Sandra's Story: Chapter 4
The 5 years following that arcane experiment were gruelling for Sandra. Nazin's 'gift' to her only caused him to expect and ask more of the young mage. The training was still as difficult as always for the other Adepts under Nazin's care, and three more had died because of it. Death became less of an issue for Sandra, now more a fact of life. Sandra's power had flourished over the years, and she was close to being a master in flame magic, thanks in no small part to the fire elemental that was now bound to her body. Nazin's forces, too, have garnered more power and land, the compound Sandra had lived in for years now a veritable stronghold. Nazin finally put his plan into action not one week ago when he, and his entire army of mercenaries, traveled to the valley of Harkenwold, and its capital city of Harken. Nazin was intelligent about his assault; He had a small business running there which offered mercenary services to the townsfolk and when the rest of the army attacked the city from the outside, the small band of mercenaries crippled the guard and killed the mayor before they even knew they were under attack. Sandra had seen none of this. She was assigned to a flanking unit as the arcane supplement, a unit that was to act as cavalry if the village put up more of a fight than expected. No such fight was put up however, and Sandra soon found herself in the Iron Circle-run village with nothing to do.
As Sandra wandered the village, she felt a small pang of guilt when she saw the haggard faces of the citizens there. Frowning, and thinking about what she really was doing in this village, a sudden shout broke through her introspection. Sandra looked up and saw a low level mercenary quickly approaching, sprinting through the crowds of dejected people.
"Adept!" He shouted again, waving slightly to get her attention.
"Yes, what is it? You realize you don't have to alert the whole village in order to talk to me, right?" Sandra replied, mildly annoyed by the sudden intrusion.
"Well, Nazin sent me to find you. Said he had some work for you to do." The mercenary responded simply.
Sandra nodded and made haste towards the new headquarters of the Iron Circle mercenaries, the Iron Keep. Previously the housing for government and guard work, the Iron Keep was quickly reformed into a military building, reinforced with watchmen, archers, and even the heavy gate was drawn closed. As Sandra waited for the gatekeepers to open the portal just enough for her to squeeze in, Sandra cursed Nazin for closing the gate all the way in a time where no attack was imminent. The man was ambitious, power hungry and neurotic, three mental tendencies one often finds together. The gate finally opened enough for Sandra to slip in, so she entered the Keep proper. Several more guardsman stood at the entrance to the war room, and they nodded and opened the doors at Sandra's approach. The war room was darkly lit, heavily contrasting the bright day outside. Nazin was overlooking a map when Sandra stepped into his presence. He glanced up and met Sandra's eyes.
"Sandra, I'm glad you are here. I need you to perform a simple duty before our next push on the town of Albridge." He said, looking back at the map and furrowing his brow. He often did multiple things at once, and Sandra had no doubt he was formulating a complex battle plan as he spoke to her.
"Alright. What will you have me do?" Sandra replied, brushing some of her wavy red hair from her eyes.
"The outlying farms... here..." Nazin motioned towards pins on the map "...and here have been resisting Iron Circle control despite being under the jurisdiction of this town. Take care of them will you?"
Sandra swallowed nervously. Nazin had never asked her to deal with people before. What did he mean? Was she to intimidate them? Kill them if they didn't comply? None of those options sounded very appealing to Sandra. She still got a knot of guilt whenever she thought of the man she killed all those years ago. Suddenly she realized that Nazin was staring at her, waiting for a response.
"Oh, uh, yes sir, I'll get right on that." Sandra uttered hastily before nodding to her superior and ducking out of the room. Once she was clear of that dark, candle lit room and back into the sunlight of Harken, Sandra shivered, took a deep breath and calmed herself. 'Well I won't kill them, or hurt them. This much I know.' She thought quietly to herself. 'At least this way I can make sure that none of Nazin's forces try anything with the defenceless family.' With that positive thought in mind, Sandra walked down the well trodden dirt road to where the rest of the soldiers were staying. She would need a group to accompany on her, just as a formality.
Sandra grabbed a few recruits for her physical back up. The new recruits seemed the least jaded, and the most morally sane of Nazin's forces, so they suited Sandra perfectly. After collecting her entourage, Sandra set out towards the farmsteads marked on her map. There were only two farms that were resisting Nazin's rule, and Sandra felt a bit sympathetic to their cause. She had no love for her master, either. But she knew that if she could get them to submit peacefully, Nazin wouldn't order them killed or enslaved like her. Nazin didn't ever go out of his way to be a harsh man, he was simply ambitious and regarded the people who he has power over as little more than tools to enact his plans.
She mulled these facts over as she walked the road towards the farms in silence, her entourage following at a slight distance. Snapping out of her thoughts, she glanced around, checking once on the soldiers behind her. They looked about the landscape lazily, wearing light chainmail, their weapons yet in the hilts. The day was beginning to get hot as they pressed on, and Sandra felt the elemental beast bound to her revel in the increased temperature. She fought the urges down. The last thing she needed today was this thing fighting to enact its will, its presence reduced to a slight throbbing in her head. Despite the great heat, Sandra felt little discomfort in her heavy wizarding robes, which had received an upgrade since they started marching as an army. The classic dark red fabric with the iron circle logo weaved into its sleeve and back was still there, but heavy leather pauldrons and bracers added extra protection in this time of war.
Sandra smoothed out some ruffles where the cloth had gathered under the hardened leather, and noticed a barn drift into her vision as they rounded a bend in the road. The farmstead certainly had seen better days. The ground was dry and brown, no fresh produce grew yet, even though it should be the season for it. The farmhouse was run down, and in a state of disrepair, shutters lay on the ground rather than on the windows they were made to cover. Very few animals ran about, and the ones that did looked malnourished and sickly. Sandra sighed once again, knowing that these farmers plight had only just begun.
A threatening sound caused Sandra to spin around quickly, but she realized that it was simply the metal ringing of swords leaving their scabbards. The rookies looked about for any possible dangers, but Sandra knew that they would find none here. This was just a broken family, not an ambush. She would have sensed an ambush coming if it had been one, the only rampant emotion she felt here was hopelessness. Whether that was due to her arcane intuitiveness, or the general melancholy of the place, she could not tell. Turning back to the farmstead, Sandra walked to the door where the family would be staying. She was not looking forward to this.
Knocking three times, Sandra stood back, silently telling the soldiers to stand back and at ease. After a few moments, the door opened a crack.
"What do you want?" A voice asked, laced with more despondency than hostility.
"Hello there, I represent the Iron Circle." Sandra said, trying to find a maternal note, "I need to talk to you for a moment. May I come in?" After she finished speaking, her headache returned in a wave of pain. Fighting back the black, Sandra shook it off, and forced the pain to the back of her mind.
The door remained motionless for a second, then finally swung open. An older man stood in the portal, looking to be 50 years of age. With a flash of memory, Sandra remembered her own father.
'I can't think about this now!' she thought rapidly, and with great difficulty she managed to fight back the stinging nostalgia. The headache throbbed with renewed vigour.
"I suppose so…" the broken man stated, leaning on his walking stick, "What can you take from us, truly?" he added with a dark humour, swinging his arm out at the depressed landscape outside.
Sandra nodded to the man as she stepped inside, and out of the sun. With a wave, she motioned to her entourage to stay outside. They would just complicate matters. Her eyes took a moment to get used to the dark interior, and she found, with a silent cry of grief, that the inside brought back even more memories of her childhood.
The older man passed her, calling back to her, "Come along into the living quarters so we can get this dreadful business finished with."
Sandra went with him, sitting down on a worn chair, one of a semi circle of furniture. The older man sat down opposite her, and sighed wearily. A woman, middle aged as well, appeared in one of the doorways to the back rooms. She said nothing, but her worried look towards her husband said much more than any words could. Sandra painfully recalled her own parents. The throbbing worsened. The older man offered her a glass of water in a stone cup, and Sandra accepted it gladly.
"We should get to the point as quickly as we can. Whatever you want from us, you may take, but the quota we were given by some of your 'soldiers'" he emphasized the last word with biting sarcasm, "is just impossible. My name is Demitri, by the way."
Sandra nodded knowingly. Nazin asked much of those under him. "It's nice to meet you Demitri, my name is Sandra. And I understand that the Iron Circle's demands are taxing and over the top, but the only way you can keep this farm is if you follow it the best you can. If not, they will take you to the work camps, or worse, the militia."
Demitri nodded, her words looked to have no affect on his already slumped demeanour. "If you can extend the deadline, or forgo it for double the output next year, I will be able to meet it. The fields just weren't singing right this year. It's a late bounty, and looking to be slim, to add to it all." He finished, looking at his wife and added. "Check on Cindy, love."
Sandra's head was swimming at this point. The headache was pressing on her skull with so much pressure that it was liable to explode, and her elemental was taking the chance to rampage within her being, spreading his dark will and agenda. The words 'burn' and 'decimate' echoed in her brain, followed by the pure emotion of fire and destruction. Sandra was about to respond when a little girl ran into the room to embrace her father. Sandra met eyes with the little girl and saw defiance, fear, loyalty and a determined courage. She saw herself. Sandra dropped the stone cup to the floor as she lost control of her hands, and began shaking violently. The cup shattered with a loud crash on the ground, but Sandra didn't hear it. Darkness began to overtake her vision, and Demitri got up rapidly, picking up Cindy as he did so. As her vision became completely enveloped in black, she heard some more muffled crashes before it all cut out. All that remained in the black was Sandra and the Elemental. They locked eyes in this ethereal plane, and Sandra felt the normal emotions she sensed emanating from this beast of destruction, with a curious addition; the elemental was smug, gloating to Sandra wordlessly. Sandra screamed when she realized his intentions and ran as quickly as she could towards him, to stop him, grapple with him, something! But as her fingers groped for the flame spirits arm, he exploded, overtaking her entire vision in flame. For once in the long period of being bound to this demon, she felt extremely, unbearably, hot. Then it all winked out as she lost even the ability to think. She did not dream in this perverted slumber, and awoke to a truly hellish scene.
Consciousness came back to Sandra slowly. It was surreal, reality and hallucination mixing together in a muddled way, and Sandra's hearing was the first to re-emerge from the black of unconsciousness. The sounds were, at first, dull and devoid of sense, but they began to become crisp, clear, and woefully evident in their nature. The unbridled roar of fire clashed with Sandra's eardrums, threatening to send her back into the blackness that she came from, but Sandra fought through it to witness the full horror around her. The rest of Sandra's sense came in a jumbled mess, but when she was able to truly make sense of what was happening around her, her breath caught in her throat.
The farm house burned, angrily and hungrily, an intelligent fire razed this house to rubble, the source of which was all too apparent. Sandra immediately began to search for the presence of the elemental within her mind. She found it easily, the beast did not even try to hide or fight as Sandra forced it into the back of her mind. Sandra gleamed a mixed emotion of the sated beast, and the smug peon. The spirit was taunting her, and she tasted bile in her throat. Once she regained full control of her mind once more, she surveyed the damage in full. She stood, hunched and coiled like a predator, her arms curled into dagger like visages, wreathed in flame. Sandra extinguished the flames at once, and looked around, straightening herself as much as her tired body would allow. The remains of the farm house was a blackened and still burning mess, the only thing that stood more than waist height was the remains of a wall far behind where Sandra stood. The flames ravenously eating at the building died off once Sandra's will fell like an anchor, her arms slumping down to her sides. She fell to her knees, ignoring the painful cuts the blackened rocks inflicted upon her. After staying like this for what seemed like hours, Sandra finally felt a presence approach her. She turned.
It was a young recruit, one of the soldiers she brought along for muscle. He looked terrified and nervous to be approaching the Adept, and rightly so, after whatever ungodly acts he had just witnessed at the hands of a demonic elemental. He spoke up after glancing down at his boots, avoiding Sandra's gaze.
"Should I take the family back to the village, Ma'am?" He asked, a noticeable stutter in his voice. "Will you join us, or do you wish to remain here?" He was desperately looking to be away from Sandra. Sandra wondered what manner of beast she turned to when she blacked out. Then, something the recruit said finally got through to Sandra, and she straightened up, turning to face the young soldier.
"Did you say 'take the family'?" Sandra asked, with a forcefulness that caused the young man to take a step back, and swallow before responding.
"Yes Ma'am, the family is ready to be taken back to the village to earn their keep in Nazin's nation."
Sandra looked away from the soldier. 'Good… that means that I didn't… murder them.' She then realized, with a stab of guilt. 'But I did sentence them to the work camps…' Sandra shook her head, willing the horrors away. She would look after them, somehow. The most important thing was that they were alive, and her darker host did not heartlessly end them. Sandra glanced back at the soldier, and realized, with a start, that he was waiting for a send off.
"Right, uhh, take the family with their wagon and go on ahead. I will catch up in a moment." Sandra glanced at the sun."And I will meet you when you make camp. It's far too late to make it to Harken at this point…"
The soldier nodded and quickly retreated, grateful for the chance to be away from the intimidating woman who recently was as aflame as a harvest day bonfire. Grateful for the moment alone, Sandra realized that it seemed like it had been days since she last slept, and a wave of darkness crept into the edges of her vision. Bracing herself on a fence post that no longer completed an entire enclosure due to years of neglect, Sandra shook away the dizziness and nausea. The guilt remained.
'I am slowly going insane. Or losing myself to this monster. As if either outcome would be any different in the slightest. How can I possibly fight this when there isn't a single person I can trust, or even talk to?' Sandra continued this train of thought until the light from the sun had all ebbed away, like a passing tide. In the cover of darkness, like many other thoughts of its kind, a spark, an idea of rebellion formed in Sandra's mind. She would make it up to those she hurt in this crusade, those she… killed… Sandra simply had to find the right time to act.