Fate - First Reply Of Sacred Things

[Hahnah]

There was blood on her hands.

Blood which water could never cleanse, and blood for which her heart felt no remorse. She had been a human slayer, and though not all of them were possessed of sin, she had believed it to be so, believed it with all the conviction her heart was capable of. That hatred simmered in her chest now, suppressed but not extinguished, unable to be totally extinguished, like a poisonous everburning flame which could merely be contained and never truly smothered.

But Hahnah had been twice touched by kindness, and of the second had occurred the opening of her eyes to all of the evil she had willfully done. She was a cleanser of profane things, but she herself had been profane as well all along.

Yet she could be better than the monster she had rightfully been accused of being. She wanted to be better. To live up to the example of they who had shown her that kindness could triumph over cruelty.

Of profane things she was the cleanser. But, maybe, of sacred things she could be the savior.

* * * * *​

Hahnah had departed the city of Menura, wandered the roads of the Kingdom of Dalriada in the proximity of Oban, and struggled to survive. Gone were the gifts of the Dying God, her sorcery, which she would have used to hunt game and live off of the land. In her possession she had but a knife and the clothes on her back, so instead she had to resort to scavenging for food from the settlements she passed through. The concept of "stealing" was something she was aware of but did not quite understand, yet she knew enough to know that she needed to not be seen taking the food she needed. One of the rules of civilization she had through hard trial and error learned.

She was bidden to walk among them, these very words spoken to her by the Dying God. But she had not talked to very many people of the settlements she had traversed, she being a peculiar seemingly-elven stranger to them and they metaphorically being on the other side of a fragile wall of ice to her. What was it that kept her separated from them, these humans, that made it so difficult to simply speak with them? Shyness? Awkwardness? An inescapable otherness, of essentially living a life so at odds with their own that her being and her ways were to them insurmountably alien? Or perhaps it was simply easier to listen, to be present but not a part of, a covert observer peering in through sound and sight to the ordinary lives of others.

But then, as it had been with Griffyn von Spurling, there came a chance meeting, a spur of luck.

Hahnah was traveling down a road, hill to one side and gentle downslope to the other, sparse trees casting pockets of shade upon the fields of green. And there ahead of her a wagon, pulled by two mules. Approaching.

They came within speaking distance, the wagon slowing to a stop and Hahnah stopping as well. A man and a woman, each with similar faces of unblemished cheer, sat on the driver's platform of the wagon. The heads of children poked out curiously from the wagon and from their parents' backs--five in total.

The man looked Hahnah over, taking in her measure: the dirt that had collected at the bottom of her cloak, the bags under, and forlorn character of, her eyes, the weakened manner in which she stood. He said to her, "Good morning, elf."

"Good morning," Hahnah replied.

They spoke, back and forth, for a little while. The slight trepidation the man and his wife had of Hahnah faded quickly, and they were not even bothered that she had a knife on her person. They introduced themselves: Nicholas and Rachel Stonemason. Not actual stonemasons, Nicholas added with a chuckle, just their surname. Rachel asked Hahnah where she was going. And Hahnah told her the truth: that she didn't yet know. Rachel and Nicholas shared a look. Nicholas shared with Hahnah where he and his family were going, and why: to Oban, for his younger brother lived there and he was getting married at last, and they were off to participate in the ceremony.

Then Nicholas, putting on a friendly smile, said, "How would you like to come with us? Keep in our company until Oban?"

Hahnah, with an understated tone and expression of joy, nodded, and said, "Yes. I would like that very much."

* * * * *​

Hahnah rode in the back of the wagon with the children, whom she had come to know over the course of their journey. Imoen was the eldest at thirteen years, and she watched over her siblings like a hawk, taking effervescent pride in teaching them things and keeping them in line if they got "too rowdy." Joseph and Joel were twins, nine years old, and were often the usual culprits of said too-rowdiness given that they adored their wooden swords and play fought with them frequently, occasionally by accident smacking one of their younger siblings or Imoen herself in their broad, dramatic strokes. Mina was seven, and she was showing signs of magic adeptness already, playing with fizzling bands of light that danced on her fingertips; at least, when she wasn't studiously reading one of the books at her side ("Expensive those are," said Nicholas of them). Then there was Rorik, five years of age and looking precisely like his father with his blonde hair and green eyes, who could be as quiet and engaged as Mina while toying with tools and miscellaneous things and trying to build little constructions out of them, and who could be as energetic as Joseph and Joel when he would inevitably get caught up in a rough-and-tumble with them--before Imoen had to step in and break it up before Rachel cast a disciplinary glance back, anyway.

Hahnah talked and interacted with the human children freely, that wall of ice stopping her previously having its fragility proven. And, in truth, she was as genuinely curious about them as they were of her. Mina asked if she could touch Hahnah's pointed ears, and Hahnah said that she may, and she asked often if Hahnah could speak to her in Elvish, which she obliged. Imoen braided and unbraided Hahnah's hair many times throughout the journey as she talked of their hometown, Juniper's Reach, further south and bordering the Savannah. Joseph and Joel wanted to know if she knew any elven martial arts, and were mildly disappointed when Hahnah didn't even know what "martial arts" were; they subsequently took turns play-swordfighting with her, and, to their excitement, ended up squashing her with their superior skill with a wooden blade. Rorik had been the first among them to share some of his food with her, half a sweetroll, and he remarked with complete childhood innocence that Hahnah was "really pretty"--which she didn't quite know how to respond to, prompting giggles from Imoen.

Five days on the road, steadily riding toward Oban.

And then they were stopped.

* * * * *​

"Must be getting close," Nicholas said, his head half turned back to glance into the wagon. "There's some soldiers up ahead. Patrol."

"You hear that?" Rachel said, looking into the wagon. "Almost there."

A chorus of approval from the children, and Hahnah glancing forward out through the wagon's opening. Soldiers. She felt an apprehension at that word, recalling the Anirian soldiers that had marched into Strathford to restore order, the soldiers during the siege of Menura. But she kept her calm.

The wagon slowed. Hahnah briefly saw that one of the soldiers had stepped onto the road with a hand raised and bid them to stop, and so Nicholas had.

"Hail, traveler," said one of the soldiers--Hahnah couldn't see which one.

"Good afternoon," said Nicholas.

"Fine day, it is." The same soldier, in the same genial tone of voice.

"Fine day, indeed."

"Allow me to apologize for taking up some of your time, traveler, but we need only perform a routine inspection of your wagon. 'Tis an order of the King, you see."

"Oh?" Rachel said. "Do you mind if I ask what this order is about?"

"Not at all, ma'am," said the soldier. "His Grace is stamping an iron boot down on smuggling, and we are bidden to do our part. We will need to be thorough, but I promise our inspection will not take overly long."

Hahnah looked among the children in the back of the wagon. All of them, Imoen included, had the look of mild uncertainty common to children first experiencing something to which they were mostly unfamiliar. But none were alarmed.

"Step down from the wagon, please," said a different soldier. Gruff, but not overly so.

"Very well," Nicholas said. Rachel, then, looking back into the wagon, saying "Come children. Hahnah, if you could help them down please."

"I will."

Soon, the family and Hahnah were off the wagon and standing off to one side of the road. Four soldiers in total, three looking through the wagon, one--the genial one--standing close by the family and Hahnah with his arms crossed.

"Where might you be coming from, traveler?" The genial soldier asked of Nicholas. Conversationally. "Well, if you don't mind my asking--it's not part of the inspection, just out of curiosity."

"Juniper's Reach," Nicholas replied with a small nod.

"Oh? Juniper's Reach? A little too south for me. Beyond the Kingdom, too inland." The soldier chuckled. "Ah, I've gotten used the smell of the sea in Oban." Then he looked to Hahnah. "And what about you, elf?"

She could have said any of the names of the towns and villages she had passed through as she wandered Dalriada. But she spoke as if in reflex, "I have come from Menura."

A cocking of the soldier's head, surprised and intrigued. "No shit? Menura. Were you there during the siege not so long ago?"

Hahnah did not see any reason to be dishonest. "Yes, I was in the city while it was under siege."

"That had to be awkward. You being..." The soldier made an up and down gesture with his hand, specifically pointing out Hahnah's elven appearance.

"I did what was right."

A nod of concurrence from the soldier. "There's truth in that, what with Menura being a victory for Oban and you being alive and well. Good on you."

Then there came a whistle. The genial soldier twisted his hips to look back, and one of the searching soldiers hopped out of wagon shaking his head.

"Alright. All done with then," said the genial soldier. Nicholas and Rachel made motions to get back onto the wagon, when the genial soldier spoke again, "Just the matter of the toll now."

Nicholas blinked. "The what?"

"The toll." The genial soldier swept a hand, indicating himself and the other three soldiers by the wagon. "It costs coin to maintain these increased patrols. And, well, this is but one man's opinion, but I'd say it's worth it--the roads of Dalriada have never been safer. All the smart bandits are gone and the dumber ones dead or imprisoned. How's that not a worthy cause championed by our King?"

"Oh," Rachel said, unsure. "How...how much is the toll, then?"

The genial soldier smiled. "Let's see what coin you have."

Tentatively, both Nicholas and Rachel slowly unbound their coin pouches from their belts and handed them over to the soldiers. Hahnah watched as the soldiers pawed through the pouches, equally fascinated and bewildered by the fixation on that which was called "money." It was such an integral part of civilization, that much Hahnah knew, but she wondered if she would ever come to truly understand the concept of money and the fixation upon it.

The soldiers conferred amongst themselves for a moment, and then the genial one looked to Nicholas and Rachel and said with a broad, cheerful smile, "It's not enough."

"Not enough?" Nicholas said, flabbergasted. "That's all we have! How are we supposed to--?"

And it was at this point that the corrupt soldiers dropped all pretense. Unimpressed with the contents of the wagon, the gruff soldier said, "One of the children. I know a man with connections." His fellows didn't argue. Nicholas and Rachel were caught completely off guard when they were pushed and held back, two of the soldiers narrowing their sights on Mina and taking her by the arms as the genial soldier watched on. Fearful cries from the other children, pleas of rising panic from Nicholas and Rachel.

Then Hahnah, knowing what she had to do, knowing that now was the time in which she could grasp at some measure of redemption, pulled out the knife from her pants pocket. Brandished it. Said firmly, "Stop."

The four soldiers, having discounted her, all looked to her now.

"You are all profane, and I will not allow you to do this. Of sacred things I am the sa--"

A sucker punch from a plated fist nearly knocked Hahnah unconscious, and it sent her down to her hands and knees. Three of the four soldiers were upon her, the family now huddling in terror as they watched. A swift kick to the gut sent her toppling over and down onto her back. They stomped on her, viciously, as she tried to get up. A plated boot on her wrist and then another kicking her hand, breaking skin and nearly breaking bone, and the knife was gone from her possession. Hahnah tried again and again to rise, but she was beaten savagely back down each time. Finally, the gruff soldier mounted her and punched down into her face with his metal gauntlet, battering her and drawing blood with each ferocious punch until he was certain she'd stay down.

And Hahnah lay on the ground. Bloodied, bruised, twitching sporadically, unable to stand and fight as she had desired to do.

"Let's hurry this up," said the genial soldier with that ceaseless smile.

The other three soldiers again went for Mina. One started pulling the petrified girl away by the arm, another pushing back Rachel as she tried to intervene and then placing a hard hand on Nicholas's chest to keep him back, and the third slapping Imoen across the face as she tried to pull her sister away from the first soldier's grip, Imoen falling down onto her hindquarters and clutching at her face with angry tears in her eyes.

Hahnah, as she lay beaten, reached a meek and futile hand out toward Mina.

I want to be better...I am more than a monster in the wild...

Of sacred things...I am...

 

[Alphonse Duyarte]

ALPHONSE DUYARTE

Alphonse Duyarte sat hunched in the shade of a lumbering oak.​

Having stewed what remained of their rations of dried jerky and grains in a cast-iron pot convenient enough to haul in their saddlebags. Saalim graced their unenviable mélange of ingredients with what little nuts and berries he had been able to scrounge up in the nearby undergrowth, afterwards grinding their paltry fortune into a edible enough paste with the pommel of a sword far too large for the boy turned man.

The meal was a meager repast even by his own criteria, enough to fill bellies for a final day’s trip and not much else beyond.

Nonetheless, the two of them ate then in an exhausted sort of silence from underneath the dappled shade of the oak's gnarled branches, stirring with every small gust of a humid breeze.

Another silent meal borne out of a necessity from long and hard travels, one of almost a dozen since they set upon their journey, and it seemed that the both of them were simply content to let the clatter of spoons and the rustling canopy of drooping pines that overshadowed the party to do all the talking in their stead.

Thankfully enough, their ravenous bellies left little time to sample the latest cuisine which could only be vaguely summarized as "gruel" to even the most forgiving of the palates.

Not for a moment did he think to complain nor moan about this, knowing hunger as a relentless companion far before he became a freerider for whomever offered hearth and home. There wasn’t a time where he had forgotten distant memories of a deprived childhood where his wobbling and decayed teeth could often do no more than suckle at whatever promise of subsistence their families could provide, oft in the form of boiled roots and barks and the small things of the world that either climbed or flew and yet proved too slow for the greedy, gaunt hands of simple farmhands turned beggars.

Those were the hard days; where Saalim's pastes were frequently more than he could have swallowed as a child, but he could not fault the lad for making due with what little left was available, nor was he sober enough to do much more than engage in the long vaunted diversion of drunkenly musing about a distant past, nestled as he was by the dwindling fire. It was too often these days that Alphonse had indulged such inattentive reveries, for there was indeed nothing that stopped him from falling further into these bouts of prideful depressions aside from younger, more prideful men than himself.

Came with the age and the creaking bones, he surmised. Childhood, regrets, and the reflections of a long life

The two retainers sat amongst the embers and the dying rays of a slumbering sun for some time in their own little introspective worlds, aside from Saalim occasionally prodding the embers at the behest of his elder when the coals grew too cool and lost their valued luster. It was not a difficult thing, he had noted in idle contemplation over the rim of his flask, to see that the boy sent with him as another sword was hardly the definition of a man. Yet he wore a painted hauberk, woolen overcoat, and sword at his waist as Alphonse did, leaning over their fire cautiously enough so as to not set aflame the puddled fabric of a muted traveler's coat pooled over his boots and the dust of their encampment while stoking the twisting flames with a blackened branch.

Why anyone imagined the lithe, dark-skinned youth with mere hints of scraggly patches for a beard was a sensible companion for a trip of this nature and length, he could not be bothered to speculate, but was assured nonetheless by Veylas' man-at-arms of the lad’s proficiency.

His latest lord, an eccentric if not capricious soul by the name of Veylas had offered a seat at his table, food in his mouth, and more since Alphonse thought to offer his services so long ago. He was a good man; his master, better than most who titled themselves and lived in high places in the decree of gods and kings. Gods and kings had a long tendency of being shite at feeding their people, along with most who thought to rule in their name, as it happened.

… although to say that he was a good man might have been an overstatement to some, all the other flaws of a lord living in a castle tended to melt away like the butter on warm bread when they provided generously. It was the way of the world; at least the only one that Alphonse knew. The only world that wouldn't let you die if you played by the same ugly rules as everyone else, so long as you swallowed the indecency of it all without the moral outrage needed to choke.

Now Veylas was concerned about his mistress, and perhaps unspoken--the integrity of her love for him after previously ceaseless correspondence had stuttered to a disquieting halt a mere few weeks past. His lord now begging him for deliverance from these greatest of inconveniences. He accepted as Veylas knew he would, if not gladly, judging by what he thought of the current companions thrust upon him.

There was the boy, and then there was the... self-proclaimed mage to think of.

The latter always held to the habit of disappearing at all times of the day and said even less when she did happen to grace them with her presence, but he had become adjusted to this peculiarity over their travels, knowing the lengths the last member of their party went for privacy from time to time and eventually paying it little and less mind as their quest went by.

She sat now across the two warriors by a boundary of an increasingly feeble dance of their campfire after having returned from only the gods knew where, though he knew that all he'd earn from questioning it would be the familiar feelings of frustration.

Liesjte in all her protestations of innocence claimed to be an apothecary, healer and even theologian, in some small ways. The plain-faced woman, at least when it came to appearances, gave little of her true identity away if there even was any imitation beyond the homely features hinting at plumpness and an upturned nose set over thin, sneering lips.

And there certainly wasn’t anything differentiating her from the faceless crowds in any of the villages they’ve come across aside from the simple fact that she too was chosen for this... quest, for yet another reason that he could not begin to comprehend. Her mop of disheveled hair didn’t reach further than a hunched pair of shoulders, slivers of hurriedly cut bangs dancing across her face with every gust of wind. Practically everything about the woman was awash with the same shade of muddy, dull brown: from her hair to her laughing eyes to the hooded burnoose she wore.

He watched Liesjte idly rummage in her satchel for a morsel to eat, noted: “Witches and their apples.”

“She certainly has the look of one,” Saalim quipped.

“If I were a witch, or even your notion of one, then you’d hate to know what the damsels think warriors look like.”

“I’ll grow into it.”

“If I were a witch, I could transport you to an island of pygmies to make that even remotely true.”

Alphonse laughed then, nudging the reddening boy into complacency before he could think to respond.

“That’s a common misconception to make about the apples. And the image of most witches being ugly old hags cackling over a cauldron. Some might in time when their tithes become more… demanding." Liesjte continued; her gaze engrossed in a book that ever so conveniently permitted her to ignore the looks of incredulity that had come with the sudden loquaciousness of their final party member. "Most are educated young women disenfranchised by the very institutions that tutored them, and the ones that are bonded to a higher power are chosen largely for their beauty, funny little thing that.”

“I have my doubts that humor plays much of a part in it.”

"No. I imagine you're right."

That was the end of that, as the three of them invested in another bout of contemplative silence as the blackening horizon prodded them to their tents and to another day of searching. To find what, or whom, it did not matter to the freerider so long as he was paid--although, perhaps unreasonably, he found comfort in travelling these old roads on a deed that wasn't entirely shameless as he had often done before. To ride the simple affair of packed earth and loose cobbles long gone to decay and smell the pervading aroma of sodden mildew and the freshly churned topsoil of their mounts without feeling the need to hide from any authorities as was his obligation in the past.

If rescuing a bountifully bosomed damsel in distress didn't scream unimpeachable gallantry, then what was?

* * *

SAALIM

They found the remains of the carriage at dawn of the next day, chewed up and picked through by vultures in the thin veneer of man.
​

Another three days were spent scouring the countryside for whatever could be described as a clue; however loose the definition may be... enough in which they could pull taut like a ball of yarn to see where its conclusion lay. Alphonse had been a tracker for most his life, against man or beast, it mattered not so long as the evidence was not washed away in a flood or trampled by the hooves of those that came afterwards. However convenient his abilities were in leading them ever onwards, he was but one man, and soon the three of them spread out beyond either horizon to discover further the extent of this malfeasance.

"… No trails, it's gone cold in the earth by now …"

"… To the direction of the city, nasty little place that is …"

The woman was alive, that was liable to be true. Her driver was found dead a few paces from the carriage, catching death by the shear of an ax blow instead of standing fast to protect their lordling's lady. Unfortunately for everyone involved, both the single escort and their objective were missing without much else to uncover beyond some personal effects left after the struggle. And for now they could only hope to split the party in order to see if the fruits of an investigation led them further down the road, or to some mountain fast off the paths.

That was when the boy stumbled upon the scene unfolding on the road to Oban.

He could not say that any of them were decent people, nor could Saalim say that he was beyond the other two members travelling with him; that he was still naïve in his youth and yet optimistic about the world at large. Truth was, he was a murderer too. He danced and others died upon the sand dunes and beneath the indefatigable, searing sun of his home.

None of those realizations stopped him from lurching forward when women were being beaten and children abducted, it was what his lord would have wanted despite all his callousness and fickle humors. There was an image to maintain of the men whom served under his banner and so in this scene did Saalim find easy pickings in which to oblige …

… and despite all his practice and talk of heroics, he did not see Liesjte till the woman was upon him with the sudden, alarming savagery of self-preservation; surprising the boy at first, then sending him into a cold rage as he tried to struggle past her and out of the nearby grove of trees, right up until the moment her hand came alight.

It was enough to snuff out his initial resistance, to turn instead to dialogue with this woman whom he towered over and dwarfed with his clanging mail alone. He spoke furiously over the sounds of a shakedown gone to violence. "Step aside, step aside and have some decency you spiteful old witch!"

"Am I? How charming. Your elder should be by shortly, so don't be the fool and go running off to your death so soon." she replied dutifully, perhaps in hopes to pacify the child who seemed more wounded by her getting the best of him than anything else. Then she spoke again, seeing the muddled confusion in his eyes as he finally reflected on her words: "Screams tend to carry across open plains."

"That amuses you?"

"Your expression does, but the act of heroics? No, fool! It's not our place, it's not your duty, and it certainly isn't within your ability to do what you imagine is right, here."

"By his virtue do we cleave a better place in this world, and it's his pity the one who lacks the restraint to--"

"You lack the restraint to not end your own life, now be quiet! It's almost done with."

She was right in that much, and so they waited until the last member caught up with a gallop from across the plains, haversack and caparison clattering nosily against the flanks of his mare as he navigated the thickening orchards surrounding the road and its clearing. Questions were asked and answers given for a time, and though it was ultimately too late to catch the guardsmen in the act, they still carefully paced their horses through the muck of brambles and branches until they were well on their way to the looted wagon and the wailing woman.

Alphonse conjured up faint, unbidden memories of moments like this in his past and instinctively grimaced at what he saw in his mind's eye as they approached. All too familiar.

Looking to Saalim, they kicked their horses into a trot. His face was impassive in spite of all the theories tumbling together. That'd have to be resolved later, followed through to its conclusion, though for now came the crying of children and the chaos kicked up by the sudden intrusion of something so terribly foreign to these villager's lives.

This was not a part he played often, but play it he would.

He dismounted as his companions had and just then noticed the bleeding, battered elf in the dirt and he could only reservedly return the look, shaded green eyes stirring with an instinctive distrust for her kind. His village ignorance certainly did nothing to dispel the innate superstition that most humans unaccustomed to such sights have, but still he tried to mold the hard and ugly lines of his face into something vaguely resembling sympathy.

He did nothing as Liesjte came forth to tend to their hurts, certainly did not show surprise at this side of the woman whom acted as a marionette on a string--all soothing smiles, with the kindliness and look of a simple priestess in brown habit, aside from perhaps the odd pendant hanging loosely from a neck.

Lastly, standing out from beside his mare was the sellsword himself, not as impressive a sight while he was largely dressed down from armaments and greaves. His armor substituted with a dulled yellow traveler's cloak that hugged his mailed frame, though did little to impede the drawing of a sword in the varnished sheath to his waist, dangling loosely as he walked towards them.

Removing his tricorne hat to bow his head in what could only be construed as regret, but to say that he meant any of the otherwise empty gesture was anyone's guess.

"My apologies for not having arrived sooner to amend the wrongs done here, my friends." Alphonse spoke soothingly, his voice measured. Perhaps surprising to some when coming from a man whose square-jawed, serious face did little to disguise the primal ugliness that a life of violence painted on someone. He looked to the husband.

"Would you permit our help? As little as we can spare."

Saalim, meanwhile, took no pause in kneeling before Hahnah with a look of contrition and a flask of what appeared to be water. He muttered that she drink, his voice carrying just above the noise of the two men in conversation. He eventually commented on the look Alphonse had given her: "He does not do kindness often, but he means well. A drink, or a healer? Come, let us repay your evident bravery in some other way than how you've been treated."

"Our lord decrees as much, he's a brave man as well in his... own ways. He'd no doubt find it shameful when vagabonds get the better of our sort. Come and sit down on the wagon, if you can?"

 

[Hahnah]

...the savior.

Hahnah did not know if she had blacked out or not. In one moment she had seen one of the soldiers taking Mina, had tried in vain to reach toward the girl, to call upon magic of which she no longer had command over to manifest and to slay the soldier taking her. Then in the next, that hand and her face were flat on the ground, Mina and the soldier--all of the soldiers--were gone. She remembered vaguely some things: horses riding by, brief images of their legs; a succinct command, spoken in the venomously friendly way that left it as belonging to none other than the genial soldier, for the Stonemasons to "stay put until..." she missed the rest, but heard the closing, "...or she'll be made into an orphan"; the frightened sobbing, questions, from Joseph and Joel and Rorik for Nicholas and Rachel, Imoen's enraged breathing. And of this last, of Imoen, of what she was feeling, Hahnah remembered this most clearly, for she was intimately familiar with that manner of rage. With that manner of hatred.

Now.

Hahnah was looking at a dark-skinned human. He was squatting down, flask in hand, offering her water and speaking to her. In the initial moment of awareness of him, Hahnah eyed the man warily. Drink, he'd said. And she did, reaching with an unsteady hand up to the flask and lifting her head just enough as she was able and tipping the flask's throat to her lips. She drank slowly, the lukewarm touch of the water carrying with it a certain bliss to her parched tongue--and if only that same bliss could alleviate the anguish throughout the rest of her body.

The stranger spoke further, and the mention of "He" in "He does not do kindness often..." prompted Hahnah's eyes to drift and search for this other person. She saw him, Alphonse, though his name was as yet unbeknownst to her, and saw the third of their group, Liesjte. And the former was currently speaking with the Stonemasons.

* * * * *​

Nicholas's heart sank when first he noticed the approach of three more mounted people. Not more soldiers, but what other woes could well befall them today? Perhaps what the genial soldier had said of the some new decree by the King was total hogwash, just a part of his scheme, and bandits were as lively as ever. But what could they do? They'd been warned to stay put until the sun met the horizon, or else...oh gods...or else they'd make Mina into an orphan. They couldn't run, they couldn't fight, they'd nothing to surrender to bandits, poor Hahnah the elf had tried to save Mina earlier and now she was beaten to the ground and could do nothing, so what were they to do? Nicholas held Rachel and she the rest of the children, all of them huddled together in shared trembling fear.

Then, by the mercy of all the gods of whom Nicholas had any notion, these three newcomers were not bandits or malcontents of any sort. The woman among them came forward in peace to see to Imoen and Rachel, the younger man went to see to Hahnah, and the older man spoke words that to Nicholas were as divine deliverance in that moment.

"Thank you," Nicholas said, his voice heavy, his head bowed, and eyes just barely meeting Alphonse's own. "Thank you, thank you. Yes, a thousand times yes. I do not know if you saw, friend, but they...there were some soldiers...four soldiers...and they took our daugh--"

He broke. Right there he broke, his face collapsing into his waiting palms. Rachel rubbed his back with one hand and nevertheless buried her own face into her husband's shoulder. It was a long moment before Nicholas, with sheer effort, managed to compose himself and looked back up with reddened eyes.

And he said with a haggard voice, "They took our little Mina. For what I do not know and to where I do not know. Hahnah--the elf over there, traveling with us--she tried to stop them. She did what she could, but they overpowered her."

A steadying breath from Nicholas. "We've..." He wiped the back of his hand under his nostrils and cleared his throat, "...nothing of value in our possession now. But I have family in Oban--my brother. I can see to it that you are compensated for your bravery, whatever we can offer, but please...all we want is our Mina back."

* * * * *​

Meanwhile, as Alphonse and Nicholas were conversing, Hahnah nodded weakly to Saalim.

"I will need...a healer," Hahnah said, her voice laden with a battered grogginess. She had seen and lived among monsters of all kinds during her long days in the wild, and she had not the regenerative vitality of a troll nor the fearsome endurance of a giant. Since her transformation, she had not any defense which could have helped protect her from the soldiers' fierce blows.

But she needed to become well again. A great act of cruelty had been perpetrated upon the human family whose name was Stonemason. Though her heart yearned for the slaying of the human soldiers, the family, and yes, even those three humans who had come here now, she kept this hatred suppressed. Controlled. Of those three groups of humans, one was without doubt profane, and for them alone she upon crossing their path again would unleash her hatred. The manifest sin in their hearts would be cleansed, and, of the highest importance, Mina would be returned to her family--for good family was a sacred thing.

None of that could happen if she was battered. Weakened.

Hahnah, slowly, began to push herself up. Raised a hand and clutched onto Saalim's sleeve for support as she found her way to up one knee, as she carefully began to rise with both feet on the ground. She let go, limped and staggered in her steps, uncertain was her gait, but she did make it to the tail end of the wagon and gingerly sat down on its edge.

Strained breaths, hands on her knees, and her hair dangling in front of her face. And after, she lifted her head and thumbed her hair off to one side and then the other, trying her best to sit with the prim and perfect posture she had adopted from her elven caretakers.

She asked of the dark-skinned man and by extension his two fellows, "Who are you?"

Alphonse Duyarte

 

[Alphonse Duyarte]

SAALIM

Who these three were; it was a warranted question that still gave pause lest they invite these strangers, unbidden, into affairs that they had no purpose involving themselves in, simple farming folk they were.​

Saalim still did not skip a beat in answering as judiciously he could after having assisted the elven women from where she lay battered and beaten to the wagon, flinging aside the tassels of his cloak so as to sit upon an outcropping of weathered stones opposite of Hahnah without mussing up the once verdant hues now well soiled at this point by the days of hard riding. He wondered only fleetingly of how these stones came to be here of all places, and was it but coincidence or at the author's literary expediency? Only the gods would know.

He responded while they settled themselves and were both provided a moment to collect their wits. "Then you need seek no further, for we've a healer at your convenience, thankfully enough for us both. Liesjte will have a look at you after she has tended to the little ones. She will... ah-h-h-h, how would you say it? Return you to your proper form."

"As for who we are? Travelers, as your party travels, although I dare say that we are more like you than them."

It gave him time to observe the work of their third companion a little longer while the elf mulled over the nonanswer, to note how gently she spoke to the children as she attempted to alleviate more than their physical woes, few as they were. For soon scratches and bumps were already forgotten in the circus that followed; her fingers working so as to superimpose the brilliance of the sun upon the dust motes caught in its rays to the verbal applause of at least one of the smaller children, when the refractions of these floating orbs sometimes caught at just the right angle to cast sharp, glimmering streaks of lights lo and fro.

Being well aware of how these cheap parlor tricks were only that--distractions for the easily distracted, and how most her spells lay elsewhere, he still could not find anything to complain about when it came to happy children. Wondered perhaps why the woman would bother learning such things at all, before finally returning his gaze to the elvish woman, all looks of momentary frustration removed from his youthful face while he resolved himself to properly answer Hahnah.

Deciding in that small window of time to cast aside cautiousness this once, knowing that this accidental meeting of chance proved to be the only act of serendipity they've enjoyed since setting out upon this journey insofar.

"Travelers on a lord's business in Oban would be the shortest way of phrasing things. Not to enjoy the harvests of any bumper crops or to visit distant relatives, but to find a woman who we know is endangered. The same way that you laid your life bare to preserve the innocents here, so would we for her. It's a rather fateful coincidence, is it not?"

Standing from the makeshift seating arrangements, he beckoned forth Liesjte. His arm bracers glittered with the movement, partly concealing the soft green fabric of his gambeson. They certainly were not dressed in the likeness of any farmers.

"To answer more practically: I am Saalim, one of my lord's retainers. As are the foreigners--or is it that I'm now the foreigner? No matter. They are Liesjte and Alphonse, you'll not find others more comfortable with riding half the continent with naught to eat except walnuts and jerky. And if you don't find offense in me asking, who are you?

***

ALPHONSE DUYARTE

To see a man reduced to weeping so openly, was there ever more wretched a sight?
​

Alphonse couldn't have told you, not in the moment, not when he was caught stranded on an island of such intense discomfort that he had to position his headwear to his chest and look sharply away to avoid any further embarrassment to either of them. And he could not help to think that the farmer's expression of utter anguish disgusted him in some strange, unknowable way as he tried to decipher and empathize with it. To make the man's sorrow his own, if only in order to pluck a familiar phrase or catechism so that they could get along with matters while the iron was still hot to the flame. He found nothing. Nothing except for all those empty gestures he'd grown so accustomed to all those years.

Finally having found a window to utilize one of them once the talks of compensation came around, he dusted his hat upon his trousers and donned it again, inclining his head ever so slightly so as to demonstrate of having shared their grief. He certainly understood it, wallowing in these emotions so thickly in the past that he had even drowned in them for a long, terribly long time. But he could not find the strength to pray for this man, and for his child, and for the woman who had enamored a lordling.

He could only pray that his prudence also translate to righteousness, that he needn't make the choice.

"Then we'll discover if we cannot find your child upon the road, or perhaps in this city of Oban if that's where they intend to go with her, just know that there is no justifying this atrocity. I assure you that much."

"... As for payments, we can surely discuss that as men do if this can be resolved with your child returned safely, have no worry."

Making a show of playing up the courageousness attributed to well-spoken, armed strangers whose sudden appearance alone lent them an air of credibility in such matters, spoke thusly, "The gods have always been willing to see to the retribution of the meek, it makes no matter if they're soldiers or cutthroats. Have faith in that much, have faith in your gods and trust that mortal men can perform their work that's needing to be done, if nothing else."

He hoped if the subsequent tone of authority would finally prompt them to expediency--directing them to pack their goods once more. His gruff voice carrying itself across the clearing that he and his fellow retainer would be happy to grant them unmolested passage for the final leg of the trip, at least until their horses regained their strength so that they may ride ahead in the hopes of catching up to the ilk.

"Nicholas, was it? You've little shame to bear, only for that of an indecent world."

So they would choose to gamble, and pray indeed that one led to another.

By the time that Liesjte arrived for Hahnah, the tension was already palpable in the air, and as she drew closer to this elven woman she could have sworn to taste it. An unpleasant menagerie of emotions hanging all about her, cloying as any miasma. The anger and frustrations, greed and terrible bitterness, all an unenviable feast. It tasted sour.

The girl known as Imoen, meanwhile, had fascinated her. She offered a parting smile to the child whose tears certainly burnt hot with the righteousness that so many have tried to imitate before and since.

Liesjte was nonetheless bound to service, and so she came to an eventual face with the elvish killer to examine the injuries involved from a cautious distance. It was immediately obvious that while her bag had all sorts of tools: from bonesaws, steeled scalpels, bone needles, rasps and leather strops. Hammers and rivets for trepanning. All manners of vials and ampoules reserved from a stone mortar and well preserved for poultices. It would do little and less for much of the elf's injuries as compared to the ridiculously simple ministrations of a trained hand, though she did have her doubts of healing the shattered and splintered bones so easily without first setting them a little more intimately. She supposed it would be an interesting experience for the both of them.

For now, she would attempt to deal with the small, trivial things before bothering to see to the essentials--diagnosing the worst of the purplish deformations, premature swelling, and the obvious side effects of being beaten half to death.

"I will do what I can for you, which is merely half of what I must."

She finished what was left unsaid by offering a hand, having removed her riding gloves to set down onto the wagon before beginning.

 

[Hahnah]

Nicholas nodded vigorously in agreement to all of what Alphonse had said. This man, his fellows, Hahnah--they were the only hope of getting Mina back. For who else would even believe them, let alone act? Juniper's Reach was on the periphery of the Kingdom, the Stonemason family from there effectively strangers in the heartland of Dalriada, the military of Oban all but assured to be more concerned with saving face than with seeing to the return of his daughter.

Have faith in your gods and trust that mortal men can perform their work...

He affirmed his name with another nod. Said, "I certainly do hope so, friend. We'll pray." Nicholas put an arm around Rachel and she in turn around him, both of them looking to Alphonse with that wide-eyed, beseeching hope of the desperate. "Yes, we'll pray. For our little Mina, and for you and yours."

Details were shared. Nicholas told Alphonse the location of his brother's house in Oban, where they would all be waiting for any news of Mina. And, furthermore, that he and his family would indeed being "staying put until the sun touched the horizon" tonight, and would set out tomorrow. In this there was an implacable fear in his eyes, shared among all the Stonemasons save Imoen, for what might happen should they dare to disobey the command placed upon them.

The kindness and the show of magic from Liesjte took, to some degree, Joseph and Joel and Rorik's minds off of the sheer terribleness of what had happened, temporary smiles and attempts at excitement following. And that, at least, was something good.

* * * * *​

Hahnah's eyes dropped down slightly. More like you than them. It was not his meaning, that much she understood, yet she feared nonetheless that the words might inspire a grim manifestation in reality, to make it true that they, too, were bearers of grave sin.

He elaborated, the dark-skinned human, and Hahnah looked back up. She did not think that it was the thing called coincidence. Even after her worldview had collapsed in Menura, she did not think very much of the idea of coincidence. Fateful made more intuitive sense to her. In the Dying God she trusted completely, and she believed that He, even in His silence, even in the loss of His gift of magic to her, had not abandoned her. He was still with her, and He had provided for her path to cross with the path of these strangers, those who were at least willing to help save Mina.

Their names: Saalim, Liesjte, and Alphonse.

And then the question was asked of her, which, given the course of her life, she was seldom asked. Still, she had answers which were safe to give, ones that she had before. She could not be forthright. Partly because she had no proper answer as to what she was, and partly because it was doubtful that they--even the Stonemasons for that matter--would be as openly accepting as Griffyn had been. Her time spent in the wild, when her Living Armor was on the outside rather than the inside, when her mere appearance alone was enough to rouse suspicion and hostility, had garnered a healthy caution.

"My name is Hahnah. It is Hah, and then it is Nah, that is how my name is said."

Yet this was an...aging truth. "Hahnah" was the name that she had come to adopt, but it was not the true name that her elven caretakers--Kylindrielle and Elurdrith--had originally bestowed upon her. For when they gave her her true name, speech itself, making particular sounds with one's mouth and throat and using them to communicate ideas to another via a shared understanding called "language," was new to her. It took her a long time to learn. Along the way, many errors, like the prolonged mispronunciation of her true name until the mispronunciation became regular and then became settled for both her and them.

Her true name, the sound of it she had never truly known until recently when it was spoken to her: Hannah.

"I was a ranger of Falwood." She was not, but Kylindrielle and Elurdrith, they had been. They had been. "We are both foreigners. I do not have a home anymore, but I believe that there is still much good that I can do."

And, despite her intention to cautiously not be so forthcoming, the next came forth regardless, "I believe that I am here for a reason."

An earnestness in her bruised and bloodied face as she looked to Saalim. She did very much believe that, but she as well wanted to keep it at that, to not elaborate. Fortunately, the healer--Liesjte--came by then, and Hahnah shifted her gaze over to her. She sat still and patient on the edge of the wagon, feet dangling just above the ground, back straight and proper and her hands neatly on her knees, as Liesjte opened her bag and browsed the tools of her trade.

I will do what I can for you, which is merely half of what I must.

"Thank you."

Hahnah took the offered hand and slowly came to stand, allowing Liesjte to go to work. The furiously red bruises, the deep purple bruises, and the jagged scrapes were plentiful all over her body: her face, her arms, her stomach and her chest. Her back had suffered tremendously as well when she had tried to roll over to simultaneously protect herself and attempt to stand. Hahnah adjusted, lifted, and rolled her cloth of her shirt and her cloak (both of which with the dusty prints of armored sabatons, like faded ghosts, upon them) so that Liesjte could apply poultices and compressing bandages as needed. Then it came to her right hand, the one which had been stomped on and kicked to disarm her of her knife, the one which felt the most raw and tender. The bone was not broken, but Liesjte surmised that it was splintered and would nevertheless need to be set.

Yet Hahnah's thoughts were on the knife that she had lost. Her eyes searched for it and found nothing.

As Liesjte continued, Hahnah looked to Saalim and asked, "Do you have a weapon that I could use?"

Admittedly, she was not accustomed to fighting with any sort of weapon, with the minor exception of the bow and arrow. But, without her sorcery, it would be all that she had.

Alphonse Duyarte

 

[Alphonse Duyarte]

SAALIM

Saalim was given pause at first, but he soon came to conclude that the name he was given seemed fitting for the unusual elvish woman.
​

Amongst her oddities was the claim to having been a ranger of some strange place, but to him many things as of late appeared strange. He did not think to question or comment as to her origins further than the trifling curiosity of whether it was common for rangers to lack both a bow or weapon to defend oneself. He supposed it didn't really matter in the end, as they had weapons to spare, so he simply kept these comments to himself while Liesjte quietly went to work on tending to the worst of the injuries.

Their silence permitted him to wonder instead about the veracity of fate and purpose, as idle a remark it was at the time.

"I suppose that we're oftentimes too eager to make sense of the world through coincidences. Perhaps indeed you are here for a reason. Come and let us put it to the test."

As the remainder of the bandages were compressed and wound tightly about Hahnah's ribs, he felt a pang of modesty to turn his head in the direction of where their other companion, Alphonse, was seen to be offering condolences and then shortly thereafter coming to join them with a reinvigorated look about him. Saalim assumed correctly that their offer of safe passage was turned down--seeing as how none of the family moved to pack their goods for travel, but it seemed for the best that they travel on their own. As for the elf?

Alphonse, now arrived to the clatter of boots upon cobble, did not seem to share the same enthusiasm with bringing Hahnah along; having assessed for himself the state of the elf whom Liesjte was just now binding her fracture with a mixture of overlying dressing stiffened and starched to give it the durability meant to restrict the wrist's movements from underneath a damp, uncomfortable covering of resin and gauze that itched with an unholy blend of moistened herbs--likely to, in part, counteract the swelling. It acted much like a wrist tensor.

She remarked something to the effect of being thankful the bone did not require further setting, despite the initial pressure of dressing the injury likely being... more than uncomfortable, for it was meant to be a tight enough fit to permit flexibility of travel. Was that something they intended to gamble on? He did not speak of his fears just yet, though he did loom over the proceedings with an inscrutable gaze and a tap of his forefinger on a compass conveniently situated by his belt for the (probably) express purpose of hastening affairs without the need to speak.

All the while they were boiled underneath the sun's pinnacle in the sky.

"Do you have a weapon that I could use?"

Avoiding the question for the time being, Saalim broached the matter to his senior. "This elvish girl by the name of Hahnah wishes to come with us to see this journey to its end. She seems to have been a ranger, once."

"There are few rangers who can perform their duties one-handed, even less capable of hard riding with injuries such as hers. No, what she needs is rest. She's paid her dues in sacrifice already." Alphonse observed bluntly, though with enough sincerity as to invoke the pretense that he wasn't already past concerning himself with this family. He had hoped to follow behind the slavers so that they could discover the source, instead of simply rescuing one girl--looking at this elf, he was given the impression that these tactics would not go over particularly well. "I'll say again, there cannot be delay in this matter."

"She means to follow the same path, with or without us, so would it not be wise to go together in that case?"

"I would rather do without the inconvenience."

Having finally heaved herself from the carriage, Liesjte entered the discussion. "Then we shall all praise whichever deity you'd prefer that she's in good form to ride, should she choose."

Liesjte took the additional step of helping the fabric of Hahnah's undershirt and cloak down again before choosing to continue further, packing her satchel together in the lieu of conversation. "So long as she rests herself appropriately, then all is well. I should also be near to deal with the replacement of her dressings and poultices if she consents."

Finding no other reason to continue the argument, nor any apparent support at that, Alphonse merely shrugged his broad shoulders in defeat. His jaw worked silently as he provided a hand in which Hahnah could take to lift herself from the carriage, his face neutral with only the barest hints of his inner monologue quickly evaporating as he sized the woman with a critical eye from underneath those fraying lashes; scrunched as they were in deliberation.

He supposed she would do, he saw that this loss did nothing to assuage the violence lurking in that stare.

"You must accept my apology if you were slighted, but understand that we will move with necessary haste."

Promptly turning away and returning to one of the horses left tethered and whinnying to a nearby tree in their absence, he began his preparations, minimal as they were. By the time Alphonse was finished re-saddling his horse with a few final tugs of the lashes, Saalim had already stepped forward to offer an emblazoned rondel dagger by its leather-bound hilt, its surface sharply glimmering in the sun.

"I suppose this means that it's decided, then."

 

[Hahnah]

Small motions of Hahnah's lips, pursing and stretching and tugging to one side or the other, as Liesjte did her work--particularly with the tightening of the necessary compressing bandages. But she was glad for it, for Liesjte being here. What Hahnah had said, and what had been affirmed by Saalim, she held to be a dear truth. She was here for a reason, and the Dying God had provided for her by crossing her path with the paths of these three humans. Yet even without Liesjte seeing to her wounds, even without Saalim and Alphonse extending the kindness of a hand which helped, Hahnah would have gone after Mina. She would have put aside her trepidation of the great human city (these which once she thought of as "hives") and limped her way in there, as unprepared as could be, but full of a fervent determination. This, because the weight of sin bid her on toward some measure of atonement.

Hahnah, with a mild curiosity, inspected the cast fashioned for her hand and wrist, slowly turning it side to side as if she had never seen such a thing fashioned before. It itched, she could not properly move or use that hand for fighting nor much of anything else, but she could not let it stop her. Perhaps, if she prayed with all the love in her heart and spoke her prayer with a pure earnestness, the Dying God would return His gift of sorcery to her, and she would not need her right hand nor a weapon. If He even could. She could still feel His presence in her heart, but she worried. She did worry.

The third, the man named Alphonse, came to them then. Hahnah was once more seated upon the edge of the wagon, watching him approach. Saalim had said of him that he did not show kindness often--a stark contrast to her old conception of the world and the people within it. In her vastly limited experience before walking among them, she had thought of all people in the way of unerring purity of being: all elves were kind, all humans were cruel. Black and white, for it was all she had seen (and all she wanted to see), these extremes, and therefore all she had known. The world was simple, made an intuitive sense to Hahnah under this framework. But now it was much...grander. Within Alphonse's heart (and within every heart) was a dividing line between kindness and cruelty, and this separating line could shift over time, even from one moment to the next. Where was that line now?

I'll say again, there cannot be delay in this matter.

"I will not hinder you," Hahnah said, eyes set with a piercing intensity. With or without them, she would go. With or without her, they should go. She wished only for Mina to be returned to her family, and Alphonse's insistence on haste was heartening to Hahnah. Endearing.

A nod to Liesjte, concerning the matter of rest and replacement of her dressings.

Alphonse offered her a hand, and she took it, sliding off the edge of the wagon once more. She looked to him, blinked, a slight confusion over the suggestion that she might have been slighted--she'd not even caught on that he had wanted to leave her behind. She had read into him instead that insistence on haste, to which she had ascribed righteousness as its primary motivation, for the good cause of rescuing Mina.

"I am not slighted."

He turned away before she could say anything more, hand sliding away. Hahnah stood, looking to the horses and their number, the question forming in the mind. Saalim approached her then, sheathed weapon in hand and hilt offered toward her. An appreciative softening of her gaze, and in gratitude she accepted the dagger and slipped it into her pants pocket and covered the protruding hilt with the skirt of her white tunic.

"Hahnah!" Imoen called out. The Stonemason family had barely moved from where they had stood during the "inspection" of their wagon. Rachel was crouched down, offering heartfelt assurances to her sons, Nicholas with a hand down on her shoulder, and Imoen, solely among them, having turned away and turned her attention onto their departing friend they had picked up on the their journey from Juniper's Reach to Oban. Imoen, who looked after her brothers and mentored Mina, who was eldest among her siblings and with bravery to spare, who had accepted Hahnah as perhaps something of another sister in only so short a time as they had spent together traveling, looked to her now with a hard regarding, with a contempt for the wicked soldiers and with a righteous impulse to match Hahnah's own and which altogether made her appear older than she truly was, and she said three words.

"Bring her back."

Hahnah's breast swelled with an inhalation. She nodded firmly. And replied, "I will."

She looked then to the three, Alphonse and Saalim and Liestje. To their horses. Asked the question that had formed in her mind.

"May I ride with one of you?"

Alphonse Duyarte

 

[Alphonse Duyarte]

ALPHONSE DUYARTE

Their three horses snorted and stirred in the clearing, an enthusiasm borne out of idleness that any creature would feel, lashed to trees for the past half hour as they were.

"I will not hinder you,"

"I'm thankful for your assurances. These past few days have seen little of them."
​

Had he been a bystander to Hahnah's monologue of goodness and the distinct lack of, he might indeed have had choice words about the races in which she chose to see as arbiters of this vague, ungraspable thing as morality. And since he wasn't witness to it, there was no reason to suddenly espouse his rather simple philosophies on the content matter to this elf--even if he saw in the demeanor of most elves the utter sham that most these old and august races perpetuated. That the gods abhorred progress, abhorred the rights of humanity to do more than survive in an empty world. These gods were up in the sky with the sparrows, leaving the mud and clay for its children to shape as they desired, and it appeared that only man seemed intent on taking its rightful place. Did that truly make them so evil?

For how could they celebrate anything less than true dominion of a bountiful world for their children?

Alphonse mounted his horse, watching the tearful departure with nary a word, save for a few gentle commands to the dullish grey courser he sat atop in order to move it onto the packed cobbles of the road itself. He was much too busy processing what little they'd learned from the family and what Saalim had seen for himself to offer any pithy remarks of farewell or promises that could very well go unkept. To go against soldiers already limited their opportunity to fulfill the latter so easily, especially if those culpable were already on their way to Oban and to the docks that heralded an unpromising future for any caught at the hands of slavers.

Were they then too late for the woman they've come so far for? And if they did happen to come across these men in the city, they would still need to discover who they had been employed for and if they hadn't already disappeared their mistress and this child into one of the many markets up the allirian strait that would promptly go to work culling and selling them again. He gnawed his lip as he worked out the choice to be made; his gnarled hands working loose a sliver of jyajleaf kept loosely in a pouch to chew between his gums and teeth, letting the heady flavors roll off his tongue as he spat into the dust a handful of moments later.

"Come on then, there's only so little time till nightfall and it's still no less than a day's journey to town."

This otherwise innocent instruction certainly came with the implicit promise of a long, hard ride. They wouldn't camp this night, not when they were so close. Saalim supposed they wouldn't stop for anything less than an occasional break, but only so that their horses weren't overly strained beyond their limits. He combed through what little was left of his hair with a series of fingers, still feeling the phantoms of his bangs now shorn entirely save for what was left for a top knot that he only barely managed to save from a barber's ruthlessness.

Saalim muttered something to the effect of an affirmative, knowing anything less would not tide over well with the man when he had something between his teeth. His dappled chestnut was only a few feet away from Alphonse's own, so when he mounted--this time at least with a wave to the family, and a deliberately dramatic bow following it--he and his elder were able to speak for the first time since with a modicum of privacy.

"May I ride with one of you?"

It was Liesjte who answered. "I suppose that you must, be forewarned that the bloody man doesn't take warmly to what some would consider a sensible pace. You've ridden before?" She asked the last question as more of a warning than an honest inquiry, draping her tools over the haunch of Saalim's horse and working herself into her own saddle with the help of the conveniently lowered stirrup. "No matter, just make a habit of not falling from the saddle and everything else will prove to be much simpler."

The other two party members were already well on the way to departing, dallying only long enough for Liesjte to offer assistance once again to Hahnah in the form of helping the elvish woman onto their mount.

"Delay will only make the distance all the more apparent, woman." said Alphonse, not bothering with Liesjte's name.

"All you've been saying, all this time, do you imagine I enjoy trifling with a pair of morons for no other reason than your company? You're like a crowd of fool villagers with pitchforks, torches, and a one-track mind."

"Then they appear to be the only other ones with a sense of duty."

"... and you're the one with the torch, so do kindly lead onward."

Allowing his horse to slow its pace by a faint tug at the bridle, Saalim was close enough by Hahnah to comment: "Pay them little mind, they're... sometimes like this. My only surprise is that it took this long."

Liesjte simply snorted at that, noting that they've yet to depart with more than a few feet between them and the family, just out of ear-shot. She knew, as the elf would soon discover, that this would be a long enough trip even if they didn't find the time to stop for the night.

But it was fate that brought them all together to this moment; she was superstitious enough to believe too in the hollowness of coincidences, and so she tolerated all of this with little more than a shrug of her shoulders as Saalim continued his discussion with the elf.

"Nonetheless, they will help you find this girl. She seems to be the only hope of finding our lady we've had yet. And I'm gladdened that a ranger of falwood can lend her services, however different a ranger's purpose might be."

 

[Hahnah]

It was not an honest inquiry from Liesjte concerning riding before, but Hahnah, with a developing but overall still lacking sense of social acumen, answered, "Yes, I have ridden before." And she accepted Liesjte's help up onto the back of the horse, keeping a steadying arm around the other woman's waist. Keen was she on heeding Liesjte's advice, in not allowing the weakness of her body to make her plummet from the horse. It was the least that she could do to endure this trauma, this pain, when she had willfully done far worse to humans scattered all throughout the Falwood.

She would pray that by the time they arrived in Oban, that she would be in better shape.

Saalim rode astride the two of them. Spoke, and Hahnah looked to the back of Liesjte's head, and then off to Alphonse. Did they hate one another? Maybe. Not to the level that Hahnah had once hated all Humankind, and thought likewise Humankind did to all other peoples. But the gulf of gradations between kindness and cruelty, love and hatred, were slowly being unveiled with more and more interactions and observations of humans and elves and others; out of a world of solely black and white was emerging an array of color.

Mina. The lady whom Saalim and the others were seeking. Both of them in the great city of Oban. The sense of irony was not lost on Hahnah, even if she could not properly articulate it if asked: that she had been advised by Griffyn to leave Menura, and consequentially his company, while she still had the chance in order to avoid going to Oban at all. Now, as if inextricably, she was bound for it. Alliria had been supremely frightening, and Oban seemed to be very much the same in size and mass of people. A great enclosure away from the world, penned in by artificial constructions of stone called walls, walls everywhere as it was, walls of buildings confining free movement, making narrow all paths, looming overhead not with the gentleness of swaying branches but like stolid, rigid sentinels were the roofs adorning these walls, and the corners, sharp angles, unnatural, like partitions cut brutally into what was once perhaps an open field or a cluster of trees, doors constantly opening and closing, except when they could not, except when they were locked and therefore either locked you in or locked you out, and in this already choked space were the many, the many, many people, of whom it was not out of the ordinary to be pressed shoulder-to-shoulder in some busier areas of the city and times of day, a gigantic web of trust that was nigh impossible to navigate, for who could be trusted and who could not in so grand a scale and short a time, and this altogether was a world so alien to Hahnah that she wondered if perhaps she might ever be able to find any manner of solace whilst inside one.

And so with a genuine curiosity undergirded by a quiet apprehension, Hahnah asked of Saalim as they all rode, "This city that is called Oban: have you been there before? What is it like if you have? I only know of Alliria. That is the largest city to which I have ever been."

Alphonse Duyarte

 

[Alphonse Duyarte]

SAALIM

To ask Saalim of what Oban was like, as opposed to Alliria or any of the other venerable eastern bastions of civilization and culture was largely an exercise in futility. Having been no further from home than the Cortosi Coast to the south and the great central plains and savannahs to the east.
​

He'd heard enough rumors and hearsay from his travels to whet the edge of his curiosity without ever providing more definite proof of what this grand, old city was like beyond just that--mere rumors. He had attempted to paint an image for himself prior with this knowledge and the few tales of what to expect from his travelling companions, but still came back emptyhanded when he tried to picture it in his mind's eye. To be fair, this elf was liable to know even less than Saalim if Alliria was indeed the only city she had ever travelled to, so he informed her of what was universally said of it.

"I have not, but from what I've been told it's much of the same as Alliria. They both seem for all the world as sister cities, married in trade and the Allirian Strait; two titans of the economy that hold sovereignty over the largest water channel separating the two continents. Their convenient positions have made the two of them terribly rich, and none more so than the capital of Dalriada." Saalim went on, at an easy enough pace now that the four of them had finally begun the final leg of their journey at a steady trot. "Too rich, and so they've gone to fat like all the viziers and petty kings and shahs to the west. They've only swallowed more wealth as time passed, refusing to greater and greater extent to share with the pleb of their banquet. It's inevitable that it is the poor who shoulder and suffer their greed, and so they do, if the tales are true."

Not that this came as any particular surprise or indignation, it was simply the way of the trade cities to take their fill and give nothing in return to the ordinary people who toil their fields and man their levies. He could not say that they were a blight, for without them where would the greatest civilizations of the land be without these tumors of industry? Where young men and women, most needed in the fields and farmsteads, are instead sucked up and lost forever in the streets and alleyways so foreign to everyone except those that lived there.

He hadn't appreciated the notion of going either, but where else were they destined to finish their quest?

He worked his horse past some crumbled stones and gorges worn into the roadway, still continuing the conversation, if a little more wary now: "Not only that, they've got silly ideas when it comes to women and magick. Two different taboos, but certainly worse when they're not mutually exclusive. Try telling some of our women to accept a man as chaperone when they're vikttalt--ah, at an age of emancipation from the figurehead of their family. Most wait patiently until after they've been granted their dowries, but that's all another tale."

"They will have no worries from me, if that's what you suggest. As for the bruised and beaten, elfish-looking Hahnah? Well, they've seen stranger things if they've widely accepted griffins as citizenry, so you," Liesjte tilted her head to give a once-over of her riding companion, faint amusement dancing in those eyes if not on the lips bent on what seemed like an effortless, ever present frown. "will probably suffer no ill will so long as we get you looking a little less raggedy, or they likely will give us the trouble we'd otherwise love to avoid."

"It's a rather proud city for a cesspit of slums, but disputing that little piece of logic will get us nowhere."

The three of them rode some distance behind Alphonse, who looked for all the world as unflagging as a coming storm despite his age. Liesjte wondered if it was the money or the promised parcel of land that made him salivate ahead like a cur dog on a scent. She supposed that it didn't matter. His only task was to find this woman, and despite all monetary motivations Liesjte was aware he'd come into, she was still pleasantly surprised at the extent he'd go to finish whatever was asked of him, if perhaps, not so amused by his singlemindedness that turned this whole journey into a test of terrible, terrible forbearance.

Liesjte turned around, the back of her head expressionless as she tightened her riding gloves around the reins once again. "You've an honest face, Hahnah, I would suggest you tread carefully with it when it comes to some of these locals that call themselves civilized men. It's not a trip I would gladly undertake for any other... reason than this, so why did you travel with that family? Why depart the elvish homeland, isolated as it is, to want to know of Alliria--or Oban, for that matter?"

 

[Hahnah]

Hahnah was by turns engaged and distant as Saalim related what he knew, craning her head with curious fascination or staring through him as her eyes took on that glassing common to those who did not (perhaps could not) understand certain things. Talk of economies, of viziers and petty kings and shahs, impersonal things and things which were manifest only to those familiar with the intangible trappings of civilizations, these produced the latter effect, that distance and that glassing of her eyes. But the talk of "the poor" who suffered at the hands of others, the "silly ideas" of women and magic, even Saalim's aside where he compared it to his own homeland, these things charged with emotion, these brought on those involved and fascinated twists and cants of her head.

Liesjte commented as well, and her estimation that Hahnah would probably suffer no ill will, came as something of a small surprise. So used to ill will was she during her time in the wild, when her skin was midnight black and her eyes burned orange, that she assumed it to be the norm.

At Liesjte's mentioned of the word "griffin," Hahnah's brows perked up with immediate interest, even a hint of hopeful excitement, but settled back down soon thereafter.

Then came Liesjte's own question to her.

And at this, Hahnah paled. A reaction slight in measure, but pale she did. That mention of ill will was timely, for that is what entered into Hahnah's mind, the outcome she feared to be near certain, should she tell the three of them the full truth. What would they say if she revealed to them the presence of the Dying God, humming deeply in her heart? What would they feel if she revealed to them that she was something distinctly other than a "strange elf," something so other that many--like Edwin Griffin, the hunter--believed her to be a monster? And what would they do if she revealed to them that these people like Edwin Griffin were not wrong, that they had been right about her all along, that she was possessed of great sin in her heart and that its sheer magnitude outweighed all else?

Yet also, conflictingly, she did not want to lie to them. Not more than she had to--like calling herself a ranger. She desired to be honest, but, as she also knew, honesty was not always the right action.

Her tongue touched her lips. Wet them.

And she began forthrightly, "I have killed many humans."

A pause. Gauging them, Liesjte and Saalim. And then she continued, "It was my belief that all Humankind was cruel. I thought them all to be killers of elves, and throughout Falwood I sought to slay them without compromise. Their words, of whatever manner they were, were unheard by my ears, because I let myself believe that I was right without error."

The slight deviations from the truth began. "But when I lost my home, I wandered. I was not a ranger anymore. There was a change in me, and curiosity overcame my hatred. I still hated Humankind, but I decided to try and be among them. I knew that I knew nothing about Humankind other than my beliefs, and still I did not think that it would go well. I thought that places like the city called 'Alliria' were lies, that Humankind could not exist with other peoples.

"I was wrong."

Her eyes dropped down. "I was wrong about everything I once believed."

She was silent for a long moment.

And then said at last, "The family whose name is Stonemason has everything that I wish for, and that is why I traveled with them. For that short time I was allowed to have it too."

Alphonse Duyarte

 

[Alphonse Duyarte]

SAALIM

To hear a confessed murderer state both the undisclosed fact of being a killer of innocents and then her subsequent regret over what she had done immediately after left Saalim without the necessary words, intimate knowledge of this elf's justifications, or indeed any other recourse to respond. What was there for a stranger to say to both these things? What could be said?
​

There was a moment of stillness hanging precariously in the air, dangling as it did over the proceedings like some death's shroud as this information was processed by the now quieted retainer, once so intent on providing conversation and a degree of companionship to this stranger if only for the sake of generosity, burdened too perhaps with a sliver of guilt due to their earlier inaction against a wrong done to the Stonemason family.

An implicit though unspoken weighing of options as to how they'd react to this revelation was taking place in the absence of any reply save for a rise of a thinly manicured brow, and although this elf was in no danger of violence--the decision to leave her as Alphonse would have must've been clearly delineated through the abject surprise and mistrust on his face as it now being an option.

Had she ever seemed the sort from when they initially met? Was it guilt, a mistaken sense of honor that blinded him to the extent of Hahnah's oddities?

Admittedly it was less the killing and more of who had done it and why that caused him to falter from his usual course of the thoughtful, open-minded fellow. He knew well enough that none of them were innocent of those charges, but this was an elf who slew for naught else but hatred of a species. She was also an injured, helpless woman whom he hadn't expected to be the cause of such thoughtless violence.

To accord them their particular rights in marriage, personal finances and in many facets of public life he would, but much like his thoughts on Liesjte, knowing a woman's capability in a traditionally masculine pursuit disquieted him as much as he knew it did Alphonse. So while the elf claimed to be wrong in everything she once believed, Saalim had not quite gotten there yet, still too mired in instinctive principles.

An id and an ego in all of us, indeed.

"How right you were! How dreadfully wrong, as well."

Liesjte was the one who thought to ask such an unintentionally meaningful question, and so too did she acknowledge it with that little retort of hers. He waited in anticipation, face perking with a newfound curiosity that banished some of his darker thoughts. And though he didn't mean to show as much suspense as he did, it was clear enough that he was an open book when it came to these sudden, foreign new feelings. Suspicion, disgust, disconcertment marred with a good nature that hadn't been banished entirely in the aftermath, surprised and taken once again completely off-guard as he was to fully process the gravity of Hahnah's confession.

It was also the second time he was tripped up like this, left defenseless and unable to control those conflicting emotions in his eyes.

"It must've been wonderful to have a reputation for such unapologetic singlemindedness, who could fault such purity of conviction? I'd give a great deal to emulate it like so many others have done before me, for wouldn't life be so much easier then, unthinking and removed from the pretense of free will? To act as a marionette to a self-codified, definite system of belief? To a king's mandate? Perhaps, like some of the more pretentious sorts; as a cruel god's unspoken, unasked ambassador? Why else?"

"Ah, Liesjte,"

She did not think to look anywhere except ahead, certainly not behind when all that lay there were two terribly emotional young children--children! And it was she who tolerated the most mistrust. To abide for a moment the expressions and moues of distaste her partner must've been making wasn't anywhere in Liesjte's inclinations, nor did she plan to disabuse the elvish girl of the notion that she had certainly done a terrible wrong in the past. There was blood on her hands, and denial would serve nobody except a bruised heart, no matter how soothing that balm would be.

"No need to answer, in fact, I suggest you don't. I only tend to condone silliness when I find it amusing." Liesjte, finding in her voice a little bit of levity to lessen the violence of her words, continued tutoring this Hahnah as she would a child. "An existence without a uniquely pervading kind of cruelty wouldn't have permitted any kind of answer, no matter how sensible or flimsy its prevarications. To think humanity is ultimately the source of this intrinsic evil is as misdirected as it is misguided. You've come to realize as much, and therein lies the advantage and the horror of your very long years. Some live and die in their short lives knowing only their prejudices, but you'll live to witness enough wickedness to know just how endemic to us all it truly is."

Saalim was taken unaware with the degree of bitterness she had spoken with, how quickly she trampled his attempts to intercede on behest of the elfish woman. How his discomfort with the blatant misanthropy when it came to evil in everything of this world, not just humanity, had unconsciously shifted those reservations back over to Liesjte. She spoke rather tellingly for a mere apothecary.

"As for having what the Stonemasons have, I would have told you to turn back! Turn back and find another Falwood divested of the awfulness that only monoethnicity, isolation, and a small tribe of family might stave off, at least for a little while," Liesjte pondered, remembering a comment made in passing, "although Saalim says you came here for a reason; which I will not scoff at, but will you temper it this time with righteousness? I can sympathize with your pain and your confusion, and would like to see that from you, Hahnah. One must believe in something a little more virtuous than blind, violent acts of hatred lest they find themselves truly adrift."

Throwing one of Hahnah's words back at her in an attempt to cleave the point home, Liesjte did not think it wise to also mention their presence then, how they stood back while the woman spoke of her code, ethos? "We are all of us desperately profane when it comes to kneeling before the altars of goodness, but make no mistake that there is always hope. For you and for us all. All it takes is a little more delicacy on your part, I have faith that you will learn, truly."

From where did all of this come from? He could not explain, only that Liesjte said whatever was on her mind. She had said all of it so conversationally that he could not begin to fathom how she actually felt, and thought it best not to ask the woman serenely riding along as if it were just a typical sort of conversation to have between strangers, one-sided though it was.

Aside from a whinny from one of their horses, both he and Liesjte remained quiet. Not entirely sure how to fill the absence of discussion while they followed the trail of Alphonse, who had disappeared a decent way ahead of the path. He did, after a time, give Hahnah a pitying look when their eyes met. This particular side of Liesjte made even the strangest alliances possible, and he could not believe that the entirety of her speech was reserved solely for the elvish girl no matter how troubling her admitted offenses were.

Finally, falteringly, it was he who tendered that balm. "I am sorry that you lost what you knew, and you had what you wanted for so short of a time. It's not something I would wish upon anyone as it is an ugly thing, and it breeds even uglier things yet in one's heart. If saving this girl is a means of some absolution to you then we will still be glad to oblige, especially if you can help us see this through to its end. Wherever that may be."

 

[Hahnah]

Hahnah was chastised by Liesjte, and Hahnah knew intimately that it was deserved.

All of it.

Her best, her full collection attempts to understand the world around her, had not been good enough. During her trek through the Kingdom of Dalriada, after Menura and the breaking of her worldview, Hahnah had wondered briefly what she would have become if not for the loving intervention of Kylindrielle and Elurdrith. But she already knew the answer. Without her caretakers, she would have been a monster, for that is exactly what she had become the moment they were gone. Edwin Griffin and those hunters did not make her this way. It had been lurking in her since the beginning. Waiting.

Hahnah did not interrupt Liesjte. Not once. She kept her respectful silence, but there were some parts which shook her more than others. Like the idea that she was the "ambassador" to a cruel god. While she did not know the meaning of that word, it seemed to her to be similar to "messenger" or "servant." But the implication that her God, the Dying God, was cruel? She was shocked, and simply refused to accept any hint of such a notion. It was her last unbroken belief, that the Dying God was not cruel, that He loved her as much as she loved Him. He was there, with her, that tiny hum in her heart, when she was starving to death in the Temple, and she believed that He had led Kylindrielle and Elurdrith--their kindness, their salvation--to her. She had failed Him with her copious sins, her profanity.

And it was saddening to hear her own reckoning of cruelty, that it was present in every heart, that even perhaps the kindest of people could fall prey to it, confirmed so casually. And she thought briefly back to Strathford, to Zael...

Spoiler: Speaking with Zael

Zael ignored her demand and just asked his question anyway. "Do you think I love my father?"

Hahnah said nothing.

"Now it's my turn to say: answer me."

"You do not love your father, nor does he love you. You are friends of convenience, so that you can engage in cruelty together on others. With no more others, no more elves, you will turn on each other. You will do this because cruelty is a part of you."

There was a pause. Long and drawn out for a stretched moment.

"Yes," Zael said, his voice heavy. "It is. It's a part of me and it's a part of you too. When I heard that you and that other monster killed my father, I thought of nothing else. Nothing else but killing you and killing that bear of yours. I'm still thinking about it now. I want to. I want to kill you so badly that it hurts me. And do you know what? I hate you. I. Hate. You. I hate what you've done to me. I just want it to stop...and I...I can't. I can't stop it. You're all that I think about. I'm killing you in my head over and over again and I can't...stop."

I would have told you to turn back, Liesjte would have said if she had been in the place of the Stonemason family. "Monoethnicity" was another of those strange words, but isolation, yes, Hahnah had been isolated well for years in her caretakers' ranger lodge, knowing only the two of them, seeing all Elvenkind in them. They had been her family. And then, upon her very first encounter with Humankind, Edwin Griffin and those monster hunters killed them for reasons that Hahnah did not at all understand. And thus the promise she, in her grief, had made to them, to Elurdrith and Kylindrielle's still bodies. The promise she never should have made.

To kill all of Humankind. To wipe their cruelty from the face of Arethil. To become a cleanser of profane things.

Temper her purpose, her reason for being here, with righteousness. Her heart had felt this feeling of righteousness as she had cleansed humans, sinful and innocent, throughout Falwood. Only joy to be found in their slaying, because they, to her, were evil. There was no higher good than slaying the profane, and her heart knew that they were profane--all of them. Her heart was telling her that they--Liesjte and Saalim and Alphonse--were profane. And so she knew now, after Griffyn's kind guidance, that she could not heed the hatred seething beneath her breast. This, for her, was not where true righteousness could be found.

Always hope, and Liesjte had faith in her, that she would learn. And she wanted to. All of her being that was not the smoldering core of hatred everburning in her heart wished to smother that selfsame core. War was all she knew now, but...before she had known something better.

And that was it.

They did not become hostile and aggressive. Their horses merely trotted along. This, at least, was good.

The silence was unbroken by Hahnah. She had nothing to say to Liesjte, and she felt that there was nothing to say. So behind her she sat, staring down, at the small of Liesjte's back and through it, keeping quiet with a solemn face partially masked by dangling strands of hair.

Saalim spoke.

And for a while Hahnah did not answer.

Then, seemingly without prompt, Hahnah looked over and asked in a quiet tone, "What is sacred to you, Saalim?"

Alphonse Duyarte

 

[Alphonse Duyarte]

SAALIM

The sun was not meant to set for some time yet, but already there were long shadows cutting into the landscape and splitting their forest into fragmented tendrils like so many grasping fingers. They continued nonetheless, their pace set.
​

There were some apprehensions about the veracity of a day's trip to the city even if they did steal a night's ride, and it seemed even less likely now that fatigue settled in. It was obvious that all three of them were flagging at this point, and their energies looked unlikely to improve when the sun did fall. The last four, grueling days saw that sleep, a valuable commodity, was largely done without due to the sincerity of the searches. They had been so close, or so they thought.

Now the end appeared to be nowhere in sight, certainly taking its toll on those once inexhaustible reserves.

Saalim yawned, looked ahead with next to no expectations to see Oban's gates, then hunched back into his saddle when that exercise of futility was done. The weariness no doubt assisted by the verbal confrontation that, once over, ensured that nobody was in much of a talking mood. All it left was the setting sun and the clopping of their horses, absent even the noises of nature on this well-traveled road.

Wondered he did of what was to come. What Alphonse, Liesjte, or even Hahnah were thinking of it all?

The former, he imagined, did not do much thinking for Alphonse was for all intents and purposes a firmly molded sellsword, cast as clay in the oven of a great number of battles and underhanded quests that required much more subtlety or determination than this one. The sellsword did not speak much of what his experience entailed, nor discussed at any kind of length how all those journeys had concluded unless he was terribly drunk but Saalim heard enough gossip to know his manifest experience to be the truth. That was why he endeared himself to the older man and listened to his sagely, though curt advice upon the road. Why he did not assert his position as the great-nephew of a wealthy and middling august family to override most decisions.

As for Liesjte, it was she whose mind he could not or would not come to understand; the same as this Hahnah girl who he still regarded from the corner of his eyes in subtle concern. Although it was Liesjte, not he, who served longer in the services of their master and therefore whose purposes and opinions should have been well-known to a court of gossip. She who declared to come along and found no resistance, who carried their purse and their passports that enabled them to sail across the greatest gulf and to the town in which their mistress was once wintered on one of her many trips, now left behind a week's past.

She who had all the trappings of danger, but now she wasn't alone in that, since he was only now beginning to suspect the truth in Hahnah's words beyond mere exaggerations and felt once again the discomfort rise as he wondered her motivations to come with them. Oh, he no doubt believed that she spoke the truth of a great and honorable purpose, further reinforced by how uncannily Liesjte caught onto her misgivings from a few small snippets of conversation that her past was not as honorable as one would've liked, now attempting to amend that. But would she amend that? Or would her new mistakes cause all of them harm?

He hadn't expected so much philosophizing for a trip like this, and was glad for Alphonse's current absence. Not a philosopher by nature.

How the elf paled and demurred to respond to those allegations that the apothecary leveled--who was, by most accounts, a court novelty to entertain their well-born master with the occult, ancient runes, even more venerable texts she had allegedly discovered. That she bothered with teaching those lessons, while also pretending virtue, confused him as to the intent for someone who had never shown much virtue nor interest in any belief. Simply to get underneath her skin, or to help? She said strange, meaningful things without so much as even looking at the elvish girl

Not knowing that he was staring, was caught aback as Hahnah turned to ask: "What is sacred to you, Saalim?"

Perhaps it was quiet intensity in the question, or his past thoughts on their newly accepted mission and the endangered child, but he answered promptly enough. "My children. Yes, I suppose that would be it." His memories of home came unbidden with the thoughts of the lost child; a convenient connection to the past and the present that permitted the coincidental reply, validated the rapidity and certainty in which he responded.

There were a thousand other things he considered sacred, yes, but all of it seemed to pale in present circumstances and so instead his logic rested upon a nursery six strong, though only one was his own. His wife loved children as much as his sister did, had worked his wiles into him as time went by and they felt it necessary to adopt the orphans of middling patrician families like his own into the playpen. There was certainly an influx of them for the past two years, but nobody dared punish the children in the political disputes of great men, the men of always. "I know that it is a silly, simple answer, and while there's much else I could consider important to me, from our gods to the ancient customs of our tribes, that is what first came to mind."

He elucidated further, breaking his gaze to count the branches of the passing trees. "Some say that our children are a way to rectify mistakes of the past and the destined, instead of compounding them. As you can see it's all still a work in progress, but they have the proper idea. It might be selfish to put upon them the task of fixing the ways of this world, but humankind is like a... a goat."

"Mmm, a goat?" came Liesjte's offhanded question.

"More than people dare to admit. it's both a restless creature, eager perhaps for a change of scenery or in this analogy; a difference to be made so they do not have to suffer for their ancestor's lack of foresight. They're also indolent, lazy beasts of burden that more oft than not will sit down and refuse to walk unless they were raised at a young age to accept the bridle. Children too must be taught to walk a good path, before they grow into the wickedness and prejudices that you spoke of."

She laughed, a quiet and eternally rueful sound that was over as soon as it had begun, obviously agreeing.

Turning back to Hahnah, a new light in his eyes. "A great many things are sacred to me, but that is one of them. How does an elf think of such a topic, what is sacred to them, to you? I am truly curious."

 

[Hahnah]

The sun continued on its march from hanging to setting, and Hahnah's question was asked.

She smiled--a faint gesture, but sincere--when Saalim spoke his answer. His children. Before her transformation, before her Living Armor's assimilation of Zael and the knowledge he possessed, she would have been baffled--she'd no notion of sons or daughters, mothers and fathers, the very basic workings of life. It had been beyond her comprehension at the time, but now she knew. Now she even longed for it, that kinship without compare (yet who was her true mother, her true father?). Saalim was a father, and with his children he knew a special kind of bond. It was like Griffyn and his siblings, like Mina to Nicholas and Rachel. Hahnah herself had felt it with Kylindrielle and Elurdrith, even if she was not of the same blood as them.

If only they'd more time, her caretakers. If only they could have guided her farther down that good path of which Saalim spoke, warding her heart against the very chance for the simmering hatred of Humankind to metastasize into manifest sin.

So what was sacred to her?

Praying; it was good to show her love, her faith, her veneration to the Dying God, He who had always been with her--for this she had an intrinsic deposition. Her self-made purpose to slay the profane; it was still good to slay those who actually did hold a surplus of sin in their heart, those whose cruelty outweighed whatever kindness they may have shown, like the corrupt soldiers who had taken Mina. Saving people, no matter their Kind; it was good to have saved the elves of Elyr-Morath with Alden, to value preserving them over killing the mercenaries who were savaging their settlement. Peace, like Idreth had found, and like what she and Griffyn helped bring to Menura; war was necessary, but it was not good to be immersed in war forever.

These were all good. But what was sacred? It was all of these things, yet simpler--more primal. Something common to them all at their very base.

After some contemplation, Hahnah raised her gaze up and to Saalim. Said with surety, "Showing kindness, and having it returned. Showing love, and having it returned. The bond that is created when this happens I feel is sacred."

She glanced askew for a second, thinking, and then added, "I do not think that your answer was silly nor I do not think it is bad that your answer was simple. I admire it very much."

She glanced askew again, for a few seconds longer this time, and added one last thing, "Though I am still confused about Humankind being a goat."

Metaphors were not her strong suit.

Alphonse Duyarte

 

[Alphonse Duyarte]

SAALIM

Saalim, having seen Hahnah smile for the first time since they met, had felt oddly compelled to do as well in turn. Her answer was definitely not the one he had expected, yet it still brought that smile to his face to hear it all the same--to want to believe it, if only in wanting to see the best of people.
​

To hear those words said with so much conviction was perhaps the most surprising thing of all, as a confession of such simple values was easy enough to claim at the heat of the moment and then do away with it in the next breath. He didn't think that way this time. There was certainly no doubt of it in his mind of her guilelessness in which she often spoke, so in this instance he sincerely did believe the claims of finding such a small interpersonal act sacred to someone like her.

Murderer she may be, Saalim was not disillusioned enough to fail to concede that much to the elvish girl.

He still didn't know why he brought up his children in the first place, but found her response to be much in tune with his own. For what else did he feel for them, if not the equal reciprocation of these affections? There were bonds forged between children and parents which were so often incapable of ever being severed, that much was true, so he found it to be a more than acceptable answer when it came to things to be cherished and celebrated. Indeed, the two of them were so open in appreciating one another's perspectives that Liesjte almost gagged on the cloying sweetness of it, said nothing.

"And so do I admire yours, as what else is really at the heart of everything we do? To be treated as you would like to be treated is a desire as old as the shifting mountains and the bottomless oceans with good reason. To be respected and to be loved is natural to want, even if it's just for a little while."

Was that what he had with his wife, Yaddel? He would have liked to think so.

Was it what everyone would want, even the meanest beggars? Judging by what he thought, it was possible.

For this elvish girl, Hahnah? He was beginning to truly believe so instead of merely wanting to. Her story of hate rarely came without the stipulation of loss to accompany it, and that was something she also happened to speak adamantly of in the short time they've met one another. Even for someone admittedly as equally guileless as Saalim oftentimes was, it wasn't something particularly difficult to piece together with all the information at his disposal. He found himself seeing her in a different kind of light, though the evening sky made it gradually less possible with figurative means aside. His face casted long, forlorn shadows as he prepared his follow-up.

"Have you had something like that in Falwood, or elsewhere?" Saalim seemed to freeze in his saddle in thought, although that by itself was quite impossible by how treacherous some of the road was. And yet for all intents and purposes it looked to be that way. He quickly amended his careless words after remembering her claim to be without a home, spoke of life at Falwood in a definitive past-tense. "I don't mean to cause offense, especially if you aren't interested in the prying into your affairs."

Liesjte twitched her head to the side so imperceptibly as to make the gesture go largely unnoticed, listening.

Then, as an aside: "Ah. Don't worry about the whole goat analogy, it made much more sense in my mind."

 

[Hahnah]

Hahnah wasn't offended. She in fact brightened considerably in the wake of Saalim's question. There had been a time in which she would have viciously guarded herself against speaking of her caretakers to a human, or truly to speaking to a human about anything other than their own impending doom at her hands. But now, to speak of Kylindrielle and Elurdrith to another was to, in a certain way, revive them for a brief flicker of time.

"Yes, I did have something like that in Falwood," she said, eyes trailing up to the warm hues of the evening sky, recalling. "When I was small, I was alone for a long time. I knew nothing of the world, not even how to speak. I still do not know who my mother and father are. But when I was close to dying of starvation, so close that I did not have the strength to lift my arms nor my legs, they found me. Their names were Kylindrielle and Elurdrith. They were elven rangers, and they became to me a mother, a father."

It did not occur to Hahnah that some details of her story might potentially sound odd. That while she had been born small, she had not been born as small or as helpless as any other elven child--or human child. Such helplessness had only befallen her when she had run out of corpses to eat within the Temple, after the trembling of the maddening hunger had thundered on for days and until all her thoughts became of food and then thought itself dissipated to nothing and naked sensation was all that was left.

She looked back to Saalim with a new curiosity. Asked, "You are a father. You have created children who are of your own blood. Is it...do you think that it is possible for someone to feel that he is a father to someone who is not of his own blood?"

Kylindrielle had, on many occasions when it was solely her and Hahnah, called Hahnah "my child" before, even though they did not share blood--implying that she thought herself, truly, to be Hahnah's mother. Elurdrith had not said the same to her, not directly, but maybe...he, too, felt this way as well?

Alphonse Duyarte

 

[Alphonse Duyarte]

SAALIM

Could you love someone as if they were your own blood; embrace them without any distinction from one to the other? How silly of a question it seemed to him the first he heard of it, as such a thing was most definitely not a moral or ethical conundrum in many familiar places.

There were always exceptions that he could not deny, of course.
​

Saalim could not personally even begin to think otherwise, but knew the differences in some parts of the world were so vast that perhaps he wouldn't ever understand the particular logic behind so many of these terribly foreign cultures. He knew as well that some differences could not be reconciled, that blood was often still seen as the measure of everything and anything a person was, or was meant to be. This theory was still more prevalent than one would have liked back home, its pangs still felt to this day.

Not something which would ever change for a great many others, unfortunately.

"I sincerely do not see why not." Saalim answered Hahnah's question gently, his brows inching a few scant inches; perplexed eyes fixed themselves on the elf, both curious and pitying. Yes, you could very well love someone as if they were your own blood. He knew that. Hurting all the same when others could not, especially when that someone was the child who would have wanted it all the more to be true.

An interesting tale, Saalim noted, and one that stuck him as being exceptionally close to home--so to say. His other children were not of the same blood, nor were they formally recognized as immediate family or truly adopted in a way recognized by his city's lawful courts. There were indeed few legal or blood ties compelling him and his wife aside from the spirit of altruism, really. And yet all those turbulent months had certainly given him no cause to think of them as anything less than his children.

There were some that were already taken away by distant relatives discovered through an obscure matrilineal line, others provided as wards of the state and offered into the care of aristocratic families or pressed into exclusive services of the temples. It was only time until the rest departed the care of his wife as well, but he would never think anything less of them for moving on from them. Certainly not Yaddel.

They knew it to be an unavoidable reality, and one that didn't change what they thought of their charges a fig.

"I cannot tell you how to feel about that, only what the truth is to me. My children are not all my children, they never were, though I don't think I have ever treated them all the less for it. Nothing I have felt is all the less for the fact, and my wife's sentiments are much more... passionate than mine ever could be.

If he had thought pieces of Hahnah's story was odd, there was no confirmation of it on his end and he simply continued as if none of it was ever amiss. "Any healthy child is precious, and we have a great temple in my home where some parents would leave their children for all kinds of reasons, good or bad. Then there are others who could not or would not have their own that are all too glad to take them. Few could ever blame them for their blood, or lack of."

Liesjte listened for a few moments later, a time which she did not turn away or deign to enter the conversation, before finally contributing: "These rangers took you in and presumably raised you as well as one could ever raise a child, for they fed you, taught you of the world, gave you words to speak. I confess that there's no answering for your own father, if that's what worries you, but is that so bad? He was what he was to you, and you were what you were to him. That is what they'll always be, plainly put."

"Ah, there you have it," came a friendly retort, done for now it seemed with all the suspicions. "Besides that--Alphonse raised a little boy with some woman back home and he was exactly what the child needed, if you'll believe that. Liesjte, I can imagine, thinks of us all as children. That said, why is it so bad for her to want to have an answer?"

"There's times when it becomes frightfully inconvenient to seek answers to superficial questions. Not when you may not like the answer. I simply think that happy memories should remain untarnished by labels, if happiness is what they provide you."

Liesjte didn't think it prudent to discuss how often people in these relationships were so abruptly disillusioned when they finally pressed for that answer, that assurance, only to find it withheld because of their blood or their birth. Even those by legal adoption could sometimes never rival a child of the flesh. Perhaps it was different for Hahnah, but something about the elvish girl made Liesjte want to caution her against looking too closely for the truth. Wasn't it best to simply have those memories?

And that ignorance she thought was best. To foist labels upon another risked failing to live up to them.

Not bothering to argue with that, Saalim set his sights upon Alphonse with a faint cluck of surprise. They had finally caught up to him save for a hundred paces of uneven ground, and he could tell already that they could not catch the guardsmen that night. For he noted how far the sellsword had flagged by this point, probably off riding and tracking lo and fro to ensure they hadn't left the path--now reduced to ambling along at a comfortable pace, his cloak pulled back from his balding pate of hair. Those three frantic days took its toll.

He permitted a prayer for this Mina, and their lord's mistress, that standing idly by did not mean an undeserved fate.

 

[Hahnah]

It did not seem to be as peculiar a thought as Hahnah estimated it might be. Saalim was not only familiar with the idea (this very idea which had to Hahnah appeared so novel that she'd a difficult time truly grasping it on her own), but had in truth been doing so for a long time. Not all of his children were his children. And at this Hahnah smiled, meeting Saalim's eyes and then dropping her gaze and then meeting them again.

Yes, he was a good person. And he was the newest testimonial against her old worldview, shedding yet more light upon its flaws and sinful tendencies. That small moment of bashfulness, of embarrassment, when she had dropped her gaze from his stemmed from this, the shame of knowing that she would have killed him without question had the time of their meeting been in that sordid past and the opportunity had been ripe.

Liesjte she did not quite follow. Often she, Liesjte, spoke in ways that were not to Hahnah well-defined, that were not plain, despite her outright stating that it was so. Hahnah was not worried about Elurdrith, and as Saalim had said, why was it so bad for her to want to know of fathers and children, of blood and of no-blood relation? And Hahnah did not think that it was inconvenient at all: Saalim and Liesjte were right here, and it had only taken her a moment to ask.

Despite it, she answered definitively, "I will always have the happiness of those times, no matter what."

And it was good that she endeavor to save Mina, to save the Stonemason family as a whole, from the end of such a time for them.

* * * * *​

And so they came to rest beside the road. In this, Hahnah was grateful; riding upon the back of a horse had done her soreness, the dull aching pains, no favors. Full night was upon them, the moons obscured by the patchy cover of clouds above, making all dark save what was caught in the small radiance of a campfire.

Hahnah was having her injuries, the bandages and the splint, seen to--checked again to see if anything need be replaced or if any more ointments and the like ought be applied.

As it was being done, Hahnah said, to Saalim, to Liesjte, to Alphonse if he cared to listen, "I remember their faces. They did not cover them with metal."

It was beyond the scope of her understanding to know how brazen this was, to know that the implication was either that they were careless, or that they thought mightily that they could get away with their robbery and kidnapping, deny any of it ever happened, and face no repercussions. But Hahnah did recognize the primal boldness of it. And as well the one among them who represented most of all.

"There was one who kept smiling. His hair was black and short, he had some beneath his nose and above his lip, and his eyes were blue. He smiled as Mina was taken, and he smiled as I was beaten."

The crackling of the fire.

Of profane things...

Hahnah's brow narrowed harshly, an outward manifestation of the general hatred in her heart. "I will cleanse him."

* * * * *​

Elsewhere, farther down that road and closer to Oban.

Mina sat stiffly on the ground, she and the soldiers all sat around the meager campfire. She was not bound by the ankles nor by the wrists, but she was a smart girl--she knew she didn't need to be. The soldiers would keep watch on her, rotating throughout the night, they with their armor and their horses, her in an unfamiliar land--there was no chance for escape.

Three of the soldiers were talking among one another. The last, the ringleader, the genial soldier, whose name Mina had gathered to be "Redoric," ate from his bowl of oats and kept to himself. Yet that slight, baleful smile had never left his face.

Mina already knew the answer to the question she was about to ask--she had read a lot of books for her age. But she wanted to hear Redoric say it. Make him say aloud the awfulness of what he and his fellows were doing.

"Why did you take me from my family?" she asked, this in a tone of childlike innocence and trepidation.

Redoric looked to her. Set down his bowl. Shifted slightly on the fallen log upon which he sat. That sickeningly friendly smile. "Because your family couldn't pay the toll."

Unsatisfied, Mina asked again. No act of innocence nor trepidation. "Why did you take me from my family?"

Redoric ignored her question. Instead rested his elbows on his knees and leaned a touch over and said, "We'll reach Oban tomorrow. Do you know what that means?"

Mina, taken by surprise, just stammered out, "...No?"

Redoric gently reached down and took one of her hands in both of his and held it up. He made one of her fingers wiggle. "That means, no more of this. No more of that little bit of magic you've got. Not in Oban." His cheeks were risen high, accentuating points on his balefully warm demeanor. "Because if you do, something bad is going to happen."

Now with real trepidation leaking into her heart, Mina said, "Wha...what?"

Redoric held that finger of hers that he had made wiggle up. Tapped on the fingernail with his other hand. "You're a sweet girl. You won't need these nails where you're going. But, wouldn't it be nice to keep them?"

"Please let go of my hand."

His vile smile unceasing. "Hey. Mina. I asked you a question. Wouldn't it be nice to keep all of them? All of your fingernails?"

"P-Please let go of my hand."

"Be a darling girl and answer my question." And in a fanciful, quietly merry way, "No more games."

Mina, defeated by her fright, nodded. Curt little nods, up and down, up and down. "Yes. It would be nice to keep..." she swallowed, "...all of them."

"Good..." cooed Redoric. "Good girl. We have an understanding."

And then--finally, mercifully--he let go of her hand.

Alphonse Duyarte

 

[Alphonse Duyarte]

ALPHONSE DUYARTE

He could go no further by the time he heard the rest of the party come upon him, his body seemed to have had enough. His eyes and his mind wandered then as well, leaving all except his long-legged mare unable to follow the path that must be tread.

They would make camp, he said, and that was that.
​

There he sat on an old marking stone that was once used for the boundaries of the city, though he found that it served just as well as a temporary seating arrangement for an old sellsword. It was probably more comfortable by far than their sleeping arrangements, if he was being honest. They hadn't the time, the foresight, nor the space to accommodate tents or any other travelling luxuries, but it was just as well that they were at least able to purchase three stout woolen bedrolls from the town they sailed into.

Not that anyone complained that the hides stank, or were impossible to properly clean while they were laid onto any ground that wasn't too wet from recent rains. There sat the other three around a campfire that occasionally sprang to life with a crackle and snapping of twigs that were fed into the flames, while Liesjte performed what little work she could on Hahnah in the light it provided, the former sitting cross-legged upon one of the bedrolls.

The two of them acknowledged Hahnah's words when she spoke them with grave interest, and even Alphonse sat up a little straighter to listen. There was nothing to say about what the other two already knew, nor of what they thought of the smiling man.

He stood after Hahnah seemed finished speaking, willing his cramped legs onward.

How old his bones felt now! Alphonse declined to imagine what had creaked more with the sudden movements, the sudden prod to action; those old bones of his or the leather armor he was still wearing after doffing the mail and settling it next to his sleeping roll in a tidy bundle. He came to a halt next to the dying campfire, having joined the rest of them, and sifted through the ashes with the tip of a discarded branch. Not commenting on the summoning of only Liesjte knew what, instead far more interested in Hahnah's recollection, having not seen for himself the faces of these men.

"Your well-being aside for the moment, you are certain to recognize these men if you were to lay eyes upon them again? Your help would be valuable if you could, as neither our task nor yours are likely to be a simple affair, and finding these men in a town as large as Oban will prove difficult enough already even with that one consolation."

He stopped, looked into the flames with a suddenly renewed curiosity.

"That is, if they mean to go there at all. You know more of their motives than we. I was told that they were soldiers, so the town's the natural next course, corrupt they might be I still doubt that anyone will try to stop them from reaching the harbors."

An utterly notorious locale for slavers, privateers, unscrupulous merchants. But he left that part unspoken.

Alphonse didn't even begin to understand the extent of Hahnah's hatred, not being present when she admitted her murders to his other companions, but he understood her previous expression well enough. He actually approved of it. This was one elf whose persistence, her sense of duty, would not be extinguished so easily. He had judged it to be an invaluable trait for what was to come ahead, and began to warm to her with that one look more than anything.

He would have liked to believe in earnest that she meant those last words, even if she did not understand the danger of saying them. Their task was fraught with enough peril without the inclusion of corrupt guardsmen.

Though however Hahnah might answer, Liesjte broached more immediate concerns regarding her handiwork.

"The ointments will do what they can for you, though the worst of the bruises will remain," said Liesjte, having examined the visible damages that had thankfully lost much of the swelling and redness thanks to the creams of arnica and flatleaf, turning instead to several hues of black and purplish splotches. "I imagined that you might have needed a splint proper, but you heal nicely enough. The brace will do until we reach the city."

"Will she be able to fight, if it comes to that?" asked Saalim, hanging onto the previous conversation.

"I don't honestly know. Would it stop you?" Liesjte levelled the answer at the elvish girl, before continuing. "There are quicker ways, but I don't have the necessary resources. My magick is not sufficient by itself."

"Then what is?"

"An offering to whoever wants to listen. There are a great many conduits in which we draw magick from day to day, though there are other means we use less often. All around us and everywhere else, truly, even if some places hold more prominence than the side of an Allirian river."

"Do you mean to say that it's so easy for you to summon the river spirits, lares, and fairies of the earth to do one's bidding, just for what, an offering? Nonsense."

"More of a ritual than a summoning, I would think. And yes, you are correct that it is not terribly easy. It's actually quite a tediously specific process, more dependent on contractual rites and relevant "legal tender" than they are with divine intervention and shining lights. This world holds bankers in more repute than they do with almost anyone else, so why would it be different with the gods?"

"You cannot discount that miracles have happened too without all this talk of banking, but I see your point."

"And how very showy they are." Liesjte replied blandly, then turned to smile at Hahnah with far too curious eyes. "I don't suppose you know any gods to plead to for a tidy little fix, perhaps a snap of one's fingers?"

He watched them work, listened to them speak, and said nothing until he felt the discussion begin to drift askew--even if Hahnah wasn't meant to actually answer Liesjte's provocations.

"It is up to her if she is in a state to continue, and her decision," came a gruff reply. His attention for once was entirely focused upon Hahnah, white crow's feet fanning his eyes. He looked tired, felt worse, and the constant fireside chitchat did nothing to improve either prospects.

 

[Hahnah]

When asked if she was certain to recognize the soldiers if she saw them again, Hahnah said nothing. She did not need to. She merely nodded with all the surety of a predator closing in on lame prey, a languid nod, down and then up, the motion slow and smooth and full of resolve.

She glanced back to Liestje when she spoke. As if on cue when the "worst of the bruises" were mentioned, a tremble of pain from her ribs made Hahnah grimace, almost wince. Still, she said without difficulty, "Thank you, Liestje."

Then, soon as Saalim had asked his question, Hahnah had quickly and quietly answered, "Yes," though it was drowned out by Liesjte. It did not matter. She could answer a question of a similar spirit in the moment following: Would it stop you?

"No."

Adamant. Making eye contact with all three of them in the wake of her answer. If she had to wait outside the gates of Oban as she had waited outside the gates of Vel Anir for Edwin Griffin, then she would. Save this time she would not be chased away. Those men who were called soldiers...they were profane all. They were truly profane. And this was how she knew that the Dying God still spoke to her, even if He was silent. Her path had crossed with theirs, and she believed that He had made it so. And now, with a better interpretation of what was good, her purpose would not be twisted into sin.

The talk of gods (and river spirits, lares and fairies) came around to her then, and at this Hahnah returned a somewhat unsteady expression to Liestje, brows arched in an ill-concealed dismay. But she thought quickly. Came up with an answer that she thought to be as conclusive as it was unlikely to arouse suspicions.

"I will pray."

The interjection soon thereafter by Alphonse was quite heartily welcomed by Hahnah, and she turned her attention to him. One side of her face was bathed in the glow of the campfire, the other completely in shadow.

"Yes, I will continue. I must."

A short, diminutive glance to Saalim, before her eyes in an ashamed way fell away for a second, and then back up to Alphonse.

"For all of the profane things that I have done, I may not stay idle and allow this to happen. Mina must be reunited with her family. They will not suffer what happened to me."

Even if I must die. Words left unsaid, yet their weight--and the determined acceptance of this possibility--bore down on her tone.

Alphonse Duyarte

 

[Alphonse Duyarte]

ALPHONSE DUYARTE

"I believe that you mean it. If you do then I suggest that you rest, there will be little of it in the city, I think."

Alphonse added his branch to the last of the kindling, letting the flames lick lazily away at their quarry like a lion does its chops. His back turned, he gathered up the cloak left in a tidy bundle across a hunched pair of shoulders and seemed then to dismiss the campfire and its company altogether.
​

He prodded uneasily at his bedroll with the tip of a boot on his way past, valiantly suggesting that she take his sleeping arrangements for he would much rather sleep on the ground as he was far more used to the discomfort. Alphonse didn't mention that he'd much rather take his chances compared to the sleeping roll, infested with only gods knows what.

"Accept it not as kindness, if that makes the accepting of it uncomfortable to you, but a practicality. Sleeping on hard ground will do your injuries no good," he said, collecting his scabbard and sword from the displaced saddle on the ground. He glanced at Hahnah again with a knowing look, how she winced.

"Try not to lie flat, you may regret it by tomorrow."

All spoken with the airs of a clinician, though he did at least provide a nod of approval at her lack of complaint.

Having already tossed the spent branch into the flames--the last for the night, he informed Saalim in tones that brooked no argument that it would be properly put out once the embers died down and they were ready to rest. He hadn't wanted the flames at all, but Liesjte had insisted and the fact was that the small grove of trees provided more than enough cover from the road and all upon it.

There would not be any more smoke than was necessary for tonight, and he hoped it was enough.

He was no stranger to those who would prey on late-night travelers. The highwaymen, bandits, guardsmen.

That being said and done, he had no problem in simply choosing a dry patch of grass that met at a junction of a tree, there he settled for the night with the cloak as a dubious headrest and with next to no fanfare, closed his eyes to the outside world. Not in the act of sleep, for he occasionally prodded an eye open in silent vigil, but it was enough to deter Saalim from engaging him further in conversation. So instead he turned to Hahnah from across the fire, laughed softly.

"I wouldn't worry about the curtness, he has never been famed for bedside manners. Young Mina will be rescued, of that I have no doubt."

He leaned on his bedroll to watch the embers disinterestedly; only from the corner of his eyes did he maintain contact with the two other women. His thoughts were of this city, attempting again to conjure up an image that could be referenced to what he had seen before, for his home--while likely comparatively as large, was probably very different from this Oban. He gave up, instead evoked the recent memory of all this seriousness, smiled in admonishment at the elf.

"Perhaps on a more lighthearted note, why don't you tell us about this Alliria? There's no point in fussing over the future, and I'm far too curious about things I've never had the chance to see. What could have ever brought you there?"

He cocked his head ever so slightly to the side, studying this strange creature with mischievous words on his tongue. Things he ought not to say to others, but imagined she would not take offense to the somewhat innocent question.

"You do not seem the type of person to enjoy places like that, especially not after what you told us of yourself. I'm sure it was an interesting enough reason."

Liesjte, despite being in the process of packing most of her tools away, snorted and looked vaguely curious herself, the concoctions of ointments gleaming sickly from the backdrop of their dying light. Her own cloak was huddled closely around her to avoid the worst of the chill air, its flopping hood looking absurdly big compared to her small, tightly-knitted features.

 

[Hahnah]

Hahnah glanced to the bedroll at Alphonse's prompting. For much of her life she had gone without such things, the trappings of civilization and civilized life. She had slept in a bed and underneath a blanket during her time with her caretakers, but in their tragic absence had reverted back to a feral way of being: wearing no clothes until her transformation, and as well sleeping simply on the ground, often in the company of other monsters.

She went to the bedroll. Stiffly sat down on it, her expression bracing against the protests of her beaten body as she nevertheless sat down on her heels with her hands in her lap, prim and with perfect posture, forcing herself to do so in spite of the pain and soreness.

Saalim spoke, and Hahnah looked beyond the gentle fire to him, smiling meekly as he mentioned Alphonse's curtness, nodding resolutely when he mentioned Mina's certain rescue. Men like Saalim, humans like Saalim...meeting them was something brought both happiness and sorrow. Happiness, that such men did exist; sorrow, in that she had doubtless killed scores of them. This latter with the firm blessing of her heart, that she was solely doing good for Arethil and for Elvenkind.

Tell us about this Alliria.

Only a small touch of cold nervousness this time. One which the warmth of the fire brushed away. The fire, and her own surprising desire to speak aloud of it, her time there, this desire springing forth like the abrupt opening of a door.

"You are right. I do not enjoy places like that."

And she began to recall, the most prominent details striking her first.

"In Alliria, there is a surplus of noise and movement. I saw many kinds of people, those that I know and those that I had never before seen, and the sheer number of them together was terrifying; there were so many that I did not know who to trust and who not to trust, and I could not possibly have the time to discern all of it. Everywhere there were angles, sharp angles that were unnatural, and there were doors and windows and tiny spaces that stifled my way as much as allowed for it. Everything was narrow, and those constructions called buildings all looked very much the same, and they did not have a natural order to them like the trees of a forest, and this made it difficult for me to navigate. The smell was..." she paused, "...powerful."

A small shrug of her shoulders. "Yet this is where many of Humankind wish to live, in cities like Alliria or Oban. So, to be among them, I had to go. I did not go alone, and for that I am grateful."

A full smile this time. For it was the same here, in the calling to go to Oban.

Alphonse Duyarte

 

[Alphonse Duyarte]

SAALIM

His knuckles against the tanned leather of his chin, he watched this Hahnah observe the proprieties with some amusement; even when the pain from her injuries evidently made it difficult to sit the way she did with any degree of ease.
​

A strange creature, he did not think to mention the people observing these proprieties rarely conflated it with campfire etiquette. It was not his place to undo good manners no matter how little the situation called for them, so therefore he said nothing and leaned in to listen to her as she told a story that he dearly wanted to hear, famished as he was for the sight of marketplaces and tall walls after all this time amongst trees and dirt roads.

​

An engaging enough beauty for a boy who was more familiar with the concept of cities than he was with the open fields, but there was only so much greenery one could stomach seeing before feeling the pangs for something a little more familiar. She proceeded to speak of those things, and he quietly listened.

The tale she wove charmed Saalim, if only for the occasional novelty of hearing a perspective that was utterly foreign to him and seemed filled with the same childlike wonder one would have the first time they ever found themselves visiting such a cosmopolis. Only that it must have felt far more alien to her than it did to a farmer's son or a hapless villager on a quest to the market for little trinkets and kitchenware unable to be reproduced in a hamlet that wouldn't even have had a proper smithy. All the details of her story sounded intimately similar to the recollection by those confused souls, it certainly had all the similar complaints that he could sympathize with.

Aside from the fact that she compared navigating a city's architectural design to a forest, but close enough.

He laughed at the end of her description of Alliria, a light and airy noise that adequately captured his commiseration with the smell for those terribly unfortunate to experience it for the first time. He was now well attuned to the stench produced by so many cloistered bodies and what comes out of them, but every now and then he would recognize just how much of an undertaking it had been to become accustomed--how you never really were to the extent that you'd forget its existence, but enough to brave the mélange of smells and sewers every day without immediately retching at the mere thought of it.

"I can guess how the smell must have been for you, knowing more of Falwood than you ever did of Alliria. I can only offer you my condolences and that, thankfully, repetition breeds a sort of tolerance. It's rarely as bad for the second time around."

That might have been a little fib, though there was truth enough in it not to be a bold-faced lie.

Suddenly shifting himself onto his back and propping his shoulders against the reed-stuffed pillow sewn into the bedroll, Saalim allowed himself another smile; though it was more a raising of a corner of his lip, eyes alight with an intense kind of curiosity. He did not ask what it meant to be among them, or the why of it, his curiosity was apparent but his manners were refined enough to realize that the answer might have been uncomfortable for her. For him as well, knowing what he did of her past.

Saalim hesitated, seemed about to say something about it, then apparently said a different something. "You will not go alone, that is true, and I am happy that we're of some comfort. You might also even see and do things you otherwise would not have. I will try to." and knowing how much their mission might get out of hand, he added: "We might not be given that chance again in Oban after doing what needs to be done, so it would be best to enjoy it while we can."

Liesjte laughed at the accuracy of the last assessment, "I imagine we don't need any augury or boiling pots of oil to divine that much." She made a symbol of an evil eye with her hand, appeared sufficiently mysterious. "I can see a bit of a hasty departure in our future, no matter how much we'd like to garland ourselves with the nobility of our purpose and act the heroes. No time indeed for sightseeing."

"An augur and a witch! You don't think self-fulfillment might ah, play a part in a town that still lynches the occasional woman for just that?"

"How droll. Our dear Hahnah that you insisted come along with us might not be aware of a city's many customs, but I'm certain you can only guess what fashion of thanks we'll get for uncovering corruption. Not to mention the inevitable murders of a few guardsmen. We'll not be welcomed again no matter how this ends."

That much was true, Saalim didn't even need to say as much for his eyes voiced obvious agreement when he next looked upon Hahnah. Tomorrow they would reach Oban's walls, and as for what happened next?

No, they'd not be seen as heroes however he might have hoped otherwise, although one would also hope that the gallows weren't payment for their efforts. There was no use in worrying about it while the last coals started to grow cold and grey, and sleep became an ever more appealing prospect. Tomorrow. Tomorrow would be the day to begin with all those nagging worries.

He returned to his earlier tangent, as if Liesjte had not interrupted.

"It might not be as awful to bear for you the second time around, so long as you're prepared for it in a way that you were not before," Saalim thought for a moment, spoke again, "All cities are much and the same and now you have the added benefit of knowing more about humanity than you once did. We'll see by tomorrow if this gives you a new... perspective? You may be surprised."

 

[Hahnah]

Repetition breeds a sort of tolerance. Hahnah certainly hoped so. The smell was pungent and that was wholly unpleasant and all, but, moreover, there was something else. Hahnah, she...no longer wished to be so afraid of cities. In a way the wish seemed impossible to reach for, let alone to grasp. It was a powerful emotion, that fear, primal in essence, a visceral response to what was opposite and alien to her lived experience. Yet, as fledgling as her resolve was in this regard, she wanted to try. Oban could be her first attempt at it.

And like Saalim said, she would not be alone.

You might also even see and do things you otherwise would not have.

Hahnah smiled in response, her cheeks red and rising. It was as if Saalim had known that she wanted to try to assuage her fear.

Liesjte then with more talk that was not plain. Hahnah did not know what "augury" was, and she could not know what boiling pots of oil had to do with it. Or divinity, for that matter. The Dying God never once bid her for a boiling pot of oil--was it something of which "Astra" and the other gods of Celestialism were fond?

As Saalim and Liesjte had their back-and-forth, Hahnah, belatedly, picked up on what they were truly saying. Oh. In...in so rescuing Mina from those soldiers, other soldiers would become aggressive toward them, and they would make Oban as a whole hostile. It wasn't good, but in a way it was alright; such hostility from civilization was familiar ground for her.

Saalim's final remarks. You may be surprised.

And to that Hahnah said, "I am eager to see."

Of those who were good, who were worthy of trust, Hahnah did not wish to fear them, even if they were many and they inhabited a foreign place. To be afraid of such concentrations of humans and elves, she might never meet those good people who had kindness in their hearts to share. People like Alden, like Idreth, like Griffyn, and like Saalim. There were many facets of her way of being to change, to adapt from the old, and this was such a one--this old fear.

Hahnah, stiffly, searched for a somewhat comfortable manner in which to rest upon the bedroll. Sleep found her easily.

* * * * *​

Elsewhere.

The Dying God knew of Hahnah's fear. And He knew what must be done.

* * * * *​

The sky above was an unblemished blue, and coastal birds flocked over and beyond the front gates of Oban ahead. Redoric led his men along the road leading there--to his right the grassy hillside, his left the steep drop down into the basin. His eyes passed over the earthen-toned peaks and towers of the city's grand buildings, those high reaching structures like scouts peering over the tall walls. The smell of the sea, faint as it was from here, was nonetheless familiar.

Mina rode in front of him on the saddle, his arms which held the reins like a cage which kept her imprisoned in his custody. When they approached the triple arches of the gates, when she saw other soldiers, she wanted desperately to cry out to them. But she was smart enough to know that it would do nothing; it would only hurt her family, and worse, she couldn't even know if those soldiers were not also complicit in some regard with Redoric and his three corrupt fellows.

The gate guards greeted Redoric and his men, and they made no special mention of Mina, even though they made eye contact with her. Redoric was casual. Calm. He did not address the fact that he had Mina directly, but his body language, his demeanor, both implied that this was as natural as could be. Oh? Her? Found her. Poor little thing. Just doing my duty and returning her to Oban, to parents who are probably worried sick about her. I'll get this sorted, no need to worry, friends.

And Redoric passed through the gate without a doubt or question leveled his way.

Just beyond the gates, in the hustle of the main streets, Redoric conferred with his three men.

"We'll be waiting on the ship to arrive at port. As bloody usual," noted the lanky, weedy soldier.

"Like last time then, I wager? Take her to the Stone's Throw Inn while we wait?" inquired Redoric.

The gruff soldier, whose name Mina had gathered to be Murdoc, shook his head and said, "No. Definitely not there this time. But I got another place. The Bluebird tavern."

"That'll suit," said Redoric.

And he looked down at Mina, showing her that nauseating smile.

Alphonse Duyarte