Special thanks/Roles:

Dem0nKn1ght - Alex

Kytzune - Tony

AwesomeMo - DM/Rest of the NPCs

Pare A Deim

Lady Victoria was, at a younger age, a creature of immense elegance, beauty and grace. She was schooled in fine dining etiquette, music, prose and all manners of art. Lords and ladies would marvel at her dancing figure at all the royal balls and scholars would journey for days to debate against her keen mind. Men would hang on her every word, spoken as if by a siren of the sea, poised to steal their very hearts.

"ROMAINE, you hedonistic son of a goat whore! You put this demon inside of me! By the Gods, I swear, you will take it out right this instant!"

Alas! Still the same charm as ever! Lord Romaine thought with a smile, and a grimace, as his wife crushed the bones in his hand to a fine powder. The midwife only shrugged at his expression, one she had been witness to twice before, and continued the task before her. "Push my lady," the midwife urged, "it is almost over."

Victoria lay on a bed, covered in sheets of silk and sweat as she shared of her pain, or what she could of it, with her husband. Married the better part of seven years, the man she called Romaine was a noble in every sense of the word. His appearance was as imposing as a peacock among flamingos, with a personality as colorful to match. He always wore the finest silks and jewelry, second only to those he provided for his wife, of course. He always wore a smile that, according to the townsfolk his nobility ruled over, far out valued the very attire he wore it with. He was kind, handsome, and funny, the very traits that drew Victoria to him those many years ago. Just not right at the moment, however.

"Nerull take you Romaine! If you had just kept it in your cod piece that night…"

"As I recall, t'was you that ripped that very cod piece from my being and flung it to the other end of the room." Romaine replied, ever smiling. The pain in his hand renewed with greater force, if that were possible.

"May Ehlonna bung me that your rod never enter me agai…"

"I'll have you not blaspheme under this roof again, if you please." Romaine feigned a frown at his wife. "Or would you prefer to take this little song and show outside? I think it would do you good to go for a walk, personally…and lose some of this weight you've gained since my rod last entered you."

He didn't have a chance to enjoy his crude joke before Victoria's hand swept him beside the ear. Romaine now had to endure two pains throughout this night, and made a mental note to avoid a third.

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"By Pelor, woman, you do make me some beautiful babies." Romaine whispered, holding the newborn beside the mother. Victoria merely smiled at him as she sipped at brandy the midwife gave her to ease the afterbirth pain. "I do my best, dear husband, I do my best." She slurred.

The child could not have been more than 8 pounds, snug in a thick blanket between Romaine's arms. There were traces of fine hair formed on the babe's head, nearly invisible as bright as it was. She'll have her mother's hair. Romaine thought, already looking at his wife's golden wheat tresses. Victoria yawned sleepily, unaware of the comparison her husband scrutinized with widening smile.

"What shall we name her?" He finally posed.

"How about we name her after your grandmother?" She replied.

"You'd have our first daughter hate her father with a passion, woman." Romaine chuckled, "Ermintrude is a horrible sounding name for one as pretty as she will be."

"Of course not!" Victoria retorted. "We'll shorten it; use the name you used to call her."

"Oh, I like that, my love. I do like that very much." They both turned to look at the little one. She, in turn, seemed to raise her head a little as if to better hear what they were to say.

"It's settled, then." Romaine gleamed. "Your name will be…"

Fear.

It was the first thing that registered in Tony's mind when he saw the torches of the coming raiders. Fear was what kept him from alerting the elders of his village, the people, his brothers and sisters at the orphanage….and kept him from warning Lily.

Hide was the second thing that entered his mind as the raiders' horses were heard not thirty paces from the village entrance, where he and his brother, Alex, had been stationed at the village watchtower. The elders believed them to be of age enough to serve their people best by placing the responsibility of the village's safety on these two young men, to prove they could surpass their childish notions and the pranks they played constantly on their superiors. Looking back on that decision and the aftereffect of the raiders actions on his village, his town, he desperately wished the elders hadn't. The raiders' invasion had been a quick one, met with little struggle. The few men the village had were not fully trained in combat and their lifeless bodies now strewn in the village's dirt road showed this. They must have stayed in the bushes at the edge of the forest what must have seemed weeks in Tony's mind when Alex made the first move towards the town.

The raiders were long gone, but Tony remained still as his mind replayed the events over and, nightmarishly, over again. The sounds of screams, whizzing of crossbow bolts through the night air, steel meeting steel, steel then meeting flesh, and the crying. Oh Gods! He thought. The crying had come from everywhere it seemed, but as the last of the raiders' horses withdrew, he realized it was coming from himself. The images remained, fresh still, hours after the battle. No, not battle. This was a massacre. Then Lily! he immediately stood up, still shaking as he did so, Where's Lily?! to join Alex who had already gone ahead to look for survivors. With every passing body he came across, there was a mixture of feelings with no conduit for expression.

These were people he grew up with, people he admired, people that helped him, people he betrayed in his cowardice, and now he could do nothing for them. All the training the town's preacher gave him in the healing arts could not conjure his family, because that's what they were, back from the dead. As he anxiously turned each one over, quickly glancing over their faces, their lifeless eyes returned no shine to comfort him. His shallow breathing lessened with short-lived relief with each body he turned. Lily's not here! He realized. She's not among them! Now his fear grew into something worse. He turned to look at Alex who was standing in front of what was once the orphanage they called home, watching it burn, saying nothing at first. I caused this! Oh Gods, if I only acted when I was meant to, none of this would have happened! Tony knew this sight would remain seared into his mind for the rest of his life, penance for his inactivity when it counted.

His brother broke the silence first. "They took them." Alex said. "Everyone that couldn't fight back, they took with them."

Tony couldn't speak, distraught as he was. For all the good that he was during the battle, he was even more helpless now that it was over. Tears returned again to his eyes, and he did nothing to prevent them.

"B-but…" Tony stammered, still unable to form a complete sentence.

"She's still alive," Alex continued, moving to grab a sword from the body next to him, "and we're getting her back. Arm yourself, we're going after them."

The wind blew through the forest where the two boys followed the caravan tracks on the road, Tony following close behind Alex as they made their way deeper into the darkness. They only took what they needed to survive until making it to the next town, but it took them well over an hour to steel their determinations, to take the first step out of their own. Tony had never been outside of town before, truly outside. The furthest he had ever been from town was the forest clearing behind the orphanage where he used to play with Alex and Lily as children. This was uncharted territory to him and even in his wildest imagination, he had never expected to feel so helpless through it. Armed with a crossbow, a mace he had taken off a raider that was felled during the battle, and the little armor that accompanied the mace, he felt far from the "combat ready" Alex expected of him. He spent his whole life with his nose in books or in prayer, learning from the town priest the ways of magic and healing, he was hardly cut out for anything resembling what he witnessed back in town.

Alex was his polar opposite in this. The young man Tony called "brother" grew up with his hands balled into fists at almost every major turn in his life. Fights broke out frequently at the orphanage and school, and Alex was always involved somehow, whether he had started it or, to Tony's constant dismay, in finishing it. Recently, Tony got better at talking his way out of confrontations before they occurred, but this incident was beyond even his sage reasoning. No, he would not talk his brother out of this one, on the contrary, he was working up his own nerves to help with the task at hand. In his mind, Tony could never match his brother's physical prowess. His strength and build was almost akin to that of a bear with heavy muscle, but where Alex had power and good looks, Tony prided himself on speed and a keen mind.

At first glance, under the baggy clothes he wore, Tony seemed to be scrawny and even gangly for his age as opposed to Alex who liked to roughhouse with some of the local boys after classes. True enough, under his scraggy black hair, he was skinny, but his wiry frame was wrought with muscles of his own. Years of chopping wood, carrying water buckets from the water well to the church, and tending to the town's livestock for allowance had seen to that. Growing up had been awkward for him, always quiet, always alone.

Except for her... he recalled.

Lily had been the only other kind person to Tony besides Alex, growing up. He had given her the cold shoulder at the beginning, thinking it was another prank, spurred on by their classmates to make him look foolish. But as the days passed, Lily's kindness never wavered, almost as if she were genuine about caring for him. He started to fall for her. Then a day came when Lily was being picked on by one of the biggest bullies in the schoolyard. Her rag doll was torn and hanging from the bully's hand, just out of her reach. Tears had blurred her vision and she eventually gave in to pained wails as her toy was too high to reach. Tony acted then unlike as he would when the raiders would come, some years later. Out of instinct, his first reaction was to run at the bully and head butt him in the gut. The rag doll flew from the bully's hand and landed just beyond the clearing of the schoolyard. Tony ran after it, almost forgetting the now angry bully had changed his target and, after recovering, was making towards him. That was when Alex first stepped in the bully's path, blocking him from getting to Tony.

When Tony turned around to see why the girl's crying stopped, he saw Alex doing what Alex does best: winning a fight. The bully ran away, defeated, and then it was Tony's turn to feel like being hit in the stomach. Lily hugged Alex. Lily thanked Alex. Lily kissed Alex on the cheek, for something Tony did. So here it was, the cruel joke he was expecting up until he decided she couldn't be like the rest of them. The term "punch line" was right. He felt his own eyes well up, and turned his head up and himself around to avoid the pull of gravity on the water from his eyes, avoid the grins of the rest of them who no-doubt would laugh at him, again. Suddenly, he bolted, away from the clearing and out into the woods behind it. He was alone again, and he wanted to be utterly so. He stopped behind a tree, whose trunk was split into a well-defined Y shape, and collapsed there, sobbing silently.

Tony looked down into his hand. The doll was still there, half-torn at the arm. He became angry that such a small thing would land him in this situation and was about to throw it out further but stopped when he heard a voice behind him.

"It was you…that saved me..wasn't it?" the little voice panted.

Tony turned to see that Lily had caught up to him and was trying hard to catch her breath after chasing him. Her face was still red from crying and from running, but it now matched his own.

"You have my doll, too…don't you?" she asked hesitantly, "I…would really like it back…if that's alright."

Tony looked down at the doll again, torn as it was, it had a very familiar look to it. The doll's face didn't smile, the black yarn hair was pretty scraggly, and the clothes it wore seemed like they were made for a bigger doll. He gently turned it over to get a better look at the arm and how it was made.

"I…made it myself, and…it's very important to me." Lily stammered in almost a whisper, looking down at the ground and blushing.

Tony looked from her down to the doll in his hand again. There on the doll's back, and in little awkward stitching only a child was capable of, was proof of her words.

ToИy

In his shock, he didn't notice when she came up behind him. She hugged HIM. She thanked HIM. She kissed HIM. And then…his falling for her finally hitting ground…he returned her kiss for longer.