Private Tales A Fallen Knight

[Finn]

She frowned, putting down the rope. Blue eyes shifted between the grimace on his face and the way his body slumped back down. She couldn't help the instinct to shy away from his sudden movement.

"Safer here than anywhere else right now. They haven't found this cave yet."

She gathered the rope and put it back in the basket.

"Doubt you could get very far anyway," her eyes averted from his face whenever she spoke. "There's some bread in that pack by your feet. Some blankets there. You should rest."

 

[Talus]

He frowned. "Yet."

That was the operative word.

She was right though. Talus didn't want to admit it, but he could hardly stand up, much less get anywhere else. His fingers tightened slightly and he glanced down at the bag she had pointed out by his feet.

His stomach was in fact growling, but eating was the last thing on his mind at the moment.

"Who are you anyway?" He asked with a frown. "Some sort of...witch?"

Talus didn't know a better word for what he was looking for.

 

[Finn]

Head jerked up at his accusation. Crisp eyes widened. A small snort left her nose.

"Ww-hat? No. Heh." Bony-shoulders shrugged. Fingers came up to tuck that blonde hair behind one ear. Button-nose sniffed.

"Name is Finn," her expression changed to wariness. "I just...like to travel." She pointed one end of a hammer in his direction. "Who are you, besides Anirian emmissary whats-it?"

 

[Talus]

He raised an eyebrow at the idea of her 'traveling'. Most people in Arethil didn't go beyond their village, a fact that Talus was keenly aware of.

"My name is Talus." The young Dreadlord before slowly continuing.

"I'm a..." He trailed off for just a few seconds, then quickly added. "Guard."

Talus knew that he looked young, mostly because he was young. Yet the story was believable enough. "Was my first assignment."

He lied.

 

[Finn]

“Hmm. Seems like a rough first assignment to me. How’d you end up being a guard for them?”

Finn pulled one of the glow worm jars closer.

Setting the hammer down, she took up a piece of charcoal and began scribbling on a piece of parchment. Hand was steady as she went, drawing precise lines.

 

[Talus]

He observed her for a moment before giving a rather truthful answer. "Actually it was a pretty easy assignment."

Talus had always enjoyed the missions where he got to travel, especially those where he didn't actually have to kill anyone. This whole assignment was supposed to have been that. Just a journey to Belgrath, nothing more.

"Got to sit on a ship for a few weeks, food was good." He shrugged. "Just hit a bit of bad luck."

That was the understatement of the year. "I think they just picked me because nobody else wanted to go."

Likely another truth.

 

[Finn]

Finn blinked over at him.

Hand was mid stroke with the charcoal. Brows furrowed. A thoughtful look crossed the young inventor’s face.

“They let you choose your assignments? They don’t give you orders?”

 

[Talus]

"Not choose so much." He told her. "I just volunteered and no one else wanted to go."

A shrug rolled over his shoulders. "Nobles from Vel Anir aren't usually the kindest."

The Ambassador hadn't exactly been a pleasant man. He'd been stuck up, mean, and generally speaking lazy. Yet compared to some of the Proctors he had practically been a glowing example of what Humanity could bring to the table.

Plus, the ship beat the Academy any day.

 

[Finn]

"I've never really met any nobles," she admitted quietly. The way Kellen talked about them, though. She knew there probably weren't a lot of 'good' ones out there. That man had a vengeance for the upper class. Or didn't think there should be separating classes at all.

"So it wasn't the traveling part that none of the other guards wanted to do? They just didn't want to be around the noble. Ironic since now that part of the equation is gone."

Finn realized a little too late what she'd said and that it could be insensitive.

"Sorry," she stammered, blues averting back to her work.

"I'm not really around people that much."

 

[Talus]

He shrugged. "He wasn't exactly my friend."

Some might have thought that callous, but he had dealt death since he was a boy. What was the death of one Noble? Not even an important one at that.

He studied her for a moment.

"Is that why you're out here?" Talus asked. "Escaping civilization?"

She wasn't a dwarf, and she didn't exactly seem like a tribal either. He very much doubted that she was from around here.

 

[Finn]

Fingers released the charcoal. Hand pushed against her nose, spreading a black streak cross her face. If she noticed what she'd done, she didn't show it.

"No," lifting the piece of parchment, she gave it a silent nod before rolling it back up, stuffing it into a satchel.

"I like cities. They just don't give me enough space for...," voice trailed off. There was no way in hell she was showing him her balloon 'ship.'

"I told you. I'm just traveling." Thin shoulders shrugged. "You should get some rest. Sleep even? Though, you don't seem that bothered by death. You around it a lot?"

 

[Talus]

For a moment Talus didn't quite know how to answer the question. The obvious answer was to just say yes, but given that he was so young that might just raise an odd alarm in the back of her head. He frowned a moment.

"More than I'd like." He said finally.

It did not seem that she knew much about Vel Anir, at least not culturally. That worked to his advantage at the very least.

"Things have been rough lately." He said with a shrug. "The Guard never has cared much about its rank and file."

 

[Finn]

"Hmm." A quiet response from a quiet girl.

She stood and walked to the entrance of the cave, looking out. A glance back in his direction, he was lit partially by the glow-worm jars. She was lit by the waning light from the dwindling day outside.

She'd not had an easy life either. She'd been around death plenty - just not the same kind of battles. Not with armies and governments. More from knives and power plays.

Starvation.

Fist-fights.

Maybe tonight was a good night to move on. She'd wait for Talus to fall asleep and leave him enough food and supplies to get down the mountain. She told herself he'd be fine.

 

[Talus]

Talus watched her quietly, frowning for a few moments as he tried to gain a little bit of insight into the strange woman that had rescued him.

She seemed...

Odd. That was the best way to put it. Like she wasn't entirely sure that she had done the right thing in pulling him from that battlefield. The thought made him somewhat uncomfortable. She didn't seem like the sort to cut a throat, but folk often did not look that way on the outside.

His lips thinned, and fingers drummed gently on his knee. I can't make it out of these mountains on my own.

It was not a thought that he really wanted to have, but he knew it was the truth.

Talus' wounds would take weeks to heal properly, and by then the Orcs would surely find him. He needed to get this girl to help him more.

Somehow.

 

[Finn]

She came back toward him and got out a few blankets. She had her own bedroll in the corner. He'd have to make do with the extra blankets because she didn't have an extra bed roll.

"You should rest," she added again quietly.

Turning her back to the stranger, she began putting coverings over the glow-worm jars. She'd leave one out. She just didn't want to risk giving away their position while they slept. Or rather, she didn't want to risk Talus waking up and seeing what she was doing, either.

 

[Talus]

Talus frowned for a moment, but eventually just nodded.

Back when he had been caught in a Grove he'd used a Rune to keep himself going for days longer than he should have. The idea crossed his mind here, but with the extent of his injuries he knew it would have been foolish.

The Rune likely would have killed him once it was done.

So instead he slid himself from the rock and slowly lowered himself to the ground, leaning against the heavy stone wall.

For a time Talus simply watched the girl, his eyes half lidded as he considered how the hell he was going to get out of here. Eventually he drifted off, too tired to keep himself awake.

 

[Finn]

Sometime later...

Finn rolled awake. Eyes cracked open in the semi-darkness. Talus seemed to be asleep. Moving as quietly as a field mouse, she began collecting the things in the cave. She’d make a first trip to the rolled up air balloon and house ship. She had to get the fire going and inflate it.

It was a good thing it was the dead of night and the moons weren’t full.

What she didn’t know was that the orcs had moved their camp closer and there were two scouts in the area. Soft-booted feet took her past Talus and outside, her gangly-arms full of supplies.

 

[Talus]

It was not the sound of Finn moving that woke up. Not the patter of her feet or the jostling of the supplies in her arms.

It was the drums.

They tore Talus from his rest as surely as a slap to the face would have. The sound was an echo at first, resounding quietly through the mountains and the caverns. A steady thrum that beat within his chest as it reached his ears.

Eyes snapped open, hand immediately snapping to the sword that lay besides him.

His head whipped around, searching for Finn. "Finn?"

He called out quietly.

 

[Finn]

The fire was lit. The canvas balloon was slowly filling up, the fabric blotting out the stars as it rose. There was the sound of a slipping rock behind her. Finn turned in time to see an orc with a spear wave it toward her.

It paused in its downward strike as its head tilted back to look at something it never saw before.

"What sorcery this?" It mumbled, slack-jawed.

Finn screamed.

A sound Talus would hear back in the cave.

 

[Talus]

Talus jumped, or he tried to.

His legs were still protesting, and so was most of his upper body. The cut on his side burned, but somehow he managed to drag himself to his feet. Finn's scream echoed through the cavern, reverberating and thundering again and again.

The blade he had been holding left it's sheath, ringing as he took a step forward and found himself half collapsing.

A curse escaped him, his head shook and he gritted his teeth.

Power welled in his chest, and then suddenly his entire body shifted. An odd ghostly after-image split from Talus' body. It glanced around the entirety of the room, and then suddenly quickly darted out of the cave and towards Finn.

 

[Finn]

Finn's feet dangled in the air as the massive hand of the orc grabbed the collar of her jacket, yanking the small girl up as if she weighted nothing at all. Her hands went around the orc's massive, meaty wrist as he moved her through the air.

"What you make?" He snarled in her face and shook her in front of the balloon.

Finn clenched her teeth. They felt like they were rattling in her skull. "W-w-hat?" She whimpered.

The other orc scout sniffed at the air. "Take her back. Leader will want to see. And if she doesn't talk. We eat." The orc holding her scratched his head and nodded.

"Let me down!" Finn screamed again.

By now the ropes holding her balloon houseboat were beginning to get taught. Soon they would want to lift free entirely.

 

[Talus]

The after image of Talus appeared outside of the cave, lingering at the open like a haunted specter before it spotted the two orcs and Finn.

Her voice echoed down, but the ghost only tilted it's head as though it struggled to hear the words. An odd smoke emanated from every aspect of it, small curling wisps of ethereal nothingness that lingered and then disappeared in the air.

The ghost watched for a brief moment more as the Orc tugged Finn into the air, then it stepped forward.

Within an instant it closed the distance between itself and the three other figures.

Talus' after image, or perhaps foreimage in this case stepped into place behind the Orc holding Finn. It's blade moved upward, and then stabbed through the creatures chest. Instantly the Orc dropped Finn, his face paling and eyes turning an odd pale white as his pupils and iris' lost all color.

He stood for a moment, then collapsed onto the ground.

"Wut?"​

The Other Orc spoke, a look of confusion on his face as he peered from his fallen friend and then glanced at Talus' ghostly form. Rage fell on his expression, but a quick swipe of a ghostly blade saw him afflicted with the same pallor his friend had fallen to.

 

[Finn]

She hit the rocks and snow hard, an oomph leaving her lips. She barely had time to roll out of the way to miss the orc's body crashing down. She scrambled back, elbows supporting her as she looked up, on her back. Chest heaved, pale eyes darting from the two dead orcs and up to Talus.

He was a ghost?!

She gulped. Inquisitive mind began to eclipse her fear.

"How," voice trembled. She grit her teeth to stop from shaking. "How're you doing that?" The drums sounded in the distance. "We have to go!"

 

[Talus]

The ghost stood there in silence, slowly turning it's head as if attempting to hear her.

Then it suddenly snapped backwards. In an odd, almost rush, the Ghost was suddenly whisked away towards the Cavern. It was not quite instantaneous, though as the ghost moved following it with one's eyes would have been impossible.

Back in the cavern Talus lay against the rock wall, his body as limp as a sausage pulled out in the middle of an Academy Archive.

He did not move an inch, not until the ghost suddenly rushed back into his physical form. The instant the ghost touched him his eyes snapped open. Both of them were an odd pale white, his skin having lost almost all color. A gasp tore through his lungs.

"Holy fuck." The apprentice breathed in panic.

 

[Finn]

The girl blinked and he was gone. Head shook. If it wasn’t the orc bodies lying motionless on the ground, she’d believe that she imagined all this. Gloved palms pushed herself to her feet. Still in shock, she stumbled back down to the cave entrance.

The rope would hold the revving up balloon.

She hoped.

Hand slapped the rocky entrance of the cave as clear blues fell on Talus.

“What ARE you?” Voice squeaked.