Memories of a stranger
23
JUN/20
He looked down with contempt at the two bodies lying twisted and contorted on the ground beneath him – thin wisps of smoke wafting lazily out of their burned out eyes – and he spat derisively upon the corpse of the man who had stabbed him. He grimaced in pain as he pulled the bone dagger out of his side. The top three inches of the blade were coated in scarlet blood, the wound was deep. ‘That was really sloppy, I shouldn’t have allowed them to close in on me like that,’ he muttered under his breath. He pressed his hand over the wound and looked around…where had she gone off to? She hadn’t been that far ahead of him when these two had jumped out at him, had she? The sound of a slamming door up ahead down the left hall provided him with his answer, and he turned and sprinted towards the noise.
He burst through the door and out into the bright sunlit market. Only pure strength of will stopped him from shading his eyes from the tenacious amber sun that bore down relentlessly directly overhead. He could not allow himself to look harried or troubled – image was everything, and the crowd had stopped to stare at him with a mixture of fear and awe. The square was predominantly packed with filthy elves, busily hawking their wares or looking for easy marks; and when they realized who – and what – he was, they stopped their staring and scattered like karakroaches exposed to light. ‘I will never tire of that,’ he mused to himself. He grinned at the thought and stepped dramatically out into the market square.
He focused for a moment, forcing his mind to slow and his senses to hone and sharpen, and spotted her flowing purple cloak almost immediately, flitting down the street nearly three blocks away. He could just make out their quarry as well, darting through the crowds a couple hundred yards ahead of her – his giant steel sword was a dead giveaway. He reached into his mental reserves and drew power into aching muscles, charging them with crackling energy. He exulted in his newfound power and took chase after them, running with unnatural speed, his crimson robes fluttering behind him.
She must have felt him coming, because she slowed to a walk and allowed him to catch up. This is important. Look at her face. Try as he might though, her features blurred and faded in his mind as he tried to take her in. Curly red hair; luminous silver eyes; a constellation of freckles dotting her cheeks; the slight point to her ears; her thin, mischievous smile. Each individual facet of her being was stark and apparent, but when he tried to piece her all together into one cohesive form, she blurred and twisted and drifted away. Her name…Kel…Kir…or did it start with Zel? He could almost see it spelled out in front of him; but the closer he got to it, the further it moved away, before finally dissolving completely, like a desert mirage. The desert…how are Agis and Paulu going to handle it when we have to leave them? I feel like I….Wait…this memory feels wrong. It doesn’t belong here…
She looked down at the wound on his side, her silver eyes flashed with concern and then flipped back to mischief. ‘You’re getting slow old man,’ her voice playing in his head. He tried to fixate upon her accent and tone – lilting and soft. He needed to remember! This was important. Her name, did it start with Sal…? Lir..? She reached out her hand and touched the dark, wet spot that stained his cloak, pressing further, until her fingers found the wound on his side. He grimaced at the touch, but relaxed as he felt warm, soothing energy flow from her hand into him; sighing in relief as the wound knitted closed and the throbbing pain subsided to a dull ache. He looked down at her blood stained hand as she pulled it back: long delicate fingers; manicured nails; numerous small scars dotting her hand and forearm; red metal ring adorning the fourth finger. That ring… He looked down at his own hand and saw a matching band on his own left ring finger. This is important. Try to remember…Why does that finger look out of place there?
He shook these nagging thoughts from his head and turned to scan for their target, and did not see him. ‘He is getting away,’ he chided her; his lips did not move as he spoke directly into her mind. ‘But thank you for the healing.’ He smiled gratefully, before turning back towards the direction their quarry had disappeared.
‘Not to worry, I marked him back in the Agora,’ she responded silently, the mental words still somehow dripping with self-satisfaction. ‘I only took chase to give him the illusion of the possibility of escape.’ She smiled confidently and pulled a small crystal out from a pouch around her neck and held it up to her lips and whispered softly into it. The crystal began to glow with a faint blue light, pulsating a handful of times, as if in acknowledgment of her commands, before rising up in the air and darting off down the road after their prey. ‘Third floor, tall building at the end of the block,’ she informed him, triumphantly.
Ever the clever one, she was. I need to remember her! Vibrant red feathered wings sprouted from her back; he matched hers by manifesting large black wings of his own. ‘We are going for the dramatic then, I take it?’ he teased. She responded with a knowing smile, before flapping her wings and stepping into the air. Remember her smile, at least. Please… He followed her up into the sky.
Before they reached the window on the third floor, she instructed her floating crystal to press itself up against the sealed shutters that barred the window. Once it made contact, the small stone exploded dramatically, dissembling into thousands of razor sharp shards. The blast tore the shutters to flinders and perforated an unfortunate man who happened to be standing directly opposite the window inside the room. This man cried out briefly and dropped to the floor, lifeblood leaking from hundreds of tiny wounds made where the crystalline flechettes had torn into him. The razor-sharp shards then pulled themselves free from his body and the building walls, reformed back into the floating crystal and sped back into her outstretched hand.
He was inside first, unleashing a powerful blast of mental energy into the room as soon as he burst through the blown out window frame, folding his black wings around himself protectively. The two skeletal creatures turned and charged at him, but the red dragonborn warrior intercepted their charge; but she was knocked backward under the sheer force of the attack. The blue-eyed savage stepped up to take her place, holding the attention of the unnatural beasts as they readied another attack. Selise slunk back to a safe distance, but assaulted the beasts with powerful attacks laced with psionic energy. She has awakened her mind! Perhaps she can be taught to harness her power. Joe and Rain seem to have some sort of aptitude as well, but theirs stems from a….wait! This memory was wrong, too. That was not how this fight went at all…
He looked around at the carnage in the room in the aftermath of the fight; nearly a dozen bodies lay scattered throughout the wreckage, and every surface of the room was covered in viscera and blood. She was standing over their target, a blade of pure, crackling blue energy winked out of existence in her hand. Her purple robe was wet with blood – a mixture of hers and theirs -and she was breathing heavily. He was spent, both physically and mentally, but she had borne the brunt of the combat – she did like to get up close and personal with that mindlblade of hers. She closed her eyes and began to glow with a soft golden light, and the wounds on her body began to knit themselves closed.
As she healed, he went over to the dead man laying at her feet and began rifling through his body, looking for evidence and treasure. That steel sword was worth more than some established families had to their name – it alone could purchase acres of land in the verdant olive orchards – and its presence on the man indicated that he was almost certainly a Patrician of a powerful noble house. Wazir, maybe? He rummaged through the man’s purse and pouches: coins, a few precious stones; flecks of obsidian and ceramic. No clues there. Then his eyes settled on man’s belt buckle, striated red metal with an all too familiar insignia stamped on it. His blood grew cold, and he looked up at her with panic; when she saw what he was looking at, all color drained from her face as well…
Mar’iya awoke slowly, shaking an unnatural chill from his stirring body as he tried to free himself from grasping shadows of fear and dread that still clung to his waking brain. He rested his head back on the hard rock that served as his pillow, and looked up at the brilliant constellation of stars in the night sky. Rumor held that the stars used to spell out a history of a wide array of ancient gods and heroes back in the time before Her ascension. Now it was only the Constellation of the Dragon Queen – terrifying and majestic – that took up the entirety of the night sky; the ten brightest stars, representing the eyes of each of Her five heads, sprawled out in an almost perfect arc that stretched across the heavens, piercing the veil of darkness with an aura of flickering, watchful primacy. In this moment, each of the twinkling eyes seemed to be looking at him personally, and the sensation disturbed him to his core. He used to take solace in Her presence above…somehow he knew that, despite the gaping holes in his memory. But now…now, he was not so certain. The voices they had heard in their heads had seemed to indicate the presence of Others out there, trying to make Their way back into this world; and those Others had seemed to have chosen this group as their gatekeepers, as the ones who held the key to Their return.
It was all too much to ponder – he still didn’t know enough about his own story, and it was hard to contemplate that some sort of divine providence had connected him with these savage outlanders. The younglings of the tribe, and the dragonborn that had happened upon them in the desert, were growing more powerful with each passing day, and it was clear that they were not typical in that regard. As their power grew, they would certainly garner unwanted attention. And, if they grew too famous, She would certainly send hunters after them. Hunters! The dream! He had nearly forgotten it; it had almost slipped from his mind completely upon awakening. He frantically struggled to hold on to the fragile strands of memory that remained, but they ripped and tore and dissolved into nothingness under his desperate, grasping efforts, leaving only the faint recollection of luminous silver eyes and a constellation of freckles. And then that too, was gone.
GM + arcanjl + Schroedergs
I do not have any plan for who the red haired woman is to Vashir, or what their mission was in pursuing the man with the steel blade.
The belt buckle that Selise found on Vash could have been his own buckle, matching the one that this person had on him, or Vash could have taken it off of this person.
Or, this could all just be fiction and none of it really happened at all…it is just a mixture of lost memories and the perceived reality of dreams ;)