SPOILERS FOR CAMPAIGN 3 EPISODE 17!
Ignorance Was Bliss
Orym looks over at her, his youthful face and old eyes looking at her with a reserved sadness, "What is amazing about you is that you are the happiest person in this group."
She chuckles and turns to face him, "Well, of course, the worst thing that could ever happen to me already has."
"Did we win a prize?"
Laudna turns, looking back to see Lady Briarwood place a necklace around the neck of the neighbor's little girl. She clutches Laudna's father's hand while the rest of their small party stare about with fear and wonder.
"You've been chosen for a very special event," Delilah states, smiling.
Her eyes flick to Laudna, and a shiver goes down her spine as Lord Briarwood slowly tilts his head behind her.
Silent handmaidens had put feathers in her hair as she slipped into a tunic of blue with furred accessories.
The others emerged in similar odd fashions.
"Right this way, if you would." a voice remarks. She turns, taking in a bespeckled man's wide, smiling countenance in grey finery.
"I would hate for you all to miss this meal," he states, and something about his smile hollows her out from the inside, but she goes.
"The dinner was quite lovely," Laudna states, leaning back as Orym stares at her, a dawning horror beginning to cross over his face as she continues.
"And then...they beat us."
Their forks have barely been set down when a set of guards roughly force her father out of his seat and drag him off. Another, a Half-Giant with slate gray skin, grabs the blonde-haired young man and practically throws him into the hands of another pair of guards.
She tries to stand, and Lord Briarwood freezes her with a stare, "Please...relax, the entertainment will be beginning soon."
Lady Delilah tilts her head as the others are dragged off one by one, the little girl and her younger brother screaming for help as they are carried away like luggage.
The Lady smiles.
"Take her away." she orders.
And the ugly toad of a man grabs her and drags her limp body away, the Lord's glinting golden eyes severing the ties of mind and form.
She is dragged down, deep down, past rooms of rusting torture implements and a cage where a cloaked figure with a charred stump for an arm tilts their head and watches her go past.
The blows keep falling, pleading words bashed back down her throat by the fists of that ugly grey beast.
"Enough."
She looks up, spotting the bespeckled man from before, entering the room with his nose upturned.
"Ah, fuck off, Anders, I'm not done working on this one yet." the Toad growls.
Anders snorts, "What comes next requires a practiced hand, a steady hand."
The Toad growls and freezes when the Lady glides into the room.
"Leave, Stonefell," she orders.
Wiping her blood on his tunic, he obliges with a bow of his head. Anders steps forward, and Delilah leans against the door frame, her eyes burrowing into Laudna as she traces her fingers along the necklace on her neck.
Laudna fights to scramble back, opening her mouth to speak, but Anders cuts her off.
"Shhh." he mutters, his eyes glinting silver, "This will take a bit of concentration, so try to stay quiet and still, please, my dear."
Once more, she feels her autonomy vanish as he pulls a thin knife and moves her hair back from her ears.
The pain is excruciating, but she can not scream. All she can do is stare into the menacingly curious eyes of Delilah Briarwood until her world goes blank.
"I woke up being hanged..." Laudna states, and she sees Orym flinch and has to marvel at herself the look of fury that is overcoming him as her tale continues.
The feeling of something being placed around her neck wakes her from unconsciousness, blinking she looks around, taking in the torches, the sneering face of the Toad-man Stonefell, the emotionless countenance of the Half-Giant, and the decayed form of a Giant, rictus grin and bulging eyes staring down at her. She was sitting on the ground, the huddled forms of her family and unlucky strangers resting at the foot of the Sun Tree, nooses around their necks. She barely has time to register this when the Half-Giant speaks.
"Pull'em up."
The giant heaves, and suddenly she is in the air, her vision going dark as the noose closes around her neck instantly. Some of the others jostle awake, strangled gasps filling her aching, bleeding ears. Her eyes flick up to the sky, and peering down through the clouds, the muted red-light of Ruidus, the only impartial observer to her senseless, effigizing death.
That same moon stared back at her from the tensing shoulder of the halfling staring up at her.
But that hadn't been the end of her. A brief snippet of warped consciousness on another night, struggling against her noose as a beacon of sunlight lancing down from the night sky.
True consciousness, sitting bolt upright from beneath a cloth covering, cold, empty, confused, surrounded by the bodies of her kin.
She had reached a hand out to touch her father's face, the shock too great to fully recognize the new unnatural pallor of her skin.
But others had.
"Look out!" a voice yells, several figures whirling on her, farming and mining implements made weapons rising to scatter her once more. She ran. They'd given chase, but somehow, she avoided them by some warped providence.
"It was a long time ago," she states, waving a hand.
Orym leans in, "Respectfully, what the fuck does that matter?!"
Some of the others shift in their sleep at his outburst, and she smiles slightly at the tiny bit of shame that slips in at that moment, always the respectful one, this little warrior. Her own eyes fall to Imogen, and that smile widens.
"There has been plenty of good in my life since then."
A chance meeting in a crowd, a deep connection, comforting warmth in the chill of her life, a look in the other woman's eyes like Laudna was something that she had always been looking for.
She snaps back to Orym's arms wrapping around her, " You seem okay, but no one should have had to face anything like that. I am sorry, and I am impressed with you."
She attempts to return this sudden display of protective affection, " Well…thank you. That's very kind. It's strange. I don't think anyone's apologized for that, but it means a lot."
And she's drawn into another memory.
A crackling fire.
In a distant cave.
Left in her half-existence for almost a year, she had learned to live...somewhat.
A shadow on the wall.
A familiar presence.
She pushes to her feet, staring at the shifting form born from her little blaze.
Two eyes...filled with burning curiosity.
Familiar eyes.
A familiar voice.
"You have been chosen."
Laudna watches Orym lay down with his back turned away from her as Chetney takes his spot.
Her story haunts him, she can tell.
There is more to that dark tale, of course, but as she said, this is enough for now.
Laying back, she takes her position against the familiar warmth of Imogen and catches through the canopy, the dull form of Ruidus, observing her once more.
She shrugs to herself. What more could misfortune take from her.
And yet, as she feels the pull of sleep, her mind fluctuates to the individuals around her and Dorian on some distant shore.
And despite herself, she clutches Imogen a bit tighter.