M E L I T A
Melita didn’t know what to say about the current, developing situation of might against might, of Natural against Outlander. It’d hurt her, out there, watching everything unfold, listening to those she considered friends and comrades howl and roar about the ineptitude of Outlanders – something she was, always would be – but now it all seemed so petty, so ridiculous, so overblown and overwrought. Perhaps it was because she couldn’t do anything; a sensation of helplessness drifting over her features, a veil, a shroud, of ineffectualness.
But not any longer. She’d make certain of it.
Fangorn wasn’t sure whether to take pride in the compliment or balk from it, so he simply stared, nodded, and retreated behind Melita’s heels again. The subject altered away from him anyway, and Roana’s willingness to skirmish, to train, to somehow instill some amount of experience into her blood and bones. The girl was ebullient – her greedy, mercenary, covetous little claws unfolded and beatific, a radiant smile casting it way through her lips, brilliant and blinding. If it hadn’t been all for the sake of menace and warfare, she might’ve looked saintly and pious, a regal sprite of fortitude and might. Despite the inadequacies crawling over her surface, the obvious notion that she’d had no formal training in the darkened dungeons of the Rift, her avaricious mind craved the sensation of practice and skills, carved and etched and yearned for the opportunity to show someone she was capable.
There was no point in lying about her trials and melees. They’d all truly been in hell, established demonic interludes and fiendish embraces; the kind that sought its refuge in nightmares, dreamt back in the middle of the twilight evenings with anguish, sorrow, and oblivion wrapped in its tails. She jutted out her chin, defiant and revolutionary, because her entire outlook had scrapped its way from the merciless eaves of the Rift’s quarters, and there was a semblance of pride there - I survived coiled in her grasp. Her gaze was ruthless, even when her tales only shown of green, unsophisticated measures. “I don’t have any training.” She swallowed there, but didn’t lose any of her strength, her potency; ferocity ready, fervent, to be unleashed. “I used rocks. I used branches. I used anything I could get my hands on to ensure my family lived.” Then she paused, only to take a breath, to press her arms against her sides, trying hard not to ball her hands into fists. “I fought monsters.” They’d been cunning, they’d been shrewd, they’d been barbed and wired with snares and traps, and she’d screamed and roared against the calamity a thousand times over; you can’t have me she’d uttered in her feral, reckless, ferocious howls. You can’t have them, she’d pitched over and over, growling, a menace to behold in those dark lands, where anguish was common and tribulations were paramount, desperate to protect everything she held dear.
Even then, it hadn’t been enough.
The truth was tangible though, a ring of suffering and trials; mysteries uncovered only to be swept away by false gods and treasonous, treacherous, duplicitous methods, means, to unravel everything in sight. She didn’t back away either, her gaze, her eyes, still steadily on Roana. A cheeky smile managed to lift the sides of her smile into a more impish grandeur; devil-may-care, a light in the brazen, emboldened fervor. “My favorites were always a handmade staff, a knife, or bow, though.”
