From a black journal:
It's been close to twenty years since I thought about it. Since I remember the feeling of being less than a person. I still feel the rage, the emptiness, the sense of hopelessness in a place that saw me as something less than dirt in a deranged pecking order. I was nineteen when the Thayans took me from my tribe. They saw the infernal traits in me, they knew what I was before I even really knew it myself. Back then...I fought them on everything whenever I got the chance. And every time they beat me down to put me in my place. Eventually...I became obedient to their whims and fancies. I rejected myself, my thoughts everything about who I was, was discarded just so I could be the perfect slave. The perfect offering to something for more power...
Because that's all Thayans ever wanted was more power. More power meant high standing for them...lest that's what I remember from those blurry days. I remember the auctions too. Where slaves people didn't want anymore were traded for better ones. And those who left one owner seemed to end up with worse ones with perverted mindsets. As fate had it, I was given that occurrence. The man that owned me, that used me in various and disgusting ways and branded me as his property...I hated him. I hated Thayans, their city their faiths, everything about them I hated and that hate grew over the five years I was kept as a slave. I...I even had a daughter with that disgusting man...and he sold her to the Red Wizards when she was just an infant. Taken right out of my arms after she was born...
My rage spiked at that. The one who owned me, the Thayans in that house...I slaughtered them all in my anger. Even the innocent children were not spared from my wrath. And I...I walked out of the city in the dead of night, covered in Thayan blood and back to the last place my tribe had been. I found their empty camp and curled into a ball, tears streaming down my cheek at what had happened to me. I cried for the loss of my daughter, for the grief of the Razari who had been killed by a culture that sought her obedience, for the daughter of a Nomad that took her in. I cried until I was fat asleep in that deathly quiet camp.
When the first ray of light shown on my face, I could hear the sound of hooves trampling the ground. My mind focused as I listened, I knew the spund but my heart assumed it was the Thayans coming to reclaim one of their runaway slaves. However I heard a tune being sung with the horse hooves. It had been a lullaby...
"Come little star, it's time to find your rest.
The dawn is rising, the birds wake their nests.
Close your eyes, and make one final wish.
To dream a dream, that last til Moons first light."
My Foster mother would sing me that, I never understood why but hearing it then brought me so much comfort. I knew the next part of it, it's how we'd say goodnight to one another.
"In shadows arms, I wait for the night.
To hear your call, on crisp winds on high.
For when I dream, I hear your voce.
Echoing far, til it finds my heart."
After she heard that, my foster mother found me and took me back to the tribe. My slave brand was burned off my body, and with that Razari Kantayan was dead to the tribe. So...I needed a new name. A name I had to pick for myself. A day went by as I thought, I spent most of my time alone and away from the rest of the tribe. I outcasted myself for what felt like a year. Until one day, I gazed out at the plains watching the horses run across the pastures. The Sun was high above in the endless blue sky, nary a cloud to obstruct it. I thought of my lost daughter and what I would have named her if she was still with me...Zakairia. And then it dawned on me. The name I would go by from then on. Zar'Koria.
I walked back to the tribe and looked to the chieftain, he had a knowing gaze about him that day as he asked what my name is. I told him, he gave a nod after a moment then held out his hand to me and gave me a warriors hand shake. From there is was cemented in my tribe, I was not Razari anymore. I was Zar'Koria. It was after that period of time, when nights held no moonlight, that I would disrupt slave trade routes. I would free the slaves that did not want to be there and knock out the drivers before taking the wagons back to the town or village the slaves came from. I did my best to keep my horns out of sight, some saw regardless of my attempts and said they would rather chance slavery than own a debt to a demon. To which I did not fight their choice. Others...Others didn't see me as such but they could understand why I would risk myself for their freedom. I hated being treated like property, I hated how I was powerless to fight against the one who had owned me for a long time. And I hated how my daughter was ripped away from me before I could have raised her.
And even now, here in these misted Lands where slaves come in various forms...I hate it. It makes my blood boil and infuriates me to no end. But...I am just one woman in a place like this. I know there is nothing I can do, nothing that I can say to change anything. Here I am seen like a monster and treated as such without my mask in the cities. The Locals, as creepy as they oddly know when I do a decent job of keeping my horns hidden, never resist the chance to call me a monster. But...these serfs, the slaves, some go about this by mere choice others are forced into it.
And I am painfully aware that I cannot do anything unless I want to repeat what has already been done to me. It may seem cowardice of me, Hells I see it as such. How I won't risk my neck for those unfortunate souls here because I myself am afraid of such fate.
....I never want to feel that helpless again....
