-Bhashera, Sanctum of Frezia-
Amara
WAVE TRIAL COMPLETED: BHASHERA
EXP: +100
TRIAL REWARDS:
x2 Tears of Yevua
x1 Raiment of –
Her mind shoved the announcement away before it could be completed.
Slowly, the world of crumbling sandstone began to form in front of her, and she heard the wailing, pathetic voice of Lokar crying above her.
“Oh, thank Ty’Kella!” he cried, sobbing into her chest. “Thank Ty’Kella!”
She lifted a weak hand to try and bat him away and found that she had not the strength within her to force him to cease his yapping. She lay there, in the hot sand, and listened to him drone on about how lucky they were.
“Amara – the Lightbringer! The lady survives! She secures our victory as is foretold!”
She looked at his sniveling face wracked with sniffles, covered in snot and still bleeding from his forehead. She knew some of that blood was smeared on her cloak now. He nuzzled into her raised palm, mistaking her rebuke for kindness, and she withdrew with her fingers coated in his dark crimson spume.
Blood on her hands…again.
She rose up on her elbows, rejecting Lokar’s attempt to guide her to her feet, and felt the world spinning. Around her was a dimly lit tunnel – older, far older than the rest of this place. The walls were like formations from a prehistoric time – crumbling away, decorated not with the intricate mosaics of the catacombs above or the tessellated patterns of the church windows in the ruined city proper. Instead, simple stick-drawings adorned the surfaces of the tunnel - depictions so simple and sharp that they must have been carved into the grooves of the walls by rusted chisels.
And beside one of them – a crude image of a Gnoll praying to a scorpion, Mendax sat.
She moved to greet him but was struck instantly by Lokar’s hand. Throwing an accusatory look his way, she was surprised to see that the little wretch still did not relinquish his hold on her.
“My Lady,” he began with a gulp. “I must protest against you speaking with him. Since the trial ended he has been…sour.”
At the use of that word – ‘sour’ – she saw the bloody form of Mendax raise its head, staring at them both through one eye framed by the vicious slashes that the Scorpirex Alpha had left him with.
She looked back at him and found her breath caught in her throat. She reached towards him, falling under the weight of her own frail body.
‘S-stop!” Lokar cried. “My lady – you – you cannot rush-“
“I told you,” she growled back at him, finally managing to push his subordinate kindness away. “I’m not your ‘lady’.”
She managed to stand and, tripping as she went, limped over to the miserable form of the great beast.
Morphology: Desert Gnoll
Profession: Warrior (LVL 3)
HP: 9/50
She didn’t know what to say as she looked into his dark, brooding eyes. He said nothing to help her. He barely even breathed.
She took the item she knew she’d just received from the trial. Her ‘reward’ for doing what she did.
She’d killed before. She’d seen people die because of her, directly and indirectly. But this was the first time she needed to show someone that she didn’t want death. She could still see flashes of Kimon’s face as he expired in fire. In her fire.
Her mother was saying nothing. She was standing with these two creatures – and yet she felt more alone than she’d ever felt in her life.
If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.
“Here,” she said, cringing to hear the stuttering in her own voice as she held out the small potion vial to him.
Tears of Yevua
Effect: HP +10
He didn’t even look at the vial as she presented it to him. For a solid two minutes he did nothing at all. His expression did not change, and her uncontrollable shaking only got worse with every second that ticked by.
Then, he slapped the bottle out of her hand.
She just stood and watched the contents of the lambent crimson liquid trickle down the wall of the tunnel, seeping into the grooves and repairing some of the tears in the sandstone.
“A tool to patch up problems,” Mendax snorted at her, rising to his full height and glowering towards the darkness that awaited them on their new path.
“I’ll be keeping this scar,” he said, refusing to look in her direction. “There’s some wounds you can’t heal. Shouldn’t heal.”
He ignored the hand she offered him, turning and walking on without waiting for them.
“Some pain you have to carry with you. Maybe the Ch’alokk Lightbringer doesn’t understand that. But we do.”
She watched him go with her hands by her side. Her chest felt hollow. Her body was numb. And when Lokar gingerly touched her, she eyed him with nothing but weary sorry.
“I-I-I-,” he stammered. “That is - we did all we could. We did all we-“
He stopped when he saw her press her other vial into his shaking hands, and her joyless smile was enough to quiet his tongue, and his mind.
“You did well, Lokar,” she said. “Use this. It’ll fix you up.”
Only now did he seem to even realize his dripping forehead. He took the vial from her, his gaze lingering on its swirling contents.
“We…we did all we could,” he said again.
“I know,” Amara replied, beginning her heavy march towards the trail Mendax was blazing before them. “But just try telling him that.”
----------------------------------------
The tunnel posed no dangers as they traversed its all-consuming darkness, using Amara’s Flickering Ember for a miniscule globe of light. No wind blew here. The air was still, thick with moisture dripping from above, as though they had by this point tunneled into an entirely forgotten plane of the earth. The only sound that accompanied them was a persistent crashing cacophony that emerged from somewhere above them – as though some creature on the surface was beating two great, simian fists against the dungeon entrance, shaking sand from the tunnel ceiling.
But it was not this that held Amara’s attention. For, as they made progress, she began to notice that the chiseled images adorning the walls grew more and more basic, more unfocused, until they started seeing nothing but mad scratches and phrases etched into the tunnel’s edifice that Amara could not interpret.
“What does that say?” she asked Lokar, holding her ember up to one hastily scrawled piece of wall-writing.
Lokar looked cautiously to Mendax’s back as the brooding beast merely huffed and continued moving forward.
“It says Mort Khalien: Abandon faith.”
“Oh,” Amara replied, simply walking on with nothing but a tightening knot of dread in her stomach.
As the minutes wore on to hours, and the silence of their journey stretched for what seemed like centuries, they heard the roaring sound of water falling in the distance. Without even knowing it, they had quickened their pace, not even stopping to consider that, after all, it could just be an illusion – a trick played by their desperate, grief-stricken minds.
Yet when they finally cleared the dismal tunnel, they realized that, for once, the Everloft had not betrayed them.
A waterfall flowed freely from a shadowed hole at the top of the cavern they emerged into, ending in a radiant pool that filled the entire ground.
Mendax staggered forward first while Amara and Lokar took in the sight, smelling the intoxicating aroma of salt water that neither had experienced in a long time.
He dribbled one bloody paw into the pool and watched his wounds close up – knitting themselves together as soon as his flesh hit the water’s surface.
Fountain of Respite
Effect: HP Restoration +10 pts/sec
The warrior Gnoll recoiled from the pool just as soon as he had prospected its abilities, searching instead for a corner of the room that he could skulk off to, alone.
Then, above them: another crash of force that knocked the sand from the cavern’s ceiling.
“What is that?” Lokar questioned quietly, cowed by the strength behind each strike that caused the whole room to shudder.
Before Amara could say anything, Mendax met his Brother’s question with a coldness:
“We rest here till we are recovered,” he said. “Then we complete the final stretch.”
It was a command. Not a suggestion. He barked it over his shoulder to them, still unwilling to face either of his teammates. Once again, Amara stumbled forwards and tried to place one hand upon the great beast’s back.
“Don’t,” he snapped at her without turning. The statement was tinged with such animal fury that she did nothing but obey him.
“Don’t come near me,” he continued as unbearable silence descended on them again. “We are close, now. Do you feel it, Brother?”
Lokar hesitated, stealing a glance at Amara before nodding towards his waiting Brother.
“The Dominion Lord’s Lair,” he said. “It is close, now.”
Amara saw Mendax’s great head incline a fraction at the admission. “It is here. Our purpose will be fulfilled. The sacrifices of our Brothers and Sisters: justified.”
She saw his muscles twitch as he uttered those words, and he sunk into himself, retreating to his corner of the eerily peaceful cavern.
“I’ll get a fire going,” he all but whispered. “You two – use the waters. Let it remove your stains.”
“Mendax…” Amara began.
“Don’t!” he snapped back, snarling like a real dog this time, warning her. “Keep to yourself, now, Cha’Kellosk. Your destiny,” he said with spite. “It lies far beyond us. You have a world to burn, after all. Don’t you?”
She watched him go with the same knot beneath her heart tightening again, and as her arms dropped to her sides and she entered the pleasantly lukewarm waters below with Lokar, she let herself sink – wishing she could simply float away into the abyss at the heart of this great gaping pit.
He’s just a tool, dear, her mother murmured in her mind. Nothing more than a means to an end, like the rest of them. Do not concern yourself with the emotions of your inferiors.
Tools, she thought, looking at the shuddering Lokar, trying to hide his trepidation from her and, of course, failing.
That’s what mother says, she thought. But as she looked back towards the ever-mighty Mendax, sagging under the weight of his Brother’s death, she considered something that was amiss in her mother’s words for the second time in her life.
If that’s true, she thought as she sank beneath the waters. Then why do I feel like this?