Yamara - Book 2 - Chapter 2

Chapter 2

Months had passed since last I bothered to ponder my situation. Indeed, a morose black mood had gripped me. I despaired of existing a solitary life with little in the way of joy. Life had turned into a set of repetition for me, though in a paradoxal way, for I made certain I never did any of my daily routines the same way twice.

I had set up a residence within a ruined hovel near the western edge of the ruins where I had dispatched the werewolves. I had to liberate the building I chose for my lair from a group of spiders that individually were large enough to give me pause. As a group they were deadly, for each was the size of a hound. A little flint and steel applied to a torch provided a solution for me. I had simply tossed the torch into the network of webs within the stone building and butchered the surviving spiders that rushed out to escape the flames.

One had managed to bite me, however, and I lay in a swoon for nearly two days from the debilitating poison. I recovered well enough, though I was parched at that point as my fever had burned throughout while my body fought the poison. The spiders had been slain, at least, and I soon discovered that to a starving woman, roast spider can be a delicacy.

I scouted the ruins daily, learning what I could of my surroundings and clearing out all signs of the spiders occupation. The werewolf den was soon taken over by a new creatures, an apparently mated pair of reptilian beasts that walked on many legs. The smaller was twelve feet long while the larger was closer to sixteen. I stayed clear of them once I saw the larger one breath out a cloud of mist from its mouth to paralyze a giant rat that was searching for some refuse to feast on. It moved faster then I would have thought possible, snapping the rat into its mouth and returning back to its lair to share the feast with its mate.

That was another thing about the ruins… the rats. Ranging from one to four feet long, there seemed no end of them. I slew them whenever they came near me or my makeshift home, but they were forever waiting in the shadows wherever I went throughout the ruins, waiting for something to fall for them to feast on. They seemed voracious.

At times I thought that perhaps I was being watched. Ever careful, I was nonetheless unable to find any signs of a pursuer. I roughly mapped out in my mind as much of the ruins as I felt secure in exploring. South of me was a graveyard where, I was certain, the dead still walked. I avoided the place at night but heard enough noises carried by the dry wind to let me know that things were not as they should be there. The other inhabitants of the ruins likewise avoided the ruins, from what I could tell.

East, beyond the basilisks, lay the den of a mighty serpent. It looked old, from the one glimpse I had gotten of its scarred and worn hide, but with that age came not infirmity but rather experience and an animal cunning easily the match for anything else I had seen. Having not seen all of it, I could only guess at it's size, but the section of it I saw as it crawled between buildings early one morning in search of food was half again as big around as my chest. I guessed it to be over 40 feet long, perhaps more.

Each inhabitant of the ruins claimed a small territory for themselves, and anything that entered into it was trespassing and dealt with most harshly. I maintained this unwritten rule by fiercely defending my own little area, fighting back any rats or other creatures that sought to inhabit it. My defenses gradually took over more and more of my time, allowing me less and less exploration. I soon even had begun to stop working on searching my psychic talents. As with any muscle, when it is unused it atrophies. So too did my psionic powers languish, unused as long as they became.

Seasons came and went. Soon a year had passed, leaving me older but no wiser. My equipment began to show signs of wear and I replaced it as best I was able. Throughout the different times of the year the climate varied little. I had learned ways of finding food and water by watching the other creatures in the ruins. Life was far from fulfilling, but it was satisfactory. I had been alone so long by then that I had begun to forget anything else.

I secluded myself in an environment that reminded me every day of Acathia as a way of further torturing myself. In the absence of contact with people my memories and fantasies grew. My mind played tricks on me, remembering my time with Brina differently. Idealizing it, it became a time where she and I had lived in a utopian perfection, fulfilling one another's every needs until the bastard James had changed all of that.

Of course it was a lie, but it helped to preserve my sanity. At other times I even wondered if perhaps I had been wrong and perhaps I had been the one most wronged by the willful manipulations of Brina and James. My mind concocted all of these fascinations out of a strong sense of guilt and remorse. Both were emotions that I was largely unused to. I had never repented any of my actions or felt bad for anything I had done before, and now my emotions were catching up.

A group of people invaded my domain one day, forcing me out of my self-imposed exile. An adventuring group it seemed, though hardly suited towards adventuring in my expert opinion. A gnome trailed behind, eyes glancing about suspiciously at the shadows of the ruins. A pair of elves led the party, the male with a bow in one hand and the other absently stroking a holy symbol that hung on a chain from her neck. A halfling walked in between them, huffing as his short legged stride was hurried to keep up with the elves. The gnome was similarly short legged and hurried, but he seemed not to mind the pace. It might have had something to do with his girth not being in sizeable proportion to his height, as the halflings was. The final member of the party was a dwarf with a double bladed axe carried in his hands. He seemed cheerful, for a dwarf, but he kept a wary eye on his surroundings.

A part of me longed to go to them and talk, but the majority of my psyche, the part of me that had been in control for the past year, kept me hidden and suspicious. I suppose I should have at least done something to warn them. Of course, I did not.

The elven tracker fell prey to a snare trap I had laid. He was yanked up by his left foot and swung around to smash into a rock wall, which then promptly crumbled over atop of him, crushing him. The others ran forward to help him, but they were too late. This caused the elven priestess no small amount of grief, and my heart actually went out to her. Then I grew angry at both myself and her for feeling such pity and sympathy. I barred my feelings and turned away from where I lay watching them in a symbolic show of not caring what happened to them. My curiosity got the best of me after a few minutes though, so I crept to a new position to watch them from.

The halfling was the scout of the group, at least somewhat adept at discovering the traps and pitfalls I had set up around my demesne. Not adept enough. His foot came down on a patch of earth that I had a trigger string set up beneath. He heard or felt the vibration of it being set off and stopped abruptly. He looked up, the panic on his face his last expression as the scything blade swung horizontally across, severing his head. I had not considered a demi-human as prey, so I had set the blade low enough to disembowel a man. A quicker and cleaner death for the halfling, at any rate.

The dwarf howled in rage at this. Dwarves seemed to live for combat, whether on Halador or Malatoria. This stealth was not his style, and his frustrations showed as he bellowed out a challenge to whoever was destroying his company. His taunts ceased abruptly when he plunged into a twelve foot pit I had rigged with sharpened spikes treated with venom from the spiders. The venom had long since dried and become useless, but a stake sharpened forever remains a stake sharpened.

The elven priest and gnome wizard gathered close then, realizing that their time was drawing to a close. Still I could have approached and led them safely through, but I had closed myself to them, and instead watched only out of the interest of one who has to reset and repair her traps once they had accomplished their tasks.

The wizard managed to escape, through luck or coincidence I do not know. The priestess was close behind him when she actually slipped on some loose rubble and managed to sprain her ankle on her own. In upsetting the rubble she had managed to trigger another of my traps, causing more sharpened steaks to spring out of the rubble. None of them harmed her, but she stumbled away from the rubble, frightened anew.

And stumbled into a small grouping of snares I had set up. Each foot was caught by opposing traps, triggering the release of the powerful wooden springs I had set up. It had taken me days to set those traps, and included me cobbling together a rough rope and pulley system to enable me the leverage I needed to do so. The end effect on her, with a rope pulling each foot in the opposite direction, was quite grisly. It affected the previously stunned gnome in such a way that he was sent running away in fear.

As I said, he escaped my traps. He fared less well against my neighbors then he did me, however, but I was not to find that out for some time.

I waited a while to see if their sounds or actions had roused any curiosity in the rest of the population of the ruins. Though I had no direct knowledge, I had seen fleeting hints of deeper and darker denizens towards what had once been the cities center. More intelligent creatures with an active will towards destruction and evil.

After a few hours had passed I ventured out, examining each of the fallen adventurers. I went through their belongings, acquiring many coins and trinkets, as well as a few new weapons that I would save away for a chance to use either personally or in a new trap I devised. My greatest surprise came when I examined the priestess. It had been at least 2 hours since her left leg had been torn from her body, yet she still lived.

She had managed to incant a spell of healing through her pain, stemming the blood flow and extending her life. For a while, at least. The pain had caused her to black out shortly thereafter though, and now it appeared that she was passing in and out of consciousness as her blood continued to leak out onto the ground.

I knelt above her, dagger in my hand yet unsure as to what I should do with it. I nearly got up and left her when I sensed her awareness return. I looked down and saw that her eyes were clouded with pain, but that she beheld me clearly enough.

"Who are you?" She hissed, having trouble forming words through her agony.

My hand clenched around the dagger held within it. The words were as music to me, yet I feared them more clearly then I feared the dreams I had in which Brina and James hunted me.

"Are you Yamara Blackcloak?" she asked more clearly.

I nodded after another moment of indecision. It seemed my fears would allow me that much communication at least. If nothing else, at least she was unable to present any threat to me now, for she lay clearly on her deathbed.

"The King needs to see you," she whispered, struggling to speak and remain awake. "About James. He wants you to return. He knows the truth now. James betrayed…."

Her voice trailed off into a silent moan of agony. She passed out then, her fingers relaxing their rigid pose from where they clawed at the hard baked ground. I remained rock steady above her but inside my mind and emotions where tumbling about like wheat in a tornado.

James betrayed? Betrayed who? Betrayed me, yes, most certainly. Betrayed Brina? Yes that as well. Had he betrayed Elendar as well? What truth did the king now? Did he know how Brina had manipulated and toyed with me? Did he - no, wait. That's not right, is it? Did James lie to Brina and find a way to convince her that I was tired of her or that I wished to be rid of her? Perhaps he told her the reason I sought assignments abroad was so that I could be away from her because she angered and annoyed me. That James had surely been at the root of it was evident, no matter the means. James was the one that tore Brina from me, he was the one that slew her in cold blooded murder before my very eyes. Yes, that was what happened, I tried to defend her but he used her as a shield and pushed her on my blade. Brina was innocent, caught up in what had happened and by James' lies.

I started to rise when I felt the elf's hand grab mine. She had roused herself from the blackness that continued to try to claim her for its own. I looked down at her and felt rage at her for bringing this to me, for ruining the relative peace I had found there.

"Please," she whispered to me, tears leaking from her eyes. I looked down, seeing that she was pulling my hand with the dagger in it towards her. My expression softened then, for I knew what she was asking. She was in agony and because of her spell it would be prolonged for hours more, perhaps even days.

I nodded and her hand fell from my dagger. She passed out again then and I gently lifted her head up from the ground. Re-awakening old skills that had been dormant too long, I faultlessly located the spot on her neck and slid the dagger home, killing her instantly. I laid her back down and stood up, glancing at her one final time and noticing the holy symbol grasped firmly in her hand. It was the symbol of Ban-Dayid, the God of healing. I had just murdered a priestess of Ban-Dayid, how much worse could I get?

I got worse. I reached down and grabbed up her holy symbol and slipped it into my pouch. It felt heavy in my hand and very warm to the touch. I knew it was not my imagination but rather a bit of prescience that told me the more I handled it, the more uncomfortable it might become to me. I was truly on the road to damnation.

My only hopes were to take a few choice people with me.

Continued in Chapter 3