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[Katya]

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(ok, this is waaay long. you're warned! also, I debated where to put this, because it's definitely an IC story, but it seemed most appropriate in this forum.)

The innkeeper woke Katya D'Varr well before dawn. She tossed a gold coin in his direction, then stumbled out of the dank, uncomfortable cot and over to the washstand. A few splashes of frigid water startled her awake. She drew on her armor over her clothes, tied her long red hair back with a leather cord, and walked out of the inn into the cool, damp air of Moonglow. Today would have been her father’s birthday, had Katya been able to save him. Today, she would visit his grave for the first time.

It was silent and peaceful in Moonglow. The city always soothed her with its clean streets and lush flowerbeds. The only person on the streets was an apprentice harvesting flowers from one thick planting. Katya stopped, showed some gold, and within moments, had a thick bouquet in her hands.

Outside the city, silence descended once more. The walk to the mage shop wasn’t far, but as she neared it, her steps grew slower. She knew no one in Moonglow, but on the Papua side…what if someone who knew her was in the shop? If we see you here again, we’ll kill you on sight, the blacksmith told her the day she was banned from the city.

She nodded politely at the one mage already awake in the shop. He paid her little heed. She whispered one word, and before she could take in her next breath, she was in Papua. Home. The feeling was so strong it brought tears to her eyes, but she quickly pushed it away. If it were still home, she’d be here working as a healer and raising her brothers, not serving in an army in another land. Thankfully, the mages were still asleep. She slipped through an open window and onto the damp ground of her hometown. Immediately, she took to the swamp that ran throughout Papua, and moved slowly through the mire.

She forced herself not to pause when she passed the blacksmith shop. She, her father, and her brothers had lived there for three long, painful years after her mother died. Her father, already suffering under the curse that would slowly take his life, had called Katya home from Jhelom, where she studied healing.

Only a little further. The tiny cemetery was tucked beneath a grove of trees a little ways out of town. Her parents’ graves were side by side, as she expected. Though I was cast out before I could see him buried. She fell to her knees at the grave, reading the inscription: “Liane and Maarten D’Varr, paladins and scholars, parents to the beloved Katya, Barrick, Nicolas, and Ivan.”

At least they didn’t scratch out my name, she had the chance to think before the pain drove her to her face in the grass. Memories spun in her mind: Liane and Maarten sparring and laughing in the Just Inn’s courtyard, asking an enthralled young Katya to keep score. Liane letting a teenage Katya assist in her brother’s birthing…then with the twins, a few years later. Liane silent and cold, being placed gently by Maarten in a freshly built coffin. He was already weakened by then.

Other images followed. The boys’ hungry faces, the greedy healers who promised miracle after miracle…their cures did nothing, but the healers still demanded all the gold she had. The endless hunting, just to keep food on the table. The begging…

And finally…Katya wept silently into the soil covering her father’s grave. Finally, that priest who gave her hope. Maarten wasn’t sick, he was cursed. If she gathered the blood of a certain creature in the dungeon of Doom, she might be able to save him. From that moment on, she stopped hunting, and began training for battle. A few paladins helped her relearn the methods her parents had first taught her. In Jhelom’s pits, she sparred endlessly and bound her own wounds. She had little sleep and even less food, but that was of no consequence. It took far too long, but finally, she felt she was ready.

That night, she came home. She fed her brothers soup and tucked them into their bedrolls. They seemed quiet, distant, but she expected no better. The smith and his wife had been watching the boys, and she’d hardly been home in months. She whispered for hours to their father, though he was past hearing or responding. She went to sleep with only one thought in mind: tomorrow, I’ll save him.

The next thing she heard was footsteps moving stealthily through the room. Though she was still half-asleep, she instinctively leapt on the intruder and put her katana blade to his neck. She had already drawn blood when she recognized the voices shrieking around her. In horror, she dropped her weapon and scrambled backwards across the floor. Barrick was alive, but his throat bled from a shallow wound. All three boys were screaming, their eyes wide and panicked.

The blacksmith and his wife ran in, and without a word, the woman gathered the shrieking boys into her arms and fled the room. It took the blacksmith and three of his apprentices to hold Katya down when she tried to run after them.

In the midst of the chaos, she looked over to her father’s sickbed. He looked different, calmer. In a moment, the part of her that was still a healer understood. Sometime in the night, while Katya dreamt bloody dreams of assaulting Doom the next morning, Maarten D’Varr had died.

I failed. The room darkened around her, and as she lost control, she heard a frenzied howl come out of her own mouth. She came to her senses briefly at her mother’s grave, long enough to see the torn corpses of lava lizards all around her and to see the small delegation of townspeople standing a safe distance away. They only spoke for a moment, but the meaning was clear. The boys would be raised by kind people, far from here. The graves of the D’Varrs would be tended. Katya was to never set foot in this area again. If they saw her, they’d kill her.

“You’d try,” she remembered snarling before descending back into madness. This time, she awoke tied to a healer’s bed in Skara Brae. The man urged her to stay, to take the food, rest and solitude she so obviously needed, but the moment the ropes were loosened, she walked to the nearest tavern and didn’t emerge for two days.

Since then…Katya brought her head up from the soil, and looked again at her parents’ names, her brothers’ names. Much has changed. Several times, she had almost just tossed herself into the Abyss. Drinking herself to death had seemed another option. Finally, after weeks of drunken despair, she had made a decision. She would spend one afternoon in Hanse’s. If someone during that time offered her a job, a mission, anything, she’d do it. If nothing came…well, the Abyss was close. She hadn’t expected to live through the day, but plans had changed. I'll give you something to fight for, Arlin had said, and the Army had done just that.

Plans have changed. Slowly, Katya rose to her feet. The bouquet of flowers lay on the ground, crumpled and muddy, but still beautiful. She bent, and gracefully placed the flowers at the base of the gravestone. I’ll get the boys back, she promised herself for the hundredth time, but the words didn't seem right. I’ll make sure the boys are loved, she promised instead.

She looked down ruefully at her filthy, mire-covered armor. Suddenly, there was nothing she wanted more in life than a bath. She laid her hand on the gravestone and muttered a silent prayer. The arcane words of her sacred journey spell followed, and just as Papua faded from sight, she saw light over the trees. The sun was coming up.