The journey from Muon Pond to Udny Pass were a blur to Annara, a constant shift back and forth between consciousness and strange, disconcerting dreams that so vivid she had trouble telling them from reality. The first time she awoke, the mumbling of the river Neratine filling her ears and a moist, cool cloth on her forehead, she started up, thinking herself back in a damp cave she had once been trapped in as a child, and despite the comforting words of her companions, Annara required a minute to be convinced otherwise. Her headwound, that much must have been obvious to the others, could prove the most serious of her ailments.

But as time passed and Aust carried her towards their destination with a resilience that was difficult to match, she became more lucid, the headache and nausea were almost bearable and the unconsciousness turned more and more into sleep, despite the fever dreams. She couldn't have done much of anything else anyway - her broken ribs turned breathing into a loathesome affair and sitting upright, let alone standing, felt like somebody was stabbing her with a red-hot knife.

When she came to at the gate, her broken arm held to her chest by a makeshift sling, most of the words that had been spoken had found their way to her ears and into her nightmare; as her eyes opened, the two guards looked like arachnids to her, a sight so absurd and terrifying she couldn't make a sound, not before she realized that they were human - or, well, Aretan, [i]if that counted as human[/i]. Pride and anger were boiling deep inside her but they were nothing to the pain and exhaustion she felt despite hours of uneasy rest.

[color=orangered]"We need help"[/color], she murmured as loudly as she dared, wincing at the agony even these small words subjected her to. [color=orangered]"He..."[/color], she weakly nodded towards Lothren, [color=orangered]"he's injured and I-I can't breathe... It hurts so much."[/color]

The Eretol didn't have to fake the wheezing or groans of pain. She was scared, of course she was when her entire body seemed to be one big aching wound, but she hadn't shown it to her friends like this because she knew they had done all they could and she had felt that she needed to appear as strong as she could. Here, however, before some guards who would decide whether they could enter the city and a man who seemed willing to help convince them, she dropped all pretense of strength. They wouldn't have hesitated to slit her throat if they knew that all of them, even Annara, were Ytharien, but surely they couldn't turn away a small, weak woman with a serious injury? Not if she...

[color=orangered]"Please... I beg you... Help us."[/color]