Yamara

After my first several months, the Ornithrym called upon me to repay what I had learned. My first task came to me. I suspect it was something to familiarize me as much as anything. I was to be a lookout for a Ornithrym raid against a merchant that felt he could slight the city of Ossulmere on the taxes he paid while he sold his wares. The merchant had many guards, but those were no match for the trained assassins the Ornithrym employed. As I said, I was the lookout on that mission, but I suspect I was to look on more then anything.

I took the images of what I had seen to bed with me. The cruelties that men had inflicted upon my mother and myself over the years were not the only cruelties I was to witness in life, apparently. Indeed, such cruelties had a place in the grand scheme of things, it appeared, and that was what I was to learn. I went out on many other missions, always seeking to learn and be of use. While those around and above me found me a reliable companion, none suspected my true motives were to learn as much as I could so I could make certain that none of the tactics and techniques the Ornithrym used could be used against me.

Having lost my virginity so young served two purposes. On one hand, it kept me safe from the Melnarians, those who worshipped Melnar. They did indeed often take young women to use in their rituals, but those young woman needed were primarily virgins. Secondly, it made me available for special intelligence gathering missions. I learned that a taste for young bed partners was not an uncommon thing among the rich or the nobility. As skilled as I became as a thief, a duelist, or a spy, my true weapon was knowledge. The more I came to know, the better I felt about myself.

I never forgave my mother for her choice of a profession, but I came to understand how she let herself become trapped in it. Many times I was offered to some rich passing merchant or minor noble with a desire for a rose whose flower had not been plucked. Oddly enough, they never seemed to notice I was no maiden, but the things I learned from them was the key to me. Never doomed to a life of prostitution, I used sex as a manipulative weapon. Indeed, later on in my life, once my body matured, I also came to know the pleasures of other women. It was never for my need alone, or at least, never for the passion alone that I did it, always there was an ulterior motive.

I became fearful when my time came and my body began to mature. My balance was off and my skills in the arena began to suffer as my body grew in spurts. My hips widened and my breasts became fuller, further off balancing me. I struggled as best I could, exercising and sparring relentlessly. Eventually I became used to my new body and recovered my lost skills, but it took 3 years. By then I was counted 15 years old and easily one of the most talented in the Ornithrym's lower ranks. My body had matured such that I ended up being 5'6" tall with a wiry and athletic build. My constant exercising kept my breasts very firm a nicely rounded, though not large and cumbersome. While my hips had widened with puberty, they had not done so unpleasantly. I like to think my well toned thighs and butt complimented me nicely.

Such were the improvements to my body that the Ornithrym chose me for promotion. Elevated from the ranks of street toughs, I was further educated on the arts of courtly intrigue and etiquette. Never having acquired a taste for magic, I was nevertheless visited repeatedly by wizards skilled in the arts of body manipulation. Over time and the repeated casting of many spells, my comeliness grew under their ministrations. When finished, I was as I am now, a pleasant sight to see I like to think. Still athletic, my breasts had filled out even more, though still average sized, they were full and cried out to be admired and fondled. My scars were dulled out and smoothed over, leaving many of them still visible, but only after a few moments of searching, for they seemed to blend in to my skin and escape attention. I had broken my nose a few times in my youth and it was straightened and smoothed as well. Even my teeth, which had shown a few signs of some minor gaps and twists here and there, were magically straightened and strengthened. In the end, I was a very dangerous tool for the Ornithrym.

I do not claim to be a siren so beautiful that I can lure men to their deaths. Far from it. I believe the intent was to make me attractive and desirable, but not so much so that my beauty drew attention and singled me out. Whatever the case, it worked well, for my training as a spy grew. Indeed, it grew from merely being a spy to even becoming an occasional assassin. My conscience knew no limits, for as much as I had taken from those willing to teach me, I knew my fellow men and women well. Under the appropriate circumstances, they would turn on me to further their own positions. I gave them no chance to do so.

It was at the age of 18 summers I learned quite accidentally of the merchant who had slain my mother and nearly myself. After several weeks of research, I sneaked past his guards and into his estate house. I paralyzed him with an injected poison and then, once I knew he was paying attention, I whispered quietly into his ear who I was and why I was doing it to him. Then I slit his throat. His wife never knew until the very next morning when she awoke next to a bloody mess on her sheets. I told him I was going to slaughter his wife and children as well, and he went to Hell thinking that. I never did touch them though, for my quarrel was with him, not them.

Shortly after that I became a member of a regular group of people. A special unit, there were several such groups that the Ornithrym employed to journey into the world and adventure for them. This took place for two more years, until one of the men in my group, a demented priest of the God of Disease, upset one of the higher ranking Ornithrym leaders.

We were sent on a special mission then, not so different from the rest of them actually. We were to infiltrate a village not far from Ossulmere called Shallowglen and use our priests magic to poison the town's water supply while another group served as a distraction. It turned out that we were betrayed. Our group ended up serving as the distraction, and I only escaped with my life because I happened to know a wealthy farmer in Shallowglen that would bring his goods to Ossulmere to sell from time to time. I managed to escape the guards that chased me long enough to pick the lock on his door and slip into bed beside him. I silenced his suspicions as best I could, taking him to the height of passion several times that night. My companions were killed trying to escape that night, and the next morning before the farmer could awaken, I had slipped away and headed for a city along the Storres Sea named Ironmouth Bay.

Ironmouth Bay was less then 10 days ride from Ossulmere, however, so I knew I was not safe there. I chartered passage on a boat and set sail across the Storres Sea, heading south towards the Carsian Empire. It took some time, over a month in fact, but eventually I reached a far away city named Euwon. From there, I planned to head by ship through the Storres Sea to Westdeep Port. However, pirates intercepted our ship, and as soon as it became apparent to me who would win, I joined the pirates side.

I became the captain's consort quickly, and headed back to the Pirate Isles with them. Being a band of cutthroats and thieves, eventually word somehow reached the Ornithrym of my continued existence. While I'd done nothing wrong in my eyes, apparently my ability to breathe upset somebody, for someone was dispatched to stop me from enjoying that liberty so much. It was a wizard, of course, and wizards, I am not afraid to say, bother me. They do not fight like normal people, they hide and skulk about and then pop up long enough to zap you with some nasty magical power before sneaking away again. Nothing as legitimate as a knife in the back.

It turned out I got lucky, this wizard upset some of the locals in the Pirate Isles and I got the drop on him before He knew where to find me. Push came to shove though, and before I knew it he had summoned up what appeared to be a particularly nasty spell to deal with me. Not much liking that idea, I used my refined dagger throwing skills. Dagger got him right in the throat, point first this time. One thing about wizards, all that time spent studying tends to make them a rather weak and anemic lot. Well, his spell was so close to being finished that it could not just drain away and be a good little spell. It had to turn into some wild magic. When the dust settled, I looked around and realized I was no longer on some nameless isle amongst the Pirate Isles. I was laying on the ground in a small rocky gully with a convulsing wizard drowning in his own blood a few feet away from me.

Chapter 2

Then I noticed two things. The first was how hot it was. Unbearably hot, in fact. The sun beat down mercilessly on us, and a quick glance around me showed no vegetation or even shade in which to hide from its harsh effects. The second was that I felt burdened. It took me a moment to figure it out, and when I did I was left speechless. I felt as though I weighed more then I had before, though my body and equipment was unchanged.

The wizard had died by now, of course, and I crawled over to him and pulled my dagger out of his throat. He did not seem to mind when I went through his pouches and robbed him of everything of possible value.

Not certain what I would do with all the strange things I had found on his body, I nevertheless was concerned that I might have somehow ended up in a location so remote from anything I was used to that anything I could use to barter for my continued well being might come in handy. More of that survival instinct I had learned at a young age. It did not help me when I heard a faint raspy noise, like something hard sliding along rock.

I looked around myself quickly and saw nothing, then I glanced up at the narrow walls of the gully. I hate to admit it, but I was caught off guard then. Surprised even, by the large reptilian head rapidly descending towards me. Before I could draw my sword to strike at it, its fangs sunk into my shoulder. I staggered back from it, and it let go easily. I prepared myself for a fight and was again caught off guard when it did not advance on me. In fact, it seemed to almost be ignoring me, turning its attention instead towards the dead wizard.

I backed away from it slowly, thinking that perhaps I could find a more favorable position to fight it from, or better yet, that I could just outrun it. Now that it was down in the gully with me, I could see it was a big insect of some sort. More of a cross between a lizard and a spider then anything. Easily 10 feet from head to the back of its abdomen, it was covered in some sort of hard chitin shell or plating that did not seem to limit its multi-legged movements in the least.

The spider thing examined the wound in the wizard's throat and then stuck out its forked tongue quickly to lick it. Satisfied with what it found, it continued to lap away at the congealing blood. When it had taken care of that, it worried at the wizards neck with its teeth, trying to force more blood out. Well, without a living heart to pump the blood, the critter was mostly unsuccessful. I stumbled then, trying to back away further. The creature had changed tactics and was now contenting itself with slowly eating the wizard.

I tried to regain my feet but had trouble doing so, my legs did not want to obey me. I tried to raise my arm to brace myself against the rocky wall of the gully but it too, betrayed me by hanging limply at my side. I knew then why the spizzard (part spider, part lizard - a drugged mind seldom thinks rationally) had ignored me after biting me. I had been poisoned. I tried desperately to fight off its effects, but only managed to lose what little position I had and ended up rolling myself over onto my belly. I could smell the hard baked ground and feel the heat radiating off of it onto my cheek. Desperate to escape, my heart thundered in my chest and my breathing quickened rapidly. I realized I was helping the poison spread even further by doing this, but I was understandably a little bit upset at my inability to defend or protect myself.

Imagine my delight, or lack thereof, when I felt the spider try to bite me again in the back after several minutes. I considered myself lucky when I realized it had missed my skin and instead had only managed to bite into the soft leather armor. Then I realized it did not matter, for it had picked me up and was dragging me off somewhere to be his next meal.

A quick death, as it turned out, might have been preferable. Instead, I was ensheathed in a silk cocoon. On one hand, at least I was out of the sun. But on the other, the silk cocoon acted like a blanket and I was kept miserably hot. I do not know how long I was kept like that, but I know a few days passed before I began to feel that I could move again. Unfortunately, the cocoon was a prison from which I was not going to be able to escape on my own. Then the foul creature stuck his head back inside and bit me again, this time almost gently, and in addition to injecting fresh poison into my system, he stuck around and drank all of the blood from the wound. I was not looking forward to my fate.

No food and no water had already begun to take their toll on me, but from that point on, I began to lose my sense of reality quickly. During my increasingly rare moments of lucidity, I still struggled to try and free myself, but my conscious mind had mostly given up, it was the dark self centered bitch within me that would not die.

That was a good thing too, I think, because the next time I became aware of my surroundings I head the sounds of conflict. Eventually the sounds died out, and I wondered if the spider had won or if I had found something new intent on eating me. My hopes grew when I heard the sound, muffled and indistinguishable through the silk cocoon, of voices. What could be worse then hanging upside down in a cocoon for several days paralyzed from a poison while an incredibly hot climate took its toll on me? Nothing. Well, that is what I thought until my would be rescuers cut the silk holding the cocoon hanging from the rocky overhang above me. It was perhaps a 20 foot fall onto hard rocks below. The silk cushioned me quite a bit, I suppose, or otherwise I would have ended up more then just bruised and battered.

It took them literally hours to cut me out of the thing, apparently the silk was not the same as I was used to, for it was incredibly strong and resilient to cutting. When I finally emerged, I was still groggy from my ordeal and partially suffering from the effects of the poison. One of them, a very tall woman dressed in an outlandish outfit, gave me some water, which was warm and not particularly tasty, but very welcome nonetheless. I tried to look around and recover my wits, but instead I overloaded my senses and passed out again.

When next I awoke it seemed to be dusk. A small campfire burned nearby and I was wrapped in my cloak and laying close to it. The others were huddled around it too. First I saw the woman that had given me water, she smiled oddly at me and I noticed that she had distinctly elven features. Pointy ears, high cheekbones, anemically thin... definitely a elf. She had blond hair cropped close to her head, pale blue eyes, and was quite beautiful, in an outlandish sort of way. What surprised me was her clothing, she had a cloak pulled loosely about her body to protect her from the chill of the evening and a pair of comfortable looking boots on. The rest I filled in from my memory, which consisted of a loose skirt that fell only partway down her legs, several water skins, and a few weapons that I could not remember.

Sitting next to her was a giant of a man. Sort of. He was 9 feet tall if he was an inch. Black eyes and mottled green skin on a distinctly reptilian face. Even considering his size, I could tell that he was incredibly strong from the breadth of his shoulders and the look of his hands. He too, had a large cloak wrapped about him, but occasionally he would reach out and turn the spit over the fire and I could see that he wore some sort of scale mail that was made from the scales of a creature I was unfamiliar with instead of steel.

Two others sat around the fire, next to the giant iguana was a 6 foot tall man with coal black skin and deep blue eyes the color of sapphires. His cloak was thrown over his shoulders and he was ignoring those around him as he sharpened a weathered steel battle axe. The way he handled it I knew he was not only an expert with weapons, but that he was taking extreme care with it. He had a bastard sword at his side, a two handed sword laying on the ground beside him, obviously next to be sharpened and maintained, and a heavy crossbow across his back. He wore a set of scale armor similar to the giants.

The last one of my rescuers was undeniably a human woman. Golden hair with reddish highlights framed her brown eyes and delicate face. She looked far too innocent and beautiful to be amongst such a group, but then she looked at me and our eyes met. I could instantly tell there were hidden strengths and secrets within her. She wore a cape wrapped around herself as well, but it was open in front to allow her to reach out and help the giant cook the meal. Her arms were bare, as was much of the rest of her body when I finally caught a glimpse of it. She wore a strange looking one piece light tan colored outfit consisting of a bustier that was open at the sides below her breasts and in front, revealing the top of her well defined stomach. The two pieces of fabric that covered her ample breasts connected just below her navel. From there it turned into a loin cloth. Two additional straps rode high on her hips and joined her outfit where her loin cloth began for additional support and also to support the saber at her side and several daggers concealed about her person. Like all the rest, she had several waterskins close at hand.

"How are you feeling?" The human girl asked me, her accent so strange she had to repeat herself before I could understand it.

I tried to speak but found my voice was not ready yet. After coughing against the scratch in my throat, I opened my cloak and pulled out one of my own two waterskins and took a drink out of it. Somewhat relieved, I was finally able to answer. "I've been better. Where am I?"

I glanced at the food cooking, thinking some food would do me good, even though I was still very light headed and nauseous from my ordeal. I was surprised to finally recognize it as my former captor, or at least a section of him.

"We are five days east and north of Neewon, on the eastern edge of the badlands there," The girl said to me. I call her a girl because while I was only 19 years old myself, she seemed a few years younger then I.

The names meant nothing to me. My blank look was noted.

"Where are you from?" The elf asked me, studying me carefully.

I took another pull on my waterskin and pulled my cloak back about me, hot as it had been during the day, it was cold at night. "Ossulmere, originally. Am I in the southern parts of Halador now?"

"Halador?" The human asked me, equally confused about the name as I was about Neewon. "Ossulmere? Where are these places?"

"How did you get here?" The elf asked again. The lizard-man paid little attention to the conversation, focusing mostly on the meal. The human man seemed oblivious as well, instead concentrating on his weapons.

I considered my situation as best I could, which was not saying much. Hungry, tired, sick, and dehydrated, I had little choice but to hope my rescuers continued to treat me well. "A wizard attacked me in the Pirate Isles, I had apparently upset someone or other at one point and they decided they did not want me to continue living. Well, as the wizard tried to cast a spell on me, I managed to stick him in the throat with a dagger. The spell apparently went wild and both of us ended up here, although he was dead in a matter of minutes from the wound. Then that giant spider attacked me, the rest you know." I left out my involvement with the Ornithrym, I figured it was better to keep quiet about that for now, just in case.