Anyia looked up at the afternoon sky, watching the animals scurrying, flittering, and slithering to their homes for the night. To eat their food and say goodnight to their young. That’s what Anyia needed to do: eat. She hadn’t had any food since she’d escaped from him, which was a day ago. She scowled at the name that turned in her mind.
“How could a young noble girl cause so much trouble with a blood thirsty warlord?” She thought, shaking her head. It just didn’t make any sense. She was a noble. And somehow she’d gotten mixed up Sarcrius the Warlord.
Shaking her head again she stared longingly at an elk sprinting through the woods. If only she had a bow and arrow. But she didn’t have anything now. Just her clothes and her cat, Jasper. Even her sword and money were gone.
“Pretty worn-out clothes these are too.” She thought, running her hands down the brown skirt and black bodice. She had rips running down the sleeves of her chemise, making her look somewhat of a pirate. Her skirt was torn in several places, and dirt streaked, as was her bodice. Her boots were absolutely covered with mud and leaves, and her hair was a wild mess, as she always left it down.
She’d been running through the forest for most of the day, not bothering to stop and mend her clothes.
But “her” clothes weren’t actually hers. Sarcrius had given them to her so as not to have her “look the part of a boy” as he’d said when she tried to fight against him in her breeches and tunic.
It all started the day she got lost in the Mountains of Minday when she was 10. She had found an old warrior, who had tried to master some magic when he was too old to fight. He’d found her and raised her till she was 16. She wanted to explore, and she had some kind of magic he couldn’t identify, or teach. She wanted to go back to her family, so she set out back to her home, Clement.
But as she made her way there, she heard that a warlord named Sarcrius was ravaging Clement and the surrounding cities.
She also heard that the only person left alive in her family, was her brother, Lord Rael. She heard he was trying to fight Sarcrius, to build up a resistance. So she met up with him and they began trying to fight for their lands back.
But after about a week or two of fighting, she’d been captured by Sarcrius, who, while she was still being held hostage, killed the rest of the resistance, and her brother.
By befriending a local merchant who was part of the resistance, she managed to quietly slip out of Sarcrius’s stronghold. Bu after an hour, the guards had come chasing after her, after a while, she lost them in the woods.
That had happened yesterday night, she had run all day, not thinking about stopping or eating, and now she was almost starved to death. Jasper seemed to have caught a few squirrels that day, and Anyia was wishing she’d have done the same.
Silently, she drowsed off to sleep, too tired and hungry to do much else.
