DIR Return Create A Forum - Home
---------------------------------------------------------
The Silent
HTML https://thesilent.createaforum.com
---------------------------------------------------------
*****************************************************
DIR Return to: Stories, Ideas, and Art
*****************************************************
#Post#: 387--------------------------------------------------
Jaded
By: Tyrana Date: May 31, 2015, 7:49 pm
---------------------------------------------------------
It began the same as every nightmare. Ghaoithe led her
expedition through dark tunnels, her armor’s sigils emitting a
soft, yellow glow for them to follow. Nothing stirred, the air
stale and heavy. They could no longer know how far below ground
they explored. As they pushed onward, a distant buzzing echoed
from their destination, several twists and switchbacks ahead.
Ghaoithe slowed, raising her fist to signal the others to do the
same.
Riya was the first to go, taken by the amber prison that would
be her eternal home. It came seemingly from nowhere, a trap
sprung from the smallest of rocks as the crew darted about in
silence. Whatever element of surprise Ghaoithe hopes to maintain
had been lost in the screaming, cut off quickly by the tombs of
sap that surrounded her.
The buzzing grew nearer. Their goal, the Honeycomb of
Nax’ra’kahn, would never leave the hands of its protector. The
insect warlord had won. With a final cry, the rogue’s vision
would forever view nothing but an amber prison, the power of an
ancient god at work in the form of honeycomb.
Ghaoithe woke with a gasp, her sheets clinging to her with damp
fervor. Only after a few moments did she realize that the
knocking from her chamber doors prompted her escape from her
haunted dreams. She sat for a moment as the Cloudkicker swayed
in its rhythmic bouncing, hoping the knocking would subside. It
continue after a few moments, gently and quietly. Ghaoithe
answered.
Alex stood alone in the darkened staircase. She appeared as
though she were turning to leave and jumped slightly at the
opening of the captain’s chambers.
“Stirling? What are you doing up this late?” Ghaoithe
questioned. She tried to maintain a captain’s presence, to
pretend that nothing was wrong, but her mind sighed in relief at
the sight of Alexandra’s unmistakable blonde curls.
“I couldn’t sleep. I saw the light from your room and thought
maybe we’re in the same boat. Pun intended,” Alex said with a
weary grin. Dark pouches hung below her eyes. Sleep was
apparently a hard commodity to come by in the Cloudkicker’s
state. Given the task at hand, insomnia was hardly a surprise.
Ghaoithe nodded for Alex to enter. The younger woman stepped in
cautiously, as though stepping on sacred ground, though she was
fast becoming as much a fixture as the bookshelves lining the
walls. As Alex sat at the captain’s desk, Ghaoithe moved to her
serving table.
“Rum?” she asked. At Alex’s nod, she poured a glass, handed it
to the girl, and moved back to light the burner beneath a small
pot.
Alex watched curiously, sipping her drink. The spice kicked
pleasantly on her tongue, a welcome distraction from the quiet
of the rest of the airship. “Coffee? At this hour?” she asked
once she figured out what Ghaoithe was doing.
“I woke up just before you arrived. No point in trying to go
back to sleep at this point,” Ghaoithe said. A few moments
later, mug in hand, she fell into her chair opposite of Alex.
The lines that formed near her eyes were more prominent than
ever in the low sigil-light of the room, and for once Alex
thought the captain began to look her age.
“So you just slept in your armor, eh?” Alex teased, trying to
take make light of matters. Ghaoithe smiled for a moment and
then shrugged, letting the question hang in the air.
They sat in silence, letting the swaying of the Cloudkicker
guide their thoughts. Alex glanced about the room, taking in the
plethora of artifacts and items Ghaoithe had collected over the
years. Most of them were familiar, from the books to the globe
bolted to the corner of the desk. Each had their own story, Alex
guessed, and she imagined the adventures that came along with
them.
From the corner of the room, hidden behind a stack of papers, a
glint of emerald caught Alex’s eye. She pointed to the corner
and asked “What’s that? The green thing?”
Ghaoithe followed Alex’s finger. Whens he caught sight of what
Alex was talking about, she rose and pulled out a short sword
covered in dust. In the captain’s giant form, it seemed no more
than a tree branch ready to snap, but it gleamed and reflected
the sigil’s from the captain’s armor without ferocious daring.
The captain handed it to Alex. It was far heavier than her own
sword, and considerably prettier. Ghaoithe must have kept it in
the corner for months for all the dust that clung to the hilt,
but the blade looked new and unsullied. Within its steel, tiny
capillaries of jade glinted along the length of the blade,
giving the sword a unique sheen.
“I’d almost forgotten about that one,” Ghaoithe said, folding
her chin in her hands.
Alex lifted the sword, trying to ignore the frazzled reflection
of herself in its polish. When she lowered it onto the desk, she
looked to Ghaoithe. “Will you tell me about it?”
The captain stared at the blade with her remaining eye.
Eventually, she relented. “Ah, sure. Why not?” she said.
Alex grinned, curling up in her plush seat, letting the rum wash
through her head. Ghaoithe leaned back in her own seat and
lifted her boots onto the desk.
“I was searching for an item in Pandaria, a hammer said to call
down storms of thunder against those in its path,” began
Ghaoithe. We’d been looking for days without so much as a
scribble of a clue. We figured it must exist, because we ended
up anchored near Dawn’s Blossom in the middle of one of the
worst storms I’ve ever had the experience of flying through.”
“That’s… near the bamboo forest, right?” asked Alex, struggling
to remember the locations in her book of myths. Thankfully,
Pandaria had been a topic of some interest, and she burned with
pride when Ghaoithe nodded in affirmation.
“That it is. A beautiful place, if we had been able to see more
than a few feet ahead of us in the downpour,” said Ghaoithe. “We
ended up holing ourselves away in the tavern, thankful to at
least be among people that knew the art of a good brew.
“While we were chatting around the table, the owner’s children
came down for dinner. I guess they hadn’t met many people from
outside of Pandaria, because they immediately started chirping
at their father.
“’Are they here to help us, Dad? Are they here to stop the
witch?’ they kept asking.”
Alex raised an eyebrow. “A witch? Like, pointy hat and robes?”
she asked.
Ghaoithe raised a hand and continued, “We asked the father what
they were going on about. He tried to dismiss the children’s
questions, though they were noticeably afraid of something.
“’We have a legend here of Master Greenpaw,’ explained the
tavern owner. ‘He was among the greatest of warriors in the Jade
Forest and an honorable man. He sacrificed himself to protect
our land. However, his widow has not dealt with his death well,
and she has become a bit of a hermit, refusing to leave her
house.’”
“We were satisfied with the answer, chalking up the children’s
emotions to rumors around the temple. But, then one of the kids
spoke up.
“’But she is a witch! She turns people to jade stone, Pa! Tell
them about the strike!’”
Alex’s eyes went wide, though whether out of surprise or an
attempt to fend off the rum swimming through her head was
unclear. “That sounds terrifying!” she said.
Ghaoithe nodded. “That got us interested, and we couldn’t help
but ask the owner about it.
“He shifted uncomfortably at the table, hesitant to talk at
first. ‘Well, some say Master Greenpaw has developed a technique
in his training: the Jade Strike. Some warriors say that a
strike from his paw could turn people to jade. But it is just a
rumor. Those of us who knew the Greenpaws know that such a thing
would fly against his morals.’
“And with that we went to bed, waiting out the storm.
“The next day was clear and bright, and we were ready to take
off in search of the Hammer of Ten Storms again. As we were
loading, one of the children came up to me, well out of the
earshot of her parents.
“’You must stop the Jade Witch!’ she said. ‘She lives just down
the road from here, in a house surrounded by statues.’”
Alex yawned. “Look at you getting a soft spot for kids.”
“It wasn’t so much a soft spot,” Ghaoithe said. “She had a look
in her eyes that I had only seen in children a few times before,
none of them in good situations. It’s a fear that’s
all-consuming, very real and terrible.
“So, I had little choice. I told my crew to take their time
loading the Cloudkicker and made my way into the Jade Forest, on
the hillsides below the town. A young man, Jason, accompanied
me. He was not much older than you, a new recruit come to escape
the streets of Istanbul with no money and a head full of big
ideas. He was a hothead, but one of the best damn swordsmen I’d
ever seen, and I couldn’t turn down honest help at the time.
“Widow Greenpaw’s hut was easy to find, and unfortunately not as
easy to forget. We came across it pretty suddenly, turning a
corner and finding a massive collection of jade statues sticking
up from the ground. It was… quiet. Nothing moved, no birds
chirped. It was as if time had stopped in this one patch of
ground. As we made our way through the statues, Jason and I
couldn’t help but worry. They weren’t the work of artisan
sculptors; these were creatures with faces twisted in fear, many
of them looking as though they had been ready to run.
“And then we saw her. Through the reeds. Or rather, she saw us.
She must have heard us approaching from the hillside, not caring
to take caution with our steps.
“She appeared through the reeds beyond her house, a small hut
really. In her hands, she had a crane. It let out a pitiful
squawk, but it couldn’t flee. As she came towards us, we could
see that the bottom half of its body and wings were jade, and it
was spreading towards its next. Before long, it was a statue
just as its companions before it.”
Ghaoithe stopped for a moment, lost in memory. When she looked
up, she saw Alex breathing deeply from her seat, eyes closed as
her head rested on her knees. The captain smiled and strode over
to the other girl, taking the mug from her hand and placing it
on the desk. She then lifted Alex into her arm, barely a child
compared to Ghaoithe’s own size, and placed her on the soft
mattress the captain had been sleeping on only a short time
earlier.
“Did you beat her?” Alex mumbled groggily as Ghaoithe pulled the
covers over her.
Ghaoithe smiled. “Yeah, we beat her,” she said.
As Alex drifted off, Ghaoithe sat at her desk and stared at the
jade-infused sword in her hands. Eventually, she stood and
removed an old rapier perched above a map on her wall, replacing
it with the hard-earned one from the Jade Forest.
“I owe you this much, at least,” Ghaoithe whispered. She turned
to leave the room, making her way to the bridge of her ship
while Alex slept.
*****************************************************