Nathaniel was surprised at how cordial Plegian citizens could be. Aside from the odd racist comment that Valmese were 'spineless doormats,' they were ordinary people just like you and me and a far cry from the savage beasts portrayed in textbooks. Though he meant what he said three years ago, that not all Plegians were evil, he wasn't sure if they were tolerant or accepting. Perhaps it was true then, that the actions of an extremist cult managed to make other countries paint all Plegians with the same brush.
Now they were living in a small concrete house on the outskirts of town. It was hard getting used to Plegia's hot and dry climate at first, but both he and Ariana quickly adapted. He made a living as a blacksmith, as he already had forging skills, and Ariana managed a small shop selling the crops they grew in the back. But Ariana did not give up on her education even though she couldn't finish school. In her spare time, she would be studying, sometimes until late in the night, and she would have to be prodded to eat or sleep. It was five o'clock, so she was probably at work now, and she was starting to need her father less and less.
Sometimes, what she said on that day three years ago would still bother him. Everything he did was to make sure she was strong enough to handle whatever life could throw at her; he didn't want her to be affected by the smallest things, or allow her emotions to affect her discerning capacity. He wanted her not to be complacent and to work hard, and aspire for greatness. Perhaps he wasn't clear enough about that, perhaps he never really communicated to her on his intentions. That was why she always felt like he hated her, like he saw her as a failure, but in reality it was the exact opposite. He couldn't help but notice that no matter what he did, she never resented him. She got frustrated, but she never blamed him or held a grudge against him, however she would blame herself.
"I have returned, Father."
Nathaniel turned around and saw Ariana with a metal box containing the profits for that day in one hand, and a yellow cylinder on a stick in the other, which he immediately took notice of.
"Oh, this? A… shaved ice cart was passing by the shop and… it only cost five gold, I… I hope you don't mind."
He knew why she was so hesitant, when they were living in Valm, he never allowed her to have sweets, much less spend money for herself.
"You're an adult now, besides, your teeth aren't going to rot from having one lemon ice stick."
She was trying not to smile as she ate the frozen dessert. After finishing it, she washed her hands and looked over Nathaniel's shoulder as he was counting the money in the metal box.
"A thousand gold, add that to my earnings, a thousand five hundred…"
"…And we will have made two thousand five hundred for today."
"Correct."
Ariana then began rummaging through the cupboard for anything they could make for dinner. He didn't know why, but Nathaniel was reminded a day which seemed like a lifetime ago, when his biggest worry was whether she would be able to cope with military school or not. His daughter had grown so much since then, and yet in some ways she was still the same child who thought he could do no wrong.
"Father, we have cheese, sausage, and lettuce, but we are out of bread. I will go to town to buy some."
"Remember, take a tome with you, and be back before dark."
"I will, Father."
He had been telling her to take a tome with her whenever she went out since she was about ten, for her own safety. Though an incident happened only once, and Ariana managed to get out of it, both of them didn't want to take any chances.
But Nathaniel had a bad feeling, as if he knew something would go wrong that day…
It would take about half an hour to go to town by walk, another half an hour in the bazaar, due to being crowded and bustling, and another half an hour to return, she'd be home by six-thirty, about when the sun set. She jogged briskly on the dirt path, she had to run for much longer for many years, so it wasn't that big of a deal for her.
She reached earlier than she expected, in twenty five minutes. The bazaar was just as crowded as ever though. She had to manoeuvre around scores of people to get where she needed, hearing the same chatter she often heard when she came here. She saw men, women, and children running about in a frenzy. She found the stand where flour, bread, and other wheat products were sold, but she had to wait in line. As she waited, she began to listen to the conversations that were going on around her.
"…you've been out of the country for weeks, it's no wonder you're so out of touch with what's going on here. Anyways, two months ago there was this huge coup, and King Leon and his wife and children were all murdered. Now some former street urchin is the king in his place-"
"Hush, hush! There are eyes and ears everywhere, if they heard you speaking ill about the king, who knows what would happen?"
It was old news, King Gangrel had been ruling for two months, but people were still talking about how a family of hardened warriors could be murdered almost single-handedly by Gangrel and his accomplices, rumour had it that he was in cahoots with the Grimleal, but Ariana wasn't so sure how true that was. She was sure however about the fact that things changed since Gangrel came to power. Resources were becoming scarce, as it was a requirement to give seventy percent of your crops, weapons, what have you to the castle. People were getting poorer, and the streets were becoming less and less safe as they were teeming with Gangrel's men. One of his soldiers gave her the eye once, and then started saying things to her so lewd that she couldn't repeat them in mixed company, she responded by using an Elthunder on him, he never bothered her again.
"…these Grimleal, I swear. Master Grima would never preach violence; He would not condone the killing of innocent people in His name. He would most certainly be disgusted with the Grimleal. They are not true Plegians, they bring shame upon our country."
Whoever said that was right, Ariana thought to herself. She didn't know much about the teachings of Grima, but all religions preached goodness by default, so it made no sense to her that a god would ask His followers to be evil. And because of the Grimleal, the Valmese thought that all Plegians like herself were bad.
Finally, she was next in line, and she bought what she needed, and decided to leave. As she made her way out of the bazaar, she got the strangest feeling she was being watched. She turned around, and nobody was there, so she started walking again. Then, from the corner of her eye, she felt like she saw a hooded man in a black cloak. She turned around, and couldn't see him again. She was becoming more and more worried. She didn't want this to be a repeat of the incident with Gangrel's soldier. She got out her Elthunder and began to run as fast as she could, looking behind her on occasion to make sure she lost the hooded man.
She ran until she appeared to have left town, as she was sure the hooded man could not have caught up to her this far. Then she sighed with relief, and continued to walk back home.
"You…"
She jumped, and turned around, the hooded man was right behind her.
"The blood still sleeps… but the aura is strong…"
She wanted to use her tome on this man and run, but she couldn't. This man had some kind of control over her, as no matter how hard she tried, she could not move. She was petrified.
"Yes… the seventh one… it's been nineteen years… but I have finally found you! You are Grima's child… the one…"
He was probably Grimleal and using his Grimleal magic to make sure she did not run away. Maybe he wanted her to join him in his evil cause.
"I don't… I don't…"
The man took off his hood, he most certainly looked Grimleal. He had jagged black hair, a wispy beard and moustache, purplish skin, probably from some kind of accident, and wore the sorcerer's costume. He had eyes like a snake's, and seemed to be staring right through her. Before she knew it, his long bony hand was smoothing her hair, and then caressing her cheek, but something about this touch was far from tender.
She wanted to scream, this man was scaring her, but no matter what she did, she still could not move.
"Oh, worry not, my child. Of course you don't know," his voice sounded beguiling but soothing, as if he was lulling her to sleep, "You will know in time though, trust me. Oh dear… I see… I see something in your eyes… sadness, pain, despair." He placed another hand on her shoulder, and patted her back in a gesture of sympathy.
"You have suffered, my dear girl, it is evident. All you wanted was acceptance, love, affection from others… but until this point, nobody loved you. Not your father, not your fellows, nobody… they all saw you as worthless, spineless, disgusting, and evil. But now that is about to change…"
How did this man know so much about her? For a minute though, she found herself believing his words. It was true, her father scorned her, her classmates and teachers scorned her, but wait… her father knew she was Plegian from the start, and in spite of that, never abandoned her. He said she wasn't evil, he believed in her when nobody else did…
The hooded man was lying to her.
"Join me, Ariana, that is what they call you, isn't it? Well, at least you were aptly named. Join the Grimleal, the place where you belong, and you will be loved… all you must do is give the word…"
She didn't know where the place where she belonged was, but it most certainly wasn't among the Grimleal. She waved her hands, a sign she could move again, and used Elthunder on the man, knocking him over, and she fled the scene. She ran for her very life.
Ariana ran home with the bread, but she was sweating, and terrified, as though she had been chased.
"What happened?"
"Strange… hooded man…" she was panting and shaking.
Nathaniel held out a chair for her, and she walked to it and sat down.
"Stop hyperventilating and tell me!"
"A hooded man was following me, he said that I was Grima's child or something like that, and he wanted me to join the Grimleal, I used my tome on him and ran away."
Nathaniel froze. He remembered during the Valmese Civil War, when Ariana first fought. After killing her first soldier, some of his comrades said that something was wrong with her. Some said her eyes were pitch black, and she began barring her teeth like fangs, and she was almost… growling. When she came back from school and was crying, her eyes became soulless, dull, and she sounded almost as if… as if two people were speaking within her. He noticed a slight change in her demeanour and mannerisms every time she was traumatized or deeply upset. Grima's blood was strong in her, much stronger than he had ever anticipated… maybe she was… no, no she couldn't have been.
"We have to run."
"What?"
"Pack your bags; we need to get out of here. That hooded man might be after you again."
"Do you know him, Father?"
"No… and I don't wish to. Now come on, hurry!"
She ran to her room, grabbed her possessions, which weren't much, and stuffed them in her bag. She ran out, saw her father had also packed his things. They both left their house without looking back, sprinting as fast as they could until they could catch a carriage. Then they stopped, they knew they couldn't just wander aimlessly. They needed to go someplace else, somewhere far from here…
"Yilsse."
"…Father?"
"We'll go to Yilsse, we'll be safer there."
Ariana looked at him, perplexed. In the past, Yilsse wouldn't let outsiders into the country unless they converted, but she heard that a long time ago, most probably when Exalt Rowan ruled, or was it shortly after Exalt Emmeryn took up the throne? She wasn't sure when. She had heard nothing about the law after that. For their sake, she hoped that Exalt Emmeryn was more broad minded than her predecessors.
"But-"
"The law's changed, Ariana. You don't have to start saying prayers to Naga to get in. They'll let you pass as long as you don't worship Grima, which we don't. Now come on, we're wasting time."
He seemed to have read her mind, and they went to the moving carriage closest to them, the horseman said he could take them to the border, but that was about it. They understood, and hopped in, hoping the hooded man would not catch up to them.
They had only been voyaging for six hours, and were sound asleep when a whooshing noise came from behind them, and started to get louder and louder as it reached its target. The carriage was electrocuted, and was now strewn across the road in pieces. They were all injured, but nobody was dead yet. The horseman, obviously terrified by what was going on, ran as fast as he could in the direction back to town.
"That's probably your pursuer. He's probably gaining fast," he looked around, and saw a tree in the clearing with a hole inside that was big enough for her to fit through, that gave him an idea, "Listen to me, see that tree over there, get some leaves, cover yourself with them, and hide in that hole while I take care of this guy."
Ariana couldn't believe what she was hearing. He was telling her not to fight, as though she was incapable of protecting him or herself. Besides, if he was not lucky, he would die fighting for her, she couldn't let that happen.
"No, I'll fight with you, you're not going to face this guy alone-"
"Idiot! It's you that he wants, not me! Listen, if you don't do as I say, both of us will die, now go, GO!"
She ran, and did as she was told, covering herself with leaves and hiding in the tree, trying her best not to show any sign of fear or apprehension. She was tense and alert, making sure her ears were tuned in to the confrontation between her father and the hooded man.
Meanwhile, Nathaniel stood in the middle of the road, and there he was, all dressed in black with snakelike eyes and bony limbs. He felt himself shiver, Ariana had every right to be terrified of this guy.
"Where are you hiding my child?
His child… he called Ariana his child. No, it couldn't have been, she looked nothing like this man, but Nathaniel realized that no matter how much he wanted to deny it, it made sense. Ariana's pursuer was none other than her real father.
"Where is she? Where are you keeping her?"
Nathaniel said nothing, and instead brandished his sword at the man.
"Draw your weapon, or die where you stand."
"Her stupid mother absconded, and somehow she fell into your hands. You were hiding her… you kept her from her purpose this entire time. Because of you, YOU, she refuses to swear her allegiance to me, her own flesh and blood… and instead she heeds the words of filthy Valmese trash!"
"Will you not fight me, coward?"
"You turned her obedience, which is due to me to stubborn harshness… you deserve nothing less than a painful death, DIE!"
He got out a dark tome, and powerful magic came from it, luckily, Nathaniel managed to dodge the spell. He ran towards the sorcerer and thrust his sword at his chest, but the sorcerer dodged it with incredible speed. Before he knew it, the sorcerer was right behind him, and used his dark tome again, the dark lightening grazed him, but he was still standing.
"DIE, DIE, DIE, DIE, DIE, DIE, DIE!"
The sorcerer was screaming and cackling as he shot more spells from his tome, which Nathaniel attempted to dodge, but some of them still hit him, and he felt like a tree that had a spike driven through it to recover its sap. Actually, that was what Nosferatu was. It would strip you of your energy and vitality and give it to the user. Sure enough, the sorcerer was looking a lot stronger.
"I'LL LEAVE YOU DEAD AND BEGGING FOR MERCY!"
Nathaniel was noticeably slower and weaker, though he did manage to drive his sword into the man's ribs, causing quite a bit of blood to come out, the sorcerer was still outdoing him. Then his sword grazed his arm, but it didn't do much damage, in fact, it only made him more furious. He screamed and let out a barrage of spells from his tome, Nathaniel managed to dodge some of them, but most of them hit.
Now he was sprawled on the ground, weak and withered, and the sorcerer had his wounds partially healed. Images began to fly by him, his childhood, his parents' deaths, the battles he fought, the people he met, watching Ariana grow up…
In the past, he would fight for the common good, for the needs of the many… now he was fighting for a personal cause; he was fighting to ensure the safety of the only person he had left in his life.
He'd rather die than lose any more people.
"Die."
He felt as if his life energy was being forcibly taken from him, like a thousand leeches were all over his body, sucking away at his vital fluids. It was a slow and painful death, but after it came endless sleep.
The sorcerer sneered, now he looked revitalized, with all his wounds healed as though he had never gotten into a scrape.
"YOU FOOLISH GIRL! YOU ARE RUNNING AWAY FROM THE VERY REASON FOR YOUR BIRTH! WHEREVER YOU ARE, WHEREVER YOU GO, KNOW THAT I WILL FIND YOU! I WILL FIND YOU AND MAKE SURE YOU UNDERSTAND WHY YOU WERE BORN!"
After yelling those words as loud as he could, he disappeared in a cloud of black.
She made it across the border.
They didn't question her much, surprisingly enough. They didn't even bother to take off her gloves or search her. They just asked for her name, her age, if she was travelling alone, which sadly, she was, but they did ask for which god she prayed to. She wasn't sure what to answer, though she had visited The Mila Tree quite a few times, she didn't really feel any devotion towards Her. The idea that there was a god or goddess who controlled everything just didn't sit well with her. However, to be safe, she answered Mila, and they let her in.
Valm was orderly but dreary, Plegia was colourful but chaotic, and Yilsse…?
Yilsse was prosperous, absurdly prosperous to the point of utopia. Everyone lived in two or even three storey houses, luxury goods were being sold everywhere, children dressed in bright colours, even ones like purple which were normally reserved for royals elsewhere, everyone was happy, all smiles. But there was no such thing as a utopia, Ariana knew about what this place did to other nations, she heard about the atrocities of Exalt Rowan, and of Exalt Alistair before him. Even though Exalt Emmeryn was supposedly better, nothing could change the fact that Yilsse was built on blood money.
There was also another problem in Yilsse that she never had to face in Plegia or Valm. Everyone watched everyone like hawks. If you acted even the smallest bit out of the norm, a man or woman of the cloth would hound you. They would look at you like a brain damaged person or a lost child, talk to you as if you were one of those, and parrot passages from The Book of Naga that were relevant to your deficiencies. Ariana had been hounded several times because she was never seen in Naga temples, and was often urged to 'come out of the darkness and into Naga's light' as they liked to say. Even though they stopped forcing people to adopt their religion, the Yilsseans still held on to the idea that they were superior to all others. Of course, not all Yilsseans were arrogant, but most of the people in the clergy were. It frustrated her, and the reason why she would move from town to town in the first place was so that she could lose these overly persistent people.
They wouldn't just treat her this way for her religion, or lack thereof, either. They would ask what a young girl was doing all alone without a father or husband or whether she had a boyfriend. When they did, she would often grit her teeth. In Valm, gender was no more than an aesthetic and was only brought up in the context of courting, in Plegia a woman would be teased sometimes when she walked on the street, but that was about it. Here, men and women were treated and expected to act differently. She could not even count the number of times she was called, 'poor girl,' 'dear child,' 'sweetheart,' and on occasion 'foolish girl.' They wouldn't even refer to her as a woman, as though she was still a child. Her father almost never acknowledged her gender or called her these condescending names.
She wished her father were here.
When she came out of the tree hollow that day, it was morning, and she was greeted to the withered corpse of her father, a grisly sight. She buried him hastily, and spent half of the day crying over his grave. She felt somewhere deep down that his death was her fault, but she knew that she wouldn't have stood a chance against the hooded man, and she was lucky to be alive. She wanted to take back every ill thing she thought about him, because her father did care about her in his own way, he wouldn't have died for her if he didn't. Even though four months had passed since then, she was still haunted by the loss of the only person who, in his own way, loved her.
Now she was on the outskirts of Southtown, leaning against a peach tree and eating the fruit she picked from it. None of the clergy, or as she liked to call them, the 'moral police,' came to bother her yet, so she thought she was safe for now. She decided to close her eyes and take a small nap…
Betrayer…
She froze. Nobody was there, so who was talking to her?
Betrayed, evil, wrong, unloved, hate, hell, despair…
The voice was raspy, it sounded like a man and a woman was talking. It was piercing her ears, even though she was only hearing it in her head. She felt a searing pain, as though someone had stabbed her through the sides of her head.
They never loved you, they hurt you, and they called you bad…
She was kneeling on the grass, covering her ears.
"Stop! Make it stop!"
DESTROY THEM! DESTROY THEM ALL! DESTROY THEM ALL! DESTROY, DESTROY, DESTROY!
"Stop…"
KILL THEM ALL! KILL THEM ALL! KILL THEM! KILL THEM!
"STOP IT!"
As she screamed, she heard a screeching noise, the last thing she saw before she blacked out was a pair of glowing purple eyes.
