Archon of Strife: Segment Seven

They had both been taken to an encampment of dens and pits constructed of sticks and mud. At first they were separated, Kael and the girl, but sometime in the night the latter had been moved to reside with Kael in a pitch black burrow at least ten feet underground with only one way out. It had taken a full day to reach this place, indicating that their captors were most likely some kind of foraging party. Thinking then of food, Kael let out a low grumble as he massaged his tightened stomach. Other than the occasional berries and roots in the forest, he hadn't had much to eat in the last two days. He fumbled around the burrow for anything other than the sleeping girl, but only ended up crawling over her several times and deciding their prison to be about teen feet square, though oval by shape, and some three feet high. Grossly enough, the ceiling felt like it was reinforced, or moreover, eaten away, by dried fluid or saliva.

"Ow! Stop moving around," came the indignant voice of his fellow victim. She rustled about a bit, making audible her efforts to dust herself off. "It's bad enough that I'm stuck here with charstrizes swarming about ready to eat me and I don't need you kicking up dirt all over the place to top it off." Kael put on a quizzical expression, but then realized neither could see the other and instead asked, "Charstrizes? Those are the deformed things out there?"

"Are you kidding me?" she answered, "How could you not know about charstrizes? Next you'll be telling me you don't know what a quasibeing is at all." The silence that followed spoke for him, and he could tell she was rolling her eyes as she continued. "You must be one of those fools tricked into a caravan contract huh? What did they promise you, five percent of the profits? Sacks of gold and jewels hoarded by puny little creatures for the taking?" Kael thought about the truth, and then decided against it with a pained, sour face.

"Um, yeah… they said I'd be rich and stuff." Remembering some of the prominent wagons that had passed through Daldenvale, he added, "One of them even saw my future or something." The girl sharply exhaled and snorted in a knowing fashion,

"They're tricky alright, folks around here have to deal with mistaken adventurers year-round."

"What do you mean, why don’t they just go back home?" Kael asked.

"Well," she answered, "that's exactly the problem we have. Nobody has ever been able to get back in one piece, and I'm not talking about their bodies. Whenever someone tries to leave, that person just ends up hopelessly lost until he or she doesn't want to go home anymore. Most people blame magic, while others genuinely believe that the people here are conspiring against them, possibly to keep nonexistent riches to themselves."

Kael whispered to himself, "So then I really am in the…"

"Yep, you guessed it! The magical wonderful funderful Echo Lands," came the sarcastically cheerful reply. Then Kael struck over what she had just said.

"Wait, you said magic didn't you?" Kael asked.

She giggled and snapped her fingers saying, "Of course I did." To Kael's surprise, a small flame erupted from her index finger. By the new light she could see his incredulous face and laughed some more. He could see hers as well, and though dirty, it was wiped off and cleaner than before and she was rather pretty.

"How did you do that!?" he exclaimed, at the same time drawing near her finger to investigate.

"Oh hush, you make me sound like an enchantress," she humorously replied. "Before you get too close, shouldn't you at least ask me my name?" Kael blushed as he inadvertently stumbled across one of her legs with his hand, and she snapped out the flame while he scuffled backwards.

After a few seconds he asked, "So, what is it?"

"Well, that's not the nicest way to ask, but it's Sarina," she said in a resigned tone. She rolled her eyes as she pictured him staring vacantly at her dark form, and finally asked, "Well, aren't you going to tell me yours?" She smiled again as he nervously tried to answer.

"Uh yeah it's umm, mm-"

"Don't you know your own name?" Sarina pressed.

"It's Kael!" he said a little too loudly. Kael sunk to the ground as she laughed some more, and he said in a melancholy tone, "Oh shut up. You think you're the only one who's been through a lot recently?" That was all he said for the rest of the night, even though she said his name several times without response. Sarina felt bad after that, and tried to keep a little light in the den for the rest of the night, but it went out after she fell asleep. Neither was in the best of situations she realized, and they'd need each other for what she had planned for tomorrow.

At first light the den seemed just as dark as it did in the dead of night. The only way Sarina was able to keep track of time was by sleeping by the small strand of light that would issue from the nearly blocked entrance during the day. The way in and out was barred by a rock much too large to grapple by someone on his or her hands and knees and Sarina had tried digging around it but the soil, moist with something other than water, became rock hard several inches in. She had heard of charstrizes hollowing out caverns with their acid-like saliva and wouldn't be too surprised if she were to learn that it had architectural properties as well, but she couldn’t decide if it was truly the hardness or the revolting nature of her prison that was keeping her from digging out. Her plan thus far was to wait for the boulder to be moved, and then use what little strength she had to issue an explosion and escape out the hole in the turmoil, hopefully avoiding recapture. She wasn't at all sure how the boy, Kael, could assist her other than adding to the distraction, because he certainly couldn't accompany her, but she felt a little guilty for not having a better escape plan for him. It was another hour at least before he stirred and she had thought up a good excuse in order to draw him into the plot.

"I’ve been starving here for almost two days, and I don’t know about you but I’m ready to do just about anything to get out of here and get some food," Sarina rehearsed to herself in her mind. Hmph, men; might as well call them animals, considering they both only ever wanted two things. And if that didn’t work she would continue on to illustrate the fact that the longer they waited, the weaker they would be in their escape attempt. Now that she thought about it, Sarina was sure that this was precisely why the charstrizes hadn’t brought them any food thus far. They likely would soon, however, unless they had no intention of selling herself and the boy as slaves. Sarina shuddered as she thought about the clichéd boiling pot surrounded by barbaric cannibals. But even that picture didn’t fit and she knew it. Lizardfolk enjoyed skinning their victims and then licking off the blood from the tissues of the body, letting their saliva eat into the meat of the body to soften it up since the creatures only had teeth made for tearing, not chewing. The reason Sarina preferred her worst-case scenario, other than the obvious decrease in gruesomeness, was that the charstrizes did not always kill their food first.

It was strange though, she thought on, how the charstrizes in this region had become so much more civilized in just the last decade. The academy had exhausted many ends in trying to procure an explanation and hopefully a solution thereof, but thus far the most likely candidate was still the steady flow of some hundred adventurers through the mountains annually, bringing with them items and behavior to be stolen and mimicked, like the pack hunting strategy Sarina had just witnessed two nights ago. It was also the first instance of using other creatures for their gain, using the will-o-wisp like a hunter would use a hawk to capture prey. How the savage creatures had even managed to capture a will-o-wisp was beyond Sarina, who for the most part had had serious doubts that her presence here would turn anything up at all and that the charstrizes were much less intelligent than they had been showing as of late. The Arcane Academy of Border Valley had only sent her out to search for answers as punishment and it was obvious to everyone, not just her. Only the most advanced of the academy, fit for running errands for royalty and furthering their studies at the capitol city farther West were up to the task of investigations on the matter, not just an understudy orphan like Sarina. She had been sent out not far from Border Valley, the town housing the Academy, to "check for activity" and "possible threat" to the populace. It was a fool’s errand, obviously, considering the only activity anywhere near the town had been nearly two weeks distance away and had occurred some months ago. The real reason she had been sent off was to halt her own little investigation of some ‘Academy affairs’, many too disturbing for Sarina to want to recall. It wasn’t any form of false assignment, however, that had led her to the swamp and to nearly a month’s absence from the Academy now; it was what she had found out when she had first returned for report.

Sarina’s thoughts were interrupted by the sudden shifting of the boulder blocking the entrance, nearly three feet in diameter. She hadn’t considered it before, but to move that there would probably be several charstrizes present and she wasn’t all too sure she could handle more than a couple. Sounds like whispers and hisses started to make themselves audible from outside the den and as the huge rock began to budge outward in small spurts she turned to look at the boy in the increasing light, then panicked as she saw he wasn’t even close to waking up. Sarina quickly crawled over to him and began shaking him violently.

"Boy! Wake up! Oh, what was it – Kael! Get yourself up now, we need to do something!" Kael mumbled something unintelligible and attempted to roll away from her, more intent on holding on to the few dreams that didn’t haunt him. "Damnit, I’m not about to miss my chance to get out of here just because you’re used to a spoiled night’s sleep!" Sarina slapped Kael hard across the cheek, searching his face for signs of awareness. But when Kael did open his eyes a moment later with a face scrunched up in discomfort it was already too late. A scaly intruder had entered through the opening barely large enough for Sarina or Kael to get through despite them being smaller than the ophidian creature with them now. As Sarina turned to meet it, her right hand glowing to a fierce hue of scarlet and ready to burst into flame, she abandoned her plans to wake Kael or disorient her capturers with a blast and focused now only on saving herself from the immediate danger and avoiding the horrific fate she had thought of not long ago.