No Prayer for the Dying
Sometimes, Melvara regretted becoming a Darkfriend. Sometimes, perhaps usually, she didn't. It wasn't a matter of loyalty, as she was certainly loyal. But today, she regretted it. It certainly wasn't everyday that a person, servant of the Dark Lord or not, saw a Myrddraal—at least, not a person who lived to tell the tale.
But she had! And a special case he'd been. She'd been alone within her room, enjoying a good book, as it so happened, when he'd appeared from nowhere. Within the time it would take for a man to die, she'd been ready. The One Power had come to her, sweet and crisp and serene. She often reveled in it, the power that the Creator lent to mankind, and then she'd long even greater to taste the superior equivalent that the Dark Lord offered his Chosen. But today had been a different case. As she'd said, it was special. Just as quickly as she'd been filled, she'd been empty. Shielded. She'd thought herself Stilled, as horrid as that thought was and still is, but time was her reliever, as she now held the Source. She held it tightly. Quite tightly; as tightly as one could hold something that held no permanent physical form.
Her heavy hold on the Saidar was completely justified, she felt. It wasn't every day that a Halfman bursts into your room. It wasn't every day that there was a Halman in the Tower, actually. But that had been today. Today, Shaidar Haran had payed her a visit. She'd never heard of the beast, which she was loath to call a man; she now knew, and in so doing, feared him. Shaidar Haran was an exceptional Myrddraal, and she was a rather unexceptional Aes Sedai. The difference had been made quickly and clearly; he'd been swift to dash any illusions she had that he was anything but the Hand of the Dark Lord himself. He'd interrupted her peaceful night with orders. Orders she'd been reluctant to follow, yes, but orders nonetheless. The Dark Lord was not happy with her, it seemed. And so to regain his favour, she was to go on a mission to recover something of great import—a test subject, an early model model, a source of inspiration; the orders were not clear. All she knew was that she was to retrieve a person that would further the cause and make the Soulless more efficient.
That was how she got here, if one overlooked her means of transport. Here being . . . somewhere foreign. Very foreign. Completely beyond her experiences, in fact. She'd almost claim that this land was from the Age of Legends, if it wasn't for the fact that none of the people around her were speaking the Old Tongue, which she was fairly fluent in. No, she was definitely not in any place she could even remotely detect as her own, beyond the fact that she was still able to properly hold the Power. She was using a weave to disguise herself, to blend in with the scenery as best she could, and by the Lord, she was holding the illusion for dear life.
If one didn't neglect her means of transport, they'd know that Shaidar Haran had . . . moved her, perhaps Traveling? Whatever it had been, he'd taken her out to a field that she hadn't recognized and forced her to follow him through some barbarous woodland, where at the heart they found a pillar. This pillar, a 'Portal Stone' he'd called it, was covered in a multitude of strange and curious symbols that she'd felt she should—and eventually would—recognize. The symbols, as she posited that they each stood for something, ranged from simple geometric shapes to bizarre and outlandish facsimiles of creatures she recognized from the discriptions she'd heard of Seanchan war-beasts. Today had not been the day, though, to study these glyphs. Today had been the day that Shaidar Haran forced the Power back into her. At that moment, he'd, in some way or another that she didn't care to dwell on, forced her to focus onto the pillar. Saidar rushed from her in volumes she'd never wished to wield before, bringing pleasure and pain in equal bouts, and converged onto the a specific glyph. The glyph, she'd found with her vastly improved senses, was in the mysterious shape of a hair bun. She didn't have long to examine it though, as within the minute she was gone elsewhere.
Melvara Sedai, as she often used her title in third person, awakened to find that she was next to another pillar, this one slightly smaller, in the mid of another thicket. Once she'd trudged her way out into what she surmised to be a park of some sort, she righted herself and made for the exit under the cover of her poorly held illusion. She had to use Compulsion on several of the civilians that saw through the gaps in her Mirror of Mists, but that wasn't terribly important in the scheme of things. Upon reaching the exit, she turned to examine the sign and discovered that she had just left Kojo Park. Further examining of her surroundings told her that she was in Takoaka, Japan. That was all terribly baffling, as she could read this jumbled foreign script, but she could neither make heads nor tales of what the people around her were saying. That wasn't particularly important either, though, as she knew where she was headed. It seemed that coming here hadn't been the only thing Shaidar Haran forced on her—he'd instilled a purpose into her soul, one that she knew that she must pursue, and so she did.
She certainly had a purpose, a location she needed to reach, but it seemed that Pattern chose to deny her an easy ride. Her innate sense of where she needed to be did not account for the fact that she would be dropped in the largest city she'd ever seen. She could feel a tug, a direction that she needed to go, the only problem was that that direction was directly through several large buildings. She definitely didn't want to draw any undue attention to herself by attempting to blast her way through them, and so her search was confounded. There were maps of the city everywhere she looked, but they didn't help her much when she didn't know her desired destination particularly well. At this distance, it indicated a . . . the maps used kilometers, so a quarter kilometer radius with which she needed to be, but she couldn't quite put a better estimate on the location of her quarry.
Her problem was solved, however, when she was bumped into by what appeared to be a young couple. She'd apologized out of habit, losing her focus and becoming visibly herself, and no longer the young Japanese woman she'd been masquerading as. She'd been about to resume the Power and Compulse the couple when, to her surprise, they responded in kind. Whilst she'd expected a rudimentary apology or response from someone who'd just bumped into what appeared to be empty space, she'd instead received a response to what she'd said—in the Old Tongue, as she'd spoken. That had not been expected, certainly. So, instead of ruining these people's minds, she decided it would be best to solicit them for directions. She could always use Compulsion if that failed.
"Ah, yes, sorry about that again," she said, finishing the perfunctories politeness called for, "I'm afraid I'm a bit lost."
"Yes, far from home, then?" the female asked. She oddly had hair the colour of . . . grass, the Japanese seemed to have a taste for unnatural dyes. She also oddly appeared to already know the answer before she replied—they both did, in fact.
"Yes, well, . . . yes. I'm looking to be about," she stretched out the last syllable as she pointed to the middle of where she felt she must go on the a nearby map, "there. You wouldn't happen to be able to give directions would you?"
"I don't see why not," the male answered. He had much more mundane hair, though his choice of dates surely belied an odd taste in hair just as easily as if it were his own that was coloured. He seemed delightfully bored, with bored eyes peeking out boredly from his boring, if delightful, black locks. Perhaps he saw helping her as an escape from his tedium.
And so, with the help of the odd, quiet, slightly enigmatic couple, she found her way to the centre of where she'd hoped to be. They'd asked no questions, answered none of hers, and departed upon arrival, but she didn't complain. Nor did she think upon why anybody here would know the Old Tongue. Instead, she followed her instincts, as the day was almost gone. It had been morning when she'd arrived, she hoped to depart before nightfall. If she did her job well, perhaps the Dark Lord would bless her with a taste of His power, but first she'd have to find this proto-Grey Man.
Said proto-Grey Man was apparently not far away, as her 'distilled' sense of where she should find her took Melvara on a relatively short walk. 'Akaza' the placard on the house announced. Melvara was in no mood to wait around when no one responded to her knocking at the gate, so she melted it. She was on a smaller side street, no one would notice until she was long gone. She did much the same to the door of the house, barging in through the empty door frame to be greeted by a silent home. Silent, empty. Her quarry was here, but she couldn't see her. She must have been heard coming in.
There was a clutter in the kitchen, just to her right. A large knife that had been resting in the sink water was gone without a trace.
With her Saidar enhanced hearing, Melvara heard a drip from across the house. She assumed it was the sink water slicking off of the missing knife.
Drip. Drip. "Another one of you?" Melvara heard a whisper from the kitchen, but when she turned to look, nothing was to be found.
Drip. "I don't want to go back to your fiery mountain," the whisper called again, this time from the other side of the room. When Melvara turned again, all she could detect was a drip-sized puddle.
Drip. Drip. "They did horrible things to me, you know." This time it came from the foyer. Melvara could have sworn that she saw a girl with buns in her hair, just like on the pillar, but her gaze just slid right past where she thought she was.
Drip. "And then they just set me back home . . ., but they taught me so much. " Right behind her. Melvara could feel the breath on her neck. She spun to look behind her.
Drip. Drip. "Akkari~n!" Such a harsh whisper, to come from nowhere that Melvara could see. But she could definitely feel the knife as it entered her heart. "Akkari~n! Akkari~n! Akkari~n!" In and out the knife surged with each repetition, bleeding out her strength with each tug. The drips from her heart mingled with those of the sink water, creating a flood that puddled at her feet. "Akkari~n! Akkari~n! Akkari~n!"
"Akkari~n!" her assailant barked out one last time before letting her fall to the floor and bursting into laughter. "I've no more soul to study, Aes Sedai! Shayol Ghul won't be dragging me back! Aha ha ha ha ha ha . . ." The laughter continued long after Melvara died, but to her it seemed to fade slowly.
ODD#I(e)/5,iii;40Bcy3178