Brynne

Logs crackled in the sputtering light of a dying fire. Brynne added a few small twigs to the flames, but they wouldn't last long.

Footsteps approaching the fallen tree where Brynne was sitting announced the presence of a second person entering the small clearing where the fire lay. Brynne tensed, but quickly relaxed when she realized it was someone she knew. Ainsley walked up and dropped a large stack of larger sticks he had found next to the fire.

“How long has Terk been gone now?” Brynne asked, trying not to let the worry she was feeling enter her voice.

Ainsley shrugged and added some fuel to the fire.

"It hasn't been very long. It will probably be some time before he returns. Don't worry about Terk, I still owe him five flecks. There's no way he would die before making me pay up. Besides, these types of arrangements aren't easy to set up. You should know that by now."

Brynne let out a sigh of frustration. She did know that.

She had thought that once they had escaped Eloria two months ago they would be safe, but it had turned out that the Lost City was simply the first in a long line of ordeals. Ainsley finished adding logs to the fire, and he took a seat next to Brynne, trying to warm himself in the feeble light.

"What has you so worried?" Ainsley asked. "We finally reached Spectralia, you should be happy that you're almost safe."

"I don't know, I… Something doesn't feel right. Everything has gone wrong over the past two months, why would our fortunes change now?"

"Maybe you’re so used to things going wrong that it has started to feel wrong when things go right. Just because a few things have gone poorly for us, doesn't mean that it will stay that way forever."

"Maybe." Was Brynne's only reply as the conversation lapsed into silence. She couldn't help but think back toward everything that had happened to them.

Eloria was where it had all begun, with the terrifying being that had nearly exterminated the entire expedition. Even after two months, her mind was still trying to come to grips with all the impossible things that had happened that night.

First there had been the feeling of apathy that had stunned everyone in the room. Then, there was the sword that had simply disappeared at the armor's whim. Finally, there was the wall that had appeared to prevent their retreat.

All three were impossibilities. Those events had run through Brynne's head over and over again. The terror of those moments was burned into her mind, and it would not leave her. Everything about it had been wrong.

Eloria had been just the first of many hardships. After they had left the forgotten city, they hadn't seen the armored monster again, but that didn’t mean their suffering was over. The night that they reached Kakren, the nearest city to The Wall, Larik had disappeared taking with him Brynne's pack with all of her money, and the soul-stones that they had collected in Eloria. He took a horse from the inn's stables and was gone.

After questioning the Kakren city watch, Brynne had learned from some city guards that Larik had left Kakren through the Eastern gate heading back toward The Wall and the kingdom of Shael. Although it was possible that Larik was heading back to The Wall, Brynne thought it was unlikely. Eloria was a death-trap, and the shaper had been seen leaving with plenty of supplies. Enough for the three-month journey to Selenya, the capital of Shael.

Brynne had wanted to chase after him, but she eventually listened to counsel from Terk and Ainsley. They were not trackers, and they had no way of knowing where Larik had really gone. He could have left through the east gate to trick them into thinking he was going east, all the while intending to turn back and head west.

They couldn't hire a tracker because almost all of their money had been in the pack Larik had stolen. Terk and Ainsley both had a decent stack of coins, but it would be needed to buy supplies if they wanted to return to Spectralia.

That meant the only thing they would bring back to her family was failure. Complete and utter failure. Regardless, it was still her duty as a daughter of the Deserrow family to report on her mission, and so they decided to return to Spectralia.

Little did they know that their suffering had only begun. Before they could leave Kakren they were attacked by a group of thugs and only barely managed to escape. They were followed all the way to the next town where the entirety of its criminal underworld was out to get them. It soon became apparent that someone had put a large sum of money on their heads.

Their only guess was that Larik had indeed turned back west instead of east, and he had used some of the money from the soul stones to take out a bounty on them for whatever reason. From that time on, every single city they arrived in had people trying desperately to kill them. They were forced to camp off the road, completely exhausted and with precious little food. Their pace slowed to a crawl, and it took an extra month of travel to arrive at Spectralia, pursued nearly the entire way by thugs and ruffians. They had only recently started to risk building fires like the one that lay before them.

Twice Brynne had tried writing to her family, but she never received a response. She had a feeling that the people who were chasing them were somehow checking the mail for anything she sent. Everything they tried to do to get out of their desperate situation seemed to end in failure.

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Eventually, they managed to escape the groups of people chasing after them only to have a run-in with some kind of dark beast. All of them had nearly died before they had finished the thing off.

After all of that they had finally arrived outside the walls of Spectralia. The only problem was that they needed to find a way into the place without the criminal elements learning about their arrival. That was something they hadn’t managed since they had departed from Kakren, which left Brynne and Ainsley waiting outside the city while Terk met with a group of smugglers.

Brynne brought herself out of the past and looked at Ainsley. The soldier had shaved his prized mustache to disguise himself, his hair was disheveled, and there were large bags under his eyes. The past two months had been hard on them all. None of it compared to what had happened in Eloria though. And once again she had brought herself back to those brief, terrible moments when her entire world had changed.

Part of her desperately wanted answers. That treacherous part of her wanted to know what had happened and who had killed nearly every single person who had entered the Lost City. That part of her knew the way she could find those answers, but it was hidden far beneath the greater portion that simply wanted to go back to living the life she had before entering The Wall.

The fire was starting to burn down once again, so Brynne stood up and added a few more sticks to the hungry flames before sitting down once again.

“What are you going to do once you reach your family?” Asked Ainsley suddenly, his eyes still on the fire, reflecting its flickering light.

“I don’t know,” Brynne said, “I never really lived up to my father’s expectations, and I’m not certain I’ll even have a place in house Deserrow after what happened. I’ll try to find work as a scribe for a local magistrate and just try to forget all about Eloria.

“Would you take it back?”

“What?”

“Would you take back all of these experiences and return to the person you were before Eloria?”

“Of course. Why would I want to live with these memories? Why would I want to wake up every night with nightmares? I would do anything to stop what happened to us in Eloria.”

“Look forward to the day when you can say that you can live with your experiences, and not just live with them, but be grateful for them as well.” Ainsley said, “That’s when you will be able to move on with your life. You won’t be truly happy until then.”

Brynne let out a snort. I’ve heard some strange things from both Terk and Ainsley before, but this has to be the most ridiculous. How could she ever be happy that so many people had died?

Ainsley took his eyes off the fire and focused on her.

“You’ll see what I mean, eventually.” He said, the weight of his words hinting that he spoke from experience.

She didn’t have anything to say to that, and the conversation lapsed into silence once again.

Brynne didn’t know how much time passed before the faint sound of approaching footsteps could be heard. Ainsley’s hand went to his sword’s hilt, and he left to see who the footsteps belonged to.

A minute later he walked back into camp with the familiar figure of Terk walking beside him.

“Will they do it?” Brynne asked anxiously.

“Yeah,” Terk said with a smile. “It took a lot of convincing though, I had to offer them most of what we have left.”

Brynne sighed at the expense. It wouldn’t matter. Once she reached her family she would be protected, at least until they threw her out because of her failures. Even then they would see her off with some gold in her pockets.

“Come on,” Terk said, “They’re waiting for us outside the walls.”

It didn’t take long to break up their camp and be on their way. They all donned cloaks with hoods to obscure their features. Just as Ainsley had sacrificed his mustache, Brynne had cut her hair short. Her blond hair stood out too much, and while the Deserrow house was not the only family with blond hair, it wouldn’t do to have rumors of a woman with her features sneaking into the city.

Nervous excitement rose in Brynne’s chest. Even though she had said something didn’t feel right to Ainsley, she had hope that the ordeal would finally be over.

Their path brought them to two rough-looking men still standing quite a distance from the walls. They gave curious glances at the hooded party, but didn’t ask any questions. That kind of behavior could get you killed quickly in their business. One of the men moved off into the darkness without a word leaving Brynne, Terk, and Ainsley with the second man. After about five minutes of tense silence the man with them must have received some kind of sign from his companion because he held a finger to his lips in the universal sign of ‘be quiet’ before he gestured for them to follow.

Their guide set a quick pace to an open grate where the other man was waiting. The first man entered a small tunnel on his hands and knees, and it was obvious that they would need to follow. Ainsley followed the man quickly. Terk nodded at her to follow Ainsley, and so with some trepidation, she entered the tunnel. While the idea of crawling through a small enclosed space wasn’t very appealing, it was a small price to pay to enter the city without drawing any attention. Honestly, this would be the least of the indignities she had faced over the past two months.

Brynne soon realized that she was very wrong. Crawling through the tight confines in the dark tunnel brought her back to that terrible day. At first, she tried to ignore it, but as the tunnel stretched longer, she couldn’t hold the feeling back. Her breaths started to come faster and her arms began to shake as she moved through the tunnel, reliving the same horror she had felt in the Elorian basement where they had been attacked.

She remembered one soldier after another falling to the armored figure. She remembered the blood staining the gray stones that made up the floor. Most of all Brynne remembered the stone wall appearing to prevent their escape. It was irrational, she knew it was irrational, but her mind kept on calling up images of a wall appearing in front of her to trap her in the dark with a monster. Brynne’s breaths were starting to come faster and faster. The tunnel seemed to narrow even further. Brynne didn’t realize she had stopped moving until she heard a whisper from behind

“Hey, are you alright?”

Terk must have noticed her distress because although he had used only a whisper she could hear concern in his voice.

“I’ll manage.” Brynne said as she started to crawl forward once again in the tunnel that seemed to stretch on forever.

It wasn’t easy, and she couldn’t stop herself from shaking, but eventually the tunnel started to lighten, and she heard the sound of metal on stone ahead, and finally, blessedly she came out of the tunnel.

Brynne took a deep shuddering breath after she stood up. Ainsley looked at her, but she couldn’t see his face because of the hood that cloaked him in shadow.

Brynne turned away from him and inspected their surroundings. Surprisingly enough they had come up inside a building, however the bricks of the building looked a lot newer than the stone that surrounded the grate covered tunnel that must originally been a drain before it had been converted into a smugglers tunnel.

Ah, Brynne realized, They must have built this building around the drain to hide the fact that they were using it as a way to smuggle goods in and out of the city.

The clinking of coins announced that their payment was made, and it was time to leave. Brynne stepped out into the streets of Spectralia, noting the trash and the grime all around them, and despite it all, Brynne found a smile on her face.

She was home.