Chapter 8: DD2 Chapter 002 – Scars

“Wake up. We’re not done yet," Rolf whispered, his baritone voice in her ear bringing Arilla swiftly back to the present.

The knife slid into her chest without resistance. The skill-forged steel in Rolf’s oh-so-steady hands parted her flesh with all the ease of a hot knife moving through butter. The freshly severed tissues scarcely bled as the blade moved past, which was a miracle considering how deep he cut. Sliced open blood vessels, muscles and skin, all holding back their fluids as if in disbelief at what had just been done to them, but Arilla knew better. It was Rolf’s class skills as a torturer that kept her from bleeding out from any one of a dozen otherwise lethal wounds. Her prodigious health pool had long since zeroed-out, allowing for all the harm that the small man could inflict to be applied directly to her body without so much as the edge being taken off the pain.

She screamed with every cut, for what else was she supposed to do. Her stoicism was replaced with despair and feeble attempts at dissociation as her torture stretched on into yet another pain-filled moment. It could have been going on for hours or days, she didn't know. The reassuring knowledge that she had yet to see the sun was eroded by how frequently he made her sleep.

Whenever her pain or terror threatened to overwhelm the skills that he was using to keep her cogent, she would close her eyes, time would pass and when she awoke, she would see his face smiling back at her, excited eyes drawing her attention to some new bit of flesh that he had carved out of her. An immaculate organ held high, separate and yet still attached to her as it trailed long lines of pulsating veins and arteries across the cleared ground between her and it. The indescribable sensation of being pulled out through her own chest as she was arrayed in front of herself like pieces of a puzzle waiting to be put back together again.

“Please kill me," she would utter, each word a struggle, her throat cracked from her cries.

“Not yet," Rolf would say, maybe adding a little something extra for variety, something like. “I’m practicing for the main event," or “It’s rare that I get to work on someone with quite so much vitality,” and lastly “You have no idea how pretty you are like this.”

Rolf clearly had some very serious issues.

Over and over again, the knife would flick out and Rolf’s face would contort into a perverse smile. His straight teeth bared as he ran his pink little tongue along each tooth in turn as the man salivated with each stroke of his knife. She felt his hand inside her, rummaging through her chest cavity, poking and prodding as he took his time choosing the next organ to cut. He would carve it out to the sound of her screams, present it to her, and when she threatened to die he would make her sleep. To recover. All so that she could wake up and see the ruin of herself and beg to die, so that he could do it all over again.

Finally in answer to her prayers, the night’s sky lit up like it was the day amidst a flash of bright golden light which was swiftly followed by the sonic boom that crashed through the air. Then there was silence. Rolf's hand, still inside of her chest pulled something important to the surface, as with minute, precise movements he cut it free from its cage of meat and connective tissue. Her still-beating heart held in front of her eyes as the pain of it all assaulted her.

“Wait, this isn’t right. This didn’t happen," she panted, gasping between pained breaths.

“Oh? Would you care to enlighten me?” Rolf asked, going decidedly off script.

“You’re supposed to put me to sleep and then when I wake up I kill you.”

“Oh yes, that. Well it is your dream I suppose,” Rolf said, surprisingly quite agreeable to his scheduled death.

“Nightmare," Arilla uttered defiantly, the memory of the pain starting to fade as the dream moved on, losing its coherence.

A second sonic boom thundered to more golden light, her familiar nightmare veering off into uncharted territory. Rolf changed with the flash. His smiling face morphed into a lipless grimace where the magical flames had burnt away his face, leaving just a ruin of raw weeping flesh where it peeked out from his cracked and fire-blackened armour. Ferros’s thin body bent grotesquely around him like vines climbing a tree, all exposed bone and seared skin, where the intense heat had fused her broken body to his armour.

“Is this what you want to remember?” Ferros and Rolf asked in unison, their voices coming out as crackling rasps, their breaths shallow and hyperventilated, each one layered in pain. “How good it felt, when you stuck us with your sword? How many levels you gained by slaying your own kind.”

“No, not that," Arilla said, backing away, her body suddenly whole and pain-free. Her steps panicked and rapid until she walked backwards into a broad, firm chest.

“What about when you killed me?” Boscoe asked, his stomach still smouldering from where Typhoeus had ripped him open. “Do you want to relive your little levelling high, after you murdered me?”

“No…” she said weakly.

“Don’t forget me, girl! I got you to 20 after all. I showed you the truth about her with my death, or should I say him? Surely I’m worth remembering?!" Quint yelled accusingly, as he dragged himself towards her. The hawkish man's body simply ended below the waist, an obvious reminder of how she had once cut him in half. Bloody streaks of gore trailed behind him along the uneven ground of the hill.

“Stop it!”

“What about me?” Galen asked, a wide line of bleeding flesh carved through his torso. “If you didn’t murder me, then you’d still be a poor, worthless, little gutter rat, whose only meaningful accomplishment is fucking a monster.”

“You deserved it. You all did!” she yelled through clenched teeth, angry at the ghosts' audacity to try and make her feel guilty for killing them.

“Do you even know my name?” asked a dead soldier in Traylan colours, a wound in his neck where a ratling spear had taken his life. “Did I deserve to die?”

“I—I don’t know…”

“What about me?” asked another unknown soldier, his question quickly taken up by a hundred other unfamiliar voices.

“Please stop! I want to wake up!” Arilla cried, trying to ignore the long line of warriors behind the first. Each increasingly foreign face insistent that she admit that they had all died because of her actions, and her choices. The dead quickly closed in around her, each walking corpse clawing at her skin with bloody hands and blunt fingernails as they demanded to be remembered. Her panic rose as she was slowly buried under a sea of her own victims.

When Arilla woke up her first thought was to bite down on the nascent scream. She had just rented out the floor below her’s to a darling little Agrovian family and the last thing she wanted was to have to assure them, again, that she was a good neighbour. That her nightly terrors were an aberration brought on by too much wine. Her second thought was perhaps more predictably to reach for the bottle, but she stopped herself short before her hand closed around the glass neck. Her promise to Father Mihalis still vivid in her mind, she swore not to continue numbing herself to her pain.

She pulled her hand away from the stoppered bottle she kept beside her bed and swung her legs out to the side as she sat up out of her sodden sheets, the cool air of the room all the colder against her damp skin. Her vivid nightmares had caused her to sweat through the thin fabric leaving a noticeable dark patch on her sheets where she had lain, visible even to her in the dim light of the cold winter's morning.

Arilla got up and walked across the large room, the thick wolfskin rug warm beneath her bare toes as she moved to face herself in the mirror. Like her home, it was another extravagance that she had paid for with a dead man's silver. The large piece of reflective glass, mounted in a carved wooden frame provided her with a clear view of the woman she had become. Looking back at herself, she still struggled to recognise the face staring at her. The warrior in the mirror was so very different from the one that had occasionally glanced back at her from the occasional muddy puddle only a few months ago.

Her face still had that ineffable roundness to it, her soft cheeks jarring with the prominent musculature of her body. The hard look in her eyes and the sunken bags beneath them spoke to her experience with violence, something that was quite rare to see in someone quite as young as herself. Her hazel orbs were piercing in their quiet intensity as her face rested in a comfortable frown, the sense of lightness that she had once felt at being an adventurer gone. Gone along with the woman who had helped inspire it.

Arilla slowly brought her fingers down to just below her collarbone as she traced the thin lines of knotted tissue that formed her scars. Across her chest from armpit to armpit and then down between her breasts ending just above her waist where there was another large horizontal cut to mirror the one below her shoulders. Like the outline of a ridge tent carved into her skin or a capital ‘I’, the three intersecting lines which Rolf had sliced into her had yet to fade despite the healing she had received. The many healers she had paid had all assured her that there was no skill artefact keeping the scars in place. That it was her own charisma score forcing her body to hold onto the wound like some kind of sick memory that she wasn’t willing to let go of.

Oh how she had raged at that.

That recollection made her grimace with embarrassment now that she wasn’t quite so numb to it all. The nightmares, which came every night she didn’t drink herself into a stupor, had led to a few too many days where she simply didn’t see the point in pausing to catch her breath. Thankfully, before she lost herself completely, her priest had convinced her to swear off alcohol, even if just for a while. Just to know that she could still stop if she wanted to. With sobriety on her side, she could see the obviousness of the healers’ point. Her scars only went skin deep. There was no pain or stiffness, just an unpleasant aesthetic to remind her of her near miss with death. That, and the first of the many people she had subsequently killed.

Arilla liked to think that she had gotten over the deaths of Medraut’s Rovers, Quint and Galen. But it was all the others that she had trouble with. Soldiers, who had sworn oaths to a noble family for coin and easy levels, had died by the hundreds so that she could enact her revenge. An act that even now she was still trying to atone for despite her rationalisations to the contrary insisting that she had nothing to feel guilty about.

Her shoulders slumped as she made her way over to the jug of water that she kept on her table. The cool liquid refreshed her mouth even if it did nothing to slake her thirst before she splashed the rest of it on her face to wipe away the sweat and grime from another restless night. She performed her daily ablutions and dressed herself in warm cottons and linens, a weighted metal sheath to protect her sword and to ensure that the additional weight helped her get the most out of her skills that had long since out-levelled the thirty pounds that her sword weighed.

Throwing on her thick winter coat, Arilla made her way out of her flat and down the communal stairs that she shared with her tenants. She frowned when she reached the bottom and noticed that someone had carved the words ‘Fuck the Traylans, Fuck the Nobility, Free Rhelea!’, into the ground floor wall leading to the shared entrance. It was a sentiment that she didn’t disagree with, but she had to keep her head down and didn’t have the luxury of being able to be quite so politically outspoken.

Not when half the city was after her head.

She was going to have to hire an earth mage or a high-level stonemason to fix the wall. That, or at least get a poster to cover it up, but finding non-political posters these days was easier said than done; the printing houses that hadn’t complied with their new lord’s demands to churn out his lies had either been shut down or gone to ground. The streets were plastered in propaganda either in favour of or bitterly opposed to their new noble lord. Signs of a daily war between the printers of Rhelea where battles were fought with paper and glue rather than sword and shield, while it wasn’t the revolution she had quietly hoped for, Arilla couldn’t say that she disapproved.

Arilla’s long frustrated sigh turned into a wince as soon as she left the building. The frigid cold of Rhelea’s streets continued to surprise her with its harsh intensity despite having faced it every day for the past few weeks. She pulled her coat tight around her chest and began to quickly make her way towards the city’s grand temple. The early hour and heavy snow ensured that the pavements were mostly clear, with the notable exception of scattered congregations here and there, where people gathered around wanted posters plastered onto the sides of buildings.

Their conversations were all disturbingly similar. One and all, they vocally overcame their hatred of their noble overlord at the hypothetical prospect of not only all that gold, but being raised into nobles themselves. The ease at which her fellow citizens were willing to sell out one of their own for the mere idea of replacing Galen as the heir to the Traylan dynasty, did much to turn her stomach. Until she reminded herself that they had no idea that the Dragonrider was one of their own and even if they did, consorting with monsters was hardly the way to earn the hearts and minds of the common folk of Rhelea.

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Still, Arilla couldn’t help but be disappointed. There had been a lot of grumbling since Lord Traylan had returned to Rhelea with the King’s decree and promptly ousted the Merchants Council from power. But none of it had yet to amount to anything, aside from a lot of graffiti and a few ill-advised brawls with the new guard. A part of her had hoped that Galen’s death would have precipitated some kind of profound change, an uprising, or a riot, or something, but whatever effect killing him and destroying his family’s castle may have had was drowned out in the furore over her chosen method of assassination.

No matter how much she hated it, the people of Rhelea were far more interested in what had happened to the Dragonrider, the ratling army, or the dragon itself than they were in casting off the few chains that still tied them to the whims of their noble overlords.

When she finally arrived outside the temple, the ornate brass doors were open as they always were. Something about the church needing to be available to all, no matter the time or season. Given the weather, that little bit of doctrine should have made it unbearably cold inside, but numerous members of the priesthood had overlapping aura skills that served to keep the temple grounds almost balmy, despite the large snow drifts in front of the open doorway.

Waiting just inside the doors for her was Father Mihalis, a warm smile on his face that for some reason always managed to set her nerves on edge. She couldn’t quite place why he made her so distinctly uncomfortable. Since she had sent Typh away, the aging priest was the closest thing she had to a friend. His kind words and patient ear had done much to help relieve her guilt and help her start to move on with her life.

Maybe it was because, like Typh, Father Mihalis was a terrible liar.

“Good morning Arilla, you look well," Father Mihalis lied, causing her to instinctively frown in response. She looked like shit and she knew it, but he was just being polite so she allowed the lie to slide as she always did. The contrast between the two of them was stark: him, well groomed and clad in his holy vestments that, while clean, still smelt faintly of old incense; and her, dressed in literally whatever she could find on her bedroom floor. Laundry had not been a priority for some time and between old sweat and older wine stains, she had smelt far fresher.

“Good morning to you too, Father,” she replied, the priest's title uncomfortable on her tongue. She knew that it wasn’t Mihalis’s fault, but just saying the word out loud made her think of her own absent parent, stirring up even more memories that she didn’t want to dwell on. Gods, how she needed a drink. “Is there something wrong? It’s unlike you to be waiting here.”

“No, child, nothing is the matter,” he replied softly, a discrete skill layered into his words that tried to soothe some of her anxiety. She quickly shrugged it off, eliciting a small frown in turn from the priest which he did his best to conceal.

“In that case I should get going to the kitchens, I’m sure they could use my help to prepare."

“That won’t be necessary, I believe Iphaen has it all under control today. If you could spare an old man a few minutes, then there is something I would like to discuss," Father Mihalis enquired.

Arilla almost scoffed at that; the priest was still relatively young by classer standards. He couldn’t have been much over 60, but she supposed that still made him more than three times her age. With her effective vitality score, she knew that it would be decades before she even began to see the passing of the years on her face, something she was still struggling to comprehend. The idea that she could realistically live for centuries was not a welcome one, not when it included nightly visits from Rolf and his knife.

“Of course," she said a little uneasily, unsure as to where exactly this was going.

Mihalis led her away from the door leading to the kitchens and instead down the long aisle between the row of pews that filled the hall where church services were held weekly. The tall man stopped short before the pulpit where he stood still in silence for a long moment as he looked up at a stained glass window on the far wall: a depiction of two angels guiding an armoured man up into the heavens, almost glowing as the morning light shined through the patterned glass.

“I have never once seen you attend service. Yet you are here practically every day to help feed the poor, and your charitable donations have been truly ...immense. Arilla, you alone have allowed the church to expand its activities in ways that I never would have believed possible within this city," Mihalis said, his voice loud and clear, projecting through the empty hall far more than was necessary for Arilla to hear him.

“I was told that my donations would be kept anonymous," Arilla replied quietly, her eyes downcast as she winced at how far his words had carried. Fears that he might be overheard, or worse, ask where she got all that gold to donate at the forefront of her mind.

“And humble too. Arilla, if we had someone like you in every city in Astresia I dare say that Creation would be a much better place," he continued.

“If you say so, Father, but I really don’t need or want your praise," she said, the man’s words making her distinctly uncomfortable.

“Well what do you want then?”

“Just to continue working in the kitchens," she answered honestly, the man smiling even wider as if she had stepped into some kind of a trap.

“What if I told you that there was more that you could do to help the church. Not just the common people of Rhelea, or Terythia, but all over Astresia.”

“I would be interested to hear how, but I am just a warrior, Father.”

“The Church always has need of warriors, Arilla. Have you heard about the angel that touched down in Pallas?”

“I’m not really the pious sort, Father. I have heard the rumours, but I don’t really care for religious debate.”

“Well trust me when I say that the debate shall soon be settled,” he said confidently.

“I still don’t really see what this has to do with me.” she asked, confused.

“If you were to swear vows to the church, I would be more than happy to sponsor you as a Templar for our divine cause. Given all that you have already done for us, I can assure you that you would be trained and raised up to bronze so that you could take a templar-tagged class within the decade. And of course, in the meantime I would be able to make you privy to certain secrets. There are auspicious things going on beneath our very feet that you could help us with, things that will make Creation a much better place for all of humanity...”

Father Mihalis kept talking but she wasn’t listening, not anymore. Instead, Arilla’s heart raced in her chest, her class roaring in anger at the mere suggestion that she swear another superseding oath. She felt the tether of draconic power in her chest stretching off into the distance, so much closer now than it had been in quite some time. Consciously, she was sorely tempted by the priest's offer. The church, despite its secrets, was undoubtedly a force for good. It was the best way she knew of to atone for her crimes, but the thought of it was unimaginable on so many levels.

She remembered the last class-oath she had sworn, how prideful she had felt in the moment, how content, in her lust and affection. Now she knew better. Typh was Typhoeus, not even a woman, but a male dragon that had terrorised the merchant caravans entering and exiting Rhelea for years. He ate people, killing some of the greatest heroes her country had ever known and when she was with him, she too had killed, exacting her vengeance on those who had wronged her like an unstoppable force of nature.

She had become the Dragonrider, a traitor to humanity and worse than that, she had liked it.

“I—I… Swearing oaths is a big decision, Father,” she said in a panic as she instinctively took a half-step backwards, mind whirling as she was assaulted with a myriad of half-buried conflicting emotions and urges. Longing and disgust intertwined so deeply that she couldn’t even begin to understand it, but there was one thing she did know for certain no matter how much she wanted to deny it.

Typh or Typhoeus. She missed them.

“Of course, Arilla, I would never want to rush you into anything,” Father Mihalis said, jolting her out of her spiraling self-recriminations. “Why don’t you sleep on it for a few days and give me your answer then. Feel free to go to the kitchens whenever you are ready, I wouldn’t want to interfere with your good work any more than I already have," he said kindly, dismissing her with a benevolent smile and a wave as he continued to stare up at the angels in the stained glass.

Arilla turned and fled to the kitchens, struggling not to run.

Her hand itched for the bottle, her class, her dragon. Like her lips and her heart, she could feel it crying out for the one person that she never wanted to see again.

She had a lot to think about indeed.

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