The Road To Sitara| 18+

Chapter 3 - The Poison & The Gift

As the smoke began to clear and the falling ash dispersed, I lifted my grief shattered, aching body. Everything hurt, my arms, my feet, my chest, everything. Each limb felt like a thousand pounds to move and I wasn't sure if it was the exhaustion from the events of the last 24 hours, or the sheer power of my emotions that had drained me completely. I knew The Draeg Army would be back once the smoke cleared to ensure there were no survivors. I couldn't stay out in the open or I would be a sitting duck.

I am no one's salvation. I am their retribution. It was all I could think as I moved back to the forest's edge to find some veil of concealment. All that was left of my belongings were the clothes on my back, and that wasn't much considering the damage from the flames. My feet remained bare, festering from dirt and rocks that embedded themselves in my wounds. My arms were covered in painful burns from the lashing flames, still warm to the touch. My shirt and pants barely hung onto my body, providing hardly any type of coverage through the rips and tears. I was in bad shape. I knew my wounds would get infected if I wasn't able to clean them, but the nearest streams were filled with ash for miles. I just had to make it long enough to take a few of them down with me.

I collapsed behind a series of sparse bushes. I balled myself up as small as I could go, and I simply laid there on my side. Consciousness faded in and out as the sky darkened and once again grew lighter with the rays of the sun. Each time my eyes fluttered closed, a multitude of voices began whispering all at once. When I would try to focus on what they were all saying, they would immediately stop. As I drifted between the horror that was my current reality, and nightmares that were my subconscious, the image of that grove of trees circled through my mind. Everything had moved too quickly for me to grasp the first time I had seen them, but now I noticed they were just like the two trees I had seen yesterday. They all shared that rust colored bark and stood so tall you couldn't even see the tops of them. The grove of these, seemingly, magical trees stood in a tight circle, roots entangled as if they were all holding each other together. A small clearing sat in between them, large enough for just a few people my size, moss creating a soft blanket over the roots as they creased the ground. The image faded from obscured, to crystal clear, and back to obscured as I continued to ride the wave of my exhaustion through the night.

A shout of distant voices thrust me back into awareness, the morning mist leaving my skin chilled to the touch. The sun was shining in the sky now, barely any evidence of the smoke or what had happened here last night. I looked through the sparse shrubs across the large clearing where our village once thrived. A few men dressed in the red armor of The Draeg Army kicked their feet through the massive piles of ashes, laughing and making jokes with one another. My eyes hardened into a sizzling glare, rage pumping through my veins as I propped myself up. Shit. I had to move, they could easily spot me if I didn't find better cover than these thin bushes. Shit. Shit. Shit. I scrambled to my feet, my soles screaming in pain with every step I took. I gritted my teeth and bit my lip as I pushed deeper into the forest, hobbling on the sides of my feet. 

I pulled myself behind a small group of younger trees that stood about ten feet from the treeline. I could still see the Draeg, but unless they were specifically looking, they wouldn't be able to see me. I pulled the soles of my feet upwards to examine them and assess the situation quickly. I hissed as I began pulling out the small pebbles from the wide gashes on my feet. Any sound from me could mean an immediate death sentence. I bit my tongue to stifle any reaction as I began pulling them out as quickly as my fingers would move.

I needed to rinse my feet. My mother had bandaged my feet many times when I was a child and didn't consider shoes to be a necessity when exploring. If I didn't clean them out, swelling and infection would start to set in. My body would begin fevering to try and fight the infection. Hallucinations would follow until the infection would eventually enter my bloodstream and stop my heart. The only streams I could get to were in the forest on the other side of the massive clearing, the same direction the Draeg seemed to have come from.