Brutalis

WAR comes to Kemena, part 2

The man strides angrily past the many guards of the sweltering compound into a burnt-red chamber of the fortress half as old as time. It is time for her to be given another dose but right now he needs her awake and at least partly able to talk. He lifts the slight body of the young woman in blue, growling into her face as her fugged mind and eyes try to focus on his mohawk.
I have something I need you to do woman.
Blinking and mumbling, the only clear words she gets out are Rel.
Oh, you're about to talk to him, my dear. He slaps her hard across the face. Dagger point under her chin to quell her struggles.

-sharp-

A Journey South...

Wulfran raised his hand in greeting, as his dapple grey mare cantered east past Karone's post, glad he was far enough off to be spared verbal greetings. He needed the time alone. He liked Karone and had almost choked on his ale when she called Vhaelon, petty dictator that he was revealing himself to be, "Centurion Blondie" and the expression frozen on the officer's face was priceless. The smile that was starting at the memory died as he remembered the immediate aftermath, the punishment issued for a tavern house jest, the insistence on southern frivolities in a room full of off duty Cimmerian mercs. No, these weren't flower wearing Aquilonian dandies, with their shiny buttons and pretty parade maneuvers; these were killers from the cold, harsh Northlands. These were the reavers that still gave northern Aquilonians nightmares when the name Venarium was whispered.

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The Oathbreaker

Most of the small village was abed with those few who had reason to be up having long since taken refuge from the unrelenting downpour in either the tavern or the more sheltered places away from the square.

The rider passed through the gate without a challenge from the sentry, the horse plodding in a tired way, head lowered and its hide covered in mud. Upon the rider too, the mud of a hundred miles clung, cloak slicked to the rump of her mount and heavily armored form sheeting tiny rivers of water that must have long penetrated through to her skin. Her head was bare and sleek from the rain and the skin of her face was a deathly white. The guard recognized the tattered tabard she wore naming her a soldier of the King’s Guard, but the look in her eyes made him step back and consider calling an alarm.

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A Cimmerian Bride

Memories had come back to her bit by bit as time passed. She remembered the fierce joy of running wild in the fields, spoilt and indulged by her parents. She recalled her father laughingly calling her his ‘little barbarian’ as he would swing her up to his shoulder to ride there safe and secure, her tiny feet dangling and stained green by the grass of the meadow. She remembered being safe and secure, and how she had been so certain nothing could go wrong with her papa to watch over her. She remembered being loved.

So many beautiful images newly revealed to her mind as she grew stronger, yet none of them could compare to the bliss she knew in her recent days. Yet even more intoxicating were the nights…

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Love and Tradition

The confines of the candle lit study muffled the soft curse. The flames in the fireplace flared briefly as yet another expensive parchment fed the orange blaze, and shadow swirled with light through the room and along the slender form of the woman seated at a nearby desk. She was scowling, her smooth brow creased as she eyed a clean sheet yet unblemished on her desktop.

Sensitive command documents from the King and her superior officers in the High Guard were pushed aside, rolled maps partially unfurled on the ground around her and she stared fiercely at the blank paper.

Though her armor and sword were set aside elsewhere and she was clad in a simple shift, her expression was touched with the resolve and fierceness that an enemy on the field would recognize. And this focus was directed to the simple sheet of parchment before her….

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