CANELIS FRACHDAL's promotion comes with a price and that is to investigate a supply issue in the army. Upon arrival, she is greeted with a renegade camp underneath the Army's nose, a magical anomaly creeping inward from the ocean, and warring sides...
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2407 Iclis 19, Jyda
Canelis licked her fingers free of the crumbs she attained from eating the slice of bread with her hands, uncivilized as it might be. What choice did she have? It's not like they gave her silverware to eat. She could barely fit the slice in between the rails.
A sigh built in her throat but never quite reached her lips. She had been limiting the number of sighs she let out in a day. If she let out another, she might lose it completely. None of them wanted that.
How many days had it been since she was taken from Xai-Ren? Nobody was around to give her any clues if she had been here a week, a month, or at least a year. They had also thrown off her count by giving her meals at odd times around the day. It was a common tactic to distort a prisoner's sense of time and, as much as it pained Canelis to admit, it worked. Now, she had no idea if it was night or day, afternoon or dawn.
She blew a strand of hair off her face. She had let it loose two meals ago when it began straining against her forehead, causing pinpricks throbbing in her temples. It wasn't that painful but it could get distracting and annoying. So, she had slipped off the twine off her head and flung it across the room, letting the darkness swallow it whole.
It would not be long before she thought of the darkness as a companion and gave it a name. That's when the time she would know she really did lose it.
The lack of anything to do was more frustrating than not knowing anything about her current location. She could have painted a dozen more landscapes with the time she spent ogling at the odd patterns in the rocks making up the walls of her cell. Tears crept to her eyes as the thought of her poor succulents dying of thirst. These people would pay if just one of their leaves turn wrinkled from lack of water. That, or she would have no choice but to bust a hole through the walls with whatever magic she could muster. Her succulents didn't deserve such loneliness.
Canelis let herself sigh the fifth time since she finished eating her bread. Her breath echoed briefly across the walls before dying off without a trace. She leaned her head against the stone wall, letting the cold soak into the muscles on her back despite the hollow nagging of her trainer's voice in her head.
She closed her eyes and crossed her arms on her chest, tucking herself in. As a soldier, she was used to sleeping in all kinds of places and she could trick herself into falling unconscious as she wanted. If she wanted to get some sleep, she could. But now, she's got to think.
What the boy and the Marshal mentioned about the plague had been bugging her since forever. They both said it came from the sea before ravaging Ok-Sa. What had transpired and why was Ok-Sa the only one affected?
The Marshal mentioned using murwen leaves to treat the physical repurcussions of being exposed to this plague. The boy claimed using quilderfen bones in holding it off. Was that why the renegades have been surviving in the barren city that was Ok-Sa for so long? Where were they even getting those bones? As far as Canelis was aware, the animal in which they belonged to wasn't native to Peltra.
