Crusade of Innocence

Guilty - [1]

Mendax inhaled deeply as the unsullied winds of nature wheezed past her rough square face.

The untainted breeze devoid of humanity's corruption, industry and stench swirled around her tall muscular body as she opened her hazel right and blue left eye, the beautiful landscape before her expanding brightly as the darkness of her infernal nightmares vanished.

Tilting her head she happily looked into the straw basket which was filled to the brim with giant crabs and pink salmon squirming around as their lives were at risk, their gills slowly beginning to malfunction from long exposure to the lethal air.

A good saturating catch which would fuel the rest of her flight up until the border of Nazagoth, the desolate continent as the people in the south called it, as the people of Mendax's home called it. But it wasn't her home anymore. Not after she had been convicted and banished for crimes she didn't even commit.

Why was she the scapegoat for all of humanity's faults and sins?

An answer to this question hadn't been found by her in the two weeks she was already fleeing.

But she didn't really spend much time thinking about morality or ethics when her life depended on absolute concentration on the present, on survival in the real world, not in the philosophical one.

With a last glance, Mendax admired the dazzling reflection of the sun on the blue transparent lake before picking up the basket and trotting over to her makeshift home, an abandoned cave which had once been inhabited by a family of bears and judging from the footprints, the mother had had three cubs.

Ascending up the flat slope towards the cave entrance, the powerful woman hummed an old folk song of mages which she had learned from a very young age and passed down to her own nieces and nephews.

Upon entering her temporary home she carefully placed the basket down on a spot which was covered in mellow leaves.

The sizzling fire in the back of the shelter illuminated the cave which included a bed of leaves and twigs, a fire pit, several weapons stacked into a cache which formed a cross as they laid against the wall, a cooking pot and a mysterious scroll enwrapped in golden ornaments.

Without bothering to remove skin or grates from the fish, Mendax pierced their lifeless carcasses onto a stick and placed them above the raging fire which was fueled by her infusion with magic as it turned darker, taking on a crimson tone rather than the common orange.

Deeming her meal's position above the flame as satisfying, she left the cave again and calmly walked down the slope towards the water, light waves rippling through it as the gentle breeze moved her shoulder-long dirty blonde hair away from her ears, her right one missing a big portion of its upper earlobe.

Stripping down her white fur coat and warily placing it above an ashen, black-dotted tree branch, Mendax relaxed her fatigued muscles as she tipped her toes into the freezing water, thankful that the ice had already dispersed despite being in the middle of spring, a season which usually saw this part of the world submerged in snow and ice.

But judging the water as warm enough, she wholeheartedly jumped into it, destroying the peaceful calm of the vivid blue lake as her heavy body sent quakes through the surface of the water, like an earthquake rumbling through the earth or like a war sending tremors, both positive and negative, through the people's hearts in its destructive wake.

Spending the whole next two hours rapidly darting through the water, seemingly effortlessly moving in the foreign habitat, considering her speed nearly flying through it, the warrior erased her worries and doubts, simply enjoying the water's rhythmic sloshing, the pounding of her working heart and the beautiful chirps of the passing birds which she imagined were encouraging her to beat herself on each lap she took across the huge lake.