The Four

..or not

Liandra woke in steps, the pain in her head putting stars before her eyes making her movements slow and awkward. She didn’t want to wake up, she wanted to lie there and let herself go. To leave her body and never return to the pain and horror that had been her lot over so much of her 659 years.

Memories flowed through her, brought painful tears to her eyes, memories of the only time she had ever been happy. The man who had made those memories with her, the teasing way he had made love to her, the way they had fought side by side through centuries of battle.

Liandra pushed those thoughts aside and the memories they invoked. The pain they awoke in her soul that was so much stronger than any pain her body now or had ever suffered. Feeling around with her hands, not wanting to open her eyes just yet, Liandra tried to figure out where she might be. What she felt was not unfamiliar to her, but still it made her stomach clench.

Bodies, she was surrounded by bodies. Panic set in and Liandra began to fight her way out of the pile. Her stomach was queasy and unsettled, more than once did she vomit what little was in her stomach until she reached fresh air after what seemed like an eternity.

Liandra still had not opened her eyes when she felt the first wisps of fresh sea air, but now she did. Slowly she opened her eyes, and looked up at the sky, not daring to look down at herself or the bodies she knew lay around her. The moon was full and bright above her, the stars twinkling merrily along like she wasn’t in the middle of a nightmare. A deep breath filled her lungs with night air, and the stench of bodies left to rot in the elements. Gagging she bent over and having lost all that was in her stomach dry heaved right into the face of a dead child. 

More panic and she was scrambling up and away, tripping over limbs, stepping on faces, stomachs... so many of them! She had no idea where she was going but she ran and ran until the ground underneath her no longer squished and writhed with the dead.

Liandra fell to her hands and knees, her eyes burning with the tears that ran down her cheeks unchecked, her breath came out in sobs and her mind reeled not only with this horror, but with horrors that she had lived lifetimes through. Ages and ages, had she lived in battlefields, drenched in the blood of her enemies, lying among the fallen bodies of her friends. 

Falling over onto her side Liandra curled into a ball and rocked back and forth as the tears and the memories, kept coming. Some time later, she had no idea how long, her body was finally still, the tears dried and she felt so utterly empty inside. 

Bolstering herself, calling herself a weak, pathetic, coward, she pushed her body up off the ground enough to look around and see where she was. She started violently as she recognized the cave in front of her.