Private Tales The Failure of Nobility

[Edric]

Edric watched the whole display with a morbid interest.

It wasn't like anything he'd ever seen before. Not quite college magic, not quite natural sorcery. It was an oddity, and he found himself carefully watching every little move that Kristen made. Briefly he wondered if there was a way to learn this magic, or if it was something inherent to the girl herself.

He supposed it was the latter.

That was a fact of most Dreadlords. They were taught college magic, the arts of Elbion and the like. Yet always their focus was upon the abilities that lay within themselves. That was what the Academy had always been for, training you to be the best you could be at your own abilities.

Edric knew that better than most did. Before the Revolution The Proctors had made sure that he was well trained in his magics. Hours, days, perhaps months spent within that basement.

Dying.

Living.

Stealing.

The fire sprang into life, caught on the brambles. It almost seemed to snap Edric out of his odd little trance, his gaze falling on the flames as Kristen beamed with pride. "Good job."

He told her, his voice injected with a little bit of mirth. "Least we won't freeze to death."

As small a consolation that seemed.

 

[Kristen Pirian]

"Yeah," Kristen said, agreeing with the sentiment. She sat down beside the fledgling flame, hovering her palms close to it, rubbing them together. The orange glow reflected in her eyes as she stared into the fire.

"If we're fated to perish, I would rather it be at the Heart of Aktash. To die trying."

A somewhat morbid thought. But such thoughts, she found, came quite easily in a situation as dire as theirs, and yet, strangely, somehow did not detract from her overall optimism that they would make it out of here alive.

She shook her head then. As if rejecting the notion she'd only just spoken.

"I want to see his face. Her face. Their faces."

The fire danced along the grays of her eyes.

"They won't be surprised if you come back through the Academy gates. They won't be enraged if you come back. They won't be sc--"

She cut herself off. Just stared. Enraptured by her own fantasies.

Edric

 

[Edric]

Edric watched Kristen as she spoke, lips thinning slightly. He found himself feeling a sliver of pity, that same emotion that had ripped through him for Chas just a few weeks ago.

He wondered if Kristen knew she was weak.

It was a cruel, perhaps even mean thought. She was shy, slower than the others, but maybe not weak. Without her he would not have been able to kill that scorpion. Without her the fire might have taken an hour to start instead of minutes.

Maybe he'd misjudged her. "You'll see it."

Edric said simply.

"You'll get back." He had made a similar promise weeks ago to Noel. It still rung true in his head. It wasn't the same, not quite. He'd grown up with Noel. He'd been with her side by side for more than a decade.

It wasn't the same with Kristen, but...he wanted her to succeed. He wanted her to see the Proctors watch them walk through those gates. A victory over those who'd betrayed both of them. "I'll make sure of it."

 

[Kristen Pirian]

I'll make sure of it.

"No. You won't."

Her voice distant.

"I will."

Almost serene.

Edric

 

[Edric]

Edric couldn't help the smile that grew on his lips. He wasn't sure why. He wasn't even sure of anything anymore, but he couldn't help but nod. "Alright."

What else was their to say.

The determination. The stark and serene calm that came over Kristen. It was like nothing he'd ever seen before. Noel was confident. Eleanor was skilled. This? This was something else. He couldn't have described it if he tried.

There was nothing else to say.

So Edric simply leaned back against the cold stone, wrapped his arms around himself and pulled the shawl tight around his body.

"To getting home then." The Initiate said, offering a drinkless toast as he closed his eyes.

 

[Kristen Pirian]

"To getting home."

The words were perfunctory. Absentminded, as Kristen was largely preoccupied. Despite the subtle desire, she wouldn't do what she normally did in the lateness of hour when said urge came. No. Not aloud, in company--terribly shy and bashful was she about it. She'd keep it in mind and hope to fall into it in dream. Those were lucky nights.

So Kristen slowly descended down to her side beside the crackling fire. Funny, how she lamented the heat by day and craved it by night.

Her stomach only kept her up for half an hour. The raw discomfort of the rocky cavern floor a half hour longer. And then sleep finally found her. Her night was not lucky, but it was not unpleasant either.

Edric

 

[Edric]

Edric let his eyes stay shut.

Sleep did not come as quickly as he would have hoped, nor was it was peaceful as he wanted. Dreams haunted him. Pictures of the Proctors back home. Tales of what might happen. Stories of what had brought him to the desert.

His own mind tortured him, poked, prodded, stabbed.

It was lucky that nothing appeared in the night. Lucky that no monsters appeared from the darkness to consume the two Initiates. Perhaps the desert saw what haunted them. Perhaps nature itself granted a reprieve.

For the soul could only take so much.

Edric's eyes snapped open. The smouldering flame sitting between himself and Kristen. A wisp of smoke still rose from the embers, his head turning left, then right. A sharp breath flew into his lungs, and he drew himself into consciousness.

"Kristen." His voice echoed within the cavern. "Wake up."

It was yet before dawn. The best time to move. When the sun was not yet high, and the heat wouldn't kill them.

 

[Kristen Pirian]

Kristen groaned, the noise a tiny rumble in her throat. One eye opened, and then two. Soreness from sleeping on the hard stone pervaded all parts of her body, yet in joining the league of her other miseries it was unremarkable on its own. Her prone body rolled upward into a seated position. And she brushed stray strands of hair from her face and smoothly transitioned that same hand to rub her eye, her cheek, her temple.

Half-closed eyes glanced out of the cavern's entrance. Midnight black was turning blue. The dawn was coming, and the air was still cool. Cold, rather, beyond the sphere of the campfire's meager warmth. The sun had yet to scorch the land.

She didn't feel hungry. And that was...concerning.

"What does the compass show?" she asked.

Edric

 

[Edric]

Edric glanced at Kristen for a moment, then looked down at his palm as he unfolded it. "Same direction as yesterday."

He commented with a complete lack of surprise.

Briefly he wondered how long the spell would actually last. There would be a time limit, surely enough, but he had absolutely no desire to find out just when it would run out. That was why he had awoken Kristen now. They needed to get going.

"Come on." Edric said as he pulled himself off the ground. "The faster we get going, the faster we get there."

As he stood he offered a hand to Kristen. "Maybe we'll even make it today."

He hoped, because he wasn't sure how much longer they would last.

 

[Kristen Pirian]

Kristen looked to his hand. Seemed to consider it for a second.

Then accepted, and got up to her feet. Her legs had most certainly had felt better. Oh, but the same could be said of her body as a whole. Yet to be seated within the lap of luxury all her life, as it undoubtedly would have been if House Pirian had not bid her to the Academy, would never have prompted within her any manner of meaningful change. The noble little princess, simply attending to her familial duties, above the servants and commoners in station yet, paradoxically, helpless without them. Such a life still appealed to her, but, as with a fruit left to the unrelenting mercy of the sun, said appeal had begun to rot.

At least now she could make her own bed. And run a few miles. And use her magic to help kill a giant, monstrous scorpion.

And as of last night, possess a new wherewithal to do what she would have previously thought to be an insurmountable challenge. Proctor Magomo's oft said words came to mind. Building character.

"It is good," she said as she walked, boots finding hardpacked sand once again as they departed the cavern, "that the compass hasn't lost its function. Seems the notes I scrawled down were adequate."

She smiled a little. Pleased to have contributed. To be more than dead weight, as Noel had insinuated (truthfully, Kristen recognized) back in Vel Acan.

Edric

 

[Edric]

"Well, I'd probably dead without them." Edric offered with a shrug. A part of him wondered if this meant that he should start taking notes, or even paying attention in class, but that idea was quickly dismissed.

Better to focus his efforts at what he was actually good at.

"Come on." Edric said with a slight wave, kicking sand over the remnants of the small fire. "Lets get going before the day gets too hot."

Neither of them had any idea of how much further they had to go. The two initiates were quite literally wandering around blind in the desert, the only good thing was that they now had a string to follow. Had he been a different sort of man Edric might have assumed the two were bound for death.

Yet he'd never been the kind of man to doubt himself.

The two Initiates sent out from their cavern home, stepping once again into the desert and heading along the path the Compass set them upon.

Their journey took hours upon hours. Trudging through the sand, taking step by step. The sun eventually rose, cooking and roasting the desert below. It was well afternoon, when their skin had burned and the water had been scorched from their bodies that Edric finally saw something.

At first he thought it was another illusion, a mirage created by the Desert.

There was a cliffside that rose high into the air, near a mountain, and in it's middle split a massive narrow canyon. "K-kristen."

His voice was a rasp, the two had not spoken in hours, conserving what little energy and water they had.

"Do you see that?" He asked.

 

[Kristen Pirian]

Through the desert they trekked. The sea of dunes upon whose waves Kristen and Edric had trudged for the past several days was giving way to other land features. Exposed rock greeted their boots in brief stretches--jarring, perhaps, the sudden transitions from the softness of the sand to the firmness of the stone. Skeletal weeds grew in isolated patches, clinging to the shade on offer from some of the outcroppings as if taking refuge. For the first time in these miserable days, they could see birds flying overhead.

And then Edric spotted something.

Kristen, having fallen into a pattern of staring at her feet and willing each forward step to press on, looked up when he spoke her name. She tried to wet her lips, found that she couldn't, and her dry rasp was much the same as Edric's own.

"See what?"

Spoke too soon, for right as she said it she followed the track of his gaze and squinted and saw the gargantuan canyon which lay ahead.

"Is it there? Tucked away?"

Normally an endless font of conversation, especially when nervous, Kristen could only manage what few words she had spoken. To her chagrin, she recognized that Edric might prefer it this way.

Edric

 

[Edric]

Edric glanced at the great pillar of stone that seemed to be tucked into the middle of the desert. He frowned for a moment when Kristen didn't confirm that it was there. Then, finally, she apparently saw the same. A brief sigh of relief washed over him.

He hadn't imagined it.

"I think so." It hurt to speak at this point. His voice seemed to strain, his lips were cracked, and he felt as though he'd been punched in the chest over and over again. Everything was aching, screaming out for water.

A part of him wondered how Kristen was even standing.

"The compass is pointing towards it." He said with a glance down at his palm. "Lets go."

Without waiting for confirmation Edric began to walk. And Walk. And Walk.

Until finally, mercifully, they reached the canyon. It lead down into the shadows, closed off and covered like a mountain, but Edric didn't care. He stepped into the canyon, upon a path that looked as worn as any he had ever seen. "This is it."

The initiate said quietly, confidently.

It had to be. He could see the steps carved down into the canyon below.

 

[Kristen Pirian]

Kristen staggered along after Edric. She couldn't believe the amount of stamina that he possessed! It was fiendish. What she knew of his magic, she knew from the few pathetically short bouts in the sparring arena, feeling the sapping effects firsthand. He stole life. This, apparently, was very much enough to substitute for actual food and water.

If only her prayers to Aionus could provide such a substitute for sustenance. The thought had more of rueful edge than she anticipated. Yet today she felt exponentially worse off than yesterday, leading perhaps to this defiant cynicism.

By the time they reached the tower cliff face, Kristen almost collapsed. She threw her arms out and steadied herself against a jutting protrusion of rock. Her elbows flexed and she leaned forward until her shoulder touched the sunbaked stone. Her head hung low.

"If you stop...if you sit...you're not getting back up," she said to herself. And no truer words had she ever spoken, a grim certainty confirming this.

Torture. But she pushed away from the rock wall. Glanced with beleaguered eyes over to Edric, a haggard face worn down with fatigue, starvation, and thirst.

"I only...have one spell...in me," she said. Maybe, maybe she could cast more. But she didn't want to promise anything that she knew she could not deliver. So one spell--that was all that was certain.

Edric

 

[Edric]

Edric glanced back towards Kristen. "Well, hopefully you won't need it."

He commented, slowly pushing their way through the small canyon. Both sides of the rocky cliffs seemed to press in on them, getting tighter and tighter until eventually the gap was so small Edric could hardly fit through it.

Then, as though they'd stepped through a portal, the two Initiates walked into the Heart of Aktash.

The sight was an impressive one, even for someone as terminally cynical as Edric. Before them sat a lake, massive enough to that swimming to the other side of it would be a struggle. Trees, bushes, and even flowers surrounded the body of water, and in the middle of it all stood a stone pillar into which was carved a tower.

Edric blinked, look to Kristen, and then glanced down at the compass in his palm.

The needle spun wildly for a moment, and then the image faded.

"Guess we're here." He said with no small amount of wonder in his voice.

 

[Kristen Pirian]

Kristen shuffled after Edric, her gait lengthening with the promise of rest and respite just ahead. The narrow gap between the towering rock faces was a blessing, something upon which she could lean a good portion of her weight. Almost over. The spell had worked, of course it had worked, she was always diligent about taking her notes. They were here at the Heart of Aktash. Surely.

And for once in this dreary drag of desert days, her hope was borne out.

She smelled it before she saw it. The expansive pool of water, tucked away from the harsh glare of the sun, clear and shimmering blue. Life had sprung up all around the lake.

Such a joy was it all to see that Kristen fell to her knees. Overwhelmed. She could have cried, and she struggled to hold it in. No thought was given to whether or not their arrival was known, if they had exhausted their luck the previous night when no beast nor bandit came crawling out of the darkness of the cave's depths to assail them while they slept.

"It worked! By Aionus, it worked!"

Kristen briefly rose up to her feet, crouch-walked the rest of the way to the lake's edge, and dropped back down to her knees again. She didn't even bother with her own empty waterskin. She simply cupped her hands, lifted up some of the cool water in the basin made by her palms, and drank.

She wiped her wet palms all across her face. Gasping and laughing quietly, and in utter relief.

Edric

 

[Edric]

Edric didn't bother stopping at the edge of the lake.

The young Dreadlord stumbled forward practically in a daze. The Scorpions life had ebbed into him, carried him this far, but even he could only last for so long. His boots tramped through the beach, and then splashed into the water.

Without a single word to his companion Edric let himself sink into the lake, falling to his knees and simply dousing himself within the waters.

Eyes closed, and he took a long drought of the crystal clear reservoir.

It was like a surge of life that rushed over him. For the first time in what felt like hours his skin stopped burning, his insides stopped aching, everything seemed to become whole. His body shook, and then he pulled his face from the water.

A long breath pulled into his lungs, and he let out a laugh of joy. "Fuck thats nice."

Edric breathed, not noticing the figures on standing on the other side of the lake.

 

[Kristen Pirian]

The water reignited the pains of her deprived stomach, but such pains were vastly overmatched by the euphoric relief upon her tongue. Kristen couldn't say if it happened to be the waters specific to this hidden oasis, if they were indeed special or sacred in some way, but never before in her life had it tasted so good.

So elated was Kristen, she could have used obscene language in the manner Edric had and not felt one bit guilty about it. (Not until she was comfortably back in her room, laying in bed awake, chastising herself over it).

"Hey, Edric!"

Maybe he turned to look, maybe he didn't. With a sly smile, Kristen splashed some water at him regardless. She tossed her head back, arm over her forehead, giggling. The rush of emotion from being delivered from certain death produced many a strange result.

And Kristen, too, failed to notice movement across the massive span of the lake. They were visible, those figures. And then they weren't, obscured by the abundant vegetation.

Edric

 

[Edric]

Edric half turned, receiving a splash of water in the face.

For a moment he was stunned.

A year ago he would have grabbed Kristen, held her beneath the water and simply drowned her where they stood. It would have been easy, simple even, but that impulsive thought was no longer there. Not something he felt.

Instead he simply blinked. "Why...did you do that?"

Edric asked, his head tilting to the side. Not quite sure what Kristen was getting at in that moment. Did he smell? He was already submerged in the water. It was a bit much to splash him too...

 

[Kristen Pirian]

Kristen looked to Edric. Blinked in return, a matching befuddlement. Even so, her grin didn't diminish--how could it? The supreme relief, the peak of elation after trudging through a valley of exhaustion and creeping despair, was just too powerful to be overcome by something so slight.

"It's fun," she said, saying it as though it ought to be self-evident.

Kristen stood. Stepped into the lake's water up to her knees. And then she splashed some more water at him, this time not so well aimed, most of it missing Edric and foaming up around him as bubbles.

"Try it!"

Absolutely this had a childish nature about it, she recognized. But after being baked under the sun and dried like cuts of meat, Kristen didn't very much care for appearances. Even finding something to eat could wait. The water of the lake--drinking it, being soaked in it--was simply divine.

Edric

 

[Edric]

Edric hesitated.

A frown pulled at his lips for a brief moment as he watched her. Then a few seconds later Kristen splashed him again. The young Initiate recoiled somewhat from the water, his head ducking down for a brief moment as he stared back at her.

Small things. Tiny joys. Enjoyment. Still escaped him in a way.

He had never been taught such things at the Academy. The way he had learned to enjoy himself was on the battlefield. Beating ones opponent. Outwitting those matched against him. That was fun for him. This? This was utterly foreign. "I Uhh..."

Edric pressed his hand into water, and then sent a wave splashing towards Kristen's face.

 

[Kristen Pirian]

Kristen squealed with delight, half-turning to shield herself from the splashing water. One arm guarded her face, the other scooped another splash of water to launch at Edric. After a year of grueling tribulation, even one that couldn't compare to other years endured by her fellow Initiates, having a moment of an indulgent adolescent fun was an incredibly welcome respite from it all. From the Academy. From House Pirian. From expectations and responsibilities. From burdens and worry. From terror and stress.

The Heart of Aktash was an oasis that offered more than just water. Kristen reveled in the moment, carefree, without a thought to its eventual passing. Enjoy it while it's here.

Kristen bent over in an attempt to use both hands to fling a massive tide of water at Edric, but she lost her footing in the soft sediment of the shallow lake bed and slipped. She yelped in surprise and splashed face-first into the water, disappearing for a second before bursting back up from the surface. She whipped her head back, swept her wet hair from her face, and just laughed at her own folly.

Unbeknownst to her, the arrival of the Heart's residents would be soon.

Edric

 

[Edric]

Edric smiled. Actually smiled. It was a rare sight even for him, but reveling in the fact that they were still alive, the fact that they had made it through the desert...it was something to be celebrated. Something that they could cling to.

The journey ahead of them would be long, there was no doubting that, but...at least now they had their bearings. They knew where they were, they could take water from the lake, and everything could work out the way they ne-

In an instant Edric's smile slipped from his face.

His expression became outright dower as Kristen swept up from the water, and for the first time Edric saw who was approaching behind her.

A band of twenty men seemed to melt from the jungle trees around the lake, their clothes a drab brown which blended with the sand. Half of them held oddly waved bows, the other half swords which held sickle like curves. One of them stepped forward from the pack.

"Kristen." Edric's voice was deadly serious, grabbing the Nobles attention.

 

[Kristen Pirian]

Edric just being Edric again. Though the twisting in her stomach agreed with his tone, that they really ought to dispense with frivolity and attend to more important matters, all Kristen had wanted to do was celebrate. Just a tiny bit. But alas.

"What? It's just a little wa--"

He wasn't looking at her. Edric wasn't looking at her.

There existed a special kind of trepidation in life, wherein you knew something bad had caught up with you, it was imminent, and as it so happened, it was right behind you. And all you needed to do was turn around for it to fully become a reality. And you had to turn around. Because, even though you desperately did not want to, you knew deep down that you were caught. That there was no escape.

Guided by such trepidation, the invisible hand of inevitably bade Kristen to slowly turn her head and look over her shoulder.

Whereupon she saw them.

In the past, she had made grievous mistakes by opening her mouth when she ought to have kept quiet: mistaking Archon Gilram for a Proctor was one such example. This time, Kristen did manage to keep her nervousness from spilling open her mouth.

Apprehensively, she regarded the score of men, those warnings about the Heart of Aktash foremost in mind.

Edric

 

[Edric]

Edric tried to run through the handful of language in his head that he knew the people spoke here. They had been taught a dozen languages of course, all of them beaten into their skull enough to understand, not speak. Most of them had been a form of Elvish, or Cortosi.

The Academy had a focus on war, but it also educated and taught the more subtle sides of battle. Understanding your foe was almost as important as beating them. At least according to some of the Proctors. Such things weren't about the value of culture, but simply the ability to defeat ones opponent.

Edric cleared his throat, but before he could speak the man who stood apart from the pack beat him to it.

"You should not be here."​

A frown touched the Initiates face. "We were lost in, the desert."

Every lie had a kernel of truth.

"We happened upon this place...it saved us." That wasn't entirely true, but also not enough of a lie that anyone might notice. "We...we're sorry. We didn't know."

The man seemed to stare for a moment, and Edric noticed his grip tightening on his sword. For a moment he tried to run through his head how this fight would go, and the optimism quickly swept away. He might be able to survive, but only as a prisoner. Kristen?

He doubted it.

"Is this true?"​

The man said, turning towards Kristen.