The Coming Drought
12
AUG/20
Mar’iya’s eyes glowed with crackling energy as he burned his will deep into the brain of the white-robed priest. The bearded man cried out in pain and grabbed at the sides of his head as the psionic cacophony shredded his waking mind. After the assault, Mar’iya silently whispered into the dark recesses of the man’s soul, “There is no need for you all to die here; we do the bidding of Amun’Re. Now, let us pass!”
The bearded priest looked up with tears of agony streaming down his face, and he raised both of his hands up before him in defiance. The expression of agony he wore was quickly replaced by one of stoic resolution, “Give. Us. The. Waterbringer…” his resolute response echoing in Mar’iya’s skull. His order was accentuated by the creation of a slowly swirling galaxy of holy fire that opened up on the ceiling above Mar’iya and the others. Mar’iya felt the oxygen being sucked out of the room as the air rushed to feed the ravenous mass of flame. “Fuck!” Mar’iya cried, as he tried to dive for cover before he and the party were promptly bathed in a pillar of holy fire…
‘What in the name of the Five was happening here?’ Mar’iya thought in a panic, as he ducked around the corner, pursued by the stench of burning hair and skin. He patted out the glowing embers of flame that had stubbornly latched themselves onto the burning holes in his robes. Cries of pain from the hallway declared that the rest of the tribe had not fared much better than he had. He heard Joe cry out for Oni – a call that was not answered; the young monk must have dropped again. Oni had fallen several times during this fight, but each time he had steadfastly stood back up, a feat bolstered by Rain’s healing magic. Each time he wobbled back to his feet, the young monk had waded back into the fray to face off against the teeming mass of Temple Guards. His bravery – or was it stubbornness? – was uniquely impressive, it seemed to Mar’iya.
Mar’iya also heard Ayassa cry out in rage and pain following the assault of the pillar of holy fire; and the sounds of the battle resumed as the fearsome dragonborn threw herself upon their attackers. Rain redoubled his healing, calling out to his forbidden God; and the fight continued on.
Mar’iya leaned back against the wall and took a deep breath; the act producing searing pain, as the myriads of cuts and burns on his body cried out in protest of the exertion. How had it come to this? Oni and Rain had tried to rationalize with the priest and his minions. When that had failed, Mar’iya had tried to bully them into submission. That too, failed – a fact that surprised him deeply. While Mar’iya still could not remember a single detail about his life prior to being found in the desert by the tribe, something told him that he was someone who was used to getting his way. Instead, the priest had remained steadfast. “Give us the Waterbringer, and we will let you go.”
Rain. A week ago, Mar’iya had fantasized about bashing in the brains of the young Mulblood for slaying Jorkhal. That act had denied Mar’iya any hope that the Defiler could provide the key to the sealed vault that contained the memories of his previous life. Mar’iya had carried that seed of hate within him during their trek across the desert, often toying with the idea of assaulting the young cleric with a psionic assault during this fight or that, and snuffing him out. In the chaos of battle, no one would have any idea what had happened to him, and Mar’iya would have had his vengeance. But the young Waterbringer had proven himself to be invaluable during their journey, and his sheer usefulness had doused the embers of rage that smoldered within Mar’iya. On several occasions, the water Rain produced was the only nourishment they had to live on; his prodigious healing prowess had turned the tide of many a battle; and, in the fight with the strange undead creatures, Rain had quite singlehandedly turned the tide of that battle when he ordered the monsters to flee – a command that most of the beasts surprisingly obeyed. When the elderly priest had ordered them to leave Rain with them, Mar’iya had surprised even himself with his response; “If you try to take him, you will all die.”
Now here they were, battered and beaten, the battle all but lost. It had been foolish to take on the group of guards en masse like this; they should have taken them out in small groups as they came across them, rather than trying to mow them down where they stood. Grouped as they were, it was impossible to gain proper position against them, and their ranks were bolstered by the holy magics of the grizzled priest and the Holy Laseda – the cleric they had helped earlier in the day. Mar’iya had thrown everything he had at the old priest, assaulting his brain with psionic assault after psionic assault, in the hopes of felling the man quickly, and demoralizing his guards into surrendering. But the old man just refused to drop. The priest always retaliated to their onslaught with a punishing magical attack of his own, and now things looked impossible. Mar’iya, quite simply, had nothing left to throw at the man, he realized with dismay. He was beaten; a sensation that seemed utterly foreign to him.
A wave of self-preservation – which some might call cowardice – washed over him in that moment. There was no point in all of them dying here, was there? Surely the others wouldn’t begrudge him sneaking out of here in the hopes of avenging them another day? Mar’iya made his way down the hall, leaving the sounds of battle behind him, and he worked his way back towards the entrance. Soot, Paulu, and the newcomer Faststaff – who was living up to his name – were trying in vain to bar the door shut from the group of guards that had tried to close in on their flank. A few of the guards had already shouldered their way into the room, and the three were being forced to give ground against the superior number of guardsmen. Mar’iya weighed his options as he watched the fight. He knew he had just enough strength to hide himself from the eyes of their enemies, and then, only for a short time. If he waited a moment longer and allowed a few more of the guards to burst into the room, he would have his chance to escape…
“…Spare my friends and take me.” The words had come from Rain, from down the hall, behind him. Mar’iya turned with a start to stare at the young Waterfinder in astonishment. Was he really turning himself over to them to save his companions? He would sacrifice his freedom for them? Mar’iya felt a strange sensation wash over him; an emotion that took a moment for him to recognize: Shame. Shame that he was willing to leave his new companions behind in order to save his own skin. Shame that he felt he was superior to them for the way they looked and lived. Shame for how he had completely misjudged the character of the young cleric. Rain was ten times the man he was, he realized in that moment. Mar’iya knew that there was no chance that he would have made such a sacrifice, even for those who had so recently saved his life in the desert. This sense of humiliation burned him much more severely than the priest’s holy flames had, and the conflagration threatened to consume him completely.
As Rain walked off with the priest and his retinue of guards, the smoldering sense of disgrace that still clung to Mar’iya slowly wafted away, leaving him feeling reborn. In his place stood a new man; one baptized in fire and disgrace; a man nearly identical to the vainglorious coward that had inhabited his skin mere moments before. The only discernible difference between the two men was that this man, in response to Oni’s assertion that “we will free Rain or we will die trying,” found himself nodding in agreement…