Pinay: Resolve

[King Ghidorah]

Upon finally emerging from the shadows of the trees Pinay set her pack aside and stripped off her ash-stained leather armor. Down to her leggings and gambeson, she sat at the edge of the forest with her glaive close at-hand. The night-time air was cool, and smelled of rich soil and wildflowers in equal measure. Before her, open countryside rolled away, past rocky plains and open fields towards far-away mountains: jagged, white-capped silhouettes on the horizon, glowing silver with distant moonlight. The beleaguered elf stayed there until morning, engaged in fitful reverie, her repose aided by the feeling of the breeze against her ravaged face and denied by the horrific, malevolent heat of the anger in her mind. 
  
At first light she rose, ate a single biscuit and some dried fruit from her supplies, and donned her armor without a word. With the haft of her weapon resting across her shoulder and the ruddy orange sunrise staining everything in shades of bronze and blood, the last Oskinder set out alone across the lands of the Kingdom.   

Pinay had never been to Dalaran before, but she knew the way; travelers lacking the power of flight had to make the trip to Minas Tirith first, and from there fly by Pegasus to the floating City of Mages. It was a long way to travel on foot - more than a week's march from the outerlying duchies - but her tribe had been nomads; she'd walked greater distances. 

It was the solitude that bothered her.

For the best part of a decade the golden-skinned Oskinder elves had roamed the countryside of western Camelot, camping for months at a time in fields and forests and avoiding large settlements. They had moved as a broad unit, a procession hundreds-strong, grouped by clan allegiance - except for the watchers: the warrior-caste would run ahead in pairs, forming the vanguard and foraging for food. Only rarely had they sent representatives into the bigger towns and cities to trade for rare materials made urgent by some crisis or other; On those particularly daunting missions into the world of the city-building societies Pinay's kind had always traveled in packs.

The hideously-scarred elf-maid knew the road well, but over all her years spent in the Omniverse and for centuries before, she'd always had companions: friends and kinsmen, either at her side or awaiting her eventual return. With the sickly furnace-glow of trauma and death illuminating her thoughts and the mindless warbling cackle of King Ghidorah still echoing in her brain, traveling didn't feel the same as it had before; the horizon no longer held promises - only questions.

[King Ghidorah]

Walking nonstop from sunup to just before midnight, Pinay made good time. The road to Minis Tirith was well-worn, and other travelers gave the armed and burn-ravaged Oskinder a wide berth, intimidated by her air of deathly purpose or frightened by the bark-like yellow textures of her patchwork  face. Contrary to her expectations, nothing and nobody attacked her, and by the evening of the eighth day she was marching through lowland  fields in the shadow of Camelot's greatest city.

The mountain citadel was a wonder; It monopolized an entire peak. Terraces  of white stone fortress housed rings full of city, growing narrower as one progressed tier by tier towards the top of the rocky tor: an anvil-shaped plateau crowned by a grand promenade which fronted a castle with an alabaster spire - the home of the King. The vertical sides of the central mesa cut through the inner walls of the great metropolis like the prow of a ship, penetrating every level of the city in a grand metaphor for the monarch's power. Glowing softly in the light of the setting sun with larger, untamed peaks flanking it like bodyguards, Minas Tirith seemed to radiate nobility, authority and prestige. 

As with every other time she'd caught sight of it, Pinay hated it instantly. Such a large settlement had a gravity all its own, distorting the landscape for hundreds of miles in every direction. The very idea - a place which became a vortex rather than a moving part of the natural order - went against everything her  people had believed.

She grimaced at the thought, a horrible pressure rising up in her mind. It didn't matter how she felt about the city - the fact remained that it was where she had to go. 

There was a moment at the main gates of the towering outer walls, where the lowest and widest level of Minas Tirith interfaced with the traffic flowing in from the surrounding plains, when Pinay thought it was all going to fall apart. She watched the sentries in their white-tree livery and mail hauberks interrogating a merchant and thought that perhaps they wouldn't allow her into the city, and she'd have to find some other way. 

Her concerns came to nothing. They inspected  her polearm, gave it back to her, asked her business and waved her through. Pinay passed between the massive multi-story guard-towers and beneath the stony shadow of the overbuilt gatehouse, and found herself in a bustling central plaza.

[King Ghidorah]

People and horses jostled past on every side, entirely occupied with their own business. The air stank of sweat and manure and the sour smell of damp straw. Above the general din of the crowd, the roar of muted voices, the creak of wagons and the clank of armor, criers hawked their wares; they advertised stable-space, smithing services, food and lodgings at only the most competitive prices.  Looming over it all, on the far side of the plaza, the flattened nose of the massive rocky spur which divided the higher tiers of the city stood - a rugged, narrow granite cliff nearly a thousand feet  high, casting its shadow over the square. 

Pinay stalked through the evening crowd with her glaive propped against her armored shoulder. Her mind struck a precarious balance between the solar-bright urgency of her mission and the horrible sense of displacement brought on by the overpowering buzz of urban life. The scarred elf was acutely aware that she didn't belong here - or anywhere else for that matter; The only direction available to her was forward, so now that she was in the city that meant her next step was to determine where 'forward' lay.

Wending her way to the edge of the square, she clambered up a stack of wooden crates resting against the weathered limestone wall of a stable and levered herself up onto the  building's ornately vaulted roof. From there, she leapt to the slate-tiled second-story roof-top of the inn next door, covering the not-inconsiderable distance with practiced ease born of centuries spent navigating forest canopies. Atop this new vantage point, unimpeded by the crush of people in the square, Pinay began to breathe again. Steadying her nerves, she surveyed her surroundings. 


Beautiful stone buildings stretched away from either side of the central plaza in curved strips several blocks wide, nestled between Minas Tirith's outer fortifications and the first of the city's  inner walls. With few half-timbered exceptions, the outer ring of  the city seemed to be constructed entirely of austere white and grey stone blocks, rife with sculpted arches, worn columns, and vaulted porticos. It was elegant but sterile, with only the occasional green tuft of a tree protruding among the rooftops to break the monotony. The streets were wide enough, but filthy and worn, and like the square they were crowded with people of every description.

The elven survivor felt a little bit silly. The fragrant breeze rising from the streets felt cold on the sensitive skin of her bare scalp, and she wished she'd been able to scavenge a helm. She had the lay of the land, but it hadn't helped at all; There was no indication of where a person in need might rent a pegasus, which meant she'd have to find someone to ask. 

Just as Pinay was about to climb down, she realized that someone was shouting; More accurately, a lot of people were shouting, but now it dawned that one of them was shouting at her.
 
"HEY! YOU ON THE ROOF WITH THE POLEARM! I'M TALKING TO YOU! YES, YOU! THE BALD ONE WITH THE MANKY SKIN! GET DOWN FROM THERE!"

Pinay peered into the crowd. After a moment's uncertainty, she identified a stout human in a chain-mail hauberk and a surcoat emblazoned with the local livery looking up at her. He was cupping his gauntleted hands around his mouth in order to make himself heard, and he didn't look happy.

Her first impulse was to flee across the rooftops, but the hunter in her won out over the frightened exile. A vein of coldly vicious logic emerging from the jagged edges of her  consciousness, dictating a bolder course. The displaced elf waved to indicate that she'd heard him, and jumped from the roof of the inn to the stable, and from there to the ground. She landed in a shallow crouch, narrowly avoiding an unfortunate mishap involving her glaive and a passing mule.

The man who'd called to her pushed his way through the crowd as Pinay straightened up, approaching the elf face-to-face. Up close, he looked old, but robustly so, with bushy grey eyebrows and a face that broadcast habitual irritation. There was a mace in a leather thong on his belt and a battered kite-shield hanging on his back.

"What in the nine hells was that about?" he demanded. 

Pinay blinked in confusion. This man was obviously the local version of a watcher, and she could tell he thought she'd done something wrong, but the elf didn't have the slightest idea what it might have been.  "I'm sorry. I don't understand." 

The man sighed, a complex thought rippling through the abundant lines in his forehead. "What," he said, slightly more slowly, "were you doing on top of that building?"

"I couldn't see anything through the crowd, and this is the first time I've been alone in this city," Pinay replied, leaning on the haft of her glaive. "I'd hoped that finding higher ground would make things clearer, but I've no better idea of where to go than I did before. Could you direct me to the pegasus stables?"

The guard rubbed his forehead. "Tyriel save me from heavily-armed tourists... miss, you can't lurk on rooftops overlooking Minas Tirith's most crowded square. You just can't. Now, you don't appear to have a bow on you, you don't look like a sorceror and you weren't exactly skulking, so I'm willing to take you at your word that you were just looking, but never do that again or I'll have you up before a magistrate so fast it'll make your head spin. Do you understand now?"

Self-consciously tamping down a tide of irrationally intense impatience,  Pinay told him that she did. 

"Good," he said, his expression softening only very slightly. "The pegasus stables are up in the fifth ward. If you need directions on the way, find a guard who looks like he's slacking. Now, if you'll excuse me, I've got a garrison I'm supposed to be yelling at."

The man paused for a moment - then added, without seeming to think about it, "Have a pleasant evening," and disappeared into the bustling crowd.