Upon a Star: Karyana's Journey: Chapter 20

A Chapter by Sebastien B.

Sayeth's past begins to unravel itself, as the comrades meet a strange young man on the road.

Chapter 20

Leading Karyana out of the gaping hole that was appropriately-named the Blasted Mountains was one thing, but Sayeth had another problem: the only town in the vicinity was Magrock, and it was far from the most welcoming place for strangers. Let alone Dun-elves like herself.

As if she didn't have enough trouble with her 'lackey'. When she wasn't talking to herself, switching tones and personalities as if there were three minds inside one body, she was tempting her in opposite ways; part of her wanted to just kill her and get it over with, but another part was more intrigued about what the black-haired young woman really was. Using a teleportation spell sounded like a possible reason why the odd girl had appeared there, but even so, the question was why.

Even as the faint embers of the fire died down, the night sky was still hanging overhead. Sayeth looked back at the sleeping girl with some tell-tale signs of jealousy. It wasn't that she wanted to sleep �" in fact, she did, but needed to keep watch, as her senses were sharper at night -, but she was jealous at how blessed the girl seemed to be. She looked… well… she was quite a sight when she was awake, but now that she was asleep...

For the she-elf, men were only good for two things: war or as beasts of burden. Nothing more than stinking, brutish, daft animals. If it wasn't for them being part of the natural cycle of birth, she would have given up on men after the first one who tried to play 'nice' with her. In fact, she gave up after the third.

The first ended up being too keen on drinking and ended up drinking something he shouldn't have: a well-disguised vial of boa venom, laced with just enough mead to make it look like any old flask of alcohol. The second one didn't fair any better, as the horse trainer was less interested in her than in the mare she travelled with. In the end, the ungrateful sap left with her horse, with him hanging from a rope that had been tightly wrapped from his sleeping neck onto her ride's saddle. The third man was an arbiter, a holy man who acted as judge in civic courts, and who had bribed her into marrying him so she could avoid burning at the pyre. In the end, the bribes and threats didn't hold, and the judge was sentenced to his own pyre, courtesy of Sayeth herself.

It was actually around that time that she returned to her tribe's cave, only to see her kin's ranks thinned by mutual hatred and used as simple grunts and mercenaries by the demon-faced 'client' she turned her back on. Even around that time, her taste for men pretty much withered to oblivion, as something else hatched in her mind: maybe the fairer of the two genders would be more to her taste…

"Hmmm… work first, then pleasure." the dark-skinned elf noted as she got up. "Either I find something to eat, or we'll both starve…"

Removing the drapes that kept her warm from the mild yet chilly winds, Sayeth placed them on Karyana's sleeping form. "Hope you sleep well, 'cause when morning comes, you're going to be helping me out."

-----

Karyana's dreamscape looked almost barren. What used to be a field of high grass, with a lone apple tree resting on top of a small cliff was now a desert, trapped somewhere between night and day, with barely any wind or life around.

"Wh-what? Where am I?" she shouted, with only the echo replying.

Looking at the horizon, all she could see was a broken mountain range, the sun and moon resting, both seemingly setting �" or was it rising?

As she looked about, taking hesitant steps towards the setting spheres, her heart felt heavy. "Where is everyone? Mommy! Daddy!" she shouted again, the echo still reverberating everywhere and nowhere at once.

"Stop shouting." came a familiar voice. "There's no one here except us."

Turning around, Karyana noticed Laurinya and Kaina's forms appearing, as if made of sand. "Wh-what… who are you?" she asked the two, even as the sand fell of their bodies, revealing their flesh and blood forms �" or at least, what could be accounted as such in this desolate dream �" to the startled young woman.

Laurinya folded her arms around her chest, her torn robes flowing in a mild breeze that picked up sand. "What? What this place is, it's pretty simple: thanks to us, you were able to survive being ripped apart, but your mind wasn't so lucky."

Kaina took a step towards Karyana, who took a step back. "It's okay. Don't worry.", the ranger said. "I won't hurt you."

"What makes you think I can trust you?" the black-haired girl asked. "Maybe I'm just-"

"Crazy?" Laurinya retorted sharply. "I'd say you're pretty close to it, but then again, we're all just different sides of your personality, aren't we?"

The brown-haired young woman placed a hand on Karyana's shoulder. "It's true. When you vanished, we were born. I'm Kaina, and she's Laurinya-"

The golden-haired sorceress rolled her eyes. "To call a mule by its name, I ended up getting the lion's share of your body and knowledge, while she got your heart and most of your personality." she added flatly. "After that accident, we both ended up away from one another �" not by choice, mind you! �" and raised differently."

Karyana looked at the emerald-eyed young woman and noticed a four-point, star-shaped scar on her forehead. "What… what happened to you?" she asked, making Laurinya's expression grow tense with anger.

"The blasted Planars, that's what happened!" she shouted, her words echoing about, making the winds pick up even more. "I was sick and tired of being pushed around, told what to do and forced to do it without being able to even say 'yes' or 'no'! All I wanted was to be free! To be able to make my own choices!"

Kaina wrapped the black-haired girl in her arms to shield her from the blowing sands. In the meek ranger's arms, she felt… small. "Laurinya, please stop! You're only hurting her!"

"Hurting her?" the young sorceress replied furiously, causing the winds to blow in gale force around her. "Hurting her! No one helped me when I was hurting! No one saw that I was suffering, and everyone just used me like a blasted puppet!"

Karyana looked up to meet the ranger's brown eyes. "What is she doing?" she asked worriedly.

Kaina shook her head, looking even more worried than the young girl, who was a young woman moments ago, was at the display of fury. "It's all her pent-up anger. If she doesn't stop, you might not even wake up!"

"Kaina… let go of me." she replied, her tone showing concern �" not for herself, but for Laurinya, who was now surrounded by a column of spinning sands, as if she was trapped in the eye of a hurricane.

"But, if I do, you'll only get hurt!" the ranger retorted, trying to keep her grip on the girl.

"I'll be alright. I have to do this…" she replied before wiggling out of the young fighter's grip.

Kaina watched with palpable worry as Karyana turned away from her, walking forwards towards the wall of spiraling sands and blowing winds, even as the dress she wore �" a duplicate of the one she was now wearing in reality, but now fitting her child form �" was being bombarded by sand.

"Lauri… let me in, okay? I just want to talk." the young girl replied.

"Stay away! If no one wants to help me, then I don't deserve to be helped!" came the young sorceress' reply, her voice filled with deep-seated anger, but also with sorrow.

"It's alright. I'm-" Karyana tried to say, before noticing a fourth form appear from the sands. The winds quickly blew the debris off the form, revealing the form of a young man, dressed in pageboy clothes, a tauk around his neck.

"We're all here to help." he added, wiping what sand remained on his sleeves.

"Who… who're you?" Karyana wondered curiously, which seemed to surprise the young man.

----

Pison could smell it. The stench of musty leather, drenched in a layer of sweat. The blood of a slaughtered beast… and the reek of darkness. He didn't expect his quarry to reappear, but there it was, and there he was going.

As his demonic instincts sharpened his own trained skills as a scout and hunter, the mercenary could track prey through myriads of different ways: through the smell of the bounty, the thorough examination of terrain and even, thanks to the dark gift Xelnos had blessed him with, he could track a person by their fear.

Normally, a Dun-elf would be too proud to show fear, but the stench of it was enough to track a target even if it was an hour's walk away. And he smelled it.

Pison gripped the hilt of his scimitar and unsheathed the blood-stained weapon. Killing used to be for survival; now, it was for the thrill of it. Seeing victims of all races and ages beg for their lives before he cut them down brought relish to his damned soul. Xelnos could keep the souls, as he didn't care; nothing but the death of the Aspect of Destruction itself would quench his desire for unholy vengeance.

Leaning down to examine a light footprint left in dry sand, he contemplated his quarry. "This print is too irregular to have been made by a sandal or a boot, and too light to have been made by greaves." he analyzed, looking in the direction the steps escaped to, then to another pair that started a few paces away. "And these… hmm… a dark she-elf's boot. It seems the renegade has a pet."

Raising himself from his knelt position to examine the sky, he scratched as his deformed chin. "By the dampness of the ground, and the fact that the deserter has a stowaway, I'm guessing she barely made it out of this… shrine to Xelnos' foolish ambitions."

Pison concentrated his strength into his distorted legs and lept as high as he could, landing a good thirty feet away. "Once I climb out of this pit, I'll take pleasure in skinning that rebellious wench, and make sure that whoever she has in tow doesn't have time to scream!" he said to himself, already relishing in the coming bloodshed.

----

"Lackey, wake up!" Sayeth said, about to kick dirt in the young woman's face.

Karyana's eyes slowly fluttered open. The first sight that greeted her was the vast, clear blue sky. The sun was shining harshly into her face. Raising her hand to shield herself from its glare, she slowly lifted herself up to a sitting position.

"What the hell's wrong with you?" Scythe snarled. "If you had taken any longer waking up, I would have caved in your skull myself."

Karyana stretched and yawned. "Mmm… morning already?" she lazily asked.

"It's been morning long enough for me to get tired of you talking in your sleep!" the dark elf answered. "Just what in the Scrier's were you blabbering about?"

The Scrier, as Sayeth yelled out at the black-haired young woman in reprimand, was Panyus' name in the dark elf mythos. The shadowy legends said that the first elves were all of the same purity and fairness, until some grew too confident and boastful. Though the Scrier had warned them time and again that such foolishness would lead to chaos, many simple became lost in their own glory and started hunting those they deemed too ugly to live. In a moment of spite, the Childlord, who had been warned by Panyus of the plight of those who hunted "the imperfect", cursed them to the same imperfection by staining their skin with ink and their head with snow, making them impure to the eyes of those who they used to hunt, thus becoming the hunted.

The young woman wiped her eyes. "I had a strange dream… there was this desert, and this man-"

"Oh good, bore me with the details, why don't you?" the elf said, tossing branches in the meager fire that was lit a few feet near them.

Karyana tried to offer Scythe a comforting smile. "Forget about it. Is breakfast ready?"

"Breakfast?" Sayeth looked as if she'd disembowel the dark-haired girl on the spot. "Breakfast! What am I, a cook? Here." the dark elf replied, taking a piece of bloody boar-flesh from the spit and tossing it, the uncooked venison landing beside her lackey. "Fresh bacon. Now, eat!"

Karyana winced at the smell of the dripping meat, shut her nostrils and breathed through her mouth while the dark-skinned she-elf ripped off a piece with her bare teeth like a hungry wolf. She chewed it for a moment before swallowing it whole.

"You won't last long on the road with your kind of appetite," Sayeth remarked. "Either you knuckle down and learn to eat meat raw, or you can stay behind and spare me the trouble of having to eat you too."

Karyana stared for a moment, looking mortified, before her eye color shifted to emerald, her expression showing disgust and anger. "You wouldn't dare."

"Of course I would," Scythe said between mouthfuls. "Trust me, when you're stranded in the middle of the Blasted Mountains with no food, you can get really desperate."

Laurinya's stomach was starting to heave at the sight and sound of the dark elf chewing down on the raw meat. She stood up and brushed the blades of grass from her robe before her eye color shifted again, this time to brown, as she looked away from the camp towards a small pond a good ten leagues away.

"I…I think I'll have a swim first," Kaina muttered. Before Sayeth could reply, the girl already started to run away from the campsite.

"Damn deadweight," Scythe sneered before spitting out a lump of boar flesh, which landed in the flames.

-----

Kaina didn't really mean to go swimming; in fact, all she wanted to do was get Karyana as far from that cannibalistic lunatic.

As she stared in the water, her reflection looked almost alien to her. "So, this is what I was meant to look like…" she said with some melancholy. "I wonder what would have happened if none of this ever took place."

The reflection in the water looked back with emerald eyes. "Use your head for a second! If she hadn't been brought back together, I would have gotten my freedom!" Laurinya spoke back.

The ranger's mind made her close her eyes for a moment. "No… you don't understand. If I had not saved you from Shardfall, you would have ceased to exist… and I as well." Kaina replied, before her eye color shifted to a crystalline blue.

"But if you hadn't appeared, neither of us would have been here, right?", Karyana replied, looking uneasy about the sudden realization. "If Master Rauz-"

The young woman's reflection split into two forms as the two 'past selves' appeared on the water's surface, like a prism dividing a mirror. "That was not Master Rauz!" Kaina replied, taking a defensive stance. "He wouldn't have… I saw him… he's a good man…"

Laurinya shifted her gaze from one to the other. "I don't have a clue what you two are mumbling about, but Rauz is definitely not the one who did this… he told me himself."

Both Karyana and Kaina looked shocked. "Y-you… you met him?" the black-haired girl replied.

"Met him? I saved his skin by freeing him from Wizardbane Prison and left him back at the Order." the golden-haired sorceress replied. "I also did a favor to those book-scribblers by getting rid of that old coot Vokram!"

"Y-you…" Karyana tried to say, the facts that the emerald-eyed aspect of herself spoke with pride making her tremble. "Y-you… killed him?"

"He tried to kill me!" Laurinya shouted. "I would've ended up some discarded puppet or a living weapon if he had his way!"

"You s-should…you should thank Demyan, then." Kaina replied with a mild stutter. "It was him that-"

"Wait. Demyan? He's alive?" Karyana commented, eyes wide with shock.

The ranger let out a sigh. "He was there… in our dream. B-but…"

Karyana didn't have to hear the rest of it. That young man was the young boy she met in her dreams, who played and was taught with her… and who she gave Chime to.

"Medy…" the black-haired girl whispered, blushing, even as the two Aspects vanished from the pond's surface.

----

"I'm telling you, your Highness! I have to go find her!" Demyan replied, looking at the Viceroy with a determined expression.

The old aristocrat wiped the weariness from his eyes. "Let me get this straight." he said before scratching his neck. "You want me to allow you to leave Citadel, in the middle of your studies, to find a girl you never met in real life?"

The young man clenched his fists. "I did meet her, I told you-"

Viceroy Hale let out a sigh. "Yes, yes, once upon a dream…" he replied in a weary tone. "If I remember correctly, you had your pageboy sent to me last night, while I was sleeping, only to repeat that same tirade. You should know by now that dreams do not always make sense, or come true."

Chime scratched behind his ear with his paw, just like a dog would, while Demyan unclenched his fists. "Sir, with all due respect, I've been locked in these walls for all my life! I need to see what the world outside is like!"

The Viceroy stifled a yawn, then thought of the options. 'He knows his place in the world, but if I allow him to leave and he dies, what then? What would happen to Citadel without its founder… or Medierth itself without magic? Maybe… yes, that could work.'

The nobleman rose from his throne and looked at the young man. "My boy, I may have the perfect solution for your… ambitions. Follow me; I have something important to show you."

----

Onyx hammered away at his travel-forge while Alban let Tarolon leave with the ox-pulled chariot. "It looks like this is as far as we can get." the ranger replied.

"I'm surprised we could even get here in the first place!" Onyx replied. "What with that half-wit mage returning to his Order, and that gruff war-priest intent on his pilgrimage from Shardfall to Planar-Gift…"

Alban let out a sigh. Planar-Gift was a small archipelago far to the east of the continent's shores, days of travel by sea through Weepfall. It was said that the name came from the pleas of all races for a shrine in which the Planars could be worshiped away from wars and destruction. In a sense, Planar-Gift became the gift of the Planars to the mortal races, as each of the small islands held a shrine befitting each Aspect of Medierth. Through time, many of the islands were swallowed by the sea, as the Planars that represented them faded into emptiness, the worship of some of them having ceased.

The road to Planar-Gift would normally take several months by foot, but Korgan had sent a carrier hawk to his clergy, telling them to continue with the creation of the shrine in Frostreach, and that he would return once his pilgrimage came to an end.

"Where do we go now?" the dwarf asked, still hammering on a weapon Alban didn't recognize. "It would be a shame to go back to Warmcreek after all this. Old man Sardonyx can still hold his own, but he will need a replacement sooner or later."

"Why not travel to the Motherforge?" the ranger asked as he grabbed a whetstone and started to sharpen the edges of his immense blade. "Maybe you could go there and learn about… What are you working on?"

Onyx pulled the weapon out of the fire. "Oh, this? Well… before that girl vanished, she did leave her sword behind, right?" he asked, though he already knew the answer. "Well, from what I could tell, that weapon was blunt, and grossly unbalanced. I don't know if it would be of any use to anyone in the state it was in, so I thought of reshaping, sharpening and balancing it. Maybe if we meet that lass, she'll actually have something to defend herself with…"

A set of crisp steps resonated in the area, which Alban quickly picked up. Bringing a hand to his blade, he turned around… only to notice a young man, a few years younger than he was, dressed as a page, except for a silver-grey mask that covered from just over his eyebrows to the tip of his nose, and a bronze tauk around his neck.

Alban slowly unsheathed his weapon. "What's a pageboy doing here?" he said, keeping his guard up.

Onyx turned his head to examine the newcomer. "I'm not sure he is a page, Alban." the dwarf replied, examining a small chest in the young man's hands. "Just by the look of that chest…"

The dwarven smithy put his hammer away and turned from the forge, leaving the blade to heat in the flames. "As I thought." he said, after a moment of closer examination. "Reinforced platinum hinges, scarlet oak cover… this young man must either be very rich, or work for someone who is."

The young man placed the chest at his feet, then gave a courteous bow. "Forgive my intrusion, master dwarf." he spoke. "I am Medy, servant of Citadel."

Alban looked at Onyx with a confused look. "Citadel? Have you heard of a place with such a name?"

Onyx simply shrugged. "If there is, I've never been there." he answered before turning back to the servant boy. "What's a servant doing here, hours of walk north of Myst?"

"My master, who wishes to remain anonymous, sent me to find you." Medy replied before opening the chest, revealing a large stash of silver and platinum coins, as well as a large gem, shaped almost like a dragon's eye, but almost the size of the dwarf's palm. "He has heard of you and your father's exploits in Warmcreek from… a friend of his court."

Onyx scratched his beard, frowning. "Keep talking." he said, trying to size the young man up.

"My master wishes to court a young woman he wishes to betroth, and has asked me to find the best smith I could to craft a circlet for her." the servant added. "Sadly, his bride-to-be suffered a great injury and does not remember him, therefore my master wishes to have the crafted item be enchanted with a certain manaweave."

Alban put his sword back in its scabbard and looked back at the boy. "Onyx is a smithy, not a wizard." he replied, keeping an eye on the page.

The dwarf examined the contents of the chest. "And this is the payment?" he wondered before biting on a coin to make sure it was not a counterfeit.

"These are the components. My master will send me back with the proper payment once the craft has been finished. He will personally enchant the circlet, so do not worry about the manaweave." Medy concluded.

Onyx examined the gem. It looked cut and polished to perfection, as if a master gem cutter �" probably a gnome by the simple details and etched runes on the surface -, had spent ten days making the stone, which seemed almost flawless for a ruby of that size.

Examining the rock made him smile, as inspiration blossomed in his mind. Sure, he was no elf when it came to elegant craft, but as a Rune-forger, he could still shape the manaweave of objects he worked on to please his clients. "Tell your master that he better have his payment soon. I'll make sure to work double-time on this, so I expect my payment by tomorrow." he said, grabbing the chest and unloading the coins into a bucket to melt them.

Medy looked shocked. "You… you would craft a courtship band in less than a day?", he hesitantly asked, losing his composure and role for a moment.

Onyx smiled. "If you wish to help, we could have it done before nightfall." The dwarf concluded before picking up his hammer. "You look like you don't have a lot of tales of bravery under your belt, so how about Alban and I tell you some of our own, while I finish this project I started."

----

Through Hanad's looking-glass, the Viceroy smiled. "My dear boy, I hope your time outside of these walls will be enlightening." he said before snapping his fingers, the hundred or more candles within the Hermit's study snuffing out in an instant.

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