| Re: Medieval Fantasy RPG (PM to join)
Like a panther, she lurked. A shadow among shadows, ever so silently, ever so gracefully.
The old man was there, the one called Kelly, sitting by his small wooden desk reading, with nothing but the dim candle-light lantern beside it to guide him through the pages. Ayanna studied him from just beyond the door. It was surprisingly easy to find his whereabouts; a modest barn, just north of the village beyond the woods. Shaia Village, the locals called it, though Ayanna had heard of no such place around Kasil, or anywhere for that matter. They were also only too happy to point to her the where-abouts of “old man” Kelly, and it seems, from what was told to her, that he holds quite a reputation among the locals.
From behind, she could see how old he was. His frame was frail, and his hair a sparse patch of silver and grey that lined his crown. He wore a plain nightgown which covered him from neck to feet.
Surveying the room, Ayanna sensed no traps or ambushes, and seeing no visible weapons, she advanced, her footsteps deliberate yet deathly silent, with her dagger snug in her hand.
Old man Kelly closed his book. Without turning around, he spoke, not a hoarse whisper of man who has lived past his years, but a sturdy bellow, a lion in despair. “It would seem that my past has caught up to me.” And he turned. Ayanna saw his wrinkled face and his deep-set eyes, full of memories and hopelessness. “I tried you know,” he continued, his gaze holding hers steady. “I tried to change, I tried to atone for all I’ve done.”
She felt the darkness rising inside of her. “You cannot change what was done in the past.” And with that, she plunged her dagger into the old man’s neck. Blood dripped down from the fatal wound, and silently, he fell to the floor. Pulling her dagger out, she found the blade was not red with blood, but black.
Then the dizziness came. Ayanna stumbled to get up and, cursing, ran outside into the night. Her head throbbed with an intensity that she had never known… a million voices screaming, clawing at her mind like carrion feasting on the dead. As she approached the woods, she could see nothing, feel nothing but pain and she dropped down to her knees. Suddenly, a sound… a horrendous screech of agony and torture… was it her own voice? She could not tell. Her mind was slipping into the darkness, which she welcomed with grateful longing… anything… anything but this. As Ayanna’s last threads of consciousness faded into the oblivion, she barely made out the figure standing before her… no … two figures… a man and a woman, calling to her … begging to her… before she collapsed into the arms of darkness itself, with her dagger firmly clutched in her hand.
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