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Author: KlynnGrey
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Glena
Glena’s lungs burned. The air ran through them in a ragged wheeze that burned with every step she took. The ground was a rugged patch work quilt of stone and grass in shifting patterns.
The mountains here had changed. When the sky fell it had left plumes of earth that had slowly drifted back to the land filling in pockets and pools of stone. Then the seed came and filled in over that. The pockets turned into grassland from a foot wide to hectares large and every where the stone of the mountain poked out and none of it was flat. The terrain rose up or out or dipped into valleys as haphazard as the rest of the course she ran.
In her hands she carried two blades one short and one long, both were weighted far more than they would be normally. As she moved she swung them in the patterns her mother had taught her as a child. She watched her footing as she ran. Precarious as it was it gave her stamina and coordination far beyond any other exercise she could do.
When she could no longer run or hold her arms up and her blades dragged at her feet she stopped, finally, and gulped the thin air into her lungs as fast as her body would let her without getting sick from the motion. There was a time when she didn’t have that option and these runs had caused more nausea than childbirth.
“…bloody moon’s…”
Glena had run herself to the ruins. These weren’t native to the mountains but another side effect of moonfall had been new lands in this case it was just another mountain dressed in the poor clothes of a dead man’s home. At one time it was a very nice home. The stone alone would have cost more to quarry than Glena had seen in her lifetime and it didn’t hale from this region. The red gold granite was a long way from home and the marbled silver veins that crossed it made it even stranger to her than the color alone.
At one time the castle had been huge but now it was a warren of caves and open roofed rooms that left splendor behind. Small animals rattled over it like mice in a carcass and the larger mountain goats could often be seen racing a pinnacle in the distance, a lone warrior taking over the hold waiting for the master to return. Which also meant it was a stopping ground for the larger predators in the area. This high up only a cat would venture, the wolfs stuck to the lower altitude. In the sky several hawks had the temerity to live out their lives in more prosperity than many others.
Glena wiped the sweat from her shapely brow and pulled the few wisps of her hair back behind her slightly pointed ears. Next she opened her vest to let some cool air into her overheated body. In a few minutes she would put on an over cloak to ward off any chill but for now the high mountain air and bright sunlight felt as good as any bath would.
A sparkle caught her attention. Something in the ruins, either it was the time of day or a martin had dragged a shiny bit into the sunlight and then discarded it once its curiosity was feed rather than its belly.
Walking over to find the elusive light, she had to shift her perspective to keep following the light of the sun; the fading opulence of the old furniture took her attention. The fabric was long worn and weathered full of mold and sprung padding. The shine of the wood had dulled and faded from the weather and sunlight. This debris was scattered around the castle walls and ruined stone walks both in and out of the boundaries that the walls made.
Glena climbed over stone and broken bits of living till she was near the brightness she had seen. Searching rewarded her with a flash in her eyes, a brief burst of pain and then she could see again. A coin lay near her grasp. Drawing one of the blades she had re-sheathed to climb rocks and broken stone she reached out with it and scraped the coin towards her.
Gold.
Old gold lay in the palm of her hand, so old it wasn’t dated, that came after moonfall. In the right hands or city this would be worth more than just the shiny metal it was made of.
An avarice she had never been aware of took over the serenity of her blue eyes and they gleamed almost like the gold in front of her. A feeling she had never known before wormed into her senses, an old greed born of power and fear and magic.
So there must be more of it somewhere.
A sound startled her out of her reverie and her reflexes took over. The anger she held back suddenly reared and her blade flashed in the sunlight. Blood flew and the high pitched squeal of an animal faded from the still mountain air.
“What in…”
The animal was dismembered and in pieces on the ground, its lungs still working if only for a few moments.
“That’s not…normal.”
Her eyes returned to the gold she held in her hand, the hand the weasel was attacking, had almost grasped in its sharp needle like teeth.
In a burst of anger and coveting she didn’t understand she brought the heel of her boot down hard on the weasels head and heard the satisfying crunch of bone breaking.
She slipped the gold into a small pouch and started her search for more poking into ruins and rooms buried farther and farther from the light of day.
Every few minutes she would check her pouch just to make sure her gold was where it was supposed to be. Each time she did the gleam would return to her eye and she would smile like the merchants she met in the mountain trade fairs.
“Greedy bastards, you won’t get my gold.”
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