Private Tales The Failure of Nobility

[Edric]

Edric glanced over towards Kristen. "Maybe you'd understand."

His voice was bitter, harsh.

"If you were actually a Dreadlord." Edric knew that the words were cutting, harsh, even cruel. Kristen had joined them a decade too late. She had been thrust into their ways far beyond her own means.

That wasn't a fault of her own. That wasn't a reason to hate her, and yet it was the only thing that Edric could prick at. What else was he going to do? Claim, she wasn't trying hard enough? Say that she was...she was a waste?

He already knew that wasn't true.

All that he could really say, all that he could cut at was the place she held amongst them. "Take the blanket."

Edric grunted as he pulled away from her.

"I don't need it." Truth was of course that he really didn't. Out of all the Initiates truth was that Edric needed truth and comfort the least. The magic in his soul sustained him, but in truth all he wanted to do in that moment was hurt Kristen.

Without another word he twisted, turning away from her to go sleep.

 

[Kristen Pirian]

Maybe you'd understand...if you were actually a Dreadlord.

Kristen didn't say anything for a moment. And then her gaze dropped down. Not in shame.

Contemplation.

"I know." Quiet and realistic, her response.

Edric said that she could have the blanket, and she was glad to have it. She pulled it close, held the bundle of it to herself as if she had been gifted a house pet.

"Tha--"

She stopped herself from saying it. And then she turned her attention down to the bundled blanket in her arms. At first her face slowly became one of a sorrowful parting. Then, with but a few minor changes, she seemed to regard the blanket as offensive, mocking thing.

Kristen set aside the blanket far away, and she lay down on the smooth stone without it, looking up through the top of the gorge at the sliver of night sky. The rock was intensely uncomfortable.

For hours she heard just the soft lapping of the oasis's waters against the tower island shore, and the occasional gust of wind.

She didn't know if she had slept or not.

Edric

 

[Edric]

Edric glanced down at Kristen as she lay down and turned away from the blanket.

He wondered if she believed it was some sign of strength. If rejecting the blanket somehow earned a little more slice of respect.

It strange how wrong she was.

The things that had earned his respect were not when Kristen leaned into what it meant to be Dreadlord. It had not been when she'd shown herself capable of enduring the same suffering as he or something of that note. No.

She had impressed him most when she'd shown herself. Those moments when Kristen had displayed what she was capable of. What her power was. Whether it be her magic or the simple strength of her personality.

Edric only shook his head, grabbing the blanket and leaning back to use it as a pillow.

He woke up a few hours later, having fallen asleep within seconds. Dawn had not yet struck, the cold air of night clinging to them. Edric's eyes snapped open. "Time to go."

The Initiate announced, quickly beginning to scoop up and shaking Kristen once to ensure she got up.

 

[Kristen Pirian]

Kristen's resolution come the morning: she had to keep moving forward.

All her life she had known comfort. She believed that her mother and father meant well, as did her sister Amelia. They had all wanted for her to stay in that sort of life, to never know the tribulations that Evangeline had survived. Times did change with the Republic, but still, according to Edric, to Noel, to Delaney, the Academy today may as well have handed out metaphorical blankets symbolizing all manner of comforts, such was the comparison to the Academy of old.

So Kristen had to do her best to resist the familiar temptations of her old life. At all costs, resist the temptation to quit and return to it in full. Resist it today, stranded in this godsforsaken desert, and resist it tomorrow. Resist it until the day she did become a Dreadlord.

If Evangeline was here in her place, if it was Zana, if it was Selene, would any of them quit? No. No, no matter how frightening the future seemed to be.

Time to go.

Kristen opened her eyes, yet it was not a rousing from sleep--she'd been awake prior. "I'm awake," she said after having been shaken. "I'm awake."

As she stood, the colossal ache in her entire body made itself known. Like the burning of her muscles she suffered after running laps around the perimeter of the Academy, it was good.

She glanced around, eyes searching in the pre-dawn dark. She didn't see them. None of the nomads. And a guileful suggestion came to mind.

Kristen came close and whispered into Edric's ear, "I think we should refill our waterskins before we leave."

What the nomads didn't see, didn't know, couldn't hurt them, right? And they needed the water.

Edric

 

[Edric]

Edric nodded his head. "Lets do it."

There wasn't a second of hesitation from him.

He didn't have any moral quandaries. He didn't have a second of wondering. He knew what it would take to survive out in that desert, knew what they would need. The water would save their lives down the road, and he didn't particularly care if it was sacred.

Without a second thought Edric stepped down to the beach head, filling the water-skins and glancing back at Kristen.

"This map has us traveling almost a hundred miles." He told her in a whisper. "After that we'll be in Cortos."

Edric didn't notice the figures hiding among the rocks. Those that intending on following them. "From there we can take a ship, or steal some horses."

He suggested as he finally finished filling the skins.

"Either way." The Initiate said with a shrug. Supposing it didn't matter until they actually got there.

 

[Kristen Pirian]

"A hundred miles," Kristen said, doing some quick math in her head. She, as well, kept her voice low like Edric. "If it were flat, easy land, and if we were well supplied, we could be there in a matter of three days. In this desert, deprived as we are," she sighed, "it may take us twice that."

She wasn't looking forward to such a trek. But stronger than her apprehension of the task was her motivation in seeing it completed. The core of what kept her going, what ensured that she would not quit, was that desire to see their faces. Whoever they were. Which Proctor or Proctors had set this all up.

She didn't want to be that nine-year-old girl again, helpless Kristen Pirian, the Darling Daughter, held captive on that Aionus-cursed island.

Kristen leaned down and accepted her waterskin once Edric was done filling them and had come back up. For the journey ahead it would be woefully insufficient, but she would have to get as much as she could out of it. Gosh, she didn't want to pester Edric for sips from his again--it would be highly embarrassing a second time round.

As they started across the bridge from the tower island and toward the narrow exit from the Heart, the followers went unnoticed. This was their home ground. They'd have an advance scout tracking the movements of the two Dreadlords, whilst the others prepared their camels and weapons.

They intended to ride the defilers down, and to see them lanced through.

Edric

 

[Edric]

It was an odd sensation, walking through the desert once more.

A sense of dread hung over him. Not that imminent thought of death, not that despair that had clung to him before the oasis. This was something different, something more sinister. It wasn't about the desert, it wasn't about what lay ahead on their journey.

It was about what they would find at the end of it.

There was no doubt in Edric's head that they had been set up to fail. That the Proctors who had sent him and Kristen out here had seen them as a problem that needed to be gotten rid of. He just wanted to know why, even though he feared the answer.

Briefly, as they walked, Edric glanced over to Kristen.

He wondered if she was thinking about the same thing. "Whats your family like?"

The Initiate asked abruptly. They had been taught things about the Great Houses of course, and there were rumors, but it was rare to get anything totally true. At least from what he knew. The games that the Houses played were complex, impossibly so, and Edric couldn't help if some lingering remnant was responsible for this.

 

[Kristen Pirian]

The low light of the breaking dawn couldn't hide the bewilderment in Kristen's face. That was something she would likely be asking him. Maybe not precisely that, an inquiry about his family, but something of the like to spark a conversation, such that the time might pass more quickly and their trek be made a touch more pleasant through entertainment. But he asked her first.

"Oh. My family," she said, trudging through the sand and putting together her thoughts.

"They love me dearly. My family is quite large, as you can imagine, once you add in all my uncles, my aunts, my cousins and so forth. But within my immediate family, Mother and Father have only ever wanted the best for me. My elder sister Amelia is a kind soul, though she departed Vel Anir some time ago. My brothers are all a rambunctious lot, perhaps taking after my cousin Percival a bit too much. I do miss them all so."

She wrestled with some splinter of a thought for a moment.

"I...I know that I am here at the Academy for reasons that are political in nature. But I do not for a moment believe that such a decision was made callously--solely for the sake of those political reasons. House Pirian is the house of the model citizen, and Mother and Father exemplify the virtues thereof. We champion the people of Vel Anir because we care. And I know that Mother and Father, because they cared for me, were pained by the decision that the House as a whole came to with regard to my admission."

Through the endless sand they walked.

Edric

 

[Edric]

Edric listened intently as Kristen prattled on.

It was just about the first time during their mission that he was rather grateful for the way she couldn't hold her tongue. He had asked about her family, and he got more than enough information. If what she was saying was true, then...well it was possible that any number of people would work against them.

Vel Anir was hardly a place of virtue and love of the people. That was something that the Academy had taught them early on. Even Anirian citizens were expendable, as long as the greater whole of them survive. Lives were plenty. "I see."

He said quietly.

Presumably then it was not House Pirian who had planned this. Some sort of internal plot from her own family. They seemed...nice. Loving.

No, it was an outside force. Maybe not a House but...someone displeased with Pirian's meddling in the Academy?

"Before the Revolution I was being...courted?" He glanced at her, not sure if that was the right word. "By House Sirl."

A frown touched Edric's face. He wasn't sure why he volunteered that information.

 

[Kristen Pirian]

Of all the Houses, there was only one that Mother explicitly forbade Kristen from talking or asking questions about. One that was rarely brought up in conversations during family dinners. One which, if Kristen did so happen to hear her elders speaking of them, perhaps from a corner she'd yet to round, it was always in hushed tones.

Some of that dread, inescapably, translated into Kristen's tone. "House Sirl?"

Edric had been courted by them? Mayhap it was fitting, given Edric's demeanor and Sirl's intimidating reputation, yet still Kristen could not help but to feel as though it was something akin to a harsh sentencing, some awful punishment for a heinous crime.

"What...what came of it?"

Things were certainly different now. Would be different. Edric's class would be the pioneers of the post-Revolution Academy, the implementation of the Republic's rules for how newly christened Dreadlords would be divvied up. The Houses no longer had a monopolizing claim over them--for all intents and purposes, it was the Anirian Guard who held such a claim now. But the Houses were still allowed a tiny percentage of Dreadlords to serve them. The methodology by which these Dreadlords were pledged to them now? Kristen didn't know.

And, as well, she'd heard quite the news concerning the state of House Sirl. What courting may have been with Edric in the past was likely ashes in the present day.

Yet...why would he bring it up?

Edric

 

[Edric]

A shrug rolled over his shoulders. "Nothing really."

That was the truth.

"They're all dead, aren't they?" Perhaps the words would illuminate just how much Edric didn't know about the Houses. There had been ways of finding out more information of course, digging in, but he'd never planned to swear to any of them.

Not that he would tell Kristen that.

"I talked with one once, Damien I think his name was. There was a Dreadlord of theirs too..." He frowned, not remembering the name. "Doesn't matter."

He shook his head. "Noel once told me the Houses constantly try to kill each other."

Their classmate had been in the middle of a small rant about how she was going to become an Archon and transcend all the games the Houses played. Edric hadn't been entirely sure of that, but at the time hadn't care to point it out.

"Maybe one of them set this up." He asked. "Getting you killed, I mean."

 

[Kristen Pirian]

They're all dead, aren't they?

"No, not all." Then she seemed to have second thoughts, as if trying to remember precisely what she had heard, grasping for little details and rogue technicalities. "At least that is what my Uncle Tobias said."

Not to her directly, no. But one of those tidbits she'd gleaned from overhearing one of those aforementioned conversations spoken in hushed tones. Noel, as well, may as well have been part of those kinds of conversations, for she through Edric all but corroborated what Kristen had heard about the game of Houses.

Kristen paled.

Holy Aionus...what if Edric was correct? Dominic Foresend, some lowdown Cerak pirate and self-styled warlord, was not the true and sole perpetrator of her kidnapping and the ensuing Battle of the Blades. Kristen knew the quiet allegations pointing to at least two other Houses. As then, so could it be now--it wasn't so farfetched. Whoever wished House Pirian ill, Kristen could yet again just be a means to an end.

"I cannot refute that as a possibility," she said, "nor can I confirm the veracity. It's maddening."

Her head lulled back, and she briefly looked skyward.

"I wish I could just...know who my malefactors are."

The wind was blowing to their fronts, their faces. Masking sounds behind them.

Edric

 

[Edric]

Edric shrugged. "I guess you can always ask your parents to look into it."

A luxury that many at the Academy did not have.

He knew that a few of their peers had met their parents, and that some even had taken up correspondence with them. Talea herself had been able to send a letter to her mother, something she had been very happy about.

Edric hadn't taken the chance. "But..."

He frowned.

"It might be best if we keep this to ourselves." The Initiate galnced over towards Kristen. "If we get back, and survive all this...whoever wants you dead will still want you dead."

This likely wouldn't be all that encouraging to Kristen. "Maybe they'll take a more...direct hand next time, and we can catch them."

Edric suggested.

 

[Kristen Pirian]

Kristen tossed the idea about in her mind.

Mother, Father, especially Uncle Tobias, could do just that, investigate these alarming matters. However, what proof had she other than a worrisome hunch? This entire experience had been harrowing, yes, but she was loathe to appear paranoid on top of it. Worse yet, an investigation may well turn up nothing: for all the circumstantial evidence pointing to House Sirl, House Banick, or House Urahil being responsible for the Battle of the Blades, it ultimately amounted to nothing more than hearsay, and that was years ago.

Maybe it would be best to keep it to themselves.

Edric's suggestion was something far more actionable than pleading with her family for vague help. She glanced over to him, a gust of wind whipping her bangs and ponytail to one side as she did. She gave a small smile.

And a firm nod.

Whatever camaraderie may have been forged and enjoyed in that moment was quickly interrupted. At last, with inevitable closeness of their proximity, the beating of hooves could be heard, the wind no longer carrying it away in its entirety. Kristen looked over her shoulder and saw them, five riders loosely lined side by side, their robes and garb black as the departed night, their faces streaked with fearsome red dye in a ritualistic manner calling upon the favor of ancient desert gods, their eyes having turned to granite in their stolid intention to kill. Sabres bounced at their sides and in their hands they leveled their lances, their spears, on both Kristen and Edric, and their camels bellowed as they were kicked into a gallop, their charge underway.

"EDRIC!"

Kristen had but a moment to throw herself out of the way of an oncoming rider, and briefly she disappeared in the plume of dust kicked up in the camel's wake.

Edric

 

[Edric]

Edric spun around the moment he heard Kristen's voice bark out.

The camel riders rushed forward like a torrential wave, three of them going for Edric and two dashing towards Kristen. Both of the one headed towards the daughter of house Pirian missed as she tumbled down into the sandy dunes.

Those rushing for Edric were not so unlucky.

A war cry of sorts echoed from the lips of one of the men as his camel trampled forward, Edric staying perfectly in place. There was a sudden lurch, a kick up of dust, and then the sickening sound of metal piercing through layers of bone and flesh.

It was followed only seconds later by the thud of someone dropping onto the floor.

From the cloud of dust rode two camels with their riders, and one without.

The lone animal rode on, the two remaining riders glancing at each other with confusion. As they looked over their shoulders they would see Edric still standing, the dust settling around him as he reached up and grabbed the pike which had been impaled through his chest.

Fingers wrapped around the hewed wood, and with one quick snap he broke it off, leaving a gaping wound within his torso.

Edric boot came down hard onto the man whom he'd thrown off his own camel. A scream echoing from the Bedouin's lips as his skin grew taught over his skeleton and the life began to leave him. The hole in Edric's chest slowly knit back together, and then with a quick twirl he turned, launching the half broken spear at one of the other raiders.

 

[Kristen Pirian]

Kristen rose, scampering back up to her feet. The two riders who had charged her down slowed their camels, turning them around, lining up together and preparing for another run.

All Kristen was able to see of Edric was that (Holy Aionus! No!) he'd been skewered through the chest with one of the riders' lances.

There was no time to grieve, panic, become enraged, nothing. The two riders leveled their lances and kicked their camels into a gallop and were charging her again.

Kristen, with trembling fingers, struggled to detach her book of verses from her belt. She got it. Rapidly she spoke the words.

And an Ashen Crucifix slammed down into the sands. Kristen pressed herself to it, squeezing as much of herself behind the cover of the wood as possible, its smoldering embers harmless to her. The two riders had no time to avert. Their lances plunged into the main mast of the Crucifix, becoming stuck, and both of them were knocked off of their mounts by the crossbeam a second later. Their feet flew over their heads and they each spiraled down to the ground. The camels, spooked by the magic of the Crucifix, bellowed plaintively and went running away.

Kristen drew her mace from her belt.

The two nomads stood. One was struck with fear by looking directly at the Crucifix, the other averted his gaze just enough.

The man with the blazing bronze eyes.

"Don't!" Kristen said. She tossed her mace up and got a better grip on the handle.

He drew his sabre, his gaze purposely oblique.

"Don't!" Kristen said again, almost pleading.

Edric

 

[Edric]

The spear arched down through the air, and then with the sickening sound of crunching bone pierced through one of the other other attackers. There was a lurch as he fell to the ground, his camel continuing off into the desert at a gallop.

Edric briefly glanced over towards where Kristen had drawn herself up in the sand. His lips thinning as he witnessed the bright crucifix burning from nothing. A shout went up, and the Inititate's gaze snapped back towards the figure he had left alone.

The last rider began to turn his camel, the anger clear in his body language as he charged.

Lance was thrown into the sands, his hand grasping at the sword that sat at his hip. It twirled in his hand, whisping through the air with an enchanting grace as the man and camel charged Edric. The Dreadlord stood tall, his hand raising.

The rider continued to scream his cry of war, echoing out in the wasteland of the desert until suddenly it found itself cut off and blooming into a scream. Man and beast both began to whither, shriveling into ruinous skeletons as their life was fed into Edric's veins.

As they tumbled to the ground a cloud of dust kicked up around them, Kristen's voice resounding within as she pleaded with the enemy.

"Your sentence has already been demanded for your defil-"​

The Bedouin's words cut off as a fist punched through his chest, Edric's hand wrenching backwards as he tore out the man's organs. "You have no idea who you came after."

Edric whispered as he let the man drop to the floor, his body spilling crimson onto the sands.

 

[Kristen Pirian]

Heart-stopping shock and revulsion as a fist burst through the bronze-eyed nomad's chest.

But then.

"Edric!" Kristen said, immensely relieved. "You're o--!"

A final cry of war. The last nomad, the one previously struck by fear, had closed his eyes and found again his source of courage. With sight gone and just the memory of where Kristen had been standing, he'd come forth, swinging his sabre.

Kristen yelped. She spun and in a curious combination of half-training, half-accident, she batted the sabre away in a passable parry. And from there she just acted. With the nomad wide open, her boot found his chest and she kicked into him. The nomad went stumbling backward, losing his footing in the loose sand and collapsing down onto his back.

Before she knew it, Kristen was standing astride him, mace pointed down. Only then did conscious thought have any harbor in her mind.

"Yield!" she said, sounding more desperate and frightened than firm and assertive. "Just yield!"

The nomad grit his teeth, refusing to give in.

And he stabbed his sabre up at her.

Edric

 

[Edric]

Edric darted forward, his arm shoving outward to Push Kristen aside.

The sabre arched forward, it's tip piercing through Edric's bicep and cutting through the flesh as though it were little more than a side of beef. The Initiate let out a growl of pain, his hand reaching up to grab the blade. Blood instantly pricked from his fingers, but the Bedouin seemed to freeze in his confusion.

Before he could wrench the blade to the side or pull it free, Edric kicked his booth down.

The brutality of a Dreadlord was on true display as the Initiate slammed his foot down on the man's face again and again. The sickening crunch of breaking bones and torn cartilage echoed out, a desperate gurgle echoing from the Bedouin's lips as the last traces of life slipped away from him.

His grip on the blade in Edric's arm grew slack, hand falling away and into the now crimson sands as he passed into the afterlife.

Edric scowled, his fingers tightening around the blade as he wrenched it free from his flesh.

The blade fell onto the floor, a long sigh escaping him as he turned towards Kristen. "Don't, do that."

He spat.

"They wouldn't give you half the same courtesy." As he spoke, his wounds began to heal. Flesh knitting back together on his palm and bicep. "No enemy would."

 

[Kristen Pirian]

Kristen staggered to the side after being pushed clear of the thrusting blade. She let out a shriek and covered her mouth with her hands when the sabre pierced through Edric's arm.

And what came next robbed her knees of strength entirely.

She toppled down onto her rear in the sand, one arm behind her for support. The remaining hand over her mouth clamped tighter and tighter, knuckles white, ridges of bone poking at the skin. Her own nails dug into her cheek. A gasp, a yelp, a whimper escaped her throat with each stomp of Edric's boot upon the nomad's face. Her eyes were as wide as could be, their whites shimmering, the pupils crushed with fear and shock and all manner of barbed emotion--and she couldn't look away.

It was one thing to train for combat. To spar, wherein both the victor and the defeated rose again. It was entirely another thing to kill for real. To take a life. A human life.

Another, indeed, to watch it happen in a manner as horrifying as Edric had done.

Her Crucifix crumbled to nothing, unsummoned through her broken concentration. She looked up toward Edric from the ground as if he were a giant preparing to crush her beneath his boot, preparing to pulverize her into the same grave with the nomad.

All of her thoughts were interrupted by a bubbling of bile in her stomach.

"I'm going to be sick," she said, her voice distant, stuck in the back of her throat. She turned over onto all fours, head hanging. "I'm going to be sick."

She breathed heavily, made some deep retching noises, but held it in. She didn't want to vomit again. Not like Vel Acan again.

Edric

 

[Edric]

"Don't waste the moisture." Edric reprimanded, as he watched Kristen heave for a moment. Shaking his head with a frown.

Throwing up in the desert was practically as good as throwing away a bottle of water. "Try to think of something comforting."

The Initiate pointed out.

"Puppies and...flowers, or whatever you Nobles like." He was trying to be helpful, even if he did find the whole thing a bit pathetic. What had Kristen thought being a Dreadlord would be like? They were soldiers. Weapons.

Death was a part of their nature. He frowned for a moment more, looking at his companion before slowly his attention returned to the dead man at his feet. Boot pulled away from crumpled flesh, his gaze flickering over the man's form.

He glanced at the other bodies around them. I guess some of them didn't agree with the old man.

Edric thought quietly to himself, glancing a bit over the ridge where three of the camels had come to a stop.

"Hey." He said to Kristen, taking a step over towards her. He reached out, stopping half way, before gently patting her on the back with his still bloody hand. "Get yourself together. We need to keep going."

He glanced back the way they had come. "There could be more."

 

[Kristen Pirian]

Kristen let out a long, wretched gasp. Panted. Swallowed and gasped again. As her breathing stabilized and that roiling pit of her stomach calmed, still she remained down on her hands and knees.

She felt the hand on her back. Heard what he said.

Kristen looked up, her face tormented, her voice hollow. "...how do you do it?"

Noel had told her very much the same thing Edric had told her. Don't hold back. Don't show any mercy. In concept, such advice was easy to heed. In execution, gazing into another human's face, knowing that they had a family, that they had loved and been loved, that they weren't so far removed from her...in execution it wasn't so easy.

"I don't want to be like...this."

The Darling Daughter. The helpless girl held captive by a warlord in the Blades. Not anymore.

She hazarded a glance over to the dead nomad, to his mutilated face. And then she looked back up.

"How do you do it, Edric?"

Edric

 

[Edric]

"It's what I was made for." The Initiate said, as though it were the simplest thing in the world.

His tone was flat. Even.

He had this same talk with Eleanor, with Noel, hell, he'd even had it with fucking Chasmine in a way. It seemed to strange. What set them apart. He wondered how the students of Elbion functioned, how other nations raised their sorcerers.

Surely it wasn't the same. Surely they couldn't be...couldn't be quite this cruel. "Ten years, Kristen."

His gaze slowly turned towards the Noble Daughter.

"Ten years being beaten. Thrown into a box. Tortured." He took a breath. "Murdered and mutilated again and again."

The latter was a special treatment, a gift that the Proctors had offered just for him. Edric knew that, but Kristen had asked how he did it. Not how the others coped with the life that they had been given. "They made me to kill. It's what I'm good at. It's what I'll always do."

Even if he left Vel Anir.

"Maybe..." His fingers pressed gently on her shoulder. "Maybe that's just not what you're meant to do."

Edric slowly looked away, staring into the desert. "Maybe you're supposed to be better than a murderer."

His words were soft, quiet. The only comfort he could offer.

 

[Kristen Pirian]

His answer was terrifying. And Kristen knew that if it was true for him then, in varying measure, it was true for Evangeline, for Zana, for Selene. All of them, and all of her Initiate peers now, and for all of the Dreadlords who have ever been--it was true. The Revolution promised to change that.

But...should it?

Without Selene as she was, the Anirian Guard might have lost the Battle of the Blades.

Without Zana as she was, would there ever have been a Revolution in the first place?

And without Edric...Kristen herself would be dead on these very sands.

What they had all become was the inevitable expectation of what it meant to be a Dreadlord. A large part of Kristen had accepted her family's urging to enroll into the Academy for the unspoken promise to herself to no longer be as she was. Weak and vulnerable, the Darling Daughter, at the mercy of anyone who had a modicum of strength and malicious intent. She looked to her heroes and saw that they had power, real power, and she wanted to be as they were. She had tacitly refused to engage with what that meant.

Kristen just stared at Edric for a while, a queer manner of sorrow in her gaze. For something lost, or yet to be lost. She made as if to speak but seemed to think elsewise of it. Yet the splinter was in her mind, almost visible as if by reflection in her eyes; whatever she had lurking in her thoughts she would come to speak, sooner or later.

Slowly Kristen rose to her feet, brushing her sand-covered hands against her arming doublet in a perfunctory manner. The gigantic bruise on her left arm flared up and she ignored it.

She saw the camels on the ridge milling about.

"We can use their mounts," she said quietly. "It will be of tremendous help."

Edric

 

[Edric]

For a few moments Edric simply remained quiet.

He watched as Kristen drew herself off, his hand slipping from her shoulder as she offered him no response. A brief second passed where he thought that perhaps he could offer her more, where he thought saying something else might help.

Who are you kidding. Edric thought to himself. They broke you before she had even thought of the Academy.

The Initiate thought bitterly, lips thinning with a shake of his head.

He was the last person that should be giving advice to Kristen. The last of them that should offer any sort of comfort. Lips thinned for a brief moment, and then he simply nodded his head. "Yes."

Edric agreed, leaning down to grab the waterskin off the dead man's belt.

"We take the camels, whatever other supplies they have." What they had already been given was in theory enough to get them out of the desert, but Edric wasn't going to take any chances. For a brief moment he paused.

Then he stepped up besides Kristen, hand reaching up to gently grab her face. His bloody hand left a stain on her chin."Focus on surviving, Kristen."

He told her firmly.

"Everything else can come later." No matter what it was.