Sanctuary 4 : Restoration

[Sandermann]

Tel stood atop the low cliff eroded in clay by the river before her while it was in flood...which was it, The Delimbyr? Dessarin? Did it even have a name she would know...it seemed so long ago that she had been able to name surface places on maps, since she could find her way with ease from one city to another without asking passers by. How many hours had she spent with Lord Hykros...with Mhair, with Lady Gentilara, learning the surface. So different to...so...flat. There was no above and below here..only north, south, east and west. All lost in a single daggers blow.

She closed her eyes and drew a deep breath, scenting the air. The trees, the grass....the tainted mud of the floodplain below. The soft, chill wind from the north east stirred her cloak and golden hair. She knew it was fancy, imagination, but she smelled death, ice, fear, pain, blood on that wind.

The breeze carried to her the sounds of the men below...soldiers from a dozen different camps. Nervous laughs, bored taunts. An elf berated a dwarf for his drunkeness and the dwarf retored in coarse insults, both spoke in the common tongue but both so...different. An exchange she must have heard a hundred times in a hundred different places as far removed as Icewind dale and Baldurs gate. But this time it carried a poingancy...this was a frontier...beyond this motely collection of warriors lay the unknown, lay war.

********

A cold wind blew from no where.

Tel sat curled in a foetal position on the featureless...grey..cold plain. Around her the ghosts flowed, keening their despair, gnawing at her heart with their plees for release, for something, anything to end this nothingness. She flinched as the sky tore, a chariot, drawn by horses of fire, swept into the anonymous host, sweeping a half dozen with it, as it sped away into the sky once more and the firey rift snaped shut behind it. The host wept bitter tears of envy for those who were going somewhere else.

With effort she composed her self...this then , was the grey paths.

She laughed bitterly. Gagging on the sound she felt bile rise from her stomach. Why was she here...had she not served her goddess to the best she could. She looked in contempt at the host...is this what was to become of her? A formless..nothing. Cold, swallowed in self pity and bitterness.

Nau.

She looked down at herself...and...blinked. Her skin black as night, her scar gone. Whole.

A slow smile crept across her face I am whole...here...here I am Ilythir

She took a praticed, graceful step. Heedless of the spirits about her she took another, and laughed in joy, the sound had all mirth stolen from it by the nothing around her, but it did not matter....had this place ever heard a laugh without madness and despair?

One step became two, two three, and she danced. She danced and laughed for she was dead but she was whole.

I AM Arzit'el Varillo...I AM T'rissae d'Eilistraee..I AM drow

********

The host parted, a crack, a flash of darkness and despair in the throng of the lost.

Tel spun towards it, and laughed...no madness, joy, joy here? maybe she was mad.

She spun about the form as it coalesced before her, a demon. In the form of a drider. She laughed.

The words came with hatred, with a malice unimaginable to a mortal mind, they dripped poison and glowed with sinister, violent evil.
You are Selvetarms. This is the last time you will have the offer. Come with me and this can end

meet rudeness with kindness, meet violence with swift violence She danced on. This abomination would take her.

You can not resist heretic mortal
No threat..a simple, cold statement of fact. Tel screamed, her mind rent apart. The demon towered above her satisfied..reaching for her, she screamed.

It faltered. paused unsure. then blurred and went. The cold returned.

********

The evil wind stirred in an eddy round her. Her eyes flickered open and looked up to the sky above. Thick cloud hid the sun, was it heavier in the far east, or was that imagination again?.

She took a deep breath, held it and savoured the sensation of the cold air in her lungs.

********

Light. It shone through her eyelids. She shied from it, rolled. Images. Sheyreza, Inthara, Qilue, Gryndal..Ilyana?...most of all, Aszune. Fire...pain...death. Whole hosts of faceless, nameless, anonymous people...elves, dwarves, men...they screamed, they ran, they hid..some even tried to fight...but still they died, to what she could not tell...but they would die, that she knew.

NAU!

shh...Arzit'el..the voice soft, full of compasion, of shared pain.
open your eyes

she did so. A figure above her curled form held a hand to her.
There is strife in the realms, sister. Come, there is one who wishes to see you

Tel took the celestials hand numbly...what could she do.

********

Her eyes snapped open. Crows circled to the east, across the river. Her ears faintly picked the sound of fighting from the wind..steel on steel...a scream.

Across that river, what ever its name may be, beings bled and died. They rent each other with cold, sharp metal. The smashed each other with axes. Who lived, who died? Who were they...here there was violence being done against good people, and here she could earn in the hearts of even just a few, a place for her people, for those who had turned to the light.

She turned and paced lightly down the reverse of the shallow cliff and took the road that led towards the bridge and to the distant sounds of death.

[Zakharra]

Very good Sandermann.

[PensivesWetness]

ok... i'm baffled but, considering the depth of crap Tel's been in that Millia has not level of clue....

it was nice, love. More please, with lemon.

[sabercraig]

Nice Writing Sand.

Its not often i actually manage to read something in the library, but this grabed my attention.

Hope there is more soon