The Greatest Fear 7

His eyes opened to a brightening sky of pinks and purples. He closed his eyes again and took a deep breath of the dawn air. A metallic rotting scent made his nose wrinkle and he gasped as memories flooded back to him. Sitting up so fast he almost snapped his back; he looked around for the monster that had attacked him. What he saw was a corpse with the top of the head on a hinge of skin, the brain and wall of the skull open to the hungry eyes of the ravens.
He allowed himself a moment of relaxed relief before he tensed up again looking for Tsingena, remembering the black and silver blur as she had leaped with the knives at the thing’s head. His eyes were met with the sight of his horse’s healed back, as it was curled protectively around something. He got to his feet, walking unsteadily towards the horse, looking over the spiked mane at what the horse was protecting.
Tsingena was curled in the circle the horse had made around her, head pillowed on its shoulder, oblivious to the horse’s muzzle resting so affectionately on her shoulder and the quickly brightening sky. He rested his fingertips lightly on her neck, right below the jaw, feeling for a pulse. After a few moments he felt it, slow and steady, slower than normal maybe, but that was okay. She was alive. He sighed as he sat down with his back to the horse’s, leaning against it as he watched the sun rise once more above the tree-covered hills and fill both the land and the sky with light.

((I will post more when I have time to type some more up! I hope that you like my story so far and please leave me some comments))

The Greatest Fear 6

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She sighed and sat down on a stone wall, watching the spots sunlight that managed to pass through the trees overhead and play over her bare arms and feet, and shaking the white red-tinged hair out of her eyes when it fell forward to cover her peripheral vision. It was over a year ago that she had wandered into the village, not understood a single word spoken to her, and her hair had grown a lot longer. Since then she had learned everything GoldenEye had to teach her, even the magic he used so frequently to stop their meals from burning.
She still kept her eyes half shut, not quite knowing why, but knowing that there would be dire consequences if she showed them to anyone. Even GoldenEye knew nothing about what her eyes looked like. Speaking of GoldenEye where was he? He was supposed to have been here more than an hour ago. She leaned forward and looked both ways down the road. She shrugged, pushed herself off the wall and began to pace down the packed dirt road, moving her feet in different patterns watching her shadow shift on the dirt, in the direction he had been headed when he had left a few days ago.
She had been walking for a few miles when she heard the horse scream, and the roar from something she had never heard before. She began to speed her pace until she smelled the metallic scent of blood. A memory of a night a year ago surfaced and she shook it away hurriedly. She couldn’t afford to be distracted now. She crept closer, the brush at the side of the road, looking at the situation, seeing if it was wise to fight or run.
Her eyes widened out of their normal position as she took in the scene before her. The horse lay on the ground, the bite mark on its side so deep she could see most of its ribs from where she crouched. She turned her face away from the almost dead animal and looked for her friend. She blinked when she saw what had taken the bite out of the horse.
A huge creature, easily twice her height, stood with its scarred, old blood-colored back to her, shaking something that she couldn’t see. It was talking in a voice that she had heard only once before. It was the voice she had heard in her head that had urged her to kill the man who had attacked her the first night she had come into the village, and it was asking whatever it was holding “Where is she? Where is she?” as it raised its left fist time and again, hitting whatever was in its right hand as the fist fell. Each time the fist disappeared from view she heard a dull thud, sometimes a crack, and a moan. She pulled her left hand back, finding a knife-pocket and pulling the knife free. She pushed herself free from the brush and launched herself at the creature, holding the knife above her head with both hands, stabbing down at the thing’s back as she hurtled through the air. As she neared it she heard the words it was speaking and her eyes opened wide again before she struck.
It was speaking a different language, a half-croak half-roar, but she understood it. The knife she held struck it full force, and the creature whirled around dropping what it had been holding. She cast a quick look at it. It looked like nothing but a bundle of blood and black cloth; but a part of the cloth fell away, what remained of GoldenEye’s favorite hat, and his eyes looked at her for a split second before sliding up into his head.
The laugh-light the dark amber globes usually held as he talked to her, taught her and answered her floods of questions with was gone, and the irises themselves were floating in blood. Rage fueled her actions then, as she slashed again and again at the creature, pulling knife after knife out of their pockets as the old ones became stuck in the putty-like flesh of the whatever-it-was.
It cried repeatedly at her “Sister wait! What are you doing? I have been searching for you! Why are you attacking me?” Pain was flaring in the left side of her face, but she paid it no mind. Suddenly what it had been asking earlier made sense. She stopped her attack, one knife stuck in the thing’s forearm. “What do you mean, you’ve been looking for me?” She looked up into its eyes; hers still wide open with shock and rage. And froze. “NO!!!” she cried slashing up in an arc with a free knife, slicing neatly through the jugular vein then curving the blade into its skull, the sharp blade cutting through bone like a knife through butter. It was dead before it hit the ground.
She hit the ground with it, her knees buckling from the shock. She got up the instant she hit the ground, walking unsteadily over to her friend. He was breathing and his life-signs were strong, but he was coughing blood which she was pretty sure wasn’t a good thing. Remembering what had happened to her on the first night in her memory, she placed her left hand on his chest, over his heart. Blue light poured like water out of the tattoo on the back of her hand and over GoldenEye’s body soaking into his face and chest, into the veins beneath the skin, flowing with the blood, healing all wounds they touched. After a few minutes he stopped coughing and his breathing quieted into that of one deeply asleep.
She breathed a sigh of relief and turned to the body of the horse, the liquid light still streaming from her hand. She knelt down and placed the still glowing hand on the horse’s side, feeling the pulse of its life fading slowly. She put her will in the magic pouring from her hand. She watched as flesh knitted over the bare ribs, as skin folded over the mix of muscle and fat. White fur grew in the place where a few moments before there had been nothing but bone.
She looked approvingly at her work, though the white fur was a different color from the light tan that covered the rest of the horse’s body. She sighed and closed her eyes and a wave of tiredness swept over her. She leaned forward and rested her head on the sleeping horse’s shoulder, curling up into a half-formed ball, her back against the horse’s warm stomach, inside the protective circle that the horse’s legs made against the slowly darkening night’s sudden chill. The last thing she saw were the creature’s eyes that looked exactly like her left one floating among the stars.

The Greatest Fear 5

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She opened her eyes into the darkness of night and sat up quickly, trying to see what had awakened her. A man dressed all in black stood near where she lay looking down at her. His mouth moved and words that she couldn’t understand came out. He took one look at her empty eyes and understood. His fingers moved swiftly in a gesture that was familiar to her and she responded in kind. [You screamed as you slept. Are you all right?] [You bastard! You hit me!] A look crossed the man’s face. [I didn’t have a choice. They would have killed you before you reached this town’s boarder.] [Oh.] The man shook his head and turned back to what he had been doing. She looked down at her hands. What had she just done? How had she remembered the words to the hand-movements? She sighed and lay back down.
The man looked over at her and his mind summoned a memory of his earlier thoughts as he had walked to his house. He thought again about the huge flare of power and wondered if she had been its source. He knew she wouldn’t tell him, even if she did know. The girl, she must have been at least twenty, but he couldn’t stop thinking of her as a child, she seemed to view everything as though seeing it for the first time. She didn’t appear to know how, or be able to speak, and yet she knew Mademoke, something few were ever fluent in. Also her eyes never fully opened, as if they were extra-sensitive to light. Or like she was afraid of what would happen if someone saw them.
He looked back down at the soup that was burning merrily and sighed. He had never been good at cooking, but maybe he could magic the pot to not burn food? His mind wandered into the realms of spells and he didn’t even notice as the food in the pot evaporated into a fine burnt mist.
She opened her eyes to the sound and smell of food cooking, a bright light streaming through a window where before there had been only small pinpricks of it. The man was asleep in a chair a few feet away. She looked toward the door and back at him, then back at the door, then at the food simmering in the pot. The next time she looked at the door, a voice spoke from the corner where the man had been sleeping. She turned so quickly that she almost fell over.
His hand moved and her eyes easily caught the words behind the movements. [Forgive me. I didn’t mean to startle you. I had forgotten that you do not know how to speak. If you were thinking of running I would wait until the night. The people in the pub last night still haven’t forgotten what you did last night.] She translated words into movements and formed her own sentences. [What is speaking? I do not understand. Are we not speaking now? What is a pub? What is night? Why did they get so angry when I saved a man’s life?]
A smile curved his lips for a second or so, until it faded back into the usual line and his forehead creased in concentration as he moved his hand in the patterns of his words. [We are speaking, in a way. I meant the sound version. Why is it that you do not know how to speak? Or is it that you cannot? Night is when the sky is black and the stars, the small dots of light, are out. A pub is a place where you can get food and drink. In this town it is also a place to go if you wish to fight or to watch a fight. A mage is usually present to watch the fight and heal the wounds, as well as to dull the blades. You interrupted the fight last night and in doing so earned the peoples hate.]
Her face heated at his words of speech, and she averted her still half-closed eyes away from him. She didn’t know if she could produce the sounds that were necessary to “speak”. She opened her mouth and copied the movements that the women’s mouth had made last night in the pub, fixing the correct sounds to the movements. “What can I get for you tonight?” She then moved her hand. [Did I do it right? What does that mean? Can you teach me more?]
He smiled again at her questions. Yes, she was like a child. He laughed softly to himself. Then the inevitable question came. [What is that sound? It sounds like you are growling. Are you angry?] He shook his head and answered in the complicated movements.
[It is called laughter; it is a sound you make when you are happy. I can teach you how to speak if you wish. I am called GoldenEye. What are you called?] A look of sadness and confusion crossed the girl’s face and her hand began moving again. [I wish to try learning your speech, but I do not know what I am called.] He nodded and moved his hand in reply. [I understand. It matters not about your name. I shall give you one. I give you the name Tsingena.]
She smiled at the look of her name. [How do you say it?] He nodded, understanding, and spoke her name aloud. She smiled again at the sound of her name, and repeated it. It felt like water rolling over her tongue and she loved in instantly. Her smile brightened and she signed [Thank you. Can we start speaking now?] He smiled and nodded, laughter still glinting in his amber eyes. He signed the word then spoke it, and she copied both the words and movements correctly; asking as she spoke them what they meant.

The Greatest Fear 4

He watched through dark amber eyes from the back of the crowd as the girl came though the crowd, not noticing the crowd of people she was walking through, so focused on the fight was she. He watched as she ended a fight that would have ended with another corpse. He watched and listened as the girl looked around, confusion clouding her features as the crowd began to grow agitated, then angry at the person who dared interrupt their show. He watched as a man came forth from the crowd, settling into a fighting stance. The girl looking around though the half-closed eyes that never seemed to open, looking for a way out when the man slammed his shoulder into her side slamming her into one of the tipped tables.
He looked away as the girl slumped to the floor, expecting that the fight was over. As he started to walk away he felt a swift flash of an incredibly strong power and he whirled back to the fighters just as the man hurled himself at the now standing girl. She lashed up, and reversed the man’s momentum, hurling him into the tables. Her opponent lay on the floor, groveling, as she glided over. A slow smile spread across her too thin, dirty face. A smile that sent his back into small spasms of fear. She reached into one of the pockets closer to her hand and withdrew a knife. She was pulling her hand back, preparing to throw, when the smile disappeared and fear flashed across her face.
She hurtled over the table and ran past him on her way toward the door. He viewed various consequences in the several seconds it took her to close the gap between her and the few feet of saw dusted floor near the door. As she passed him he put his fist out and cloths lined her in the stomach. Her feet left the floor as her momentum carried her body further than his fist. She peeled off his fist and hit the floor; not feeling her body hit the floor.
The crowd of drunks gathered round them as he picked her up in a fireman’s carry. “When did you get back GoldenEye?” one of them asked. “We can always count on you to cut our fun short,” another added, and several voices murmured fervently in agreement. The one called GoldenEye simply smiled and said, as he pulled golden coins from a pocket with his free hand, “I just came in before your fun began, and now I would like to buy a round of drinks for everyone to apologize for your loss of fun.” He laid the coins down on the nearest table, barely avoiding bashing the girl’s head into the wall as he turned and walked out the door.
As he walked away from the crowded pub he wondered about the strange burst of power he had felt radiate from the girl when she should have been out cold. He wondered about the eyes that never seemed to open fully. But most of all he wondered if she was the one who…

The Greatest Fear 3

She walked along a looking at the beaten path that ran through an ocean of swaying waist-high grass, looking up occasionally at the darkening horizon. Once or twice she saw a hawk wheeling across the sky, or maybe it was a vulture waiting for something to die. She kept walking staring at the path looking up occasionally, until the path came to end in a small town filled with small wooden buildings and people that stopped for a few seconds and stared at the stranger in their midst before going back to what had occupied them before her. She looked up and headed towards the biggest building, opening the door when she reached it.
The people inside looked up from their talks and drinks as the door opened and shut behind her. Heading towards the darkest corner furthest from any other table she looked at the people staring at her through the corners of her eyes; registering that almost all of them had swords belted to their waists, that their hands were heavily callused and scarred from years of sword work, and that several of them were having a hard time sitting up straight. As she reached the table, pulled the chair out, sat down, and pressed her aching head onto her crossed arms, closing her eyes as she did so, she could feel their eyes sizing her up the same way she had them.
Something pressed uncomfortably into her thigh from her pocket. She pulled one arm out from underneath the other and slipped it into her pocket without moving her head from its comfortable position on her other arm. Her hand surfaced with several round and oval metal shapes, which, she saw when she lifted her head and opened her eyes, were of varying colors and sizes.
She looked around at the other tables, chin resting on her re-crossed arms, eyes half-closed effectively hiding them from the others in the room, watching as a man pulled out similar shapes from a pouch on his belt and hand two of the smaller, silvery shapes and give them to a woman who was waiting with a tray of food balanced on one hand while the other was stretched out to receive the metal object the man handed to her. As the hand closed the woman set the food tray down in front of the man. She watched as the woman turned and examined the coins in her hand, a scowl set in her face as she saw them.
The woman walked over to her table, thrusting the two pieces of metal into the pocket of the half-apron that she wore, a scowl still on her face. The woman opened her mouth and said something that she didn’t understand, so she laid three large silver coins down on the table and pointed to what the man was eating noisily from.
The woman looked at her strangely for a few seconds, then scooped the coins off the table and went back to long, scarred, wooden bar and shouted something through a door by the bar. An answering yell sounded from whatever lay beyond, and she lay her head back down on her arms, groaning slightly as the pulsing behind her eyes stepped up a notch.
A hand tapped her shoulder a few minutes later and she heard a thud as something was placed in front of her. Lifting her head once more she saw a tankard full of something or other, which she finished without a second thought in three big gulps. The woman who had taken the metal from her came back this time laden with the tray of food. As soon as the tray was in front of her she wasted no time in cleaning the plates of meat, vegetables, and fruit.
As she was finishing the meal she heard shouts coming from the opposite end of the barroom. When she looked up, a fast disappearing fragment of meat hanging out of her mouth, she saw two men that could barely remain standing reach for their swords. Well… This could be interesting.
As she watched the two men draw their blades and the rest of the patrons either remove themselves from the premises or move the tables back to give the fighters more room, she was reminded once more of the man she had killed on her first night. She watched as the first blood was spilled from the thick forearm of the man who had drawn first. She felt her muscles tense as the blood dripped slowly towards the floor. Her eyes followed each droplet of blood until it hit the floor, then it felt like the world was moving in slow motion.
She stood and walked quickly over, pushing people aside as she went. The two men had their swords locked, each grunting with effort as they tried to push each other back. As she moved through the barricade of tables she saw the man who had been wounded draw a belt knife and smile slowly as he realized that no one had seen the action. She moved quickly now; inside the circle of tables, placing a hand on each man’s chest and shoving as hard as she could, each man falling flat on him ass and passing out from all the alcohol they had consumed.
She looked around at the angry faces of the almost drunk bystanders; not understanding, glancing around thorough hidden eyes. Suddenly they started shouting at her, and a man purposefully strode out of the crowd and settled into a fighter’s stance. An invisible hand gripped her intestines, squeezing until she could barely breathe. She didn’t want to kill again, and she couldn’t remember how to fight. The man on her first memory was a mistake; she didn’t really know how to fight. She looked around quickly, searching for a way out before she was attacked.
Something hit her hard from the side, knocking her from her feet and slamming her into the table barricade. Black dots danced threateningly in front of her eyes and she hurriedly blinked them away. Looking over at the man who had hit her, she felt a burning race through her and she settled into an unconscious fighting stance of her own. Standing straight up, eyes open enough to see but not enough to be seen, fists half clenched at her sides, full weight resting on her left foot, right foot balanced on the toes, staring straight at her opponent without blinking.
A look flitted through his eyes that she couldn’t catch, or understand. As he launched himself at her again she lashed out with her right foot, hitting him in the chest and knocking him to the floor. She felt an insane pride flick through her and she walked lightly, as if on a cloud, over to the disgusting, whimpering man.
She heard a distorted, excited voice speak inside her, sounding like bubbling blood and breaking bone, “Let us finish him! Just this once, just this one!” She pulled a knife from its’ pocket a raised her hand to throw it, a smile on her face that held no trace of humanity. Then suddenly something inside her snapped. She dropped the knife, something crossing her face as she leaped over the barricade of tables and sprinted toward the door. A fist came out of nowhere and hit her hard in the stomach, her body folding in half over the fist as her momentum came to an abrupt halt. Then the blackness came again as the voices roared in her ears.

The Greatest Fear 2

When morning found her she was by a stream, lying where she had fallen from sheer exhaustion. She got up, and began washing the cuts on her arms, legs, and face. The cuts had long since dried and scabbed over. For so much pain the wounds were very shallow, and all that blood couldn’t have come from all of these cuts.
As she scrubbed at the wounds a blue light began to shimmer, flowing from her hands around her body like the water she sat in. She began to panic as it rose above her nose, cutting off her airway for about a second before it flowed back into her hands and out of sight. She looked down into the water, now oddly still, and saw what her face looked like for the first time in her memory.
The eyes captured her attention first, the right iris a constantly changing color of blue with no pupil, and the left a blood-red slit-pupil surrounded by an iris so green it was almost black. Then the snow-white hair that looked as if the ends had been dipped in blood. Small fading scars littered her arms and face. She stood up, water rushing off her baggy black pants that had twenty pockets in various places, and several more hidden ones that held throwing knives judging by the weight. Her shoulders shifted back, feeling the skin of her shoulders moving the soft forest green loose short-sleeved shirt.
The glass and metal beads on the dark red and black string choker clinked as she moved, and the light mithryl chain she used as a belt chinked as she walked away from the stream and her reflection, her bare feet making no noise as she moved through the grass, sun beating down on her back.
Looking down at she saw oddly shaped tattoos forming on the backs of her feet and hands. In a flash she knew what they meant; with the left hand’s symbol as fire, the right hand’s symbol as water, the right foot’s symbol air, and the left foot’s symbol earth. Well that explained the healing at least. She had some elemental magics, and now she wondered what the others could do.

The Greatest Fear 1

She was alone. That was all she knew, even before she opened her eyes. Not where she was, why she was there, or even who she was. All she knew was that there was no one there. She opened her eyes and, without moving her head, looked around. Something inside her was telling her that there was danger for the awake. Firelight flickered in her quickly retracting pupils, the only light in the darkness of the night. Her eyes flicked away and registered that nothing could be seen through the darkness. There didn’t seem to be any danger, but the feeling persisted and so she lay perfectly still, eyes shut to slits, facial muscles relaxed, breathing the slow, deep breaths of one asleep.
As she breathed she noticed a faint metallic odor in the air. It was familiar, like something she had smelled everyday. She heard branches snap as a heavy object came through them. Her eyes moved toward the sound and she saw the reason for the feeling. A huge, heavily muscled man was coming through the brush heading for the fire, hand resting lightly on the hilt of the longsword that hung from his belt.
Her nose twitched, reacting to stench of unwashed human, as well as the metallic scent that grew stronger with each step the stranger took toward her. As he passed by her “sleeping” form she caught sight of the sword glinting in the firelight. It was dripping with a red liquid that she instantly recognized as both blood and the source of the smell. At the sight of the blood pain flared from many wounds on her body, and she bit the inside of her cheek to stop from screaming, and tasted the coppery blood that now flowed freely into her mouth. Her eyes flicked back and forth frantically trying to find a weapon or a way out of this place.
All her eyes saw was the shredded bodies of other people, people that may have been her friends. People that may have been her enemies, but who was to know? The man shifted his weight, and her eyes flicked back towards him. He knelt by a cluster of bodies touching the neck of one then another. Each time he pulled his hand away he shook his head.
As he neared her, a plan formed in her mind, and as he knelt near her she sprang up grabbing the sword on her way up, slicing at his back in one fluid motion as she twirled in midair. He yelled as he went down. She hit the ground on her knees, pulling him over and grabbing fistfuls of his worn leather jacket, shaking him, yelling incoherably, asking him ‘Why?’ over and over again. His replies grew more and more feeble as blood drained slowly out of his back. She kept shaking him until she heard a dull snap as his neck broke and knew he was dead.
She slumped down staring at the corpse next to her in a mild form of shock. She started to tremble and scream, shaking with unborn sobs. It had all been so easy, grabbing the sword, slicing skin to the bone, breaking the man’s neck. It had been so familiar. She looked around at the bodies, twenty in all. She looked down at where she had flung the sword and stared.
There was so little blood on the blade for so much carnage. The man’s words came back to her then. “I didn’t!” “I swear; I just saw the fire!” And at the end, “No, please don’t!” If he hadn’t killed these people than who had. She stood and stumbled away in to the darkness.