The Cleansing (Book One: The Folara Chronicles)

013: Kara

The fortress could never be considered a palace akin to the one Kara had been raised in, but it did have a wing that now rivaled Castle Aquaria. Feniece had seen to that.

Kara's fingers shuffled through the golden glass Galantyne had crushed in his rage earlier. Her eyes blurred with tears. An object, that's all it was. But it represented a moment of heritage they'd shared. She was grieved that she'd goaded him into a fit so furious an heirloom had been broken.

As she stood to leave a wave of dizziness assailed her and her hand reached for the table. The slice of golden glass against her index finger startled her enough to make her gasp, not in pain, but in surprise. She staggered as her vision clouded and the darkened image became a windblown hill of grasses and weeds, a hard packed dirt path and the sound of crashing thunder.

Instinctively she sat down hard, holding the side of the chair that she knew was firm and real. In her mind, a voice interrupted thought forcefully, taking her own will and supplanting it. But the mind voice wasn't worded, just feelings. Kara closed her eyes and breathed as deeply as she could, counting to five and blowing out all the breath she held.

"It has been a very long day." She spoke the words aloud, to give herself a moment to recover her senses. "I am understandably upset and fatigued." She felt the vision recede, and the room took its contours once again.

In her right frame of mind, she analyzed the feeling of otherworldliness she'd experienced. Not her world, as she'd never felt true wind, never heard true thunder. Whose vision was it then? And how would she describe the sense of longing?

Just that... longing. Yearning for something not experienced. This was understandable. She stood up again and pinched her finger tightly to staunch the blood. I am simply wishing for what I have never experienced before.

Kara made her way up the stairs to her rooms.

She tossed her belt pack on her bed as she entered. With relief, she sat on the chest at the foot of the bed, pulled off one shoe and examined it ruefully. There was a hole just under the big toe of both feet which had been worn through to the leather underneath. She tossed the shoe away from her and it landed in a pile of similar foot coverings in a basket near the door to her private bathing chamber.

She slipped the full leggings off, her tunic over her shoulders and then stood in her under things staring across the room at her reflection in the mirror. One hand reached up to pull her hair out of its customary braid and she sliced her fingers through it to ease the tangles.

She bent to retrieve a robe off the floor where she'd left it on another day, and straightened slowly as a sixth sense warned her of impending danger. Kara retrieved a fiery lit baton with steel blades from the trunk at the end of her bed and she brandished it as a dagger, lighting the corners of the room, ready to let fly her weapon.

Out of the corner of an eye, she saw the shadow of a man, and she let the baton go, whirling it toward the heart of the intruder. She ducked, expecting an assault, raced across the cold hard floor to retrieve her sword when her pack was pierced a quarter inch from her hand by a sizzling ice green arrow, longer than any she'd seen, and quivering in perfect symmetry. It landed exactly where the shooter intended. Only one person in her experience could produce such accuracy and precision.

"There is a man who could stop me from reaching my weapons right now, but he would never enter my personal chamber uninvited. Your manners are appalling, Korlon." She stood up, flushed red by her lack of apparel, and reached for the robe once again. This time it was held out to her on the tip of a sword. She lifted her fingers to retrieve the robe, yet never saw the movement that dropped it to her feet and sliced the thin material of her breast coverings or the arm that fiercely grabbed her to a rock solid muscled chest with a dagger at her throat. Both hands came up to grasp the choking grip, and both legs bent, her body doubled to the front, and she flipped him artfully, using a wrist and thumb technique that rendered her opponent defenseless and on the ground. With one bare foot on his lower back, pressing her toes deeply and painfully into his kidney, she twisted the wrist again for good measure, and when his other hand slapped the ground for release she laughed and gave it, turning to cover her nakedness.