Private Tales Endirinn

[Skad]

Gruthal, The Blightlands

Thud.

The streets of Gruthal were still as the frigid night air wrapped its winter's claw around the throat of the small trade town. It was an irrelevant sort of place located on the barren east coast of the Blightlands. A place where the locals never tended to leave. Insular, pointless and not worth a damn to those that sought real coin.

A clear, cloudless night left the sky freckled in many wonders as the stars surveyed the scene.

Thud.

A dying woman; slumped against the wall of a hovel. Clad in leather, furs and scar tissue she stared out into the ether, her lone pupil engulfing the otherwise green of her single eye.

With no other soul to be seen, the only sound that echoed through the town was that of rasping, laboured breaths drawn from flame-filled lungs, each one a struggle greater than the last as organs began to gradually slow and fail alongside muscles. She could feel it in her heart, whose time between bloodied beats seemed eternal.

Thud.

Skad had been poisoned.

Abandoned in the streets, the Nordwiir had been left staggering into the night as a shock sensation of paralysis had so suddenly crept into her limbs like malevolent ice. It seemed to happen so swiftly, and yet each second dragged by excruciatingly as if the frost snails had crept into her mind.

The yellow cunts of the town were so craven that they didn't even crawl out of their homes to finish the job by hand.

Her mind, the last vestige of apparent function could only contemplate certain death, as her blessing from the Dark Gods was rendered useless by the underhanded measure of vengeance. She could not evade her mortality without the crimson sacrifice of another, hell, she could no longer slit her own throat and dictate her dying tribute.

Thud.

To die like this, felt like a mockery.

Was this what They had planned? Was this a test? Was it a punishment? Had she not been devoted enough?

No.

Such thoughts were symptoms of creeping poison, spreading seeds of doubt and fear before the end. Those cowards wouldn't rob her of that, not her faith. She was Skad fucking Kin Slayer and she would die here faithful and unburdened by fear. If she was no longer needed upon this earthly plane by her Dark Gods then she would carry their cause into the afterlife. Such was the way of the Nordwiir.

The warrior tried to snarl such sentiment into the night but her face remained still.

It was time.

A darkened figure approached, an unfathomable silhouette caught by deteriorating sight. Haraudur, it must have been. The Dark God of Blood. Her God who she had spilt vast oceans for. She was ready.

Thud.

 

[Brenna]

"You poisoned her?!"

It had been hard not to hear the trouble that had been going on in the town from her trading station at the docks. Gruthal was a long shlep from Farrin but the Northernmost town on the Nordenfiir lands was the closest large trading post to them. Things the villagers couldn't get such as good furs, metal and whisky were regularly imported by then from outside. None of the cadets particularly liked making the trip but Brenna was sick of her town; it somehow felt smaller now she had travelled so far south. The need to move, to roam, was now a constant inside of her that made the bear she shared a body with press against her skin begging for release. So when the opportunity had arisen Brenna had jumped at the chance.

Not that any of the townspeople had been particularly grateful when she had arrived. The gruff people put Farriners to shame with their hatred of outsiders, even a friend. So when she had heard there was trouble with another traveller she hadn't really paid much attention to it. No doubt the stranger would be ruffed up a bit and sent packing with a boxed ear or two. What she hadn't expected was to arrive back to the inn exhausted from a day of work to find the townspeople celebrating having left someone to die a cold and horrid death.

Bre stared at the hunched, greasy looking man across the bar aghast.

"That is not how we do things!" Though her journey south had taught her to speak better it was still in the disjointed manner of someone who hadn't heard words for most of her life and her hands flew with signs alongside her speech.

"She killed-!"

"Then you kill with honour not... not trickery," she pushed herself off the stool and grabbed her mittens from the bar. It took a lot to anger the wheat-haired Nordenfiir but this came close. Without another word she stormed out into the blizzard beyond. Despite the harsh weather her nose didn't let her down; the smell of poison cut through even the crisp coolness of the air. Still it took longer than she wanted to find the hunched figure against the side of one of the huts. She had no idea how she was going to help she just knew she had to try.

Brenna crouched in front of Skad, grimacing against the howling raging wind.

"I want to help."

 

[Skad]

The shadows spoke, imparting soft feminine tones upon Skad's dying ears. The Nordwiir's face remained frozen, incapable of expressing surprise that her God of Blood was in fact, a woman. It made no difference, gender and even species were irrelevant to their deities. The Dark Gods could make themselves known in many forms, even in concept.

<”Haraudur...”>

The voice was gruff, strangled out between rasped breaths in her native tongue. It took a startling amount of effort to even just speak. However, when the Dark Gods granted their mortals a glimpse of presence, one simply had to make that effort.

Skad longed to reach out, to touch upon the divine apparition that was crouched before her but it was an impossibility. Even the sheer power of faith could not dispel the very poison that had rendered her limbs both numb and useless. A cruel irony. An arm's length away from the infinite drinker that she had dedicated her entire being to and yet completely paralysed.

<”Take my blade, God of Blood,”> Skad grunted more through teeth than lips, her tongue now also succumbing to the void, <”let me quench your thirst.”>

There would be no greater death than this.

 

[Brenna]

The wind howled and snatched at the woman's dying words with greedy claws but for Brenna it was not the elements which made it hard to understand her. The words she mouthed looked like words she knew but... not. As though she were seeing them through mud. She hunched her shoulders over and tugged her hood further down to shield her face from another blast of ice and snow. Was it another language or was it her own but slurred with the poison? Either way they couldn't stay out here. The woman hadn't put her blade through her so she took that as agreement to her offered help.

She gave a firm nod and with surprising tenderness drew the woman close to her as though she were embracing a friend. Despite her willowy form and her short stature for one of her kind, Bre still had the strength of her people. With a soft grunt she lifted the Nordenwiir over her shoulder and got to her feet.

The hut she was using during her stay was a little further out than most of the rest on account of her being an outsider but with the size of the town that still only meant a short walk. With her arms full of the woman she kicked open her door and followed the raging wind inside, struggling to close it behind her. If there had been any warmth left in the hut it was gone now. Striding over to the small cot she eased the woman down onto the bed and then hurriedly rummaged through the sack she had left beside it.

She should have asked what poison they used. Hemlock? Mercury? Cyanide? Wolfsbane?

"Here," she pushed a foul smelling bundle of seaweed into the woman's mouth. "Chew."

 

[Skad]

Like an old friend Harauder came to her, lifting Skad with relative ease to presumably carry her faithful servant to the lands of Himnariki, where the souls of the true carried on. Her comparative warmth symbolic of rushing blood against the Nordwiir's frozen form.

She was not, however, taken to the afterlife of inherited folklore but rather a small hut.

It wasn't until a putrid, overbearing sensation of salt was wedged into the woman's mouth that her fading mind considered that she was not in fact in the presence of her Blood God.

Skad chewed as instructed, jaw gripped by lethargy as rotten ocean pervaded her taste buds. There was a grunt of protest, a natural, instinctual reaction to the sudden disgusting flavour that sought to mingle with the blonde's parched mouth. It might have been Spotta, one of the many Gods of Trickery, known for her cruel japes at the expense of others.

The lone eye stared, seeking answers but still only finding blurred shapes before her and time became bizarre once more. Skad could not say how long she lay there like a stunned kaltku chewing salted cud, it might have been seconds, minutes, hours. Sensation fought to return, pinpricks stabbing at frozen extremities.

Clarity came; the edges of the figure before her becoming more coherent.

At first it seemed to be a reflection, that Skad was standing before herself as an omen of death, but no. This figure had two eyes, and her nose bent in a different yet familiar manner. Staring. Sneering. Judging.

<”...Hella?”> Kin-Slayer muttered, alarm attempting to creep onto her still-lethargic features.

Hella was her twin. Hella was dead. None knew this better than Skad, who had done the deed herself, mercilessly cutting her sister down during the ritual of The Great Hunt.

This was Refsingar, Nordwiir hell.

<”Fuck!”>

Skad grabbed at the edge of the bed, her limbs still clumsy and uncoordinated as she sought to put distance between her and her deceased sibling by pulling herself onto the floor. The rising panic contrasted against her poisoned heartbeat, which slung sharp arrows of pain across the woman's chest as she attempted to flee.

 

[Brenna]

The Lychweed would buy her some time to figure out what exactly the villagers had poisoned her with but not much. If she asked though, she didn't think she would get a very forthcoming answer. They might not have been Nordenfiir here but they were as stubborn as the bears were when it came to helping those who had wronged them. Stubborn, mule-headed... she furiously thought to herself as she began looking more carefully through her bag for medicines that would tackle a multitude of sins. Tiny little glass bottles followed by fat pouches and wooden bo--

"Hey!" The Nordenwiir's sudden lunge for freedom nearly knocked the precious box from her hand. Brenna grunted as she grabbed a hold of the woman flailing about like a trout out of water and attempted to wrestle her back into the bed. Her eyes followed the woman's words and a small frown creased her slender brows. What was that language...?

"Rest," she repeated, this time with the signs as well in case the problem was she didn't understand her language. Not that it was any guarantee she knew the lexicon she herself had developed from the age of eight. Her fingers clenched and with a sigh she focused instead on just tucking her back into bed. "You're sick," she explained slowly. "Poison,"

 

[Skad]

Before Skad could manage to launch herself off of the bed and onto the floor Hella was upon her. In such a weakened state the woman's limbs felt clumsy and useless, like a living nightmare where every fist flung felt drowned by thick tar.

“Rest.”

No. No! She could not rest and be condemned to Refsingar! She had to struggle, had to fight! Unfortunately, Skad could already feel her pathetic exertions taking a further toll as each gasping breath fanned the cursed flames within her lungs, her heart struggling to comprehend miasma-laced adrenaline. The vision of her twin took to tucking the Nordwiir into the bed as if she were some sort of child.

“You're sick,” Hella said in the common trade tongue, swimming ears hearing venom-laced accusations, “poison.”

Such words weren't untrue, even if their context was part-hallucination. Skad could still recall the look upon their parents' faces when she alone returned from The Great Hunt, minus one eye and wearing the crimson remains of Hella's mangled corpse as if she had been baptised by Haraudur himself. They were aghast, openly devastated that their paragon child had been murdered by their detestable, evil one.

Skad remembered not caring.

“It was,” the the one-eyed woman gasped in awkward trade tongue as she attempted to wriggle free of new bonds, “fate,” each syllable felt like a fucking mountain to climb in her lungs, “you die,” lone eye darted, searching for a reprieve, “...I live!”

 

[Brenna]

Brenna's hands stilled upon the sheets after securely fastening the blanket under the straw-filled mattress. Her eyes had tracked the words carefully but even playing them back they didn't make much sense. There was a wildness to the woman's eye though; too much white showed and it rolled like a beast caught out in a thunderstorm. She half expected her to toss her head and stamp a foot. Instead all she did was writhe with the strength of a mewling cub, though Brenna was careful to ensure the blanket was tucked extra tight to ensure she didn't cause herself any further harm. Poison was bad enough to treat let alone a broken bone on top of that.

"Brenna," she said softly and placed a hand upon her chest to indicate who the name belonged to. No doubt she would have to remind her when she woke from her fevered dream. Was it that her face simply reminded the Nordenwiir of someone or that she saw someone else entirely? Hallucinations narrowed down the poison but if it was just delirious ramblings brought on by a fever...

Perhaps fate would decide again she lived. With that thought in mind she seized a blue vial and uncorked it.

"Drink," she opened the woman's mouth and tipped the contents down her throat.

 

[Skad]

The word Brenna was lost upon Skad in the midst of illusion, it looked as if the vision of her twin was using it to describe herself but it made little sense. Was it some common word that the Nordwiir failed to understand? Before Skad could even comprehend such a thought Hella was upon her again, forcing ominous blue liquid into the one-eyed woman's mouth.

It tasted like the arsehole of a kaldabatur, which was a diplomatic way to say, like shit.

With her face contorted in both terror and disgust, she continued to writhe, which seemed to be as much resistance as she could muster under the fearsome grip of the blankets.

“What...you...doing?!” Skad breathlessly objected in her tormentor's chosen language, her beleaguered wriggling shifting as the Nordwiir opted to try and find the skinning knife that hung from her belt.

Her gut hit turbulence, and for a moment the woman felt as if she were floating. A thin sheen of sweat developed upon her forehead as the scent of burning fields engulfed her senses. Was this how death felt? So peculiar, like swimming in the air. Ever-fading.

<”Hella!”>

Then nothing.

Skad suddenly lost consciousness and her body became rigid, hard-worked muscles stiffening before then violently jerking in a disconcerting fashion.

 

[Brenna]

"I. Am. Trying. To. Help."

Each word was a bitten off growl as she pinned the woman's shoulders down to stop her thrashing about and ensure she actually swallowed the medicine. It hadn't been spat straight back into her face so that was a good sign, she reasoned with the part of her mind which had floated to that calm void that made her such a good fighter. Content that the medicine had gone down her gullet she released the woman's shoulders and turned back to the medicines. The main task now was getting the poison out of her system if she didn't know how exactly to counter it. With a grimace her fingers went to the little wooden box--

"Shit!" Silence was one of the worst signs in any patient which put Brenna at a severe disadvantage when it came to treating the sick. It meant that she was only aware something was wrong - well, more wrong than the pressing poison - was the sudden jerky manner of the woman's movements. Drool dribbled from the corner of her lips and her eye had rolled back into her skull. Bre lurched forward and grabbed a hold of the woman's shoulders once more to gently but firmly hold her down whilst also trying to ensure the woman didn't swallow her own tongue.

Wrong medicine, wrong medicine!

She grabbed the red vial and quickly poured that down her gullet instead.

 

[Skad]

Mercifully, Skad remained completely unaware of the violent surging of her own form as the spasms took their hold. Her fate was now completely in the hands of a stranger, which, if the Nordwiir would have probably objected to if given a choice in the matter.

A few minutes after the next experimental antidote was given the warrior's body relaxed, granting her saviour at least a small reprieve from her unwilling patient.

There was a calm.

Skad's eye opened, the mossy green lazily flickering around the room as if it was trying to adjust to its surroundings. It seemed as if the last treatment was the winner. Third time's the charm, as they tended to say but as the seconds ticked by, a feeling of omen settled upon the hut.

She couldn't feel, couldn't move.

Panic settled within the Nordwiir's core as the disconnect between her brain and limbs became more and more apparent. She could imagine it; she knew how to do it, to move her legs, to sit up, to make a fist but there was no response, no feeling.

Nothing.

Worse still, the woman had come to her surroundings in a state of confusion. How did she get here? What had happened? There was a hazy blank where very recent memories should have been.

Fuck, it was so hard to breathe.

Skad tried to scream, shout, do anything. Again, nothing. The only part of her body that held any function was her eye, which soon settled upon the blonde woman before her. Was it Hella? No, no, that wasn't right. Nothing was right. If she had any luck the woman above her would have taken a shred of mercy and slit the Nordwiir's throat right then and there.

 

[Brenna]

Has it been minutes? Or has it been hours...?

Time was hard to tell inside the little windowless hut yet time was exactly what she needed to keep a track of if she were to keep this woman alive. Many people in life would have questioned why they bothered to go through this strain for a complete and total stranger. Not only that, but a stranger who had attacked members of the town she sought to do trade with. Yet the question never once crossed dear Brenna's mind. Her only thoughts were about which medicines to try next based on the symptoms she had seen so far.

Hallucinations, fits and slurred speech eliminated more poisons than one might initially think. There was no fever, and the woman's heart rate was steady in her sleep, which crossed off more. A careful and slower examination had finally led to her retrieving a bowl and grinder and mashing up a paste.

Minutes or hours?

Bre glanced up at the slumbering woman only to jump out of her skin when she noticed her icy gaze upon her.

Well at least she wasn't dead.

"How are you feeling?" she asked, uncurling her legs and standing in one fluid movement, still cradling the bowl against her stomach as she mashed.

 

[Skad]

No matter how much Skad tried she couldn't respond, her body refusing to cooperate with every single command beyond her eye. Not even a single twitch or quiver of the lip.

Truthfully, it was more terrifying than any fate one could face in battle. Pain? A blessing from the Dark Gods, a sensation granted in tribute to life itself. What better way was there to feel truly alive? Death? An inevitability and honour in battle, guaranteeing entry to the sacred halls of Heidur, the Warrior's End.

But this, being stripped of all feeling and control yet remaining conscious was nothing but a curse; a punishment.

As Skad stared helplessly at the woman that spoke to her she tried to fathom just who exactly she was and more importantly, why she seemed to be aiding the Nordwiir. Everything seemed to be a chaotic blur. She had been in the tavern, then a wicked haze descended upon the night. It had been cold. Then this hut. Hella. No, that woman wasn't her twin, she was dead.

Then who was she?

Even the panic didn't garner reaction from her body, as it remained static and useless, functioning yet dead.

All she could do was continue to stare.

 

[Brenna]

Because this isn't uncomfortable in the slightest...

There was something about that gaze that made Brenna slow her approach. It reminded her of one of the hunting dogs that had been bitten by a Aenaer and had contracted rabies. She wasn't entirely convinced the woman wouldn't lurch forward suddenly and bite her. She certainly had that crazed look but was it the poison or was it the... woman. Whilst she had been sleeping and giving Brenna the breathing space to think she had finally placed her scent. Nordenwiir. She had only ever met one other before and theirs and the Nordenfiir scents were so similar the subtle difference might be missed by many. Kol didn't possess the crazed look this woman did but there had been something... off about him too with the way he stared over her shoulder at something only he could see.

But beneath the scent something stronger rolled off her: panic.

Bre's brows knitted together as she drew closer and her eyes ran over the woman's rigid form. Something was wrong.

"Can you... move?" she sat gingerly on the edge of the cot and put her hand to the woman's forehead.

 

[Skad]

A small mercy had been granted to the woman when she asked her incredibly stupid question, instead of receiving a face full of spittle and violent cursing, all she got was that eye, still staring.

Albeit with the intensity of a thousand burning suns.

Skad once again tried movement, picturing herself thrashing, imagining what it was like to violently surge and lash out but once more there was nothing. Instead, the Nordwiir took to screaming inside of her own head, her mental voice reverberating in her own skull like the apex of fearsome tundra winds. Perhaps her internal screeching would vibrate into the woman's hand upon her own forehead.

No. That would be ridiculous.

The prone woman began a new attempt to communicate using her singular eye as she flicked the direction of her stare down to where her skinning knife would be. Of course, such a signal could easily be misunderstood, so for good measure Skad kept doing it. Looking at the woman, and then looking downwards where her belt would be.

It was a long shot, but if this woman held any wit or mercy, she would find the blade and put the Nordwiir out of her misery.

 

[Brenna]

Brenna wanted to laugh.

She had spent all of her life unable to communicate as others had. She had had to relearn a way to speak, had struggled when there had been gaps in that language, had had to build it practically from the ground up. Yet here she was, with the first person she had met like her, and she wasn't able to communicate with her. Her lips pressed into a thin line to keep the laugh from bubbling out of her. Instead she tried to remind herself how terrifying that moment had been all those years ago when she had woke up in a similar state: it had been by the luck of the gods she had regained use of everything but her hearing.

With a soft sigh she looked, finally, to the knife.

"Dying is easy, living is harder," she smiled sadly then put a hand to the woman's forehead. At least her temperature was fine for now and it seemed the other problems had vanished. Had her medicines just lessened the impact of the poison? Reduced it from death to paralysis? "I did not think Nordenwiir gave up so easy," her eyes sparkled with amusement before returning her attention to the vials she had left. Believe it or not paralysis was a much easier thing to cure than death.

She plucked up a green vial and poured it past her lips. Maybe the Gods who had let this work on her all those years ago would be benevolent again.

 

[Skad]

When the woman decided to part sentimental wisdom instead of slitting the Nordwiir's throat Skad's eye locked back onto her fucking ridiculous pitying little face with renewed fury. Her stare, centred right between the woman's eyes was so seething it was as if she was attempting to pierce right through it. Although, without the use of any other muscles in her face it really just boiled down to very intense staring.

But what did she know of the significance of life and death? The trials and tribulations present by both were irrelevant. A true Nordwiir served the Dark Gods in both realms and that was all that mattered, not the strife, just sacred service.

She could not serve them as a disembodied mind trapped within an unmoving prison.

Just how this woman knew of her kind was another question, one that filled Skad with rampant suspicion. The details in her post-feverish mind were still hazy. Was she the one responsible for this? Was this some kind of elaborate punishment courtesy of the people of Gruthal? To rob her of her body?

What would she take next? Her mind?

Skad tried to resist as another ominously coloured concoction was brought forth to her lips but once more there was nothing. Helpless to resist.

I'll kill you. I'll fucking gut you from arsehole to breakfast.

Mental threats also did nothing in halting the liquid from sliding down her throat. What would come next? The edges of her limited vision dimmed, and a blanket of relaxation draped both mind and body. Sleep called, sending the woman's eyelid drooping and smothering her furious stare until there was nought but the black.

 

[Brenna]

Brenna remained sat on the edge of the cot as Skad slid back into sleep. A part of her didn't trust that the woman's wasn't faking it and would jump up to stab her the moment her back was turned. That look had left very little to the imagination. Would it do her any good to mention she knew Kol? The Nordenwiir struck her as a people who could easily start blood feuds with one another as quickly as starting a friendship. Giving the woman one last, slightly narrowed, stare she finally stood up.

Taking that knife with her.

The vial was a concoction the doctors had given her all those years ago. She wondered how it would impact her. Would it make her deaf too? Worse? Or maybe her near-death experience wasn't as bad as Brenna's. Her lips pressed into a thin line of doubt before giving a big sigh. There was no point dwelling on it until she woke up. So to occupy her time she settled herself onto one of the worn and weathered armchairs and went back to her Nålebinding.

 

[Skad]

Three days passed.

Three days of peace in which Skad slept, her body taking its time to process and recover from the litany of concoctions that it had borne witness to. The poison that had clung so thickly to blood ebbed and dissipated as the array of antidotes saturated the Skad's being. It was a process that took time more than anything, much to the detriment of the woman who had given up her bed for the Nordwiir.

It was a dreamless sleep, with nought but the blackness of the ether to cradle the one-eyed woman. No dreams passed down from the Dark Gods to give reason or lesson to all of this madness. Just the unknowing black.

It was on the night of the third day that she finally woke up.

And the world was still black.

Skad paid no immediate attention to such detail, more focused on being able to move with stiff and lethargic muscles. It must have been dark wherever she was. She groaned softly, lips parched and head feeling several sizes too big as she flexed cramped hands and wriggled toes.

No, something wasn't quite right.

Fuck, she could have killed for a skin of water, might have even settled for piss as the one-eyed woman flexed her jaw and slowly sat up. It was too dark. The inside of her mouth felt like sandpaper and held a bitter aftertaste that lingered upon hot breath. Skad hadn't felt this worn since the aftermath of the last Ryrnun festival.

Hands felt at the cot that held her, fragments of memories filtering through the haze of a three-day-long sleep. She was in a hut. There was a woman. It couldn't possibly be so dark in here.

Realisation dawned slowly as one hand reached up towards her face and the other for her skinning knife. Her remaining left eye was still there, made evident by the prodding and poking of calloused fingers but... she couldn't see anything. Heart skipped a beat as Skad swivelled the organ around in its socket, feeling it move behind sleep-worn eyelids.

Her knife was gone.

<”Fuck!”>

 

[Brenna]

Three days on the cold hard floor for many would have built up resentment. Especially when the patient you had given your bed up for - as dire as it was - is less than grateful. So ungrateful in fact that upon first opening her eyes she planned to stab you in the back. Yes, for some, the cold hard floor would have built up a touch of resentment. But Brenna was not like most people. Each morning she went out cheerfully into the market to do her sales and in the cold evenings she shifted to her bear form in order to take comfort in the softness of her furs.

That and to ensure any townspeople who thought they could sneak in to kill Skad would get a nasty shock indeed.

Dutifully in-between working and sleeping she tended faithfully to the young woman she had brought back from the brink of death. It was quite a wonderful feeling seeing a person regain colour in their cheeks, see the way their breathing eased and how their body moved with the natural twitches of a restful sleep. As the Gods would have it she was just arriving home to see her patient open her eyes.

"You're awake!" pleased, Brenna set down her fish and moved over to the cot. "How do you feel?"

 

[Skad]

She heard movement, head snapping towards the direction of the sound, her lone eye still searching for anything other than nothing.

A voice, in the dark. It was that woman. Who was she? What had she done to her? Why was her voice filled with such cheerful pleasantry? There were too many questions within the Nordwiir's mind, important questions that Skad decided right there she was going to get the answers for. Preferably by force.

“...like shit,” she responded gruffly with a sandpaper throat, her eye twitching as it tried to follow the sound of the woman's movement.

The heavily scarred woman decided not to tell her prey about the fact that she was blind, it wouldn't matter anyway once she got a good grip on her. Hazy recollections estimated that out of the two that Skad was bigger but then, hazy estimations also remembered Hella being there. A distinct impossibility unless she was dealing with a necromancer alchemist.

Her face sat passively with the exception of her awkwardly bobbling eye as the Nordwiir moved to swing her legs over to the side of the bed. They felt heavy and stiff, a sure side effect of being stationary for so long. With no knife, this was going to be more difficult than she thought.

“Legs... sleeping,” she announced in awkward common tongue before thrusting out her arms for some aid in standing up, “help me up.”

 

[Brenna]

As it was Brenna had to get uncomfortably close in order to see the woman's lips move from her position on the bed. She had no intentions of getting closer than absolutely necessary now she was proving she could sit. Nordenwiir were not so dissimilar from their Bear cousins and she was pretty certain that the characteristics of stubbornness and their inclination towards fighting first, talking second was two of those. She had suffered enough swung fists from fellow cadets when she had been trying to stop them ripping open stitches and spilling their guts out again.

"You should really rest," the doubt in her voice was nothing to do with the fact she didn't believe the woman should be resting but rather that she didn't think the other woman would listen to her. "You have been asleep a few days, the poison is still trying to leave your system," even as she spoke her eyes ran over the woman from a safe distance to see any indication of problems.

 

[Skad]

“Will rest,” Skad lied, her face as stony as usual, her stare trying to focus upon the source of the woman's words so at least, in theory, she would be looking in the direction of her face, “but need...”

Shit.

How did they say stretch in the common tongue? It wasn't a word she had learned yet, not that it came up very often. Not a lot of stretching in the Nordwiir's life, it was mostly slaughter, which funnily enough she could say, not that it was particularly useful here. Perhaps later.

“...wake up legs.”

At least a few gaps had been closed, she'd been out of action for a few days and it was most definitely poison that had done the work. Did that really mean that this woman had helped her? It would have seemed so. How curious.

“I walk small time then go back on bed.”

Skad still held out her arms, signifying that she wasn't going anywhere without being helped up. What was that word they used when they wanted something?

“Pl...ease?”

 

[Brenna]

Brenna's nostrils flared at the scent of the lie: stubbornness was definitely a shared trait between the cousins it seemed. At least she had said please though and she said it in a similar way to how Kol had; like they were surprised to find they knew the word at all let alone was using it. With a soft sigh she stepped forward and grasped the woman's forearms perhaps with a surprising amount of strength beneath her fingertips.

"Nice and easy now," she coaxed the woman to her feet slowly so she could test her own weight a bit at a time. "That's it," relief flooded her. The last time Skad had been awake she hadn't been able to move anything but that single eye and even that had seemed like effort. Bre hadn't been entirely sure the medicine would have healed her.

 

[Skad]

It was all awkward without sight, even the smallest things like placing her feet upon the floor and feeling the other woman's hands as they took a surprisingly firm grip. As she was eased onto her feet, legs stiffer than Nordwiir men after a successful raid, there was a sudden flood of doubt in Skad's plan.

She was blind, in a weakened state and her body had yet to wake up from a good few days of sleep. Perhaps attacking the woman who was trying to help her wasn't the answer? Not a woman with a strong hand like that at any rate.

Later then, when her strength and hopefully sight had returned.

The one-eyed woman balanced her weight carefully, on one foot and then the other taking a few minuscule steps into the blackness of a random direction. She could have been walking into the wall, or about to trip for all the woman knew.

“I tell you now,” she announced, since her plans to inflict sudden violence had changed, “I can't see.”

Skad's face remained blank.

“You fix yes?”