Private Tales Something Amiss

[Lia]

"It's a claymore." Lia said, her voice sounding somewhat fascinated. Though she was no blademaster, the Sergeant was close enough to it. She had a fascination with swords, and had spent most of her time in the academy studying them in one way or another.

Some of the instructors had told her that with a few more years of practice she could easily become one of the best swordsmen in the world, though she hadn't quite reached that level yet. At least she thought so.

"They're usually used for fighting pikemen." An interesting thing for a Ranger to have. "Batting away lances before getting in one or two good swings."

Not very good for sustained combat though, especially for smaller people like she and Kaska. "It's probably taller than you."

She observed.

 

[Kaska]

"I can't fight the lich with this!" Kaska exclaimed, a hint of a whine entering her tone. All this effort for it to come up flat. She had flesh-soil under her nails!

She struggled to even lift it in the confined space, Kaska not the swordsman Lia was. She had trained all her life, certainly, but her efforts and studies had been split over too many fields to ever make her more than a damn decent fight. That was a flaw of her upbringing, as you'd have it. Jack of all trades but a master of none.

"Switch with me!" She demanded, childishly jerking it out to Lia.

 

[Lia]

"I'm not strong enough for that." Lia pointed out with a frown. "Neither are you."

That was the trouble of being a woman, well one of them. Neither she nor Kaska really had the build to carry around a weapon like that, much less use it properly. Even strapped to their back they wouldn't be able to carry it properly, and actually fighting would be next to impossible.

She frowned for a moment slowly shaking her head, and then nudged the sword away from herself. The Sergeant was even more glad that they'd found the first sword now. "We can give it to one of the Rangers assigned to us."

Lia suggested, though she knew Kaska wouldn't like that plan either.

 

[Kaska]

Kaska groaned, letting it flop to the ground and kneeling there a touch defeated. She really didn't want to face that lich again without reassurance that she could handle herself. Which none of this was.

"We don't even have a choice..." she grumped, too tired from the night to have a strong reaction to this.

She sighed, clawing at the wall to help her up. "Welp. Best hope we can find a priest." She stretched up, grunting as she pulled herself up and left Lia and the sword bellow.

That was anticlimactic.

 

[Lia]

Lia threw the sword over the edge of the grave, letting it clatter onto the ground as she grabbed onto the other side of the wall and began to clamber up the side.

Once up she let out a heavy breath, her head tipping back as she took a moment to simply breath. "We'll find one."

The Sergeant assured Kaska quietly, glancing around them to see if anyone was coming. When she spotted no torches she shifted slightly, taking the massive claymore and leaning it up against one of the nearby trees. They had spent most of the night digging it up, she wasn't about to leave it behind.

Perhaps it would help them somehow in the end.

"Let's fill this up and get out of here." She told Kaska. "We still have a chance to get some sleep tonight."

 

[Kaska]

"I'm sleeping in," Kaska informed Lia, grabbing a shovel and beginning the monotonous task of reburying the poor fella. "Decompose well," she murmured to him as she tossed dirt back over his chest.

She worked quickly, in no mood to be caught up and forced to explain themselves. Like Lia, she doubted such an event would end well. Thankfully, they had the task fully done just as dawn began to throw hint of gray into the sky. Kaska tossed her shovel into a bush, not keen on showing back up at the keep with it in her hands.

"Was worth a shot," she grumbled, grabbing the sword and fastening it across her back, trying to act nonchalant with it. It was awkward to even walk, the end getting caught up in her legs.

"Woulda taken longer with one." Was the vaguest acknowledgement of Lia's assistance. The library would have taken longer too. S'not like Lia deserved her thanks!

 

[Lia]

Lia couldn't help but smile slightly as Kaska attempted to walk normally with the sword, amused that the girl would even try to do so. It would have been smarter to just carry it in her hands or rest it across her shoulders. Of course Kaska likely didn't know that, or rather she hadn't thought of it.

"It'll be harder to keep that hidden." The Sergeant pointed out as they began their trek back to the fortress.

She doubted that none of the Rangers would notice Kaska wandering around with a giant six foot sword. Particularly since she'd never had one before. It would have been better if it turned out the weapon was just a pocket knife, at least then they could have put it some place out of sight.

This?

This was going to be impossible. "You might want to stash it some place."

That way they could just collect it on their way out.

 

[Kaska]

"I will. A bush or something as we get closer," she yawned.

Waddle waddle.

"Orders should come by lunch. I guess I'll .. find you.. or something." Her brows furrowed. For the first time, Kaska found herself worried that she wouldn't be trusted with a mission. It was strange. It made her gut boil and and everything. She looked at Lia in mild worry, then looked away again, saying nothing on it.

 

[Lia]

"It'll be fine." She assured the girl, her lips thinning for a moment. Lia had never really considered that Kaska wouldn't be assigned, but she seemed more than concerned about it for some reason.

Would her father really be that protective?

A raven would have undoubtedly been sent to him and the rest of High Command, a missive detailing what had happened over the last few weeks and what was now going to happen. All of the Majors and the Commander of Rangers would weigh in on who was going with her on this mission, but the idea of Kaska not going...

That didn't sit well with her. "We'll finish this together."

One way or another.

 

[Kaska]

Kaska swallowed hard and nodded, resorting to walking in silence.

About a few minutes in, she took it off her back and held it, a bit slow on the pick up but moving easier after that.

A mile from the keep, she stashed it into the bush. From there it was a simple matter of just walking back in together .Two rangers returning early morning covered in dirt wasn't a rare sight to see. This was a training facility too, after all. At the court yard, Kaska merely nodded her head in a goodbye, prepared to depart the woman and get sleep without further prompting.

 

[Lia]

Lia waved to Kaska as they parted ways, deciding it was best not to speak anymore.

There was still much to do before they left. She had a plan on killing the Lich, she had a weapon to do it with, and she even had a way to defend herself. Now the problem became finding the damned thing.

For that she would need to head back to the Archives.

She remembered well enough where they had been when they'd encountered it, where the thing had been going. All she needed was a map with the old Fortresses on it. From there she could make some guesses, and then it was just a matter of poking around until they found the right thing.

A yawn escaped her as she walked towards the archives, her head lulling a bit. "Maybe...maybe I'll wait for tomorrow."

Lia said to herself quietly, rubbing her eyes sleepily.

 

[Kaska]

At noon, Kaska was woken up by the sound of knocking at her door. An order being given.


The next Lia would see of her, it would be inside the Archives itself. The woman was sitting back at their old table, an even larger pile of books stacked around her head. Kaska was buried deep into a book, covered in papers and ink as she completed her tedious task of indexing all mentions of liches for their further use.

She had gotten the order.

She had gotten it.

 

[Lia]

Lia came into the archive carrying a large map, something that she had procured off of one of the librarians here. The woman had been more helpful than the Sergeant would have expected, something she had been mildly happy about.

The map had surprisingly not been drawn by the Raners themselves, but was instead a product of an Elven cartographer who had taken a particular interest in the region. It was a detailed thing, showing topography, villages, towns, and of course Fortresses. Half of the landmarks on it didn't exist anymore, but some still did.

It was just a matter of working out which ones were still there. "There you are."

Lia called out as she spotted Kaska.

"I have a map of where I think the Lich was going." Of course that Map covered more than three hundred Leagues...but it was better than nothing.

 

[Kaska]

Kaska jolted at the call, a little scattered as she looked up to see Lia coming her way. She blinked out of her reserve, placing down her pen and reaching out.

"Let me see," she greeted. "Up North, right? The fortressess?" She surveyed it, appreciating the finer bits of detail she couldn't help but to feel some of the ranger documents kept lacking. "Which one then?" She mused, following the trail up herself in an attempt to guess.

 

[Lia]

"It could be any of these." Lia pointed to the small artist rendered castles that seemed to line the entirety of the river.

She had circled twelve of them.

"As far as I can tell these ones are still actually...standing." At least those that she could cross-reference with other maps anyway. "Some of them are quite large."

Lia frowned for a second and then pointed to one of the fortresses laying in an odd bay formed by the river. "This one used to be a Ranger keep."

 

[Kaska]

Kaska blinked, double taking at the pointed out castle. "...Well wouldn't that be ironic," she mused.

She traced the path up in that direction, trying to quickly memorize important bits by heart. She looked up afterwards, a curious look about her. "So you got your list then? The assignment one," she asked, cutting right to the point.

 

[Lia]

Lia was staring at the map when Kaska asked her about the list, her lips thinning slightly as she let out a noise in response. "Mm."

She'd gotten the list, a messenger had delivered it this morning to her while she'd been with the cartographer. From her inside coat pocket she pulled out the envelope, offering it to Kaska with the seal still in tact.

"Haven't touched it." She said. "I've been too focused on this."

The lich had to be in one of these thirteen Fortresses.

She was sure of that.

 

[Kaska]

Kaska accepted it, raising a brow. "You haven't? Really?" She bristled on the inside without understanding why.

She sat back and cracked open the seal, brows furrowed as she skimmed the list. Her name was there, of course, as well as a few others she recognized. Geeze, that was going to be miserable.

She closed it up and slid it back, making no comment. Well If Lia didn't care, why should she.

"So you'll want to travel up them. Naturally. While still managing to not be noticed checking up along the length of the river."

 

[Lia]

"We're going to take a ship." Lia said, glancing at Kaska with a smile.

There was a reason she hadn't looked at the letter, a reason she hadn't felt the need to. In her head it didn't matter who was coming with her, who the other eleven were besides Kaska and herself. She had been confident that her partner in all of this would be selected, and her plan had already included her.

"Trade vessels are common all along the Sayve." She explained. "And all of these Fortresses lay within a handful of leagues of the River."

A boat was also a whole hell of a lot faster than going on horseback. "We'll stop when we reach each one, pretend to make camp and send scouts to the Keeps. Once we find one occupied..."

She trailed off with a smile at Kaska.

 

[Kaska]

Kaska tried to withhold a smile of her own, feeling spurred regardless. Her lips twitched. She raised a brow at Lia, positively huffing.

"Do you even like boys?" She asked abruptly. "Or is that smile really all about this mission coming together?" The skeptical look continued. She didn't understand this woman. Not in any way that made sense.

 

[Lia]

Lia glanced at Kaska with a perplexed expression. "What does that have to do with anything?"

The subject was so far removed from anything they'd been talking about that Lia had no idea what Kaska would even bother bringing it up.

"I was given three months to find this Lich." She told the girl. "A two months of that would have been finding the damned thing. I cut that down to two weeks with this plan."

She gave Kaska a disapproving look. "My preference in lovers has absolutely nothing to do with this."

Nor did it have anything to do with the Rangers.

 

[Kaska]

"Well I don't know," Kaska leveled, leaning forward. "It's been a few hours. You coulda gotten laid." She shrugged as if it was simple truth. "So. Do you like girls then? Is that it?" Kaska asked again, ignoring everything else the woman had said.

It had been a genius plan. Lia had really pulled through here. But Kaska was panicking, she didn't even know why. And it all left her resorting back to sharp comments and lashing out, if just to put distance between them again.

 

[Lia]

A scoff echoed in the library, as if the thought of doing such a thing had never even crossed Lia's mind. In truth, it actually hadn't for multiple reasons. She was more careful than that, and more intelligent.

"Ever hear the term don't shit where you eat?" She said in a matter of fact way, shifting her attention back towards the map. "This place is filled with Rangers, and only Rangers."

Lia was not some sexless dwarven made construct.

She had urges and desires like everyone else, but she knew better than to get involved with people that would jeopardize her future. That was what mattered to her after all, her future. She wouldn't let some brief fling jeopardize everything that she had worked for, and sleeping with another Ranger? That was asking for trouble.

Lia was smarter than that. "I can wait until I'm back in Alliria."

Far easier to find someone uninvolved there.

 

[Kaska]

Kaska snorted, slightly frustrated by LIa's lack of true engagement with her prods. "What? Too good for your own kind?" She nudged further. This hostility was truly coming out of left field, but to her it felt completely relevant. The panic seized up in her chest, and she responded to it in a knee jerk reaction, the old cruel Kaska creeping back out.

"Is it because you're our Sergeant, or because you're rich, but neither will help you out here on the field you know."

 

[Lia]

She perked an eyebrow. "It's because getting involved with those you have no choice in seeing is both idiotic and foolish."

Lia had no idea why they were having this discussion. Perhaps Kaska had involved herself with some Ranger in the past and was now feeling judged. It made sense, but Lia didn't apply her own standards to others. She never had, mostly because she knew most weren't of the same mind as her.

"It simply leads to hurt feelings and conjecture." Her gaze returned to the map once again. "I don't need either."

She had already made herself more than clear to Kaska once. There was only one thing that she wanted in this world, and she intended on getting it. "I don't think I'm better than anyone else. I'm just not going to throw away my life's goal for a few nights of pleasure."

Not to mention the idea of what would happen when feelings and emotions were wrapped and mixed into actual missions.

Now that would be bad.