Remembering the Dead

Nym volunteered to inventory the supplies in the hold to have a bit of time alone after her strange encounter with Beranhond. That hadn’t been the first time someone had been afraid of her because of her magical abilities and wouldn’t be the last, but there was something else behind his behavior, and she knew it.

It was dark in the hold and she stopped for a moment as she walked down the stairs for her eyes to adjust. With no portholes at this low level, it was still too dark for Nym to see. She raised her hands and a soft blue light began to form around them. In only a few moments, Nym had created four blue will-o’-wisp lights of her own that floated gently around the boxes in the hold, lighting the room. She watched them float about for a moment before beginning the inventory.

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Nym was 8 when she was invited to attend the Silverymoon Wizarding school. She hadn’t wanted to go particularly, but her father thought it would be good for her and her budding abilities. The city was beautiful, but she was a forest child and never felt right away from the trees. She made friends easily nonetheless, and received good marks in her classes, though she found the materials remedial at best for her.

Her best friend at the school was a tiefling wizard of her age named Morna. She and her older ‘brother,’ Moran, had been created in Thay as warrior wizards, but had been taken from the land when Morna was an infant and Moran was only three years old in hopes they would live better lives outside that land. Nym and Morna had become Moran’s tag-alongs, feeling older and more mature by hanging out with students a few years their seniors. Always protective of Morna, Moran didn’t mind them following him and his friends around. Avarn, a human sorceress from the north, was in the same class as Moran, and Wayrn, a clumsy human wizard, and Rahm, an elf sorcerer from the High Forest, were two years senior than their friends in classwork, but Rahm was over a decade older than Wayrn. The group spent most of their time talking about how someday they would be great magical adventurers, slaying dragons and saving villages. Moran spoke mostly of the great magic of Thay and how someday he would ride back to claim his birthright in that land and learn the ways of the Red Wizards.

Only four years later, the group left Silverymoon intending to learn the secrets of the Red Wizards in Thay. They were too innocent and too young to know what they had gotten themselves into.

For a year they traveled east seeing wonderful sights such as the Cormathor and the Sea of Fallen Stars before reaching Thay. It was fall when they arrived in the land, and as the group of children walked through the outlaying fields of Thay, nothing seemed amiss. They laughed and joked as they walked, but if they had paid attention as they’d gone through the small villages and towns on their way to the capitol Bezantur, they would have noticed they were not welcome in Thay.

The group was arrested by guards from the wizarding school well before they’d made it to the capitol and taken to the dungeons of the Red Wizards. For months they were questioned and tortured, slowly being stripped of their individuality, their wills to live. They had been branded as slaves. It hadn’t taken long for the Thay wizards to realize these children were neither spies nor powerful enemies, so their cruelty was only for their own enjoyment.

The wizards, Morna, Wayrn, and Moran, were the first to die, as they were of little use to the Red Wizards. They hoped to use the sorcerer children to learn how to create their own sorcerers. The bodies of their friends were strung up outside their cells in the dungeon. Nym took to laying on the damp cell floor and watching the rats and bugs when not being interrogated. She rarely spoke, though Rahm and Avarn were still with her. Avarn had collected a finger from each of their dead companions in secret in hopes of returning to Silverymoon to resurrect them. She and Rahm spent their time planning a possible escape. It was hopeless, but they were desperate. Rahm was the next to die, and the two girls were forced to watch. Avarn screamed for Rahm during his agonizing death, but Nym just watched. She was incapable of doing or thinking anything. She was too damaged by what had already happened to her. Avarn wept all through the night that night. Nym laid on the icy floor silently.

Days, maybe weeks, went by on the same routine of interrogation and waiting in the cell with their friends’ decaying remains haunting them just outside the cell. Nym continued to do nothing, say nothing. Avarn had collected a finger from Rahm. “Now she has the complete set..” thought Nym, in a lucid moment, before being lost again to the rats and bugs on the floor.

One of the Red Wizards had decided to try a different tactic with Nym, and had began to visit her occasionally. He sat in her cell, telling her of all the things she would have if she helped him create Thay sorcerers. She laid on the floor, not listening or caring. When he grew frustrated, she’d be taken for more ‘interrogation.’

Nym had lost track of time. One day she was awoken from her stupor by Avarn shaking her. “PLEASE, Nym, listen to me!” she hissed. Nym turned and looked at Avarn for the first time in months, maybe years. Avarn’s face was drawn and dirty. Her eyes had lost the light they once held. Nym was shocked by this for a moment, before returning to disinterest. “They’re going to kill me, Nym.” She said. There was no fear in her voice, it was only tired. She handed Nym something wrapped in dirty cloth. “Swear to me you’ll get them home. Swear to me you’ll keep them safe!” She hissed urgently. Nym took the package carefully and held it against her chest. She nodded. Avarn collapsed against the wall. Nym laid down on the floor hugging the dirty package to herself. She slept.

Nym awoke to the sound of Avarn being taken away for execution. She realized as Avarn walked silently away with her guards that she too was missing a finger. “You match our friends,” Nym said to no one in particular through cracked dry lips as she stared at the decaying corpses just outside her cell. When it was silent again, she unwrapped the package, even though she already knew what it contained.

Nym had been all but forgotten by her captors after Avarn’s body had joined the ranks outside her cell. She had tied the package from Avarn inside her shirt where it would be hidden. Days later, the Red Wizard who had taken an interest in her returned, taking her away to his home and a new prison. She was dressed and washed before being locked away in a chamber not much better than her old cell. “At least there’s a window here,” she thought. She replaced staring at rats with staring at the people below from her barred windows. Days became weeks and months as her new routine set in. The wizard would come and try to learn the ‘secrets’ of sorcerers, and when she didn’t speak, he would have her beaten. She was fed and dressed by the wizard’s slaves. She spent her time alone staring out the window or laying on the floor thinking of nothing. Nym often checked to make sure her package from Avarn was safely hidden.

One night, Nym awoke to whispering outside her door. She sat quietly, waiting to see who had come for her. When the door opened, one of the wizard’s slaves came in, and motioned for her to follow. Nym did as she was bid. The slave gave her a few gold pieces and food to help her escape Thay. “Never come back child! Be free of this place!” The woman said to her before pushing her into the night. Nym was confused, not having hoped for freedom again and not having thought of what to do if she became free once again.

She ran through the night blindly until she collapsed in a field. For weeks after her escape, she walked roughly south, staying off the roads, until she came to Ganathwood in Murghom. She stayed in the wood for months as she regained a sense of who she was and what she needed to do. She’d been a captive in Thay for over a year.

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Nym’s little blue lights had winked out in her inattentiveness, but she continued to sit in the dark, staring into nothingness. She touched her shoulder where she’d been branded as a slave of Thay. The ship creaked, the waves broke against the hull, and Nym felt nothing.