*Thump* *Thump* *Thump*
His head pounded in time with the banging on the door. Ilyash had never felt so miserable in his entire life, waves of nausea rolling through him.
“Ilyash, we’re leaving!”
Laura’s exasperated voice sounded through the house, distantly reaching the young man’s ears.
For a moment, Ilyash considered ignoring the call, his body’s protestations too traumatic for him to move. Finally, his sense of obligation won out and he rolled out of his bed and gently lowered himself to the floor with his arms.
Groggily, the man got to his feet, using the bed as a crutch to reach verticality. As he stood, the nausea he felt seemed to skyrocket, an almost overwhelming urge to vomit overcoming him as he stumbled towards the door of the room, his feet catching on a loose pile of clothing, causing him to stumble.
Pulling open his bedroom door, Ilyash squinted at the dim light that was streaming through the front window of the kitchen, Laura’s frustrated face peering inside.
“Laura, they’re not going to wait for us.”
Benjamin’s voice sounded raspy and muffled, coming from somewhere further back.
The young woman looked over her shoulder for a moment, before turning back to peer at Ilyash’s lumbering form as he finally reached the front door and pulled it open.
“Finally! We’re leaving!”
Laura exclaimed to the young man as his body appeared in the doorframe. The young woman was practically bouncing from impatience, part of her wanting to see her friend, while another part was screaming at her not to miss the caravan’s departure.
Ilyash…stumbled outside, lowered himself to his knees, and vomited. He swore he was still drunk, what had he done last night? Why had he done it?
Even after his stomach was empty, Ilyash’s nausea failed to subside and he rolled over onto his back, staring upwards. The cold, hard, ground miraculously alleviating some of his misery as he stared into the cloudless sky.
Benjamin and Laura’s faces both hovered above him as he stared up, their expressions a mix of emotions that he couldn’t quite decipher.
“Come to see us off I see.”
Laura’s voice was frosty while Benjamin just shifted uncomfortably far above her.
“You’re…leaving?” Ilyash croaked.
Both of them stared down at him silently for a moment before Benjamin spoke.
“I need to find a temple, and Laura’s determined to…do what she does.”
Foggy memories of the prior night came to Ilyash, flashes of the ritual, the anxiety, the stress, and their walk to the hill, but it was all a haze.
“What…happened?”
“We saw the guidance of the ancestors, then you decided to get so drunk we had to carry you home.”
Laura answered him, her voice colder than the morning air.
“And…you’re…leaving?”
Laura let out a sound of frustration at his words, just as another voice echoed over the empty square.
“Rolling out in five minutes!”
A few more flashes came to Ilyash as he attempted to desperately recall what had happened the prior evening. Something about a flower…and a war symbol? He thought he remembered Benjamin talking about going to a temple of Atyr, but none of the details remained.
“We don’t have time for this. You know we love you, Ilyash, but you need to get your shit together. You promised to come visit, don’t forget.”
Laura knelt down by his side, avoiding the odious puddle that was still steaming in the morning air and patting his side.
“I’ll see you.” Benjamin rumbled from up above, nodding to Ilyash before he turned to walk away.
Frantically, Ilyash propped himself up on one elbow and grabbed Laura as she was starting to rise to follow the large young man.
“Don’t go.” He pleaded with her.
Laura looked at him for a moment longer before pulling her arm out of his grasp and rising to leave.
“Find us, if you want to.”
With those words, she strode away not looking back. On the ground, Ilyash fought between desperation, the headache still pounding at his ears, and the newly resurrected wave of nausea threatening to overtake him as his two best friends walked over to a man who he assumed was the caravan’s leader.
He watched as the pair chatted briefly with the small portly man and then walked towards the back of the large line of wagons, neither sparing Ilyash a further glance, their gazes set towards their own futures.
As he lay back down, exhausted and defeated, he missed how both of them gave his still form one final, longing look as the teams of horses started moving the rows of wagons eastward.
–
Laura’s morning had started with a slight hangover. It hadn’t helped that she and Benjamin, much like the rest of the village, hadn’t gone to bed until shortly before dawn. Nor did it help that she’d committed to leaving with the morning’s group traveling east, but what’s done was done.
She’d been waiting for this day for as long as she could remember, only Ilyash being …Ilyash put a damper on her fine mood, despite the lack of sleep and the nuisance of a headache. She was ready.
It’s not that Laura had had a bad life up until this point. On the contrary, she’d had a very pleasant childhood: raised by two loving families, surrounded by grandparents, cousins, and great friends in a comfortable lifestyle.
Laura’s mother ran the town’s merchant guild while her father operated one of the town’s grocery stores allowed them to provide her with everything she could ever hope for; and maybe that was the issue - Laura had tried everything that the town had to offer, even going out on hunts with Jakob no longer excited much as it had when she was younger.
Jakob and his apprentices provided the village with much of their game, their regular hunts bringing in everything from reindeer, to boars, to the occasional polar bear. Laura had managed to get herself added to their hunting parties by the time she was fourteen after demonstrating her skill with a shortbow and it had been exciting…for a time.
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After years of hunting the same animals though, she felt…unfulfilled, nothing that she did seemed to fulfill that primal itch to grow, to improve herself, to strive for better. That’s when Lyandriz had found her, their party having come across a solitary traveler in the wilds two years after she’d first joined the group, initially thinking the strange woman lost.
Lyandriz immediately stood out to the hunters, dressed in dark chainmail and wrapped in furs, the woman seemed entirely undaunted to be found by a group of five strangers so far from civilization.
Laura couldn’t help but be amazed by her demeanor or her foreign looks, the woman’s dark skin contrasting with the villagers’ paleness. The woman herself was statuesque, rising more than a foot above the largest of the group, her form lithe even beneath the armor and furs. It was her face that stood out most to Laura however, her face more triangular than oval with sharp ears jutting out in opposite directions, only slightly covered by milk-white hair which flowed out of her hood and down past her shoulders.
Lyandriz hadn’t explained her presence, but had nevertheless been invited to travel with the group during their hunt, journeying with them for days while they tracked a herd of reindeer through the snowy plains. She’d ended up staying in the village for a few days after the group returned from their successful hunt, pulling Laura aside on the night before she left to talk about the Underdark and offer the girl an opportunity to become something greater.
Over the following years, Laura had struggled with the offer - her frustration with stagnation warring with the offer itself: an apprenticeship with the Black Rose, an assassin’s guild of the Underdark. She’d never thought of herself squeamish, but taking another’s life wasn’t something that she thought she could do easily.
In the end, her friend Ilyash was what spurred her to take the leap and join the caravan she was planning on joining this morning. She hated seeing his lack of action, for all that he’d always been one to talk of adventure and magic as a kid. While she strove to get better, he never did much of anything, neither joining her hunts, nor pursuing his dream of magic, nor following up on any other interest or hobby as far as she knew.
Though she’d long since admitted her feelings for him to herself, she didn’t think she would be satisfied with staying in the village to just exist for the rest of her life.
And so, exhausted and hungover, Laura forced her way out of bed and out of her room, to finally start her journey.
Laura’s house looked much the same as Ilyash’s, though her parents’ professions allowed them a home slightly further from the hustle and bustle of the central square of town, as well as some additional space. The hallway from Laura’s room led to a large, brightly-lit common area, a mixture between a kitchen and a gathering area with large, floor-length windows stretching across the far wall, illuminating the room.
As the young woman entered the room, her pre-packed bag hung over her shoulder, Laura saw her parents chatting at a table in the center of the living area, plates of bread, cheeses, dried fruit, and cured meats and smoked fish arrayed next to them.
“Good morning dear.” Laura’s mother greeted her, smiling brightly at her daughter.
“Morning mom.”
“Ready for your adventure?” Her father asked her, rising to pour his daughter a hot cup of tea from a kettle.
“Yes, all packed up.”
Laura shifted the bag on her shoulder and she walked over to the table to make herself an impromptu sandwich of bread, smoked fish, and dried fruit - a combination her parents had derided, yet enabled.
“Good, I remember my first adventure…” Her mother said, smiling wistfully as she recalled her own past.
“I know, it’s how you met dad.”
The young woman grumped, having heard the story dozens of times. She found it odd that her parents had never tried to dissuade her from leaving, especially when all of her friends’ parents were so vehemently opposed to their own progeny leaving, but she wasn’t going to complain.
Accepting the cup of tea from her father with a word of thanks, Laura perched on a chair while munching on her sandwich, the food and drink quickly helping her wake up and overcome her headache.
“What about your friends?”
Laura’s father asked, right as his daughter was struggling to chew a too-large bite.
Choking, Laura raised a finger while she furiously masticated.
“Benjamin’s coming, but I doubt Ilyash is going to do anything.”
“Too bad, but there’s plenty of wolves on the plains.”
Laura’s mother smiled knowingly at her daughter.
“What’s her route dear?” Her father asked his wife, knowing that she’d been the one to arrange the caravan that would take their daughter to the south.
“East towards Typhiria, though they won’t head that far north. Then south through the mountains, around the Cursed Wood, and then down into the caverns not too far from Trivn.”
“What are you shipping that way anyway?”
Laura’s mother chewed on a dried fig before replying, “The usual, arctic wolf furs are popular in the Underdark these days, they’re also interested in some of our dried snowberries. Wish we had some Wyvern leather but no one's brought one down in a while. Oh and some smoked sturgeon, if Laura leaves any.
“They should be able to bring us some more potatoes and other vegetables on their way back, will help to have some variety over the winter. Maybe some more of this nice tea.”
Laura half-listened to her parents while she chewed her own breakfast, her head lost in daydreams of her adventures to come until her mother’s voice interrupted her.
“You’d better get going dear, no doubt Benjamin’s already waiting for you but you should say goodbye to Ilyash before you go.”
“What? Oh yes. Though he might still be sleeping.”
Laura couldn’t quite keep her irritation out of her voice, but still rose from her seat.
Exchanging hugs with her parents, the young woman checked herself over to make sure that her new armor, a farewell gift from her parents, was securely fastened. Two knives rested on her hips, within easy reach; her pack slung over her left shoulder, the unstrung staff of her shortbow secured to its side.
Waving to her parents, the young woman raised the hood of her cloak to cover her ears and hair as she stepped out into the chilly morning air.
Once outside, the young woman quickly wove her way down the path between the hills until she found herself back in the town square in front of Ilyash’s house once again. All signs of the prior night’s festival had already been removed, replaced by sets of wagons, horses, and milling people preparing for departure.
As expected, Benjamin was sitting at one of the picnic tables waiting for Laura’s arrival, while Ilyash was nowhere to be seen.
“How are you feeling?”
Laura greeted her large friend as she joined him at the table, setting down her bag in front of herself.
“Tired.”
“Hungover?”
“No. Couldn't sleep.”
Neither of the two friends being much of a morning person, their conversation mostly consisted of one or two word questions and answers for the first few minutes until Laura decided to elaborate.
“Are you sure you want to do this? You can just ignore the ritual you know, nothing happens if you do.”
Benjamin gave her a tired look before replying.
“I’m not sure, that’s why I couldn’t sleep. But I wanted to find out where I came from, and this way I can travel with you.”
“Do you know where you’re going to start looking?”
Benjamin shook his head in response to Laura’s question.
“No, may as well go to a temple of Atyr to see what that symbol meant, but I don’t know if war is for me.”
Laura smiled at her friend.
“No, I don’t think either you or Ilyash are well suited for conflict.”
“Speaking of our wayward friend, want to go see if we can wake him up?”
Sighing, Laura grabbed her bag and trudged over to their friend’s door. Behind her, she could hear the caravan lining up as the last of the goods were loaded on the wags and the remaining stragglers trailed up, struggling to wake up after their own celebrations.
Knocking on the door, Laura and Benjamin shuffled from foot to foot for a few minutes before exchanging glances.
“Maybe he left?”
*Thump* *Thump* *Thump*
Benjamin banged on the door once more, louder this time.
“I doubt it, probably still passed out. Let me… Ilyash, we’re leaving!”
Laura called out, walking to peer into the small window leading into Ilyash’s family kitchen. What seemed like endless moments later, just as Laura was starting to feel anxious that they wouldn’t be able to wake their friend, Ilyash stumbled into the kitchen, a look of pure misery on his face as he shambled towards the front door.