She was no longer a young woman far from it, very far from it, the many thousand man pins embedded on every limb and surface of skin granted her a (semi) youthful appearance but she wouldn't kid herself, being almost 60 years old after all.
Granted, being this age meant witnessing many things, with age comes wisdom, although, the whistle she bore around her neck plainly gave much more wisdom she believed.
She spent life struggling and fighting and still wouldn't come out of retirement, she had a rough childhood, then she had become a delver, with that comes hundreds of delves down into the abyss seeing people die in a myriad of ways really impacted the psychology, not that she cared anyways, everything was perfectly fine by her standards, better than ever, she had seen people ripped apart, splattered on the ground, sucked dry of their blood and eaten alive, none of it bothered her in the slightest, she lived a treacherous life, fighting with other delvers and finally finding somewhere to settle down and take a break, yet that man, bondrewd had to come through one last time and bother her underlings so she had to forcefully expulse him from the premises, only the abyss itself knew what type of sick experiment the man would be up to down in his so called "home", she cared not for him, as long as he would stay down there.
Then she met lyza, at first she hated the girls guts, but after constant badgering and pestering from the girl she accepted her fate of having to teach the girl, at the time she saw it as a burden, but lyza was the draft of fresh air that gave life to her two tone world, seeing color instead of black and white. Then that bastard torka came, and wrenched lyza away from her, her daughter, and only person she will ever love in that manner in her life, taken by some petty, weak, short, pathetic excuse for a man, and for what? Lyza said she saw kindness in him, but what is kindness in a profession that requires the exact opposite to deal with the opposition, hostile delvers and an even more hostile environment, hell, even bondrewd would be leagues ahead of torka on anything, because aside from the man's insanity, he was extremely cunning, cruel, and had serious firepower at his disposal, with vast amounts knowledge on how to use those things he possessed , it would be named a kindness that torka left the world instead of staying in it, a bigger kindness would be him to be killed by bondrewd, all dreams now however. The man was long dead.
So good riddance, Ozen had seen many things, save something akin to this.
She heard his voice first, panicked and hurt, the man, or should she say adolescent, was climbing up the side the tree like a damn inbyo, her first thought woukd be that the person is some would be assassin, but that would be sloppy, no assassin worth his salt would alert their prey of its presence.
The boy dragged himself onto the window Giving out an exhilarated whoop of joy laughed hysterically, ozen blinked slowly at this, this one was on his last legs before something broke.
Further observing the insane boy she noted the boy's extremely ragged appearance, tufts of hair missing, shirt barely hanging on his torso, trousers ripped exposing his shins and thighs. Blood, caked dirt and moss, predominantly on his arms, carnivorous moss at that, ozen thought gleefully.
The boy turned towards the window, unaware of her presence, pulled back a bloody fist, and with a roar, struck the 1 inch thick glass shattering it, this gave her a pause, she would have her group check every piece of glass of the camp shortly.
Continuing his break in the boy squeezed himself through the now newly created entrance lacerating himself further, murmured some gibberish, vomited then promptly landed unconscious on the pile of glass and fluid, inflicting further injuries and increased blood loss, she could almost observe death cradling his soul, he would die soon. But that's no good, she had questions for the boy, as irrelevant as he might seem.
--
It seemed like a cloud wrapped around him, had he perished? No, he could still feel all the aches and tingles of wounds being repaired by the body, definitely still alive then.
Entertaining the thought that maybe he wouldn't feel pain if he died he stayed half conscious for as long as his mind permitted.
Suddenly gasping, he lurched forward roughly scraping his wrists on a pair of shackles attached to the wall behind the glorious bed homing him.
Where was he? Well obviously in the seeker camp, right? Where had the shackles come from, he hadn't committed any crimes, right? Well, aside from raiding a government facility.
However those were special circumstances they would without a doubt understand, right... yes, all that needed to be done was an explanation of his predicament! moreover, he would be sent on the merry way up with the next group of delvers returning to civilization.
For now though, the bed sung a sweet melody, a melody which he gladly succumbed to.
Or at least that would have been the case, had the that would have been the case, had the door not blown open, smashing the adjacent wall with a sonorous boom.
The door wasn't the only loud thing though, breckan could feel his heart popping in his chest as the adrenaline was released into his bloodstream.
Being intimate with the terrors of waking in less than pleasant circumstances was a part of him by now, being the victim or riko and her entourage of children's pranks really didn't help.
"So, you're finally awake, man everyone's got questions for you I dont know how the boss hasn't thrown you off the edge or killed you yet, but I gotta ask, how did you end up here? Why were you in the boss's room? If you're looking to kill her, you suck at your job
"Well, anyways, Hello, my name is simred, what's yours?"
"I..what?"
"Name, you have one right, at least a first name"
--
AN: im trash, I know, im sorry for kind of abandoning this story, reading through made me realize it needs some serious proofreading and changes, as my writing is horrible, still I had this chapter laying around for two years and figured it wouldn't hurt to post it, again im sorry.