Private Tales For What Do We Bleed?

[Elijah]

Ellijah only grunted.

At them both.

It still amazed him after all Lyssia had been through at the hands of the Dynast and her ruling elite that she didn't want to kill her. Or at least, sympathised with those who did want to see her off the throne and a new order introduced. As for Elliot's comment his grunt was neither a disagreement or agreement to the statement: the Captain, after all, had started in the slums. He had known hunger and death and suffering. He had grown up with the whispers of discontent and rebellion. He could understand it but it didn't mean he agreed removing her would bring about a change that would actually help the average Joe.

"My point is," he said with a wince as a phantom pain raked him up the spine. "Is that our goals do not align and so I don't foresee you offering to help," Nem snorted and stamped her hoof in agreement with that and no doubt to 'subtly' inform her Captain she would like to add to his words - which he chose to ignore.

 

[Lyssia D'avore]

Her eyes widened at Elliot's statement, and for a long moment she could do little more than sit there in silence, unable to process what she had heard. Elijah's words washed over her, and were it not for the absolute...absolute...

She didn't even have words for Elliot's crass statement. Regardless, Elijah was wrong, too. He was a soldier, as was Nem, and it was neither of their place to try to talk someone round to their way of thinking, to reason with the seemingly unreasonable. She might be admittedly naive of the world in many ways, but she was still a noblewoman, disgraced or otherwise. Some might fall back on might to sway their opponents, but the mightiest of the breed could talk their foes into submission or, at least, into avoiding a fight.

Even then, she visibly bristled at the callous words.

"It is not my place," she said slowly and deliberately, fixing the criminal with a measured (and exhausted) stare, "to determine who lives and who dies. Were it left to me, no one would be put to the sword."

She hated killing. Her hands burned even then as she spoke, with the spilled blood of someone trying to kill her - someone that had died on his own blades, wielded by her hands. She could still see the light leave his eyes - a nightmare that recurred every night it seemed. Unlike everyone else here, she was no warrior. A coward.

"And what the Dynast stands for does not deserve to burn, however much pain she has brought me personally. Stability? Protection from those who would seek to subjugate those weaker than themselves?" Her eyes burned with a particular intensity. She opened her mouth to say more, and coughed harshly instead, spitting a gob of blood-flecked phlegm onto the floor of the tent. Once she had mastered herself again, she looked back to Elliot, pain writ large on her face.

And determination, though what for was anyone's guess.

"Whatever imperfection you see in our homeland, it has brought stability and safety to more than not. It is to that my allegiance lies, not some person wearing the regalia of the state," she finished. Her pale cheeks were flushed, but with a touch of anger rather than sickness.

 

[Elliot Aldmar]

Elliot flicked his eyes toward the captain. He was right. While the Dynast's life, whether she lived or died, was ultimately irrelevant to his true goal, Elliot certainly did not need to depart from his own path to save her. If it was D'avore's goal (and by extension the captain's goal) to save the life of a tyrant, they were free to do so. Natural law would see if they prevailed or not, as it always did. Their strength against the strength of their foes--the stronger would claim victory, the conflict resolved in their favor. The same, of course, applied to him, his goal, his conflict with his own foes.

D'avore responded, and Elliot listened. Beside him in the corner of his eye he could just barely see Taros, looking somewhat concerned. Both Taros and the centaur did not very much like the nature of the conversation. Very well. It was their own judgments that were causing them that irritation, that concern, and it was up to each of them individually to sort themselves out.

Elliot's eyes trailed down briefly to the blood which D'avore had coughed out. He said nothing of it.

D'avore finished what she had to say, and Elliot let the moment sit.

Then he gave her a wan smile.

Said, "I am glad that your station afforded you much to be thankful for in Dornoch. May you find your place there again."

Lyssia D'avore Elijah

 

[Lyssia D'avore]

Her eyes narrowed at his response.

"Do not pretend that it is only the wealthy and the powerful that benefit," she said in a low voice. "Peace benefits all, high or low. Law - not that you would know anything of that, it seems - benefits all. High, or low."

There was a discordant note hidden in there, though. The law was not perfect, the peace scarcely less so. Lyssia would not fool herself, delude herself into believing that it was perfect. It was only that it would be worse without it. Such problems as existed needed reform, for sure, but there was no need to discard everything because of the flaws.

"I want...," she began, and paused. What did she want, truly? She wanted her old life back for true, but that would never happen. What, then? "I want to help the people of Erdeniin, or at least see that chaos does not consume all. Too many would die..."

 

[Elliot Aldmar]

Too many would die.

Where were her petulant protests a few hours ago, when people on both sides of the engagement had by necessity to die to secure her freedom? What, was that particular number acceptable to her, then? Surely it would have been better to banish her rescuers if it were not acceptable. Where was the peace she so coveted, and how was it benefiting her so when she was dangling from a tree? Why did she not respect her lawful detainment at Stannis's hands--was it not decreed that her house was a house of traitors?

But there was no point to asking these questions, to argue in the probing manner of the venerable acolytes Dreng'toth. No point to employing rhetoric that was not direct, as it had been done with him when he was but an initiate among them.

"Tell me for how many years Dornoch has stood, and I'll tell you for how many years peace has failed."

A measuring glance to the captain and to the centaur. Elliot was keenly aware that the setting of this talk, here in this camp, was strictly to his disadvantage, that he could say something that would immediately erase the thin shred of good grace afforded to him and the other criminals. He remained interested in holding to the debate nonetheless, even if he had to monitor what he could and could not say.

Keep it general. Do not divulge any personal interest in doing any of the things discussed.

Back to D'avore. "You want to help the people of Erdeniin." Even this. Do not even say that he, too, wished to help them. It could be misinterpreted. "But you'll join that history of failure. Because you value your stability, your safety, your peace, and change requires instability, requires danger, and requires conflict."

He shook his head in two curt motions.

"You are not ready to make those commitments."

Lyssia D'avore Elijah

 

[Lyssia D'avore]

She felt very tired, and it was easy to see the weight of that exhaustion hanging from every word. Lyssia did not understand what she was dealing with in this man; she may have dealt with criminals before in her life, but there was a very large difference between someone that skirted the rules in order to live and someone that was a revolutionary. That she did not really know of the mans clear revolutionary ideas put her at a distinct disadvantage in this conversation.

She looked to Elijah, but he was keeping clear of this. It rankled a little, but...she could not be mad. He was here because of her, after a fasion.

Couldn't be too mad, anyway.

"And what has Erdeniin failed at that no other nation has failed in as well?" So tired. "Corruption happens in all systems...it is for us to excise it. That is what I intend on trying to do. Murdering people will not solve that problem."

 

[Elliot Aldmar]

Elliot said nothing for a moment. He stood by the tent's entrance, Taros glancing between his Dornite benefactors and him with that unbroken concern. Elliot considered the woman on the bed before him and what she had said and, more importantly, the manner in which she said it.

D'avore. Lyssia D'avore. The third-hand information he had on her was sparse, and was likely tinged with some measure of intentional and unintentional inaccuracies. What was clear was that treason haunted the very name of D'avore, just as murder haunted the name of Aldmar. Did Lyssia have a hand in that treason? If so, was she motivated by what she believed to commit said treason? Elliot couldn't say. But what the past moments had illuminated was that she held a conviction and defended her principles, in words even if she refused to do so with the sword. It was more than Elliot could say of his own father, the servile, amorphous, overly-agreeable, sycophantic creature that he was.

Elliot believed her to be wrong, yes. Believed that history proved her wrong, that nature itself proved her wrong...but he retained the possibility that he could well be wrong in his assessment. It was foolish to hold to a decision, to a judgement, simply because you have made it and for no other reason. Such was an egregious misuse of one's capacity of commitment, and it was this lesson that the necromancer monks of the Dreng'toth used to open Elliot's younger mind to the wisdom of their teachings.

What did he want? To help the people of Dornoch, to free their sons. If it were so that it could be done through words alone, Elliot would have done that. If it were so that it could be done by killing the Dynast alone, Elliot would have done that. But as it stood, the history of upheavals and war throughout Arethil, the nature of violence as being the final and most powerful resort of conflict resolution, made clear what stood the best chance of bringing forth the change he was committed to seeing.

Such could still be true, and Elliot himself still wrong. His application of violence could well be misaligned. The only means available to him were crude and volatile. Once the war he planned was started, he had no way of controlling it, of guiding it nor stopping it. All he had to offer the sons of Dornoch, the daughters of Oban, was a chance. A chance, and nothing more.

And so, what if there stood a middle means. A means of measured peace and measured war. A means concealed from both Lyssia and Elliot, neither of them capable of achieving it on their own.

Elliot unhooked his thumbs from his belt and slowly reached for his right dagger--it might provoke a reaction, it might not. He unsheathed it.

"Elliot," said Taros, tone stern and taut, hand on his sheathed shamshir.

And Elliot discarded it, the weapon bouncing once on the ground before coming to rest. He drew his left dagger and discarded it as well. He held up his hands, open palms at shoulder level, available to be seen. He walked forward with a languid motion, crossing the small distance to the bed on which the captain and Lyssia sat. Slowly he descended down into a crouch, sitting on his heels, only the balls of his feet touching the ground, hands lowered, elbows resting on his knees. From his position he was looking up to Lyssia.

"I will ask you something in all sincerity. You may choose to believe me or not, yet my genuine intent will stand regardless."

A flash thought of Nysia's brand upon his wrist. What he was willing to do. The lengths to which he would go.

"Tell me. How will you achieve what you seek?"

And he awaited. Listening.

Lyssia D'avore Elijah

 

[Lyssia D'avore]

Tired, and then to add to the weight upon her shoulders, this.

She had considered the problem from many angles, and did not see any easy way of achieving what needed to be done. She did not understand the problem that Elliot in particular was concerned with; she was more concerned with the corruption in the system that had been allowed to grow and spread over many, many years. It was possible that the corruption had little to do with the perceived wrongs of Elliot - wrongs she either was either unaware of, or unaware of their extent.

Something deep inside made her very afraid that there would be no way to achieve a cleansing without spilling blood. The thought sickened her in a way that would have made Gloria laugh. Hell, in a way that would have made Elijah laugh at her, let alone Elliot.

Coward, that insistent voice in her head whispered to her. Too cowardly to do what needed to be done. Another part of her screamed in the darkness of her skull that what the dark part wanted was simply an easy way out.

"...," she opened her mouth, and closed it. Looked up at Elliot, then to Elijah. Nem, she could care less about. But what would Elijah think of all this? "I scarcely know where to begin," she admitted in a weak voice.

"I have spent two years trying to...to trace the root of the problem. A problem no one else seems to believe exists," she said slowly and carefully. "How to excise rot from a healthy host without killing the host? I...I believe in the system, but the system is only as good as its parts." She looked down, down to the floor. "Killing the system would kill the rot...but then what takes its place? Tyranny, likely - the histories are replete with it."

She shook her head. "She has to be made to see. To see the rot, to see what it is doing, what it has done. Erdeniin has been a beacon of stability and safety - and of hope - for hundreds of years. It can be again, if only..." She sighed tiredly. "I have been trying to expose the corruption. It has not worked, yet...but I will not give up." Coward! "I will not," she said emphatically.

And then sagged.

"Too many have died, or suffered. I...I do not wish to add to the debt of blood. But I will not simply roll over, and vanish like mist in the summer sun..."

 

[Elijah]

"Well isn't this all very philosophical," Nem broke into the silence which fell after Lyssia's words.

Elijah had had no desire to participate in a battle of words when it was a battle of will merely to stop from keeling over and giving in to sleep right there and then. They were also words he had very little inclination of expressing his own views about. He was a son of Dornoch. Had been born in the ramshackled lower levels and had worked his way up, taken chances, taken risks. He had made it to a position held only by women in the past and he had to fight to keep it every day. He most certainly had views and they didn't always lean in Lyssia's favour.

With a sigh he ran a hand through his matted hair.

"Our next stop is Dalriada," stick with facts and actions, not politics and philosophy he thought to himself. "We have a contact there who will be helping us figure out the part their kingdom are playing in this... corruption. You are welcome to join us so far as that if you are worried of facing our past weeks Host alone."

 

[Elliot Aldmar]

Elliot peered up at Lyssia. Tiny, near indiscernible motions of his eyebrows, little creases appeared and disappeared across his forehead, outward evidence that he was weighing what she had to say.

If he had a response, he was beaten to it by Nemythia. Elliot cast a sidelong glance toward the centaur, and then in turn to the captain when he spoke. An air of finality to the conversation in his words.

Elliot drew in a breath through his nose. Slowly stood back up. Turned. Walked back to the tent's entrance and crouched down to collect both of his daggers and stood. As he was sheathing his weapons, his back to the Dornites in the tent, he said, "If I'm still here come the morning...that'll be my answer."

Without a look back, he departed from the tent.

Taros shifted his gaze back and forth between the swinging tent flaps and his benefactors a few times. For once this night, his outward countenance matched his inner heart: one of mildly concerned uncertainty. He wasn't quite sure if what had transpired was good or bad for his true purposes. No matter. Planning and improvisation weren't the bitter enemies some made them out to be, oh far from it, they were in fact soulmates and dance partners--one often completed the other.

Taros gave a slight bow and a twirling hand gesture, said in brief, "Captain," and then turned to take his leave from the tent as well.

Lyssia D'avore Elijah

 

[Lyssia D'avore]

The two men left the tent, and something seemed to drain from the diminutive sidhe. She sagged where she sat, and the exhaustion and trauma of the night and the previous days fell upon her shoulder like a metric ton of bricks.

"Philosophy is the weapon for those that lack strength of arms," Lyssia said faintly of Nem's comment. She could never live up to the expectations of the centauress, and so did not try. It was quite clear that the woman thought the former noble was so much waste of space and misappropriated supplies and rations. She rather imagined the woman would have happily left her to her fate with Gloria.

If not for Elijah. As often as she agonized over what the man thought of her while pretending not to care one bit - and pretending to herself as much as everyone else - she did not think he would leave her here.

She stared at Nem pointedly, deeply underscored eyes unflinching - half out of defiance, mostly out of exhaustion.

Once she had gone, she sat in silence for what felt like a long time. "I don't know what I am doing," she said suddenly, shattering the silence between them. "I keep moving forward, and dragging others along in my wake...but I don't know what I am doing."

A pause. "Am I wrong in all of this? Do I bring this suffering about needlessly?"

 

[Elijah]

"No."

Eli had seen Nem's mouth open to answer and spoke quickly to cut her to the point. The Centauress snapped her mouth shut and gave her Captain an unreadable flat-eyed look, but nodded and made her own exit. Once she was gone he let out a long, tired breath and his shoulders sagged. It was a silent, unspoken testament to his own feelings and thoughts that he allowed Lyssia to see a weakness he did not show even in front of a trusted and old friend. He had hoped he would be spared his own turn at talk of philosophy though.

"Things always have to get worse to get better," it was something his mother had always said when some other thing in their ransacked house had broken, or one of his brothers had come home with his final payslip and news he had to find another job. He sometimes wondered how she had found the energy to smile for them still and when he had asked, that had been what she had told him before handing him a sweet and ruffling his hair. It was such a strong memory it took him by surprise.

"And things are always better after sleep," he rumbled and begun to move to lay down on the cot. "Something we both need."

 

[Lyssia D'avore]

She did not move from where she sat as he lay down, her eyes fixed ahead somewhere in the middle distance. On the tent flaps, on the people that had just left. On Elliot in particular; well, perhaps not her eyes, but her thoughts.

"Things have been getting better," she said in a low voice, almost a mumble. In an even quieter voice, she added: "Thanks to you."

Disheveled, stinking of sweat and blood, she leaned forward, working the laces of her boots with fingers that felt thick as sausages. Her mind worked through it all. All the trouble and strife she had brought to those around her pained her, but not near as bad as the suffering that Elijah had forced himself to endure. She wanted to blame herself, but the truth was that she commanded none of these people who worked towards that shared goal.

She kicked her boots off. You should not do this, something in her mind whispered, and she pointedly told that voice where it could stuff itself as she rolled back and lay beside Elijah with her back to the man. "Thank you," she said in a tired whisper. "You brought me back from the edge, and have given me what strength I still possess. I do not know why, but...."

She shook her head tiredly, and yawned. "...thank you," she murmured before her breathing slowed in the deep rhythm of sleep.

 

[Elliot Aldmar]

And so the morning came.

Elliot awoke in the Dornites' camp, sitting up from laying on the bare ground and glancing about at the soldiers and sellswords. He'd not been ejected. That was something. Of the other petty criminals, Elliot saw no sign of them, so either they had been or had taken it upon themselves to risk their chances out on their own. They might make it, what with the cover of the forests found along the coastal Steppe.

But they also carried the distinction of being scarcely worth Stannis's time. Lyssia, the captain, and Elliot were certainly the prizes she sought. There a common enemy, here a common goal: Dalriada. Elliot was keen to make the crossing of the Strait and to get back to Obanese territory, his part in the diversion played and done. He shared the same road as Lyssia and the captain, at least that far.

Elliot sat cross-legged. Placed his hands on his knees. Closed his eyes.

And began his morning meditation.

Focusing on the facets of friendship. Of love. And the sensations that these inspired.

What would you do...

...to save them?

Lyssia D'avore Elijah

 

[Elijah]

Elijah listened quietly as she spoke and prepared for bed, not pointing out she probably would have been much comfier in her own bed rather than his cramped cot. In fact he didn't say anything. Instead he rolled onto his side with a quiet grunt of phantom pain and put an arm about her waist to tug her close against the warmth of his broad and muscled front. Then, when he heard her slip into sleep, he allowed himself to do the same.

As dawn broke rosy fingered across the camp and the first soldiers begun to stir to go about the necessary chores of log chopping and cooking, the Captain did not stir for perhaps the first time in his life. It was a mark of just how exhausted he really was from the whole ordeal.

 

[Lyssia D'avore]

...change requires instability, requires danger, and requires conflict...

***

The searing heat washed over her, leaving her running with sweat that darkened the dress she wore. In the way of dreams, it was ephemeral - a thing that was difficult to pin down, to examine, to see. But the flames were real. The flames were always real. In the amorphous, burning heart of the inferno there lie fear and weakness, shame and regret.

She could not face the flames. She could distantly recall a day where she stood in defiance against rage made manifest, burning its way through Dornoch. So strong, so brave; she had wet herself in abject terror, been flung aside like the detritus of the shattered buildings all round her. Had failed to save so many in the aftermath, stood transfixed and stunned by the brutality of the world that prior that day...prior to that day, she had known only the lesser, tender touch of the world.

The flames had been rage.

The flames were ideas spawned of ideals: hers, the corrupt individuals of the high Houses, Elliot, Gloria.

They were as merciless and remorseless as the elemental she had only just survived, but these other forces that swirled round her now were beyond knowing. And at least one of them was right. The road ahead was dark and fraught, full of danger and spilled blood.

Her hands burned with the ghostly memory of blood. Her arms ached in sympathetic agony for the damage done, and the searing blood burned all the hotter for it.

Lyssia found herself running across fields of bleached bones, the casualties of interminable conflict and war stretching back into the dawn of time. Behind her, a shambling beast bred of blood, fire, and bone lumbered along. Each step was crushingly powerful, turning the skeletal remains of the insignificant souls consumed by the endless wars to dust. Fear ran through her like liquid ice, almost paralyzing in its intensity.

But the beast did not chase her, no. It couldn't even see her, perceive her. She was an insignificant mote upon a plain of broken dreams, merely another tortured soul caught in the machinations of the mighty. Behind it lay the ruins - the ruins of families, of house and home. Empire. Civilizations great and powerful, laid to waste in the fires of war both righteous and unjust. Ahead of it, the city of Dornoch stood. Dornoch, Oban, and the countless little places between. The countless places, and the countless souls.

And one other, a beacon shining on that dark plain. Life, light, and a balm against the despair that had nearly taken her not so very long ago...

***

Her eyes popped open, and beheld the light in the tent.

Grey, grainy light of early morning filtered through the fabric of the tent, the air as chill as the grave such that her breath plumed in front of her. She was warm, though; the arm round her waist, while overly familiar, had pulled her in close. The furnace that was Elijah warmed her far better than the thin blanket draped over the pair of them.

For a long time, she simply lay there in that embrace, unsure of what to do but certainly knowing one thing: here, she felt safe. She still did not understand how she felt towards the soldier that had saved her life on more than one occasion, but whenever she thought of him she could seldom feel anything but a warmth of soul that certainly no other had ever kindled in her. However that tangled skein of emotion played out, she at least trusted him implicitly with her life. In this camp, there was no safer place than here.

She did not really wish to rise, to disturb this tranquil moment...but there would hopefully be other such moments. Eventually.

She stirred, shifted her position, and then went to pull his arm off of her waist gently. "Elijah?"

The word was delivered in a whisper, and she twisted to face the man as he lie there. "Captain? It is time to wake up," she said, and once roused, made a meaningful glance at the offending arm round her waist. "Before the centauress comes hither and makes rude comments," she added.

 

[Elliot Aldmar]

"Good morning, Cherry Rose."

Elliot cut his meditation short about a minute. Opened his eyes and glanced up. Taros was there, hands behind his back, a cordial enough smile on his face.

"Cherry Rose?" Elliot said dubiously.

Taros gave a small shrug. "Ah. Perhaps the humor of that nickname is lost on those not in the know. Regardless, count me among the surprised to see you still here."

Elliot stood and smirked. "I was going to ask you for half of your payment."

His tongue ran along in the inside of his mouth, and Taros raised both his hands in a slow down gesture. "Easy now. Surely the compensation of freedom from the Bloodhound's bonds is compensation enough? And if not, well, how about I throw in some breakfast? Unless you'd prefer to try your fortunes with the Dornites' hospitality."

"Fair enough," Elliot said, and clapped Taros on the arm. And the Kaliti man led him off toward his baggage to share in his rations.

Passing by the captain's tent in doing so, Elliot spared a brief look toward it. He hadn't noticed either the captain or Lyssia outside. Still in there. Planning their next move, perhaps. Though that might be crediting them too much. If Stannis (and ultimately the beast of Dornoch) could be defeated with pleasant ideals and vague generalities, Lyssia would have triumphed over her easily by now. And the captain was only as good as Lyssia, chained as he was to her will.

It was a damned shame. What Elliot saw in Lyssia's eyes when he had asked her what she meant to do would go inevitably to waste. Lyssia knew what she wanted, but she didn't know how to get it, because her own faulty principles restrained her--even worked against her. Meanwhile, her enemies suffered no such restrictions, and that would be her downfall. Elliot might not witness it with his own eyes, but he may well hear of it, and when he did he knew that all he could do in response would be to shake his head, briefly, in solemn disappointment.

Elliot and Taros stood by the latter's horse, sharing some travel rations: hardy flatbread, and a treat of a few small assorted fruits.

Lyssia D'avore Elijah

 

[Elijah]

Elijah hadn't slept for seven nights.

The closest he had come were the odd periods of unconsciousness brought on by blood loss or severe pain and usually those had been cut pitifully short. So it was no small wonder that when Lyssia tried to rouse him he merely grunted and rolled over. There was barely a sign he had registered her words at all merely the general tugging on his arm that had at least penetrated some part of his sleep-fogged mind to let him know the woman wanted out of the cage of his bodies making. As soon as he was turned over, however, he went back to quietly snoring.

"Let him sleep an hour more," Nem said from the tent way suddenly, her voice low and soft. "Come, eat."

 

[Lyssia D'avore]

At Ne's voice, Lyssia's face went wooden, her posture stiff. She felt a fool for speaking so flippantly after all that the man beside her had gone through - disregarding her own troubles - and to have the hard-eyed soldier be the one to bring to mind that reality made it even worse. She looked back to the sleeping figure on his cot, keenly aware of the chill in the tent and the absence of his warmth just then, and then slipped off the cot.

And nearly stumbled and fell on legs that were still unsteady and unwilling to support her weight. The Captain was not the only one that had suffered in the past several days, merely the one to receive the lion's share of the physical abuse.

Picking at the crusty scabs across the couple split scars on her arms, she grimaced. She was not hungry in the slightest, did not require the rations in the same manner as the Captain or any of the others for that matter...but sitting round in the tent and slowly freezing, waiting for Eli to open his eyes, would have been...a bit much. That she had even considered it for a moment was by itself alarming.

"Lead the way," she said absently, distracted by her own thoughts.

 

[Elijah]

The Centauress only watched to make sure Lyssia did indeed intent to leave her Captain alone before ducking her head back outside. Her flat eyes scanned the camp beginning to grow busy with the morning rush to eat and pack down the tent. It moved like a well oiled machine, a unit used to one another, and required for little overseeing anymore. Aside, of course, from the extras they had picked up. Nem gave the small sidhe a glance when she materialised from the tent and without another word.

"You two coming? There's nicer things than flatbread at the fire," she called as they passed Elliot and Taros, her tail swatting at some fly as it tried to land on her hind quarters. She didn't slow though as she lead the way to the main fire pits where indeed there were much tastier things on offer for all. Flat, square sausage, hardy breads, eggs too and of course honeyed porridge.

"It'll be the last good meal until we read Dalriada."

 

[Elliot Aldmar]

"Bonfire. Over your left shoulder," Taros said.

Elliot glanced, and indeed, he saw Lyssia following in the wake of the military centaur. A mild surprise, seeing her without the captain.

Taros smirked. "She looks even shorter of stature next to Winnipeg, does she not? Pack her in your satchel and Stannis will never be able to find her."

Elliot looked sidelong to Taros, a smile laden with a reciprocal jesting nature given to the sellsword. "Let's flip my lucky coin. Heads, she goes in your satchel instead."

Taros snickered and clapped Elliot on the shoulder. "Remind me later: I've a rather funny story involving a pretty little dwarf in a similar scenario to share."

Nemythia called out to them in passing. Elliot and Taros each looked to their flatbreads, looked to each other, came to the same conclusion via eye contact alone, and stepped off to come astride Lyssia behind Nemythia.

They walked for a few steps, and then Elliot said to Lyssia as he strode along. "Did you sleep well?"

* * * * *​

Gloria Stannis had raised proper hell in Fort Zam Üzekh ever since she had arrived. Just a short time ago, her arrival--but really, wasn't that a credit to her ability to inspire these laggards to action? She berated everyone she had come in contact with until the officer in charge granted her an audience, and she imparted with an urgent brevity of words the utter importance of her plight. Well. It had started with brevity, but soon Gloria had to expound quite verbosely for the officer to understand the seriousness of the situation. Utter incompetence at this small, backwater fort. No wonder she saw a profuseness of men stationed here. Zam Üzekh was evidently a dumping ground for imbeciles.

The House of D'avore, den of snakes they had clearly been ousted as being, had attacked, ATTACKED, Gloria and her coalition, sabotaging a mission vital to the security of Dornoch. With a traitorous unit of Dornoch's own military, no less! How deeply did that turncoat Lyssia's conspiracy go? Oh, and Gloria didn't even bring up to the officer about the loss of Aldmar--yet again! Gloria was still seething over that grayskin bastard's weaseling through her grasp once more!

But. At long last. A force was being organized to set out from the Fort and start on the rogues' trail. They'd quite a lot of ground to cover, and quickly.

Lyssia D'avore Elijah

 

[Lyssia D'avore]

She said nothing, focusing on where her feet were going in order to avoid any missteps. The weight on her shoulders seemed to scarcely have dissipated from the day before, but gritted teeth, lips pressed into a thin line against a ceaseless litany of pain and weariness were all she could offer. Nem wasn't talking anyway, and the dagger of distrust between her and the centaur deepened. Between a soldier of strength and means, and her with little to offer.

She almost did not notice the pair of men come alongside her, so preoccupied with not falling flat on her face she was. Well, that...and the dithering thoughts of one Captain Elijah. Words scything through the relative quiet almost had her on her face after all; she stumbled as she was pulled from her reverie. "What?" she managed as she caught herself on the verge of falling, regaining her balance and looking away from the both of them out of embarrassment. "Oh. Well enough," she said - perhaps a little too quickly. She was uncomfortably aware that Nem at least knew where she had been sleeping at, if little else. And men were, well...

They were men.

The smell of the fire brought with it the smell of food, but Lyssia herself didn't find she had any appetite at all.

 

[Elijah]

Nem did indeed cast a sideways glance in the small woman's direction when she commented on how she slept, then furthered her look with a soft snort. Making it very clear in the way of women what exactly she thought Lyssia's words meant.

"And how about you two, were your quarters satisfactory?" There was certainly an edge of humour in those words though not at their expensive, rather, at the whole situation. Soldiers wit, Elijah had once called it, a common thing amongst those who spent too long on the road and seeing the darker side to life. She stepped into the food line without much thought of offering the others first chances. In the army when it came to food even rank didn't matter; it was first come first served and every man and woman was looking out for their own stomachs.

 

[Elliot Aldmar]

A laconic reply. It was to be expected. Adjust the circumstances just enough, and Lyssia might well have been allied with Stannis working against Elliot, answering similar questions of small talk with the same sparing use of words. Tenuous allies of mutual convenience.

Nemythia returned the question to him and Taros as they all walked.

"The ground was accommodating," Taros said with an understated cheer.

"No place like home," Elliot said. He'd take the wide open ground of Arethil before any warm bed in Dornoch.

"What do you do?" Taros asked of Nemythia, somewhat pointedly, as they stepped into the chow line. "I never actually seen a centaur asleep. Do you sleep standing up? Surely you don't sleep standing up."

"You ever seen a horse sleep?" Elliot said. As if the answer were obvious.

"Centaurs aren't horses. Look, Winnipeg's got..." Taros motioned to her human-like upper half, "...all of that extra assembly to concern herself with."

Elliot just shook his head. Mildly amused, but not enough to crack a true mirthful smile.

Lyssia D'avore Elijah

 

[Lyssia D'avore]

She hung back from the rest as they made their way into the food line. She really did have little appetite. At the best of times she seldom ate much, and these hardly counted as the best of times. The mere thought of eating made her sick to her stomach.

Alone, away from the others. Not aloof, not haughty, not above the others - but alone. She was a stranger here as much as they would have been in a ballroom - a delicate porcelain doll among hardened veterans, mercenaries, and criminals. Their entire way of life was alien to hers. While she had hardly lived a life of luxury in the past few years, she had neither been in among the military women and men of the Dynasty. Their regimented lives, their coarse and dark humor, and their clipped, efficient way of speaking and moving was not her way.

She could find no way to include herself in their conversation, these men and Nemythia. She did not belong here and - perhaps worst of all - she knew it. Against being an outsider, the unspoken words of the centaur meant little. The only person in the camp that remotely understood her, and accepted her to any degree, was the selfsame soul that twisted her thoughts into knots until she couldn't tell the direction of her own mind. And yet...in his presence, she felt what she hadn't felt since the fall of her house and loss of her home and her family.

Stability, safety. Belonging, oddly enough.

She watched on from the outside, looking through an invisible window into the lives of people she did not understand, and did not really know. The derision and disdain, the distrust and dismissiveness - real or perceived - pushed her away like a shield wall against an advancing horde of conscripts. She could share nothing with these people and, likewise, they would find nothing of value that she could offer in any case.

Instead, she turned her eyes inward, struggling to understand the knot of emotions therein - the one that had grown from a simple seed until it had become little less than a ball of ice in her soul.