• Closed • Rise and shine

[Ent]

70th Ashan Arc 717

The guards had been taking it in turn to keep her sedated, for the past two days every twelve hours they had given her more of the dust. Before she had fully woken so she would barely remember, finally they had come to a conclusion of what to do and now at the end of the last 12 hour sleep Rey'na would find herself waking. She was in a room, clearly underground as the walls were built from dirt and large thick roots that grew through them. They acted as beams in the walls and rafters on the ceiling to keep it from collapsing on them. There was nothing in the room but an old women stood leaning against one of the walls. Although she was clearly aged she seemed to have a strong body for her apparent age.

She was wearing a tunic made from deer's hide and she held a white staff in her hands. An exquisite piece, crafted from white ash with some carvings made into it, different animal shapes were over it. It was clearly something that had taken some time to create. "Ibiti sre." There was a hint of sarcasm in the voice although Rey'na would not be able to tell that. The woman watched Rey'na's eyes open, her face expressionless as she looked at the mouse that had just climbed down the fox hole. Rey'na, laying on the floor before her, was to the older lady a disgrace, an abomination.

"Herwìva awt ke’u tọ?" The Xanthea would sound completely foreign to Rey'na's ears unless she had heard it around Rynmere. Either way she would not understand it, making it difficult for her to explain herself before it was made apparent to the lady who was now standing over her that she did not speak the language. As this was not explained yet the woman would continue as she was. "Mänyän ɗäukä ke’u tä kana Ileri?" She nudged Rey's foot with the staff before placing it back down on the dirt floor, twisting it and making a small dirt pile in the process. A look of curiosity on the hold lady's face. She seemed to be supporting herself on the staff.

She looked at the blue eyed girl before her and had great doubts. It seemed unlikely that she would have been caught so easily if she intended to kill Moseke. She would be the worst assassin if that was the case and the old lady new Moseke's sister was not that foolish. No immortal would send someone to do that if they were clearly incapable like the blubbering mess that had entered the temple two trials earlier.

Translation

"Ibiti sre."- Good morning
"Herwìva awt ke’u tọ?"- Why are you here?
"Mänyän ɗäukä ke’u tä kana Ileri?"- She send you to kill her?

[Rey'na]

Rey'na glanced around as she woke up. Her eyes felt heavy,
like it was a task to keep them open. She listened to what she assumed were words coming from the old woman in front of her, though she had no way to be sure. It didn't matter much. Whatever had happened, she was captured. Chances are, she thought, she wasn't going to make it out of here.
As the woman carried on talking, Rey built up the courage to speak. She was scared, and alone. She'd come to the only people she thought could help her and yet still ended up the enemy. A voice rung through her head, but it was no longer the egg. It was her own. Three words repeated constantly.

"I don't understand you..." Rey responded, only just audible. She was scared to move, but she tried to anyway. She rolled herself over to her back, looking up at the ceiling fully. She shuffled back so she could sit up, assuming the woman let her.
"Please. I need to see a healer. I need help, something - anything. Please just help me" she said, voice pained but face blank. She'd cried and she'd cried, until she appeared to feel nothing. She couldn't bring herself to cry anymore.

Rey'na looked down at the ground, keeping her hands beside her. Her head was ringing with pain, anger and sadness all at once. She glanced up to the woman, her gaze showing no resistance but also no compliance. After many years, Rey felt broken. She took in a deep breath before speaking again.
"I'm hear to get rid of a mark. Please. I don't have much time."

[Ent]

The older woman didn't seem too surprised when the blank faced girl said she did not understand. Thinking about it it was somewhat obvious that the foolish girl before her could not speak Xanthean. As she shuffled back and sat up the older woman moved with her and knelt before her as Ry'na would reach the wall. She would be leaning against it before the elder finally spoke in the common tongue to her captured enemy. "Of course you don't you are not one of my people." The woman seemed surprisingly strong as she squatted there before the younger lady, not something you would expect to see from a lady of her advanced age. "Ceh've ligok spulmokri." She looked at the girls eyes as she murmured her insults towards the poor marked girl.

"I know you need help, someone corrupted like yourself would need help." She stood again and jabbed the girls head with the end of her staff, not hard but enough to press it against the dirt wall. She shook her old head, the wrinkled and drooping skin wobbling as she did. "Why should we help you?" She grew frustrated once again, clearly the girl had brought up something within the woman. "Herwìva kur teyrpin sọ ke’ua walƙiya eiek ise agbese?" When frustrated she switched automatically back to her default language, forgetting the girl could not understand or just not caring. There seemed to be an anger and sadness in the old woman's eyes.

She stepped back and turned away, thinking and her hands twisting around the aged white wood staff. She waved her hand in a nonchalant gesture as the roots in the room suddenly came to life. Two dropping from the wall behind her and seizing her arms. They lifted her up onto her feet and then three more roots would sliver out, taking her waist and ankles into their tight and unrelenting grip. "You animals would not do the same for us." The older one turned again and looked into the blue eyes of the beast, the corrupted body and mind of Rey'na.

The worshippers of Lissira were rare in realising they were doing wrong and bad. So now when one finally seemed to have realised the error of her ways why would they believe it not to be some cheap trick. Rey'na spoke of a mark she wished to have removed as if they did not already know it, she had assumed it from the moment Rey'na stepped into the temple. "I know what lies in that head of yours and I know the wickedness that put it there." She stepped over and placed a warped and crooked old finger into her forehead. "Anou hin'da sọ av spulmokri." Again she was unable to keep back her emotions enough to concentrate on the language she was speaking. The thought of Lissira and the pain she had caused the Sev'ryn and the other poor souls of the world burned heavy in her heart.

"Why should we help you?" Finally came a question that was clear and simple, one that would possibly decide the fate of the girls life. It fell to her now to convince them this was not another scheme of the evil Lissira, searching to finish what she started once long ago.

Translations

"Ceh've ligok spulmokri."- Blue eyed monster.
"Herwìva kur teyrpin sọ ke’ua walƙiya eiek ise agbese?"- Why would one of your deserve our help?
"Anou hin'da sọ av spulmokri."- The egg of a monster.

[Rey'na]

Rey'na listened to every word the woman said, whether she understood it or not. She knew hate, she'd spent her whole life surrounded by it. What she wasn't used to was the one being hated. She was feared, occasionally loved - but rarely hated. Until now. What she saw as her only hope, her only chance, was gone. All she could do now was beg. Why she was begging, however, she had no idea.
Rey winced a little as the vines grabbed her, holding her in place. She felt weak, her body aching with exhaustion. When called an animal, she wanted to open her mouth and argue. But she shut it before the words could get out. She might not want to be part of the Plague Bearers, but as of now she was, and she had been for a long time. No amount of help would ever change that.

Eventually, she was asked the question she knew she would have to answer. Why should they help her, a plague bearer, through her struggles? It would be easy to say that it would help rid Lisirra of a follower, but so would these vines tearing her apart. So what purpose did it serve them, helping Rey'na? She kept her eyes to the ground.
"When I was a child, my father ran away from home with me. Left my mother behind, a woman I still have no knowledge of. Moving from place to place, my father ran. From what, I never knew. But it was a lifestyle I learned to hate. As did my eventual sister, born of a different mother. He abused us both, and all we had was each other."
Rey'na took in a deep breath after she finished that sentence, refusing to look up as tears poured down her cheeks. "He killed himself, unintentionally, with poison - and I wept. I hated him, but at that point I had nothing. Abusive or not, he was someone. He fed us, sometimes. He paid for the inns we stayed in. It was enough to live, and it was suddenly gone."

Rey's eyes finally met the woman's. "When she came, that day, to help me - I thought I'd seen an angel. Maybe an Immortal of love, or of passion. I knew little of the real immortals then, my father didn't believe in them, so I thought I had been blessed. She told me she would be my mother from now on, and that role she filled well enough for me to ignore the suffering she causes."
"I can't do more than beg for your help. But I was a child looking to fill a hole in her life, one that trusted the wrong person and filled that hole with evil. I believe that somewhere, Lisirra is as human as anyone else. But right now, she's not the one that needs help. I am."

After talking with few breaths or breaks, Rey stopped and hung her head. She was held up using vines in a dank, underground dungeon. She'd lost her mother, the man she thought she loved. Everyone. What little she had was gone and she had no idea why. Whatever was left of "Rey'na" was dead. Everything she believed in and everybody she cared for was gone.
After a few trills, the shell of a girl cried. If they wouldn't help her, she thought, perhaps she'd at least die painlessly.

[Ent]

For a brief moment there was a look of pity in the older woman's eyes, however, the pity was not for the loss of her mother and father but for something else. In fact she would soon find out what it was as the woman spoke again to the trapped Biqaj. "I pity you, to be seduced by the monster that has defiled you." The woman looked into the bright blue hues of Rey'na and shook her head. She wished she could see the girl before her as something else but she was struggling with it.

Still, even as the woman looked at the captured girl, like an insect in a glass jar, she could not help but notice she had not attacked. She had remained true to her story, what seemed like real tears escaping her eyes as she hung from the roots of the great Makubwa Lori trees above them. She turned her back on the servant of Lisirra and sighed, turning the white staff in her hands as she thought. She was not unforgiving but the evil that the immortal sister of Moseke had spread was something that had caused the old lady much pain and anger.

"You made a huge mistake the day you allowed Lisirra into your life, the day she began to corrupt your soul. For that I pity you, to have that rotten egg inside of you is disgusting." She waved her hand and the strange yellowish green glow returned to the roots as they released Rey from their grasp, dropping her down to the floor once more. "Sev äbu kana ke’u." Squatting with the wooden staff placed across her lap she looked at the poor crying girl and wondered if it could really all be the truth.

All that was possible for her was to imagine what was going through the mind of he curled up excuse for a person. Broken and ruined by the evil that had once destroyed these lands they were under. Even though she was angry and knew it foolish to trust the servant of such a cruel being she could not do it. Even as she considered the many simple ways in which she could end the plaguebearer she saw the other side of things.

She knew the corrupting power of Lisirra netter than most and perhaps it was better to see this woman as one who had escaped and realised the monster she had become and the one who had marked her. "How did you realise this was the truth? How did you come to believe that this was all a mistake and that she was not what she had once seemed?" More questions for the terrified prisoner as her jailer wrestled with the impending decision.

Translations

"Sev äbu kana ke’u."- I should kill you.

[Rey'na]

The words of the woman echoed through Rey'na's head like the voices of her conscience, tearing her emotions to shreds. She put up no resistance to them, letting every word sink in and drain her of another piece of hope she had. Eventually, she knew, she would lose it all - give up for good. Maybe if she did she'd get to see Denebah again, and he would comfort her like he used to. Maybe.
When she was dropped to the floor, Rey'na made no attempt to move. Her entire body was sore already, so the pain of kneeling on the hard floor changed nothing. Her back and head arched, slumped over like a corpse. In her head, that's all she was now. As good as dead.

"I realized this was a mistake when I made a mistake myself, trusting Fridgar" she replied, saying Fridgar's name as if the woman would know who that was. "He told me he loved me, a few times, and he treated me like it too. Bought me gifts, held me when things were hard - even helped me with the jobs that 'she' set me."
Rey'na inhaled as she continued her story, tearing up as the memories flooded back to her. "After an arrest was made, and he disappeared for a few days, he returned home with a frown on his face - to tell me he'd found someone else. Most people would be upset at him, or even angry, and at first I was. But I quickly realized that this egg was to blame. That I scared the man I loved away."

Rey'na looked up to the woman, eyes teary and puffy.
"I will never be able to make up for what I've done, be it under the influence and manipulation of this egg or not. But if I can learn to help people, then I can sure as hell try. I just need Moseke's help to do that, to remove this curse and teach me how to heal. Show me a new path."
Rey'na's sadness broke for a second as she smiled slightly at the idea of it, genuine hope in her eyes. "Please."

[Ent]

For a trill the hard face of the old woman softened at the girls clear sadness and pain, maybe she had been too quick to judge. Yet, she had come into the sacred place of worship with that monstrosity inside of her. She could be deceiving her right now, Lisirra and those she supported and marked often were manipulators. They would get under your skin and trick you, it was one of the worst traits of such people. Besides their often lack of any remorse for what they do to others with their sicknesses and poisons. They were monsters with broken minds and few could ever be saved.

However, maybe this one could, perhaps she was the exception. "Ke’u eltu ibon dabi murädï ni ayo." She looked up at the ceiling as she seemed to be talking to herself for a moment. "Ke’u eltu tiobe ar kuendelea èrè." She let out a long and uneasy breath before standing again and lifting the blue eyes girl with her. She looked right into the bright hues like she was searching them for an answer to something.

"You have been through much girl, seen suffering and pain. I have seen the death that follows those like you around and so have you." Her eyes dipped for a moment lost in memory. "For that reason you know the evil you have spread and the death you have caused. You understand even better than me the cruelty of your actions." She stepped back and looked at her.

She reached up in a stretch and then as her arms lowered her body began to change. The greyed hair turned into long shimmering ebony locks the skin became flawless and perfect. Her green eyes the colour of the leaves she gives life too in the forest. A truly beautiful woman. "I, Moseke, will think about it, Rey'na plague bearer." With that she left through the archway a dusty green behind her pulling the soil together to close off the room.

Translations

"Ke’u eltu ibon dabi murädï ni ayo."- You people make life so hard.
"Ke’u eltu tiobe ar kuendelea èrè."- You people murder and enjoy it.