-Bhashera, Forgotten City-

Amara

She let the tiny orange burr of her firelight play around her fingers, watching it trail up towards her fingernail and dance off the tip. She suppressed a giggle. Even amidst these hideous creatures, the power within her had the tenacity to make her laugh.

Indeed, it was all she could do at this moment to laugh while her servants ran amuck, prospecting the ruined stained-glass windows of the dark church interior that had suddenly turned into their base of operations. Amara looked towards the conal sculptures and broken statues that lined the floor, noting the beautiful mosaic and tessellated thorn and flower pattern that had once adorned the ground here. In its prime, she was sure those flowers had shone in the sun above.

She followed the cracked stem of the patterned vines between the thorns and saw that they led to a dark dais in the room’s rear. Upon this dias rested the image of a bloated bronze scorpion, pincers raised, eyes focused heavenward – like this was a creature suspended in the animation of a prayer.

“This is nothing like the churches of Amarata above,” she whispered aloud, not knowing that Kimon had crept up to join her at the dais.

“I imagine not,” he said gravely. “I have heard the Chainbreaker is a much stuffier mistress.”

At his sharp tone, Amara’s eyes flew to his, and he let out a tiny, hoarse chuckle.

“Her places of worship are way less cool than this,” Amara agreed with a smirk.

“How fitting it is that the Lightbringer enjoys our temple,” he said, patting her shoulder and guiding her towards the menacing yet beautiful statue.

“What’s with this place?” she asked. Despite the danger that surely surrounded them outside this place, she somehow felt a sense of calmness overcome her senses, like these barren, dead walls provided a kind of sanctuary from the vicious Scorpirex that ruled the ruins of Bhashera.

“This is an ancient place of rest,” Kimon replied with a distinct touch of pride. “Rest and devotion to one of our many Sun Deities.”

At Amara’s glare of confusion, Kimon took motioned for her to follow him, nodding to Lokar and Mendax as he did so to inspect and secure the building’s entrances and exits.

“We denizens of this place you know as the Everloft have existed for eons before your kind crawled forth into the material world,” Kimon explained, sweeping his gnarled hand over a selection of debris and whipping up a small tornado of quiet wind under it.

“We grew to love not only the strong, but the daring, the beautiful, the wise and the faithful,” he continued, and Amara gasped to see that through his Windcalling Glance he started to knit the broken pieces of rubble together into an icon depicting a spear-wielding Gnoll with a scorpion tattoo.

“We Gnolls are creatures of purpose,” he continued, taking meticulous detail to wipe the eyes of the icon clean with his spectral fingers. “But the first of our people lacked direction. We required leadership. Spiritual enlightenment. We needed a reason to be. This, we found, through communion with the energy you know as the Glance. We looked through the Doors of Perception and found that which stared back at us. Then, together, we brought it into our world.”

He swept his fingers over the splintered remains of a stained-glass window and Amara watched, rapt, as he again re-constructed this object piece by shattered piece, slotting every fragment into place with the care of a practiced artist.

“These beings we called our Sun Deities – our Ty’Kella,” he said, whispering the name like it was a forbidden, high-level incantation. “They were fonts for the power that flowed from the Glance – beacons of pure creativity and raw, pure energy. With them to guide us, we sheparded our people through our caves and crags to the world of the Shifting Sands, and we found others – the first mortals of the Everloft – to share in our prosperity.”

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Amara saw the story Kimon weaved through the reconstructed panes of glass: there were the Gnolls trading and sharing their magics with some vaguely human entities in a city – an actual city! – bathed in the sun that hung above them all.

“You gonna tell her the end of the story?”

Amara gave a sudden start: she had been so preoccupied with the wonder of seeing another employ the powers of the Glance that she had not heard Mendax appear behind them.

“The ending of our story is not yet written, Brother Mendax.”

The surly Gnoll gave a growl of defiance.

“She might as well hear it,” he spat. “It concerns her kind, after all.”

“What ‘kind’ might that be?” Amara asked, brushing past Kimon and staring up at Mendax. She met his dark eyes with the mixture of tenacity and fear a toddler exhibits as they challenge their schoolteacher.

“Surfacers,” Mendax spat, and the way he said the word, it was like he was addressing a smudge of dirt on his toe. “Ch’alokk.”

“That’s enough, Mendax,” Kimon cautioned.

“No, no,” Amara insisted, holding up a hand to halt his protests. “I want to hear what this dog has to say.”

Mendax eyed her darkly for a moment, then laughed with the gumption of a thirsting demon.

“What happened next?” he growled. “Your Chainbreaker did. It was she who poured the most vicious of your kind into our world. Like us, they had spoken to beings who dwelt behind the Doors – but not the Ty’Kella. Their ears had heard the voices of others. Those who stew in the deepest, darkest pits of our home…and when they came here, they came with conquest on their minds and rage in their hearts. And when they had turned our Ty’Kella – our very Gods themselves! - against us, that’s when they sent your Argents here. To finish us off.”

She felt the hot sweat of his fury radiate on her skin, and her own burning flower of flame was ready to bloom into furious life as he brought his snarling face closer to hers.

“So, forgive me, Lightbringer, if I don’t take you seriously. Forgive me if I don’t bow down and kiss your surface-born feet. I’ve trusted Ch’alokk like you before, and if you wanna see the results of that trust, just take a look arou-!”

“Mendax!” Kimon roared.

The hulking beast ceased his snarling at looked at the downcast faces of his Brothers, their brows smeared with shame.

Then his face met Amara’s again, seeing only anger there. Seeing her barely repressed desire to strike him down.

“Hmpf,” he huffed. “Least we can do is tell the truth, Brothers. Don’t we owe the dead that much?”

“T-t-the sacrifices made by our brave Brothers is not her f-f-faul-ah!”

Mendax rounded on Lokar as he stuttered his defensive retort, and then promptly withdrew to the other side of the church.

“Whatever,” he snarled.

The three broke off as a dead wind blew through the other ruptured church windows. Somewhere outside, a Scorpirex roared with the primal ferocity of a jaguar feeding on its prey.

Mom, she asked her trembling mind, desperately fighting against the urge to burn the haughty Gnoll to cinders. Is it true?

It is true for these ones, dear, the Voice replied. And that truth will suffice. It may not endear them to you, but it will ensure you do not perish here. The prophecy of the Lightbringer is absolute. It is baked into these creatures’ very bloodstream.

She cast her eyes over Kimon and Lokar, who shuffled away nervously to continue barricading the room. What they were expecting, she couldn’t say, but somehow even amidst these capable warriors she now felt more alone than ever.

Ignore the sulking of that great beast, her Mother told her. That same aggression is what shall make him and his ilk such good tools for you to use. He will defend you, Amara, even if it kills him. That is the beauty of a good, obedient dog, isn’t it?

She looked at Mendax’s sagging shoulders as he rolled a plant of ceiling rafter against the church door with one massive hand and saw again that distinctive sadness ruminating under his furious eyes.

“He’s just a tool”, she agreed quietly. “Just an instrument to use.”

But as she kept her eye on him from afar, she couldn’t shake the feeling that something in the Voice’s words, for the first time, rang hollow. She wondered how many of his friends had died for her, perhaps in as gruesome a way as Anna had, and felt her callow mind greatly puzzled.

She barely even heard Kimon gasp from behind her, his tone tinged with the uncharacteristic note of fear.

“What is it?” she asked him.

He palmed the scorpion shrine and watched the little statue turn to face the rear wall of the church – and as if on command, the wall itself lowered to reveal a door stamped with the insignia of a single scorpion fending off a group of vicious looking, barb-tailed lizards: the Scorpirex.

Lokar’s teeth started to chatter and Mendax, rearing his ferocious head, gave a wry chuckle.

“Of course,” he sighed.

“What?” Amara demanded, pointing to the runic insignia on the door. “What does it mean?”

Kimon gave a single gulp before turning back to address them all.

“It means exactly what we feared,” he said. “A Wave trial.”