Memoirs: Retreat

[shosen]

It started in Revantusk. It always seems to.

I had gone with the intention of fishing, but wound up just starting at the water instead. I was already unsteady, having come from the Blasted Lands, and an area I had no business trying to traverse alone.

The water helped, for a short time. It was calming, lulling, and I began to relax. Until I felt it, the creeping sensation of being watched. Like prickles all the way up my back, until I couldn’t sit still anymore and left.

I attributed it to my earlier difficulties and tried to put it out of my mind. Still, I didn’t want to be alone. I went to the Undercity rather than travelling home. Borel’s shop was open, and I thought I might find some people I knew there.

Tundrarunner was there when I arrived, and he’d heard that my training was complete. I’m still, unsettled with the idea, though I’m proud of it. But if it means I can help those around me, I’ll get over that. Though Tundrarunner left earlier, he promised to send me a letter later, something I could help with.

Curiosity is a wonderful distraction. That, and something I’d asked Jessa to talk about left my mind rather occupied, and for a while I just got caught up in the bustle of the crowd. At least, until the incredibly odd Forsaken man paced around the entire room, peering at people and talking. His restlessness drew my attention back to the feeling of being watched, and I realised that it hadn’t really gone away at all. It had just faded to the back of my mind.

I stood against one of the walls, relieved to let myself just listen, and not to have attention on me. Except for that odd man who continued to come back, time and again, sometimes talking sometimes not. It wasn’t until I overheard him talking with one of the patrons that I began to wonder if he weren’t simply crazy.

I moved closer to the counter, close enough to hear the rather tense exchange between the odd man and Borel, and apparently close enough to draw attention to myself again. But at least this time it resulted in a pleasant discussion with the shop’s assistant and someone he introduced me to for whatever the reason.

Kolja, he said that Suweena both had happy stories. I’m not certain about her, but mine... Well, the middle of a crowded shop is not really the place to realise that you don’t. At least, not that you can remember. Though Kolja recovered admirably from our lack of conversation. I have to hear the end of the story about how he and the Voidwalker are close friends some day.

As the crowd in the shop began to clear out, I started to notice it again. no matter how many times I looked around, there was nothing there. I told myself I was being foolish, tried to pay attention to the people I was speaking with, ignore it, but I wasn’t entirely successful. Not even when the conversation turned to the rotting pig and the fact that I need to eat more. I spent more of the night confused and disoriented.

By the time I bid everyone good-night, I was used to it. I considered hearthing home, but decided to walk to walk to the Auctioneers instead. The Undercity was still a somewhat uncomfortable location for me, and I wanted to be used to walking around it again. It had been so long, though, I was certain that the Apothecaries didn’t care about me.

Apparently I was right.

Everything changed before I reached the inner circle. At the Priest’s Convention I had felt someone looking through my eyes, and hadn’t liked the feeling, had gone inside the walls to watch the Priests themselves and make myself useless to them in order to avoid it. This feeling was a hundred times worse.

Weak-minded. How many priests have I heard say that? I’m not, I wasn’t, but... That didn’t help. I couldn’t move, couldn’t speak, couldn’t even call for help the way Tabaqui had told me to, and I didn’t know what to tell them anyway.

Very good. Now, shall we visit the Apothecaries, hmm?

And there was nothing I could do. I turned and walked back. I couldn’t even shudder as I walked through the Apothecarium and into Keever’s lab. I hadn’t been able to enter that place on my own since that first time, and now, here I was standing in the centre of it, just waiting.

“This one?” a voice sneered behind me, and my spirit shuddered in its prison as I recognised Faranell. “That makes sense. I could have told you this one was a failure earlier, if any of you had bothered to ask me, absolutely useless.”

“We already know dat,” a voice replied, matching the sneer with haughty distain. “We wanna know why. Dat’s what joo gotta help wit’.”

There’s a snort, and then... something.

No listening. No peaking.

And my world suddenly had no sound, no sight. I could feel myself moving, though I didn’t know where to until I felt cold stone beneath me and at my back. There were bars to one side, and when I felt the flash of fire, I knew I was near one of Keever’s experimentation cages.

The feeling of control left suddenly, but was replaced with a crushing exhaustion, that left me slumped on the ground. I tried, in that brief moment, to call out as I’d been told, to reach any of the Path. If they heard me, though, it couldn’t have been more than a whisper. And it wouldn’t have been exactly helpful.

“My luck ran out, but it wasn’t what I thought.”