From The Ashes [#NaNoWriMo16]

Chapter Sixteen - Ryia Ivetta

They had been standing around for hours, waiting for this stupid rebellion guy to send his minions to collect them. Kida was playing with the stitches on her neck, while Ryia was leaning against a stone house in the street they were standing in, scowling. Her daggers were tucked away safely, but she suspected she wasn't allowed to take them in. Where the hell it was they were going, anyway.

"If we have to stay out here any longer," Ryia growled, "I'm going to have to kill someone to stop myself dying of boredom."

"I'll come," Kida offered. "I could seriously do with some entertainment right now." Ryia laughed.

"I like you," she decided. "Someone slits your throat and you don't die. You tricked me into thinking you were my assassination target. You can control shadows; that's the coolest."

"I like your hair, I guess," Kida replied with a shrug, making Ryia grin. "Sorry, I don't have any heartfelt compliments for you yet, other than the fact you kill people. But I'm sure that speaks for itself."

"Sure does," Ryia mused, glancing up as someone walked out of the house they were told to wait by. Her eyes widened as the human approached the girls. He was dressed in furs, as if the glaring sun beating down on him didn't tell him he was supposed to be hot, and he looked rather calm.

"Right this way," he said, gesturing to the door of the house. Kida went first, then Ryia, who was narrowing her eyes at the human suspiciously. He might be with a rebellion, but Ryia never knew who the bad guys were anymore. I mean, she was an assassin; usually, she would be classified as the 'bad guy'. But now she was helping save the world. This rebellion could be an organisation full of nice people, and they might believe in their cause because that was their opinion, but other people had other opinions too. The Adranian Council thought that the rebellion were the bad guys solely because they didn't believe in their opinion. But the rebellion thought the Council was bad, because they had their own beliefs. Everyone thought they were right, which just meant they were all wrong.

"Relax," Kida muttered to Ryia, who glanced at her companion.

"Right," she murmured, then turned to find the human had shut the door behind him and was moving through the house. It looked normal, like any normal house in Milos would. He led them through the rooms, coming to the very end of the house where a trapdoor was sitting in the ground, previously being covered by a rug. Glancing at each other, the girls opened the door and climbed the wooden ladder down, both landing roughly on the stone.

"I see why he was wearing furs," Kida muttered, rubbing her arms at the cold. Ryia grumbled something under her breath about her shirt, but just thanked her pants for rising up high to cover half of her stomach.

"Follow me," the human announced, and the girls followed the man as he led them through a series of underground tunnels that Ryia didn't know were sitting right beneath the city and had been this entire time.

"Where did these tunnels come from?" Kida asked suddenly, as if reading Ryia's mind.

"They were made as an escape route during the war," the human answered for them. "They were used only once, and abandoned after the peace treaty was signed. They had been here ever since."

"So the rebellion uses them to move throughout the city?" Ryia asked, but the human shook his head.

"The rebellion lives down here," he explained. "This is why we wear furs; it gets colder the further in you move."

"Yikes," Kida mumbled, glancing at Ryia. "You should've brought the rest of your shirt."

Ryia glared at her and opened her mouth to shoot something back, but the sudden shift of air around her made her hesitate as she turned her head. Then, her eyes widened.