Private Tales End This Way

[Raea Stormcrow]

"A moment," she said after he got her back to her unsteady feet. She almost lost the gained ground dropping down to cut a piece of cloth from under the dead deserters armor, and got to her feet again with some difficulty. She quickly wrapped the strip of cloth round the cut in her arm, whimpering a bit as she tightened it down and tied it off. She sheathed the blade she had used.

Standing there, looking like a drowned rat with water streaming down her shivering frame.

I can't...keep going, she thought to herself. Exhaustion lay across her like a lead blanket, threatening to drag her down. Instead of giving in to the desire to simply lay down in the mud and go to sleep, to let it slip away...she moved in the direction of the fighting. The movements lacked confidence and grace, lacked any strength - things done out of necessity, not pleasure or desire.

"Lead...the way," she said quietly. "You have the bow, not I," she added.

 

[Elliot Aldmar]

For a woman beset with illness, Raea was performing admirably. Not an insignificant number of mercenaries, hardy men all, boasted of their endurance to the elements, and during fair days chided their fellows for bringing along, and entertaining the thought of using, cold weather gear. Norden mercenaries, hailing from the far northeast, actually had the acclimatization to back up their claims. Yet even they, should they be careless enough, and the conditions treacherous enough, could and did fall victim to the cold's grasp. Some even died because of it.

Yet here Raea stood. Persisting against adversity both manmade and of the elements. A universal truth: There was no right to live. Life had to be purchased, every day, with effort that ranged from routine and mundane to perilous and extraordinary.

She applied a makeshift dressing to her wound, and Elliot raised a fifth Skeletal Warrior from the fresh corpse. With so many now, individual direction would suffer, but Elliot could command them well enough as a group.

Raea started moving, and Elliot came up alongside her.

"Just a little further. You can do this," he said, leaning into her peripheral vision, his gaze and expression one of encouragement.

* * * * *​

Tavish surveyed the villagers. They weren't fighters, they were a rabble with pitchforks, shovels, hoes, and whatever else lay close at hand to be repurposed into weapons. This was supposed to be a straightforward plan: ambush the mercenaries tailing them, "resupply" before leaving the hamlet, and continue on into Liadain at large. Now it seemed like more than half of his boys were dead or missing. What the hell had inspired these simple folk to resist, when they could have just stood aside and things would've been easier for everybody?

"Good," Tavish called out to the small group of hesitating villagers, some of whom were dropping their weapons as ordered. He had nine men with him, but they'd be more than enough to take these villagers if they tried anything. "Now. Here's what's going to happen next. You're all going to bring--"

An arrow struck the man tending to the wounded deserter, lodging into the thick of his bicep. The ad hoc medic howled, his ministrations to the wounded deserter interrupted. Injured, but not slain.

"Who the fuck shot the arrow!?" Tavish shouted.

"There!" One of the deserters pointed, rainwater dripping from his extended arm and finger.

A dark elf dropped down from a rooftop, disappearing between a granary and a house. The villagers passed urgent and excited glances among one another.

Tavish pointed one of his swords toward the crowd. "Don't you do it!"

Raea Stormcrow

 

[Raea Stormcrow]

Her pulse pounded in her head, thunderous and driving knives into her brain with every pulse. She should have been dead already. By blade or by illness, there was no reason that she still moved - that she yet draw ragged, strained breath - and yet, here she was. Elliot said she could do this, but she doubted herself too greatly to believe those lies.

And yet...

The plan should have been purest idiocy, and yet the deserters were not nearly as smart as she had originally given them credit for. What they were about to attempt, her and the drow, was essentially the same thing that had downed five of these men already. Simple though it was, divide and conquer was effective, and being able to choose your ground to fight on another sound strategy.

Breath rattling, world swimming, she waited. The raised squadron stood before her, and as Elliot rounded the corner, they started forward. This time, she was not going to be at the forefront. This time, she was going to strike from the side, as Elliot struck from another side.

Villagers to the rear, the two of them flanking, and the skeletal warriors to draw their attention and hold it just long enough...

 

[Elliot Aldmar]

Elliot rounded the corner. Took up his ambush spot, hiding, laying in wait. Across the pathway Raea hid as well. He met eyes with her, and gave her a quick nod and a thumbs up. The first thing the deserters would see upon rounding that same corner would be the wall of Skeletal Warriors waiting for them--certainly not the lone fighter they assumed it to be.

The deserters came around the corner. It was more than Elliot was expecting. They'd come as a full group this time--not what he and Raea were hoping for. Yet all ten of them skidded to a halt, one of them slipping and falling onto his ass in the mud. A few of them yelped in surprise, a few more shouted alarmed curses.

Tavish, wary and aghast, bellowed loudly, "The hell is this!?"

"IT'S THE UNDEAD!" one of the deserters yelled, his face pale with fear, his morale close to breaking.

Elliot gave the command for his Warriors to march forward, and in terrifying tandem they did. A couple of the deserters lost their nerve, turning around on the slippery ground and stumbling back toward the main road, their will to fight broken. The rest of the deserters entered combat with the Skeletons.

Elliot emerged from his hiding spot, drawing his Bow and waiting for a clear shot from behind the line of his Warriors. He crouched some, and shot his arrow through the open ribcage of a Skeleton, puncturing the leather jerkin of a deserter, who grunted and stumbled back wounded.

"Villagers!" Elliot shouted. "Now or never!"

To their credit, the group of villagers--regular rural folk with no combat experience and little nerve for it--put together the situation with admirable quickness. Mayhap the once-timid keeper in the general store was some assistance with this. Regardless, with invigorating cries they flocked from the main road and crashed into the rear of the deserters. Skeletons, Elliot and Raea on one side, the villagers on the other, pinned in by walls on the flanks, the deserters were surrounded. And panicking.

Elliot gave a confident smile to Raea.

Then drew one of his daggers and joined the fray. If a Skeleton fell, Elliot could plug the hole. They had them, and no opportunity should be allowed for the deserters to elude their defeat.

Raea Stormcrow

 

[Raea Stormcrow]

She did not return the smile. Born weary, on the edge of her ability to keep her feet, everything that followed was a mere necessity. Others might have enjoyed meting out justice as they did, but for her it was less than work. Less than drudgery; she was barely aware of the world around her at all. Only that part that stood before her, and maybe some parts swimming in an out of her awareness as she pushed herself onward.

Far beyond her limits.

There was no elegance in this. There was no style, and certainly no confidence. Elliot went to his work like what he was: a workman, neither gleeful of the job nor proud, simply doing what he was paid to do. Similar, she went to the work as well. The measured cut and thrust she had been capable of only half an hour gone was no more; every cut almost brought her to her knees, every step was a war between gravity, the weight of her own clothes, and the enemies she faced.

A skeletal warrior clipped one man across the face, dented the faceguard he wore in until it split a cheek. The blow of his own weapon shattered the skull of the undead automata, neither slowing nor greatly impairing its ability to fight. The fellow went down to a blow a moment later, shattering the unfeeling thing from clavicle to pelvis, neatly cutting it in twain. The deserter struggled to get back to his feet, but one of the villagers took the opportunity offered to drive a hay hook into the side of his head, and he went down spasming.

The villager caught a vicious backhand blow from one of the other deserters, sending a welter of blood airborn as the young woman holding the hook went down, her bosom sliced clean through, broken ribs standing stark in a gory mess that immediately soaked her dress.

Raea saw it, and winced. Stepped forward, and with inelegant aim, tried to off the fellow that had down the deed. What followed was the most unsightly swordplay ever, with her staggering from every one of her own attacks as much as from her defense from his. The weapon in her hand bent under the force of one vicious overhand blow, which surprised both the nameless soldier and herself. The weapon had held, she hadn't been knocked down, and he was doubly surprised when she gracelessly spun and half severed his neck.

She let the weapon slip from her hands. It was useless, now, damaged as it was. She cast round in the rain and the mud for another weapon, completely unaware that the fighting was already over; no matter how well trained, there was never any hope for the deserters once the villagers had joined the fray. One soldier, one strange vagabond, five of their own raised companions, and a dozen or so country folk were too many for ten men, caught between the hammer and the anvil, to handle.

And yet, the soaked woman still looked for a weapon frantically, as though the fighting were not yet done. As though the bodies she stepped round were not the very same people she had set out to help, to save from the depredations of the other bodies lying round. Her world had shrunk to a very narrow tunnel, a buzz low in her ears that fair drowned out the sound of the rain.

Staggering. Stumbling. Searching without real purpose, heedless of all round.

 

[Elliot Aldmar]

Surrounded, the deserters fell one-by-one. Most fought through their panic, taking down a couple of the villagers and a few of the Skeletal Warriors with them. Elliot was able to lunge in at the perfect opportunity, when Tavish had to deflect two separate pitchforks from the villagers. He stabbed Tavish in the back, ramming the dagger in up to the crossguard, twisting, and pulling it out.

When Tavish fell, the deserters who plagued the hamlet were no more. An inevitable cheer and raised weapons went up among the villagers. Some of their number, related to those who had fallen, dropped down and wept over their loved ones.

Elliot quickly dispelled his remaining few Skeletal Warriors, each falling into inanimate piles of bone. Good to do it now, while the villagers were otherwise distracted in jubilation or sorrow. Necromancy was far from welcome in rural hamlets or elsewhere. Best they have the opportunity to forget about it, or at least look the other way.

Elliot sheathed his dagger. Strung his Bow across his back.

Raea was down on the ground, pawing around in the mud and the among the fallen and their discarded items, her own rapier gone from her possession. This she did with an unmistakable urgency.

Elliot dropped down quickly. Reached out and put a firm hand to her shoulder.

"It's over," he said. "It's over."

A small smile. Rainwater dribbled down from his hair, down the sides of his nose, off of his chin. With the excitement and the immediacy of the situation finished, the elements were creeping up again into consciousness, making themselves known.

"Those weren't good odds. Well done."

Raea Stormcrow

 

[Raea Stormcrow]

The world swam round her, and the touch of her erstwhile companion was scarcely enough to pull her back into the world of the living. No, she 'lived' in a world halfway between waking and dream. Body steaming, the intense heat of fever was no match for the continuing rain.

She recoiled slightly at his touch, and shook her head. "You're...you're not right," she said suddenly. Her words were slurred as though she was drunk, and the eyes she turned on him were bright and glassy and - most importantly - seemed to see right through him. She tried to stand, but instead she fell and landed on her rump, almost comically. The ground squelched beneath her. "I'll be fine, you'll...see," she said.

Not talking to Elliot at all. No, she was talking to a spectral shape behind him and to the right. She could almost see them there, tall and beautiful and shining with all the bright light of the world.

Elliot's words remained in the air, and no answer or response was forthcoming.

Trying to get to her feet again, her feeble efforts netted no gain. "You needn't worry, Mother," she said, and stopped trying to rise. Shivered, stared beyond Elliot with flushed face and cold water running down her cheeks and back.

 

[Elliot Aldmar]

Everyone had an endpoint. With enough privation, even the mightiest souls succumbed. Nature could not be bested in this regard.

Raea was at her endpoint now. Having started from an already unenviable position, struck by the cold's grasp and laden with illness, necessity bid her to push through and with that necessity now gone so too departed the strength of its impetus. Exhausted, wounded, sick, the fever which ailed her reclaimed its dominion, and it likely would not be supplanted again until it broke.

She had trouble standing, was slipping from coherency, and the steam evidenced that the heat of the fever was raging.

Elliot scooped her up in his arms and stood. A mild surprise at how easy it was. She was even lighter than he had expected, and his arms still coursed with the high of the battle, masking what shivering fatigue would beset him once the rush faded.

He spoke to one of the jubilant villagers.

"Where's your inn?"

"What?" The villager leaned closer, hand cupping his ear. The cheers and giddy, victorious talk was quite loud.

"Where's your inn? You have an inn. Where is it."

"Oh." The man pointed in the direction. "Down the main road through town. On the right. It's small but you can't miss it."

Elliot proceeded on abruptly from the gathering of villagers. He had to take great care with his steps down the road, avoid the worst of the mud and test his weight and balance with nearly every step. It made for slow going, but the last thing he wanted was to take a spill and make matters worse.

Raea was a warrior. One who had earned Elliot's respect. Where he had seen nothing but a loss here in this hamlet, she'd seen a path to victory.

He'd see her returned to health. On that he was committed. His other obligations, his plans elsewhere, could wait.

Raea Stormcrow

 

[Raea Stormcrow]

Being picked up happened to someone else. She sagged in his arms like a rag doll, head lolling back. For all that she was awake - for lack of a better term - she seemed blissfully unaware of the manhandling. Her mind had withdrawn to some other place, some other time. A happier one? It was hard to tell from the outside.

"They are...not right," she whispered softly even as Elliot asked his questions of the villagers. "I'll..I'll get better s-soon. You'll see, mother..."

In her mind, painted in virulent color and painful detail, she was in the bedroom. The bedroom, the one she spent weeks at a time in. Windows shut, curtains drawn, the sickly scent of unwashed body - sweat and an indescribable odor of unwellness - the girl lay out on the bed, bedding drawn up over her chest. The physician had just left, and her mother stood in the door.

Face drawn, haggard; eyes underscored by dark circles, the flesh melting from her body as worry and sorrow consumed her from the inside out. Sorrow? Grief. Their only child, doomed. No amount of money would see them through this terrible truth. It was a bitter thing to realize, that all the money in the world would not see their daughter live so much as one more day.

Her expiration date had been set. In truth, it was the same for all - but she was fourteen, and should have had another fifty or sixty years. Her parents should have preceded her in death.

No thing is worse to a parent than outliving their children.

"Don't...don't cry...," she whispered. The words were becoming fainter with every step, as if she were slipping further and further away. Apt, that; the punishing heat of her body might have been welcome by Elliot, cold and wet as he was, but it would kill her as surely as being cut down by the blades of the men she had just killed. All it took was time.

An ignoble death. Better to go with blade in hand, fighting for a righteous cause, than melting away in a bed, unseen by the uncaring world.

"...my own...," she breathed ever so faintly. "...my ... own way ... out ... ..."

What ever animation had been in her before then, she became utterly dead weight in the arms of the drow. She yet breathed, but she stirred not one hair beyond that.

 

[Elliot Aldmar]

Elliot shouldered open the door to the inn--this more roughly than he had intended. He saw the innkeeper, frightened by the door's abrupt opening, duck down behind his counter in a hurry.

"It's alright," Elliot said. "I'm not one of the deserters."

He stepped inside, his muddy boots making a wet sloshing and squishing sound with each step. Rainwater dribbled ceaselessly from his both his and Raea's bodies, sprinkling the floor with a march of soft dripping patters. The two of them looked every bit the forsaken mess they appeared to be, this very much reflected in the innkeeper's shocked grimace as he warily stood back up.

Elliot crossed the gap of the lobby and moved straight toward the fire in the hearth. Other than the innkeeper and his wife, who peeked cautiously out from a storeroom behind the counter, there was no one else in the common room. There was a dead body by one of the front windows--the bastard Raea had said she slew.

He kneeled down and as he set Raea on the floor nearest to the hearth he asked, "How much does it cost for a warm bath?"

The husband innkeeper stammered for his words, but the wife spoke up for them, "You...you killed those men who were aiming to plunder our town?"

Elliot took off his filthy gloves and wiped rainwater from his face. "Yes. They're dead. How much for two warm baths?"

The husband, after releasing a breath he seemed to be holding in for a decade, said, "Free. Free, for the two of you. It's the least we could do. I'll go draw the water."

Elliot nodded. "Quickly. Please." The wife had come over to have a closer look at Raea, and Elliot reached up and took a clean cloth from her apron and wiped blood and grime and rainwater from Raea's face.

"She's been sick as a dog ever since she came here yesterday," the wife said, a note of pity in her voice. "Astra bless us, I can't imagine doing all that fighting whilst stricken by the elements."

He glanced up to the woman. "We wouldn't be having this conversation if she hadn't."

The cold and the exertion hadn't done Raea any favors. What rest she may have gotten while at this inn had all crumbled to nothing, and the fever, with all its delirium, had come roaring back. Readily so. Elliot had caught some of what she had to say. It was hard to say whether it was the fever talking or something of note: whether she was prone to such illnesses and her mother could stand as witness to this fact.

Right now though, what mattered was keeping her warm, getting her cleaned up and in clean clothes, and then getting her to bed. Somewhere in there he could see about applying a proper dressing to her wound and investigating whether someone in the hamlet had any small remedies for her symptoms.

Raea Stormcrow

 

[Raea Stormcrow]

Murmuring continued without cease, but the words soon lost any sense of intelligability. She was deep into the dusky twilight of the fever, and seemed completely unaware of the world round her. Might have been just as well, all things considered.

Things happened. She surfaced every now and again, a single ray of consciousness quickly swallowed by senseless delirium. Bleary, blurry, with the voices of those round her muted and indistinct. She heard Elliot speak, but it was as thought she were underwater and he were speaking another language. Other people, some near and some far, spoke in tongues.

It was terrifying when she had the capability of any comprehension of what went on around her. Mystifying when her thoughts could not string themselves together, witnessing them disrobing her pale body. She was blessedly senseless when Elliot tended to the vicious laceration on her arm, to the various cuts and bruised that covered her from head to toe. Being bathed by strangers would certainly have mortified her, had she known.

But she didn't.

She didn't know anything save a few scraps of echoing conversation and the heat and the cold of chills and fever, and it was a week and a half before the fever broke.

***

The light that streamed in was the light of morning, and silence hung heavily on the air. The inn, such as it was, did not host many patrons at the best of times, and these were not they.

Raea lie in bed, a bed drenched with her own sweat. She felt as weak as a newborn kitten, but for the first time in a long time she was entirely lucid. Every bone in her body ached, from every sweat-soaked strand of hair to her toes. Especially her arm - she had fuzzy memories of the fighting, and remembered being gifted a vicious wound for her efforts.

She also remembered a darker skinned fellow. A companion during the fighting, a ghostly, hazy companion. The events of the day in question were a mystery to her; it felt as though a piece of her life had been cut away and rubbed in the mud (apt), and then hastily and rudely sewn back into the hole.

She sat up. Fought against the swimming sensation in her head, the room spinning; old problems, these, old friends or enemies as the case might be. Despite nearly two weeks without having had a solid meal, she had lost remarkably little weight. Probably for the best. Wasn't much to lose to begin with, and if she lost too much she would have the flat chest and narrow hips of a boy. Letting the blankets pool at her waist, wrinkling her nose at the faint smell of stale sweat, she stared dully at the wall. She would need to get up, and soon.

 

[Elliot Aldmar]

Not too long after Raea had sat up, the door to her room opened quietly. Elliot entered with a bundle of fresh folded sheets in his arms. He was without his weapons and his armor, wearing just his pants, gloves, and sleeveless undershirt. His hair, as well, he had tied behind his head in a knot.

He noticed with a brief flicker of surprise that Raea was not only awake, but sitting up. He stood there for a moment simply taking in the sight. After a close two weeks of bedridden stillness, it had become novel to see that Raea was again up and moving. Novel, that her eyes were open.

Elliot placed the sheets on the endtable beside the door. Looked to her.

"You must be famished."

Outside, birdsong continued to filter in from the nearby trees.

Raea Stormcrow

 

[Raea Stormcrow]

Her thoughts moved sluggishly. She watched the door open, an stared uncomprehendingly as the stranger walked in. Only some flicker of fragmented memory brought any familiarity of the fellow at all - the mud, blood, rain-streaked face wrought by the uncertainty of a fight that could not be won.

She sat in silence for a moment, parsing through his words. "A little," she said at last. The truth was, she did not eat very often at all, even in the best of times. In the worst, she had gone through periods like this without much loss of weight or strength. Physicians had commented on it, and never been able to fully explain how.

"How long?" She stared at him, eyes darkly underscored. Who are you, she wanted to ask. Refrained from it, as he had likely told her once and she just needed to remember. There was a murky period in the recent past that she could recall very little from. This man and his name were part of it, as well as this room. A look to an aching arm and a cleanly bandaged wound - some flicker of memory about a fight - was also part of it.

 

[Elliot Aldmar]

"Twelve days," Elliot said.

He placed a hand down on the endtable with the sheets upon it. Leaned casually on it as he went into recounting the interim time between that rain-slogged battle and now.

"Oren and Fabiola Peligrade, the innkeepers, were content with allowing you to stay for as long as necessary. Free of charge. You and I both." He shrugged, a slight gesture. "Even so, I couldn't just be idle. I earned my keep regardless. Helped out around town and in the inn wherever an extra hand was needed." He pointed to the knot of hair behind his head and smiled slightly. "Fabiola prefers everyone in her kitchen wear long hair in this manner when preparing food."

A beat passed. The smile faded. Grim forthrightness came through in his tone.

"When I said that Oren and Fabiola were content with letting you stay as long as necessary...after the first week, they no longer thought it would be until you recovered. They thought it would be until you died."

He let that hang in the air.

"You got lucky, Raea."

Raea Stormcrow

 

[Raea Stormcrow]

...lucky...

She did not know if she agreed with that sentiment or not. Sometimes, when things were particularly bad, she wished for the end to come. The pain and the suffering would finally melt away, and she would know the bliss of the world that came after. And sometimes it was only the mealy-mouthed nod to the ephemeral gods or goddesses of the world, never named and never worshiped, that kept her from ending it on her own.

She smiled instead of voicing those inner thoughts. "I've no desire to pass beyond," she said slowly and deliberately, picking each word as though she were tottering through them. She flicked a strand of sweat-grimed hair from her face absently, a thing that presented unexpected effort. "But when I do, I hope it to be a way of my own choosing," she said.

Wasn't any need to speak of the why of it; the fact that she had chosen to fight for these people that she did not even know, alongside a stranger who could have betrayed her at any time, was good enough. For her, anyway; it was likely Elliot would not understand. Even if he had the full picture, which she was not about to go into unless pressed.

She wanted no pity. Pity was for weak people, and she would not let herself be weak. Just because she was of privileged upbringing did not mean that she had to act like all the rich girls did.

After all, most did not get to live two lives. She had died once already; her birthname buried and gone. How long until the second - and more permanent - death?

She plucked at her sheets with more irritation than strength. "You've been busy. And..." She paused, and let out a long breath. "And I...I don't remember too much of...whatever it was I did. I fought, but..." But that was all she could remember. Misery and desperation, but the details were hazed.

 

[Elliot Aldmar]

A way of her own choosing. It was an admirable statement, close in nature to what the teachings of the Dreng'toth. Theirs was a focus on the internal setting rather than the external. One could not truly control when death came, be it in bed from illness or out in some mud-slicked streets engaged in a battle, but one could always control how one made use of the impression. The impression of imminent death could be allowed to inspire despair, terror, grief, all manner of things unseemly to the sound mind. Or, as the Dreng'toth taught, one could face death with purest contentment. That capacity of choice, ultimate in its freedom, was always under one's power.

Such teachings had tempered the wild, undisciplined man Elliot had once been. He who was wedded to his miserable circumstances in Dornoch, who cherished rather than forsook his anger and his resentment, who lashed out in ways subservient to the capricious tides of these emotions like an obedient slave.

I fought, but...

Elliot nodded. "You pushed yourself to the very edge of your limit." A casual swing of his open palm indicating the whole of the hamlet. "For the sake of the people here. I reckoned, given the disadvantage, that it was not possible to best the deserters."

He stared at her, consideration playing out in subtle, tiny movements of his eyes.

"You changed my mind."

After a moment, Elliot reached back and pulled his hair loose of the knot and it flowed freely down behind his shoulders. He stepped forward and sat on the side of the bed, looking over to Raea.

"The mercenary company I was with had a contract for the elimination of those men. I've yet to return to Alliria to collect the payment."

The implication had a beat to settle in, before Elliot said it outright.

"You deserve half."

Raea Stormcrow

 

[Raea Stormcrow]

She looked down, some trace of pain flitting across her face. Not physical pain, although there was plenty of that. She shook her head slowly. "I have no need of money," she said slowly, one word at a time. "And even if I did...I will not go back h-," she began, and shook her head angrily at the slip. "Back to Alliria, to get it," she finished.

She hadn't tried to change his mind. She hadn't tried to do anything other than give those that lived here a chance to continue living, and not under the boot of the hooligans that had encamped in their town. Fragmented visions of dead villagers flashed through her mind, sacrifices on the altar of their own salvation. Their losses hurt her, but not very deeply; they had to stand up for themselves to some degree or another.

She had given them the steel of her spine to steady them. And, somehow, came through the other side still alive.

"Take my half and give it to someone that needs it," she said, and lay back on the bed, staring at the ceiling. "I have all the coin I need already," she added. And all the coin in the world will not buy me another day of life. Money is worthless beyond basic necessities. She did not speak those words, of course. She didn't want money, and she didn't want pity, either. Sympathy and pity and sorrow had been what her life had been steeped in for the past several years and that, much like her desire to go and see the world, had been what pushed her away from home.

"Maybe to the family of the men these scoundrels killed," she said.

 

[Elliot Aldmar]

Elliot listened to her answer, a mild flash of surprise in his eyes. Surprise and a feeling of kinship. Were it not for the cause he had undertaken, coin would likewise have held no value to him. He didn't know what had fostered this resolution in her--she might say in her own time--but he was delighted to hear it nonetheless.
And she did, right then and there. Abundance, so it was. Curious, though, for in Elliot's experience it was especially those who had such an abundance of wealth who coveted more of it. Contentment, from the most destitute mercenary up to the wealthiest noble, was so rare that it might well be a thing of myth. The question was moved back a step, then: she had all the coin she needed, but why she did not desire more, as was most often the case, remained unanswered.

Give it...to the family of the men these scoundrels killed.

Elliot gave a deep nod. "I will. You have my word."

Morning birdsong filled the moment in-between.

"Where did you learn to fight like that?"

A rapier was an uncommon weapon. One that was not simply picked up and wielded with any degree of effectiveness by untrained hands.

And yet, more than her expertise with steel, it was her will to fight that had impressed Elliot the most. From where had it come?

Raea Stormcrow

 

[Raea Stormcrow]

"Tutors," she said succinctly. She shook her head tiredly. "The best the realm could offer. Mother did not approve, of course...but could hardly stop me." She laughed, a rasping thing out of keeping with her youthful features. What her father had thought of the whole thing she could not speak. It might break her heart to repeat those words again.

"I was awful at first, like anyone else. But eventually, after a few years, it became apparent I was a natural with it." It wasn't as if she had much else to do. They could teach her all the things needed to run a business, to take over for them when they went into retirement or passed away...but what was the point?

What was the point? Her heart twisted briefly, and maybe some fleeting glimpse of the anguish crossed her features, unwelcome and unwanted. She did as she always did when the looming inevitability threatened to break her.

Fought her way past it.

"Always wanted to learn the short sword," she said offhandedly. Not very convincingly, but almost. Almost. "Too heavy. I am...I am not very strong," she added, holding up a thin arm by way of evidence. It looked a miracle that she could even lift a rapier, let alone anything else. "Thankfully, the rapier is less about brute strength and more about finesse and strategy."

Intelligence won a lot of fights, anyway. She also did not mention that the battle in the mud was the second she had ever fought. The second real one; a natural with her chosen weapon did not do her proper justice. Not proper at all.

 

[Elliot Aldmar]

Tutors. Not teachers, mentors, instructors, but tutors. As well, not merely tutors but the best the realm could offer. Such a statement fit right in with what she had said prior, and slowly a more complete picture was emerging.

Her fever had broken, but still the sound of her laugh was troubled, Elliot noticed. A lingering sickness perhaps, the last vestiges.

"That it is," Elliot said, agreeing with her assessment of her chosen weapon. He'd not utilized the rapier to any meaningful extent, but he knew enough about from those who did to know that she spoke true. "And you were a natural. I'll attest to it."

He regarded her for a moment. Thinking.

And then he said, "So you're away from home."

Here was where answers could be most fascinating. Thrust into the fold of those who have made all Arethil their home himself, Elliot always had a keen interest in those who likewise abandoned the lands from which they hailed--the why of it.

"Has your home treated you unsatisfactorily?"

It was not always the case that some injustice or another repulsed a reasonable man or woman from his or her homeland. But often it was.

Raea Stormcrow

 

[Raea Stormcrow]

She barked a ragged laugh at the question, shook her head in negation to it. "No," she said simply. "I love both of my parents,and they me. Am an only child, you see; they always said they wanted a brother or a sister for me but that obviously never happened."

She turned so she could set on the edge of the bed, making sure the shift she wore did not hike up to show anything she didn't want seen, almost as an afterthought.

"I am - technically - wealthy," she said. "Mother and Father run a large business, with overland and blue water trade within most of Arethil." She had been intended to take the reins, one day. That day would never come, though. She did not dwell kn that; the challenge of steering a trading company through the shark infested waters of the business world was appealing to her...but her parents needed to find another successor to their throne.

She looked up at Elliot, thoughts running slow in her head. Before, she had been too fever-addled to consider such complicated things as regrets, but she now wondered. How would he feel if she told him she was dying, and that everything that happened the other day amounted to little more than a selfish desire to make her death mean something? Mean anything, anything at all. She could feign caring about the welfare of people she did not know, but such selfless acts really were not the purview of a rich girl like her.

She could lie to herself, but others would see right through it.

"Of late, my family has been a bit...restraining. You could say this is me opening my wings," and that said with a weak smile.

 

[Elliot Aldmar]

"Opening your wings," Elliot echoed.

If he sounded doubtful--which, he was aware, he might have--he didn't mean it. His experiences with the wealthy had been one-sided enough for him to have a certain grasp of the generalities that could be fairly applied to them. And, in general, those with wealth abhorred its absence. Among the peoples of Arethil seemed to run a common thread with regard to wealth and power, the two being very closely related: that such had the exquisite capacity of spoiling, or outright ruining, those who possessed them.

Raea, however, seemed an exception. A fascinating one. Many who were well-to-do bound themselves to their wealth, made themselves slaves to it even if the life they derived from it was doing nothing but making them miserable. They would rather be sorry wretches locked in their gilded halls than happy freedmen with the whole of the open world available to them.

Raea had made a choice, and committed to it. So much so that she was willing to put her life at hazard for it. And in knowing this Elliot's respect for her only flourished.

If had had indeed sounded doubtful before, the genuine smile which spread hopefully served to counterbalance it. If she wished to speak more of it, Elliot would be glad to hear it.

But. First things.

He reached over and patted Raea's knee. "You must be hungry. If you're up to it, you should come downstairs--Fabiola and I prepared plates of breakfast."

And he added, "If not, I could bring a plate up to you."

Raea Stormcrow

 

[Raea Stormcrow]

"I need to stand," she said simply. Haggard, worn thin and fraying at her edges, she nevertheless pushed herself further, farther. She pushed herself off the bed and tottered a moment, but despite being down and out for so long, she was remarkably steady. Despite being down for so long, she was remarkably not hungry, either.

Some semblance of curiosity was reawakening in her. She could not remember the fighting, still; that would come later, perhaps much later. This man was a hazy recollection...and yet, she remembered pieces of conversations. Perhaps imagined, though; it was quite difficult to say.

She did not know how he would feel about her connection to wealth. Sometimes it made people act in a very specific way towards her. She wasn't so sure they weren't right to feel that way, either. She very likely might have turned out as entitled and spoiled as her peers were it not for...other circumstances. That had kep her grounded, for better or for worse, to the world that most people inhabited.

What of him? What was his past? Who was he?

"I will maybe need help with the stairs," she said as she moved carefully. She felt old, like broken glass ground away in her joints. Internally she laughed at the thought that it was better than most days. "Maybe you could recount what it was I did while I totter about like an invalid," she added.

 

[Elliot Aldmar]

I will maybe need help with the stairs.

"Take my arm if you do," Elliot said. After being bedridden for weeks, hard as it would be, Raea needed to reinvigorate her muscles by moving about under her own power as much as possible. And when she came close to faltering, she needed a shoulder upon which to lean to keep her going.

Perhaps by tomorrow, or even by the evening if all went well, she wouldn't be tottering so.

He walked close by her side as they exited the room, his steps measured by her own.

"It was an awful, muddy, miserable fight," Elliot said as they made progress down the hall. "The deserters ambushed the mercenary company I was riding with, the Grimhounds, and I was the only survivor. You stumbled into the general store down the street, where I was. There was a...generous amount of blood on your dress. You had killed one of them prior, right here in the Peligrades' Inn. I don't suppose that it was easy--you were burning with a fever when you did."

They came to the stairs, and Elliot briefly paused his story, giving Raea a prompting look.

Raea Stormcrow

 

[Raea Stormcrow]

Her weakness was, as ever, a frustration she could do little about. Each step was careful, but she did not tarry about any more than she had to. She pushed herself as hard as she dared - in this, as in all things - for there was little incentive to conserve what she had left to her.

"I do not remember but bits and pieces," she said slowly as she made her way down the hall. "I do not even know how long I had been abed here before they...came." Came, and put his allies to the sword, and abused the residents of this village. "And there should have been a generous amount...just not mine," she added.

She could remember brief flashes of the fighting; the bone-chilling cold, the damp, and the heart-thumping fear of death. That last was a rich joke, of course.

"You get used to dealing with things when they happen often enough," she noted of the difficulty of fighting while wracked by fever. She regarded the stairs distrustfully, but firmed her resolve and began down them - with, perhaps, a fair bit more care than walking down the hallway. She picked her way down carefully, a trifle unsteady but still not taking the offered help. Her independence, as it so happened, was a thing she was keen to maintain. She puffed lightly at the exertion, though.