Nalandra (A Rappelz Story) pt. 1

She woke up shaking her head trying to clear it. She was on a pad at the base of the stairs to some strange tower. As she pulled herself to her feet she realized two things rather quickly; that she could remember her name and nothing else.
She didn't even know who she was other then that she was called Nalandra or Nala for short.
"Hey get up, you need to get moving!" a voice called to her. A stranger standing nearby said. "We have other recruits coming so either come over and start your training or get out of the way."
Still trying to gain her balance she wandered over and tried to ask some questions but was cut off quickly. "Welcome to Trainee Island. Don't worry about the memory loss, its natural and expected. Now lets begin your training."
Before Nalandra could protest she was sent on a whirlwind of various tasks by a collection of about a dozen people. Each of these quests seemed to involve finding someone, killing a bunch of roaming monstrous creatures, or gathering items. Though she was paid well for these tasks, she couldn't help noticing the urgency with which she was pushed through them, and that other "recruits" around her were pushed just as hard. Most questions were deflected or outright ignored, especially anything about who she was or why she was here.
She quickly learned she was proficient with monsters and began training a giant catlike creature called a Pantera. They came in many different species but generally all looked alike. She also learned she had magic-like abilities to heal these creatures, herself, and to sometimes damage the various hostile creatures.
She also had something like some kind of radio in her head that never shut up letting her hear thousands of voices in her head. Eventually she learned how to control them, filtering them, and even responding to them.
After a few weeks she was transported, again seemingly magically to a city on the continent called Lasky, a metropolis floating in the air filled with shops, warehouses, homes, and in the center a massive church. As she learned to navigate around the continent she figured out that the society was divided into about a half dozen cities and each one seemed to operate under different monarchs but tied together by the mix of magic and technology and by the church that seemed to rule all.
Besides Lasky, there was Horizon, a city in the plains; Katan, a city built into a volcanic crater, Rhondo, probably the largest and most "traditional" city, and a city that called itself the hidden village that you had to receive special passes to get into. Additionally, other small camps and villages splattered the landscape.
Very quickly, Nalandra learned that monsters were plentiful and friends were few in this beautiful but hellish world.
Because she had an affinity for some of these monsters, although she wasn't so good at actually taming them, she eventually bought or traded a few including two pixies and a human-like creature called a siren. She didn't use the siren much, finding it to be weak and troublesome, but she liked her pantera and her pixies.
These creatures were controlled from a devices that looked like oversized tarot cards and each had its own personality and skills. Some like the pixies and sirens could talk some could not.
Because friends were rare, Nalandra usually took jobs that allowed her to hunt on her own with just her pets, the creatures she had tamed or bought. However, eventually, she eventually took a job in a set of ruins where she kept running into some of the same people over and over again.
Among the most notable of these were Tatty, a healer that could heal people as well as creatures, someone that came across as a cross between a mage and a fighter named Sin, and another breeder similar to herself who refereed to herself only as Gidion's Girl after her partner, Gidion.
After a while, Nalandra started joining in parties with one or more of these people and sometimes others in order to survive the tougher jobs. Many times these pople helped Nalandra with more then simply shear survival, giving her equipment, tips, money, and perhaps most important, trust.
Nalandra loved the times she spent with these people, and one day Sin asked her why she didn't join the guild they were all in. After a few days of debating it with herself, Nalandra joined Requiem.
As time wore on and she became increasingly involved in the guild, she began to grow nearly inseparable from Tatty, and considered Gidion, Gidion's Girl, and Sin close friends as well. She began to think things were looking up.
But then one day she had an argument with Tatty and Tatty disappeared after radioing another guild party she was going to join them, never to be seen again. Nalandra searched everywhere she could but never saw her friend again. Everyday thereafter she always thought of her and felt a horrible emptiness in her heart.
Though she meant more friends she grew close to both in the guild and out, such as Tumm, Girus, Pokey, and others, she felt uneasy and continued to question her existence and her identity.
Then one day new monsters began appearing. Some of the most vicious were the harpies, creatures with fearsome tempers that were both hard to tame and viciously proficient with the bow and arrow. The harpies and other new monsters had a higher attrition rate on on the various adventurers that wandered the globe and even several of Nalandra's friends were injured by these creatures.
Despite that Nalandra grew fascinated by the harpies and began saving to either tame or purchase one.
Rumors of the arrival of a new ship guarded heavily on trainee island also appeared during this time. Some of the rumors said the crew was dead, other said the crew were turned into zombies and skeletons, and some even said the fearsome witch, dead some thirty years was responsible. The church sent a team to the ship and it disappeared.
Nalandra eventually went to investigate for herself and found the crew was indeed undead. As she made her way through the ship she found members of the team that the church sent, most of whom seemed to blame the witch. As she killed off the various zombies and creatures and rescued the remains of the team she found two things that shook her. The first was the spirit of a girl that encouraged her to question everything she thought she knew about the world, the witch, the church, and her own existence. The other thing she found was it was a member of the church itself that had caused the disaster.
As she returned home from that ordeal, even more strange monsters appeared. One of the new monsters, called a naga, nearly killed Nalandra, and it shook her to the core.
When she returned to the guild she found out that Gidion and Gidion's Girl had left, as well as another friend called Frostboarder. The news devastated Nalandra, who felt it was not only a betrayal to the guild but to her personally as well, and it took her a long time to even speak to any of them again, even though Gidion's Girl eventually came back to the guild. Nalandra never recovered from this.
During this period of sorrow, Nalandra eventually was able to trade for a harpy. It was a bit older and more powerful then she wanted, and badly trained, and though she liked it, they didn't get along well at all. Nalandra eventually found herself nearly giving up on the harpy.
As more members of the guild left or went missing, Nalandra increasingly threw herself recklessly into hunting and increasingly dangerous jobs. She no longer cared if the creatures she hunted were so extremely powerful that they were beyond her skills or abilities to fight. Most often she fought with her harpy, whom she named Adorable, by her side, and the harpy became increasingly agitated and hard to control as their close calls came increasingly closer.
Then one day in a patch of deep woods Nalandra and Adorable found themselves horribly overwhelmed by the sheer number of monsters. Nalandra had in her grief blindly led them into the very nests of several creatures. Though Adorable fought harder then she ever had, a pantera got through and dove for her.
Nalandra saw the pantera leap at Adorable. Seeing what at the time she considered her last companion about to fall, Nalandra spun around placing herself between Adorable and the pantera, and shoved the pantera out of the way. Nalandra felt the impact knock her face down into the ground. She felt the powerful claws dig into her back and jaws clamp down on the back of her neck. Then she blacked out.
***
A persistent nudging in her side and repeated worried sounding croaks and squawks eventually caused her to awake. Through she was in pain all over she eventually opened her eyes. The first thing she saw was the worried eyes of Adorable looking down into hers, a reproachful look on the harpy's, surprisingly human-like face. The second she saw was her gear strewn about behind the harpy, a trail of bandages leading from her pack to where the harpy was trying to gently tie them up as best she could with her sharp claws.
Nalandra smiled weakly, taking the gauze gently from the harpy to finish tying the knot then gave the harpy a soft smile. "Thank you Adorable. I'm sorry I got us in this mess, I'll try and be more careful in the future."
The harpy offered a smile, then cast a spell that allowed Nalandra to fall back asleep, her wounds already healing beneath the bandages...