River of Flames

The ground was burning out from beneath her. She ran, scrambling madly, away from her now decimated home, clutching the single remaining aspect of her past to her breast, as the blood pounded in her ears, seeming to mimic the pulsating chaos that rammed her back as she left it behind. The haunting shrieks of the poor unfortunates below her, the ones unable to escape slaughter, echoed mercilessly again and again inside her brain. She tried, but could not block the roar of battle from her ears--a battle her people were obviously losing, and losing badly. But there was still hope. Still a shred of hope for them if…

A sudden explosion burst forth from the tiny cluster of homes behind her, jarring the earth and eliciting a strangled gasp of horror from the girl. Without thinking of the hazardous consequences of what she was doing, the girl whirled around, so fast she had to take care not to stumble and end up rolling down the hill on top of which she was now standing.

Even before she was all the way turned around, the girl's clear blue sapphire eyes were searching the rubble frantically for the source of that unmistakable sound. As she watched in shock, a huge, vicious plume of orange erupted from the center of the village, engulfing the structure in which it began, and the large battalion of enemy soldiers which clamored at the entrance. An entrance, a house that she knew; her own, and inside it, in all her fiery glory, stood Amauri's own mother, the Priestess of the People of the Flame, leader of one of the four religious sects (the Guardians of the Earth, the Warriors of the Wind, the People of the Flame--the one to which the girl belonged--and the Clan of the River--the Clan whose people had become a momentary enemy)…Her mother…dead, burned alive by her own flame, leaving a girl of eighteen and a newborn babe behind.

A terrible wave of cold panic enveloped the girl, draining the color from her face and causing her knees to go numb, as she stood, feeling the hope wither and die within her chest. "NO!" she dimly heard herself cry out in anguish, " Mom! Qualadria!"

Someone below heard her, raised his weapon as though in slow motion, took aim--and fired. Amauri, stunned, saw the huge energy blast leave the shaft of the weapon and soar through the air toward her. Coming back to herself with a crash, Amauri tried to leap aside to avoid being hit. But too late.

It slammed into her right mid-thigh, hard enough so that it knocked her sideways. It took her a second to realize that not only was she on the ground, but the bundle in her arms was screaming. Before rising, however, the girl reached up and fingered the crystalline pendant to make sure that it was undamaged, then--knowing that she could not linger here--she hauled herself up using the tribal staff she held in her right hand, flinching hard when she put weight on her injured leg. Luckily, there was still enough adrenaline suffusing her system to cloud the agony slightly. Groaning, one hand patting the screaming babe at her breast, the other gripping her staff, Amauri set off, dazed, shocked, and tortured by the recent events, hearing the hideous screams again as they followed her, running as well as she could, away from the camp. She thought of nothing but 'Move! Move! Keep going! Move! Must keep going'
She continued walking for days. She didn't know how many, for, after a while, time lost all meaning for Amauri. She just kept moving, stopping only a few scant moments to drink, relieve herself, or feed the baby a bit of the nursing substitute her mother had concocted in anticipation of their escape. For her mother was supposed to have come with her, as they had planned in the weeks following her father's death, after he had been publicly drowned by the Clan of the River for being the Commander of the Fighters of the Flame, the People of the Flame's army. In that plan, she and Amauri were to have escaped with the infant to a set of underground catacombs situated beneath the city, and left to find the Silver Circle, which would take all three away to safety.

But things hadn't worked out that way. The Clan had attacked early, leaving Amauri to run with the baby while her mother distracted the mob of enemy soldiers clamoring at the door, demanding surrender. Rather than give them the satisfaction, Amauri's mother, Mirani, had lit the house on fire using her powers, destroying both it, and the men outside…Amauri stopped following her train of thought at that point--always--before continuing on her aimless trek. She could think, wouldn't allow herself to dwell too long, lest she break down, and fall into a pit from which Amauri didn't think she could drag herself again, no matter what was at stake.

Through the fog of misery and depression that surrounded her, Amauri felt a pang of agony from her ravaged leg. The wound, having gone untreated, was beginning to fester, as it became more and more swollen and hot with each passing hour. Amauri began having difficulty walking, unable to clear her sore head, as her body slowly succumbed to fever. She started to hallucinate, believing herself to be chased by enemy soldiers, or seeing her mother's burnt flesh hovering before her in sickening unreality. Finally, her leg began to throb so painfully that Amauri knew it could no longer be ignored.

Pausing in her staggering gait, the girl glanced down and examined the infected wound. The enemy weapons blast had torn into her leg, slashing a deep, agonizing chunk out of its tender flesh, leaving a grossly swollen, and mutilated gash in its wake. The aching hole was oozing a chalky yellow pus, which was inching its way towards her knee, causing sharp shocks of torture as it slid sluggishly downward.

Working quickly, Amauri took hold of her calf-length leather skirt, dyed--like her short chest-covering-- a light maroon shade, and ripped off a large, horizontal strip that left the space just above her knees bare. Taking the crude piece of cloth, she wrapped it tightly around her thigh and tied it off, a bit too roughly, for she winced hard before continuing on her journey, leg emitting piercing stabs of pain with each forced step.

Moving was so difficult now that sweat ran freely down her flushed face, soaking her short auburn hair and stinging her red-rimmed eyes, which looked sunken, and accented her gaunt features.

She kept going, stumbling forward ceaselessly under the backing sun, quivering with fever and exhaustion until, at last, she heard a disturbance of some sort behind her. Frenzied, she glanced around wildly and turned, raising her right hand, switching her staff to her left, as she called upon the furious power of her birth, the passionate inferno within, and released a brilliant stream of fire from her palm, aiming the deadly weapon of her hand toward an invisible adversary. As the flame flew away from her, she let out a hoarse cry of desperation, praying that the tormenters of her mind would just vanish and stop harassing her.

From the mist of heat and humidity ahead, emerged the massive, looming figures of several boulders grouped together, casting small pools of shadow onto the desert-floor.

To anyone else, they would have seemed a grim reminder of the barren, lifeless surroundings, being the only intrusion upon the horizon for as far as the eye could see, but to the starved, traumatized and fevered girl, they beckoned as a place of soothing refuge, of rest. Almost blinded by pain and illness, Amauri all but crawled towards them as though they were her salvation. She was dimly aware of the weakly squirming infant inside the carrying cloak she had fashioned out of a spare blanket and tied around her neck, but she had reached the end of her endurance, and took no notice. It was now time for her to rest without fear, guarded by the imposing shapes, unmoving, before her, to rest for a while, in the hopes or rising up once more. Little did she know she was being watched…