That morning

And suffer they would.

The plan forming in my mind was to make them fear for their lives. To make them know the fear that my mother must have felt. To make them feel it was futile to even try to escape, but watch them scurry around and try.

I wanted to destroy them, from the inside, out. Watch their fear tear apart their reason, and rational thought; and only at the height of their terror, end it.

So shortly before dawn broke, I left their camp; but not before I made it clear that someone had been there. Once I was done, I headed for my perch in the trees overlooking the campsite. I wanted to be able to see them when they woke up.

It didn't take long, they were awake by the time the light of the sun shone through the canopy of trees.

I watched them stir from sleep, and I pulled back on my bow. My arrow flew true, and landed with a soft thud as it buried itself in the ground mere inches from the face of the shortest and fattest of the dwarves.

It was almost comical to watch what happened next, and if it hadn't been for the cold rage driving me, I might have even laughed (yes at this point, I was still capable of laughing).

His eyes opened slowly, blinking the sleep from his eyes, not quite able to focus just yet. Then the slow recognition of what was literally all he could see in front of him.

Confusion was the first thing that crossed his face. You could see him trying to process, first exactly what was in front of him; and then WHY it was in front of him.

Fear was the second thing that crossed his face, as it all sank in. You see, attached to the arrow was a little note. It simply said “I'm coming for you”

That first night...

To this day I can’t quite explain what it was that came over me.

I didn’t yet know that my mother was dead, but I saw the look in her eye; she had been harmed to the point of not being the same again. I already felt her loss.

But it went beyond that. The anger and the pain I felt over what had happened to her… well that was a complex set of emotions there and what I was feeling, or not feeling rather, was quite simple.

I wanted, no needed them to die.

I trailed them for the better part of the day, not wanting to expose myself just yet. I wanted to be sure I had them isolated; that they didn't have any back up coming. I needed them to be alone.

That first night, I just watched them from the trees. They hadn't traveled far since leaving our village; it almost seemed like they had no where to be. They made camp in the late afternoon, and their intoxication was evident by the time the sun went down.

It really didn't take long before they had passed out around the fire; the fumes from their breath were enough to get someone like me drunk just by passing close to them. And I did get close to them that night. When I was sure they weren't going to wake any time soon, I crept down from my perch and into the firelight in their camp.

The light and shadows danced, highlighting the creases and divots on their faces.

I started to waver just for a moment. Deciding that perhaps this wasn't the right thing to do... and then the wind shifted. It was as if my mother breathed a sigh with her last breath. I later found that this was indeed the night she passed, and it just reinforced that this is what she wanted me to do.

When the wind shifted... I caught her scent mingled with the smell of dirt, and booze and sweat.

I felt the cold rage rise up in my body and settle in the pit of my stomach.
The hot rage in me wanted me to slaughter them right then and there; but the cold rage in me quashed them. It wasn't enough to make them die.

They had to suffer.

A touch beyond the beginning now

Onward to the mission, I suppose.

Here, I will have to get into a few details that I find distasteful to think about, even today.

When I found my mother that day she had been badly beaten and her body had clearly been ravaged; and she had been left there to die.

I sometimes wonder how things would have gone if I had just left her there and gone home. Blocked the thought and idea of her there out of my head and tried to move on with my life. Maybe things would have been better for me…

But I didn’t, and they weren’t.

So when I found her in that clearing; when I smelled the blood, and fluids and that stench that still haunts me now I did what any good daughter would do. I carried her home, I washed the filth from her, and I vowed revenge.

I can’t quite explain what happened to me that day. I mean, I had been angry before, hell it wasn’t an unusual state for me. But this, this was very very different.

Whenever I felt angry, my face would get hot, and my hands would tremble a bit. It always seemed like the world was tinted a little bit red.

This… my hands were steady and my body went cold. It was as if there was a block of ice in my chest. And in my mind, it contained only one thought.

Revenge.

Once my mother was comfortably resting, and I had a neighbor to look in on her, I packed a few provisions and set out to the clearing once again. My first stop, the clearing I found her in.

It wasn’t hard to pick up the trail from there.

There were three of them, dwarves by the smell that still hung strongly in the air. And they were drunk; the stench of ale and body odor was enough to track them from there, although even if it wasn’t they left a clear trail where they went.

I found them 2 days after I found my mother.

And any thoughts of turning back were soon banished.