10 years ago…
Nura woke up as she did every day, with the sun blaring at her from the large windows directly opposite to her bed. The handmaiden had opened the curtains not a couple minutes before she woke up. This was how she was woken every day and even though she was familiar with this routine she never quite got used to it. Her room was huge and her bed equally as huge, to her anyway. She was allowed to wake as she saw fit but she strictly stuck to her typical routine. She crawled under the covers to the left side of the bed and carefully fell out of her oversized bed into a well worn pair of petite leather boots. Her clothes like every other day lay carefully on the cabinet at the end of the bed and she swiftly gathered these clothes and put them on, they were loose and well worn like the boots but they are not what you would exact. Nura lived in a huge house in the centre of a town called Norton. This house was gargantuan compared to the other building in the town. She was for all intents and purposes, high class. Even so the clothes that lay out for her were outdoorsy. Not your typical oversized dress and overpriced shoes. These were essentially commoner clothes. And these were the clothes that she liked. She lived in a castle sized manor and was a lady of class and wealth and yet, wore commoner clothes.
Nuras' parents were strange as well. Like Nura even though they were of high class they did not act like it, in fact it was very much the exact opposite. For people of wealth and nobility they acted no different then the objectively normal people of Norton, they acted like commoners. Her father was a soldier and spent very little time in the house, he would train the townspeople to defend themselves and patrol around the town with those townspeople making sure the town was safe and secure. This was the sort of man that would spend all evening at the tavern with the town's men even though he was of higher class, he did not act like it and the townspeople did not treat him any differently than anyone else. Nura's father was fundamentally a townsman. He had devoted himself and a good amount of funding to the town and its defence and development and it paid off. His father before him didn't care much for the town of Norton. He just spent most of this time close to his giant house. When Nura's father took over the family things changed in Norton for the better. And that's where it is now, a thriving centre of commerce and townships.
Nura's mother, Emlyn, was known to be quite elusive in town. Like a shadow, she would leave early in the morning. She would be gone for days without telling anyone where she would go. She would then return days after without a rhyme or reason. She would do this at least once a month and for seemingly no reason, people had also just started to acknowledge and accept this. Considering Emlyn was one of the most wealthy women in Norton this was more than strange behaviour. In fact, some of the more secluded residents in Norton thought that their whole family's behaviour was very peculiar and avoided them for that reason. For Emlyn's shorter trips out she would bring Nura with her. Nura looked forward to this; it was one of the few times she was able to leave the town with her parents' permission. This being one of Nura's families most ironclad rules, to not leave town unattended. This was for good reason, Potentia was just as, if not more, dangerous now than it has ever been at any point in its vast and complicated history.
Today was one of those rare days Nura was allowed to go outside the town with her mother and she was ecstatic. The thought of adventure and to escape this secluded town meant the world to her and she was going to make sure she was going to make the most of it. Like the inquisitive child she was, she hasted to gather all of the stuff she was going to bring with her. She grabbed the bag that lay by the door, most likely left for her by the maid. The bag was already full of the essentials, a change of clothes, a small stash of provisions, a couple flasks of fresh water and some medical supplies for any aches or bruises. This although rare, better safe than sorry she thought. She rushed out of her chambers to be met with a ginormous hallway; thus she sprinted down it to meet her mother at the end. This hallway was glazed with all sorts of trinkets and decorations, things like paintings, pots, flowers, statues and other oddities. Nura would often play and move these around to confuse the house maids, this she found to have great entertainment value as the poor maids couldn't figure out why all the paintings kept moving to different places around the house. Her mother knew but she kept her mouth shut as it provided Nura with much needed amusement.
The door that Emlyn was standing in front of was quite a bit larger than the other passageways in the house. It was a sterling door of oak construction, hardwood, and it was ordained with all sorts of metal fixtures that covered it from top to bottom, almost like this door was wearing metal clothing. Halfway up this magnificent door was a huge iron lock with an equally large iron keyway, it was like the centrepiece to a whole contraption. Nura knew this menacing door well. It was the door to the house's armoury. Nura's dad, being the head of the town's militia, had quite the assortment of delightfully deadly weapons all of these safe behind this bank like vault door made from the finest lumber in the east. Only two people in the world could enter this room, Nura's parents. And this was quite literally the case, the only two keys known to exist in the world never left Nuras parents' person. If in the impossible occasion the keys did fall into the wrong hands, they had a peculiar characteristic that would inhibit their use. A failsafe you could say. None knew how but if someone that wasn't Nuras parents touched the keys it would feel like touching fire red steel, they could quite easily burn a hole though whoever stole them.
Emlyn waited patiently for her tardy daughter and when she arrived she took the strange cast iron key form of her belt and inserted it delicately into the lock and gave it a twist. The door slowly opened inward to reveal shelves of all sorts of deadly weapons, from crossbows to daggers and form battle axes to maces, basically any weapons you could imagine where stored in this magnificent room. Nura didn't dare to enter but she waited for her mother to get what she needed. She first went to the side of the room and grabbed a petite little knife; it was sheathed in a beautiful leather pouch. This and the sheath were a gift for Nura's tenth birthday from her parents, a lesson of both self-defence but also responsibility and respect for potentially harmful weapons. Next Emlyn went to the centre of the room, there she opened a spectacularly decorated display case. In this case lay a short sword.
This short sword was something special, it had an aura about it. The sword itself lay in an ancient looking leather holder, heavily worn with scuffs and scratches all over it. It also had a number of engraved decorations on it and a word, maybe its name but it had all worn down over time. At the top of its holder you could make out the handle and handguard of this weapon. The handle was leather again but with woven golden strands going all the way down it and the handguard laced with both gold engravings and small jewels placed carefully in the metalwork of the hilt. The sword itself was spotless, not a dent or scrape to be seen. This was very different from its leather holder that had clearly seen many battles, but the sword itself looked so perfect that you could be fooled into thinking that it had just been made. This was Emlyn's sword. This was Amora. One of the Forty-seven wonders of man. She hastily grabbed Amora and left promptly to close the armoury back up behind her. Emlyn was a woman of very few words, Nura knew this well, as such when Emlyn carefully handed Nura her knife she didn't expect Emlyn to say anything. And she didn't. Nura still thanked her mother for retrieving the knife and then followed her downstairs and out of the house.
Emlyn's pace was hard to keep up with, but Nura did. She badly wanted to get out of Norton and go run around in the fields so that she almost beat her mother to Nortons front gates. The gates were locked shut like they usually are but atop the colossal oak slabs adorned with rusty steel hinges was a platform cobbled together with three individuals on top looking down on them. Two of them were generic guards you'd usually see patrolling a fantasy town, the third just so happened to be Nura's father. He was a uniquely tall man with a large scraggly beard hung from the bottom of his head. His armour, compared to the other two generic guards, was beaten and bashed in with multiple dents and scrapes. He had the aura of the kind of man that would be in his element in the middle of a battlefield. Nura didn't get to see her dad very often with him always out patrolling and maintaining his men, so when she did see him it was always a cherished moment. The large man didn't take long to notice his wife and daughter at the gate. When he did he gave then order to the other two men to open it, he then beamed down at them from above.
"Be safe my darlings, be back before sundown," he yelled, With a silent grin.
"Bye Bye dad," Nura yelled back with an air of excitement behind her.
Emlyn didn't say anything back, this was unfortunately a normal exchange between the two. It was like the two didn't need to say anything to each other, or the other far more likely scenario was Emlyn had way too much on her mind and simply didn't notice her loving husband's words. Either way, both Emlyn and Nura began to walk out of the town and north with the same impeccable pace that they had when they left their home.
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The place they went to was different every time, but it was always remote, last time they hiked north four or so hours, deep into a forest. Nura didn't know why her mother did this but when they got to the place they had been hiking to, which always seems to be calculated and planned in advance, Emlyn would just stop and sit with Amoura unsheathed on her lap, this would go on for hours. It looked to Nura like her mother was in a kind of trance or deep meditation. Was this what she did every time she left town? Thinking about it a bit harder, Nura seemed perplexed by this behaviour. She knew the townspeople thought her odd but it only just dawned on Nura why they thought this. Also the location confused her as well, why did it have to be so remote? Why could she not do her weird ritual at home? And why was this the first time she was thinking about all this? Nura had been going on these excursions for years now and this was the first time she had properly put some thought to it. She knew her mother to be quite an intelligent individual, she only seemed to do things for a cause or reason so there must be something she had been missing all these years.
A good couple miles down the road later and Nura decided that she would give up the ghost and just ask her mother the reason she went out of town all the time.
"Mother, why is it that you go out like this all the time." Emlyn was caught off guard by this, just getting asked out of the blue after walking such a distance in essentially complete silence.
She replied, "Someday you will understand Nura, in fact one day you may do the same, travel into the wild yonder and gaze off into eternity."
"But why?" she pushed.
"I'm looking for something sweetie," she responded, being deliberately vague.
Nura noticed this and decided to drop it for now, instead she looked in her surroundings. They were walking up a barely worn footpath that snaked its way through a luscious grasslands. Nura thought that the path, which was barely visible unless you were trying extremely hard to find it, may have been formed from her mother frequenting the trail. She seemed to know this route well even though they were in the middle of nowhere seemingly lost in this endless grass plateau. Maybe to find this thing that Emlyn was looking for one must be lost, maybe that was the point. Maybe in order to find this thing that is lost you must become lost to find it. Of course there was always the possibility that Emlyn didn't have a plan and she was just going in a random direction in order to find this long thing. Nura continued this train of thought in her mind for a good couple miles further. Nura didn't seem to notice the distance that they had travelled in the past half a day, she was so focused on her mother's odd behaviour that the distance had become almost irrelevant in her mind.
They eventually came to an large opening from the long grass, it was like a giant circle was cut from the dense foliage, this seemed odd to Nura as it made it look man made, especially since in the direct middle of this large circular clearing in the grass was a collection of boulders that looked like they had been placed carefully. There was a large one sitting in the middle and the rest of them were placed methodically around the centre in a circle. These stones were smaller and somehow managed to form a near perfect circle around the middle one. Emlyn taking the lead sat on the centre stone with her legs crossed, Nura trailing behind her decided to take one of the smaller stones and sat down as well. The stones were old as well, whoever put them here had placed them many hundreds of not thousands of years ago. The bottom of these boulders were caked in a thick layer of deep green moss and the top of the stones were seemingly glossy, most likely from travellers sitting on top of them. At this point they both took some provisions and a flask out of their bags and began to eat. This went down well after walking most of the day considering that Nura was fixed in thought over her mother she didn't quite realize how exhausted she was. After taking a swig of water and biting into the rye bread she had provided for her she noticed her mother trying to get her attention.
"Remember Nura, you cannot interrupt me, do you understand?" She said this every time Nura came with her, Nura responded with a strong nod and began chomping back at her bread. With this confirmation Emlyn decided to draw Amoura, putting it on her lap, she then closed her eyes and relaxed. A powerful energy emanated from her and the sword and she sat perfectly still in silence. Nura observed this carefully, with her new interest in her mother's activities outside Norton and with a bit of careful perception she could feel this energy wrapping around her in a circle around the stones, it felt strangely calming and warm, with this Nura put her focus back on the impeccable scenery of the area.
It was a good couple hours and there was no change in Emlyn's state, she remained sitting on the centre stone engulfed in her deep meditation. From Nura's point of view it just looked like her mother was in a weird trance. She knew none who could just sit and do nothing for so long. At least Nura could see the sights and wonder about and to be fair, the sites were pretty gorgeous. The grassy plateau glazed with the sweet late afternoon light and the forest that poked just over the horizon line. It was enough to see the trees but not enough to see them clearly. Nura also noted the sound of the birds and wildlife in the distance, it was like a pleasant white noise that ruptured and echoed all around the vast fields.
This did not last long however, the pleasant white noise became nothing but early silence. Nura at first, thought this oddity was just the time. Then she noticed her mother, still in meditation but not still, she was twitching like she was distracted. She closed her eyes and also noticed that the calm, pleasant, warm energy that previously surrounded them became distorted and cold. Then like a terrible thunderstorm had struck, but with no rain, a horrifying, hulking thunderclap came from the distant tree line, then silence again. Emlyn's twitch became more like a shake and the energy around them became much more violent and chaotic, not dangerous but definitely unsettling. Nura remembered her mothers words a few hours earlier, to not disrupt her, and she didn't.
She heard the hulking thunderclap again, this time louder, maybe closer and started to become a little worried. The atmosphere of the whole situation had completely changed. The previous peaceful and tranquil afternoon with the calming sounds of birds and animals had completely gone away at this point. Just loud, unnerving huge bashes coming from the direction of the forest and then silence. It was at this moment she noticed a figure edging closer and closer towards them and it was at this point Nura felt like she could be in potential danger. With the ginger getting closer and the horrid sounds coming from it getting louder and louder, Nura was beginning to run out of options. Then as if only a couple meters away the sound became so ear splittingly loud that Nura had no choice but to call out her mother.
"Mummy wake up, something coming," she said this quite loud and with immense purpose. Emlyn's eyes shot open and she stopped shaking. Disoriented and confused she fell back off the large boulder and hit the hard ground with an unnerving thud. Emlyn had told Nura not to disturb her for a reason, because she would come out of her meditation in a disoriented and weak state.
Nura said again with some urgency but not as loudly as before, "Something is coming mother!"
The horrendous ear splitting had pauses for a brief moment again before starting again and Emlyn heard this. The look of worry on Emlyn's disorientated face drew like a distorted Polaroid image of horror. Nura had never seen her mother like this before and it only added to her panic. Emlyn had at this point had gotten up and could see the figure, it was coming towards them and fast.
The gargantuan man bolted over the small lip in the land in front of them, now within spitting distance. To say this man was huge would be an understatement. This man was more reminiscent of a mountain constructed out of pulsating muscle mass and steel hard flesh. With him was an equally huge great sword attached to his arm with blood red vines from the hilt of the blade. It looked organic like the blade had nested itself as part of the being's biology. It was more beat than man at this point.
After assessing the situation to the best that Emlyn could pull of in her weaken state she turned to Nura and pointed Amora and screamed at the top of her lungs, "Tuteor, amica mea, clypeo omnia habeo, ut fatum meum impletum videas." (I protect, my love, with everything I have, I shield you so you may see my fate fulfilled)
Amora shone and a glass like bubble was formed around Nura, this from what Nura gathered was some kind of energy shield. This however took the beast's attention right to Emlyn standing a strong distance away from Nura in the way of the beast. It charged right for them.
The beast got to Emlyn and immediately swung the huge disgusting blood sword at her. Nura began with a defensive position with the sword smacking against another shield formed from Amora in front of Emlyn. It hit with an earth-shattering thud pushing Emlyn back a couple meters. This opening gave Emlyn the chance to strike back, like a flash she ducked under the clumsy blood blade and thrusted the blade at the beast multiple times. It didn't seem to affect it, it just pissed the beast off. The beast with his other huge arm smacked Emlyn away from him and gained the ground. She got back up as quick as she could and bolted back to the beast trying to get in some more lightning fast blows to try to weaken the beast. This only served to enrage the beast, and in response swung this sword arm