Darkness.

A pink glow appeared in midair. Slowly materializing, the glow appeared to reshape itself and form into a humanoid figure. In seconds, the glow disapeared, replaced by the naked figure of a woman suspended in midair, parallel to the ground.

Darkness again. Silence.

The woman, no longer suspended in midair, fell to the ground on her side, with a loud thumping noise from the hardwood floor. Weakened from an unknown time imprisoned in portal space, she lay there breathing alive, knowing that she had finally escaped. Who did this to her? Her mind was still foggy.

An almost imperceptible whisper came from her lips. "Vengeance is mine."

After a few minutes, her eyes became adjusted to the darkness. Still lying on her side on the floor, she turned her head slightly to look. There was an odd, faint blue light coming from the window nearby. She was in an old cottage. There was a constant sound of water dripping somewhere, and it was awfully damp and musty smelling in there.

Slowly, she got up from the ground, and brought herself to the window. Though shocked, she was not visibly so. Clearly her captors meant to make escape difficult. Looking out of the window, she saw that she was in an abandoned cottage complex, deep underwater. A large school of small fish swam by. Whoever had done this had submerged the entire valley underwater. A few slivers of sunlight penetrated the water from above, and through the window.

This would not stop her. A slight distraction.

Elsewhere, there was widespread panic. "Milady, the crystals have been destroyed somehow. Our prisoner has escaped." reported one of the leader's minions.

Disatisfaction. The words "Zojak Quafeth" were uttered, and instantly the poor individual was electrified to a crisp.

"FOOLS! Prepare for battle! Soldiers and archers only! She must not obtain a wand to use!"

Back in the cottage, our heroine felt around in the darkness, looking for clothes and armor to wear. Everything was so old and rotting away, everything crumbled into dust when she touched it. No wands, no weapons. Still naked without armor. She would have to find something later, outside.

She approached the window again. She could barely see a reflection of herself in the glass. Long, uncut black hair down to her waist - grown long after months of captivity and torture. Green eyes.

Grabbing the chair in the corner, she took a deep breath and held it. She shut her eyes.

When the chair met the window, there was a violent implosion of water into the cottage. The woman was thrown back, tossed about like a ragdoll in the resulting turbulence.

The room filled with water instantly, and then the woman took some strong strokes with her arms and exited the cottage, swimming upwards towards the surface as fast as she could. Her lungs felt like exploding, she needed to take a breath fast. Images flashed through her mind. Arriving on Dereth with her mission, only to be immediately captured. Months of torture. Banishment to an alternate plane of existance.

She rocketed up through the water's surface, taking a breath on top. Treading water, she looked around. Blue sky, faints clouds, bright sunlight. A few sea gulls flew here and there. She saw shore in the far, far distance.

Her captors would be there. She started swimming towards land.

On the shore, a small garrison of troops nerviously readied themselves. This was no easy opponent. One of them paniced and urinated down his armor leggings. A couple of them didn't have time to buff themselves with the vital life protections. And now they were stuck without any wand or staff to use, having obeyed orders from their leader to leave all such items behind.

Brandishing their swords, they awaited a solitary figure to emerge from the water. No one ever showed up there.

A far distance away, three Altered Drudges sat on the beach, surrounding their little campfire. They were quite hungry, not having eaten in a while. But they had their little fire ready to cook their next meal. One of them looked a little surprised, and nudged its companions to look at the thin, naked human walking out of the water, towards them.

She's not fat and plump, but this will have to do, thought one of them.

One of the drudges raised its arms to cast a lightning bolt at their potential meal, but in mid-windup, a strong hand found its grip on the poor cat-like creature's neck, and snapped it.

The woman raised a finger to her lips. "Shhhhh." The look of impending doom became evident in the frightened drudges' eyes.

Seconds later, a trail could be seen in the sand, leading away from three drudge corpses, headed into the nearby forest.

"INCOMING!!"

An object flew through the air, nearly hitting the leader had she not ducked. The object landed on the ground with a thunk. The surrounding guards recoiled in horror. This was no weapon, this was a severed head from one of their compatriots!

"Milady! Somebody has set fire to our buildings!"

A drudge's lightning weapon flew threw the air and impaled a soldier in the neck. With a bloody gurgle, he collapsed to the ground.

The leader was getting restless. Her masters would not tolerate such failure. She was intent on killing her prisoner, perhaps recapturing if possible. Noticing a rustling in the bushes in the distance, she motioned her archers to fire into that direction. About 20 arrows flew into that spot. Silence after that.

Then, to her right, more rustling in the bushes in the distance. Again more arrows were loosed into that direction.

"Guards! What the hell are you doing?!? Go in there and search!!!"

A few nervous guards reluctantly started approaching the bushes. Suddenly, the bushes started rustling. Somebody was running away.

"FIRE!!"

Chaos ensued. A hundred arrows starting flying everywhere, intent on hitting their solitary target. There were a few fatal screams of pain from the soldiers who had ventured too far into the bushes, and gotten struck by friendly arrows.

A naked figure jumped in the air out of the bushes and spun around a tree branch, landing on a soldier's chest, crushing him instantly. She was dodging all attacks from the soldiers and killing them very fast.

"There she is!! ATTACK her!!!"

More arrows again, but she jumped up into the air, dodging them. Executing a perfect roundhouse kick, she planted her foot squarely in a poor soldier's face, snapping his neck.

"You incompetent fools! Can't you kill a single, unbuffed, NAKED foe?!?"

The number of surviving troops were dwindling fast. The leader grew restless. Being a mage, she decided to attack and drew out her focusing stone.

"Cruath Quaguz", she uttered. Nothing happened.

The lone figure suddenly stopped in her tracks, and snapped her head quickly at this mage. All she saw was the focusing stone in her hands. She then started running towards the leader as fast as she could, straight as a beeline.

"Dammit, she's resisting my spells! Guards!! Do not let her get to me!!" The remaining guards scrambled towards their leader.

"Zojak Quati" came from the lips of the leader. A huge spinning blade launched from the leader towards the oncoming target, who then jumped in the air, somersaulting over the war spell. The blade slammed into one of the guards, shredding him into thousands of pieces.

The lone heroine was now at the leader's feet.

"Zojak Qua--". In the middle of casting another war spell, the leader felt a fist slam into her belly, and she almost doubled over. Meanwhile guards tried tackling down their opponent without success.

Next came another spin kick from the naked individual. The leader raised her arms to protect her head - she did not want to lose it! However, the feet made contact with the focusing stone instead, sending it 50 feet into the distance. A second kick knocked the leader onto her back on the ground. The heroine lost her balance doing this and also landed onto her back.

The focusing stone landed on the ground far away, and continued rolling away a bit. Both our protagonist and her opponent looked at the stone, turned to look each other in the eye, then looked at the stone again. Both of them and several guards starting racing towards the focusing stone.

"No no no no no no!" cried the leader.

The leader dove onto the ground, grabbing the stone, but then an elbow came crashing down on her back, with a loud crack, causing her to toss it up into the air again.

The guards tried to tackle down the heroine. Too late. She managed to catch the stone this time.

"NOOOOOOO!!!!" cried the leader. Instantly, her opponent started uttering ancient words. The pink glow of a level VII spell, the highest possible, was evident.

"Cruath Quareth." Bludgeoning vulnerability.

One of the soldiers noticed a grey haze fall over himself, with a buzzing sound. The last thing he saw was a single kick to his chest, causing him to explode. Similarly gruesome fates befell the rest of them.

The leader, still incapacitated on the ground, noticed no war spells being used. Only life magic vulnerabilities. Why was that?

The rest of the battle did not last long. The leader continued to lie on the ground, paralyzed - she could not feel her legs anymore. The elbow strike had broken her back. Within seconds, all but one of the guards were dead. The one remaining guard pissed down his armor leggings again, like he did on the beach shore earlier.

"You. I will spare your life if you return my weapon and ammunition."

The guard nervously ran indoors to find the equipment.

The heroine felt a grip on her ankle, and looked down. The leader, the same one that had captured her, was showing defiance. A bare foot came crashing down on her elbow, smashing it. A yell of pain. The grip released.

"I know what you're thinking. You want this stone back so you can cast a spell and heal yourself. You can't do much in your condition." With all her might, she threw the focusing stone far, far away into the distance. A large Malus Shreth, hungry as ever, stupidly bent over and swallowed it whole. "You want it, go get it," she taunted.

The leader gave a sigh of defeat. With great, painful effort, she spoke. "Noriko, we will continue to hunt you down!"

There was a look of amusement. "Noriko? You thought I was Noriko? You thought I was a MAGE?!?" A mischievous laugh came next. "HA HA HA HA HA"

The leader, lying on the ground, stared in disbelief. "Three of you!? We thought there were only Noriko and the young child, Rie!"

"Noriko lacks my cruelty. She is rather... incapable of it...," the heroine replied, kicking the leader in the face and rendering her unconscious.

The guard finally returned with a bow and a full set of arrows.

"You. Give me your dirk," she said to the guard while continuing to look at the paralyzed leader. Taking the dirk, she raised it, and cut her own hair back to its usual length, less than shoulder length. She rudely tossed the severed hair in the leader's face.

"I'm not done with you yet." Using the dirk again, she cut off the leader's leather robe, fasioning a quick bra and loincloth. "There. Much better."

"You deserve a mark, to be reminded daily who it was that defeated you."

After carving a large "J" character in the leader's forehead, she took her old bow and arrows from the guard and ran off into the distance in search of her sisters. The archmage Noriko, and the young child warrior Rie.

The sun soon set.

Darkness again.