-Than-

I shuddered as my eyes slowly opened. My thinking was slow and my breathing short, a lance of pain driving through my lung with every inhalation. My muscles were weak, and my mouth felt like Tatooine.

Where am I? I tried to remember where I was, or how I got here, but the answers evaded me. I struggled to sit up. Just that one effort felt like the extent of my physical abilities. My muscles were screaming in protest as I tried to lift myself up to my feet. Unable to stand on my own, I tried to grab onto the face of a massive rock wall next to me and use that to pull me up. Every fiber in my body begged for me to stop, to lie back down and let them wither away, but I refused. I wouldn't lie down and accept death. I had to find answers. Had to.

I finally managed to pull myself up. I was doubled over, trembling, and leaning heavily on the rock. I felt frail and old. But… I'm not that old. Right? I realized that I couldn't remember my own age. Panicked, I tried to remember other personal details.

My name. My name is… is… Than? I think it's Than. What's my last name? Than… Bellum? No. Than… Vellum? No, that doesn't sound right. Than… Valum? That sounds familiar. I glanced at my leathery skin and noticed a prominent mark seared into the flesh on my chest. I traced the circular groove with my finger. How'd I get this?

I heard a twig snap, and immediately jerked my head towards the noise. Instinctively, I reached for my waist and searched for a weapon, but came up empty. Through bleary eyes, I could make out a lone figure coming from behind a rock. It saw me, and immediately rushed over to me.

"No! No no no! What are you thinking?! You should not be exerting yourself yet!" I heard a young female voice cry, and I felt hands on me. I tried to fight against them as they lowered me to the ground, but wasn't strong enough.

"Quit fighting, grypha" she said.

I tried to argue, but it felt so good to lay down again, and I was so exhausted from the fight to stand, that I succumbed and fell into a deep sleep.

I woke up to the smell of something cooking. I groaned as I sat up. My mouth felt like sandpaper and my lips were dry and cracked. I lay there, smelling the cooking meat, and my stomach rumbled. I realized that I was starving. I rolled onto my stomach, wincing as the rocks on the ground dug into new parts of my body, and tried to lift myself up. I felt my muscles protest, but the rumbling of my stomach drowned out their screams of pain. Slowly, I got to my feet and looked around. It was rather dark. I thought it was night, but now I could tell it was a pile of large rocks that, upon falling, created an opening inside, allowing it to be used as a shelter.

I slowly made my way to the entrance and stumbled outside. The harsh light blinded me, and I awkwardly raised my arm to cover my eyes. After about a minute, my eyes had fully adjusted, and I was able to see where I was. We were at the bottom of a cliff, the top of which was some two hundred meters above me. Behind the rock shelter was an impassable pile of boulders. In front of the shelter was about twenty meters of rock that was rather flat, then it rapidly descended into a forest of trees and bushes, which from where I was looked to be another thirty meters below me. The flat rock I was standing on now was about ten meters wide. Ten meters by twenty meters by thirty meters… 6,000 cubic meters of solid rock. This information was pointless, but it was good to know I could still do simple math.

Feeling another pang of hunger shoot through my system, I looked around to find a pillar of smoke coming from a makeshift fire pit right up against the rock wall, a place I missed because the shelter was close to the edge. Above the fire pit, a lone figure was spinning some sort of animal on a spit. Around the figure, I saw a collection of bowls, ripped up plants, a collection of tools, clothes, a bow and quiver, a large backpack, and my armor, the light shining brightly off of it's dark gray finish. Cautiously, I made my way to the fire, until I stumbled over a rock. Instantly, the figure turned, revealing herself to be a Mirialan. She looked me over quickly, then turned back to the spit.

"Morning, grypha" she said, back turned. "Are you hungry?"

"Yea," I managed to croak, and I took a spot on a rock that wasn't covered by any of her stuff.

I watched as she turned the spit. Her skin was greenish-yellow, and she had five black diamonds tattooed in a pattern under each eye. From left to right, the first diamonds top right edge was adjacent to the bottom left edge of the next diamond, and the bottom right of the second was adjacent to the top left of the third diamond, and on and on. The far edges of the tattoo, as in the far corners of the first and fifth diamond, were in line with the corners of her eyes, and didn't extend any farther. Her hair was jet black and tied into a bun.

"Quit staring, grypha," she said without looking up.

After a few minutes of silence, she said "Grab me that knife over there."

I grabbed a large knife that was laying on a rock next to a magnifying glass and handed it to her. She took it and cut into the meat. After examining it for a few seconds, she placed the knife on a rock and took the spit off the fire. She quickly took the meat off the stick and into a large bowl, then proceeded to rip the meat off the bones. She placed some meat in a bowl before turning to me, her strikingly blue eyes analyzing my body before turning back to the meat and stacking a lot more on. She walked over and handed the bowl to me.

"Eat, grypha."

I took the bowl and started stuffing the food in my mouth, as if I hadn't eaten in a week, which in all likelihood I hadn't. I looked up with my mouth full of flesh to see her watching me with an amused smile. I swallowed the food before asking "Are you gonna eat?"

"After you." She reached behind the rock she was sitting on and pulled out a canteen, which she tossed my way. "Drink this."

"What is it?"

"Poison."

I threw it back at her, and she easily caught it and threw it back while rolling her eyes. "It is water. If I wanted to kill you, I would not have saved you."

I took the canteen and hesitantly took a sip. When I felt the cold water hit my tongue, it was like little drops of heaven in my mouth, hydrating the barren wasteland that was my tongue. I tilted my head back and drank the entire thing right then and there, indulging myself with it's cool crisp taste.

"So. Who are you?" she asked.

"My name is Than Valum. You?"

"Bree Allstone. Why are you here? Newcomers usually never come out here."

I shifted slightly in my seat. I had no idea what to say here. Do I tell her why I'm here? What happened? Do I lie? What motives does she have? Tentatively, I said "I was searching for information." Not a lie, but not everything.

She looked like she wanted to keep prying, but staved off her curiosity. "So what do you do?"

Great. Another thing I didn't know how to answer. "I was a personal assistant to a very powerful man," I said carefully.

She stared at me, then said "Care to elaborate? On anything you just said? Or are you going to keep being this vague?"

"I'd rather be vague. It's all rather difficult to explain. What about you?"

"I am a healer. Well, healer-in-training, but I know what I am doing, so next year I will be old enough to be a full-fledged healer. My nan sent me to a nearby village for a few days since she needed to stay home and there was an outbreak at the village. Plus she is old and rather frail, and she knows I love the outdoorsy stuff. So I was sent there while she stayed home. I was coming back when I found you over there." She pointed at a pile of rocks I hadn't noticed before. They were covered in a dried blue substance that I knew to be blood. My blood. "You managed to screw yourself up in every way possible. I do not know how long you were down here before I found you, but any longer and you would have died. And now, we are here." She clapped her hands. "Now that I have shown you how to tell a detailed story, would you like to try?"

"Not really. It won't make sense. How old are you?"

"Seventeen. How old do I look?"

"About that old. Where do you live?"

She pointed up.

Oh Force. Charybdis.

I stood suddenly, wincing in pain, and grabbed for my armor when a stick hit me in the back. I fell flat on the ground and a boot pressed against my neck.

"Not so fast."

"You don't understand! I need to-"

"I do not understand because you do not say anything. Now, you need to rest. You still need to take a few herbals for that concussion, unless you want permanent brain damage."

"No! There's no time! You've gotta let me go!"

She sighed, pulled something out of a pocket, and stabbed it into my leg. I lost consciousness again.

The first thing I sensed was the strong smell of… something. It roused me back to consciousness, and I saw that Bree was holding a burning plant to my face. It was morning. I scrambled backwards.

"What the hell?!"

"Morning, grypha. I tranquilized you. Nan never allowed it, but I am not letting you get brain damage after I had to repair like every part of you AND deal with a few raging infections to keep you from dying. All of the herbs are in you now, doing their job, repairing what I cannot."

I scrambled away from her and for my armor, when I felt the stick hit me again.

"Huh. Still psychotic. They should have worked by now."

"I'm not psychotic! They're in danger! Your village is!" I cried before she could tranquilize me again.

I noticed her expression change before she scrambled to pack all of her stuff up. I quickly threw the armor on. It felt good to be back in it.

"Come on, grypha. I lead."