Meela, the Thief chapter 1

I'm waiting for my mouth to not be mush after the dentist to record, lol.  Have Meela, a favorite little lady of mine.

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"I'll be going to temple tomorrow," Adrin said, his voice as soft as his hands turning the wild strands of her hair into tiny braids.

"You go to temple every day," Meela pointed out although she knew Adrin wasn't going for his usual daily prayer.  He wouldn't have brought it up if it was for usual reasons.  She'd known this was coming; it was why she'd suddenly asked him to redo her hunter braids.

Adrin sighed; they'd been friends too long for him to not recognize when she was being obtuse.  His hands didn't still, however, so he was willing to humor her.  "I'll be there for a week."

Meela closed her eyes and bit her tongue, holding the pain within herself even as her mouth gained a small pool of blood.  She couldn't beg him to stay, to disregard everything he'd been training for.  If that was going to work, it would have been eight years prior, when Adrin first dedicated himself to the god Lesca.  He hadn't listened to her begging then, and he wouldn't now.

"Meela?" Adrin's hands stuttered to a stop, and Meela swallowed.

"I know.  I'm headed out to hunt tomorrow.  I'll walk you to the temple." She was glad her back was to him; she couldn't face him, couldn't let him see her misery.  He was kind enough to not say anything if he noticed that her voice was thick.

...

They walked side-by-side in silence the next morning.  Meela had gathered the plethora of braids Adrin had worked her hair into and tied them back with a strip of leather.  Clad in her thick fur, bow and quiver slung over her back, she was indistinguishable from the other hunters in the village.

Adrin was draped in red, the color of those devoting themselves to Lesca.  He looked small and unprotected in the flimsy red cloth, and Meela ached to pick him up and run.

He smiled at her once they reached the temple, but no words were shared between them.  Meela didn't know what was left to be said, anyway.

She watched him until he was swallowed by the dark gray mass of the temple, then turned left, headed into the wilderness.  Once out-of-sight of the temple and those headed to it, she adjusted her path to be parallel with the temple.

Everyone knew the stories; that their village held the sword for Lesca's hero to use in saving their world.  Meela figured that meant a secret part of the temple, so that The Scourge wouldn't find it.  Surely a hidden chamber would have multiple entrances as well, in case of the worst.

She would find one.

It took her two days before she tripped over an errant stone jutting out of the snow.  She barely managed to catch herself before her face had a close encounter with the mountainside, which brought her eye to eye with a crevasse she would barely be able to walk straight into; a crevasse shining gold with divine magic.

Meela immediately tried to shove her arm through, only to pull back with a hissed curse as the golden magic coalesced into a fire over her glove.  She eyed the crevasse for a moment, steeling herself for what she was certain would hurt.  She shoved both hands this time, teeth finding her bottom lip as the divine fire overtook both hands.  She kept them together, driving her fingers through the magic.

Her gloves burned away, leaving her flesh unprotected.  She felt blood leak onto her chin as she bit through her lip to keep from screaming as the fire started in on her.  She rallied her thoughts, pictured Adrin in her mind, and threw her whole weight into her push.  She wouldn't give up, unwanted by a god or not.

She could smell her flesh burning, but the magic gave just the tiniest amount, so she pushed harder.  It gave with a pop, and she heard a fur tear as her shoulders scraped the stone sides of the crevasse.  She stumbled through until she was in a larger chamber with an ornate door.

Here, she let herself collapse to her knees, clutching her hands to her chest.  She just knelt and shook, unable to stop herself from crying, now that she could fully see and feel the damage.  Her fingertips were raw, and the rest of her hands sported shiny red burns where the flesh had started being eaten away.

When the pain subsided enough that she could do more than shake, Meela carefully shifted to reach a pouch on her left side.  She couldn't stop the watery gasp as she forced her damaged fingers to grasp a tie and pull it free, opening a pouch enough to grasp a cloth stored there.  She pulled it free and wrapped her hands in the cloth, hissing as the cloth, soft as it was meant for wounds, still stung her burns.

She let herself sit for a little longer before forcing herself to her feet, nearly falling over without the use of her hands.  She faced the door, and braced her forearms against it when she didn't see a handle, pushing.  The door gave, slowly, but Meela never stopped pushing until she was through.  The hallway she was deposited into was dry, and comfortable, but entirely undecorated.

That struck her as a bit odd, since Lesca's temple was full of depictions of the god.  Shouldn't the place the sword was hidden have the same treatment?  Or have some sort of ornamentation?

Still, she didn't come here for the decorations.  Meela chose to go left, following stable lighting whereas right seemed to have more torch lighting, with frequent flickers.  The hallway led her to a large, open room with a pedestal in the center and a Devotee before the pedestal.

Meela didn't know how Lesca chose the Devoted and the Devotees.  She didn't really care, either, she just wanted Adrin safe from it all.  However, even she understood that the Devotees were people passed over for Devoted, and they were...changed, after.  They looked like statues, but could move if they wanted.  They were genderless, as all depictions of Lesca were, and they cared only for Lesca's orders.

Meela marched forward to plant her feet before the Devotee.

If she was willing to burn herself for this, she wasn't going to let a guard stop her.  "Is that the hero's sword behind you?"

"You are not god-chosen," said the Devotee, their stony eyes seeming to gaze in her direction.  "This is no duty of yours, and yet, you have decided to take up the sword?"

"'Not god-chosen' my ass," Meela responded, the rage she had tried so hard to hide leaking into her voice.  "Where are they?  Where's the prophesied hero?  The world has ended, has been ended, for a hundred years.  Where are they?"

The Devotee did not answer her, and there was no change in their serene expression.  Meela bared her teeth.

"Give me the sword," she growled, "I'll fix it."

"It will kill you," the Devotee warned, but didn't try to stop her when she stepped around them and approached the pedestal.

"I'd rather die than continue living this way," Meela said honestly.

She looked to the pedestal, gratified to see a blade on it.  She'd never seen a sword; the Scourge had outlawed both swords and the depictions of swords before her birth.  The blade looked like Meela's hunting knife, except much longer and smooth for the length of the blade.  It didn't have any decoration, but shone like liquid silver no matter what angle she looked at it from.

She finally reached out and grasped the hilt.  Divine fire raced up the blade and onto her hands, already so abused.  Meela screamed, but held tightly to the sword.  She wouldn't lose, she couldn't wait any longer for a savior.  She would save herself and everyone else.

The fire on her hands extinguished, but Meela could feel it sink into her bones, trying to eat away at her.  'You cannot save yourself,’ a voice spoke into her mind, impassive in its tone.  'Only Lesca's Hero can use me without dying.'

"I don't care!" Meela's words barely seemed to be audible through her scream.  Even if she understood how the sword, apparently, was speaking into her mind, she was too busy fighting her body's natural instinct to drop something hurting her to try it.  "I won't keep watching people be sacrificed!"

The divine magic feeding the fire stopped, though she could still feel the fire eating at her bones.  The sudden cessation of the majority of the pain knocked Meela's knees from under her, and she collapsed in a twitching heap.  It felt like someone had scraped her raw inside, and she could only ride it out while clutching the sword.

'I am Iri,’ the sword's 'voice' seemed to convey curiosity.  'What do you mean about people being sacrificed?'

"The Scourge demands a person be chosen from each town and sent to them.  If we don't, they Purge the towns that disobey." Meela should probably be more concerned about carrying on a conversation with a sword.  She should also probably be concerned about the sword's-Iri's-ignorance of the Devoted.  She couldn't make herself care at all, however, as she started to shiver, her entire body cold.  At least her body wasn't twitching from pain any more.

'How long have the Scourge held sway?'

Meela shook her head, trying to clear some of the fog from her thoughts.  "Uh.  A hundred years, give or take.  Records from their first appearance are inconsistent, if Lesca's Devotees are to be believed."

'A hundred years and no Hero has arisen?  Lesca promised this wouldn't take so long.' The last part didn't seem aimed at Meela, though that didn't stop her rage from rushing through her again.

"Lesca and you knew this was coming?  You knew the Scourge would hunt us for sport?" Meela was proud of how her voice didn't shake, despite the rage overriding her pain.

Iri still seemed to note Meela's rage, because the sword's tone was more cautious.  'Not...quite.  Lesca knew something was coming, and that we couldn't head it off without fully manifesting in your dimension.  Since that wouldn't work, they asked me to do this.'

A lot of what Iri was saying didn't make any sense to Meela.  She followed along as best she could, and came to the conclusion that gods were weird, and pretty useless.  She'd been of the second opinion for a while, but it was nice to have another god she could point to as evidence.

"Okay," Meela said, gingerly pushing herself into a sitting position with the hand not tightly clutching the sword, "okay, okay.  I'll be honest, I don't actually care that Lesca knew about this beforehand.  I mean, I do, but it doesn't matter.  It doesn't even matter that there's been no Hero.  I have you, now, so I'll fix it."

Meela nodded curtly to herself.  She worked best with a plan to focus on, something to take step-by-step.  The next step, obviously, would be to leave the village with Adrin, protect him on his journey while she...well, she'd figure that out.

'...you will die, if you take me from this temple.' Iri's voice was soft, perhaps even a bit sad.  'You will already die younger than you should, from Our Fire.'

Meela could still feel the divine Fire eating at her bones, if she thought about it.  She'd need to think about that.  For now, though, it didn't matter.  The Fire already had her, and even if she died, saving all of the current and future Devoted was well worth it.

"We can discuss that in greater detail later," she told Iri as she paused to let the dizziness of pain pass.  "Are you going to kill me to stay here?"

'Of course not!' Iri sounded affronted, and Meela wished swords had faces so she could see the expression to match.  'To be entirely honest, I think your choice is very noble, and I would be proud to help you.'

Meela grinned.  That was what she wanted to hear.