There was no one to hear her, Ayanga having left hours ago uncaring of the slow death that he sentenced his sister too. She kidnapped his children, her life was forfeit in his eyes the moment that happened.
Days passed, hunger gnawing at Qacha’s belly, thirst cracking her lips and gnawing at her throat. It drove her to try the water from the mineral springs, a mistake she hasn’t made since. Those hours spent in agony where she was certain that death was waiting for her were not something she wants to experience again.
Though, at this point, death would be kind.
Yet? Qacha could not let go of life so easily. She had been promised more. That more was the crux of it all, the very core of her entire existence. Her mother had said it was so and Qacha was an obedient daughter, so it must be so.
Claws blunted from throwing herself uselessly at the shimmering barrier were walked along the wall of the tunnel she hadn’t found the end of yet. There was no light here and she’d spent so much of her own aether trying to undo what the traitor had done that she had none left to spare to illuminate her way. She was a child of the caves, but fear had her heart pounding from the perfect blankness that engulfed her sight. Not even the faint light from her trap could travel this far along the curves and meanderings of the unknown path her feet fell upon.
She couldn’t stand it, the not knowing, anxiety making every sound sharper until she was certain that the rolling of a pebble from her fingers signaled an impending cave in. With a shriek of fear, Qacha curled herself up into a ball, pressed up hard against the unseen wall that was her life and her guilde. The tall female shook in time with her frantic heartbeat, waiting, waiting for a doom that never came.
Time was meaningless here, she had no way to mark how long she cowered there beyond the ache in her back and the burning of her thighs. In the end it was the brush of a pointed muzzle and thin whiskers on the back of an ankle that spurred the woman to move, again in a rush of horor that had her sprinting down the tunnel instead of sedately making her way.
Each twist in the tunnel had her scraping scales and flesh on the protruding rocks, leaving her blood behind in a macabre trail for any that came after her to follow. A faint sense of light dazzled her eyes, a gasp of delight coming from her when she realized that the tunnel had edges she could see now. Was there a way... out?
Fresh air teased Qacha’s nose and stirred her hair, the sparkle of distant stars and the eternal visage of Nhaama seen through a break in the domed roof of the cavern she stumbled into. The sky? Plants? A pond in the center? Had she been climbing up? Is that why her legs and lungs burnt so much.
Unsteady legs carried her over the rune covered floor, bloodshot eyes focused on the pond that surely had to be her salvation. There was no strong mineral smell, no heat, and plants growing along the walls, all signs that the water should be safe to drink. The other warnings were ignored, the perfectly spherical shape the water was held in, the way the break in the roof mirrored the shape and placement of the pool, the ancient bones swept towards the smoothly sculpted walls of the room, and the rune carved into the raised stone Qacha knelt upon that was darkened by generations of spilt blood.
Blood from the wounds upon her arms dripped into the water as she scooped up as much as she could cup within the curve of her hands. The first gulps were as refreshing as snow melt, a perfect nirvana to the suffering Qacha had endured for the past few moons.
She was going to live. That bastard would regret this.
The surface of the water turned dark and reflective as more of Qacha’s essence dripped into the pool. The plunging of pale skinned fingers into the water barely marring the silver hued surface, motes of moonlight were gathered in the woman’s hands only to be gulped down with eyes squeezed shut out of the pure bliss that followed her first sips.
That bliss shattered with the first swallow of blood and power that slid down her throat.
This wasn’t the fire of the mineral water, but ice. Ice that gripped her bowls and crackled up her spine to spread along nerves like hoarfrost along the browned steppes grasses in the dead of winter. Then it was winter, and spring, and summer, and fall then winter again, Qacha’s awareness tumbling backwards into the hundreds of lives that Uyagir Seers had walked prior to her panicked race to this sacred spot.
A trained mind could endure.
A soul lifted by ritual could endure.
A body disciplined by hardship could endure.
Qacha was none of these, the only lessons Odtgerel gave to her daughter were indulgence, empty promises, and cotton candy dreams of power that turned insubstantial and sticky in the torrent of power that assaulted the xaela’s mind. Her hands balled into fists, body convulsing and muscles locking in place tight enough for the worn and shattered points to dig into skin and draw blood. Blood that ran in rivulets to the rune on the floor, slowly filling the outline of ancient Dominion.
With the first drop of blood from the channels of the rune into the pool the onslaught of foreign memories halted within the broken mind that was forced to house them. She was Jebei, first to lead the Uyagir to the caves as a broken people trying to find favor with the gods once more. No, he was Ghoa, kneeling by the pool to claim this part of the steppes as the first Khatun of the Uyagir and harbinger of the iron fisted rule that was to come. Borte, Tolui, Khojin, Monx, Nachin, Argat, Kiyad, she was? he was? Everyone, she was everyone that held a stone, poured life into the pool, dreamed the living memory of a tribe that once held dominion over the steppes in a way that only the Oronir could dream of.
Arrogant as the sun, the Oronir weren’t the first to be taunted that way, and now Eij.. no Qacha. Her name was Qacha. Now she led that knowledge, that arrogance, that forbidden knowledge locked away for only the Seers to know. They were trained to hold it lightly, in silence, lessons to be learned from a past the tribe dared not repeat. But a shattered soul could only see the glory to be gained under the sun that peeked it’s first rays through the broken roof of the cave.
A gloriously mad cry greeted the dawn, exultant and broken as it wound down into breathless sobs when the woman noted what she clutched in her hand. An opalescent stone that was a perfect match to the one her brother wore at his throat.
<“I told you I’d win you fucking bastard.”>
