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The Lost One

Lore, history and other content by the citizens of Underlight preserved for posterity.
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Windsong
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Joined: Wed Jan 29, 2014 6:58 pm

The Lost One

Post by Windsong »

“I'll do my best to see what I can learn for you...It's hard to say when ghost stories and nightmares become the stuff of research.” What a promise to make. What was I thinking? It means going back...there. That...place...that started it all. What a fitting place to find a horror story come to life...The memories still haunt me.

“Hush your whining, girl. You’re lucky we got you instead of those Black Robes.” The voice that snapped was harsh, roughened from too much smoke and too much yelling. “It’s a good thing for you that lot was superstitious but not so good at fighting, eh?”

Blinking back tears, trying to follow what the man was saying. I just wanted to go home. I wanted my brother. I didn’t understand what was happening. I’d been given to the group in black robes by her parents - an annual tithe to appease the Lost One’s appetite for flesh. I’d heard the words “sacrifice” and “offering” thrown around, but wasn’t yet old enough to follow the implications of the statements about my fate. I cried for her twin brother as I was dragged away by the people in the robes, demanded to stay with him. It was useless, however. The larger adults pulled me along with them, binding my hands and feet and tossing me in a rickety wagon when I struggled too much.

I wasn’t the only young girl in the group, though I stood out against my companions. There were three of us in all, none of us more than five years old. I was pale with light hair and eyes, while the other two girls were taller and darker, like the rest of their people. We huddled together in the back of the wagon, scared to speak or move lest we be hit again. Our robed companions had shown no hesitation in using force to make us compliant.

We’d been traveling for three days when the other adults came along. These men, for they were all men, had no robes but many weapons. They fell on the group in the middle of the night, cutting our escorts’ throats and leaving them to rot alongside the road where they’d made our camp. They left us alive, but not unbound - one set of captors traded for the next. Shackles and collars replaced rough rope, leaving us no more free than we had been with the Black Robes.

“Damn waste of girl flesh if y’ask me,” grumbled one of the men, glancing over at the three children plodding along silently in their midst. “This lot’ll bring us a pretty penny in the city. ‘Specially that yellow-haired one. Wonder where she came from?”

“Prolly some war prize. Them tribes is always invadin’ someone or ‘nother an’ takin’ the babies for their own. Must’ve got her up north,” commented another, shrugging his shoulders. “Doesn’t matter much. She’s a rare one here. They’ll pay well for her.”

“Cheer up, girls. Yer gonna get to live now instead a’ drownin’. An’ we’re gonna get paid. Ain’t that lucky for us all?” laughed another one, tugging on the chain connected to the my neck. Despite the jovial sound, I felt only dread.


The Lost One. Dagroneth, Mandus called him. The reason I lost the only family I had left. The reason I wound up a slave. I promised Mandus to look into the myths, but didn’t tell him I’d directly touched them. And now, I have to go back.
*Priestess of Paradox*
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