This Mind of Mine

[Witchblade]

(A writing exercise to try and get my inspiration back. Closed to Zook, or whatever character he uses.)



She always found herself retreating to the forests. They felt like home when no other place ever could. Concordia was the most evident of this feeling. She had spent so much of what parts of her life she could remember in that forest more than any other village or city or town. There was something about it that resonated within her and made her feel comfortable. Safe even, if she dared to say such a word within the confines of her mind and hope that no other creature would ever hear it. After all, a murderer should have no need to feel safe in any kind of place, let alone one as beautiful as where she found herself now.

As the long grass and the rocky plains beyond the port city of Talmhaidh faded from her view, Witchblade found herself in one of the thickest forests she had ever wandered through. The trees were monsters that could have been hundreds of years old, easily a thousand perhaps and they towered toward a bright blue sky that dared to shine through cloudless and clear. The smell of damp earth tickled her senses and the feel of the rough bark upon her fingers was a familiarity she had missed while aboard the ship that had brought her here. All she had to do now was figure out what exactly she was doing here.

I need you to help me...

Those words still echoed in her mind, pleading in that emotional way that she hated so much. Eyes that were not hers and yet so familiar to her, which stared at her through a tainted truth of a mirror, begging her. And beyond that, peeking from under the pristine and white dress that had covered a frail and malnourished body poked a symbol all too familiar to the halfling.

A ring of circle burned into the very flesh.

She had the exact same one on her shoulder blade. She knew not what it meant and how she had gotten it. For years she had no even known about its presence. After all, who could see what lay on their back? It was that psychic connection with a person she knew and yet didn’t know, words that had asked her to be a hero for once instead of a murderer and a familiar feeling that had driven her from Corone to Dheathain. And her first steps off the boat and into this country had left her with an unmistakable feeling of déjÃ* vu rushing over her and attempting to cripple her. Even this thick forest called Luthmor felt familiar to her and yet the more she tried to uncover the memories from within her mind the more they seemed to elude her and the more The Malice mocked her from its dark depths.

Just where was she going? Dheathain was easily three times as large as Corone and filled with a vast wilderness and untouched pieces of land that would take her weeks if not months to search for this person, this woman that tickled her mind. But she had to try. To stop the psychic connection, to destroy what had made her weak once more, she had to try. Even if it meant in the end she’d become just another murderer by ending the woman’s life, she had to try. It was all she could do.

[Amatullah Fadiyah]

It was strange. Like an oasis, but much larger, and smaller at the same time. Great trees, the likes of which Amatullah had never seen before, towered all around her. The earth was soft, but not because the sands shifted beneath her. It was soft and wet. She had never sweat so profusely in her life, and it made her wonder how she could ever have survived all those years on the vast desert of Fallien.

How long has it been, she thought, since I left home? She had been on the move for three months, desperately searching for a cure to the wasting disease that ailed her tribe. Some of the elders shied away from the light of day, and others could not bear to leave it, though it hurt them so to bask in it. And still more, there were the growths. So it was that her mother, the High Priestess, asked Amatullah Fadiyah, second daughter, to go out into the world. To go out and find a cure, any cure. And never to return until she had obtained it.

And so she trudged through the thick mist and thicker trees, seeking the help of the "fayrees," whom she had been told were masters of magic and lore. That is, until she came across a strange woman dressed in all black wandering the gigantic oasis.

"You there!" she called out. "Are you alright? Do you need help?"

[Witchblade]

The voice broke through the sound of the forest and pierced into the inner areas of her ear, creating a sound out of place in this ancient paradise. She had been so lost in everything around her and her own thoughts that she hadn’t even heard the heartbeat getting closer, the heavy steps breaking branches and crunching down on dried leaves and dead and rot that fell to the forest floor. But the voice had penetrated her mind and caused her to focus on something else other than her dark thoughts and confusion.

Stopping, Witchblade turned and laid cold, red eyes upon the figure of the woman. She looked out of place here perhaps as much as Witch did. In fact she reminded the halfling of the people of Fallien. It was her hair and skin and eyes and she had seen it often enough during the war that had taken over the region to recognize it.

“What makes you think I need your help?� She growled in the mind of the woman. “I’d be more concerned about yourself, after all you’re being stalked by a group of adolescent Algora.�

Though she had not spent very much time in Dheathain, the halfling did prefer to learn a bit about the regions she travelled in before she jumped head first into them. That included the local beasts and monsters and everything else that went bump in the night and kept the children safe in their beds. The young creatures following the woman were easy to detect from their smell, now that she had pulled upon her senses and actually stretched them out into her surroundings. There were only two of them, a male and a female and they had probably been following her for a little while now, waiting for make their move. They’d get eventually, when her guard was down or she stopped for a rest. As predator often recognized predator, many of the creatures in this forest stayed away from her.

Turning once more, Witch continued on her way deeper into the woods heading towards some place called Donnalaich. The Fae capitol of this region. The draconian capitol was further in and a place she wouldn’t mind visiting at another time. The race intrigued her and reminded her of MetalDrago, who was of a similar race called Dragonian. Apparently there were differences, she knew too little about either to know what they happened to be.