A/N Alright, moving along with Star's life, this is the beginning of the end of that period where she just didn't feel anything and really didn't care about the stupid mortals and their stupid issues. It was a really long, really boring chunk of time where she worked in the background and didn't have a lot of direct contact with the mortals, unless one called to her directly. There's going to be a lot of skipping through this story line, but the big things will be here. Just know that T'reth was her tipping point.
In other news, the world is more medieval, magic again, and the Royalists are the oppressive, wealthy, uh, royalty. T'reth was born Royalist and Ackala was his house slave, but they're just about the same age and they ended up being best friends instead. When they got older Ackala functioned more as a body guard (mostly self-appointed) and his temper made it so that when the day came that a couple of young men from rivaling families ganged up on T'reth when he was alone and Ackala caught them beating the crap out of his best friend he ended up killing one of them. The punishment when a slave kills a Royalist is death, no exceptions. T'reth wouldn't stand for that, though, so he broke Ackala out of the dungeon and the two of them headed for the hills. T'reth was, you might have guessed, a slave sympathizer, and so after a bit of just wandering around they up and decided to lead a revolution with the hopes that T'reth's knowledge and natural leading ability would give them an advantage nobody else had had before them. They were right.
This is a good way into the movement, when they're starting to pick up speed and gain some people and small victories. Gree showed up a while ago, the only survivor of a farming community riot. His people were holding their own for a few days, until the Royalists sent in their sorcerers. He saw things that day that left him half mad for a few years, but he's pretty stable now. T'reth sort of took him in and started teaching him how to lead and appointed him third in command in hopes that he would step up to the responsibility, and he has. Anyway. I think that just about explains it. But look for these backgrounds in the author's notes. I don't have the mental material or patience to get this all down in story form now (maybe later), so you'll just have to take it like this.
UGH moving on to the actual story.
A bell clinked against the door as the three of them entered the tiny, dimly lit shack. The air was thick with incense smoke, and it seemed larger on the inside than it had looked outside. Maybe it was because the shack was stuffed to bursting with odd, curious items; objects made even more mysterious in the flickering oil light that shrouded them in dancing shadows. Gree stifled a cough as Ackala picked a way through the maze. There was an eerily heavy atmosphere in the old dwelling, causing all of them to glance warily into the dark corners and walk quietly, trying to not break the stillness.
"Hello?" Ackala called in an uncharacteristically subdued voice. "Anybody ho—" he abruptly jumped back with a grunt into T'reth as something moved in front of him, and they both teetered off balance for a moment, surrounded by breakable-looking objects with nowhere to go. Gree reached forward to steady them as a small, dark-skinned, heavily bejeweled woman stepped into the lamplight. She was as odd as the things packed into her house, adornments glinting like stars against her black skin in the lamplight. Her deep brown eyes seemed to absorb the same light and returned nothing for its effort and her clothes—or what of them that could be seen beneath her jewelry—were iridescent, shimmering three or four different colors as she moved. She was mesmerizing.
"Um…" Ackala tried to articulate. There were several seconds of awkward silence as the three men stared at the woman and she stared expectantly back.
T'reth cleared his throat, first to recover. "Are you Ӕparra?" He asked, leaning around Ackala to study the strange woman. She certainly looked the part of a mystic.
Her eyes caught his gaze and held him entranced for what felt like a very long moment, pupils rapidly dilating and seeming to pull him away from himself, out into the open where she could see him and inspect what she saw.
"Yes." She blinked and the spell was broken, leaving T'reth feeling slightly light-headed. "I am de one dey call Ӕparra." Her voice was rich and deeper than he would have expected for one her size, and he had never heard an accent like hers before.
"Oh." T'reth shook his head to dispel the last of the hypnotized feeling. "That's good. I'm…"
He trailed off as she sharply lifted a hand to silence him, bracelets clinking and fabric rustling silkily. "I know who you are. And I know who you seek." She made a vague gesture for them to follow and turned to gracefully weave her way through the piles of stuff. Ackala glanced back at T'reth questioningly and he motioned for him to go on.
"I don't like this, T'reth. She creeps me out—this whole place creeps me out." Gree nervously confided. "Are you sure this is safe?"
"Nothing's safe anymore, Gree. That's why we carry these." He patted his sword hilt. "That's why we're here. If even half of what we've heard about this creature is true, then we need her help, and you heard the locals. Ӕparra knows if anybody does." Gree didn't look very reassured, so T'reth paused to put a hand on his shoulder. "Don't worry, friend. If anything happens, the three of us can fight our way out of it." He turned to catch up to Ackala and Gree reluctantly followed.
"Some things can't be killed with steel." He muttered.
They passed through a low doorway with glass beads strung over it, stooping so they wouldn't hit their heads, and entered a brighter, more open but smaller room. There was a low table in the center, placed on a woven mat, that Ӕparra had seated herself behind. "Sit." She gestured at their side of the table and after a moment of hesitation Ackala cautiously complied, crossing his legs and pushing his sword hilt out of the way. He didn't let go once he was seated.
T'reth and Gree quickly followed suite, and then there was a moment of awkward silence. Ӕparra had taken a meditative pose and closed her eyes, still as a statue. She didn't look like she was going to come out of it anytime soon, either. T'reth was just about to say something when she did, opening eyes that were a much lighter color than they had been a moment ago.
"She calls herself Star." Ӕparra stated.
"Yes, we heard that." T'reth nodded. "Can you—"
She lifted her hand commandingly to stop him again. "Do not interrupt." She ordered. T'reth blinked in surprise, but subsided. "She is a being of Light; immortal. Created to balance good and evil. When she find a people to fight for, she is more dangerous than any weapon man can make wid his steel."
The three of them listened closely, intrigued as much by her voice as by the information she was giving them.
"She fight like wild cat, wid untamable fury until her enemy is in her grip, and den she hold dem like snake until der is no life left in dem."
Ackala leaned back, raising his eyebrows. "Well. She sounds like our kind of girl." T'reth would have agreed, but Ӕparra's mood suddenly shifted. Her dark features pinched together and a bronze gleam coated her deep brown iris' in anger.
"No. She is nobody's girl." Her eyes narrowed, but she wasn't glaring at Ackala. She was directing her anger at T'reth. "Her heart was destroyed long ago, she feel nothing now. She help only because she must. Don't think oderwise." Her eyes bored into T'reth as if she wanted to set him on fire.
Ackala was a bit taken aback. "Okay… good to know…"
"Do you, uh, know how we could find her? We really need her help." T'reth tried to change the subject and was relieved when the mystic settled, almost like a porcupine relaxing its quills. But she still had that hard look in her eyes and addressed herself only to T'reth.
"She is difficult to find, sometime here, sometime dere, sometime nowhere."
"You mean you don't know?" Ackala demanded incredulously. "Then what are we even doing here?"
"I am not her master." Ӕparra snapped, glaring and bristling again without taking her eyes from T'reth's. "I cannot tell her where and when to go."
"Patience, Ackala." T'reth murmured, reaching up to put a hand on his friend's shoulder, restraining him. "Please, go on." He encouraged Ӕparra.
"If you wish to find her, you must think her to you. But you must be sure you want her to find you. If she come and decide she do not like you, she may not spare you. If you want her to fight for you, you must show her dat your cause is just and your enemy's not. If you think you can do dat, den you have a chance. If not, den to call her to you would be to die."
Gree shrank down, not liking the sound of this at all. Even Ackala was suddenly a bit unsure.
"Thank you, Ӕparra. Come on, let's go."
Gree was out the door before the words were off T'reth's lips, and Ackala was not far behind.
"T'reth," Ӕparra said softly before he could follow, and he paused to turn back. She was still sitting at the table, and when she looked up at him her eyes had lightened to a golden hazel.
"You must be very careful if you do not wish to die." She warned.
He nodded, and then slipped through the beads after his men.
"And you must be even more careful if you do not wish to destroy her again." She added in a whisper, pulling a large, pure white feather out of the air and setting it on the table. "Child of de Sun."