Behind me, the noise escalated, the screams of those fighting and the metallic clang of their weapons bouncing down the stone hallways, chasing me to wherever next my fate may lie. While I may physically have left the Ibenon fortress, my mind will forever be etched with incessant memories of excruciating pain and a virulent ruler.
I would hide myself so not to be found by the Uacan, a group of men working for Losero, the ruler who was as distorted as a ruler could possibly be. Imprisoning civilians, forcing them to pay exorbitant taxes with money they didn't have, and murdering those who weren't able to pay was his way of ruling the land. It really was only a matter of time before the villagers revolted. Or tried to, at least.

We, the civilians, the villagers, were losing. Badly. Losero was simply too powerful for us. The agonized screaming I had held witness to was a testament enough of that.
As I finally broke out into the chill of the outside, my breath coming out in cloudy puffs in the frigid fall air, I thought all was over until I heard the voice, ever so familiar. "Aurra . . ." It tapered off. I froze.

"Aurra, come sit with me," the voice said softly. The voice was coming from a doorway set deep into the stonework of the castle, making it difficult to discern the hunched figure from the shadows. As I cautiously moved closer, I noted the small stream of blood running down the stoop, reddening the straw that littered the street.
Never before had I been as frightened as I was in that moment when I fully realized my long-time mentor, Airasenna, was dying. Never before had I seen her weak as she was now, a red stain growing on her torso. Without thinking twice, I pulled my cloak off, gently placed Airasenna on it, and dragged her toward the Woodmead Forest, a short but safe distance away from the castle and violence.

Her wound was terrible, and I could easily see she had little time left, but her mannerisms and disposition certainly had not changed a bit, much to my grim amusement. Airasenna scrutinized me, her bright eyes lingering on my torn clothes and bloody shoulder before speaking. "You shouldn't worry about me. The wisest thing to do now would be to go- as fast and as far away as you can- to a place where the ruler, if there is one, is venerable at the very least and knows how to rule fairly."

I stood there, absorbing what she said, the daunting, dangerous task looming before me. Airasenna took my silence as acquiescence. She closed her eyes, slipping away into a painless, carefree, and substantially less dangerous world. I was too shocked to react, so I just stood there, unbelieving.

I was broken from my reverie by the sound of a branch snapping behind me. I hadn't even turned all the way around when I was pierced by an arrow that may or may not have been poisoned. The shooter, a palace guard, smirked and walked toward me. He roughly pulled the arrow out. Ouch.

"Aurra . . ." I heard my name called a second time, the warmth and compassion lost to the speaker. He smiled down at me tauntingly. "You didn't actually think he'd let you get away, now did you?"

"And to think you could have been saved had you not taken the villager's side . . ." he said, cleaning my blood off his arrow. "Oh well, you know what they say: weed out the weak ones," he stated, his tone grossly indifferent.

"Well, I have better places to be, so . . ." and with a tip of his hat, he strode off into the forest.

As I heard distantly the bells of the village crying out, announcing an emergency much too late, I sighed and slowly felt myself be repudiated from this life.