“Trust me on this, young ones, sometimes you just never know where life would take you. I sure as hell never expected to find myself a home amongst your kin after mine own drove me away.” - Celia the Eternal, Martial Artist and one of the oldest inhabitants of Ur-Ankh.

Aideen swung her staff, blade out, as she scythed through the necks of two bandits who failed to react before their heads rolled off their necks. The burly one was still busy choking on his own blood, so he was not a threat either. The last two bandits were caught flat-footed and one lunged towards the dying one’s sword since he had not worn any weapons himself, while the other made a hilarious and utterly futile attempt to block her next swing with the spoon he held.

When her adamant staff came for another swing, the wooden spoon shattered, and so did the man’s head. The force with which she swung her weapon drove the dagger-axe blade into the man’s skull, which simply burst open like a watermelon when the body of the staff itself struck moments later.

The last bandit screamed incoherently at the sight of his dead comrade, who just moments ago was eating next to him, and visibly trembled even as he pointed the chipped sword in his hands towards Aideen. She batted the sword away with her weapon, before she grasped the bandit’s throat with one hand, her other hand nimbly spinning her weapon so that the spearhead rested a hair’s breadth away from his throat.

“How many captives?” she asked sternly at the clearly frightened man, though she kept her voice low so as not to warn the missing one. When the bandit trembled but failed to answer her immediately, she pressed her weapon closer until it drew blood from his neck.

“One! Just the one! I swear!” said the man in fright. His eyes then widened even more as he gurgled when Aideen pushed the spearhead through his throat and dropped his dying form on the floor, pausing only a short moment to remove the still-usable javelin from the now-dead burly bandit’s throat. Then she walked towards the thatched hut with firm steps.

As Aideen got closer to the hut, she heard the noises from within, which was mostly the grunts of a man who exerted himself. It was not beyond her expectations, but she was still disgusted by it. Carefully, she pushed open the door to see the last bandit busily forcing himself on a woman who had her arms tied to a pillar in the house.

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Probably too engrossed in his acts of debauchery, the bandit never noticed Aideen’s arrival, and the next thing he knew, his vision shifted as his head rolled to the floor. He still had a look of bliss mixed with stupefaction on his face even as he left the mortal coil.

Aideen gave no more heed to the naked corpse, other than to crudely shove it away from the tied woman with her leg. The woman had made no sound all that while, and only stared blankly into the distance, like someone with no more will to live on.

“Shh… Everything’s going to be all right now,” said Aideen gently as she tried to converse with the badly abused woman while she freed her off her restraints. The woman just remained silent, her blank stare unchanged all the while. “Forgive me for not coming sooner.”

It was when Aideen circulated her magic through the unresisting woman’s body that she realized something that had surprised her. The bruises and other injuries on the woman’s body, she had expected, both the ones from the bandits’ rough treatment and even the ones caused by the chafing from the ropes she was tied with.

Even the injuries to the woman’s private regions, she had expected. There had been over twenty bandits after all, and if they all took turns to have their way with her all that while… It would have been strange if she were uninjured from the abuse.

What she had not expected however, was that the woman’s heart had long ceased to beat. Much like her own. She recalled the conversation between the bandits, about how their “wench” was about to croak. It turned out that was the trust indeed, and Aideen guessed that the woman must have passed on some time ago.

Only to rise back as an Unliving while caged in the same predicament she had died under.

She had risen early for certain, Aideen thought, as even the stupid bandits would have noticed her death and disposed of her otherwise. Then again, given the intelligence of some of those bandits, maybe they wouldn’t have noticed, doubly so when she already barely reacted like now at the time.

With care, Aideen helped the abused woman stand, supporting her on her shoulder, as she carefully led the woman towards a nearby stream. The bandits had not been stupid and built their camp not too far from a small but clear stream, which gave them a long-term water source.

Gently, Aideen brought the woman to the stream, and helped her wash the filth off her body, which she had healed in the meantime. At first, the woman moved almost like a puppet, as she only scrubbed herself out of ingrained habits, with her eyes as dull and lifeless as before.

After a while however, she started scrubbing herself harder, so hard to the point that her skin turned raw and red. Yet she kept going until she broke her skin and bled, as if she was coated in the worst filth in the world and she wanted to peel her own skin off just to be clean of it.

Aideen remained a silent spectator to it, as she just kept the woman healed from her wounds, only for her to repeat the actions several times. She noticed the light return to the woman’s eyes, however, and before too long, the woman started to sob and wail into her hands.

Wordlessly, Aideen collected the woman into an embrace and patted her back gently as she whispered words of reassurance to the crying woman.