It was hot out, that was the first thing she noticed. And not just the normal heat. After all, she was in the desert. Hot was normal.
It had been two years since she left her clan again, but Bryn was gone. She had traveled around a bit, undergoing her own form of "training" as she called it. There had been jokes about her recklessness leading to setting off traps in a very... unusual manner. But her skill was there. Now she just had to work on finding the traps, and learning more wouldn't hurt too much either. So that's exactly what she had started doing. She started in Southvale, making sure to stop and say hi to old friends before moving on. After that, a quick romp through elven territory nearby and off to the desert she went. The Greysand Oasis was where she currently resided, and it really earned its name. Maybe it was minerals in the water, or maybe some sort of magic was at play, but the sand was always ash grey. Not that Bryn bothered enough to actually look up why it was that way. She just went with it. Because that wasn't why she was here. No, she was here for the ruins. Just outside the oasis city is where the real fun was. Some of the ruins had been cleared long ago, little more than tourist attractions meant to draw in trade and commerce. A little further out is where the treasure was, and with it, traps. Lots and lots of traps.
She really should have payed more attention to where she was going though. Maybe researched a little into Dragonborn architecture, since they were the ruins of an ancient Dragonborn civilization. The part of her that missed her companions told her that Aran would have been a valuable asset, but she ignored it. Just like she ignored it when the gang had split up, and when she had left her family for a second time. She was good at that. But no, instead she was here, pinned to a wall, trying to figure out if the hallway in front of her would have blades or arrows. Her gut said blades, but only because she knew Leonidas liked them. For all she knew, they liked neither and acid would spew out at her when she tried to walk. Bryn shuddered at the thought and tried to find the trigger. Keyword: tried. Before she had a chance to actually do anything, some halfwit looking for treasure tried to walk down the path. She blocked him, giving him a sturdy glare. "There's a trap. So unless you want to be mince meat, you'll stay put for a second, sparky." The traveler (a human) just laughed at her and tried to continue on. Her eyes flashed once in irritation before she reigned it in. In the blink of an eye, her dagger was out and pinning his shirt to the limestone walls.
"Who do you think you are? I would like to go down here, and no matter how cute you are, pint-sized, you won't stop me." Again her eyes flashed. This guy was trying her nerves, and she had half a mind to let him just trigger the trap for her. It would certainly make life easier. But instead she held up a finger and threw one of her coins onto the trigger stone. Just as she had hoped, it was heavy enough, and arrows started shooting through holes in the walls. The human just watched, wide eyed as puffs of air disturbed his bangs. As the arrows died down, Bryn pried her dagger loose with a smirk.
"That's why I was stopping you. But if you'd like to continue, than please do. By all means, I'm no longer stopping you. But at least let me finish my work, alright?" She ignored his comments, her mind slipping into diagrams and tools. She knew the stone was the trigger, but she couldn't figure out quite how it would reload. There had to be at least another trigger, because the stone she had thrown her coin onto was still tripped. Finally her guest's words reached her.
"The off colored stones. But that doesn't stop the actual arrows." Her eyebrows shot up at his comment, and she could have smacked herself for not realizing it earlier. The off-color stones were the safe stones, something for someone who needed to get by but didn't want to fully disarm the trap. With careful precision and practiced ease, Bryn hopped from stone to stone until she reached the other end of the trap. Or at least, what she hoped was the other end of the trap. It had something for her to do, and that was enough.
The nice things about ruins was that they tended to be falling apart. This one was no exception. Large portions of the walls had holes, and she was staring into one now. Only, instead of more chambers like most of the holes had, this one was full of firing mechanisms for the arrows. "Why, hello there. Let's just have a look see," she murmured, and her hands went to work. A few minutes (and annoying shouts from her guest) later, the trap was done. She had managed to disarm it without setting it off. Well, without setting it off on accident (she wouldn't count the coin thing.) "It's safe. Keep the coin, maybe it'll bring you luck. You're gonna need it if you keep blundering forward like that." He looked less than impressed.
"I would have been fine, I'm sure. Besides, you look like you need it more. Not many halflings decide to wander through ruins on their lonesome. You sure you don't want a little company?" Bryn gave the human a once over, although she already knew her answer.
"Are you kidding? You were about to stumble into a trap, you're wearing leather, so you don't expect anything to go wrong. Either that, or you really can't get much else, because it's always better to be prepared. And you have no clue where you're going, because the treasure rooms aren't this way, but left at the last fork. I know, I looted them. So it seems like you need my help, not the other way around." A sneer managed to find its way onto her face as she spoke, and Bryn couldn't help but let it stay. She didn't let her eyes go haywire, but she was almost certain her body language spoke volumes about her feelings right now. "Now one of two things can happen: I can let you go now and we forget you ever stumbled across me, or you keep running that mouth of yours and I find a trap that hasn't been triggered or disarmed to shove you into. Because you're testing what little patience I have left. I have been in these damn ruins for the last two days for training, I have had next to no sleep, I want real food not rations, and I'm sick of all this damn sand," she ended, her words coming out more like snarls. She just wanted peace and quiet to do her thing, to look around and maybe find some cool stuff that she could actually use. He was having none of it though, opting instead to be offended by her words.
"Excuse me? I must have you know, even leather is extremely hot in this weather, and full armor would be worse. You're in leather and you seem to be just fine. And who says I'm looking for treasure. How can I even know you actually did what you said. Two days? For 'training'? I think you're full of Minotaur shit and just won't accept it. Who do you think you are, pretending to play the lone adventurer?" His words piled up on Bryn, and she could feel herself snap. It had been four days (two in the ruins and two for travel), she had been plagued with nightmares (which was currently normal) and thus had no sleep, the rations sucked and she wanted real food, sand was getting in her boots, and worst of all she had to deal with this asshole. Her eyes didn't glow with their normal vigor, instead casting an almost eerie, blood red light just in front of her face, illuminating what little bit was in shadow. Ire and some irrational rage seared through her, and before she quite had time to process it, her dagger was back out and pointed.
"Who do I think I am? You really want to ask that? I think I'm the one who's faced down countless creatures you've only seen in your nightmares. I think I'm the only one of us here who's looked death in the eye and lived to tell the tale. I think I'm the one who's been in this desert for a god's damned week prepping in the heat before I even touched these god's forsaken ruins. And I think that, of the two people here, I'm the one who has the map. You know, the one from the archives in the city? No, you wouldn't. Because no one goes to the damn archives. How do I know? Because if they had, they would have known I have the only copy of said map." She left out the part about stealing it, because the nice people in the building hadn't wanted to let her make a copy. That was better left unsaid. "So I think you'd best turn around and walk home, green stalk. Because I think you're out of your league." Before Bryn could do much else, her feet were walking away, through the hallway, past the (now disarmed) arrow trap, and to the next area.
It was a good hour before she calmed down even a little bit. Thankfully there weren't any living things she could take it out on. Well, unless reanimated skeletons could be counted as living, but she didn't count them. Finally she found what she had come there for (besides the traps, that is). In one of the far corners of the ruins there had been an archive, or a library of some sort. And even though she hadn't seen him since before her adventures, somehow Bryn knew that if she could get one of these books for Aran, he'd be grateful. Not that she cared. No, she just wanted to do something for an old friend. He had been on her mind a lot recently, and had their last encounter not ended... well, she just was hesitant to go back. Maybe she'd leave it on his doorstep with a note. And maybe the gods would take pity on her and the earth would swallow her whole before that actually happened. Either way, she found a room that seemed to be mostly intact, and they appeared to be the right area according to the map. Quickly taking whatever was still intact after all these years, Bryn set up the instant camp and called it a night.
For the first time in two years, Bryn didn't see the faces of her family in her dreams, wasn't haunted by the derisive laughter of fate, couldn't feel the pitying stares of her former friends and companions. Instead she slept more soundly than she had in a very long time.
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