Fable - Ask Paths Less Travelled

Her breath misted in the air as she sat resting on a fallen stone nearly as large as she was. The thin alpine air didn't necessarily agree with her and the cold merely added insult to injury. She was not as in shape as she thought she was. Probably not a surprise, given where she had been.

The girl looked ahead. The road was cut into the side of a ridge, one pile of stone that looked much like the rest of them. The peaks marched away in every direction and faded into the blue distance, sharp air clear as glass. A trader's track, wide enough for a wagon with places where one could pull aside to allow others to pass.

Not that she could see why anyone would be out here, wherever here was.

Below, in the next valley between shoulders of stone, a village hugged the rugged land. It would probably have been beautiful if she hadn't been so bone-weary. Cute buildings of rough-cut stone and timber in amid pine trees, scattered round a swift-flowing creek with a narrow stone bridge. There were perhaps three dozen houses lining the road and climbing the valley sides.

One of the buildings had half a dozen wagons pulled up to it, horses still in the traces. The minstrel's heart lurched - maybe it was a place with rooms to let. A night spent indoor, with a roof over her head and a real bed to sleep in sounded divine.

With a weary sigh, she got back to her aching feet. At least it would all be downhill from here.

---

She entered, instrument case on her back and sheathed knives on her hip, into the common room of what must have been an inn, or at least what passed for one in such a rural place. In truth, it served as much as a community hall as anything else. It had rooms to let out to travelers coming through, or to locals that had stayed to late to safely return to their own homes. Often it was more the latter than the former. This place was more a wide spot on the road between bigger towns and villages. If not for the local mining, it wouldn't exist at all.

But at least it was cheap. She found herself a table, slipping the case from her back and leaning it up against it as she took a seat. She stood out a bit more than usual among the other patrons; her travel-stained clothes were quite different from the handful of armed men and women at the other tables in their leathers and steel. The merchants whose wagons were lined up outside sat apart from their hired blades at a table in the corner. There were a couple of locals in rough woolens at a table apart from the other two groups.

She was by herself, unremarked by any except the natives who looked at her just as suspiciously as they did the other transients.

All in all, there were only a half dozen tables and only two were empty. Alleria eyed the others with muted curiosity. It was mostly dulled by hunger and weariness; it had been weeks since she had been freed from captivity for the second time, and all that time had been spent trying to cross these mountains. She had elected to travel alone in the end.

Some days it was good to be in solitude. Others, less so.

She eyed the case and thought. Room and meals had not cost much, but she did not have much money. She had thought to ask if she could play for them, but that didn't suit her very well this evening. Being forced to play was not the same as doing it for love of the craft. Just then, tired as she was, she was still considering whether or not she would. An audience was an uncommon thing and even if she would never admit it aloud, she did enjoy the attention it brought.

The door from outside opened, and she looked up.

More travelers or, perhaps, adventurers. The expression on her face fit someone who was well traveled enough to know that this little hole way off the beaten path was far from idyllic. The stranger bore the look of how she herself felt on the inside except that the taller woman wore it on her sleeve. That which marked her out as a Praetor meant nothing to Alleria, though.

Too long in the wilds and held captive. Too far from home. She stood out in the way of all outsiders everywhere - just slightly out of place. At least she wasn't trying to hide her foreign nature.

She raised an eyebrow herself at the question posed. Now her features tightened. The man was an idiot asking such a thing aloud if they were in fact hunting fae. Not that they always needed words; they could crawl around in your head and read the thoughts as though it were a sheet of parchment.

She opened the instrument case and took the lute out without much thought, casting occasional glances at the man and woman that had come in. It was not long before she was plucking out a melody, bright and wary. She was humming accompaniment to the strings; some of the other patrons looked up as she began her song with some interest.

Place like this probably did not see many minstrels or gleeman.

She cleared her throat lightly and sang. It was an old folktale from the lowlands many hundreds of miles distant. She knew it by heart because she had lived it. Warnings from the old ones were best heeded.

"Come bearing gift,
Eyes alight with candor,
Heart 'reft the truth,
and ready t' steal thy splendor!

'tween words where
hidden in plain sight,
lies like gold and silver
the price of your plight!

Beauty will steal your children!
Light will steal your sun!
Sweet words and empty promises,
A cage of dreams - all for their fun!"

She stared at the pair as she sang her song, words soft and carrying at the same time. Others in the room tapped their fingers on the tables they sat at, even if the words washed over them unremarked.

No food had arrived by the time she had finish her song, and she let her fingers dance lightly along the strings in something a bit more upbeat and light. Eventually, though, she decided that she had waited long enough. She stopped her music and set her instrument down to a general murmur of disappointment.

She stood at her chair in silent thought for a moment and then doffed her cloak. The thick braid down her back swung as she turned to walk back to the counter where the person minding the place stood. After a few terse words about a parched throat and empty stomach, she turned and went to walk back to her table.

She stopped as she drew abreast the table of the two that were talking of Fae. She stood there for a moment while something of herself washed over them. She could feel nothing of faerie glamor about them. It would be nearly impossible to hide that stink from her.

"You should abandon whatever business you have with those arch-eared bastards," she said suddenly in her quiet voice. "Whatever you see, it is not worth dealing with them." Her words were cold and hard.

"There is nothing to be gained consorting with Fae," she said briskly in her quiet voice. "The only way to deal with them is to gift them the long sleep." Quiet, and hard as steel. Something fiery burned in her eyes for a moment as they went to another place and another time. Humiliation and helplessness lay down that road.

She clenched her teeth and was momentarily taken aback at the level of hatred that rolled through her in sickening waves. She was not by nature an unkind person, or even particularly violent. Thinking of the arch-eared devils made her blood boil. So much had been taken from her and she still had the faintest idea of what all it may be.

First and foremost was the lost time. "I still do not know what Gild really is," she said. "Or a Praetor for that matter. Ruslan Gildal spoke of them some. Praetor or Gildan either way, you are still a mortal. You are little more than an amusement to them. Faith will not protect you from their glamour and their wickedness."

She nodded in response. "It has been a long time since I went... went away," she said with only the slightest hitch. Away. A pretty bird in a golden cage not allowed to even understand her own plight until the gods or goddesses she didn't even believe in had granted her a boon: a way out. "I have heard the names of many places I do not know. I would like that."

She paused, a look of thought crossing her features. "Is this murderer of the Summer?" Her words dripped acid even though her features remained placid enough. They were also uttered in a cadence that seemed...antiquated, an accent just slightly off and unplaceable. "If it is, I would offer my assistance."

Was that a touch of eagerness in her voice? Odd. She was no adventurer. Or rather, had been no adventurer. She was just a gleewoman - a personage of many talents in song and story and sleight of hand. She could remember the land of her birth - a tiny village in the mountains far away from everything else. Spurred on into the craft by a wily man of the same profession and set upon her own road many years later.

It was just the aching gulf of time between freedom and freedom that set her out of kilter with the world she now found herself in. Ensnared in magic beyond her ken, the span of years had become simply a steady march from something to something with little features between to mark out their passage.

"I have the ability to smell their presence," she said to forestall an immediate denial. She did indeed have that gift, even if she did not understand how it worked. The ability to cut through their illusion and magic certainly existed too - evidenced by her current freedom.

Even if she understood that skill less.

She nodded matter-of-factly, if a bit sourly. "Would be better to simply cut his throat and rid the world of another person's troubles," she said in that same measured tone.

She bowed at the waist with a flourish, brown hair spilling over her features as she did so. "They called me Alleria, and so that is my name," she pronounced as she rose to stand straight again. There was an ironic smile on her face, the crow's feet at the corners of her eyes crinkling with a twist of mirth. "But I am no one so important as a Praetor - of Gild or otherwise. Just a woman in the world, winsome words and tales and song kept right here," she said, tapping her head and her heart as she spoke

She shook her head slowly, then. "It has maybe... been some time since I was last free, though." Some time... The world had moved onwards as was its wont. People spoke of different lands and with different accents, their words just slightly different to her ears. More, she felt the passage of years now as she had not since her escape.

"Don't matter, though. Faeries are Faeries, no matter when or where," she growled out. Her face went blank a moment later as she realized the seething sea of rage that even speaking of them brought to the surface.

She nodded to the question of preparedness. She had actually been looking forward to sleeping in a real bed for a change. The prospect of sticking some arch-eared bastard in the gizzard somewhat reduced her eagerness for one over the other.

She nodded briskly. "A moment, please," she said in that neutral tone of voice she had, so different from when she sang or told a tale. Without waiting for a reply, she turned just as briskly such that her braid struck someone seated behind her and went back to her table and collected her instrument - carefully stowed back in its case. She shrugged back into the cloak and slung the lute on her back with practiced, efficient ease.

There was no eagerness on display as she made her way back and then slipped through the press with considerably more subtlety than Leas had managed. There was that about her like a dancer; light on her feet and exceptionally aware of her body and its movements. Cat-like grace, if you will.

She nodded to Letta, nearly expressionless. "I am not strong, like he is. Or probably you, either," she said as she lifted the edges of her cloak. The heavy knives at her hips were workman-like and well worn. Even if it wasn't her hands that had worn them so, she was still skilled enough with them. They had seen to that.

A memory surfaced; a spindly creature with arched ears and needle teeth, pinning her to the ground by her shoulders while faceless people laughed and tittered around her. Edged in fog, she could not recall who. Only the warm wash of blood over her hands and the indifference of her tormentors as to whose blood it was.

"I am still alive, anyway," she murmured. Her expression was still blank, serene. It was only somewhat spoiled by the sudden pallid complexion. "Must be doing something right. The song and dance of battle is not my first choice."

"Your confidence inspires," she said in that reserved tone of hers. She moved gracefully with them, nose wrinkled in distaste. The taint of fae magic was strong in the air, the acrid stench of their kind impossible to miss. It wavered in the air unpredictably as the untrained talent caught it and lost it again and again. Her right hand rested on the concealed weapon on that hip seemingly without her being aware of it.

"It is like a midden in the fullness of summer," she said by way of reply. "But it comes as a fitful breeze, there and gone and then there again." Her face crumpled as the stink rose such that her gorge nearly rose with it.

The ability to scent them out - not really a thing of the nose and not really something she understood - had only awakened in her shortly after she had broken the bonds that had held her for...

She shook her head. It was years, but she had no recollection of how many. Just an endless series of years filled with a vague recollection of humiliation and condescension. "I have not any training in this skill that you take for granted, perhaps." Again, no heat. She spoke without rancor or condescension or even wry humor. "It has only been a handful of weeks since..." She trailed off, shook her head. "Freedom. This talent awakened then."

"It would be the first time someone spared my heart anything," she replied to the half-orc with a wry twist to her lips. "Your cursed tincture is not the worst I have witnessed."

Not warrior but not a civilian, either. Not some high noble or courtier and yet with many of their mannerisms. Alleria felt mildly out of place amid the company of soldiers - which was what she took both of these souls to be. Mildly, but not entirely. There was something there in the misty past that she could not grasp, a shape hidden from her by time.

After some time, she shook her head. "Too much," she said suddenly and even more quietly than before. "Too much reliance on a gambit. This opponent is Fae," she added after a moment. Her distrust of their kith and kin was complete. And perhaps they had impressed upon her over interminable years that their wiles and slyness was a cut above that of any other people she had seen. She had watched others laid low by their own assurances.

She was determined to never return to their thrall. Letta and Leas would not lead her back to that hell again, nor would she allow them to suffer the same as she had for all of those years. "'ware overconfidence in thy trade," she cautioned. "The knife-eared foe is tricksome and dangerous. But they need not be particularly tricksome. Many the tale of confidence turned to woe..."

Her steps slowed. The stink had returned, the greasy feeling in the air that was not really a smell or a feeling at all. Her skin itched in the presence of whatever it was, her dark eyes narrowing as she observed her surroundings. She did not look to see if either companion had noted it.

A hand fell to smooth leather wrapped hilt.

"I am acutely aware of how many different fae there are," she replied with a shudder of disgust. There might have been a thread of dread buried in there somewhere, too. "But this is my first hunt. I will let those who know the work take the lead."

Not aligned with the values of Jura. Whatever that meant. She wasn't sure who or what Jura was, other than that these two believed in it as some deity or leader. Very likely a god or goddess; Ruslan had spoken of Jura as well in the same reverent way. She was very sure, though, that the Fae only aligned with their own enigmatic values. Half the time, those seemed to be tormenting mortals to see how far they could be pushed before they...

...broke.

She gripped the handle of her blade hard enough for her knuckles to turn white. "It is here, and near. The rot of its cruel heart fouls the air," she answered. Her eyes crawled over the scenery, searching. She did not ask where Leas was headed to. A warrior she might not be, but a fool she definitely wasn't. Fools did not survive as a mortal among the dispassionate eternal beauty of the high fae.

When she spoke next, her words were even lower and carried an edge. An edge of anger, not of fear. "The foul trickster watches us. I can feel it trying to...to..." Magic. It was the greasy and unclean feel of ley magic that she sensed. But it was coming from everywhere at once. Almost as if-

They were standing right next to it. "It is here, concealed by a glamour!" she said.

The sound of steel being drawn rang out in the deepening gloom.

She nodded to Letta. "I will not draw steel unless I absolutely must," she answered. She wasn't a warrior, after all. That was Leas and Letta's bailiwick. She was a songstress and a storyteller that had simply been through and seen too much. Her mettle was sufficient to still be alive.

It was her wits that kept her in one piece.

She accepted the sachet from Letta and did as she was bid, walking the perimeter of the area with one eyes to the shadows. There was a readiness in her gait, an attentiveness that came from long practice. She had spent many, many years in the company of the fair folk. Perhaps that was what had gifted - or cursed - her with the ability to see and smell and sense things that were not strictly speaking tangible.

"Do not let this creature take me. I will not go back without one hell of a fight. I will not go back alive."