A soul is weighed

[BattlePixie]

Kessa stared into the fire as she drank deeply from her flask and began contemplating the events of her life. She had travelled farther than most, both in distance and in trials that had shaped who she was.

Kessa looked down at her worn and dented armour. How many miles had they travelled together? When did the journey begin? Decades ago, or was it more than that? It didn’t matter; Kessa knew it started in the Plains of Purple Dust when she was drafted into the army. A child, forced into adulthood well before her time, the army was hard on her innocent and naive spirit, but she took to it. It galvanised her will and opened her eyes to the harsh realities of the world, to pain and suffering. Through her training and the wars she fought, Kessa came to realise that she was the only one that would serve her own best interests and keep her from harm’s way.

It was folly she thought to herself as she drank from her flask again. They said we would be the perfect soldiers to fight the evils that beset our lands, an army of the innocent, an army of children. She shook her head in remembrance. How many were killed in the war against the shadows, against the undead and for what? Their homes were still over-run, their families slaughtered, their town destroyed by the lies and deception.

Oh it was a cruel deception indeed. Like an eclipse, lies veiled the truth behind the cause of the threat to the town and masked the motives behind its salvation. Though Kessa couldn’t blame the town officials, they were desperate and grasping at every sliver of hope they could find to deliver them from evil. Her father on the other hand, she could not forgive. He was a weak man, too weak to stand up against what was happening to his family and too weak to protect them, no too weak to protect his only daughter. Kessa drank heavily again as if each mouthful of fiery liquor would be a knife into her father’s long dead heart.

It was her father that sent her away to attend the academy. Another soul into the great war machine. The army marched on, on to destruction. Oh they had fought beyond their tender years, fought beyond their meagre abilities, but the enemy was cruel and cunning. Shadows laid in wait, setting vicious ambushes, which shaved at their strength. The undead that followed were like a great wave breaking itself upon the shore, with each push it carried a few more grains of sand away, eroding at the barrier that prevented it from destroying the town.

Kessa slugged back the last of the numbing booze in her flask in an attempt to deflect the painful cuts of her memories.

As their numbers dwindled and as the pain and suffering threatened to weigh them all down into despair and break their resolve, Kessa remembered gathering the last few priests in order to attempt to turn the tide. This gathered coven did the unthinkable; they raised their fallen comrades into undeath, ripping souls from restful slumber and forced them into broken vessels, forced them to fight again.

[BattlePixie]

“Exile! How dare they! She had delivered them from destruction! From certain death!“

Kessa remembered the anger she felt. It was not her choice to go to war at such a young age; it was not her choice to watch her friends die. It was her choice to save her own life though. Who else was going to do it? Around her poorly trained soldiers died, weak minds succumbed to fear and fled. It was either death for her, or undeath to her fallen friends. The choice had been simple.

The desert was a cruel place; the sun scorched her fair skin, blistered her parched lips and ate away at her mind. How many times did she see her salvation in the lush green grass of an oasis, where the palms shaded cool ponds, only to find it an illusion, another trick from the black prince. He mocked her. Even after all she had done in his name, he still dogged her, toyed with her and broke down her will with each jab of her circumstance.

Broken, burned and blistered Kessa remembered how she wanted it all to end, how she didn’t even have the strength to drag her body across the sand or strike at the vultures that picked at her. It was at this depth, with all hope lost, with all will to live relinquished that he came to save her.

Kessa did not know how the old man found her in the desert, or what motivated him to waste his precious supplies on her frail condition. With each morsel of food he fed Kessa and with each sip of water he gave up, he threatened his own life. The old man prayed dutifully for Kessa to be delivered, this she remembered clearly. Her dreams were often filled with his hushed words and when she had become strong enough to travel, Kessa remembered how the old man would speak of his broken god, how he had seen promise in one that had suffered so much. Kessa remembered how she began to believe his words.

Taking this man’s words to heart, Kessa remembered how she bound her wrists in red and ventured out of the desert. Kessa remembered how she took strength from her own suffering, and in the lands of Battledale, around the town of Pilgrim’s Rest, how she eased the suffering of those she met, how she fought for the weak.

Kessa also remembered how her journey took her north, over the mountains and through the gate of the Sunderer, but by this time the suffering of those around her began to take its toll. It did not matter how much Kessa sacrificed herself for those around her, evil seemed to always prevail. For every evil lord that was dispatched, three more would appear. For every sect of a vile god that was cleansed, another would form from the ashes, more wicked than the last.

Kessa found herself drinking more and more these days. At first it was just to ease her own pain, but now it was to forget, to forget how little her actions mattered in this world. Looking down at the red cord binding her wrists she sneered and cut the knots releasing her. Tossing the discarded cord into the fire Kessa pulled out a small leather bound book and ran her rough hands across the embossed image of three crowns on its cover.

“I will make a difference, not for this world, but for myself.” Kessa said as the corners of her lips curled in a wicked sneer.