Role

Chapter 5

The feeling was back. An...emptiness. How she hated it, how she hated what she had to do to
make it stop, but here it was again. She fell to her knees and overturned a rock resting against
the base of a tree. All manner of squirmy things writhed beneath. She stuffed them into her
mouth. Some time later the emptiness was gone, but she knew it would return.

This whole landscape was alien to her, the greenness of her surroundings almost as strange as
the deep-azure of her own hands. She had met a four-legged antlered being who ran when she
approached. She had met a group of two-legged pale things who had shouted "Drow! Drow!" at
her and chased her with pointed sticks. Other encounters followed.

What was she? Darkling? Drow? Evil? Monster?

Kyrrenthia was none of these things, or, perhaps, all of them. She did not understand nor care
for the way the two-legged ones yelled, rushing into their structures if they were few in number,
or rushing out of them if there were many. She became aware of another emptiness within her,
if she had the words for it she would have recognized it as hatred.

The hatred made her tired, another thing she didn't understand. The need to periodically seek
refuge beneath a bush and cover herself with pine needles was frustrating and cost her valuable
time as she made her way to...

Where was she going? She did not know, but still she went. Driven by pure instinct and primal
forces beyond her mindscape.

Some days later the emptiness again upon her she laid her hand on a stone and something
happened. Memories, but not her own, flooded her mind. Words and images formed. Arbiters,
Cities, an ancient Tree destroyed by an Empire, by Tribunal, Nature, Civilization, Defilers,
Screaming, Building, Burning. Lines were drawn in her mind between the shouters in the
structures and natural things. She looked again at her azure hands. She was a natural thing,
this body may not be hers, but she was a ... thing... something... All the while "Thar-Eris" echoed
in her mind.

More pain, different and sharper this time than the emptiness.