A Sword For Gold

Chapter 12 - Family Reunion

Vaelia walked into the hidden hideout not knowing what to expect.

She had been told to follow another girl just a couple years older than she was into the hideout, a girl that she had just met a few hours ago, perhaps a day. It all had happened so fast.

Vaelia had managed to finally escape the Nightstalkers that were on her tail for the past few days, yet she did not forget the fact that she was still on the run, and that there were people who were clearly after her. She had gone as far as reaching the scorching heat and unforgiving absence of life in Tep Desert, which lied towards the east of the reaches of the kingdom of Levyria.

Vaelia Martel did not know who was after her, or why. All she knew was that those who were after her resided in the land of Levyria, so she had to get as far away as possible. She regretted not being able to say goodbye to Baros Delvis; that her last words to him were to run away and stay away from her so that he would not get caught up in her mess. Vaelia figured, however, that it was for the best. She did not want to be the reason that her dear friend's life would be taken away so easily, especially when she knew deep down that he would have been unable to defend himself properly.

As she steeled her senses, nerves, and emotions, walking into the sandy dunes of Tep Desert, Vaelia could sense another presence approaching her. Immediately, she prepared her fiery hands to fight once again, despite her energy and stamina dropping almost to the point that she would have fainted anytime soon. She noticed, however, that the presence that was approaching her did not have any malicious intent. At the very least, she could tell that it was not a controlled monster that was after her.

When she turned to look, she saw a girl, just a tad bit older than her, probably could have been a couple years, approaching her with a concerned face. It was at that moment that the unforgiving, scorching heat of the desert got to her, and worse, overwhelmed her. As the girl who had been approaching her widened her eyes in alarm as the last thing Vaelia had seen for that time, Vaelia collapsed into the sand, extremely fatigued by what she had gone through for the last couple of days.

When she came to, she had been sleeping in a cave, and Vaelia had no idea where she was. Immediately, she tried to sit up, but her body pained so much that she had to stay down, no matter what, and all she could do at that point was to simply lift her head a tad bit off the ground and try to look around.

"You shouldn't be going into the desert like that," said the voice of a young woman, perhaps in her twenties. Vaelia merely assumed that it was the woman she had seen before fainting and collapsing into the sand.

Vaelia looked around, and saw that the woman who had saved her from the desert was just behind her, over her head, cooking what looked like a pot of stew over a rather modest campfire in the cave.

"I put together what I could as fast as possible," said the woman, "Chicken stew? All I could find was a chicken. You must be hungry."

"Y... yeah," replied Vaelia weakly, "I hadn't eaten for three days."

"Yet you planned going into the desert like that," scolded the woman, "I'm glad I ran into you. You'd do well to join us, and you seem like you have nothing left in your life."

"You could say that, I suppose," Vaelia replied nonchalantly.

"Surely, you still have a name," said the woman, as she poured some of the stew into a makeshift wooden bowl that she had newly carved for Vaelia while she had been asleep. "I'm Dorani, how about you?"

"Vaelia... Martel..." she coughed in reply, as she struggled to sit upright as Dorani had handed her the bowl. As Vaelia looked down to eat, Dorani's eyes lit up in urgency, without Vaelia seeing, and immediately, she realized something, as she then began to speak as Vaelia began to eat and drink from the bowl of stew that Dorani had prepared for her.