((update 8.8. 07)) Awakening
LadyAzmodan:
that was absolutely amazing :) - even if your game is fecked, what you did post was super! i hope you get your game up and running again soon.
Rue:
Thank you so much!!! Consider this unsuspended, game runs! Will post soon :D
starlucid:
cool! Rue love your pictures even tho the story is great would have missed em!
Rue:
PART 4: LEEF
"I'm not your enemy," said Leef, and sent it with a clear message of intent. It hit a brick wall and he hoped that the inflection in his voice had been enough. The young har was an unbound book, a half life. He hovered between one part of his existence and the next, and his inception scar was still crusted over. That meant he was new, very new and therefore, very vulnerable. Everyhar else was dead. Some of their astral bodies were outlined in the air, shocked and waiting for a guide.
Leef had seen it all before in many skirmishes and, of course, in major battles. Sometimes the dead hung around for days, waiting, waiting... for what? Did they not want to rest? It was Leef's suspicion that they were so angry their lives had ended; they were waiting for somehar to possess. How sweet life seems when it is over, even if half of it were shit. Or maybe they didn't even know they were dead. It was the ultimate self deception. "Come away," said Leef, and he grabbed the har around his torso before his hands could get anywhere near his erstwhile companion's knife. "You are not safe here."
The har repeated his warnings but Leef took no notice. He dragged him, protesting bitterly, into the nearby house and kicked the door shut. Still keeping one arm securely around the struggling har, he drew the curtains and uttered a word of power which sealed the house from psychic invasion. The waiting spirits outside couldn't move over the threshold. It solved the immediate problem. Whether the perpetrators of the massacre were still around was another matter.
Leef looked around. They were in a living room, of sorts. The odour in the house mostly resembled a pig sty, though. He could smell rotting excrement, blood and vomit. Yes, definitely the place where the young har must have gone through althaia. There were less and less suitable humans left now to undergo the process and it was unusual to find this sort of scene still. But then, Leef reasoned, they were out in the backwoods where pockets of humanity occasionally held back the inevitable. Maybe one of those renegade gangs had killed the har's companions. If so, he'd better be on his mettle.
He uprighted a chair with difficulty since the young har had regained some energy, and he pushed him down on it, kicking his feet from under him. The har sat down with an undignified crash. "Now listen to me," said Leef, "Your village is just a short cut as far as I’m concerned. I'm on my way back up north. I'm a Captain in the Parasiel army. You're the only har left in this Ag forsaken place, so you'll have to come with me, and quickly. Just accept that the whole place has died. In five minutes we are going to leave. Don't make a fuss, just do it. I don’t want to drag you all the way to Galhea, but if I have to, I will.”
Rue:
PART 5: MYSTERE
I was close to screaming and kicking my feet like a toddler when the har was dragging me towards the door I had left open, and only the fact that I intended to keep my dignity prevented me from doing so. Okay, that and... crying for what seemed to have been hours didn´t leave me with much potential in my vocal cords.
Enemy or not, I didn´t care what he was saying. He made me sit down, pretty much pinning me to the chair until I submitted to the strenght of his arm, because straining as I was, I felt like my intestines had a life of their own, working against me. It was extremely unpleasant, if not painful. In my perfect little world, I would have still been in bed, being taken care of by my friends, with Kemese curled up beside me, his gentleness taking away the little pains left after the torture I had to undergo in the past few days. In reality, I was trying to catch breath, thankful of the little time his elated speech gave me.
The faint light from the table lamp enabled me to inspect the har who appeared to have claimed himself my saviour. Almost immediately I decided I didn´t like him. He certainly was beautiful, I couldn´t deny that, beautiful in the classy way of people unreachable for one so humble like me. I loved his jawbones, moving neatly as he spoke, loved his hair and the well-muscled body, covered with skin that had a tan of one who didn´t have to work in the sun, but exposed oneself to its rays for pleasure. The rest of him I didn´t like, because his facial features, the sligtly pouted lips, the nose and even the eyes, though lovely in color, showed superiority so clearly, that you either felt like a tiny worm, unworthy of his sight, or started to boil with anger. Mine was the second case. His behaviour topped it all. Ag, he was practically violating me, ordering me around, and every word that left those oh-so-soft lips was an offense! I could but shake my head in disbelief.
„Now YOU listen to ME, Captain", I stated with all the crudeness of my unfinished sixteen years of life, gazing into the face I longed to slap in that moment. „I may be young, but I am neither a baby, nor a member of your army. You have no right to... to come and be rude to me just because you can.“ I had to catch my breath and put my thoughts in order, and I tried to do so as quickly as possible, knowing that I might not come to word again if he started to oppose me. „I do realize that our tiny village is just a dot on the cartograph in your noble world. Very well, but for me it´s all I have. All I know. It´s where I found love – which you´ve apparently never experienced, because otherwise you couldn´t say what you had said. The one I loved is out there on the ground, and I am not going anywhere until I am sure he is burried, so that the animals wouldn´t rip his body apart."
I had to use the table as a support to help me raise from the chair. Standing, my words seemed to have more weight that if I appeared like the wreck I really was. „I am not afraid of you, Captain Parasiel“, I said softly, „neither am I afraid of anyone else that might still be around. Perhaps I don´t want to be saved. Have you thought about that? In fact, when you arrived, the first thing I wanted was to ask you to make it quicker for me. I have nothing to loose but my life, and that has little worth since there´s nothing I want to life for. Besides, I´m not worthy of your effort. My ritual... has not been completed. I have but a few days before I either join my tribe in death or become something you will not want as a travel companion.“
In the moment when I was finishing, something happened. A sudden sparkle inside of me, nourished by the anger I let out, flickered in my chest, enough to bring a realisation to my senses.
Or rather, two of them. The first one was, that although, as the captain had said, there was no HAR left, I hadn´t seen a single human body. There should have been some. My mother was still living in the village, and two other females with children. One of them had a girl of my age, the other had a boy younger than me who had yet to be incepted in two, maybe three years. „Mother...“ I whispered, thinking aloud. The second flash in my mind, though secondary in the moment, was nontheless important in the long run. I realised that I didn´t really want to die. But the first thing I had to do was see my mother´s house, without this stranger stopping me.
With that thought, I run for the door, pushing into it with all my power. The unexpectedness of my action gave me a few seconds and I made it for the cottage that had been my home for many years. It was only two buildings away from my new home – the village was indeed a very small spot on the face of the world, the har had been right there - so I wasn´t even having trouble breathing.
Yet I stopped my run, standing framed in the door, frozen in shock. I expected that mother wouldn´t be there. I thought that perhaps I just haven´t seen her body...or that she and the others were kidnapped...or that they managed to escape while the hara were fighting, and would be hiding somewhere in the woods... But I was fully unprepared for the sight that offered itself to me in the main room, that served as both living room and kitchen.
The furniture was still there, the round table, the chairs that my father had made before I was born, the oven, the cherry wood wardrobe... but everything else was gone. The door of the wardrobe was open to show the dark emptiness inside, as was the cupboard. There were no pans and pots, no pictures on the walls, no curtains, even the carpets and the tablecloth were gone. This was not a house of someone who had to leave in a hurry. She must have been ready for it. She must have KNOWN.
It was in that moment that I felt tears on my cheeks again, but this time I didn´t sob. I just felt my knees giving way under me.
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