Role

Chapter 2

Fortune is a funny thing, and rarely on it's face can it be clearly
understood. Salyeris was free of her masters, but she was not free of her
compulsion. The brands compelled her to serve the Daehyanda still, and yet
none lived for her to serve. The weight of the brand weighed on her
endlessly, always there in the back of her mind, urging her to find them, to
serve them as she once had. For she was forever their slave.

Within the central circle of the brand, a dark elven rune for di'thang was
scarred into her flesh. The lower left the rune for Dae, the lower right the
rune for Hyanda. Slave of the Shadowblade family. Even with their death, she
was not free of that mark, not free of their burden upon her to serve them.
Forever more, she would be Nimkerta, the bearer of the white runes of
servitude. Only in her own death, would she be free of the curse.

And so she was free only in that her will was once her own, but she would
never truly be free of the burden those runes placed upon her. Youth she had,
and so time, but as she found her way to the surface of Thera there was
hesitance in her step. She did not know what her life would bring, where it
might lead. And there was the ever present fear that perhaps one day one of
Daehyanda blood would emerge, perhaps a bastard child never made part of the
family, to return her to servitude once more, for the brand upon her would
demand nothing less of her, and in the presence of one to serve, it would
break her will once more into submission before them.

A shudder came over her with that thought. There was little time she could
afford to waste. And with that she found her resolve, and stepped without
hesitation into her new life.