When Anara awoke several hours later, it was to find Valen staring at her. She sat up, rubbed her eyes and stared back. His gaze was unflinching: cold, distant and very sad. She found the water skin, got up and filled it from a jar on the other side of the barn. She stretched, took a long drink from the jar and then brought the water skin over to Valen. Wordlessly she handed it to him, and he drained it dry. She reached up to feel his forehead. Again he grabbed her wrist. She cocked her head, and he allowed her to touch his forehead. "Your fever's gone," she said, matter of factly. "Let me see your back."
He rolled over onto his stomach, and she removed the bandages. His wounds were much better this morning – no oozing or bad odor was coming from any of them. The scabs looked healthy: not infected. She re-bandaged his wounds and bade him sit up. He did, staring at her all the while.
"Where am I?" Valen said, his voice low and guttural.
"I told you before," Anara sighed, "you're in my barn."
"No, I mean, what plane am I on?" he asked.
"Plane? What do you mean what plane are you on? I have no idea what you're talking about! You're on my farm near the village of Ornilea. That's as best as I can tell you." Anara said tersely.
Valen grunted. "Clueless. Was anyone else around when you found me?" he asked, his eyes intent on her face.
"Not that I saw," she said, meeting his stare with her own. "Can you stand?"
Valen slowly got to his feet, his balance unsure after lying down for so long.
"Put your arm around my shoulders and I'll help you to the house. The barn's supposed to be for the animals." Anara gave him a small smile.
The trip across the yard was done in small increments, as Valen's strength would allow. They walked a few steps and paused while he caught his breath. A few more steps, a pause. The entire time his expression was one of disgust and pain, and it was obvious that the disgust was with himself at his weakness. After an interminably long time, the door to the house was in front of them. Anara kicked it open with her foot and led her guest inside.
"All right, let's get you into the bedroom, and then I'll go fix both of us some decent food. We both need something substantial to eat. I set up a cot in there for you, it should be more comfortable than the stall in the barn." Valen cautiously made his way to the bedroom while Anara watched. Then she turned her back on him and began bustling about the kitchen fixing breakfast.
As soon as the pancakes and eggs were finished, she went back into her bedroom to find Valen sitting on the edge of her bed. He looked at her – his gaze unreadable and distant. "Why are you doing this for me?" he asked, his voice a low growl. "Do you even know what I am?" His blue eyes flashed at her, a hint of anger behind them.
"No, I don't know what you are," she answered honestly. "But I couldn't leave you in the forest to die." Her voice broke on the last sentence. Her lower lip trembled and she took a deep breath to steady herself. "I saw a chance to save you, the way I couldn't…" She began to sob. She ran from the room and sat down by the fire in the living area. She let the tears come. This had been too long in the waiting – her grief. Put off for far too long, it now consumed her. It rolled over her: threatening to drown her in its depths. She cried for her lost love; her lost chance at happiness; her lost dreams. She cried because she couldn't do anything to save the man she'd loved, and she cried because she couldn't change that past even though she'd give anything to have Liam back with her.
After a while, she felt a tentative hand on her shoulder. She looked up at Valen, who had managed to get himself out of the bedroom and into the kitchen. She put her hand over his, wiped her eyes and stood up. "I'm… I'm sorry about that," she said, a tremulous smile playing across her face. "It's just that I…"
"You don't have to apologize," Valen said quietly. His eyes took on a haunted quality. "We all have our pains and personal torments to suffer through." He looked directly into her eyes, his pain speaking to hers.
Anara moved over to the table and helped him sit down. Then she sat across from him and they ate their breakfast silently. It had gone cold over the course of the hour in which she had cried uncontrollably, but neither of them seemed to care, lost as they were in their own thoughts. When they were finished, she cleared the plates and left them sitting on the dry sink. She turned around and looked at Valen. His eyes met hers with a steady gaze. "How are you feeling?" she asked, hands clutched around her stomach.
"I feel like hell," he said, a small chuckle coming from his throat. "But I think I will survive. That healing phial seems to have cured me of the most damaging of my ailments." He looked up at her again, his eyes still cold and hard. "Thank you for all that you've done, but I'm afraid you've only preserved me for more pain."
"What do you mean?" Anara asked in a small voice, crossing the small gap from the sink to the table and sitting down. "How did you come to have so many injuries in the first place?"
Valen looked down at his hands. "I am a slave," he said simply. "My master uses me for fighting. I am his pet," he spit out. "I live only to fight at his whim. He beat me to within an inch of death because I lost the last fight he set up for me. But even though I lost that fight, he still gave me a great deal of latitude within his tower. I have won many fights for him over the past 5 years. With each win, I moved up in the ranks of the other slaves living in that dreadful place. Eventually, I came to have my own rooms, and the freedom to move throughout the tower.
I was biding my time; planning an escape: mapping the tower and any portals into and out of it. Grimash't had a portal to the top layer of the Abyss in the upper floor of his tower. I managed to get to it and I stepped through."
He looked up at her, his eyes brimming with fury, "The plane of infinite portals is a terrible place, and I didn't know my way around very well. I was being chased by other denizens of the Abyss so I stepped blind into the first portal I could find. They are the ones who slashed my back as I fled from them. I was lucky that portal led here, and not somewhere deeper into the Abyss." Valen crossed his arms in front of him, winced, and put them back by his side. He looked out the window into her front yard. "I don't think Grimash't will let me go so easily. He is playing with me. Allowing me a small taste of freedom, so that when he enslaves me again, it will be all the more painful. I am sure he will come for me, but it will take him a while to find me. By then I should be gone."
Anara blinked in confusion. Some of his words made sense. But a great many of his descriptions defied reality. Portals, the abyss, planes – she knew nothing of what he spoke. "I am afraid I don't understand," she said simply. "I don't know what a portal is, or a plane, or the Abyss. I wasn't aware of anyone around here who kept slaves in a tower. You must be from far away." Looking up at Valen, she saw a brief smile play across his face before it was replaced with a scowl.
"A plane is an infinite expanse of existence, centered around some ideological or physical reality. You can't cross a physical distance to travel from one to another, you must travel via portal or some type of planar conduit..." Valen chanced to look up at Anara as he tried to explain what a plane was, and saw that she was just as confused as she was before. "I realize it may be difficult for you to understand, living where you do, but there are other worlds than this. Other creatures inhabit those worlds, and some of those creatures are creatures of ultimate evil, while some are creatures of ultimate good. Plus there are many, many in between: all trying to live their lives and eek out an existence where they are. All these worlds are connected: it is possible to travel from one to another. It's just not easy." A sigh escaped his lips. "I don't think I can explain it any better than that."
"So, you come from another world, not just another village or somewhere even further away?" Anara was trying to make sense of all of this, but she was tired and it was too much to take in all at once.
"Yes, that's right. I am a tiefling: part demon, part human. I grew up in Sigil: city of doors. Sigil is even harder to explain than the planes, but it is a great city balanced on top of the Spire. Many, many types of creatures and peoples live in Sigil. Demons and celestials walk the streets everyday. I was orphaned as a young boy and forced to live on the streets. I avoided being killed or captured for a long time. But Grimash't, a balor, finally managed to snatch me took me to his tower in the Abyss 5 years ago. I have been his slave ever since. Some day I will kill him for it." As he spoke, he became angrier and angrier.
Anara was looking at Valen's face as he talked. She saw him get madder and madder: anger taking over his self control. The color of his eyes went from ice blue to blue tinged with red. She got up out of her chair and backed up against the wall. This man frightened her. He seemed to be made of rage and pain and she didn't know what to do. Valen stood up and walked around the room, his tail lashing and his eyes a dull red. She stood by the wall, trying to avoid his looks when he bothered to glance at her.
"Yes," Valen growled, "Grimash't will come for me. I haven't got the weapons to fight him, so he will capture me and take me back. I will be put back into that prison and be forced to fight in the blood war!" He spit a little as he ranted. Then, faster than she could have thought possible, he crossed the distance between them and wrapped his hands around her neck. "It's your fault, if you had let me die in that forest, there would be nothing for him to take back! I expected to die there and end this suffering!" His eyes were completely red – heat was emanating off his body and he looked like someone possessed.
Anara looked down at him as he lifted her up from the ground. Was she finally going to get her wish for death? Even now she couldn't breathe: her lungs were gasping for air but the hold on her throat was too tight. She felt the blackness coming in around the edges of her vision. If he kept it up, she would pass out soon and it would all be over. Then, as suddenly as he'd gone mad, the red disappeared from his eyes and he lowered her back to the floor. "I'm sorry," he whispered, and then he went into her bedroom and shut the door.