blinked in the odd way he did, cocking his head just like a dog. “No, Amara. The Dominion Lords of the First Layer have no malice in their hearts for us. They, like us, can only be what they were made to be.”

She pressed him as Mendax closed shut the church doors behind them. “Then, who is your enemy? Who do you want me to help you kill?”

The Gnolls each shared the same look of burning, raw fury, and then Kimon turned back at to answer her:

“The Argents,” he said. “The ones who came here, slaughtered our people, corrupted our lands, and made us little more than rats skulking about the ruins of what was once a civilization that stood for so much good in this great abyss.”

The other two looked away, attending to their supply packs and prospecting the area, while Amara considered the words of the old one and felt, within herself, the same flame of hatred burn as she remembered the fiendish Yok’ra, Arekis, and his murderous band.

“You don’t have to persuade me to kill Argents,” she said, and her tone was enough to stop the other two in their tracks. “I’ll burn them all to cinders, free of charge.”