The warmth of the sun clung to the air as Deorla spent her first day in the modest riverside village. It was a peaceful settlement tucked between hills and waters, unassuming in its rhythm of life—exactly the kind of place she rarely lingered in, but for once, she allowed herself a sliver of calm.
She rose with the dawn, drawn by the soft sounds of water and the chatter of two unlikely companions—an aging Dunlending with a sun-leathered face and a plump, cheerful hobbit who introduced himself as Teilo. They stood on a rickety wooden platform jutting out over the riverbank, casting lines with the ease of men who'd done little else for years.
She took it. The morning passed slowly, the sun climbing higher as dragonflies skimmed the water and the river lapped lazily beneath their feet. Deorla listened more than she spoke, content in the rhythm of casting, waiting, pulling. Her hands smelled of fish and riverweed by noon, and she didn’t mind at all. It was a nice break at least for one day.
Later, with the last of the gold she carried tucked into her belt pouch, she made her way to the village market—a crooked line of stalls set beneath faded canvas awnings. The scents of dried herbs, baked bread, and old leather mingled in the warm air. She moved through it with quiet purpose.
From an old woman hunched beside baskets of produce, she bought a bundle of smoked river fish, tightly wrapped in linen and tied with twine. Another stall sold flatbread, still warm from the stone oven, and she took two rounds of it along with a small pouch of dried berries. A boy no older than ten sold filled waterskins for a copper apiece, fetched fresh from the spring behind the hill. She bought two.
Bartering wasn’t needed—her coin was accepted with eager hands, though her presence drew wary glances. A lone traveler with a sword always did.
Behind the stables, a straw-stuffed training dummy stood neglected beside a rusted shield nailed to a post. She spent the hour before dusk there, letting muscle memory carry her through the forms—sweeping slashes, precise thrusts, brutal overhead strikes. It had been too long since her arms had felt the steady rhythm of discipline.
Deorla took the old South Road, the weather warm and gentle, the air scented with budding heather and damp stone. The road was quiet, save for the soft whisper of wind in the grass. Travelers were few. Peaceful. For now.
But all calm things fray at the edges, and by the second day she reached the borderland of Enedwaith—a land growing harsher, the hills more jagged, the land more untamed. There, at the narrowing of the path between two crumbling ridgelines, she encountered a ragged barricade.
Five men held it. Dunland deserters, by the look—grime-cloaked, sallow-eyed, wearing pieces of old tribal garb alongside looted scraps of armor. Their leader, a squat man with a slashed lip and bloodstained furs, stepped forward demanding coin for passage. Deorla offered him only a stare.
“We guard this road now,” he said, voice thick with arrogance. “You want through, you pay.”
She tilted her head, eyes unreadable beneath her hood. “No.”
The air grew tense. Words followed, sharp and fruitless. They reached no accord.
So she waited.
At nightfall, hidden beyond sight, she circled back. The deserters had made a crude camp near the road’s edge—poorly lit, no proper watch set, confidence bred from small victories and greater stupidity.
They didn’t see her coming.
The first died without a sound, a blade driven through the throat from behind. The second managed a cry before she split his windpipe with a sideways slash, the gurgling wet and ugly. The third she dragged into the dark, her hand muffling his scream as her dagger found the soft place beneath his jaw.
The last two fought.
One swung wildly, torch in hand, the firelight dancing off her blade as she twisted past him and plunged steel through his ribs. He fell cursing, then choking. The leader came last, bleeding already from a shallow cut across his face. He lunged. She let him. The blade barely missed as she stepped inside his swing, grabbed the haft of his axe, and buried her knife in his eye.
When silence returned, it clung to the road like fog.
She took nothing from their bodies.
By morning, the sun rose over Enedwaith and she passed through the bloodstained stones, alone.
The road stretched on through barren hills and dry grass, the terrain rough and lacking shelter. For half the day she followed the main path, pausing only to drink or to scan the open land. Near dusk, she veered westward and spent nearly an hour seeking a defensible place to rest. Trees were scarce, but she found a low dip behind a scatter of broken rocks, just deep enough to hide her fireless camp.
There she sat, cloaked in silence, blade across her knees.
Sleep would come lightly tonight.
(BELOW ARE THE MAPS AND ROUTE SHE TAKEN IF ANYONE WANNA FOLLOW HER OR DO ANYTHING IN FUTURE)
