Arpia asks Kja, "Are you prepared to tell your story or are you wishing to wait until the second?"
Kja exclaims, "I am!"
Kja smiles.
Kja stands up.
Arpia takes a seat near a hot burning fire contained by a strange metal contraption.
Arpia slides the rod back into the fire to reheat.
Kja quietly says, "I laid so still. The only sound was my breath and the crashing of waves upon the rocks. Did this really happen? Reaching up, I felt the warm blood running down my face. That was gonna leave a mark. My mind raced as I tried to sort out and remember exactly how I came to be here."
Kja sarcastically says, "'Oh yeah!' I remembered. 'You have to stay here, You are too small, too young, 'too' everything.' I didnt listen. I may not be a huge Kaldar, but I have more stubborn than the tallest and strongest. I followed them anyways."
Kja snorts, loudly.
Kja recklessly says, "Pushing myself up, I groaned. Not really because of the pain but because of the really good butt chewing I'd get for not doing what I was told."
Kja makes a disgusting grunting noise.
Kja regretfully says, "Gazing upwards, the cliff I'd fallen off of seemed daunting. I was tired and beaten yet, I had to get up there. Behind me the sea..ahead..this cliff. Sweet Aniek, maybe drowning myself wasn't so bad after all."
Kja frowns, shaking her head with an expression of exasperation before resting her face in the palm of her hand.
Kja irritably says, "After many attempts and falling I fell back into the wet sand and screamed at the heavens in a language so old I made the Gods blush I'm sure."
Kja ominously exclaims, "I laid there for what seemed like hours. How honorable was dying in a wet sand? Gazing up at cloudy sky, I heard the low growl and then the words, 'Get up little girl.' Squinting into the darkness, I saw the hulking figure. My heart pounding it never occurred to me that he was talking, only that he was a bear!"
A pained expression crosses Kja's face.
Kja excitedly exclaims, "I leapt to my feet and ran at the cliff. The massive paw gripping at my shoulder. I screamed out and with all the strength I had left, I pulled away from him and began climbing and clawing at the rocks. Pulling myself over the edge, all I heard was the loudest angriest roar. Laughing to myself I ran and ran, that was one mad bear!"
Kja breaks out in a silly grin.
Kja solemnly says, "I managed to sneak back home, blaming the bloody head on clumsy. I trained hard, always remembering you never know when you will need the strength of a bear to escape one."
Kja reverently says, "One day, in the bustling streets of Crossing of all places I heard that growl again."
Kja solemnly says, "...And I realized I'd been running not from a bear..but my own fate."
Kja smiles at Dreaderic.
Kja lovingly exclaims, "With the help of the bear, my Kaldar heritage, and my own inner strength. I am the Barbarian I am meant to be. Finally!"
Kja wraps her arms around Dreaderic in a loving hug.
Arpia stands up.
Arpia grins at Kja.
Arpia says, "Very well done."
Kja grabs Squanto's forearm in a vise-like grip and shakes him violently, greeting him like a long-lost Barbarian sibling.
Kja exclaims, "Thanks!"
Kja bounces around happily.
Chuno grabs Kja's forearm in a vise-like grip and shakes her violently, greeting her like a long-lost Barbarian sibling.
Kja grins at Chuno.
Kja grabs Caraamon's forearm in a vise-like grip and shakes him violently, greeting him like a long-lost Barbarian sibling.
Kja grabs Chuno's forearm in a vise-like grip and shakes him violently, greeting him like a long-lost Barbarian sibling.
Kja kneels down.
Kja laughs at Squanto.
Arpia draws one of the thin lengths of metal from the fire and kneels down.
Arpia kneels down.
Kja winces.
Arpia takes Kja's arm in a firm grip.
Chuno deeply says to Kja, "Don't worry. It only hurts a little at first. And then a lot. And then a lot more. And then it doesn't stop. Even still my arm still burns and throbs."
A pained expression crosses Kja's face.
Arpia touches the hot metal to Kja's shoulder, working it across the skin to form blackened lines.
Kja mutters something into the air about Aniek should drowned.
Kja groans.
Arpia moves the design down Kja's arm with slow precise movements.
Kja winces.
As Arpia finishes the design created on Kja's flesh, their eyes roll back in their heads and they slump to the ground unconscious.
Chuno deeply says, "Hm."
Chuno deeply says, "Can't see it, nice cloak though."
Chuno chuckles.
Squanto says, "Take your cloak off, Kja."
A stunned Kja slowly tips over, falling on her face!
Kja shakes off the stun.
Kja removes a black shadowsilk cloak from her shoulders.
Kja puts her cloak in her weapon pack.
Kja leaps to her feet!
Kja bounces around happily.
Kja bounces around happily.
You see Battlehardened Kja Siklings, War Maiden, a Kaldar.
Kja has an exquisitely formed face with stridently expressive eyebrows, intense tempest blue eyes and a delicately turned nose. Her flaming red hair is thigh length and streaked with chaotic wisps of fiery copper and gold, and is worn in a tousled mass of locks that tumbles over her shoulders. She has some tiny clockwork fairies with spun rainbow wings accenting a jagged scar across the throat marring sun-kissed skin and an enthrallingly slight figure.
She is defiantly petite for a Kaldar.
She appears to be an adult.
A massive bear paw of raised, blackened flesh is branded viciously into her left shoulder. Seared grooves furrow the skin, forming ragged claw marks that rake downward toward the central pad of the pattern. Angry red ridges of scar tissue weave together sinuously, wreathing the design in an infernal conflagration of savage flames that appear to leap down her arm in a descending spiral to scrawl the word "PBBT" on her forearm.
She has faint scuffing to the abdomen.
She is in good shape.
She is wearing some lumium ring greaves, a padded heavy titanese shirt sealed with protective wax, a soft gem pouch, a gleaming animite parry stick studded with rubies, a padded heavy titanese mask, a padded ebon titanese hood, some padded ebon titanese gloves, a diamond-hide targe, a lumpy bundle, some polished thin-edged zills with silvered esoteric filigree, some high-heeled stomping boots with spiked sungold toe-caps, some haralun elbow spikes, some haralun spiked knuckles, some haralun knee spikes, a darkly painted lockpick case depicting a pair of emerald-eyed panthers, a large blue sack, a simple wooden medallion, a heavily scarred weapon pack with animite and smokewood buttons, an ornate iroko ring, a gaunt tyrium hand tipped with rivertears, an incurvate skinning knife with an opalized darkspine handle, a dull serpent earcuff, a dull serpent earcuff, a chakrel amulet inset into an Adan'f tail barb, a sanowret crystal, a smooth wedding ring crafted from sungold and a hollow scrimshaw tusk.
Kja grabs Squanto's forearm in a vise-like grip and shakes him violently, greeting him like a long-lost Barbarian sibling.
Kja grabs Caraamon's forearm in a vise-like grip and shakes him violently, greeting him like a long-lost Barbarian sibling.
Clamping a fist around Kja's forearm, you pull her heartily toward you in a bone-crushing Barbarian greeting.
Kja exclaims to Arpia, "Thanks bunches!"
Kja wraps her arms around Arpia, giving Arpia a great big bear hug!
Arpia says to Kja, "Bravely done. You held very still."
Arpia grins at Kja.
Kja gives Arpia some coins.
Kja exclaims, "Thanks!"
