***
The feel of her blade slicing through his neck made her smile. The warm rush of blood across her hand and the way he noiselessly screamed was something she missed. She watched the blood become sticky between her fingers, and then wiped them off on the knight’s tunic.
Kyrin stood back and looked down at the three dead Holy Knights of Perakis and then looked around her. Patrols would be by shortly and see them, so she had to be far away when they arrived. Immediately taking off into the woods, she ran to get as far away as possible, while still heading toward the rougher part of Terrahaut. The part she headed for was full of thieves and murderers, and was a far cry from the highly patrolled part of Terrahaut the knights owned.
She could hear shouting when the patrols found the dead knights, and she wasn’t far enough away to be safe, so she continued to run. When she reached the river separating the two parts of Terrahaut, she finally relaxed. They called it the river, but it was mostly a swamp full of thick mud and creatures that would eat your flesh if you encountered one in the sludge.
Kyrin knew she had to get through to the other side though, so she hoisted up her backpack and trudged through the muck, cringing at how it squished in her shoes and slid down the back of her legs.
Once on the far side, she disappeared into the trees again and then set up a small camp. She couldn’t travel during the day. The Holy Knights would be raiding this side of the river, looking for whoever killed their knights. She had to stay in the cover and see if she could find who had the seal of Carathis.
She leaned back against a tree, hungry and thirsty, and thought of all of the food in Paragoy. She wasn’t pregnant. By now, she knew for certain, but she felt a small twinge of guilt that Alric still thought she was. What he did was wrong, she admitted that, but she was starting to see that he didn’t mean any harm in it. She sat for hours against the tree, trying to decide what to do about Alric.
He infuriated her and often kept her from doing what she felt she needed to do. He was so good it made her head hurt, but she was drawn to him. She could feel his arms wrapped around her even as she sat in this wasteland full of thieves and treachery. Just as she decided she would return to Paragoy once Carathis’ seal was found, a movement off to her side caught her attention.
Thinking she was about to get a meal, she cast a freezing spell toward the bushes and then went to see what she found. Standing just over two feet tall was a scrawny gray creature with long, pointed ears, large eyes, and a soft, innocent expression. Even though the creature was frozen, he was able to move his eyes in her direction.
“Hey,” she said, and pulled the green amulet out of his hand. It was the Qualsax amulet she’d taken off of a dying warrior. “How did you get that?”
Kyrin tucked it back into her bag and then picked up the creature and carried him toward her camp. When she dropped him, the spell broke, and he cowered before her and began to shake.
“Well, you wouldn’t be worth eating,” she said, sitting down in front of it. He had no meat on him, and it looked like he hadn’t eaten in years.
The creature looked up at her, terrified.
“What are you?” she asked it. It didn’t answer but dug around inside of his thin loincloth and produced two tiny seeds. The creature held them out to her.
“What are these?” When he didn’t respond, she studied them. “Don’t talk much do you?”
Kyrin smiled and looked up at him.
“You’re a nicker, aren’t you?”
The creature moved to sit at her feet and leaned his head against her leg. She pushed him away. “I’m not your bed. Now run along and leave me alone. I don’t have anything shiny for you to steal.”
He frowned slightly and slunk off, obviously not wanting to leave. Kyrin shook her head and then shut her eyes to rest as well as she could.
A few hours later, she was drawing in the sand with her dagger when she saw the nicker return.
“What?” she asked, watching as he peered at her from around a tree.
He took one step out, and she saw he was dragging something behind him.
“What did you steal?” she asked. Nickers were so named because they stole… sorry… borrowed, anything they saw of interest. They mainly borrowed shiny things but were known to pilfer anything unsuspecting travelers had on them.
The nicker walked forward slowly and handed her a flask. She took it, opened the top, and smelled. “This is water!”
He backed away and bowed slightly as she smelled the water again. It didn’t smell funny, and she hadn’t had anything to drink in almost two days. Figuring she didn’t steal it herself, she tipped back the flask and allowed herself a little more water than usual. It tasted fine also, and she smiled and tucked the flask into her bag
“Come here,” she said, putting her hand out for the nicker. He started to run into the bushes but turned at the last minute and looked at her. She bent her hand. “Come on. I won’t hurt you.”
He dropped to his stomach on the dirt and crawled slowly toward her. Once close enough, he reached out and touched the ‘D’ burned onto her wrist.
A noise off to their side sent him skittering into the bushes, and Kyrin grabbed her flail and looked over them toward the dirt road. Perakis knights were coming, formed in perfect rows and all ready for battle. She wasn’t going to wait to see if they noticed her, so she disappeared into the trees on the other side.
By nightfall, she arrived at the caves that were suspected to house the seal. Kyrin actually hated caves. Because of their tendency to go downward and limit your exits, she normally avoided them. These caves were home to some of the most brutal rogues in the dimensions, and she’d never been this close to them. Rumors were all she knew about them, but she had to get the seal of Carathis to get out.
Soft whispering caught her attention, and she squatted low and worked toward it.
“There can’t be more than 100,” one of them whispered softly.
“They have the seal of Carathis. I’m sure they’ll guard it with more than 100.”
“Maybe not. They’re said to have traps protecting their treasure.”
Kyrin studied the three people talking. From what she could tell, they had a rogue, a healer, and a fighter, but none seemed overly experienced or very bright.
Smiling, Kyrin stood up and walked up to them. The fighter immediately drew his sword, and the rogue had her dagger in her hand.
“Who are you?” the fighter asked, snarling at her.
“I think we can help each other,” Kyrin said, fighting the urge to ready her flail.
“Yeah? How’s that?” the rogue asked.
“You’re after Carathis’ seal, and I’m after my father’s ring. I help you get the seal. You help me get my father’s ring, and we all come out alive.”
“How do you even know that?” the healer asked, frowning.
Kyrin shrugged. “You all were talking, and I overheard.”
“You mean you were eavesdropping.”
“Nope, but you were talking so loudly that anyone could hear. You need me to get in there and out alive.”
The rogue backed up to the fighter and whispered, “We could use more help, and she’s armed.”
“We can’t trust her though.”
“Yes, we can. Why would she lie about going in after her father’s ring?” the rogue asked.
Kyrin simply smiled when they looked at her.
The fighter finally nodded. “Fine, so here’s our plan.”
She moved closer to listen to what they had already.
“We’re going to rush in. There are eight guards at the front entrance. I’ll take out as many as I can, and you do what you can. Nola will back stab, and Erkin will heal us if we get hurt.”
Kyrin frowned. “Rush in? You have a rogue. Why don’t we find a back or side entrance and sneak in?”
The rogue and fighter turned to talk, and then finally returned to Kyrin.
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“Yeah, we like that idea,” the fighter said. “Let’s wait here while she finds us another way in.”
Kyrin forced a smile and then sat down beside the healer while the rogue went in search of another way in.
Four hours later, they all followed the rogue around to a side entrance. It had only one guard, and he was drunk, so Kyrin easily killed him while the fighter watched in awe. Kyrin motioned for the rogue to lead the way. The rogue seemed fairly good at her trade and was able to locate four traps that they managed not to step into.
They encountered six total groups that they had to fight off. Luckily, each group was only three or four rogues. The healer was doing a good job, and Kyrin and the fighter were easily able to kill whoever they came to.
As they neared the treasure room, security got more intense, and it was getting harder to get past them. Kyrin began to secretly use magic against the rogues, unbeknownst to her companions. They assumed she had an elaborate fighting style, because she was able to take down as much as twice what the others did combined.
The treasure room was heavily locked, but the rogue set to work immediately while the others watched closely.
“How’d they get his ring?” the healer asked Kyrin.
She whispered softly, “Killed him late one night and took his ring. It was a gift from the king of Valhara and means a lot to my family.”
“It’ll be hard to find in there. There’s a lot of treasure.”
“I at least have to try. What’s the seal you’re after?”
He smiled. “It’s the seal of Carathis. Pretty much a cloth coat of arms, but it’s rumored to have healing properties, and whoever owns it, also owns the rights to the entire Carathis Dimension, which is said to have water. The gods have been fighting over it, mainly to keep it out of the other gods’ hands.”
“So your god sent you?”
“Yes”
“Who might that be?”
“We don’t speak her name. If we can bring back this seal, then we’ll earn ourselves places on her council.”
“Your god has a council?”
“Yes, a prestigious one. We have to get this seal back to her.”
“Do you know what it looks like?” Kyrin asked. She’d seen the seal once, when the Clemency Consortium had it, but she wondered how much of its description leaked out.
“Not really. We were told it’s on a red standard, and the coat of arms is a lion. How many standards can be in there? It can’t be hard to find.”
She frowned. The description was way off. Course, she had to remind herself it didn’t matter if they knew what it looked like or not. She was out to get it too, and they weren’t going to get it past her.
“Got it,” the rogue whispered, and the double doors slid open slowly.
They all quickly ran inside and the rogue shut the door behind them. Once they knew no one followed them in, they turned slowly and tried to take in the amount of gold, platinum, and jewelry in the room. The entire room sparkled as far as they could see. Stacks of gold coins were piled higher than the fighter stood.
“Good luck with that ring,” the rogue said before shoving the seal of Carathis into her bag. It turned out to be the only seal in sight, so it wasn’t hard to find.
Kyrin didn’t consider herself a thief, because she didn’t steal. There were some things that she did consider right though, such as stealing from the dead or stealing things that have already been stolen. As such, she dropped with her bag and began loading it full of jewels and gold coins. She looked over just as the others did the same. Her bag never weighed down, because of its enchantment, but the healer had a hard time carrying his bag full of gold.
Once they had loaded up, the fighter stood and went to open the door handle. The rogue reached out to stop him, but it was too late. Large doors opened above them, and the room began to fill with a green smoke.
Kyrin immediately dropped to her stomach and buried her face in her shirt. She squeezed her eyes shut to wait out the poison. One of the others didn’t know what to do and was coughing and sputtering off to her side. The poison hadn’t reached her level yet, and she considered showing him how to avoid the poison but then figured it would take out one of those she planned on killing later anyway.
When she heard the dull thud, she knew the poison had taken one of the others, but she couldn’t risk a glance in that direction. Even with her eyes shut and buried in her shirt, the sting began, and she fought to control her breath. She knew this poison. It brought a swift death but dissipated quickly once it was released.
As soon as her eyes stopped burning, she looked over and saw the fighter dead on the floor and the rogue and healer huddled in a corner with their noses pressed against a vent.
“Are you okay?” Kyrin managed to croak. Although the levels of poison were no longer lethal, some was still clinging to the air.
The healer turned around and nodded. “Yeah, you?”
“I’m okay. We have to get out of here.”
They all stood up and looked at the door.
“Check it for more traps,” Kyrin said.
The rogue stepped over the fighter and immediately went to work on the door. The healer knelt down beside him. “I don’t think I can heal him.”
“He’s dead,” Kyrin said. She eyed the bag on the rogue’s back but didn’t want to alert the others that she was after anything more than her father’s ring.
“Get your ring?” the healer asked after standing up.
Kyrin shrugged. “No, but I got enough coins to replace it.”
He frowned at her suspiciously and then nodded and looked over when the rogue opened the doors. Kyrin and the healer fell in behind the rogue to backtrack out of the treasure cave. She kept a close eye on the rogue, knowing she had the seal of Carathis in her bag.
They were near the exit when a rush of steps sounded behind them. They all froze and looked behind them and saw over thirty thieves searching the hallways.
“Find the thief who took the seal!” one of them yelled.
When they began heading for the three, Kyrin thought quickly and turned to the rogue. “Keep going, and get us out of here.”
The rogue turned and started forward just as the thieves got within sight of the shadows they were in. Kyrin made sure the rogue wasn’t watching before she suddenly pushed the healer out in front of the mob.
“Kill him!” the front thief shouted.
“Run,” Kyrin whispered, and the rogue took off faster, followed by Kyrin. The healer’s screams sounded just as they cleared the exit and headed for nearby cover.
Once hunkered down, the rogue looked over at Kyrin, out of breath. “What happened to the healer?”
Kyrin frowned sadly. “I think he tripped. Somehow, he fell out in front of the mob.”
“How awful. At least I got my seal,” the rogue said, and shifted her backpack a little.
Kyrin nodded. “Let me see it.”
“No!”
“Why not?”
“I don’t trust you, and that seal is mine.”
Kyrin smiled and pulled out her flail. “You’re going to have to fight me for it.”
“You lied to us!”
“Yes, I did.”
The fight was brief. The rogue was a decent rogue but had no real fighting experience. Once she was dead, Kyrin grabbed the rogue’s backpack and searched her pockets for anything of use. The only thing she found was a handful of gold coins and a gold standard for her god.
As soon as the way was clear, Kyrin started up the mountain toward its tall peaks. She knew the thieves would be out in force, and their first instinct would be to search the valley below where rumors said there was water.
By nightfall, she reached the closest plateau and then ran along it, using the dark night to hide her movements. She traveled farther from the caves, feeling the weight of the rogue’s backpack on her shoulders.
Kyrin kept getting
the feeling that she was being followed, but no amount of stealth had broken the feeling or let her see who it was. She was afraid one of the thieves might be following her, but she hadn’t seen a portal key out of Terrahaut yet.
She looked up from a brief nap when she heard someone talking nearby. Off to her left, a portal key had appeared, but the voices were close enough they’d see her. Risking it, she stood up and ran for the key.
“Stop her!” someone shouted.
She felt hands grab her shoulder, just as she stepped through the portal and instantly landed in water. The sudden change caught her off guard, and she gasped in a lung full of water. After she calmed her breathing, she treaded water and looked around. All she could see in any direction was water, though she knew by the mouthful she got that it was saltwater and tinged with poisonous chemicals, thereby undrinkable.
Luckily, Kyrin knew how to swim. The Consortiums were convinced that a rain was going to hit the dimensions that would flood them all, and so they had taught their people how to swim. Huge tanks full of any liquid served as their training. Kyrin’s swimming lesson had been in a mixture of oil, stagnant slime water, and goo left over from rotten food. Though disgusting, it had taught her how to swim.
As she treaded water in the strange dimension, she looked around for any sign at all that someone was around. A splash off to her side caught her attention, and she swam over to see what it was. Just as the gray creature began to slip beneath the surface, Kyrin reached out and pulled the nicker out of the water and put him on her back. He coughed for a bit and then held onto her hair.
“What exactly are you doing here? Were you following me?” she asked, irritated.
He didn’t answer but held tighter to her hair and looked around at the water. Not having another choice, Kyrin began swimming toward where the foreign sun was setting.
When it got dark and she started to get too tired to keep swimming, she rolled onto her back and started to float, hoping to stay up long enough to find a portal out. The nicker climbed onto her stomach and curled up, almost instantly falling asleep.
The moon disappeared over the horizon, leaving only the light of the stars to show around her. She let the nicker sleep but knew that if it came to drowning or the little guy, he would have to die.
The lapping of waves could finally be heard, and Kyrin looked over toward a stark white beach. She swam over to it and crawled up onto the sand, still panting from her time in the water. She managed to inch over to the trees beside the beach and fell asleep under the overhang of thick leaves.
The sun rising woke her up, and she felt every muscle in her body complain. The soreness from swimming that much was severe, and she was only barely able to flip over onto her back. The nicker was sitting beside her, and he grinned broadly and handed a squirming fish over to her.
Her eyes grew wide and she sat up quickly and took it. “You got me some food?”
He looked down at the fish and then pointed at her mouth.
Not starving enough to be able to eat raw fish, she cast a spell to cook it and began to eat quickly, ignoring how burned it was. The nicker watched her, smiling any time she looked over at him.
After finishing off the fish, Kyrin sat back and looked at him. “You do realize you can’t follow me around, right?”
Surprising her, he moved forward and leaned against her leg, gently rubbing her pants with his long, gray fingers.
“Don’t do that,” she sighed, and forced him to sit up. “I can’t watch you to make sure you don’t die.”
The nicker frowned, and his big eyes began to tear.
“No… no… don’t cry, come on.”
His innocent eyes looked up at her as his lip began to quiver.
Kyrin looked up at the sky and then sighed. “Fine. You can stay as long as Paramide Dimension, but then you go on without me, okay?”
He smiled and laid up against her again. She shut her eyes to try to get some rest but his snoring kept her awake, and staring up at the clouds gave her time to think.
She started to understand that what Alric did wasn’t to deceive her. She could understand how it would be hard to explain some things to her, but she still wished he would have and not risked an unwanted pregnancy.
When the sun rose again, Kyrin sat up and shook the nicker awake. “Hey, get up. It’s time to get going.”
He sat up and yawned, then looked over at her and rubbed his empty belly.
“I’m sorry. Let’s go,” she said, standing up. She adjusted her backpacks and then started out across the beach. Sand wasn’t her favorite, but she would take it before stepping through a portal and landing in the middle of water.
The nicker kept up somehow, and she wondered how he didn’t get tired. They didn’t find anything to eat or drink, but it wasn’t long before Kyrin found a portal.