The haunting shriek wouldn't die down. The sound of men and women suffering immeasurable pain. Fire was everywhere, and all Sinika could hear nothing but the shrieking of the dying, and the crackling of thatch and timber blazing amidst the rubble of an entire landscape of houses spanning over the horizon. She was more blind than ever. She didn't know what had led her to that moment. That moment where all she could hear was death and fire. She clenched her fists, her fingernails drawing blood from her palms, and clenched her eyes shut as tight as she could, as if that could suppress the vision before her. But even as she put her bloodied palms to her ears, she could still hear it... the death... and then a voice. She quickly pulled her hands away from her ears to try and pick it out. A survivor? She didn't know. It was familiar... but it was hard to know for sure, as it was strained and rhaspy as if from someone near death, but it was not wailing and shrieking like the souls caught in the blaze.
"You... look just like her..." the voice wheezed over the fire... though as she listened to it, the sound of the fire became a dull whisper in her peripheral hearing, and the shrieks of the dying all but vanished, granting the living the floor to speak from. "She looked just like you..." it said weakly. It was so familiar. She held her hands out to try and feel her way through the heat waves. Soon, her outstretched palms felt slightly cooler air, and she followed it. There was a path through the fire, and it led toward this haunting apparition. "She never... would have done this... Never..." the voice whispered out, becoming more quiet, and yet more distinct.
"Who?" Sinika called out to the voice. By now, all the sounds of the fire were gone... there was nothing but silence and the voice. It was male. She was sure of that now. She listened harder. It sounded so close. She outstretched her fingers, half expecting them to meet the face of the speaker himself. "Who do I look like?" She asked, though moments afterwards, she realized her poor prioritization. "Who are you?" Suddenly, without any warning, she felt a hand go to her forehead, as if to brush the hair away from her eyes. She felt exposed as fingers traced down around her brow the the splash scar that covered half her face.
"But you can't be her..." the voice, now whispering in her ear, said with a tinge of sadness. "She... never... would have come back..." he continued, not heeding her question, but as the words pierced the silence, she knew.
"Yu-Yian!" she exclaimed in surprise. Suddenly reaching up, she attempted to grab the arm that bore the hand that caressed her scar, but just like that, the sound of fire and death washed back in, and the arm was no longer there. She couldn't make out the sound of Yu-Yian's voice anymore. Not a grunt or moan or gasp. Again, she was blindly feeling her way through fire. She could feel the dainty hairs running down her arms vaporizing in the heat, and began to wonder how she hadn't turned into a bloodied mass of ruptured blisters in this heat. Suddenly, she felt her hand tough against a glassy surface, still warm obsidian. Clean and polished. As she held her palm to the surprisingly cool surface, she heard a roar, and suddenly the surface cracked. As her hands stayed against the surface, she could feel it flex outward, and she felt heat emanating through the cracks. A hot wind blew over her, and then she remembered. In that instant, she became overwhelmed with terror unlike anything she could remember having felt before. She yanked her hand off the flexing glass and stumbled back into the flames. She didn't heed the embers her hands found purchase on. She didn't care. She opened her mouth to scream, and in that instant, she felt the fangs sink into her chest.
It took Dewnia half an hour to calm down the huntress. Her short hair was soaking wet and her face was cold. The first thing she was lucid enough to feel was the sweat and water soaking down her back under her thin leather armor. She opened her eyes in that old habitual way as her ears took in the surroundings. Dewnia was more than patient with her. Sinika slowly pieced together the jumble of sounds coming in. There were two people in the room with her. She must have been taken into a back room of the Crested Kirin. She brought her hand up to feel the scar on her own face and offered a strained chuckle, which sounded mere steps from hysteria.
"That's the last time I drink Loc Lac Ale..." she said, her voice cracking as she strained to put up a front of control. A hand went to her wrist where her hand still pressed against her splash scar.
"You scared us all. I mean... I was worried when you passed out, but you made half my customers jump out of their skins when you started screaming. What kind of dream makes a girl do that?" Dewnia nervously inquired. The second person in the room spoke up then.
"We all have our fears. Our private Hells hide behind our eyelids just waiting for us to close them." Noran's aloof insight was very welcome in that moment. It reminded her in an instant just who she was. Suddenly anchored back in her hard-earned persona, she smiled.
"I need to remember to keep my eyes open, so to speak..." she mused. Noran let out a low chuckle. Not the guffaw she had hoped he might break the tension with, but it would have to do. Dewnia shook her head, unseen to the drenched huntress sitting back in those cramped quarters. "Whose idea was it to get drunk anyways?"
Dewnia cleared her throat and answered uneasily. "You kinda insisted on it, Miss..." Sinika shook her head. She should have known better. But she had no idea such intense fear was inside her.
"Well do me a favor. Next time I insist on getting drunk, use a placebo. Just don't let me touch the strong stuff. Flavor some water if you have to," she said, giving a genuine laugh. Noran smiled. He had chosen his client carefully. Seeing this side of her affirmed his pride in her. He patted her on the back and she could hear his boots creak as he rose to a standing position over her. It was only then that she realized she was propped up against a wall on the floor. It had taken her some time to even be fully aware of her body beyond her hands and face. She held up a hand in a silent request to be helped up, and soon felt the hard and cracked hands of Noran jerking her unceremoniously to her feet. She held her hand braced to his for a moment and then released it, brushing her fingers through her wet hair. Noran's creaking leather boots could be heard taking a step back from her, and she offered her bravest smile in his direction. "I hope this didn't make your job harder..." she chuckled. Noran, again inconsiderate of her affliction, shook his head, but soon added words to his unseen gesture.
"Nah. I'm sure a few rumors will start, but none of it will amount to bad publicity. If anything, this show of human vice may have been just what people were looking for. You know... everybody knows your usual here. Some people who don't know you know you for being the tenten girl. It's next only to being a teetotaler. Trust me. You'll get some exciting hunts out of this. I know these types. The more you appear to be a stereotypical hunter, the more comfortable people will be with recruiting you. You can start being more 'elite' later." Noran said, ending off with a brief and warm chuckle.
"Wyverians aren't known for being stumbling drunks," she chastized him. "I don't see how that fits a stereotype."
"Wyverians are also not known for being Hunters," Noran returned. "Just play the human for now."
Just play the human. She rolled that around in her head and smiled. "Well either way, I'm not going to get drunk stupid again. If Dewnia has to serve me dyed tenten in a pint stein, I'd prefer that to 'closing my eyes' like that again." Noran nodded approval, giving a stern look at Dewnia implying she do exactly that. Dewnia shook her head, wanting to wash hands of all this Hunter politics, but unlike Noran, gave Sinika the words to follow.
"Of course, Miss. I'll make sure to handle that," the barmaid assured her. "In the meantime, let's get you into some dry clothes. Noran had to baptize you in half a tub of washwater to get you to snap out of the screaming. I have some of my own clothes that might suit you so you don't have to head home in soaked leather." Sinika smiled kindly in appreciation, but soon heard Noran speak up.
"Just make sure it's not something dainty. Not so early into her new reputation."