Leaving it all behind

[Noah Hendrix]

It had taken some time for Noah’s clothes to dry in the sun. When jumping from atop of the waterfall he didn’t knew if he would make it. The hallways had smelled of blood and rotten flesh,  and he still tried to get the smell out of his noise but it was like he couldn’t smell anything else.
Noah had his gun strapped around his shoulder. He only had a few bullets and nothing else than the things he wore. Oh wait. He touch his pocket and felt a small bump. The always reliable pocketknife with all its gadgets. It wouldn’t help him much, when the bullets were gone.
Dry, hungry and absent he wandered further away from the river. He had left mount weather thinking Cage had the upper hand, and seeing how the others who helped the skypeople got killed, he felt that the only chance of survival was to run away.

Leaving his mother, his kids and everything he knew behind. Noah didn’t know that they were all dead by now. Burned by the radiation, all because of the skypeople. This fact would maybe make him regret his choices but at the moment Noah just knew he would have to wait.
Hearing the sound of his stomach rumble he moved silently into the forest. This was the first time ever he had been outside alone. He felt no fear, not yet a least.
After walking a mile he heard something in the bushes. Noah hadn’t really been moving that quietly but the thought of food made him turn and walk towards the sound.

Seren

[Seren]

Seren was walking through the forest, the Commander had sounded the retreat, taken the army away from the mountain. Needless to say, the warrior did not approve of her Heda's decision. She was loyal to the coalition, to her clan, but she did not approve. She wanted to go back, to kill every man, woman and child within that mountain. She did not care if some of them were innocent, they'd all tortured her people, accepted the rumoured treatment, none of them were innocent. She wanted them to feel how she felt, suffer as she had suffered. She'd been searching for years, searching for her lover who'd been taken by the reapers into the mountain. She'd watched as the prisoners had been allowed to leave, just after the Commander had halted the attack, Sae wasn't among them. She wasn't there, Seren had lost her forever and it was all because of the Mountain, she had failed to protect the girl she had loved and she'd have to live with that fact for the rest of her days.

The warrior was wearing her usual leather armour, the black war paint on her face had smeared slightly, but it still gave her the fearsome appearance that she had been aiming for. Her sword was in its usual place on her back, not that she was prepared to use it, the battle was behind her. Jus Drein Jus Daun, that was their way. Why then, had the Commander called off the attack, she wanted vengeance and she wasn't going to get it.

Suddenly, she froze. She'd definitely heard something, reaching for her sword, her dark eyes scanned the trees. Somebody might've been following her or maybe it was just an unsuspecting deer. No, this was the sound of two feet, not of the dainty hooves of a deer. Sinking into a crouch, her hand resting upon the hilt of her sword, she waited for whatever... Whoever it was to emerge.

Noah Hendrix

[Noah Hendrix]

Once again the forest became silent. Even the birds were gone, a sound Noah had gotten very fund of.
His feet still let him towards the sound and moved away a bush. His hunger turned into disbelieve, a Grounder! Her clothes were a sure sign of her alignment and Noah knew that so were his. This woman all wild, who didn’t wash herself and carried all kind of diseases, or that was what they were taught in school. Her face seemed pure expects from some dirt and the paint. She was not a reaper, nor was he sure she would be friendly. He lifted his hands, making sure he didn’t seem threatening and moved closer.
”Im Noah” he said in a low voice. They still stood 10 meters from each other and Noah had no intention of moving closer. He was fast, would the Grounder attack him, he could run away, well only if the grounder wasn’t as fast.
To be true Noah didn’t knew much about the grounders. He only knew of mount weather and whatever books they had collected. ”Please im not the enemy” he added.

Seren

[Seren]

The warrior waited until a figure emerged from the foliage. She was momentarily stunned at the appearance of a Mountain Man, she could tell that he was from the mountain, he was not wearing the appropriate clothing to be from any of the twelve grounder clans and he was far too clean to be a sky person even if he did look bedraggled and wasn't wearing one of those protective suits the mountain men usually wore on the rare occasions that they left their home.

Slowly Seren took her sword from its sheath, her dark eyes locked onto the man that had been unfortunate to cross her path as she rose cautiously to stand. Her guard was up as she scanned his body, ready to launch herself out of harms way if she needed to. She immediately noticed the gun on his shoulder, but it would take him a few precious seconds to get it in hand and Seren meant to take advantage of this. As he lifted his hands as if to signal his unthreatening position the grounder could not help but snigger. His claims would not help him, not here, not with her.

Cautiously she took a couple of steps towards the mountain man "You are not the enemy?" she asked him, the English language rolling fluidly off of her tongue. She rarely spoke the language but thought it best if her enemy knew of all the things she was going to do to him before the night was over. "Tell that to all of the people died inside your mountain, to me you are nothing but the enemy" taking another step as the words left her mouth, her free hand went to the knife at her waist. She was heavily armed, she might not have a gun or anything as advanced as that but it was evident that she was skilled with the weapons that she had.

Noah Hendrix

[Noah Hendrix]

The woman didn’t believe his words, and it was understandable, since the mountain men had torture them for years. His eyes watched as she reached for the knife. Slowly Noah moved his hand to the top of the gun on the barrel. His other hand stayed in the air. Hopefully even the grounder knew that to fire the gun he would need to touch the trigger.
He dragged it off his back and calmy placed it on the ground. ”Please. I just want to find the sky people” he said giving off a bit of a nervous tone. Noah tried not to look the woman in the eyes. She was somewhat scary, savage.
She saw him as an enemy, a threat. But surely she wouldn’t hurt him right? ”I know what my people have done, but I do not wish to be like them. Catching grounder and turn them into reapers!” Noah even sounded mad as he told how gruesome his people were, before realising his mistake. The grounders probably didn’t know about the reaper thing. He stepped backwards, how would she react to this? ”Nothing can redeem what we have done” he mumbled.

Seren

[Seren]

Seren growled at the mountain man, her fingers itched with the desire to choke the life from his body, maybe she could have some fun tormenting him before she put an end to his pitiful life. "The sky people are your enemy just as they are mine... Just as you are mine" she spat at him, her grip tightening around her sword as she saw him reach for his gun. However to her surprise, he placed it on the ground, a gesture that told her that he had no intention to harm her. Or perhaps it was a trick. She didn't know. All she knew was that she owed nothing to this mountain man and she wasn't about to trust him.

Noticing the man's unwillingness to meet her gaze, Seren couldn't help but smirk "you fear me..." she ventured, her gaze narrowing as she took another hesitant step forward "you should... I have taken the lives of people for crimes far less than yours" it was her duty to kill the mountain man, he was perhaps the last of his kind. She had to put an end to his life, she owed it to her people. However, that was not the only reason the warrior wanted to make this man suffer, this was far more personal, the pain ran deep within her veins. She wanted to hear his screams of pain, she needed to hear them. She was owed justice, the Commander had failed to give it to her by ordering the retreat and now she sought revenge for everything the mountain had done. At his outburst, Seren faltered and her sword arm wavered, there had been rumours that the reapers had been created by the mountain men, but she had not wished to believe them. "You and your people have caused so much suffering, you turned us into monsters! You locked my people in cages! You drained them of their blood just so that you could preserve your own lives! You call us savages..." she growled at him. She failed to see how the mountain men could live with what they had done.

"You are not innocent, you say that you do not wish to be like your people! But you are like them, my peoples blood runs through your veins! It has been healing every injury you sustained since you were a child! My people have been dying to keep your people alive for generations!" she raised her sword and took yet another step towards him. "I want to kill you for what you have done... And I will... It will be painful... I will take each of your fingers, then I'll take your toes, I'll take your eyes and your tongue... And that will just be the beginning" she threatened him, she was not a stranger to torture, in fact she'd grown up watching how traitors were punished within her village. She wanted this man to suffer. For what he'd done to her people, for what he'd done to Sae, she'd never get to see her again because of the mountain men. They were the takers of life, if they valued their lives so much Seren would not disappoint him, she'd prolong his life for as long as possible, she'd allow him to feel every cut she gave him, every wound she inflicted he'd feel, she hoped he was strong, she wouldn't want him to pass out before she'd finished with him.

Noah Hendrix

[Noah Hendrix]

Noah closed his eyes for a second when the grounder spat on him. Nothing was more humiliating than this, but he stood his ground. Without his gun, it would only take a few seconds for the woman to kill him, but he stayed. Trying to look strong as she spoke, Noah felt how his breathing became heaver by the second.
When the woman raised her sword, Noah started to stumble backwards. Was this it? Was this the prize of being born into an easy life compared to the grounders? Every step took him further away from his gun. ”Then you wouldn’t be any better than my people.” His voice seemed hard and almost out of air. He held his hands in a gentle not threating way and tried to calm the woman with the gesture. ”Listen. I’m trying to help your people. Make amends, to do better. I can never take back what they did, but it doesn’t seem right to judge me for being born in the mountain. Noah spoke for his life. Rarely would this many words come out of his mouth at the same time.
Noah kneeled down and gave the woman a stern look. ”Let me live, and I can help your people and give them weapon and advanced technology, or kill me and walk away with nothing but blood on your hands”

Tag: Seren

//Don't kill the poor lad!

[Seren]

//Don't worry, Seren's not gonna hurt him

As he stumbled backwards, Seren pursued him, not allowing him to put too much distance between them. She made sure to kick his gun away when she reached it, so that he could not get to his weapon easily. There was something about this mountain man that prevented the girl from killing him on the spot, most people would be terrified if they were in the same situation as he was and yet he remained fairly calm. At his words she tightened her grip on her sword "I am nothing like your people" she growled at him "if I killed you now, it would be to avenge the ones I lost to your people, your people killed mine needlessly" the mountain men could survive easily in their home, people died. That was a fact of life, people died every day, not everyone could be saved, but the people of the mountain were greedy, they wanted to save everyone by using the blood of her people to heal them.

She raised an eyebrow at his words, but her sword arm wavered, "We have no need for guns" she told him quickly "we do not use them... Your people forbid us to, they threatened to destroy us if we ever lay hands upon a gun, so that we could not fight back" a slight quiver in her voice betrayed her as she glared at him. "Even if I wanted to spare your life... Even if I wanted to, my people would never accept your help! I am not the only one who lost somebody to the mountain, every single person in my village would want you dead, you'd be dead before I had the chance to explain, they'd kill you and then they'd kill me for bringing you back to our home" she explained to him. She wasn't a monster, she didn't kill people who didn't deserve to die, but the mountain men deserved to die. "It's not up to me anyway... If I let you live today, you'd only die tomorrow... If not at the hands of my people then in some other way, you can't survive out here" she muttered, her eyes flickering momentarily to the floor before she looked back at him.

Noah Hendrix