Private Tales Survival of the Fittest.

[Aeyliea]

It was over too quickly, this little battle in on the golden Sea in darkness. A battle only, though; everyone involved knew it. The war would go on until the telling blow, until either she and Brandr were lying dead on the ground or until the Vel Anir hunters felt that they had paid too much in blood chasing their prey. The white-haired Seer was all too willing to help speed them along in their decision, but a break would be nice.

Breathing hard but not winded, she stared daggers after the skulking dogs as they slunk back into the grass. She cast a look to her unwelcome companion - appraising, given over to some begrudging form of respect if not admiration. She spit on the ground in front of her, and made a gesture with one hand, fingers entwined in a specific way. A warding gesture; warding the evil eye away, or casting that dark attention after their foes.

"Fine," she said, standing straighter. Not telling the truth, really; she swayed a little on her feet, but it was such a small thing that most people from the civilized lands wouldn't see it at all. "Coward....hyenas. Fight, no want fair," she added after a moment. "Gone?" It was half question, half statement. In her mind, they would likely not try to do anything further here this night. They were cowards, and would only attack when they had a clear advantage. At worst, a watcher would be set upon them - likely, not even that.

She looked back into the dark grass. "Chase? Sleep? Which?"

 

[Brandr]

"They don't care for fair.." Brandr growled lowly and spat, a muscle feathering in his jaw as thought and unwanted memory flashed through his mind. He made his way toward her, his weapons now sheathed and his arm hanging limp at his side.

"We should get moving whilst we have the dark on our side.. We can sleep when we find somewhere safer to rest." he murmured. "Help me get this thing out.... Please." he added with a huff, apparently remembering his manners as he turned to head back to where they'd camped.

 

[Aeyliea]

"No is fairness, here," she said cryptically. Truthful; the wilderness was the preserve of the Seven, and host to nature itself. The people that lived out here in this sere land were harsh, unforgiving, and as little given to fairness as were those of the cities. Not a thing she would freely admit, though.

In the darkness, she could still see as well as a cat. She could see the shaft of the arrow protruding from his shoulder, the blood glistening in the faint light of the stars. Blessedly - for his sake at least - this was one of those things she was taught to deal with as a Seer, among the myriad other jobs. Bedside manner was not, however, a strong point.

"Small wound," she said cheerfully. Sudden;y cheerful, she came up closer to examine the wound from either side. "Is no problem..."

...she said, as she slammed the palm of her hand into the shaft from the feathered end, and then gripped the arrow from below the head and pulled. It came from with a sickening sucking sound, trailing threads of thick blood behind it. The swift action was accompanied with a heavy curse, to which she barked a laugh as she slapped a now bloodied palm over the hole.

"Baby," she said. And even as she said it, she called out to the Seven in her mind, seeking their power to do the work of healing. That singular presence was still there, watching on with apparent amusement, and she felt it grant her some measure of strength. Some of its strength, and her own as well, to pour into this man whom she hated on principle.

The wound mended itself slowly under her hand, a feeling as uncomfortable as having a parasite crawling round under the skin. Her head swam as it did, though, and the world spun slowly...and then, quite suddenly, her legs dropped from under her and she fell to the ground, dull-eyed stare into the dirt as the physical contact between her and Brandr was broken. For a moment, she had to struggle to remain conscious....and then everything seemed to steady.

"Fuck," she said, and pressed a bloody hand to her forehead. A deep, stabbing pain had settled into her temples.

 

[Brandr]

"A little fucking warning next time maybe.." he snarled quietly through his teeth, his face still scrunched into a grimace at the pain that pounded through his shoulder and arm. "Your bedside manner could use some work, too.." he snorted, drawing her amused little self a glare in disapproval.

What she chose to do next was unexpected enough to cause his expression to pause and he turned his head slightly to look down at her hand. He'd been about to ask what she was doing when he felt it and he swallowed the question audibly, his brow furrowing at the sensation of his flesh knitting itself back together.

He could see the strength leave her, and once more the question he'd been about to ask was rendered pointless as her legs gave way. He moved quickly, but not quickly enough to stop her from falling. He dropped to his knee beside her, his hand reaching to settle on her shoulder.

"Y'alright?" he asked rhetorically and made an attempt at helping her up. "Come on.. Baby.." he muttered under a smirk of concern. "You can ride with me until we find some place safer to rest up."

 

[Aeyliea]

Healing was not supposed to be like this. Always, some portion of what was her had to be fed into the recipient, but never so large an amount as this. Or, perhaps, the other things she had done had simply added up to an amount too great to bear. Despite the use, she was relatively unfamiliar with magic. Magi of the world beyond the Sea might lean heavily into their art, but she had never felt a need to. In fact, many of the Seers did not lean so heavily into their arcane craft.

Magic had a price. The price varied wildly, but it was never cheap.

She shook his hand off her shoulder, desperately trying to hide her infirmity as a matter of purest pride. "Fine," she said curtly, though the truth was quite clearly the opposite. "Can ride on own," she added. I do not need to be molly-coddled like some wet-behind-the-ears stripling with her first spear in hand. Still, rest sounded awfully wonderful just then. The dull ache behind her eyes had mellowed out some, but she still felt as though some fundamental part of herself was...off. Missing, or simply out of tune.

She wanted to speak to some of her peers. The disembodied, voiceless voice of whatever entity she had come into contact with was not a thing she had encountered before, and she was half afraid that it was a demon she had contracted with and not one of the Seven.

Gritting her teeth and faking a smile, she forced herself to her feet. She only just managed to not totter about for that brief moment. "Lead way," she said. It was the only concession to the bitter exhaustion that weighed on her shoulders. She was far too proud to accept help, far too proud to admit her own failings and weakness.

 

[Brandr]

Brandr was most certainly not the mollycoddling type. He was simply realistic, and he gave her an uncertain look when she assured him of her ability to ride on her own. "Alright. If you insist." he shrugged and held his hand up as he stepped back.

The darkness was still thick, and he had to navigate a few dead men on the way back to their mounts. He kept his arm pinned tightly at his side, and so saddling and mounting his horse was a little more challenging than he cared to admit. He grunted and growled until he was finally in his saddle and ready to move.

They'd have to ride easy, and so he hoped that a safe place in which they could rest presented itself quickly, and until then he'd ride close to Aey in the expectation that she was putting pride over practicality and risking falling from her horse.

 

[Aeyliea]

The gift the spectral creature had granted her allowed her to easily see in the darkness, and she happily had little trouble finding a way forward. It did little to dispel to exhaustion she had earned for her healing of the man or the other feats of magic she had displayed; before, it had never cost so dearly to perform the acts.

Perhaps it was something to do with the shadowy beast.

"Shelter not...far," she managed, and made a (very careful) gesture with both hands, indicating a passage of time equal to that of what the sun might have made in the sky. In the darkness, it was lost to Brandr but not to her. Half an hour, an hour at the most, riding at this pace. She took the lead, but only a little - another seated in their saddle near to hand in case she actually did fall off the horse, an amusing mirror of the words circling in the Dreadlord's head.

The Sea was relatively flat here, but for the single shelf of stone that they had left. The shallow dips in the land were like giant ripples on the bottom of a pond, but they seldom dipped more than a dozen feet before rising again. The grass here was tall enough to brush the withers of their beasts, but she had eyes only for their destination.

And, in due time, they arrived there. The grass became little more than a fuzz on the ground, as though eaten to the dirt or else failing to grow. It was an odd place, out here in the Sea, and sacred. A pit in the center of the roughly circular area held surprisingly clear and clean water that burbled up from below the ground, running in a thin rivulet until the grass swallowed it. Feathers and colored stones, the bones of beasts, skulls, horns, and a profusion of offerings littered the ground round the spring.

Aeyliea did not approach any closer than a dozen paces. "Here, safe. Protection of the Seven shall have," she observed. Inside, she felt...strange, here. Unwelcome. It was an odd sensation.

 

[Brandr]

Brandr's jaw tightened as his gaze warily shifted over the ritualistic wards and skimmed over their surroundings to ensure that they were here alone. He hated this 'voodoo shite', as he put it, and as cynical as he was over its power, it still made him feel unease.

He glanced upward as Aey mentioned this 'Seven' whom she claimed would be protecting them for the night. "Uh-huh. That's nice o' them." he muttered, and swung himself down from his horse, taking the reins as the beast nickered uneasily. The dreadlord hushed the steed quietly with a gentle pat at its nose before leading it toward the little pool of crystal water. He shot Aey an uncertain look, assuming it was no doubt 'sacred' in her eyes, but the horses had to rest and replenish just as they did.

"Are you close to home?" he asked her, given that she knew of this place and it seemed quite.. suited to her.

 

[Aeyliea]

"No home," she said in response. The sense of not being welcome seemed to increase by the moment, but it had not become anything malevolent. Yet, anyway. "Sea of Grass home," she explained carefully. "Move much, follow kaizua. Sometimes follow Betrayers, kill them." Followed. There was some bitterness there. She had been captured and in that capture, a chain of events had come to pass that changed everything.

Beyond that one creature coiled round her soul, the Seven had not only turned their back on her, but rejected her out of hand.

"No home, not now. Raid failed, taken by <<traitor>> Aniri. In prison, but escape. In escape...," she struggled to find the words to express the concept. Excommunication. Outcast. And aside from failing to kill all of the betrayers in her raid, she could not figure out the why of it. Why the land rose against her when she tried to turn west. Why this place - sacred among her people - rejected her, and pushed her away.

...the truth... ... ... ... my child ...

She cocked her head to one side, and almost wished she hadn't. She only just caught herself from falling over. The voice in her head had seemed very real, but she dared not speak up about it. Demons were real, and so were ill-meaning spirits.

"Aeyliea is of the Blood, but not the People," she said at last. Scales gleaming on her flesh marked the genetic history that tied her to the tribes, but culturally she was cast adrift.

 

[Brandr]

Brandr pushed back his hood, ruffling his hands through his messy, greying hair as he listened to Aeyliea and let his cloudy gaze shift uncertainly around. He looked back at her with a frown as he realised what she had been trying to tell him.

"Oh." he answered and dropped his hand to the back of his neck, rubbing at the tension that'd built there. "Sounds like we have more in common than I realised.." the man snorted to himself, but there was a glint of something apologetic in his eyes as he offered her a tired smile. He knew what it was to be an outcast, and to be hunted. He knew what it was like to have no people.

"Do you have family?" he asked her as he unsaddled his horse and set about finding a comfortable enough place to rest.

 

[Aeyliea]

"Had," she said. If her voice was bitter, it was with cause. "Mother. Brother. Now, none will speak."

Her parents had been of low status among the People. She, however, had been endowed a soul of great worth. She had not spoken with her parents much since the day of her naming, when the Seer's had peered into her soul and discerned its origin. Its name.

Such powerful things, names. The No'rei saw names as the important things they were.

She slipped off the back of the beast and landed maladroitly. She had never particularly cared for beasts like horses, useful though they were. Regardless, she was versed in the tending of them and set about to do so. "Common we have? How?" She dropped the saddle unceremoniously on the dusty ground, taking care not to disturb any totem or fetish left on the earth. "Man of city, not of Sea. You good warrior, but not of the people," she said haltingly.

 

[Brandr]

He glanced over at her as she so bitterly mentioned her estranged family, his brow furrowing. He said nothing though and went on with the task of settling down. There was enough to keep them warm without the need of a fire tonight, at least that was what he told himself at the thought of sparing the energy it would take to build one. He had little left, and the urge to sleep was great.

"I said we had things in common, not that we are the same." he grunted at her as he sat down with his back against rock. His hand dragged over his face with a huff. They were just as alone as the other, both with families they'd been removed from one way or another, both unable to return home and both hunted.

"My family gave me to Vel'Anir when I was six. I believe they were paid well enough." he laughed mirthlessly. How different his life would have been had his family tried to keep him. He never knew whether they were terrified of him, or just desperate for coin. Perhaps a little of both.. "I was a Dreadlord for the Anirian guard, but they lost control of me and i've been in hiding since." he told her vaguely and winced as he lay down.

 

[Aeyliea]

She squatted in front of the saddle, and stared at him with piercing blue eyes. She rubbed at the scarred arm a moment, more an affectation than for any pain that might be there. The dull ache was behind her eyes, not her body.

She scowled at the admission of being a Dreadlord. She was familiar with them, as would any of her people have been. Ruthless and merciless as they were, there was...a certain degree of respect to be given to a foe as dedicated and unrelenting as they. There was a certain degree of honor to them, even though they were still outland scum.

"Hiding not good," she said. Piercing eyes. It seemed she could see inside his soul, peer through his flesh and see what lie beyond it. Perhaps there was something to being a Seer, after all. "Gain nothing, only shame. Enemy only know strength, so strength only show. Seekers come, you kill or they leave." She shrugged. There were so many differences in the culture of the people of the Grass and those outside it, but the most glaring was the violence even among their own kind.

Honor meant much, and dishonor meant a quick death. The wrong word, a poorly aimed gesture or shift of the eyes - these things could bring death. Often in ritual combat with the two honor-bound individuals, but sometimes it could be swift as lightning, without warning or (to an outsider) reason.

She would not hide from her own kind, seemingly outcast as she was. She would not hide from the men that hunted her, either, nor anyone else. She was quite serious in her convictions. And so, the mountain of bodies in her wake proved.

She still stared at him, still looking at him as though trying to weigh some unfathomable thing within his soul. Finally, she shook her head. "Pieces of kin there are," she whispered to herself, and shook her head again. "Not understand," she said in a louder, stronger voice. "Family no want, only the wanting of coin. Not family." There was just the barest sliver of sympathy in her tone, but you would have to search to find it. The woman was a hard woman, well-adjusted to the hard world she was raised in.

She remained on her haunches, breath misting before her as the temperature drifted downward.

 

[Brandr]

A muscle feathered in the man's stubbled jaw as she spoke of the shame he should feel. "I was doing alright on my own until you came along." he answered bitterly. "You expect me to stand up to the Anirian army, do you? I might as well kneel in the dirt and ask that they make it a swift death. What is the shame in wanting to live in peace?" he growled quietly. He'd even questioned whether he'd wanted that at all, many times in fact, but he didn't have it in him to end his own life, and perhaps it was fear that kept him from handing himself in. He supposed in a way, it was, but not fear for himself..

The thoughts irritated him, and he looked away from her as she stared at him. Even then he could feel her piercing eyes trying to dig their way into his soul. He assumed to understand what she was trying to say about his parents, and he dipped his chin once in silent agreement.

"I have a son. Somewhere. One I'll not likely see again." he frowned. He wasn't sure why he said it, perhaps to justify his reasons for being alive and evading the state. Perhaps he believed that one day the boy would find him, but that was ridiculous.

"I stay close to Vel'Anir in case.." he huffed and rubbed at his face. When had he last mentioned the child? There wasn't a day that passed that he didn't think about watching the swaddled child being hurried away in the night, but he wasn't sure he'd ever spoken of him until now. That thought irritated him too.

"If the child is like me, they would drag him back to train him. I stay close and stay hidden because they travelled through that town." he frowned.

And now, he couldn't go back.

 

[Aeyliea]

The sentiment he spoke of was a concept so alien to her - and to all her kindred - that there existed no word for it. Peace - an end to hostility, to coexistence without constant bloodshed - was not even a thing that was sought after. The war had raged for thousands of years - perhaps even tens of thousands of years - without cease. Since the Betrayal of the Mother, the People had fought the world outside. Fought each other, too, but mostly those who did not belong.

"Death better than dishonor," she said in reply and shook her head. "Die, return to the Sea above. Later, come back and do again." She stood slowly, stiffly, her eyes seeming to glow with an inner light, never mind that starlight was the only thing to shine in them. "So it was, is, will be. Time without end," she added.

She shed what weapons and accoutrements remained with her until she was down to leather pants and shirt and undershirt. The cold of the night pressed in, vicious and unrelenting. And she considered his words, such as the meaning of them could be divined.

"No say in learning?" She asked, settling back down on crossed legs. "Train in what? Dreadlord?" She shook her head, a touch of bitterness in her voice when next she spoke. "Same. Making of Seer told by stars. Name. All life, only wish to fight."

She looked to the heavens, a scowl on her face. "Only fighting. Since time of Seven, only fight. Fight you, self....everyone. And only wish to. This?" She pointed to her hair, to the charms and bits of bone and feather woven into it. "Not want. Is same for you?" She spat to one side. "Aeyliea is legend. Ancient name, not seen in thousand years. Only...now, is me." She sounded more than a little angry about it.

"No choice in the Sea. Sea chooses for all." She shrugged, but the bitter tone still underlie it all. "Same for you, for son. Only choose to fight against, or accept. No other trail to follow..."

 

[Brandr]

Brandr let out a sharp huff of irritation, his hand dragging down his drowsy face as she thrust her opinions and beliefs onto him. "I have no desire to die." he growled crisply. "Death is just.. nothing. There is no coming back, not for me. There is no honour. Just endless nothing."

"We had no choice. We either became the weapons that they wanted us to become or we died because we weren't strong enough to do so. I took my son away from that and they sought to punish me as a deserter. Fuck them. Fuck Vel Anir, fuck the Seven, fuck life and death and the grass fucking sea.." he grunted and wrestled himself into a position he deemed comfortable enough to sleep.

"Get some sleep." he muttered.

 

[Aeyliea]

She sniffed at his tone, but said nothing further on the subject. He could believe what he would, but the reality was as she said. Was she not living proof? Was not the ancient visions from lives gone by not inexplicable without the endless Sea overhead?

Her breath misted in front of her as she stared at the silent man, and shook her head. The click of bone, stone, and the other odd bits in her hair was surprisingly loud in the heavy silence of the clearing. She felt a ghostly echo of the nihilistic tendencies of Brandr in her own soul, and did not like the similarity. Ghostly echo, but by no means anything like what the scarred man himself felt.

She huffed to herself, and discarded equipment that she would rather not sleep on - little, as it turned out, beyond knife and simple tools carried about her person. Without asking and without caring a whit about his approval or not, she lie down - right beside him, where they could share the warmth of their bodies if nothing else. The stars stared down at from the dizzying heights of the heavens, cold and unblinking.

She tried to ignore the feeling that she was being judged by all those millions of souls waiting in the wings.

---

Stars stretching from horizon to horizon, but now the ground answered those cold lights with a million of its own twinkling points of light. The black sands stretched in every direction and as far as could be seen. Here, though the chill was terrible - far worse than the northern wastes of Arethil - her breath did not raise a fog.

Far and away in the distance, a single tower stood. So distant, it was difficult to tell what it was made from, but the spire stabbed into the black heavens like the tip of a spear. The only thing that made it visible was a shade lighter thank black and the absence of stars where it stood. There were billions of those, gleaming cold and bright overhead.

"Eish takari ilim ap draka, little one," a voice said in the darkness, and Aeyliea found herself looking upon an ancient and scarred hide. The foreleg of a reptilian beast that had to stand ten times taller than she did; a dark mist concealed everything but that be-clawed limb. "Welcome to the napshire draka-an, the Seat of Solitude," the deep voice said. There was no way to tell if it was male or female, only that it was, and that it was loud.

The mist parted before the shadowy silhouette of the plaints warrior. The beast before her was draconic in nature, although of a kind she had not seen before. Long in the body, graceful, it stood as tall as she had thought, but maybe thirty men lying down would not come close to stretching from tail to...

...the mist made the head of the beast formless. Only two piercing eyes, glowing a vivid red, were clear in the mist.

There, on the breast of the beast, several great scales were missing. The flesh beneath was torn and raw, oozing dark blood that glittered faintly with some unknowable power. She found that she could not look away from that wound. It was a mortal one.

"Yes. The wound of mine undoing. Such a black deed, done by....well, it is too soon to speak of it. You must learn slowly, else the shock may break your mind. One step at a time, however long it must take."

She opened her mouth to speak, but no words came out. Only the impression of words, their idea, drifting in her head...and yet, that was enough for the dragon before her to catch, decipher, and then answer. The eyes glowed a bit brighter at the question, and a gravelly laughter rumbled through the great beast. Looking at it, it was easy to tell that the body was dead, yet strangely only lightly touched by rot. That head, lifted above her so that she had to crane her neck, was the only thing to move on the beast.

"In time. The world you know is but an illusion, but I would you pierce it with the insight gained from mine own hand, as it were. I have waited long for your return..."

The world shifted, and then suddenly the Seer was falling through the Sea herself, streaking past points of light so quick it made her want to scream.

And so she did.

 

[Brandr]

His mind wandered through thoughts better left buried in his past, and so it was long before he was finally able to drift off to sleep, to the sound of haunting whispers. Whether they had slipped in some locked chasm of his mind or whether they belonged to this place, he wasn't sure, but they were loud enough to drown out everything else.

What few hours he slept for were dark, and dreamless, and deep. It was the sort of sleep born of healing and exhaustion and mental fatigue, a perfect tonic. The cold might have bothered him if not for the woman who lay so close, and some time in the night he had apparently sought warmth and so had managed to drape an arm over her. It was being so close that made the scream so piercing...

Brandr sat bolt upright, his heart striking a staccato in his chest and a blade in his hand and raised as reached to grab and pin her. His mind had had no time to catch up, not to realise where he was or who he was with, only to register that his ear currently rang from the sound of a scream that still danced across the planes and among the reeds.

Shadows had formed without instruction, coiling a protective barrier around him until he was all but entirely concealed from view. His face, now pale with shock, was still clear however, his gaze darting around in search of an explanation, before it fell on her with a look of mute demand as he panted hard and heavy.

"What?! Aey - What?" he asked her, glancing up and searching once more for any signs of movement. He could see nothing, but he remained on one knee, his blade ready to fell whatever in fuck's name had caused her to scream like that.

 

[Aeyliea]

Bolt upright, eyes as wide as they would go and her mouth still hanging open. She had never felt her heart thundering in its cage of bone quite as it did right then - she could feel it pounding behind her eyes. The bronze of her skin seemed paler than before, and sweat beaded her brown and soaked her clothing through.

Her skin crawled. <<"It's in me, it's in my head, the djinn is in my head! Cursed! Cursed by the Seven, for I know not why,">> she panted franticly in her native tongue, careless of Brandr next to her. She clutched her head as though it pained her, and in a way it did. She could feel the thing in her head more clearly now, whereas before it had been a vague sensation. Amusement roiled off of it in waves that were almost sickening.

It took a moment or two before she could speak in any measured sense. And when she did finally regain some of her wits, she had to stop herself from speaking the truth of it. She did not know how this man would react to finding out the woman that had lain next to him over the night and ridden with him and fought alongside him was possessed by a demon.

Trying to gain control and obvious in the effort, she shook her head. "Bad dream," she said in a whisper. "Very....bad. Not good, is..." She shook her head again, trying to dispel the lingering memory. It was the fact that she could remember it that told her it had been no dream at all.

She got to her feet suddenly and a little too quickly. She might be able to convince herself that it was a dream. A product of this place, so close to the sacred when she felt herself to be impure and shunned for reasons she knew not. In the way of lying to one self, her psyche grasped the lies and pulled them in close as truths. It was, after all, a holy place among her kind. She did not belong, and-

-amusement in the back of her head.

 

[Brandr]

By the way that she rambled on in her own tongue and clutched her head in panic, it was clear that the threat was not out there, and that there was no need for the blade he clutched nor the shadows that had formed a solid shell around him. They dissipated like smoke on the breeze and he set the blade down, his muscles shuddering as the tension that'd coiled them eased enough for him to breathe an easy breath.

Relief was quickly replaced by anger as the reality of the situation sunk in and the panic she had caused in him. Concern bled away to indignation and irritability and he let out a sharp huff "A fucking dream?" He growled the words, his voice gritty from sleep. He resisted the urge to shove or shake her, it wouldn't do much good, and they'd caused enough of a disturbance here as it was.

Brandr watched her get to her feet and dragged a hand down his face before casting his eyes to the east to see the softening sky. First light was still an hour or so away, and he had expected to sleep until at least then. He muttered to himself as he tucked his blade back into its sheath. There was no breeze, no sound at all other than the words they spoke and the breaths they and their horses took. It was eerie, and in reality, Brandr had little issue with leaving a little earlier than planned.

"Lets get on the road.. We can find something to eat along the way." he muttered, too proud to inquire about her wellbeing. It was a dream, she'd said, and dreams couldn't hurt the dreamer - but it didn't stop him from being curious. What could possibly have been so terrible that it could rattle one such as her?

 

[Aeyliea]

In my head...

The words rolled round her head again and again, a litany that inflamed the low fire of fear with every repetition. She mastered that fear with some difficulty, and presented to Brandr an unruffled mien that was literally only skin deep. "Yes," she said in response to his statement, even though eating was the furthest thing from her concerns at that moment. Being away from this sacred place was more immediate a concern. It would not do for them to run in to any of her kin.

And, just maybe, the wyrm in her head was but a product of that place. She knew it was not, but that hardly mattered to the mind. Djinn were things feared among her people, and those possessed by them dangerous and corrupting influences. The images of her being burned alive to cleanse her spirit were all to vivid, made more so by the idea of gratitude she would feel toward the act.

Until the first tongues of flame licked her flesh, of course.

She mounted the horse she had been gifted swiftly and surely, eager to be away from this place. The stray morning breeze, pleasant and light, fluttered feathered idols and fetishs all around her. Despite the wind, this place was unnaturally quiet.

And, unknown to either of them, being watched. Watched as the animals were booted to a trot, the savage lost in her own brooding silence as they left.

 

[Brandr]

Glances were spared now and then over the woman who rode silently beside him, but it took him some time to properly wake. His arm ached, and he was a grumpy bastard in the mornings as it was without being half-starved and frightened half to death, so silence it was.

The morning was warm and dry, but the gathering clouds overhead grew darker in the distance, promising rain and lots of it. Brandr had spent years of his life on the road, whether it be on missions or moving from place to place to keep out of Vel'Anir's grasp, but the groan he gave was that of a man too tired for this way of life and yearning for a home cooked meal and a soft bed. Instead he was back to searching out his next shelter and meal and drink of fresh water. Well, at least water wasn't going to be a problem..

After some time, as though to confirm his prediction, thunder cracked somewhere ahead and rolled through the skies in first warning. Now they had less time than he'd hoped to find shelter, in this terrain the ground would grow muddy quickly, and the last thing he wanted was for the horses to break a leg.

"I'm going to assume we're still miles off from the next town.." he grumbled, his gaze drifting over the hills and valleys in the distance. His chin jerked toward some rocky ridges. "Might be able to weather the storm out over that way." he suggested gruffly, and at that a small covey of pheasants leapt free of the tall grass and into the air. Brandr's hand shot out to his side, gathering a few strands of shadow from the ground and gave a sharp twist of his wrist, sending them flying like long needles toward the prey.

Two fell in a flurry of feathers, and Brandr found his mood improve almost instantly..

 

[Aeyliea]

Lost in the world of her own mind. Unlike him, she was completely alert and had been nearly since opening her eyes. It did not have anything to do with the terrible fright that had snapped her out of sleep, either, though it hadn't hurt her case. Brandr's world was one of relative peace, where you could sleep and wake without fear of being killed in the time between. It was survival instinct to be able to be ready and awake as soon as the eyes opened.

She cast a sidelong look at her unwelcome companion - a sentiment she was certain was mutual - and shook her head. "Far," she said gruffly. She mad a gesture with her hands, indication the movement of the sun in the sky that would take, perhaps, nine or ten hours to traverse. "Way we go, no more Sundered village for moon, more." No'rei territory. The only traitors that crossed these ground were the caravans. The only settlements that popped up were military in nature and doomed to be slaughtered sooner or late.

The roll of thunder was enough to make her look up. It was the dry time of year, but that did not mean that sudden storms couldn't pop up. Those storms could be dangerous in their own way, every bit as dangerous as running into a hunting party of her kin, or their pursuers. She only worried that they would not have shelter should Kosin choose to bring her gift to the summer heat.

She eyed the low ridges, veritable mountains in comparison to the low rolling hills of the plains and likely some relic of a past cataclysm. At their base, trees gathered close - likely the result of water or otherwise. She nodded curtly at the suggestion, and heeled her beast in that direction. High overhead and a little to the north of their destination, coiling clouds thrust into the heavens, an angry anvil of pitch black at the base and angelic white at the crest and where it spread out across the heavens. "Danger," she said, and as if the heavens were agreeing with her, a bolt of brilliant blue-white lanced from cloud to ground some many miles distant, flickering several times in the same path. The roll of thunder came many seconds later.

 

[Brandr]

He was beginning to understand some of her methods of communication. She spoke not in hours or days when explaining distance, but in the movement of the sun, or moon, and he nodded his understanding as she spoke. Not that he seemed happy about it, he wasn't. He wasn't fucking happy about any of this - except maybe the two pheasants he currently stuffed into his satchel as they rode on once more.

"No shit.." he murmured as he watched the angry bolts in the distance. There was still no rain, but the look of the skies were enough to make even him uncomfortable, and the light was dying fast.

"We should move faster." he said and clicked his tongue as his heels coaxed at his mount's sides. The horse started at a canter, and Brandr urged a little faster still.

 

[Aeyliea]

She could feel the building rage of the heavens. It tickled the back of her mind like an itch she could not scratch. The sensation was an unwelcome thing, but not as unwelcome as the unwanted passenger in her head. That still filled her with a certain degree of fear that she kept tightly under control.

She grunted in agreement and heeled the beast under her into a canter as well, gritting her teeth at the pain each jolting step sent up through her crippled arm. The turning weather was not helping any with that, either. Both things served to sour her mood even further, such that the pair of them made quite fine company to one another.

These were trackless wilds, and before long she pushed her way ahead to blaze a trail. A trail, as it turned out, that had been blazed before. The faint sign was there, although it was clearly infrequently used. The overgrown path led straight as an arrow to what proved to be a low shoulder of stone rising from the otherwise flat grassland. Before long, the remnants of stone walls, tumbled down and abandoned, began to line the grass-filled path. She slowed her horse as the thunder cracked loudly behind them, the thunderhead spreading for miles and miles into the stratosphere now and its base an ugly grey-green and black that promised violence.

A few moments later, the scattered remnants of a settlement became more obvious. Hard against the shoulder of stone, a thing rising no more than a couple hundred feet above the surrounding land, was a town. Had been a town, once; the buildings had been razed and forgotten. All that was left was stone foundations and sun-bleached boards. More importantly, in the side of the exposed rock some four or five hundred yards further on, the portal of a mine - unexpected here, to say the least - yawned.

Completely disinterested in the ruins of civilization around her, she keyed in on the portal as darkness deepened and the first cold, fat drops of rain thumped into the dusty soil. She pointed wordlessly at the opening - shelter, at least - and kicked her beast to a trot. She could not help but notice signs of occupation here, now, though; though the ghost town was empty, it had not been for long.

A thing to worry about after the storm had passed. A light breeze stirred the still air, the opening act of the gale to come.