[Dream] Portents (solo)

[Siiri]

Timestamp: 1st of Winter, 510 AV
Location: Jungle Wilds, near the Kandukta Basin

She found herself back in the jungle and the smell it brought made her heart pump just a little bit faster. The scent of leaves, dewy wet from a recent rain shower, mixed with the less pleasant odor of the rotting detritus of organic matter underfoot sent sparks of recollection through her mind, triggering nostalgia. The noise, from the chittering of monkeys to the cawing of brightly colored birds overhead and the growls, roars and howls of distant predators were like welcoming trumpets for her. The low-hanging branches, clawing and scratching at her exposed skin, felt like a lover's caress. How she missed this place! She looked up, stretching all her senses to everything around her and reveled in her environment...

Siiri was home.

The Myrian drew her blade, the ever dependable Slayer, and her eyes darted about. She was beginning to fall back into her element, her vision distinguishing mere shadows from actual beasts lurking in the dark patches of the underbrush, her nose segregating the different scents brought by a passing breeze - the same way she sorted out the various sounds in the cacophony that assaulted her ears. It was a level of sensory perception that only one who have lived in the jungle her whole life could achieve. And with it she sensed that something was wrong, hinted by the bubble of silence that stemmed from a location near to her - to her left, it seemed.

Somewhere beyond the dense overgrowth in that direction, a power struggle between predator and prey was occurring.

And the parties involved seemed just a javelin's throw from where Siiri was.

[Siiri]

Like a stalking tigress, Siiri prowled through the foliage, her each step landing on the balls of her feet rather than the heel to keep her footfalls quiet. She moved with stealth in mind, not sacrificing her advantage of being undetected despite her sense of urgency. Slayer she used to prod the way before her, parting huge fronds and low hanging branches with practiced ease. She was drawing closer, she could feel it. The silence was palpable.

A hundred yards out and she ran across a ravine, one so deep that she could only see darkness when she peered down to try to find its bottom. It was too wide for her to attempt to leap across, and it seemed to stretch on forever to either side of her. It was strange, for she did not recall ever having seen or heard of this particular landmark before. It should have been noted in the main map in the Scout's Roost. Making sure to commit this particular detail to memory to be reported later on to Map Keeper Geeta, Siiri looked up across the wide crevasse. The sight before her left her wondering if she was looking into one of the sites where pools of wild djed collected.

Right across from where she stood was an area cleared of vegetation. A semi-circle of tall trees crowded close together framed its edges, blocking any view of the jungle beyond. And right in the middle of it stood an elderly Myrian at the mercy of a rather peculiar attacker. The first time Siiri laid eyes on them, the Myrian was wrapped in the coils of what could only be a Dhani Constrictor. Siiri knew it was a Dhani for it was huge - easily thirty feet long. And yet, the second after, the large snake was replaced by the true form of the Dhani, half-man and half-serpent. It had the Myrian trapped in its muscular arms and it was squeezing...squeezing. But another second passed and the Dhani's form suddenly shifted into a tall, pale-skinned woman and she had the Myrian locked in an expertly applied chokehold. This last form seemed to have caught sight of Siiri. The woman smiled wickedly at her and yanked back at the hair of her victim. The identity of the elder Myrian chilled Siiri's blood for she knew very well who it was.

It was Ehra. Siiri's mother.

[Siiri]

The woman's face was bruised and battered, her aged face seemed weary and drawn from long abuse and her left cheek was swollen and disproportioned, as if her jaw had been shattered or dislocated. Despite the injuries she had suffered, Siiri still recognized her mother. There was no mistaking the crown of crocodile teeth on her head, after all, nor the tattoo of the Snapping Jaws in her left arm. Ehra looked up, as if sensing her presence. Siiri felt her heart drop into her stomach as soon as their eyes met. There was so much defeat in the older woman's expression, a fatalistic quality that Siiri had never seen before in the fiery and domineering matriarch.

She looks resigned to her fate, Siiri realized belatedly. That was so unlike her mother.

"Fight her, Mother! Fight on; I will save you!" she shouted. Or tried to, for no sound emerged from her throat.

Siiri did not bother to think of the reason why this was so, merely assuming that there was something magical about their surroundings. Spots where large concentrations of wild djed was a constant problem in the jungle wilds after all. Instead she gazed about and above her, looking for vines or fallen logs long enough to get her across the crevasse. There were none. In frustration, she turned back to the Dhani who held her mother in her grasp. The pale-skinned creature kept changing from human form to snake form to Dhani form and back again, shifting every few seconds or so. It was a strange sight, for she did not go through the normal transformation process but merely turned into a different form once sufficient time had passed.

"Let her go and fight me, skurak!" Siiri screamed. Again, no sound emerged from her throat. Several more curses passed from her lips, but again there was nothing. Why was Ehra alone in the jungle anyway? Where was Janna, or Kara? Or the twins? Where were the soldiers of the Snapping Jaws clan?

Her frustration was building as well as her panic. She needed to get across to save her mother! And wipe that infuriating grin on the Dhani's face while she was at it as well! Like a tigress not quite able to reach its prey, Siiri paced restlessly on her side of the gorge, never taking her eyes off the Dhani on the other side. Her mouth did not stop working either, spewing both curses and insults and directing them at the snake woman, even though no sound escaped her lips. She just wanted the pale-skinned bitch to let her mother go.

The Dhani seemed amused by her impotent rage, at one point even drawing one of Ehra's daggers and opening a gash on her face to match Siiri's trademark scar before subsequently miming that she would slit the older Myrian's throat with the blade. Siiri could only scream at her in silence. At last, the Dhani seemed to grow bored, her face turning serious. Siiri sensed the significance of the change and she immediately knew what was to come next. Dread crept into her heart. She looked at Ehra, perhaps for the last time.

"Mother," she mouthed, a tortured expression on her face.

Ehra spoke then, though no sound emerged from her mouth as well. The distance was too great between them for Siiri to be able to read her lips and yet she knew, somehow, exactly what the woman said.

"I am not your mother. But it is an honor you still think of me that way, child."

And then the Dhani snapped her neck.

[Siiri]

Ehra's death elicited a reaction more than her words did. It would not be until much later that Siiri would think about what the older woman had said. At that point in time, however, she stood witness as her mother died. In three different ways.

The first was when the pale-skinned woman tightened her grip around Ehra's throat and, at the same time, trapped the forearm of her free hand at the back of the Myrian's neck. Just as she squeeze, her form turned back into that of a snake with its thick body coiled around the older woman's neck and torso. And the next, it was in her Dhani form, one muscular hand wrapped around Ehra's neck. The pale-skinned woman twisted Ehra's head to one side and there was a loud crack. The snake tightened its coils and there was a loud crack. The Dhani snapped its arm forward and there was a loud crack.

Siiri seemed to be watching all three at the same time yet she knew she was only seeing one form doing the heinuous deed, though she was not exactly sure which form it was. All she knew at that moment was that her mother's spine had just shattered. And the sound it made seemed to be the only thing she could hear in the whole world, and it echoed on forever.

Ehra's body crumpled to the jungle floor.

"NO!" Siiri screamed. Her voice would have been heart-wrenching had her throat made a sound, but the spell of silence still appeared to affect her. Hot tears rolled down her cheeks as she eyed the lifeless body of her mother, hoping against hope that there would be some sort of movement, some kind of sign, that would tell her that the woman still lived.

But there was none.

"Damn you!" she shrieked at the snake woman, whose twisted smile had returned to taunt her. "DAMN YOU!"

Blind with rage, irrational, and wanting nothing more that the rip the head off the pale-skinned Dhani with her bare hands, Siiri backed up and, not caring for the consequences, tried to do the impossible. She ran up to the edge of the cliff and with a great leap, attempted to reach the other side.

She was halfway across when she ran out of momentum. She fell. The last thing she saw before the endless depths of the crevasse swallowed her was the Dhani looking down at her with her cruel smile.

-o-

Siiri woke up with a start, her hand instinctively reaching for the hilt of her greatsword. She looked at her surroundings and realized she was still in the desert, in the land of the nomads. It was only just a dream. A bad dream.

Or was it?

"Mother," she uttered in a whispered sob.

For the first time in many, many years, Siiri cried.

-fin-

[Siiri]

[Cayenne]

Wow! Very vivid, and very interesting to read. It also opens a number of questions for Siiri and about her future. As you know, XP cannot be awarded here, but I do award the following: Lore - Pathways around the Kandukta Basin Lore - Three Forms of the Dhani Lore - Dhani Shapeshifting