The Memories of Steelhill

Arrora – Half-Elven Woman

21st of Trilqilst, 4986 A.E.

I sucked in air like a gasping fish. My mouth gaping, my lungs heaving, my eyes closed as tightly shut as I could. Feeling the cold rush of air fill my chest with the hope of freedom. Breath no longer tainted with sapping magic. Life no longer plagued by a hell made of ten bars by ten bars. No longer scented of iron and fear.

Freedom.

My eyes opened then. As the first desperate breath snaked from my lips in a billowing exhale. The soft, dark eyes of my savior meeting mine for just a moment before hardening in preparation and looking away. His neck, thick and ridged, twisting his vision away from my own. Peering with squinting eyes into the darkness. Listening for guards to come running.

There was more work to be done. This mountainous man had freed the two of us already, but we were far from escape. And I was little more than dead weight. But the adrenaline of hope still coursed through my veins. I couldn’t fight as I was now. I couldn’t even stand on my own. But I had spent my time here listening. Learning. Remembering. I could help. I tried to speak again.

“celma -,” I spat out. The word hot in my mouth. Weighing down my tongue with an unimaginable heaviness. “mage.” I barely continued. I was going to make myself useful. Ingratiate myself to this behemoth and earn my freedom. “arjen – shield.” I could only hope my message would be both heard and then understood. “on patrol.” My sentence - hardly coherent – delivered. I could now only stare at the side of my rescuers head. Praying he knew what I meant to convey.

His body shifted forward for but a moment, his eyes glancing to me. Before, as gently as he could, he picked my body off of the ground. With no strength to protest against him, he maneuvered me to the back of my iron cage. My back resting against my once-prison as he turned to me and nodded. His voice weeping from his throat, dark and slow, “Understood.”

A single word. A single word of understanding and I felt the weakness of relief sweep through me. Turning limbs to mush for but a moment.

The heavily muscled figure slunk itself to the ground before moving forward on four limbs. Panther-like in posture. Almost silent in this den of chains. Moving into the darkness, out of my sight. With naught but the whispering chill of an autumn night, there was nothing I could do but await his return. Wait and do what I’ve done for the last month. Listen and think.

It had been too much time since I last been outside that cage. But I could already feel power returning to my limbs and my soul. Strength flowing to muscle and the Eternal tugging at my mind. It felt wonderful. But it would be at least an hour before I could even think about casting a spell. At least anything powerful. I raised my hand, willing sparks to dance between the fingertips. A simple parlor trick I had done more times than I can count.

I watch as red light spits from my hand. Cold and dim, they’re sparks in only the loosest sense of the word. But the Eternal flows through me once again. My magic works. Good. My experiment accomplished; I turn my attention to the sounds filtering through my ears.

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The soft coo of an owl. The whispering wind of the plains. And, there, approaching softly, a conversation. I can’t make out the words, just the tones. One male and one female. I was right. Celma and Arjen were on patrol. My breath hitched in my throat involuntarily. I had seen them almost every day, but not since I was first imprisoned had I done so outside the confines of my cage. The short-haired woman looking at me like I was a child as I threw myself at the walls of my prison. Trying desperately, fruitlessly, to escape.

What would she do if she found me? I was too weak to fight back. My rescuer had slunk away. I could do nothing. Nothing. My eyes rolling in a soft panic, I spread my arms. Like a bird about to take flight. Looking, feeling, for anything. Something to hold. To grip and anchor myself.

My fumbling digits closed tightly around a haft of cold, bent metal. One of the iron rods that had kept me imprisoned for so long ripped from their socket. Thrown to the ground as I was pulled from my cage by the leifr.

Yanking the two-foot-long metal pipe into my lap, I gripped it tightly with both hands. Trying, and failing, to filter my breath through my nose in an easy flow. My chest felt like it was collapsing. So close to true freedom, and yet so far. There was nothing I could do. I was too weak. Alone. My wardens stalking their way toward me. Had they found me already? They didn’t care. They already knew and they didn’t care. Like walking through a field of flowers. I was a child. A distraction. They knew where I was. I was going back in the cage.

My breath hitched again as I closed my eyes as tightly as I could. The ringing in my ears deafening, as if ignorance to the situation would afford me an escape.

I almost didn’t hear it. The sound of a sucking thud. Like throwing something large and flat into a pit of mud. Wet and heavy. Followed almost immediately by what sounded like metal collapsing in on itself. The clear sound of struck iron ringing for but a moment before a smothering weight lulled it to silence.

I heard her voice, then. A soft gasp of surprise. Like Celma had dropped something. Or seen someone. Before it picked up in speed and volume. Chanting words of power flowing from her mouth with practiced speed. I knew it. I knew it. She had seen me. Arjen was playing defense while she was going to bombard me with spells from afar. I tucked my head down between my legs and as far behind my torso as I could manage. As if that would hide me. Let alone protect me.

Had I paid attention beyond my own shivering fear, I might have heard the waver in her voice. A shaking of panic and loss. Perhaps I may have also heard the second sucking thud and sound of collapsing fabric. Though all of that had faded to little more than a buzz in the back of my brain. The ghostly sound of echoing footsteps and cruel laughter marching toward me. They had found me. They saw me. I was going back in the cage. They saw me. I was going back in the cage. They saw m-

I gasped in abject terror at the warm hand landing on my shoulder. My eyes stretched wide, rolling in fear. My weakened arms barely able to swing the metal pole I held in my lap. The act more akin to a lazy wave than a physical attack. My ineffectual defense landing softly against the torso of a much larger man.

His baby-blue skin marred with splashes of deep red, almost black in the darkness of this den of chains. A swath of burnt flesh ran up his right collarbone, angry and large. The muscle beneath charred and blacked with arcane fire. Smoking softly with the acidic smell of burnt skin. His eyes focused with intensity softened at my pitiful display. His torso leaning towards me, a soft silencing “shhh,” leaking from his lips. Attempting to quiet my already silent scream.

“It’s okay.” His voice like sugar for how sweet it felt to my ears. “What next?”

The question hit me like a splash of cold water. The terror of discovery abating at the much greater fear of being left behind. I had a menagerie of jewels I yearned to display. Hard-won gems I forged with my mind over this month of torture.

I was going to prove myself.