Life Changing Events [Solo]

[Keres]

16th of Fall 510 – Late in the day

The hard stone of the cave wall pressed painfully against Keres' cheek as he slowly started to regain consciousness. He tried to roll away from the pain, but found that he was stuck, wedged between the cave wall and rather large stone nearly propped against the cave wall. His limbs seemed that they could all move, but the awkwardness of the position he had been in for however long had taken its toll and he could barely move, but the aching in his entire body and the sharp pain in his right brow brought his senses back to him, and slowly his memory.

He had been asleep when it happened. At some point during the daylight hours, when the Zith family insisted that they all sleep, someone had attacked them. Keres being a slave knew that his Zith masters wouldn't have expected him to rise to their defense, and, to be honest, Keres hadn't known he would either.

The cave they were staying in wasn't deep enough to have retreated away from the blinding light pouring through the cave mouth, so they were truly left to the mercy of the arrows spewing in like the light.

It had all happened so fast, but Keres could still feel the screams echoing in his skull as he slowly worked his way out from behind the rock putting flashes of memories in place as he went.

As abruptly as it had started, the arrows stopped coming only to be replaced with large shadows rushing as swiftly as the arrows. Keres remembered thinking that he wasn't armed as he threw himself at one of the shadows. He also remembered being hit and luckily dodging a swinging blade. Then, disconnected as how it came about, he remembered being thrown, and as he tumbled through the air towards the cave wall and the rock, he could see, as if frozen in time, one of the Zith men striking a lethal blow to the thrower just before Keres hit the cave wall and fell unconscious and unseen.

Keres managed to gain his feet and stood motionless for several moments feeling the silence of the cave. The strange mixture of fury, despair, and horror held the physical pain away as he scrambled along the cave floor searching for his family. He saw the broken remains of their travel furniture. He found the furs that were used to keep cold air away from the newborn. He found the bundles of blankets that were used for bedding. He found the clotted mud-balls where blood had been spilled.

Slowly he gathered himself enough to stumble out the cave mouth where the sun was fading into the first moves of darkness. There he saw them. All of them. Still smoldering in a pile some twenty feet from the cave mouth.

Tears filled his eyes as he slowly approached. The tears gave way to to gasps as he slowly recognized the forms as who they had been. His family was dead. Eight Zith in all, a very small family for the Zith, but it had been his Zith family. On one side of the spent bonfire was the matriarch of the family with gouges deep in the ground a short distance from her unburned arm. Clutched in her other arm and barely identifiable after the fire, was the severed head of the newborn.

Keres's scream seemed to echo for hours as his agony consumed him. Darkness had fully set in by the time he was able to raise his body from the now scarred earth beneath him. He tried to think, but couldn't. The feeling that had driven him from his first home in Wind Reach was once again in him. The despair that had consumed him as he ran from his childhood now consumed him with new vigor.

He began to dig. He allowed his fury to tear the earth with his claws. He allowed the the hole he could feel in his chest to show in the dirt eight times: one for each of his Zith family that had been taken from him.

One for the matriarch who had stayed the head of the hunting party that had caught him and granted him the gift of a place in the Zith family. One for her oldest daughter who had placed him in charge of the other two slaves. One for the newborn whose name had not been selected yet who he had held joyfully in his arms a few hours before. Five other graves, each with specific memories and specific pains.

The sun was rising by the time the eight graves were dug, the bodies placed, and the soil tenderly replaced. The fatigue of it all then clutched at Keres' body, and he collapsed there in the open on the graves of his Zith family.

[Keres]

17th of Fall 510

Keres woke just before the sun passed the western horrizon where he had collapsed. The emotional pain had not lessened, but he had no indecision left in him. He cleaned himself and gathered what he could, replacing his loincloth for the human style clothing left by the other slaves, and set into the wild in search of the raiding party that had taken his second family from him.

The sun set before him with Keres moving loudly through the forest as quickly as he felt he could maintain. He ate while he went rapidly from clearing to clearing in the dark several times frightening some animal from its nighttime sanctuary, but never slowing. In his mind he relived many tender moments as well as the attack and burring his family. His thoughts did not wander off of the points of his pain until well into the next day when fatigue forced him to stop and sleep.

[Keres]

19th of Fall 510

After two nights of the same half running through the forest, Keres began to realize that he hadn't ever thought that he would find the raiders. His thoughts had turned from the points of his pain to what he intended, but what he intended he could not do. A new despair had set in, that of helplessness.

This third night, Keres did not even attempt to maintain his previous speed. He walked clumsily, but steadily, onward in the same direction. He stopped to eat and refill his water at a small stream that was no more than a trickle. He stopped to sleep just as the sky was lightening again for the new day.

[Keres]

23th of Fall 510

It was now a week since his Zith family had been killed. The pain of it was still deeply with Keres, but his mood had changed drastically. Were he had been consumed by rage and pain, he then became angry with himself. Had he been more capable a woodsman he may have been able to track the raiding party. Were he a warrior he may be able to punish them if he found them, but, if that were the case, he may have been able to keep them from having to die. Had he been a stronger person he may have been able to keep them hidden.

The realization of his inadequacies brought with it a new despair and fear. He had known fear so infrequently through his life. Several times as a child he had been afraid that he would be caught breaking a rule, but this fear was not that. Keres hadn't felt afraid when he threw himself at his brother's slayer, nor had he been afraid like this when he ran from Wind Reach. The only time he remembered feeling this fear was after his Zith family had caught him, while the matriarch inspected his hands, just before she made him theirs.

Now, the second time in his life that he knew that fear, it was nothing he could see inspecting him. It was the world that he could feel inspecting him.

Standing silently in the forest in the night he could see well enough and he could hear if anything of any dangerous size were moving anywhere near him, but when he moved he knew everything could hear him. Worse than that, he couldn't hear anything over the sounds of his own movement.

He began choosing his footing rather than just stepping wherever his stride happened to put his foot. The result was still noisy, but not nearly as loud and it gave pauses between the sounds he made enough for him to listen to his surroundings. He covered very little distance through the night, and chose what he thought to be a rather well hidden place to sleep through the day.

[Keres]

25th of Fall 510

Keres had come to prefer this method of travel. He was beginning to be able to move faster without increasing the amount of sound he made, but not by much. The primary benefit was that his movements had to be much more intentional, thus his mind did not dwell on despair. The more he was able to clear his mind of the memories the quieter he found he was able to move, but he still realized that he would be easy to find if anything were nearer than a hundred feet or so.

[Keres]

27th of Fall 510

He was finding it easier to push the painful images from his mind and focus on his movements as he continued to move as silently as he could through the underbrush of the forest. Every now and again, a memory segment would surface and break his concentration, but it was becoming less frequent.

[Keres]

30th of Fall 510

Early in the night, Keres happened across an odd clearing that seemed to run in a semi-straight line. He assumed that this must be some underused road, so he decided to follow it. Also, since he had been traveling mostly west over the past two weeks, he decided to follow the side that ran mostly west.

As he began to follow the road. He allowed himself to think about the road and began to fear that he would more likely encounter someone here than anywhere else in the forest by the very fact that it was a frequently used path. This renewed fear encouraged him to move much more quietly than he had before, but at the price of covering a much shorter distance through the night.

He slept during the day, but he was careful to walk off the road a ways then follow along beside it for a ways before finding a place out of sight of the road so as to not have a trail leading straight to his resting place.

[Keres]

32nd of Fall 510

The night air began to get uncomfortably cold. The cold in his arms and legs made Keres noisier as he continued to move along the road, which he was certain was a road. At one point, he tried wearing the cloak in his pack, but found that it dragged over leaves and small branches making even more noise, which he found unacceptable. Putting the cloak back in his pack he continued and tried to focus on ignoring the discomfort of the cold.

That actually made it worse. At least he thought it was either that or the night air getting colder as the night continued. He realized that he would have to find some shelter before too much longer. His supplies were running low and he had no idea how to survive in the wilderness alone.

[Keres]

33rd of Fall 510

Halfway through the night, Keres found another small stream where he was able to refill his water. The real problem was that it was still getting uncomfortable cold at night and it was continuing to either slow him down or make him more noisy, but he had abandoned the idea of trying to ignore the cold. Now he focused all his attention on his movements, which helped forget about the cold, but not enough for his liking.

The other problem was that the cold was making him hungry and tired sooner, thus he crossed even less distance each night.

[Keres]

34th of Fall 510

This night was not nearly so cold, thus he was more comfortable and more able to move. He also began to see more signs of other people on the road. Things like leaves kicked to the side, several indention in the softer parts of the road that he thought were very likely hoof prints, and several other oddities that Keres could think of no explanation for.