Beautiful Warrior [Caspian X]

prologue

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   Her knees could buckle any minute now. The sun in the sky was hot and no cloud was in sight. Her breathing was uneven and very heavy, every breath she took felt like it was scratching against her throat. All her thought evaded one simple sentence. I hate the Great Desert. Everywhere she looked, every way she turned everything was the same. With no horse, torn clothes that barely helped her and no water she started thinking about death. The only thing that even in this dead land situation deemed to be not useful was a sabre she stole.

   She cursed her previous self for the stupid idea of fleeing Calormen in search of a more suitable place to live. In those desperate moments, she thought that living the horrible life she had in Calormen would be better than this torture. Her hopes were from the start high, that anything would be better than her beginning years of life, but now she doubted she'll ever reach anything before her body will collapse from exhaustion.

   Another narrow-eyed look across the landscape made her groan and yell out loud. She dropped on her knees in the hot sand below her. Taking deep breaths she prevented herself from crying, she didn't need to lose any more water that was already inside her body. The travel took longer than she intended and she deeply wished it to be over. Hitting the sand with her clenched fist a couple of times she hoped for freeing all the frustration inside her. How could she ever think, that a fifteen-year-old girl, with survival skills to the minimum and no helping hand in any form, could survive such an adventure she thought of herself.

   She heard her masters talk about the Great Desert a lot of times that way she knew it was big. But she never knew that it was this enormous. Sitting back on her legs she stared into abyss her mind filled with god-awful memories in Calormen. Slowly her determination overruled and she slowly pushed herself back up to a standing position.

   Then out of nowhere, she heard a loud roar. Her eyes widened and she carefully took a step backwards. Her head snapped towards the source of the noise and there in the very distance, she spotted a small speck of something.

   Idalia smiled. She smiled for the first time in many days since she fled. Her steps directed towards that speck, heart filled with new hope. The closer she got, the more specks could be seen on the horizon. A laugh emitted her as she saw tree after tree after tree all lining up and she almost thought her pace speed up. A forest, it meant there was water nearby as well.

   The last few hundred meters Idalia ran, almost tripping over her own feet as she became surrounded by the cooler atmosphere of the forest. Only then, when the adrenaline subsided did she start feeling pain across all of her body. Before she could reach the first source of the water, her vision blackened and she fell to the ground. She was later found at the very edge of the forest by a faun and slowly restored her health back.

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