”I won't stop hunting!” Larka declared. ”I have to know what happened, no matter what the end result.” She drank watching Beelze as the woman asked of her story, to confide in her. Larka was normally one to hide some things, always putting up a wall of tough warrior not matter what. But she was too drunk and too in need of venting to let that prevent her.
She looked up Beelze and nodded patting the ground beside her, wanting someone close while she spoke of her past at length. ”You are right, we aren't from these lands.” She confirmed before continuing after taking another drink. ”I'm not even from the lands Celeste is from. I was raised in a mercenary troupe that my parents ran, but they disappeared when I was young while on a job. So my grandfather raised me and took over the group, for so long they were the only family I knew. In time I thought I had feelings for a boy my own age. One night we were alone and became close, it was, well, awkward for both of us. We didn't speak for some time, too embarrassed about what we tried to do to talk. His sister, a few years older than I, came home one day for a while and within a day guessed at what had happened between me and her brother. She confronted me about it, and, the next thing we knew, as it was her plan all along, we were laying in bed together.” She laughed with a smile as she took a drink at the memory of that night. ”It was an eye opening experience for me, I knew more of my place in the world and why I had always looked at the women more than the boys, I wasn't confused anymore.”
”In time I met a woman named Lilith while on a job, we were on opposing sides to the fight. We fought hard with all we had and ended up drawing. Four times in a month we met and fought and that happened. Finally one day I was in a tavern and she was there, people wanted a fight again, to watch us, but instead, we ended up taking the tension out in a bedroom on each others' bodies.” Larka smiled and drank. ”From that point on we dated, my grandfather wasn't too happy at first but he grew to love Lilith like family and was happy for me. We both bought our way out of our respective troupes and made a home in some highlands for ourselves. We adopted twins, a boy and girl, Keenan and Mhairi, when they were only five.” Tears welled up quickly in Larka's eyes. ”Just over two years of pure bliss, that's the only way I can describe it, pure bliss. We lived well, and happily. Until the orcs started to march across the lands. They found our home and Lillith and I fought them, but were out numbered.”
She cried harder now. ”I, I watched them butcher my wife and my kids! They cut off my arm and left me for dead, but I didn't die, somehow I didn't die. Some travellers saw the smoke as our house burned and found me and got me back to health.” She raised her hand, the two wedding rings on her middle finger was what she was showing. ”All that I have left, aside from memories, and Lilith's rapier. After that, I wondered the lands fighting anything that looked at me funny, relearning all my sword work on my off hand. I slept with a different woman each night almost, sometimes more than one, I was always drunk. My companion wolf, Fel, died of old age a year later, so I was truly alone then, I had raised him from a puppy.”
She sobbed as memories flooded back and she drank. ”I had no purpose, no reason to live. I wanted to die, but couldn't bring myself to kill myself, so I fought, hoping to die in battle. I didn't. I heard rumours about a group of warriors called Reavers, so I hunted them down, wanting to join. I proved myself to them and allowed me in. I had to drink a concoction made of fresh dragon's blood, it would either make me a Reaver like them, or kill me. As you can see I again survived, but now I had a kind of family again, and they took me as one of their own. Not just humans, anyone can drink the concoction, but only the strongest can survive it, it turns out blood to a kind of poison. Some vampires have a hard time drinking our blood in large amounts.”
She drank. ”I was with them for years, until I decided I needed to see new lands and moved to where Celeste's homeland was. We had a mutual friend, a smith woman named Zhana, who we met through. Things grew from there, Zhana was only in love with her work, we were just friends to her, which was fine, but Celeste and I grew close. She became my anchor in life, my stone, my reason to keep living. The Reavers only gave me a reason to keep fighting, I figured out, but Celeste gave me a reason to survive. We married and spent happy years together until she disappeared, and here we are today, two years later, another new land and I don't know if I'm any closer to finding her.” Larka finished off the bottle and found and opened a new one from her endless bag. She was done talking now, she was still crying, and she was incredibly drunk, it was likely she'd pass out soon.
[ooc; you can say she passes out in your post if you want, depending on what you have in mind :) ]
