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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Cerulean_Wings" data-source="post: 5206171" data-attributes="member: 55060">During my first days in the surface I had already experienced anger, betrayal, and battle. It made me rethink my decision to abandon my home; weren’t all those things the reasons that had pushed me out of the underground, from the warring factions and constant survival of the fittest? But in the next days I found reason enough to stay above, if at least to give this world a chance. I think humans call it “compassion.” It’s an interesting concept that I wanted to observe. By “interesting” I mean “bat-<img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /><img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /><img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /><img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /> crazy,” really.Chapter 3I came to consciousness in a sudden, painful rush. I was aware of every single inch of my body, and it all hurt too much to keep me sane for long. It was as if my senses had expanded by ten times, for I could hear the sounds of far away things, smell every single leaf of grass beneath me, and taste an overwhelming amount of blood in my mouth.I hadn’t opened my eyes, thankfully, so I only saw blackness. But everything else was there, too vivid, too powerful, and my whole self was in excruciating amounts of pain, a feeling that made me convulse in every direction, and flail my limbs in a frenzy.And then it was all gone. My sensations returned to normal, and my pain just faded. I dared to open my eyes to try to find what had caused it. The night was over, but the sun wasn’t up yet, so it didn’t hurt to look. I was still at the bottom of the hill that I had fallen in, and with my back resting flat on the ground. Sitting next to me with her legs tucked underneath was a woman wearing cerulean robes with runes on the seams, and a strange symbol on the front. A leather belt went around her waist, sporting several pouches of different sizes, and I could see the straps of a backpack hanging from her shoulders. Her long hair reminded me of fire, and her eyes were the color of the grass. “How do you feel?” she asked quietly, noticing me stir. I stared at her for a moment to make sure I wasn’t hallucinating - had this human helped me with my wounds, and had stayed next to me all night? “Fine,” I said at length. She looked very tired, giving me the impression she hadn’t slept in order to watch over me. “I closed your wounds and annulled the pain, but my work isn’t complete. You should try to rest, lest they re-open,” she told me with the confidence of someone who had said those words hundreds of times.Something was odd here. I just couldn’t tell what.I could’ve asked her for a name. Where she came from. How she had found me. What she was doing in this place. For that matter, I could’ve asked what “this place” was. Or how she had healed me this quickly. But I asked, “Why?” instead.The woman blinked, and tilted her head to one side. “Why, what?” she replied, frowning a bit. I took a breath - it didn’t hurt to do that anymore - and said, “Why did you heal me?”Her look told me that I had asked for what should’ve been obvious. “I am a Lifegiver of Eleynu, a healer,” she said. “My duty is to help all those in need.”It still made no sense to me. “But I am…” I started to say, and lacked the strength to say the word aloud. A monster. I didn’t see myself as one, but humans did. Were they right, or was it a matter of perspective? Or had I become one through my actions in the surface, in barely two days?The woman shook her head, “It matters not who you are - Lifegivers don’t judge when it comes to healing the wounded. We must act as merciful and compassionate as Eleynu, who cares for all equally.” For some ridiculous reason I felt like protesting against that: why had she healed the murderer of six men? I felt like I didn’t deserve to be helped by her. It made no sense, of course. It was as if my survival instincts had taken the day off and some madness overtook me. Healing meant that I had survived, so why couldn’t I accept it?But I didn’t say anything, and stayed where I was, resting for the time being. The sky’s colors were changing from dark to light blue and green, and then to yellow; the sun was close to rising. “Who are you?” I asked at length.“My name is Cassandra Dymun,” she replied simply, her tone unchanged from before. “I am Aghemer,” I said after a pause where I had expected her to inquire. She merely nodded. She was looking at me from above, something I hadn’t experienced in a while with neither humans or non-humans, and it made me uncomfortable. Or maybe it was her unchanging look. Either way, it forced me out of my resting position, and I raised my upper body with the help of my arms. It wasn’t as hard as I had expected, and nothing ached too much. Heck, my right arm was perfectly in place, all the bones and joints together, as it should be.“How did you heal me?” I asked. Something was nagging me, in the back of my head, but I wasn’t sure what it was.“I opened your Gate and poured in part of my own energy to help speed up the process of restoring your wounds.”She said it as if it should explain everything. It didn’t. It sounded like magic, though. Seeing my look of “And what the hell does that mean?” she nodded and went on to explain.“Every living thing has a Gate inside of them, in a place you can’t see, but you could call the soul. The Gate is closed unless forced open by two things: magic, and death.”Cassandra paused to assess if I was keeping up, and seeing understanding in my eyes, she continued. “With magic, one can open the Gate of another living creature in order to take or place energy. In order to heal, I transferred part of my Gate’s energy to strengthen yours, and make your injuries go away faster. This leaves the giver of life drained, especially if one performs the transference for long enough, like I have done for you, Aghemer.”“You gave part of your life to me?” I asked, frowning. Cassandra nodded without hesitation. “Just like that? You don’t even know who I am, or what I’ve done.” She shrugged.“I’ve said it before: Eleynu doesn’t judge, and us Lifegivers, her followers, do likewise,” Cassandra said.Something she said before caught my attention. “When you open this… Gate, inside someone, does it change how they feel?” I asked, and she nodded. “Having the Gate opened heightens the senses.” That explained the sensory overload I had felt before.And then I realized what had been bothering me. I had been speaking fluently with Cassandra all this time, not because my mastery of the human tongue had somehow improved overnight, but due to her knowledge of the underground tongue. I had no idea humans would know my language, and asked her about it.“Lifegivers and other scholars often choose to study additional languages, since our trade sometimes demands that we travel abroad, like I’m doing,” she said. Looks like there are some smart humans around, after all, but I fear they may be in the minority. I couldn’t think of anything else to say for the time being, and I sat there next to her, staring at the tree-covered horizon. The sun would come up and blind me any time now. Cassandra stared at me with the intensity of a curious child.“Where are you from?”The question got me by surprise. “I came from my home. An underground cave, a day of walk away from here,” I said.“Why did you come to the surface?” she said.Damn this woman and her questions. I shrugged, “To go around eating humans who ask too many things,” I lied casually, glancing at her sideways to measure her reaction: none whatsoever. Was she fearless, or simply too tired to show panic? “I’ll leave you to it, Aghemer. Seeing that you’re alright, I will continue my journey,” Cassandra said warily, and got up slowly, and brushed her robes to clear the grass and dirt, then put on her hood. She hadn’t walked more than ten feet when I turned around with a suddenness that surprised me.“Wait.”Blast it. I didn’t mean for it to sound so desperate. I even had my hand stretched out in her direction. Cassandra stopped and looked over her shoulder, frowning. “What is it?”“Uh,” I began, rather stupidly. I played with the grass near me while I formulated the words, “I, ah, wish to go with you.”Cassandra’s eyebrows went up. “Why?” she asked after a pause.“I don’t know,” I said honestly. I really had no idea what the hell I was doing. She stared at me for the longest time, as if making sure I wasn’t joking. In the end she turned around and resumed her walk.“You may tag along if you wish, as long as you don’t hurt anyone while in my presence.”Music to my ears, for reasons I couldn’t explain even to myself. I got up in a jump, got hit by a spell of dizziness, shook it off, and stomped over to her side, falling into pace with her. I’ll be damned, but this was going to take a while if she walked that slowly. We climbed up the hill that I had fallen down from, and I could see part of the trail of blood I left on the way. At the top was the battlefield from the previous night, along with some of the corpses of the Blood Wolves. Old man Dan was no where to be seen, the traitorous bastard.Cassandra’s eyes regarded the scene before her like a butcher considers meat - without care. She approached one of the corpses, looked at it for a moment, and then walked away from the cabin, in a direction I hadn’t headed before.“Did you fight with the Blood Wolves?” she asked as we walked.I really felt like lying, right there and then, but I forced the truth out of my throat, “Yes. They were sent by an old human called Dan that lives in that cabin.”Cassandra nodded, “You must be pretty strong, to defeat such an infamous mercenary band. They were known even in the abbey were I had lived for most of my life, and that’s miles away. Rumour had it that they could fight in the dark as well as in daylight” To our left, the sun finally poked it’s upper rim, and light began to flood on the forest. I did my best to avoid glancing that way.“What about Dan?” she asked, and I looked at her in confusion. “Is he dead as well?” she clarified, sounding non-judging. I shook my head and told her about the last time I had seen him. Cassandra began to ask me another question, but she fell down on her face, and stayed prone. I stared at her motionless body in disbelief, not knowing what to do. Could humans die from one moment to the next? Maybe it was a defect of being a Lifegiver. What if healing me had killed her? I hoped it was something else, because I really couldn’t endure living with-wait, I think I heard something. Kneeling down, I was able to make out the groaning sound coming from her. Hm. I think she was saying my name. Yes, that was my name alright, I got it after the fourth time she made the sound. It was difficult to make out the word, what with her face on the ground. Then she made another sound… “Kelp?” I asked, confused.She repeated the sound. It sounded like “kelp.” I wasn’t sure how that was relevant to anything, and told her so. Yet Cassandra repeated herself, her voice muffled by the dirt. I frowned, rubbing my chin. “Do you mean ‘help’?”There was a pause, and she said “Yes.” Oh. That made sense, in hindsight. She wanted help. I still had no idea what she meant by that. “Help with what?” I asked, then had an idea, and grabbed her by the collar of the robe, lifting her up from the ground. “There,” I said, “now you can talk.”She had the exact same blank expression as before, expect her eyes had a hint of, hm, was it being unimpressed? “I’m tired. Healing you has drained me more than I thought. Could you carry me for now until I regain my energy?” she asked. I blinked, and then cradled her in my arms. She was pretty light, and I figured I could manage fine for even a day of traveling. Cassandra struggled weakly in my arms, making me stop moving and look at her. Her cheeks looked redder - must have been from the fall. “I… would prefer if you carry me on your back, Aghemer,” she said, looking away. I shrugged, and did as she instructed. In fact, I used my sack as a support for her body, so that she could hang from by back without clinging to my neck. So I travelled in the direction she told me to go, across the vast hilly forest (which I still think would be better known as “hilly tree herd”), with Cassandra on my back. I looked over my shoulder occasionally to ensure she was still there.“Aghemer,” Cassandra called after some time. I grunted in response. She said something that wasn’t in my language, but the human tongue, and asked her for a translation. It sounded like ’fehn-kee-ooo’, and I couldn’t recall Durzil ever teaching me that one. “It means that I value what you’re doing for me,” she said. Huh. What a strange concept. For the sake of practicing the language, I repeated her words, slowly, “Thank you.”“For what?” she asked, her voice faint and tired. “For healing me. I will repay my debt to you, and after that move on.”There. Now that our contract was clear, she understood how things worked. A favour for a favour. It didn’t sound like she got the idea, though.“Aghemer… I healed you because it’s my role in life, you don’t owe me anything,” she said with what was left of her energy. I shrugged, “No. you help me, I help you.”She started contradicting me again and I shot her a glare over my shoulder. “Shut your mouth and rest,” I said in a low growl. Her eyes widened and her mouth froze half-open, but then she closed it, and nodded. That got her quiet. “I hate the sound of your voice when it’s tired - it annoys me,” I added less severely, and nothing else was said. I kept walking and on and on, until the sun had moved between the horizon and the top of the sky, meaning it was… close to noon. Cassandra had slept all the way, and I hadn’t stopped once, not even for food, hungry as I was. I had to finally make a halt, however, when I reached the forest’s end and I saw the stone wall ahead.Cassandra stirred on my back and finally awoke, looking drowsy to say the least. “Where… are we?” she asked with a yawn, rubbing her face with one hand. She leaned over my shoulder and looked at the tall walls in front of us, frowning in concentration. “This is Gynth, the closest town. The Blood Wolves most likely came from here,” she said.That complicated things. “Could the old man be here, too?” I asked.“Yes. Him, and thousands more. Gynth is relatively small, but it still houses many people,” she said without looking away from the walls. “If you’re afraid of him spotting you, or there being a bounty for your head, then I should go inside first, and then we’ll see what we can do.”“Was this city your destination?” I asked out of curiosity. Cassandra shrugged, and brushed a stray hair from her face.“I have no particular goal in mind. My exile forces me to travel around, so I need to make stops at cities every now and then to rest and replenish my resources,” she said absently. Exile? She’s been exiled? What are the chances. I’ve been exiled, too. Self-imposed, yes, but an exile nonetheless. Now we had something in common. Too bad it was a horrible conversation topic. Hm. Maybe she hated water as much as I did? Cassandra was saying something to me, and by the sound of it it sounded like it wasn’t the first time. I needed to focus. “… so I will be back in an hour or two. Hopefully no one will find you out here,” she was saying, and I just nodded obediently, as if I had understood the whole message instead of the last bit. Cassandra nodded back and headed for the city’s gates, leaving me by myself.I have to say, for the first time in my life, I felt terribly alone, despite always being by myself.</blockquote>

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