Goodbye to a mother, the search for the father.

[sariah]

Sariah stared at the prone body of her trainer as it lay upon the makeshift funeral pyre. The sadness she felt at the demise of the elderly Mord Sith was strange to her, she had watched this same woman, who had in many ways been a second mother to her, torture her first mother to death before her eyes without shedding a single tear when it came to the end. Yet if she'd cared to raise a hand to her face, it would undoubtably come away damp now.

She closed her eyes and gave a brief moment of silence for her fallen Sister, then while gripping the elder's agiel in her right fist, took the torch in her left hand and threw it into the center of the pyre. after the wood had caught all around, she took up her own agiel in her left hand and reveled in the pain that shot through both arms. She would have to be strong enough for both of them now.

As she walked off into the night, she realized she had no idea where she was going, she hadn't known since the day the Bond went cold in her heart, yet of three things she was absolutely certain.

She would survive.

She would Find Lord Rahl.

And by the time she was done, anyone who stood in her way would live just long enough to regret it.

[sariah]

The smoke rising in the distance had caught Sariah's attention once before, but she was not yet used to traveling in the woods, and so she had gotten turned around several times before finally finding a trail that she thought might take her toward it.

She didn't know if it would lead her to Lord Rahl or not, or even if she would know him if she saw him without the bond to guide her. But she would not allow such thoughts to stop her. She would search all of D'hara, the midlands, and even the Old World if that's what it took. Briefly she pondered why she should be loyal to a man she had never met, but loyalty had been an early lesson for her, and the question was easily brushed aside.

She paused in the middle of the trail and spun her agiel up into her fist, letting the sharp pain wash over her as a confirmation that the Lord Rahl was still alive, even if the Bond wouldn't tell her where he was. With that thought firmly in her mind, she marched down the trail. Would it lead her to Lord Rahl? Or some other camp? Would whoever the camp belonged to welcome the sight of a Mord Sith? All of these questions were nearly enough to make Sariah hesitate in following the trail, but finding the answer to them for herself would be much faster than sitting around trying to figure it out. So she continued down the trail.

[sariah]

There it was again, the smoke stopped for a time, came back, then stopped again, this time staying gone for much longer. "That's either a signal... Or some lost city brat that doesn't know how to make a good fire..." she said as she hitched her pack up higher on her shoulder and marched down the trail at a quicker pace. A signal would no doubt mean trouble, and if it was just a child of the city, she had already decided she would waste a little magic to get the fire going quickly, and then share the warmth of it with whoever it was. Though she had spent much of her time alone, the chill of the night combined with the dark forest, and the recent loss of her Sister, had all left her feeling rather lonely.