Nevla's backstory
The rear third of the manor house stood on wood and stone stilts on the edge of the bayou, one of the few permanent structures in the area due to the scarcity of good building land.
The crafty trackers silently paddled their shallow boats through the myriad weed-choked channels that acted as a soft yet confusing perimeter to the enemy base, the company druid taking care to befriend (or at least not disturb) the local wildlife.
The lead boat's captain - second-in-command of the mission and commanding her own boat and two others - guided her own vessel to the water-entrance under the back veranda and gestured for her subordinates to follow and "do their thing" with the large metal portcullis that blocked their ingress to the bowels of the compound.
The engineers were careful to make the smallest amount of noise; the going on the gate was slow but sure, and five minutes later a roar went up from her commanding officer's team, who had made it to her position near a side entrance and begun the attack.
At the signal, the engineers dropped all caution and kicked through the rough circle carved through the portcullis bars and the lead boat sculled through the tight gap. The engineers leapt out and raised the portcullis properly to let the other boats past, then jammed the mechanism permanently open in case a hasty exit was needed later.
Captain Niko Teras stepped out onto the underground jetty and led her troops down a winding passage carved out of what was probably the only rocky hill in the bayou. Her keen ears picked out screaming and shouting ahead that didn't sound like the other prong of the attack, shouting that sounded like several words over and over; the words themselves were indistinguishable as the phrase echoed sibilantly around their heads, and terrified screaming from more than one mouth that struck a chill above the dampness of the tunnel...
A lone figure came running towards them. It was a Danoran tiefling: one of the enemy, and she dispatched the horned male quickly... only afterwards registering the terror on his face came from whatever he had been running from, not toward...
Ahead seemed quieter now: the screams had subsided and Teras could pick out one word from the jumble that hissed through the air, decreasing in volume as it continued: "Srasama.... Srasama......"
They reached an open door that led to a wide underground room, the right-hand wall was floor-to-ceiling with shelving for wine, but there were few bottles left; a staircase led upwards from a gap half-way along the wine racks.
In the far left corner of the cellar however, stood a bare-footed adolescent female elf, (possibly an eladrin?), with blood-matted silver-grey hair, and faintly glowing electric-blue eyes with tired dark circles under them; she wore a once-white semi-transparent shift that had seen better days and an ornate gold choker around her neck. Cuts, welts and bruises showed through the thin fabric, and a recent wound dripped blood from a duck-egg lump above her right temple. A sturdy gold-plated ring tightly pinned her waist to the wall behind her, and her hands and feet were chained with a set of golden shackles, connected to the waist-hoop at four separate points. Eladrin then: given the paranoid security measures...
She had sagged from fatigue against the wall; the ring preventing her escape also restricted any vertical movement so she could not sit or lie down... and yet she had somehow acquired a cumbersome blade, held more like a club or rod with both hands. Almost in a trance, she presented the weapon at each repetition for Srasama to aid her. Aid that had manifested with deadly force...
About her feet and to some ill-defined radius to around ten yards or so, the remains of maybe several Danoran nobles, a bodyguard, and a seedy-looking human that may have been a slaver once, judging by the belt with a whip and several restraining devices dangling from it.
They all appeared to have been slowly ground into a pulp; in fact, the air between the girl and the rough perimeter of dead bodies had the odd effect of shadowy cogs that seemed to phase in and out of existence.
An inquisitive soldier reached forward to touch a darkly glimmering cog and pulled his hand away immediately with a grunt of pain.
"Stand back, soldiers," the captain warned, as the medic saw to the wounded soldier's hand, "let whatever is happening run its course." She called to the girl: "We're here to rescue you," in the Common tongue; the supplication to the dead Goddess softened to a whisper and the shadowy gears seemed to slow a little but not wholly disappear.
Teras switched to Primordial, then Elven, even Sylvan, to see if that would register. "It's ok: I'm a friend. Friend."
The Elven language seemed to have the most effect: the girl looked confused and brandished the heavy sword at anyone who looked as if they might move towards her. Not wanting to trigger the girl's fear into reinvigorating whatever had happened the captain tried another tack: "I won't hurt you... look," and she carefully removed her helmet, revealing her features: short dark hair in a mannish cut (in fact it was hard to tell the captain was female with the lengths she took to disguise the fact), but the most noticeable features were her pointed ears and (slightly larger than average) green irises.
The reaction to that was more profound; the shackled adolescent's face snapped up and looked Teras directly in the eye - bright blue to deep green - for several moments. The captain held calm and steady, and saw the blue eyes widen with surprise and wonder. The girl gasped and dropped her weapon, the chains clinking as her slim, bruised wrists rose slightly in a silent plea. The strange effects around her ground to a halt and disappeared, and the girl's eyes, while still bright, ceased to glow.
"Leyne", Teras signalled to one of her troops, "Remove your helmet and see if you can't do something about these restraints. The rest of you, go help upstairs."
There was a collective: "Aye sir!"
The singled out soldier followed his captain's example, revealing a young Elven male who she hoped would not be seen as a threat. He approached cautiously, and slowly held out a set of lockpicks. "Um, I'm using one of these picks, miss, if that's ok?"
The girl switched her attention to the other elf, and changed the angle of her wrist to point at a spot on the floor. The soldier tried not to think about the mangled hand of the noble and pried an abraded key from its stiff fingers. Since he was at that level already, he tried the key on the girl's leg-cuffs first and sighed in relief as it worked; he moved to the wrists next, and finally the waist. Once the girl was free, what little strength remained in her slight form appeared to desert her, and the captain – who had guessed that could happen, and had been edging slowly closer the whole time – managed to catch her as she collapsed.
"It's ok, you're safe now."
"Captain?" Leyne began, avoiding looking around the room by fixing on his commanding officer, but sweeping his hand around to indicate what his eyes didn't want to see, "D'you think she did all... this?"
"It would be sort of... poetic... if she did, wouldn't it?" Teras smiled one of her rare smiles. "A slip of a girl fighting back against a roomful of her captors? I don't know, Leyne," she concluded. "Maybe we all have that spark to survive in the most desperate of moments, like a baby mongoose seeing off a cobra in the nest..."
"Nevla…?" The girl repeated the animal's name in mumbled Elven, then fainted from exhaustion in the captain's arms.
***
After the war, Nevla (the nickname having stuck) was settled with an Elven family in Risur (Captain Teras came back for welcome visits when time and duties allowed). It took a long time for her to adjust to normal life, fill in the mental and social gaps that her brain seemed to have misplaced; initially she was wild, and would not let others (apart from the captain and several others) touch her at all, but eventually came to regard Flint(?) as her home. For 35 years, all seemed to be going well; outwardly, Nevla was growing into an accomplished young woman, interested in outdoor pursuits, nature, fencing, and just about to finish a well-rounded education that complemented her intelligence and innate charm.
But inwardly, Nevla always felt that core of distrust of herself; that somehow things weren't completely... right... she didn't know if she had any living relatives, and any attempt to remember anything before coming to Flint - her parents, her life, met with a painful dark hole that she was scared to jump into...
And that translated to a tendency to not commit to anything too deeply, to trust anyone that much, from an unconscious fear it could all be taken away again.
***
That was, until relatively recently (roughly seven years ago): Nevla did not remember the events leading up to her rescue, or anything at all before that; her adoptive parents never told her the full details, the captain always hedged around it, at least admitting she thought it would be best to cover themes that happened at the end of the third Yerasol war with an older wiser Nevla.
Her (cousin/friend) Sokana however, when they were in their late thirties did divulge some of the conditions that she herself had to deal with; but – having not met the girl prior to being rescued in the same campaign – she didn't know much about Nevla's fate apart from what was whispered by some of the soldiers afterwards about "that incident in the cellar".
It was supposed that she had somehow suppressed these memories in reaction to the trauma, and people Nevla knew believed it to be kinder at the time to not dredge up old hurts, to let her experience a normal life, and the strange destructive power she had somehow tapped into had not resurfaced since, so people wrote it off as "just one of those things that happen under extreme circumstances...".
***
Then the visions began.
***
She started to remember things about that night, which was bad enough; being dragged into the cellar, the chains, the Danorans treating her as just a commodity and laughing at her when she tried to scratch and bite ineffectually and get punished as a result, the desperation and despair, a plea to a name she had only heard in... where had she heard that name before... and letting something in…
Letting it take her over, making them pay...
She didn't want to worry her parents (or the captain, who had not visited for some time as she was away in yet another war), so initially she said nothing and suffered in silence.
Then came glimpses of an earlier time, that appeared to be not many moons before; foraging in the woods because she was starving, getting lost, running from something bad... being beaten, healed, running away, beaten, healed, pinching hands, made to wear a collar, sold, leering faces, bought, whipped, the events repeating over and over in her head... and still nothing prior to that: no parents, no friends; a blank hole where early childhood should have been.
She usually woke from the nightmares with a gulping gasp as if breaking the surface of deep water and a pounding heart; Nevla began to retreat from her life and all the things she enjoyed, pushing others away rather than tell anyone what was happening to her. Sometimes she tried to stop the nightmares by waiting as long as possible before (or going without a whole night of) sleep, but it just made the next evening where she could no longer keep her eyes open even worse, as it was harder to wake up from the endless torment next time. One time she acquired several bottles of strong liquor and drank herself to sleep; that ended up being even worse (plus there was the blinding headache and hangover the next morning), so she vowed to never do that again...
She still couldn’t tell her parents, but that last attempt to fix the problem weighed heavily, and finally she sent a terse letter to Teras, now a Major :
I have nightmares of the cellar.
How did I do that? Why? And getting more from just before that too.
I can’t stop the nightmares. I tried various things. It just made them worse.
Why didn’t anyone else tell me? You were going to but you got called up again so I’m not blaming you, it’s just...
I’m so tired. I don’t know what to do.
Sincerely,
N.
***
Then one night Nevla had a dream where the same happened over and over, but instead of waking in a cold sweat as usual, on the last loop round, the captain strode into view from the tunnel. The nightmare had never reached this point before and she realised, that she was dreaming. She cried out in Srasama’s name for everything to STOP!
And it did.
Everyone was frozen like some macabre tableau: the captain, along with several soldiers, mid-stride and just reacting to the scene; the horned men and the man with the whip caught in their final agonising death-throes. She tried to drop the heavy sword but it was stuck to her hands...
Then suddenly the chains were gone; both the dead and the living melted away like snow, and all that was left was the room, the girl, and the sword. And a flight of wooden stairs leading upwards. Still holding the weapon like a club, her feet started to walk by themselves to the narrow staircase.
There was a door at the top: it was a strange door, and not one that fit with the rest of her surroundings. In fact, she could only call it a door as she had no other words to describe it... she touched the surface of the portal and it widened from the centre as the dark centre of an iris in the gloom.
Beyond the door there was only complete darkness, but she was compelled again, as if by some external notion to step through. The instant she did so the door shrunk behind her as it had opened, taking the only source of light with it, and she felt back for it to pry open and step back through. It was too late: the door had disappeared and there was nothing there... save for an unidentifiable noise behind/before her that struck a chill in her heart.
Her fear reawakened and she ran from this into what could only be described as an even deeper dark; it was almost tangible, as if it were some kind of barrier stopping her seeing what lay beyond.
There! Somewhere above/ahead of her in the darkness was a tiny glow that grew brighter, then darker, then brighter again; Nevla felt drawn toward this light and changed direction slightly to intercept.
It was strange: the pulsing glow grew closer, but not as quickly as she hoped as the lack of other landmarks made judging the distance to it impossible; she was tiring, and whatever passed for the ground in this place gradually began to slope upwards. The angle of the light changed as she drew nearer, her head increasingly tilted upwards to keep it in her sight, so-
Smack.
At the top of the hill she had run right into an old stone wall; she had to feel her way round as the light, although directly over her head now, didn’t reach this far down.
And the noise still followed.
Another door.
She flung it open and found old stone steps which spiraled round a central column, her feet automatically climbing them. Round and upwards, panting and dizzy, she fled up the stairs, not daring to stop and turn around. Occasionally she passed windows where strange things seemed to be happening outside, but she had no time to stop and stare.
The noise still followed.
She pushed as hard as she could to outrun the horrible sound that was drawing closer and somehow terrified her, even though she couldn't place where (or even if) she had heard it before... and charged through another door into a terrible light that shone through and revealed every part of her, as if she were made of glass, or clear ice.
She screamed and brought the sword up to shield herself from the sense she was melting away...
And finally awoke.
Something was different; she felt different somehow, but couldn’t put her finger on what. She hoped now that by facing her nightmare that it would stop, and she could sleep again.
***
But the dreams didn't stop, they merely changed: there were glimpses of other things, older things; impossible things.
Craving food she'd never eaten but somehow remembered the taste, and then somehow making the food she was eating taste more like that after the first bite...
Having to hide from her foster-parents that her hair had changed colour, again...
Idly humming songs that no-one she knew had ever heard, or only remembered dimly from their own distant childhood...
Sharing space with others like her that she knew, and yet didn’t know, as they appeared to interact like family...
Standing with others, dressed in strange clothing and somewhere outside; the noise of something rumbled in the background, out of eyeshot...
Another world; another life...
She felt lost in a sea of alien memories, invaded by them more and more as she slept (and more recently whilst awake, or triggered by a smell, a sound, or even just looking at a painting or other object from certain angles), and thought she was going mad...
In the end, it was too much.
Nevla was so tired, and wasn't really paying attention, just aimlessly wandering through the house; she found herself out on an upstairs balcony, wearily observing the sun disappear over the western hills. The oncoming dusk heralded that time she so needed but dreaded.
Her parents wouldn't understand. Dreams weren't supposed to be anything people should be scared of, but she wasn't other people. She was different, had to hide what she was: she knew that much.
But she was so, so tired. Tired of being treated with kid gloves, tired of waking up to another day of no answers, tired of feeling helpless; tired of feeling there was something very wrong baked into her...
She idly wondered whether if the dreams would stop, if it would all stop if she... if anyone would miss her if she just... climbed over...
"Nevla!" That shout: she recognised that voice; it was a beacon in the dark, and it jolted her back to reality. She looked about herself then, and realised with horror she actually had stepped over the railing and onto the edge of the roof. She looked down to the front door, and there was a familiar silhouette; she tried to wave and reverse her steps, but tripped, stumbled, and gave a short scream as she fell.
There was a sharp jolt, and her shoulder felt as though it was tearing apart; she looked up and saw the sleeve of her blouse had snagged on a jutting branch of the recently-pruned wisteria that ran up the side of the house. Then she looked down - a long way down - and screamed again.
"Stay calm, Nevla!" Major Teras rushed to where she thought Nevla was likely to fall, and braced herself, "can you get your other hand on that branch there?"
Nevla tried to twist her body round so her free arm could reach over to where the major was pointing, but it hurt too much to stretch that far; there was another sudden jerk and her thin sleeve ripped half the stitches where the cuff joined at the wrist; she yelped as another sharp slice of agony spread like fire from the joint, and shook her head whimpering.
"Then you'll have to drop; I'll be here to catch you. Do you trust me?"
The major didn't have to ask: before Nevla could decide one way or the other the fabric unravelled the rest of the way and she plummeted to the ground. Thankfully, the drop wasn't as far from the branch that had delayed her fall, so the captain was able to catch her (albeit with the result that they ended in an undignified heap on the grass).
"Nevla." The young woman looked up at Teras blearily through her tears, "I have to put your shoulder back in. I won't lie; it's going to hurt." A slight, yet serious nod. "On three then: one, two-" And then she snapped the joint back in place before Nevla could brace for it.
The young woman screamed once more, then passed out.
***
It was morning: somehow Nevla had slept and not dreamt a thing; did she dream what happened yesterday evening? No, she winced: her shoulder was still sore, and there was a protective sling that trussed her arm to her breast. She sat up and could hear her parents arguing with Major Teras downstairs, so, being careful with her arm, she snuck down to hear the conversation.
"...Nevla needs to know more about her heritage, more than the basic stuff that everyone knows."
"She has a tutor: we-"
"It's not enough. Whatever is happening is eating her up inside: she doesn't know how to deal with this. We thought we were protecting her, and now whatever she buried - that we buried - has come back full force."
"Should we call a healer, or maybe a Skyseer?"
"It could help, a little... but I think it may have gone beyond that. I might know someone who could talk to her."
"Not... but they're-"
"They're not that bad; well, not the one I know. She needs to have a focus on something other than her past; if she doesn't have any hope for the future in her current state, then something like this will happen again, and I might not be around to help next time."
"But we're here: we've always been here; all she needed to do was ask..."
"And yet she didn't come to you. Young adults don't heed their parents at the best of times, for various reasons. Nevla has better reasons than most."
They don't know... they think I tried to... did I try to...?
And she stepped out into the room where they were discussing her fate, and looked at the major with the same look as all those years ago.
"Help me: please..."
Nevla was quick and studious; she took to her new lessons with a drive she had not felt in a long time. She still had visions, less like nightmares now because she faced them rather than denying that part of herself. And there were some parts that she began to test the veracity of: this other life was real, somewhere, somewhen… that somehow, Srasama, although dead, was answering her prayers... but again, she kept most of those revelations to herself.
Not so the powers that remanifested: she couldn’t really keep secret the wide circle of destruction that followed her when she learnt to wield one of the eladrin ancestral weapons. The same type of sword as in her visions, she taught herself to exclude her fellow aspirants from the entropy she generated, and they in turn encouraged her to hone her skill for combat and show interest in a less abridged version of history.
Major Teras was right: she needed this, needed to know how her fractured core fit in a place like Flint, in a world where she had to survive, to adapt... or lose herself again…
