This is from the old boards... I never otherwise wrote it down anywhere and like it enough to keep it around... enjoy (again)!
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The girl looked up at the gates of Dagger Falls. Why she came here, she wasn't sure. She remembered dreams of terror... she would wake up terrified... or crying. Her only clue to her past was a crude brand over her left breast, over her heart. The rest was locked somewhere deep within her mind.
She walked up to the gates. The guard there called out in challenge. In response, she pulled her hood down and stood, arms out, hands open. The guard approached, asking who she was, what was her business. She slowly pointed to her mouth and then shook her head. It took a moment for it to sink in, but the guard finally got it. The girl was mute.
After discerning she was no threat, he opened the gate for her and she walked in. She walked the streets of the town before settling on an inn called the Broken Dagger. Inside, there was not much activity. Enough to keep things interesting, but not loud and rough.
She took a seat in a corner table. After some time, a Halfling came up to her. She knew not why, but something about him drew her. He introduced himself, but as preoccupied as she was, she missed his name. Names didn't matter to her anyhow. She would never call him, or beg his attention with her voice.
When prompted for her own name, she smiled and took a slip of parchment from her bag. On it, she wrote her name. Ni'cha. The halfling sat with her a moment before leaving her again to her thoughts.
The rest of the day blurred past her. There was a Thayan... a man who offered healing through his own pain... an elf lass from the coast... a wild halfling... a man in heavy black chainmail... battle?
She often let time slip past her unnoticed. She would awaken from the trance within hours... or days. The events therein always presented themselves in bits and pieces.
She returned to herself in the Headquarters of Lord Randall Morn's Freedom Fighters. He was paying her a small sum of gold. Obviously she had somehow earned it and decided to return to the inn for sleep.
On the walk back, she began to grow uneasy. Slices of another time came to her. Dark faces. Flashing blades. Fire.
She began to walk faster to the inn. The hour was late. Terror began to grip her heart, the same terror she felt subsiding when she would wake from her nightmares.
Finally, she reached the building and rushed in, slamming the door shut behind her. The place was empty but for the barkeep. Walking in, the relief she felt was overwhelming.
"M'Lady!" shouted a voice.
Quickly she turned, hand going into her robes, unseen, clutching a throwing blade. It was the halfling from before, the one that had shown interest in her when she had first come to the inn.
Her face alarmed the hin. "Ni'cha," he asked, "What is wrong?"
She relaxed a bit and tried to shake her head, but the halfling was persistant.
"There is something wrong, I know it," the halfling pressed. "Perhaps I can help?"
Ni'cha smiled. How can you help me, she thought. I don't even know what's wrong...
She quickly pulled out a slip of parchment and scribbled, Can you turn back the hands of time?
The halfling shook his head. "No, but I can listen." The sentence suddenly struck them both as preposterous. She felt so at ease with the small man. Laughing silently, Ni'cha suddenly felt a strong clutching at her heart.
And there it was.
Spilling back to her. A child. A battle.
A tear streaked down her eye. She looked at the halfling, who noticed she was no longer laughing.
"What is it?" he asked.
She cradled her arms, as if holding something so gently...
After a moment, it dawned on the hin. "You had a child?"
She nodded.
"No longer?"
Again, she nodded.
"Well, I am certainly sorry for--"
She held a hand out to him, a silent plea to stop and let her go on. It was coming back to her in such a rush.
She put her hand under her robe and felt the brand there. Slowly, she lowered it just enough for the halfling to see. Embarrassed, she quickly hid it.
"I'm sorry, Ni'cha, I didn't see..."
She pulled her robe down again, revealing the brand again. His eyes widened. "Orcs," he breathed. He thought he was beginning to understand.
She sat down and saw within her mind something so horrific, yet it was true. She kept her arm cradled and with the other pulled her dagger from its place. Holding the dagger blade down, she stabbed it down, pantomiming her actions those few years back.
"YOU?!?" the halfling was disbelieving. "YOU killed the baby?"
She nodded, furious that she couldn't speak... she had to tell him why! But, she suddenly told herself, she didn't know wh--
She did know why. Why was it all returning to her now?
She reached into her bag and pulled out a full sheet of parchment and then took her chalk. With a practiced hand she began to draw. She drew a village and then a likeness of herself holding the hand of a small child... two, maybe three.
"Your village?" the halfling confirmed.
She ignored him. She drew more people in the village: men, women and children. All of them happy, leading quiet, peaceful lives.
At the edge of the village she drew a man looking beyond the village and his face was shocked. Beyond the man she drew what he saw. Orcs. They were attacking.
She drew furiously, adding more to the picture as it flashed into her mind. She drew over the men in the village, turning them into peasants weilding spears and shovels and axes and rakes. Arrows were quickly drawn sticking from all villagers, again men, women and children.
She redrew herself, cowering between a wall and some boxes, trying to quiet her terrified child. She drew orcs taking men who didn't fight. Taking women away in chains. Snatching children. Gathering them up. Orcs eating man flesh they ripped from bodies as they lay.
Then she saw the orc approaching her. While the thoughts translated to pictures drawn by a steady hand, in her mind Ni'cha was no longer in the Inn. She was cowering next to the wall, watching the orc come towards them.
The child cried and cried. It was only a matter of time-- too late. The orc turned to her and smiling evilly strode purposefully forward.
Ni'cha looked beyond the orc to the people being rounded up. She watched as laughing orcs ate raw meat pulled freshly from their fallen enemies. She looked at the child and reached down to a large knife strapped to her belt. The orc was mere steps away.
She pulled the blade and held it up. The orc stopped, regarding the small woman with the blade. It laughed at the pathetic figure she made.
Only, she had no intention of defending herself. Looking at the child, a single tear tracked down her dirt stained cheek. With a grim determination, she drove the blade down into the toddler's chest. The world flashed white.
Moments later, she woke up, her head laying on the table in the Broken Dagger Inn. The halfling was looking at her with a concern deep in her eyes.
"I don't--"
"I... could not let them have my son..." she suddenly whispered.
The halfling was completely aback.
"But you..."
Ni'cha smiled at the halfling and nodded. Then, she silently excused herself and went to her room. She had to prepare.
She didn't know what had happened between that moment in the village and when she had waken up, face down in the snow near death. Her mind had been blasted by the experience, obviously. But now things were clear to her.
Dagger Falls was no place to stay. She allowed the halfling to believe all was well with her, and indeed, she had found a peace that had evaded her since that day.
Walking away from the walled town, she looked back once, then pulled her hood up and walked down the road. She knew where she was going and she knew she was never coming back.
And when the dark blade finally found its way into her heart, amidst dirty bodies laying all about her, some forever still, others clutching in the throes of death, she felt no pain.
Light washed warmly over her and waiting for her was a small child--
His face was radiant and he rushed forward arms open, to welcome his mother home.