From The Ashes [#NaNoWriMo16]

Chapter Twenty Five - Ryia Ivetta

"Kieron's soldiers will be here soon," Kida announced as they walked quietly down the dark, never-ending corridor they'd been walking down for the past five minutes. "We have to hurry; the sooner we find Ìzzøckål, the less time he'll have to send his troops out to fight my brother's. I think we have a big chance here, Ryia. If we screw this up..."

"We're not going to screw it up," Ryia argued, frowning as she tried to adjust her dagger strap around her thigh. "If anything, we've got the easiest job; making sure this dipshit is distracted. If we spend our thoughts on what everyone else is doing, that will be how we fail. We need to focus one hundred percent of our attention to our own mission. Got it?"

"Yes mum," Kida muttered, but she got the message anyway.

Kida had managed to knock out a Kron about three minutes before this conversation, and had donned the woman's uniform. It was a tad big, but it didn't matter apparently. She had grey skin, she had no hair, and she had black eyes. That was all anyone else needed to know. That was all that convinced Ryia, anyway.

"Do you miss hair?" Ryia asked suddenly, and Kida turned her head slowly to the assassin with a concerned look on her face.

"Do I... do I miss hair?" she asked, and Ryia nodded, pursing her lips.

"Yeah, your hair," she confirmed. "Do you miss it? What colour was it? Was it like Kieron's? Or was it redder?"

"It was... red," Kida admitted after a while. "So long, and so annoying. It took forever to grow back once it was cut, so I never cut it. Bad move." She paused, thinking for a moment. Then, "yes, I do miss it." Ryia beamed, pleased that she brought back a nice memory for Kida to dwell on as they went forward into a dangerous man's lair to try and kill him. Ryia didn't have any pleasant memories from her childhood, but it made her feel a little better to bring up her friends memories instead. It made her smile, to see them happy about something that was. It just made you appreciate things all the more when they were gone, leaving you wishing you could go back and appreciate it when you had it.

Unfortunately, Yzther didn't work that way, and neither did the other Gods.

"Hold up, someone's coming out a corridor to your left," Ryia announced quietly, dropping her pace slightly to avoid running into them. Kida nodded, dropping the hood on her head before closing her eyes to lift the shadows from the ground just as she did earlier with everyone else. Within seconds, Ryia was covered in a cloak of shadows that protected her from unknowing eyes and stuck close to Kida as she waited for the Krons to come out.

As they did, they spared hardly a glance for Kida, who had started walking to make it look like she was originally coming down the hall the immortals turned down. No one jumped out to attack her, so Ryia let out a sigh of relief as she followed Kida, who was following the Krons. Ryia only hoped they weren't going somewhere she couldn't follow; she needed to stick with Kida at all times. She couldn't do it alone, and neither could Ryia. It wasn't something either of them could handle.

Ryia could sense the massive space coming up in front of them before she entered it, and it literally made her gasp. She had to clamp a hand over her mouth as she slowed down, coming up to some bars that ran all the way around the massive room in a dome kind of shape, keeping the people that walked around the ledge where Ryia and Kida were standing from falling down into the deep, dark pit of Krons. Ryia stared down, horrified at what she was seeing. The immortals that were kept down there were practically crawling over one another, toppling around like there was no floor for them to walk on. There were so many of them, it was insane. It could've been about two percent of Reichon's people down there, all immortal and hairless. Ryia spotted a few Yaasma, their horns now dull and black, with a bunch of humans and even a handful of dwarves.