[piosenniel]

Amanaduial the archer – Silvan Elf


NAME: Raeis (Ray-iss)

AGE: No idea really. Over two hundred, that much she knows.

RACE: Elf (Silvan)

GENDER: Female

WEAPONS: None, but she fights like a demon with her bare hands, feet, elbows... Also, anything she can pick up. She is, or at least, she was skilled with a range of swords, and is fairly good at using a bow, or a sling.

APPEARANCE: Once, Raeis was a beauty among her people, but that was long ago. Her good looks remain though, in part – her face is high-boned, the structure belying her low birth, and her hair is fine and light brown, flecked generously with gold. Her eyes are dark blue, flecked with lighter blues and white. Her hair is not the wavy, golden abundance it was once though – it was cut short when she was first taken prisoner: having stolen a dagger from one of her guards, she had hacked it off from right close to her scalp. It has grown since then, though, has had plenty of time to do so: it now comes unevenly to approximately just below her ears, but is dirty and unkempt from lack of care. Her skin was always pale, a fine almost alabaster-white, but this is even more accentuated now from lack of sunlight. But despite the lines of pain that are now more obvious on her face, the right side of her face is still beautiful, despite the dark bruise that currently adorns her high-cheek area…but the left is a different matter. A long, thin scar runs all the way down her left side of her face from an inch above her broken eyebrow to her jawbone, crossing her eye and forcing it closed, a vicious, sharp burn made from a heated blade that was pressed against her face. It mars her beauty totally, but she cares little anymore – what does it matter when no one will see it? She stands at about 5 ft 9 and is lean – her muscles have not deteriorated entirely, but beyond them there is virtually nothing else. She is painfully thin and scars, both old and new, cross her body along with bruises, the most obvious the long thin ones that crisscross her back and a long cut running from collarbone to navel. She wears a thin, ragged shirt, the sleeves torn off for practical purposes to leave her arms bare, and a sort of short, ragged skirt.

PERSONALITY/STRENGTHS/WEAKNESSES: In the years since the elf has been imprisoned, Raeis has stopped caring about many things; her appearance for one thing, for what good is it to mourn for her lost beauty when the only ones who will see it are her monstrous captors? In a way, she almost revels in it sometimes, for the ugliness of one side of her face, marring her pureness, puts them off some of their vile sport. She almost managed to block out the physical pain and humiliation which she endures so often, for she has suffered so much that the only respite she gets is to know that she will give them no satisfaction by seeing her pain. But she has not stopped caring about everything. One thing always remains on her mind: escape. It is a wild dream, and one that she barely believes in, but which she wishes for so fervently with every inch of her body and mind that has become something that she would do simply to achieve it, to spite her captors, to cause them some of the beatings she has endured for letting her escape. If she could get out of this cell, she would die spitefully happy – she is past wanting to do much else but feel the sun on her face once more. Indeed, maybe the cell has actually driven her mad: the elf had no-one to talk to for weeks on end quite often, and her own voice was all that stopped her from going entirely insane. That and her thoughts and memories, or what might be memories: she gets confused as to what has actually happened and what is real or not. Reality is, for Raeis, an illusion – if her life in Mirkwood was reality, then this existence cannot possibly be real, but if this life is truly happening, how could she ever have missed the fact it was happening when in Mirkwood? The thoughts and questions as to what is real and what isn’t torment the elf in her silent prison. She is withdrawn and vicious, violent whenever anyone comes too near her (for the only ones that come close are those who want to hurt her) and fights like a cornered wildcat with no regard for herself, only wishing to hurt and deter her opponent. But although the innocent, idealistic persona that she once possessed is obviously destroyed, behind her half-mad, wild exterior there is still probably the softer, gentler being that once lived in Mirkwood, quick to argue, quicker to laugh, ready to love. But what is love now? Is that also an illusion…?

HISTORY: Raeis was born to a hardworking but lowly family Mirkwood, some way from the palace. She lived with her family and worked hard and honestly, carving and sewing with her mother and selling the items they made with her father and two brothers. But she always yearned for something more, sure there must be more to life, and so when she was nearly two hundred she went to work in the palace, with illusions of becoming a fine courtier, close to the king, a loyal advisor to him and friend to the princes… However, such fantasies were soon put straight when she became a maid in the palace. Once again, it was honest hard work, decently paid and not overly hard, but it still left the idealistic young elf to dream about more. But she endured it, gaining promotion and working hard to keep her place and to keep sending the money to her mother. After she had worked there for a few years, her courtship began with another elf who worked in the palace, a chamberlain by the name of Caromanieth (although Raeis cannot even remember her full name, she both cherishes and curses his, burned on her memory with love and regret). He was as idealistic and gentle as she, a dreamer with his head in the clouds but, like her, his feet still on the ground.

But one day, on a sudden whim, the pair decided to search for adventure themselves. It was painfully clear that it was not coming to them, and they both yearned for the ‘more’ that they thought they knew must exist. Within a few days, they were ready to do, eloping together away from Mirkwood and from everything about the old life that they had known, heading South.

But things beyond their control, beyond the control of any, were not stirring further South, and when the pair came to the plains of Rohan, after a few months of happy, blissful, carefree travelling, their life was suddenly shattered. Warg riders. The orcs killed Caromanieth and, in a way, they stole Raeis’s life as well – by taking her prisoner they destroyed everything she had ever and would ever have. Elves were valuable, and they took her back to Mordor in the hope of reward.

Raeis never told them her real name, or her family details – stubborn to the last, she endured many different types of inquisitional torture as they attempted to find out whether they could use the elf-woman as currency, blackmail. Raeis had always been taught to be loyal and faithful, and so she didn’t say a word to help them. All they ever found out from her was the shortened version of her name: Raeis. It was the last word Caromanieth had cried out before he died. ”Raeis, run! Get away, for the sake of…run, Raeis...” Eventually they grew tired of trying to find information from her, but they were not yet tired of her – they kept her alive as a…toy. Something to do. And so her torture continued, both physical and emotional, all sorts of abuse whenever the guards wanted something to do, something to occupy themselves. She fought back, always fought back, at the start anyway…but as she lost track of days and went without company or sunlight for so long, tortured by the thought that her family must think her a callous deserter, she was nearly driven mad, alone and isolated both literally and in her mind…

~*~

Amanaduial’s post

Deep down beneath the tower, in the depths that did not even feel the natural wind through it’s corridors or the run on its hard stone floors, a lone prisoner waited in a cell. Waited, I say, but then, waiting implies hope, and this prisoner has barely any of that left. A lone strand, barely anything at all, remained in her broken and disjointed mind, but it is all she is surviving on.

At the back of the dark cell lay what resembled like a pile of rags, tattered and torn, strewn in a loose pile as if shaken then discarded by some larger-than-life dog. But if you look closer, avoiding the dank smell of rot and blood, both dried and fresh, you would see a body underneath these rags. Another clank from above and the body does not move, and neither does it respond to the drawn-out, agonised scream which is suddenly cut short which floats from high above. The being is barely recognisable now, it’s skin mottled, bruised and torn, it’s limbs broken and disjointed, but one thing is sure. Whatever it once was, the being is dead.

But something in the cell responded.

Near the door, in the darkest, gloomiest corner, something stirred, a brief, sudden movement as a limb spasms and a gasp sounded quietly. One blue eye, old before it’s time, snapped open, and Raeis looked around, her gaze quick and darting. As another rattle, closer this time, sounded from above, and the sound of a man’s voice calls, the elf tried suddenly to move towards the door, but is pulled short suddenly by the ropes binding her wrists above her head to a loop of metal hammered into the wall. Raeis gasped again, painfully struggling once more against the ropes, her legs kicking frantically from the rough stone wall, heedless of the scrapes across her bare ankles, as her nightmare began to come real once more – the nightmare that someone was coming closer and she couldn’t do anything to defend herself. Maybe it was a nightmare…her detached mind drifted through the thought and she ceased for a moment.

Another clank sounded and the elf made up her mind. She was surer than she had been of anything in the past few torturous years – this time, it was real. And despite every instinct that she had developed in that time, she was going to have to do the one thing everything in her mind screamed against.

“H…help.” Her cry was feeble, coming from a throat unused to calling, but, bracing herself, she tried again. “Help…help!”

Suspended by her wrists against the wall, her feet about half an inch off the floor, Raeis twisted around the try to see out of the barred slot in the door. The young elf woman had been tied in this position for several hours, and she guessed it was probably morning: the guards had taken the correct number of watches for it to be a few hours from dawn, not that that meant anything down here. But where was the next? The last monster had gone sometime when Raeis was asleep, and another had not yet come – the always rested their spears in one of the holes into the cell, poking the spear through as if to tease her, knowing that she would gladly take it, throw herself upon it…even if just to see if this existence was real. But this hour…it seemed to have stretched forever. Hearing another clank, Raeis twisted again, the ropes biting into her wrists once more and opening up new wounds, but in her desperation she only spared them a moment, biting her lip.

“Help! Please I…” she trailed off, breathing heavily as she writhed furiously, attempting to get out of the ropes although she knew they were done up tight. It was just another form of torturing the elf, to hang her like this. The other rope, which wound around her neck before passing through the loop above with the one tying her wrists, pulled tight every time she struggled, choking her and making breathing and calling hard. Against all sense, she continued to struggle, coughing and choking against the noose as she called, until eventually she saw a shadow cross the door’s slot. For a moment, she thought the dark figure was an orc, another guard, but as it paused and looked in, she saw bright, blue eyes gleaming in what little light was cast from a guttering lamp. Giving another sharp, dry cough, her throat feeling as though someone had taken a saw to it, she twisted her fingers once more, feebly this time, against the ropes, and looked into the man’s eyes with her one, dark blue one.

“Help…” she whispered.