Completed Not All Cells Are Steel and Stone

[Maranae]

She saw red. Everything was a potential meal, everything was prey and she the predator. Of course, such thoughts were far, far beyond her comprehension in that moment. Her name called out in warning was a beacon. She turned blood-thirsty eyes to Ruslan. A low growl escaped her as she advanced a single step.

If not for the sizzling, white-hot heat of lightning. A blinding flash, a crack like the end of the world, and Maranae was picking herself off the ground. Her skin and clothing smoked even if she seemed to be relatively unharmed - coarse magic siphoned into her body to feed the core.

There was a clarity in her mind that had been lacking before.

Maranae looked at the criminals arrayed against her, to Ruslan ... and then backed away until she was with Ruslan and company. Blood still dribbled down her shoulder and soaked into undershirt beneath her leathers, ran down her leg. Less than before; she looked more hale than before too, as though the flesh she had consumed and the magic she had stolen had gone straight to strengthening her body, to healing her wounds.

There was confusion in her eyes. The rage had been snapped, but now she was unsure of where she was and what was happening, and she looked to Ruslan like a dog might to its master for direction.

 

[Ruslan Gildal]

They fell back until the likes of Mama Bear, Hermann, and a couple other of the caravan survivors joined them. Now the odds were looking even—likely in their favor, for the raiders seemed comprised of just men, save the wizard, and had none among their number who could equal Maranae. Having Maranae around was a lot like having his good friend Mogrin, a Gildan ogre, at his side; simply put, people tended to be a bit more respectful.

As the two groups now faced off against one another, each poised and ready for an assault or to receive the assault of the other, Ruslan had a thought laced with wry humor, wondering if these raiders would have the chance to learn a little respect before went to meet their ancestors. He glanced over at Maranae and winked. She looked a touch...lost actually, but in short order everything would be decided. She didn't like fighting, but fighting had become a necessity; best it all be done with quickly then, no?

The raider's leader (whose name was Jaxson) stepped forward with an audacious boldness to inspire the men around him. "Is that it, then? Is this all you brought?"

"You forgot about the archer."

Jaxson scoffed. "Nice try."

Maranae

 

[Maranae]

Throbbing pain echoed through her chest. Couple of cracked ribs likely, although she was indifferent to the pain for the most part. She cocked her head to one side at the unsolicited wink. A gesture that she could not fathom among the many other things she struggled to understand.

Mama Bear simply stood among her cohort with her beefy arms crossed beneath her breasts. Said not a word. In fact, the only thing that separated her from a statue was the steady rise and fall of her chest. Her head turned to take in a couple more of the bandit's own forces slinking out of the rapidly vanishing shadows of night. The most enthusiastic of Jaxson's force had stood beside him. These others were somewhat less enthusiastic.

They were accustomed to quick, one-sided victories after all. Beaten dogs that bit back were quite a new subject for them.

Maranae turned to face the group arrayed against them, taking a step forward as though considering charging at them. Ruslan would probably appreciate the fact that all of the remaining brigands took a step back, and not one or two of them had the wild-eyed look of someone in the grips of terror.

"You goin' to give me my shit back, boy?" Mama Bear grinned viciously at the leader facing her. "You return what's mine and I'll consider it even trade. Ain't no lawman, out here policing the frontier - figure you bled me, and I bled you back. Pract'ly a fair trade."

Mara looked back to her employer. She sounded...odd.

"You can take that fair trade and stick it, whore. Just because you cut some of us up don't mean shit. We still outnumber you." Jaxson spat the words, confidence oozing from him. He clearly thought he had the upper hand.

"Suit yourself, boy," she said simply.

Mara looked back towards the brigands. Mama's voice had not actually come from Mama! Almost as soon as the thought occurred to her, than Mama simply melted away. Jaxson made a startled squawk, but not out of surprise for the illusion. A hand with thick fingers had taken him by his oily hair as her spell of concealment faded and in one neat motion, the other hand belonging to the same individual drew a knife across his throat. Blood fountained from a severed artery.

"Suit yourself," Mama said.

The shit hit the fan then.

 

[Ruslan Gildal]

Magic.

Certainly part of Ruslan's decision to embark upon the unofficial Gildan custom of Gezi was that irresistible itch of the explorer, common to many intrepid men and women, but this was also an inextricable part of it: to witness that which was forbidden by Jura in Gild but pervasive throughout the rest of Arethil. So it was with the wizard and his flames, and so it was again with Mama Bear and her illusions.

And Ruslan, truth be told, could not help but feel a certain fascination in seeing it. But he'd little time for wonder.

The caravaneers, urged on by Mama Bear's definitive first move, went charging to her aid. The clash began, and Ruslan hung back a step behind Goffred, this not from cowardice but prudence. Past the melee he kept eyes on the wizard, and sure enough the magic-wielder's hands lit up with wreaths of fire and he eyed potential victims in the melee. Time was up for Ruslan holding back his secret; he'd worry about questions and all the like later.

His Praetor power came to be, a thin shimmer of a dome manifesting with Ruslan at its center. The wizard would have torched Hermann, but the surge of his fire struck the dome and then dissipated meekly to nothing. Dumbstruck, and then exasperated and bewildered, the wizard cried out, "Again!?"

Ruslan smirked. He helped Goffred finish the raider before him: a clean chop of his war axe severed the raider's arm at the elbow, and the man fell back in his dying agony as Ruslan collected his own shield from that orphaned arm. A test lift with his battered right arm and hand and...things seemed alright, save for the pain of a coming bruise. He'd live, and the shield would prove useful.

Because though the wizard behind the raider ranks might be ineffective with his magic against the dome, still the man had a shortsword at his side, and that steel could still cut.

Maranae

 

[Maranae]

The melee before had been nearly civilized. Now? Now it was the insanity born of people who found they had the edge and could finally strike back at their tormentors facing off against a group that suddenly felt the chill of the grave and the consequences of their previous actions breathing down their necks.

Maranae was unaware of what it was that Ruslan was about. She was, however, intensely aware of the sudden weight that afflicted her; her prodigious strength seemed to flag and fail her, and the heretofore easy to ignore pain of her injuries become considerably less so. Even as the caravan master turned from the former leader of the thieves to slash the one to their left, delivering dozens of precise slices intended to cause pain and disarm but quite cruelly not to kill, Mara fell to the ground. The broken rib was a shard of fiery ice stabbing through her chest. Her head split from the blow received their earlier. Even the mostly healed wound from the arrow earlier throbbed in a way that robbed her of the ability to think.

Within the null Ruslan had put up, she was weak. Powerless, even. Just a dim girl that had the semblance of humanity and little else. She could only loose a mewl of pain as she lay on the ground, ignored by the other combatants as they went at one another with exceptional violence.

And so it was until Ruslan stepped away from where she had fallen prone. Only then did her strength return. But not immediately, not quickly. The pain left instantly, but she found she hadn't the strength to rise as whatever it was that kept her going recovered from whatever it was that Ruslan had done.

 

[Ruslan Gildal]

In the second after Ruslan picked up the shield:

Somehow, finding its way among the fight's clamor, was just a little sound. Something that did not mesh so well with the violent clash which otherwise had the full audience of his ears. Called to do so by the strangeness, Ruslan glanced back, and the sight of Maranae on the ground was as alarming as it was baffling. What happened? He hadn't even seen it, whatever blow it was that proved so powerful as to lay even her, with all her innate capacities, low. But there wasn't enough time for any proper reflection, to think that perhaps it was his Praetor power which had inadvertently done this. What held primacy in Ruslan's mind was a teaching from the War College: secure safety, if not victory, first, and then see to the wounded. It wouldn't do Maranae nor Ruslan nor any of the survivors any good if the raiders turned the fight around because Ruslan voluntarily took himself out of it.

So he had to press on.

Before him, a raider with some impressive martial skill, easily keeping both Goffred and Hermann at bay—and he was the last obstacle before Ruslan could just sprint toward the wizard. Hermann was stabbed and fell back, wounded now like Maranae, and Ruslan stepped up to take his place in the fight. He made ready to pressure the raider along with Goffred, but then an arrow, like a miraculous bolt of lightning, had weaved through all openings in the melee and struck the skilled raider right in his sword arm.

"I told you about the archer."

Ruslan batted the yelping raider aside with his shield (ahhh, accursed fortune, his arm!), right toward Goffred, who got some vengeance for Hermann by finishing him off.

As for Ruslan himself, he did just what he had intended to do, and went charging toward the wizard in the back.

"Get away from me!" the wizard shrieked in his panic, his hands failing to ignite with their fire magic. He fumbled for his shortsword and drew it. "Get away from me, knave!"

What luck: the wizard was left-handed, and Ruslan was holding his acquired shield with his right. He huddled in close behind his shield's protection, felt the wizard's wild swing strike bluntly against the outside of the shield, and rammed into the man, knocking him flat down to the ground. The wizard was reeling, but so was Ruslan, as it happened, his right arm inflamed with an arresting pain after the full-on bash. He grimaced hard as he stumbled about with a near inebriated gait, collecting his wits and his will.

He just needed enough strength and wherewithal to cleave the wizard's skull.

Maranae

 

[Maranae]

The only defiance left among the thieves was the lone mage, who remained ignorant of the fact that he stood alone against a half dozen foes that were by and large quite done with him. The opportunity for Ruslan to cleave the mage from stem to stern was taken away from him in short order; the archer that all but Ruslan had forgotten about made sure that no others among their company would feel the sting of steal or bite of magic by putting an arrow through the fellow's right eye.

He didn't even make a sound as he dropped like a sack of potatoes. Just another boneless mass of rotting meat to go with the rest.

For a moment there was silent. The crack of wood burning in the highwaymen's fires was the only sound - that and the low moan of Hermann has he favored his injury and the pitiful cries of those mortally wounded but not yet gone. It lasted for a long moment - and then a cry of triumph erupted from the archer in his perch and others.

Maranae slowly got to her feet, woozy but alive. She blinked stupidly in the firelight, hunching over her broken rib and trying to ignore the crawl of sinew and bone as it worked to fix itself with painful slowness.

The caravan leader straightened from her crouch, having been about to aid Ruslan, and then spit to one side. "Serve 'em right," she said smugly and turned to go back to the corpse of the leader. Without any fanfare, she pulled his head up and then scalped him, muttering under her breath as she did so. Her grisly trophy in hand, she straightened again.

"I don't care who has first watch, but someone go tend to the wounded. If they need more than stitches can mend, send them my way." She did not wait for any answer, instead moving off to look for the private stash of the leader and whatever wealth might be contained therein.

 

[Ruslan Gildal]

Ruslan hefted his axe.

And then held it aloft for the moment as he saw, with great suddenness and skill, the work of Squint finishing off the mage as he tried to raise himself up. Keen aim, luck, or both, but the arrow had found home in the hedge wizard's eye, and to Ruslan that was a most excellent showing from their elusive archer. Good work, and much glory won.

Ruslan lowered his weapon, and the nullifying dome that was his Praetor gift winked out of existence at his will. He took a moment to glance around the raiders' camp, shifting his stance and his gaze here and there. He shrugged, smiled, and said in the direction of his comrades, "Was that all?"

Mama Bear, bless her fierce and stalwart heart, spat on the ground that once belonged to the ne'er-do-wells. Served them right, indeed. She scalped the bold leader, and Ruslan tacitly approved; worse would have been their fates if this attack had failed. But victory was theirs, and such noble action honored Regel and all the Saints.

"Squint can watch," said Goffred, as he kneeled down to see about Hermann. "He's good at that."

Ruslan holstered his axe, dropped the shield and let his sore arm just hang and rest, and made his way back over toward Maranae. If anything, hers was the most baffling injury. Even if she had been hit as Hermann had, was it not anything she had not endured in the past twenty-four hours anyway? What manner of blow could have possibly laid her flat as she was now?

"What happened?" said Ruslan as he stood before her. "Are you alright?"

Maranae

 

[Maranae]

Something twisted in her chest, something that pulsed with the world. The ache there was far more insistent than any wound she had received in recent memory (which was about all she could remember, anyway). Aside from that ache and the stabbing pain of each breath, she found herself caught in the same profound lethargy after any fight. It was a thing that went beyond the physical.

Staring into the middle distance, she did not notice Ruslan approach. Seemed oblivious to the world in general, if it came to it. She looked up after a moment, dull eyes gleaming in the growing light. Silence stretched as she gathered up the words he was looking for, every syllable a challenge. "No. Yes," she said hesitantly. "She does not know," she said after a long and drawn out second. She straightened and winced as broken bones grated in her chest.

But it was not the pain of broken ribs that made her wince. That spot behind them ached ever more fiercely.

She looked at the warrior then, truly looked at him. With an intense effort - evident in the way she held herself, the gritting of her teeth - she managed to pull the cobwebs aside. "I do not understand," she said, one word at a time. Each word an effort. "Fighting ... and then it was all gone. Strength, thought - gone." She looked at him expectantly, as though he might know an answer. It was the most articulate she had been since they had met on this job. It was also clear that the effort to maintain such lucidity was challenging, far more challenging than it should have been.

 

[Ruslan Gildal]

It looked as though Maranae's awareness descended back down upon her after some lofty spiritual journey, such was the vacancy in her eyes and in her stare. Again the phases of this outwardly mostly normal looking woman, from docile to aggressive to docile again, were astounding to behold. Whether it was a general temperament of her kind—of which she knew nothing and could not speak of it—or of herself in particular remained a mystery.

The glimmer of life came back to her eyes, this even through the torment of her wounds, and she voiced her puzzlement. Strength, thought—gone. It almost sounded like sheer fatigue, the shock of wounds, or some such trauma caused her to faint, yet even that seemed an insufficient explanation to Ruslan.

"Has that ever happened to you before? Some time in years past, perhaps?"

Maranae

 

[Maranae]

A moment of silence, varied expression flitting across her features - one after the other in a procession of fleeting memory. She tilted her head sharply to one side, puzzlement evident. Half of his question was meaningless, not that he would know. The concept of time was completely and utterly beyond her, saving perhaps the time of day, or maybe a few days or a week. Anything beyond that existed in her head shorn of any timeline.

There were...fragments, though. "In the bad place," she whispered. Her mind shied from those memories. There were no good things to recall of her time in the cage. The place of cages was a place she would not go back to. It was the only thing she would willingly engage in violence to avoid - a return to chains. To pain. "The master could..." She trailed off, struggling to find a word. "Make me sleep awake," she finished. A please smile flicked across her features, as though she had conquered some insurmountable task.

 

[Ruslan Gildal]

In the bad place.

Nothing quite raised Ruslan's hackles like hearing this. The manner in which she whispered it, the implications of that arrangement of four words—it hinting to a despoiling of innocence by a particularly malevolent kind of cruelty, that which earned invariably the righteous contempt of all good souls who heard so awful a thing. Ruslan couldn't keep that very reaction from his expression: the subtle twists of anger narrowed the brow, flared the nostrils, pressed the lips.

"This master..."

He didn't know if she would know—Mara appeared either to be highly adverse to remembering, or the memories themselves were foggy—but Ruslan had to ask.

"...is he dead?"

Maranae

 

[Maranae]

She flinched, pleased smile vanishing as if it never had been.

Some memories were not shattered mirrors. Some were not tattered wisps floating on a fickle breeze. Some carried such powerful emotion that they could never be banished. Memories of the day she left were one such.

Unaware, her face twisted in a snarl, equal parts fear and anger. Rage. Flickering images of violence that made anything that happened today seem mundane and civilized. Screams. Blood flying, the scent of magic (not that she knew what it was, not really) filling the air and nearly drowning out the scent of viscera and vitae. A flash of panicked eyes, the crunch of bone and shrieked pleas for forgiveness.

Maranae had not forgiven them.

She nodded wordlessly, the snarl slipping from her face and eyes growing distant, looking inward. "All gone. No more ... pain. No more cages." Her eyes sharpened. "She will not go back. Will not, will not!" A low growl rolled deep within her, like that of a big cat. She regarded Ruslan with a predator's eyes, held back from violence by a single word. One of their companions - Squint - looked over uneasily at the vehemence in the words of one with so few of them.

 

[Ruslan Gildal]

"And you won't," Ruslan said, halfway reaching out his hand before, again, remembering Maranae's general aversion to touch this time and curbing his own tendencies, he stopped and let his arm descend back down to his side. Such was his way to make a point and drive it home with the clasp of his hand but here it seemed unwise, if for no other reason than the look on her countenance courting as correct a respectful space rather than a genial closeness.

Still, he felt relieved and happy for her at the news: all gone, she'd said of this supposed master. Taken from me in making; make me sleep awake; pain, cages; all of this to Ruslan's ears sounded like the foulest of Curite dabblings, and emblematic of the very reason why magic was blasphemous for use by the hands of mortals. More and more, with what little Maranae revealed of this erstwhile master, it seemed that he in his arrogance wished to play at the work of gods.

But in the place of divine wisdom, all he had was insatiable cruelty. It made Ruslan sick.

"All I wanted to know was that he got what he deserved. And praise Regel, it sounds like that it is so."

Cages.

What that master deserved was to be scourged in a public square and then beheaded, but Ruslan would take whatever earthly act proved his mortality. The gods would do the rest.

Maranae

 

[Lyssia D'avore]

[Supposed to be Maranae, not Lyssia. DeRp]

Invisible hackles remained up for a moment before she shifted her stance, adopting something less threatening. "Deserved," she murmured in agreement without really understanding what it was she was agreeing with, and the sunny disposition she was better known for reasserted itself as if the uncomfortable conversation they just had had not happened at all.

Echoes of that ancient trauma - ancient to her, at least - still skipped round the back of her mind though. Her troubles at the hands of the bad ones had not ended with the death of every soul that had stood in her way to escape. They had done to her what had happened here and it was only the arrogance and complacency of those that tormented her that had given her the narrow window to escape.

"Not know Regel. Regel not one of bad ones," she said cheerfully, completely at odds with the grim scene of death round them both. The general assumption being that Regel had been one of the bad ones that had come to an unsurprisingly bad end trying to keep her caged.

 

[Ruslan Gildal]

Ruslan's blood cooled when conjunction with the softening of the tension within Maranae. And, well, the numbing effect of anger, now departed, allowed for the heavy ache and soreness of his right arm to creep back into his awareness.

"No, he's not," he agreed, smiling lightly, glad to hear the cheer returned. With grace, he might be able to avoid spoiling it once more while also getting at the cause of Mara's collapse.

Hmm. Curite dabblings. The thought from the moment prior clung tenaciously in his mind. The timing was...right. Perhaps. Maybe then...?

"Allow me to ask you something," Ruslan said. "Did that weakness, that robbery of strength and thought which saw you collapsed...did that happen when the wizard cast his fire?"

Because that was right at the time when Ruslan called upon his Praetor gift.

Maranae

 

[Maranae]

Wide eyes tracked every single movement Ruslan made, quite like a cat in their intensity. Gnawing hunger crept into her mind again - constant, unwelcome companion that it was, but easily ignored. For now, at least.

She blinked, and scanned the ground, looking for something while the Praetor asked his question. Cocking her head to one side - a seemingly unconscious reaction to any question that was not immediately easy to understand - she huffed. "Fire hot," she said absently - completely missing the question. "More hot than ... than blood. Not same as for cooking. Not touch her. Vanish," she chattered. There, on the ground beside a man that had suffered a close encounter of the Maranae kind. Her battered, chipped and notched and half rusted blade. She went to go pick it up.

She paused halfway to standing straight. "There was bad smell. Bad feel, then heat... then nothing. Fire gone. I was not... fell. Not there. Wake, sleep," she said. The uncertainty in her words was mirrored in that hunched stance.

"Wizard?"

 

[Ruslan Gildal]

Ruslan's brow furrowed in his bid to decode Maranae's particular manner of speech; the somewhat wry amusement which could be gleaned from the situation—that Mara had her visible difficulties in understanding him, and now he in his turn had his visible difficulties in understanding her—was not lost on him. Still, Ruslan made the attempt.

He'd not seen what happened when the wizard had tried to conflagrate Maranae directly, and so missed a crucial part of the puzzle to put "Vanish" into context. Bad smell, bad feel, heat, nothing, fire gone. The chain of events didn't make an immediately identifiable sense, and there were avenues of thought, explanatory possibilities, which likely were not correct. Wake, sleep; how it happened with such suddenness remained a mystery, and Ruslan could not yet soundly attribute it to his anti-magic.

If nothing else though, Maranae was alright, and the day was won.

"A man who can use magic," Ruslan said in answer to her question. "Usually one of vast knowledge and skill, but...I suppose I applied the term generously to our late friend over there."

He gave a small jerk of his head toward the collection of wagons from their caravan, and the trove of plunder from other sources, all once belonging to the raiders, now firmly in the hands of Mama Bear and what crew of hers remained.

"Hungry? Nothing tastes quite as good as the first meal after victory."

Maranae

 

[Maranae]

Imaginary ears perked, and her entire body became taut, exuding a level of excitement not seen in days. "Food?" Gnawing hunger at the back of her mind. Never, ever sated fully. But sometimes... "She would like to eat. More! More!"

Excitement indeed. There were no thoughts to spend on the affliction that left Ruslan stumped as to its source. There was only the scent of raw, bloody meat and the cookfires (the ones she could have done without, truth to tell).

Mama Bear had Squint crack open one of the casks which contained salt pork, while another worked on stoking the fires. The caravaneer simply directed Ruslan and Maranae to the grim work of dragging the bodies away from the campsite so that they would not have to smell them later in the day. The smell of cooking pork soon cut through that of blood and spilled guts.

She kept humming a happy little tune to herself that was many different levels of off key from anything commonly sung in any bawdy tavern. The thought of her actually being in one of those places was hilarious in and of itself. Eventually she stopped her humming and began to chatter in quite broken common about a myriad number of things.

The first directed to Ruslan was perhaps a bit too on point for someone like her. "Why is he here? No one wants her, so she goes with people who take. But why is Ruslan here?"

 

[Ruslan Gildal]

There wasn't much to the search—Squint had already gotten into the good stuff when Ruslan and Maranae came round—but there were a few post-battle tasks which needed doing. Tending to the wounded was one, inventory was another, cooking a third, and, of course, the labor which fell to Ruslan and Maranae by way of showing up when they did: removal of the bodies from the site. So in the first light of the morning sun, with its warming rays gracing all who lived like a sweet reminder that, today, at least in this moment, mortality was staved off by victory, Ruslan and Maranae found themselves hauling the dead outside the perimeter of the camp they now claimed as theirs.

As Mara hummed, Ruslan contemplated. There would yet in the future be many battles, wars, which Gild would face—the peace of the Armistice among the Campanian powers would not last forever. The last war, from before Ruslan had yet graduated from the War College and received his Holy Accolade, had ended unfavorably for Gild, resulting in his homeland paying tribute to another nation. Tribute. The price of peace, measured in talents of silver. When he returned home, and when the Armistice inevitably crumbled, Ruslan aimed to ensure that his people ended up in a far better position than ever before. Not like these bandits, scattered and broken. Defeated.

Maranae broke from her humming as they both freshly deposited two corpses outside the perimeter and were walking back inside. Asked a question of him.

"Simple," Ruslan said. "I am far from home—traveling—for there are sights that I wish to see, places that I wish to visit, here and there upon Arethil." And, moreover, to perhaps discover from different kingdoms and cultures—those that are thriving, and even from those that are waning—that which might be of use to Gild, to help see her rise to become a great power in Campania, mayhap even Epressa, mayhap even the world entire. But this added detail would likely only serve to baffle Mara, so Ruslan kept his explanation simple.

"And, with travel, there comes certain practicalities, coin chief among them. Living off the land is all well and good, but who doesn't like a hard roof over their head and a warm bed from time to time?"

Maranae

 

[Maranae]

"Home," she said. Her face twisted as she considered the term - a touch of sadness and loss, a touch of incomprehension. At least this time it was not born out of inability to understand. No, it was born of an inability to relate. "I wish she knew," she said matter-of-factly.

The dead had been tended to. It was grisly work, but there were very few things that bothered the girl - a fact that Mama was keenly aware of. Before their work was done, the smell of something more substantial than dried meat and cheese filled the air. Apparently the haul had been bountiful, the spoils of a war that they had not picked. Won it, though.

She wilted a bit at the thought of what he spoke. "Coin?" She reached into her blood-soaked leathers and pulled a little satchel from between her breasts. It reeked of sweat, blood, and worse. She jangled it, and the sound of metal clinking about inside spoke of its contents. "Pretty, but ... not know what to do with."

In truth there wasn't much in there. She was criminally underpaid by most every person she 'worked' for. Her concept of money and its value was practically nonexistent. Her coin purse contained copper and a piece or two of silver. Had it been Ruslan, who knew his worth and work, it would have contained gold.

 

[Ruslan Gildal]

Ruslan gave an appraising glance at the coin pouch produced by Maranae, and it undoubtedly had about it a shocking sparseness akin to a man wasting away from malnourishment. But this wasn't particularly surprising. Maranae herself didn't understand the value of currency, and so likely cared not for its acquisition even as a means to an end and as well parted with it freely. Some ways of life openly embraced the near or total disregard for money, certainly, but, for Maranae, it did beg the question.

And as they came to a stop close by Squint's soon-to-be collection of fine dining, Ruslan asked it.

"Why are you here, Maranae? Is it merely because Mama Bear took you on? Seems an inadequate reason, don't you think, venturing life and limb for something whose value eludes you."

He did genuinely want to know. Hers was a life quite atypical of what generalities could be gleaned from peoples the world over. A memory shot through with holes, "taken" from her in her "making"; a hole in the ground that scarcely counted as a place she was from, much less a home; an erstwhile master engaged in Regel-knew-what with her as his unwilling subject. All this preceded the freedom she now had.

But what was her aim? Ruslan had his, both in what he said aloud and the further elucidation he had kept to himself. What aspiration, of the so very many life had on offer, earned its place as her proper destination?

Maranae

 

[Maranae]

Food commanded her attention, as it always did. She was always hungry to one degree or another. Tonight was not one of those times where it was an easily ignored, nagging thing in the back of her mind. It was a full roaring, unavoidable fact of life. Her eyes remained fixed one what was being prepared.

It took a few moments to register that she had been spoken to again, and another few to recall what had been said. Abstract questions were her Achilles heel, and ones about her desires even more so. She looked to Ruslan with a veil of confusion in her eyes. She did not answer his question, turning instead to the meal that was being made.

It wasn't until aforementioned meal was declared ready and the others had collected their share of the spoils (bacon and hard cheese with some crusty, mildly stale bread) that she spoke again.

"Not wanted," she murmured. "Am not ... smart?" Aware of her own inadequacies. She paused long enough to eat everything she had been given without seeming to chew or enjoy any of it. It was like a dog given a bowl that feared others might take it - she inhaled everything as though it were her last meal. "Only tough. Can fight, know how. Not know anything else."

Her face had turned sour as she spoke. Hunger still gnawed - hunger like that of a gnoll, endless and insatiable. The thing in her middle demanded all the time, without cease.

"Not like." Her sour expression deepened. "Not fighting. In bad place, made to. Kill, over and over. Hurt all times." Distance in her eyes, retracing treacherous paths in her mind. A moment, and the fog cleared as she visibly flinched back from whatever she saw there.

"Somewhere, she belongs. Maybe ... family? Maybe hammer on metal, make things. But not fight."

 

[Ruslan Gildal]

Ruslan ate slowly, far more slowly than Mara, as he listened, devoting the greater share of his attention to her over the complaints of his unsatiated stomach.

It was rough to hear Maranae's answer. Ruslan likened it to waking disoriented on a road enshrouded by a thick fog, knowing not what came before and knowing not what lay ahead, yet going, just going, walking down the path, no clear idea of the ultimate destination, no indication of how far one has come or how far one has yet to go. To a man of Ruslan's character, such a state was close to the very height of misery, yet Maranae seemed unperturbed by her lot. To all came what was in concordance with their natures.

That mention of the "bad place" again, the hole in the ground, the domain of her former master. An intrusive thought kept trying to assert itself in Ruslan's mind: what if those claws, those fangs, weren't natural? What if Maranae, as she was now, was not a kind to be found upon Arethil, but a creation, forged by this master, made for the purpose of killing, over and over, as she said. It was almost too horrific to believe, yet...what magic didn't eventually make a Curite of all who wielded it?

"Wheresoever you belong, you would do well to discover it quickly," Ruslan said. He glanced about the campsite formerly owned by the raiders, at all of their spoils, at all of the reclaimed spoils, at the surviving caravaneers who were themselves partaking of a victory meal. All of it was evidence of a truth certain to not be to Mara's liking.

"Because, in the meantime, fighting is all you have."

Maranae

 

[Maranae]

"No," she said. The set of her shoulders and jaw, the direct stare. She did not want to be nothing but a sword-arm, and she would not simply allow it to be the lot of her life. If only she knew how to change tracks, how to shift the course of her life.

Not smart. It would be frustrating if she could understand half of the world round her. There had never been time to simply sit and learn; either her strangeness saw her run out of town or - more common - trouble found her and she had to flee.

Unable to read, unable to write, and in many cases had difficulty even speaking. Unless some of those things changed, she was doomed to live the life of a sword-for-hire.

"Must not. Other things, ways. But how? Not... talk well. Many not know what she say," she managed after thinking for a moment. Clarity returned as her meal settled. It was not enough. It was never enough.