Purple Haze Ch. 01 - Lana

"So the door has collapsed over time. It saves me time."

For the first time, Lana heard her voice, a deep, chest kind of voice. The woman stepped into the opened passageway, Lana following her closely. On her way redhead noticed something resembling rusty door hinges where the stone wall used to be a minute ago.

The woman traced her fingers on the wall, and Lana followed her example. It felt like something was carved on it, like a bas-relief of sorts, but it was too smoothed by the time to recognize what it depicted.

Eventually, they arrived in a round chamber with a huge stone chest in the middle. The remains of the lock were still lying on the floor near the chest, so opening it was not an issue.

But lifting the heavy lid was indeed a huge issue. The dark-skinned woman put all her effort into it, flexing her impressive muscles to finally throw it open. There was a bunch of stone tablets covered in scribbles lying inside

"Sotha Sil, bless you for not keeping the notes on paper," the woman said. "And curse you for your puzzles. Are these tables just another part of the text? Fuck!"

Lana did not recognize this name, and she started to get a bit bored. Very little of what she saw made sense to her, so she decided to study the room.

In a corner, she noticed a pile of rusty metal that resembled a human figure. As she watched, the pile started to move. With an awful grinding sound, it stretched its arm toward the woman, who instantly recognized the danger. She waved her hands and created a protective sphere around herself, and just in time. A torrent of fire spewed from the arm, and the shield absorbed it all. In return, the cave explored shot a lightning bolt from her hand, blasting the rusty remains to pieces.

The sudden action sent Lana ducking for cover. The closest thing she found was the stone chest with tablets, she hid there and perked up only when the fight was over. The redguard woman turned away from the wreckage and stepped back to the chest.

Lana tried to make room for her, but her leg caught the chest lid, still lying on the floor. The redhead waved her hands to keep balance and her palm actually connected with the dark-skinned woman's arm.

The reaction was instant. The woman jumped away and yelled:

"Show yourself!"

She smashed her fist into the floor, invoking glowing runes underneath her. The other hand whipped out the nasty-looking knife from the sheath. Something about this knife was wrong, as if it was not just moving through space, but cutting the world's fabric.

Lana yelped and jumped away, scared. She was no longer so sure about her safety. Moreover, she noticed that woman's skin now looked different. Hundreds of thin, thread-like white lines traced it now. It looked like a tattoo pattern, but Lana was absolutely sure these lines were not visible before.

The woman stood in the center of the rune she created on the floor, glaring around the room.

"LAAS YAH NIR," she suddenly said in a low voice, totally different from how she sounded previously. Lana felt vertigo and vibration in her bones, feeling unlike anything she experienced before. She dropped to one knee to cope with her head spinning.

Meanwhile, the mysterious woman continued shooting angry glares around. A couple of times she looked directly at Lana but did notice her. Lana started to feel safe again, when the woman retrieved a small vial, filled with something white, and gulped it down.

Her eyes instantly locked on Lana:

"You. Who are you?"

Lana screamed. The woman's pupils turned into pinpricks of purple, piercing her soul. She lifted her knife and stepped towards Lana, the readhead stumbled back and hit the wall.

With a gasp, Lana sat on the bed. The night was quiet. Their room smelled with recent sex. Near her, Hildi whispered something in her sleep and rolled on the bed.

Lana's heart trumped like never before. What was this? Most importantly, who was this woman? Will she look for Lana outside of the dream world? She felt chills on her spine.

"I must get to a magician and seek help, this is starting to seriously freak me out." Eventually, after restlessly rolling on the bed for hours, she drifted to sleep again. No forests of glowing fungi or murderous women chased her this time.

In the morning they discovered a pleasant surprise -- the sacks that men unloaded yesterday were most of the Hefnir's goods, he had a deal with Svar from the previous visit. So he was heading back to Solitude today, and the girls jumped on his cart.

Svar was nor happy to discover that his most profitable employees were leaving and tried to convince at least one of them to stay. Eventually he relented, after Hildi paid the rent for two months in advance. They left most of their stuff in the room, and it convinced Svar that they were planning to return, at least.

Soon Lana sat on the swaying bench, looking at her home village as it vanished behind the cart. She spent all her life here. Yesterday she was still apprehensive about leaving Dragonbridge, but after the dream encounter all she wanted were answers. Somehow she doubted this was the last time she saw this tattooed woman, and it filled her with dread.

Hildi sat near Hefnir, enjoying a conversation, so Lana was left to her ruminations. What was happening to her? What awaited them in Solitude? This woman from the dream was certainly up to something. Suddenly Lana felt like a dust bin in working gears, and she did not even know the scale of the mechanism. She decided to put her hopes in the future. At least she was surrounded by friends.

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A note from the author: writing this was quite a journey. I have at least two more chapters in mind, where some of the familiar characters will re-appear. Stay tuned, I will probably split my next creative endeavors into parts.