Not everyone is destined to be a hero. But Ashi Clawfinger always dreamed about hero's glory. She was born in the wild from unknown parents. Ashi doesn't remember much about her early childhood. When she was young her tribe of jaguar-people was attacked by humans. But they decided to spare her life and to teach her culture of great civilization of The Intanse Confederation. She grew up in the relatively small hamlet called Releaseguarded. And there was one aspect of human culture that she adopted more quickly than other. Storytelling. Ashi liked listening to stories about legendary heroes, kings, monsters and forgotten horrors. But even more than listening to stories she liked to retell them. And she always knew where to add some incredible details or slip a joke. Time passed, everybody in the town got used to her company, she was working in the local tavern entertaining random adventurers and carefully listening to their stories, memorizing every detail to retell them later, but something was lacking. Stories. Stories she told wasn't about her. With every new day her urge to create her own story grown more and more.
And one day Ashi finally gathered everything she needed, said goodbye to her friends and set out on the road. Two of her friends decided to join Ashi on her adventure. They were Sathar Dessertenjoy (who was a little bit fat, because he enjoyed desserts too much) and Ica Griffonsafety (who has nothing to do with safety of any mythical creatures). First few day of their adventure was really fun. Ashi felt the same way as when she was a little kitten when her mother taught her to hunt. Together they killed some animals for food, and even one unfortunate goblin. Friends had fun for few days, but they needed some real adventure. So they headed to the nearby tomb Pagejudges. Their lord previously told them that some vermins are skulking in there. And that's where their problems started. Group spend couple of hours searching for intruders in the entire tomb complex with no luck. All three of them were tired and hungry, so they decided to abandon the idea of finding anybody. As Ashi proceed to the exit she heard sound of impact and second later scream of Sathar. At first glance Sathar was okay, he was standing leaning on the wall. After a couple of seconds, when her eyes again got used to the darkness, Ashi noticed that his neck has been mangled beyond recognition and the blood pulsing from it. On the floor nearby was some strange device with silver mace attached to it, covered in blood. Sathar stayed there for a moment, he even decided to tell a story about some distant plain titan that killed 43 people, but stopped mid sentence and fell on the ground. Needless to say they were devastated. They decided to leave Sathar's corpse where he was, cause tomb seemed like an appropriate place to rest his soul. But from this moment their little adventure wasn't so fun anymore.
Friends stopped for the night in the nearest hamlet. In the tavern when Ashi was telling a story about Sathar (who loved desserts so much) and his unfortunate death, Ica noticed that one local goblin in the dark corner was staring at Ashi. When she finished goblin came close to her and said that she shouldn't travel alone tomorrow. He said that goblins are planning an attack on this town, and it's unsafe here. After small talk goblin decided to join the group to help them get out of here in one piece. His name was Arstruk Hatedwebbed.
The night was strangely quiet. They got up early and headed for the road. Everybody in the group felt uneasy this whole morning. They didn't even get out of town when Arstruk noticed two red glowing spots in the deep morning fog. Small group of goblins were waiting for them. Ashi commanded to go back only to realize that they were surrounded. Two tall goblins were getting closer to Ashi while other three headed to Ica and Arstruk. To this day Ashi couldn't remember all of details of this fight. At some point Ashi was wounded first in the one arm then in another and lost her shield and battle axe. Ica lost conciouseness due to multiple broken bones. Arstruk was indistinguishable from other goblins. Situation did not look good. Without her shield she didn't stand a chance against two armed goblins. So she decided to run. Luckily for her one goblin decided to change his focus on unconscious Ica. Another tried to reach her with his pike and wounded her leg. She fell on the ground. That was it. No weapon, no shield, on the ground and she could swear she heard the last scream of Ica. In Ashi's head were no thoughts, no feelings, no emotions, only instinkts. Surviving, that's all that matter. Suddenly she forgot about everything she was taught from humans and become a wild animal she is. She bit into the goblin's throat and started shaking vigorously. After couple of minutes goblin wasn't moving. Ashi heard some whip sound from the distance and everything went quiet. Only at this point she understood how badly she was injured. She couldn't move her arms, her right ear was mangled beyond recognition, her leg muscle was torn open, she was faint and barely kept herself conscious. After some quiet time Arstruk came out of the fog. He was covered in blood but mostly intact. Everybody else were dead. He never told what happened and how he managed to kill them all, and Ashi never asked.
If you ever visited Releaseguarded you probably saw Ashi. She decided to retire there. Her arms still doesn't work, and without them she couldn't really do much. So she got back to storytelling. If you've been to local tavern you probably heard her famous story about Sathar, Ica and of course Arstruk.
Not everyone is destined to be a hero. And Ashi Clawfinger isn't dreaming about hero's glory anymore. After some time her name probably going to be forgotten. Other heroes' names would be remembered but not her. But she is going to be the one who will write their names in history.
In reality this adventure was mediocre at best. But for some reason i wanted to draw jaguar-woman, so i decided to create a little story to describe her adventure. Also sorry for all mistakes that i made, English is my third language so its not that easy for me to write in English. Hope you enjoyed it!
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Topic: Ashi the Storyteller (Read 2042 times)