In the Omnipresence of Death

[Xara Solerrius]

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The Wilderness of the Centripaxian Heartlands
Junctior 1st in Era I of the Celestine Mandate
Era XIII Post Fractum
Paradigm: Persecution of the Orcs
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There was blood everywhere.

Xara slowly stumbled across the wooden floor of the cottage, her left hand clutched tightly over the garish wound in her side, crimson vitae streaming through her digits and leaving a trail of smattered blood behind her. A candle burned upon a tiny table in the far corner, its flame flickering wildly and casting deep shadows about the room as it began to gutter out. Rivulets of blood that had collected to form large pools would waver just into view before quickly disappearing yet again, and still her mind refused to accept what her heart already knew to lie in wait.

After what seemed an eternity of agony she reached the entryway to the bedroom, and with a trembling hand she picked up the candle from the table. The entire room was cast in a nearly impenetrable darkness, but as her shaking hand lifted the candle into the air and she took a hesitant step in, its guttering flame proved to be just enough. In the moment before the candle's flame at last died and pitched her world into a smothering void, she had seen what she had so dearly hoped against.

The scent of blood was thick in the room, but Xara had not noticed that. The entire room resembled a macabre painting, crimon hues streaked and spattered all across the walls and floor. Two forms had been crumpled upon the floor just beyond where she stood, their once lively and caring features now twisted into expressions of shock and horror. Her beloved Llorie and Dariath were dead.

Xara slowly crumpled to her knees, the candle tumbling uselessly to the ground as she clutched her head within her hands, and as her slender frame gently rocked back and forth, a small girl's voice called out from the darkness. "Why did we die and you didn't, mommy?"

* * * * *

Xara bolted upright from her bedroll with a choking gasp, and immediately rolled over onto her hands and knees and retched, her entire body convulsing with each heave. After several minutes she collapsed back on top of her bedroll, a sheen of sweat coating her haggard features.

It had been a nightmare, but one that cruelly forced her to revisit that fateful evening with startling clarity. Her daughter's hollow voice still rung within her head, and though she had not actually said that, it did not prevent Xara from nevertheless feeling a pang of guilt. She had failed them in every way possible but one, and it was for that one thing that she had managed to muster strength of will and resolve from some unknown well deep within her core.

She could remember nothing of that evening save for when she had awakened with a near fatal wound, but the fact that she had somehow survived and her family had not was proof enough of her own weakness. She had not managed to protect them, and for that alone would she never be able to forgive herself. Xara could only hope and fervently wish that wherever they were now in the Afterlife, they did not despise her for not joining them.

Xara rolled over onto her side and curled into a ball, grimacing as her still healing wound throbbed painfully. It had taken the entire month of Ioannes for her to heal enough to begin travelling to Natura. She had heard stories from her husband, and she knew there she would be able to find the training she needed to make her goal achievable.

A long journey still stretched before her, but it was there she would seek to learn the art of the blade, and then pay upon whoever slew her family a fate worse than death.

[Xara Solerrius]

Sleeping had been difficult after the nightmare had awakened her, but it had been made nigh impossible once the thunderstorm had rolled in. She was exhausted and sore, and the dark circles beneath her eyes were testament to this. The Medonian had been unable to get a decent night's sleep since the tragedy, and as a result her mood had become to be increasingly dark.

It was midbrightening, though the thick storm clouds that hovered high overhead made it difficult to gauge the exact time. Lightning flashed across the sky in jagged arcs, lighting the landscape about her in a blazing glory before quickly dimming yet again. The rain had, for the moment, slacked off from its torrential downpour, though a steady drizzle still persisted.

Xara was already soaked through and through, and paid the drizzle no mind. Her clothing clung damply to her toned body, and strands of hair that had managed to work free of the leather cord that bound the majority of it back lay plastered against her face and neck. Her knee-high leather boots were coated in a thick layer of mud, and it was obvious from the dark scowl upon her tired features that she was not pleased with her situation.

She had taken the break in the storm as an opportunity to build herself a more suitable shelter, and had spent the last candlemark building a form of lean-to supported on one side by a tree. The Medonian had questioned the wisdom of taking shelter beneath a tree in the middle of a vicious thunderstorm more than once, but it was either that or die of hypothermia.

The rain was once more starting to pick up, but it didn't matter at this point since the shelter only required a few last finishing touches. Xara hurriedly spread leaves and moss out over the rocks she had placed evenly over the ground where she would be laying, using them to elevate her body up off the ground, and the moss and leaves to help trap in the majority of her body heat. It wouldn't exactly be comfortable, but comfort wasn't exactly what she had in mind when she was building the tiny shelter.

Giving the roof a quick look over and a few minor adjustments, Xara then ducked inside, settling herself on the bed of old leaves and moss in a cross-legged position. There was a pile of fist-sized rocks set to the side of the shelter within, and it was with these rocks that she formed a small circle, and then carefully placed what little dry moss and twigs she had managed to collect. She sorely needed a fire if she ever hoped to dry off and survive the chill of the night, and within moments she had a piece of flint and steel in either hand.

Long minutes ticked by as she desperately continued to chip sparks off into the small pile of tinder and moss to no avail, and for the first time in her life she cursed the gods that had so obviously forsaken her.

[Nimh]

The shelter was a rough one and under the pressure of the early Autumn weather, it swayed and buckled as the storm loosened its strong wind gusts. A time or two it seemed that it would fail, the stricks and stripped vegetation crumbling down around, but it held...somehow...though the rain drifted inside to splatter and dampen the exhausted woman as she struggled to warm herself. The sparks fizzled uselessly against leaves and moss that had begun to dampen as the storm howled its fury and whipped rain inside the lean-to.

By now the brightening had pushed well towards the darkening and the thick cloud cover blurred away the moon and the stars. Added with the cover of the trees, the area was uncommonly dismal and the darkness that descended staunched any warmth and comfort that Xara might have otherwise found on a a typical, Autumn brightening.

So Xara could either continue struggling with the tinder, perhaps a hopeless cause given the continued rain splatter and her now wet fire food, or venture out into the storm for some other source of shelter and warmth. Neither options were particularly good: In the first, she would simply sit and suffer as it was...her situation unchanged and her wet clothes freezing her to the bone; In the second, she would at least be moving, but it was a strange and dark forest out there to navigate, no less freezing than in the first option...and continually battered with rain.

A loud boom of thunder tore overhead and moments later light flared through the sky. As the forest brightened, a shadowed figure illuminated in front of the lean-to. It was not that of a human nor even something remotely humanoid, but rather the furry figure of a dog sitting on its haunches. As another flare of lightning and a roll of thunder again spiked the sky with brilliance, the dog was revealed instead to be a wolf, its pink tongue lolling out the side of its mouth, sides heaving in a pant as it stared at the woman. If a wolf could look amused, this was certainly the expression it would wear.

Cold, little two legs? A voice slithered through Xara's head, for it was clear that the wolf didn't speak--no wolf was quite that clever. If you can follow me and show you have the willpower to live, then I will give you warmth.

And then the wolf stood, howled once, long and loud, and spun about on her legs, taking off at a break neck speed into the rain-drenched woods. And suddenly Xara had a third option opened up before: Track the wolf, if she could, and be rewarded with the warmth and comfort she so obviously needed.

[Xara Solerrius]

Cold and miserable, Xara's temper was quickly mounting to a blind rage. The lean-to was proving to be less than sturdy as it slowly swayed beneath the fury of the storm, and she had no doubt in her mind that it would be unable to hold through darkening. The roof had sprung a leak or two in several places, which meant that even if the tiny shelter did manage to remain intact through some whimsical grace of the gods she would still be unable to get dry enough to fight off the threat of hypothermia.

A strong gust of wind howled against the lean-to, and as a new spray of rain ruined what little dry tinder she had left, the Medonian could take no more. Cursing vehemently she swept her leg out and kicked the small pile of tinder and moss she had built up, scattering it to the wind and mercy of the torrential weather. Shoving the flint and steel back into the traveling sack she pulled her cloak more tightly about her shivering frame, peering dismally out into the darkness.

A flash of lightning illuminated the landscape before her, as well as the sitting form of a wolf much to her astonishment. Her right hand immediately flew to the hilt of Everglint, her longsword, though she made no further movement to unsheathe it. Wolves were beautiful creatures to behold, though such thoughts were quick to change to horror once their sharp canines ripped out the jugular.

The woman jerked reflexively in surprise when a voice came creeping into her thoughts, and the small hairs upon the back of her neck stood on end. She had heard tales of such strange occurrences before, though she had always dismissed them as the ravings of the insane. Steel grey eyes narrowed in suspicion as she gazed hard at the shadowed outline of the wolf, half expecting some form of treachery to befall her any moment.

No such thing came to pass, however, and before Xara even knew what was happening she was frantically scrambling out from under her small lean-to, paying no heed to the rain that stung harshly against exposed flesh. There was only the wolf and the dangling hope of survival, and she was not one to waste such an opportunity.

It was nearly impossible to follow after the bounding wolf through the dense woods, and more than once the flash of lightning became her only saving grace from losing the wolf entirely. It was dark, far too dark for any human, and the snarled roots of ancient trees quickly became the bane of her existence as they seemed to appear out of nowhere to rise up and trip her. Low-hanging branches swaying in the stiff breeze clawed harshly at her arms and face, and thin lines of blood were quick to appear and then be rinsed away by the rain.

Slowly but surely she was falling behind the fleeting form of the wolf, but even a wolf with the ability to mind-speak left footprints within the mud.

[Nimh]

Sentinent or not, Xara saw easily enough that the strange wolfish creature had dappled the softened soil with prints the size of the woman's fist. This was perhaps the best possible thing that Xara could ask for; without them, the wolf would have been practically impossible to pursue, her cream-colored image disappearing amongst the dark foliage as Xara scrambled to follow after her. But the night was dark and just begun, the rain heaving down upon the damaged woman with a violence that showed no signs of giving any time soon.

The prints led deep into the woods, easier to see at first, but the further ahead the wolf managed to get, the more time there was between the prints that Xara followed. Rain water began to pool within the prints and in some places the prints skidded as if the wolf had stumbled within the slick mud and the prints were eradict. Still, the prints were visible, if slightly obscured and not entirely difficult to continue after.

And then Xara reached what must have been, on quiet, sunny brightenings, a very small creek with a trickle of water over rocks. The rain that had descended had blossomed the creek into something more...a burbling stream over a slew of rocks that quickly overwhelmed what footprints the wolf had left there. And it would seem that the wolf had not continued straight as she passed through the stream, but must have torn either left or right for the continued path was somewhat hard to see...