Chapter 3 - Revelation
This was a short story I ended up writing after having spent some time roleplaying with the Ember Warband.
In the dim light of a torch, Greva Emberbone looked up from the scroll she had been reading, putting it aside. She looked across the rest of the table, which was covered in a lot of different documents.
What did Reisha expect me to find in all of this?, She sighted before grabbing another scroll and pouring her attention on it. After a couple of minutes she shoved the scroll aside, growling under her breath. I am getting nowhere with this...
She stood up and walked over to a stool standing a couple of feet away. A small pile of heads was lying next to the stool. Sitting down on the stool, she picked up the head of a Grawl, unsheathed her dagger and started carving off the skin. Thanks to the spell she had cast on it, it didn't bleed and didn't smell either. Not that she herself wanted to avoid smelling it. She'd been working with things like this for so long she no longer minded the smell. Others would though, and she'd rather avoid any complications and inquiries.
Once she was finished with the skin, she sheathed the dagger and threw the skin aside into a corner where a few more were lying. She would clean those up in time. Taking the head in both paws now, she closed her eyes and started muttering an incantation. As time progressed, the bits of meat remaining retracted into the skull, seemingly being absorbed into it. The inside of the skull did likewise until at last she merely held just the skull in her paws. With careful observation though, one would notice a reddish layer over the entirety of the it. Looking at her work, she smiled in satisfaction and wondered once more if there might be a way to actually make use of the brain in some way before putting the skull down on the other side of the stool, where two finished skulls were already deposited.
Grabbing the head of a human and unsheathing her dagger again, she started carving the skin off of it as well. Her mind wandered back to those documents on the table that she'd been handed by Reisha. What am I missing? There should be a reason she gave them to me without saying anything...
She quite liked Reisha. Reisha didn't seem to mind her magic overly much and was quite a practical thinker herself, in Greva's judgment. Although, so was most of the other members of the Ember warband. A fact Greva was very happy with. Still, when she'd first seen Reisha, the similarities in their looks had unnerved her slightly.
Had it unnerved Reisha as well at the start? It probably had... She suddenly stopped working on the head, her eyes growing wide. Oh, but of course! Why didn't I think of that sooner! She let the dagger and head fall to the ground and hurried to the table, grabbing several documents and arraying them before her.
Minute on minute went by as Greva searched through the documents, when at last she stood up and put both paws on the table and started laughing. For Khan'ur's sake! No wonder we look so much alike. Reisha... my sister!
She stood there a while, trying to orientate herself with the news. From all the information scattered in those documents, she had finally pieced it all together. Apparently, their parents had been in the same warband, which caused them to stay together even after Reisha was born. Ten years after Reisha's birth, Greva had been born. They were all the way in the lands of the Iron Legion though, and duties required them both to stay there. Going back to the Capital of the Ash Legion and putting Greva in the same Fahrar as Reisha was not a possibility. Instead, when the time came, Greva was put in an Ash Legion Farhar hidden somewhere in Iron Legion territory.
After a long time, she finally stood up from the table and headed back to the stool and continued with the head, thinking how the others would react to this news.