A Beginning and an End

[part one – survival]

I was very carefully chiselling a piece of cherry-wood, intending to give it to my friend, Rihanna, for his anniversary which was coming up in the turn of the white moon, and I wanted to give him a perfectly carved amulet of Narmiraen, to guard his steps when going onto missions to the outside world… not that he needed it, I mused, but to show him my love, which was always following his steps, wherever he went… he was older than me, but ever since I passed childhood, we were together, him teaching me, me lightening his often shadowy moods, everyone else is saying that we were the perfect companions, the perfect team, and I basked in the light of all that praise for I thought him far better than me… he was away now, but would return soon, I was already anticipating it, the house was all quiet without him, although it was more than usually empty, my father also left, together with most of the household and would not return for some time. In the quiet of the evening I suddenly sensed some disturbance, not quite yet hearing it, but I worked hard on my other senses too, and everyone said that I had been blessed with unusual qualities and destined for much… yes, it was shouting now, sound extremely rarely heard in the house, and screams too, I was alert now and sought someone, but the house was empty, I also run out to join it, whatever it was, picking up a sword on the way out, my place was with the adults now, I thought proudly, for it wasn’t that very long, not with the children any more, who already ran into their hiding place, I just caught their teacher’s worried glance as he shut the secret door behind them, outside was a full melee now, I saw orcs and humans fighting with the servants and the remaining guards, but we were few, very few, too few, I thought as I ran to help them, one guard peeling off the fighting, shouting me to retreat to the house, but I ignored him, my place is here, I wanted to fight, I was young then and naive, and although trained, unfortunately still untried, unhardened by real battle, I cut down some who came at me, and glory started to fill my head already, but then an orc found me from behind with a bludgeon, it should have smashed my head, but a guard collided with him and it deflected the blow a bit, so it only felled me…

I come to in darkness, seeing stars inside and out, so it was night and my head hurt like hell, and I was tied, so they must have won the fight, I saw now the fires around me, and them… I have never before seen humans, nor orcs, so momentarily my curiosity surpassed the pain and the possible consequences of the situation, I was watching them with morbid wonder… I had time from then on to watch them, for we – the few of us who were taken alive – were herded like animals for weeks, until I could hardly move, escape was simply not possible, and after a while it was only automatism that took me from step to step, dimly feeling the sting of their whip sometimes, until we arrived into some kind of a town, a big, mainly human town and in it, a warehouse-like huge building, full of beings of every kind, all chained and tied and bloody and miserable, and suddenly it dawned on me that although we elves had no slaves but other races weren’t that scrupulous, Narmiraen help me, they will sell me and I am to become a slave too, what should I do now, well, I cannot do much, it all depends on them now, I must communicate to them somehow that I was important enough for a ransom or something, but my education sadly lacked the language of humans, I did not understand them and vice versa. I could exchange some words with another elf who was nearby, and who told me that this place was named Pidera, where most of the captives from the outside world ended up to be sold to their new masters. He also told me not to expect any kind of exchange – they were simply not interested in that, what they needed was slaves to kill, to work or to experiment on and nothing more…

We were sold in groups and I was thrown in with other elves, all of us freshly captured but from different parts, they must have hit the elven border in a number of places, and even all the human slaves looked down on us, we were most often whipped or got the food gone bad, jostled and hit and treated with words of which I could not understand the meaning but certainly got the intent, it seemed that this place had even less liking for elves than the rest of the human world, as I heard that our kind is rather envied for long life and our abilities than despised in most human kingdoms, but this one was surely an exception, I had to end up in a place were my best hope is to die as soon as I can, but I shook myself, enough with all that whining, I am an elf, I am a noble daughter of a great house, it is time to behave something like that, I take what is my fate but I do not lie down whimpering like a whipped dog, I can and will escape and go home as soon as I can. It did help curiously, this vow strengthened me and gave me a goal, far as it was but worth fighting or hurting for…

We were taken on yet another journey, and the last part of it we had to walk blindfolded and ears covered, dragged by our bonds, so as not to be able to retrace our steps I guessed, and unceremoniously thrown into a huge cavern where we could see other slaves, bedraggled, covered mainly with scars and some shreds of torn clothing… we were to live there from now on until we die in some way, sleeping on the dirty floor, washing in only buckets of foulish water, cleaning the fighting pits, repairing the equipment - and mainly die by the various weapons that the school’s students were learning to wield and practiced with… They did exercise with each other too, weeding out the weakest ones from their ranks, but we were there too to perfect their skills on, slaves were cheap, worth almost nothing, each day we carried away dozens of bodies from the training fields, sometimes it seemed to me butchery, not training, but after all they were learning to be manhunters, assassins, and they had to be the best, for the school was the most famous in these parts, they for some reason called it Twins, but nobody bothered to explain the curious name. I survived the first few month with sheer luck, as I look back I do not really understand exactly how, as the average lifespan of the slave were certainly less than a month… I have changed much then, from a proud but gentle elf-girl, into a hardened and cynical somebody whose sole goal was to survive and escape… I collected scars on my body and on my mind too, there were times when I thought when the morning came that there is no chance that I can stand, much less go out and fight, defend myself, as we were not really there to fight as equals, the very idea was laughable, we never got decent weapons, just so much so as to have something in my hands, and I had to learn to win even with inferior weapons, against many, against all the odds, but my steel will, my determination carried me through some situations, that I hadn’t even dreamed to win…

I slowly gained some kind of grudging respect, even the school‘s leaders noticing that I survived for far more than any of the other slaves, and I suddenly had some unwelcome attention, as it meant ever more torture, for they did not want to believe that a simple elf, and a female at that could best their pure-blood apprentices, it was too much for their alleged superiority… I got through a pretty difficult time, but still persisted, still survived and the attention subdued somewhat, and though I became almost like a banshee, half crazy most of the time, my stubborn, dogged determination coupled with intellect and my abilities carrying me through the tight situations, and they did notice the stubbornness and tried to kill it in me, trying to break my resolve and backbone with shame and humiliation as well as with brute force… but still I lived and still I dreamt of freedom again, although the exact details of it has already started to disappear, I struggled to remember, to hold on to memories, faces, words, places and ideas… but they meant ever so less, fading into obscurity, not needed for survival, needing precious energy to think of them, my whole being streamlined down into the absolutely essentials, there was no place, no energy, no will for more… until one night lying exhausted on the filthy floor, half-dreaming and half awake I saw Rihanna’s face, sad but calling out to me, and I struggled again, for I understood that it also meant loosing my self, becoming a body which survives but contains nothing, empty of thought, devoid of feelings, memories, and what is the point to survive if it means loosing everything that worth living for…?

And from then on I had to struggle to attain these two goals, to survive and eventually escape and preserving my very self in the meanwhile. It took me years to even concoct something resembling a plan, the hunt, where I was the prey to be captured or killed, helped a lot to get acquainted with the surroundings of the school, but of course I was forced to take the slow poison, of which the antidote was back in the school, carefully portioned, so I could not escape, but still slowly I formulated a plan, that was of course dangerous, but I knew that eventually I had to take the risk, because as the years came, it was harder and harder to survive, I assimilated by then everything that the assassins had to learn, but they wanted to kill me more and more, on every occasion the stakes were higher, the odds against me lower, I was always on the razor’s edge, until I knew that it cannot go far, because I will on some day make a mistake, and it will be the end of me. It was a hunt again next day, I thought, and I have managed to steal some of the antidote the last few times, skimming the dose that I was given, it made me throw up and weakened me, but I got through it, and kept it hidden, hoping that it would be enough, that it would not loose its potency, until I got out of this accursed country, but could not be sure, since I had no idea of its location or what lands surrounded it, I had not ever learned the geography of human lands, and it was now the biggest risk, for the antidote was enough only for a week, tendays at most, and after that if I cannot find a priest or magician, who could neutralize the poison then I was dead.

[to be continued]