Private Tales The Last Resort

[Seska the Dragonslayer]

She sniffed meaningfully at him, but could not help grinning even as she did. "See that you do," she replied.

With some reluctance she rose from her seat, surveying the camp a moment, and then setting about gathering their things to stow back into the saddlebags and other storage. She paused a moment at her dress, and sighed as she picked it up and donned it. The heavy cloth would have been a boon were she concerned about being prudish, and since the previous night she had not been as much.

"That is not the smell of a wildfire," she stated simply. She had been in the wilderness for a long time, and knew the difference. Having remembered what it reminded her of, she finally gave voice to the notion. "It smells like a house fire." It smells like war. How often had she endured the odor of it to know its particular flavor? Violence on that scale was uncommon on this world though. Blessedly.

"We should be careful, in face it isn't an accident." She was minded of the armed men and women they had seen leaving town the day before, and hoped that Draedmyr was minded of them too.

Respite lifted his great equine head, snorted, and trotted over to the Sidhe for all the world like he had been called.

 

[Draedamyr]

The elf felt a touch of regret for what could have been as they finished packing away their camp. He reminded himself of the words he had just spoke, but base desire did not always agree with reason. They had taken a step, they did not have to stumble through the rest of them.

Draedamyr offered a hand and smiled up at Seska as she made her way up into the saddle. It was a very low level magic she seemed to work. Connectings with animals was no typically something he saw done by the college mages. At the same time he didn't see druids or shamans weaving spells as complex as those he had seen her use. Draedamyr decided that a rogue Sidhe would be a very dangerous opponent indeed.

He stretched out his legs as he led the saddled horse back out of the woods. Almost as soon as they reached the worn dirt track of a road he could see the column of dirty black smoke ahead.

"That's the town ahead..." he muttered.

 

[Seska the Dragonslayer]

She took his hand gratefully, even as the great stallion knelt (something comical to see, really). Even knelt Respite was taller than she was, and the length of her stride not sufficient to easily swing up and over the animals back. She was happy with the choice to have the skirts divided for riding, else splayed as she was on the back of the stallion she would have had her legs exposed up to her small clothes.

Her eyes were focused on the smoke drifting into the still sky. Autumnal chill still clung to the air despite the sun high in the sky, and not a breath stirred in the air. Leaves made fair mimicry of the flames that surely burned at the source of the smoke, brilliant red, yellows, and oranges fedtooning trees as though festival were under way.

Respite trotted along, a knotted bundle of feelings in the back of her mind. The scent of the smoke was particularly sharp in the equine mind, and conjured a skittishness borne of instinct. In her own mind, it stirred similar apprehension, albeit for a different reason.

"I do not like this," she said in a small voice. There was no fear there, but there was an undercurrent of unease. The demons they had faced were overt, after all. Not all devils were so...obvious. Not every situation could be black and white. In fact, they seldom were. "Be ready for anything, my fine swordsman."

She stood ready herself, though not a drop of power flowed through her. Yet.

It turned out the scent of burning they had noted from their camp was only a couple of miles beyond their camp, and was not a town. It was not the source of the larger column of smoke either.

It was a farm, or had been.

The house itself was a half charred ruin, two walls collapsed in charcoal and cracked stone. Thin streams of smoke still trailed away from some if it, testament to the recentness. The fences where pigs had been held - evident only by the half rotted carcass of one in the stinking sty - were shattered and splintered, as if they had been attacked by axes. The barn doors stood open with the stalls within also open.

About all hung a pall of solemn silence.

"There," she said suddenly, voice a breathy whisper. One hand in the reins and another slim hand pointing, she indicated a shape laying on the ground. A small shape, its form broken and twisted.

The Sidhe sat her saddle, alert. The only sound was the buzzing of flies over the corpse of the child, the hog, and coming from the ruins of the farmhouse. There was a cloying smell here that, taken with the fallen girl-child, told the full ghoulish reality if this little homestead.

 

[Draedamyr]

Reverie let out a gentle sigh as it was released from its scabbard. There was a chance whoever had done this was still close by. If not they might have left wounded who could panic and attack.

There would be no investigating the farmstead itself for any clues. The flames were dying down but the heat it gave off was intense. Draedamyr found he had to shield his exposed face from it as he walked closer.

A loud crack rang out and an entire section of the roof's remaining skeleton collapsed inwards.

"Those soldiers were coming this way, perhaps to deal with a bandit problem..."

His face scrunched up as he realised how naive that sounded.

"Deserters, foreign troops or perhaps just the kind of soldier that treats their own peasants like this..."

Probably not the latter he decided. Someone would own this farm, even if it wasn't the family that had lived here.

"Do you remember how many passed through?" he asked, revenge already on his mind. The old elf was slow to anger but when it started to burn it was a fierce, deadly thing. The barns had been cleared out so either the group was large enough to have eaten the livestock or there were enough of them to sheppard them along.

 

[Seska the Dragonslayer]

The horse trotted forward, but the woman on it's back was silent and brooding. The animal bore her closer to the fallen child, and she looked down in the fallen with eyee that were distant. She noted the knife in the childs' hand, blade stained with blood that had nothing to do with the congealed mess she lay in.

"I do not recall," she replied. Her voice was winter itself. Her face a blank mask that betrayed nothing that went on behind her eyes. "A dozen, perhaps." So cold.

She booted the horse into a canter, surveying the yard swiftly. She could scent burned flesh, so close to the charred ruins of the home. She slid from the saddle quite suddenly, land adroitly on both feet. She took her staff from a saddle scabbard designed for it.

She stared at the ruins for a moment, and then timbers and boards shifted suddenly, hot ashes swirling away from brief tongues of flame. Charred bones greeted her eyes.

"This shall not stand," she said. Her voice was quiet, so different from the moments spent in the red mists. Those who had known her would have been chilled to hear the tone of her voice just then.

"A mage was here." Flat statement of fact. She looked around and shook her head. She strode across the yard to a small building that would have housed grain. It was empty.

The door to a root cellar also stood open, and was likewise empty. A certain picture began to form, baffling her a little. "They took all the food," she noted aloud, and then went to see what the elven swordsman had found.

 

[Draedamyr]

"A mage who steals from farm stores," Draedamyr muttered. The intensity in her gaze might have been unsettling had he not felt some of the same cold, hard determination. This had been a cowardly, wretched act.

"If they took livestock and the stores then there was more than just a lone mage," Draedamyr reasoned. "A hired battle mage? A case of revenge?"

There were too many possibilities. They did not have enough information to come up with any convincing theories. He tried to get any sense of the kind of magic that had been used here, but the traces were too faint for him.

"Can we get away from this place?" he asked Seska suddenly. The smell was becoming too much for him.

"I saw no tracks to follow." This time there was an edge to his voice. If he was looking for a way to track them then he was looking to do right by those who had died here.

 

[Seska the Dragonslayer]

Respite knelt without a word again, and the Sidhe hoisted herself up onto the animals back without a word. She was already casting far and wide with her arcane senses, trying to divine any source of power nearby. The residual taint of blasphemous magic still hung heavy in the air here, and its use for such an apparent purpose made her quiver faintly.

She shook her head slowly in response to his suppositions. "This was no hardened wizard that did this," she replied coldly. The feel of sorcery, of the method of casting, did not suggest someone who was well trained at all. Vengeance might serve as a possible reason, but it seemed to her to be off. Then again...

A faint premonition. It was the way of her questing, of sending a part of herself out to seek a thing, Just the notion of some arcane residue...towards the pillar of smoke rising on the horizon. As if there was any doubt that that would be where they wound up going.

"Do we need tracks?" The tone was cold and dead. This was a different side of the Sidhe than had been seen before. There was judgement there. Judgement, and condemnation. "Yon smoke beckons. Even if it did not...that is where the one who crafted Fire and set this place ablaze has gone." She felt nothing for the people here, not pity nor a desire to avenge their deaths. She was apart from the world, after all, and had been so for a long time.

The only one that stirred anger in her was the child, and for that she would find answer. The adults could choose their lot in life, but the child could only follow where they led.

She started towards the smoke billowing into the air some miles away, her face hard.

 

[Draedamyr]

Age had not taken a great toll on Draedamyr yet. As Respite started on his way the elf jogged alongside. There was a flutter of his cloak and then his weight was settled behind her on the horse. The ease of motion to move so far was testament to an agility she had barely seen the start of.

"The town is small," Draedamyr called out. "Not even a wall. A pair of guards at best."

A novice battle mage could be attached to a small military unit. For all he had recently listened of human politics it could be a scouting force finding supplies. There could have been an army of thousands a few day's ride away coming this way.

He dismissed the notion quickly. This was far too imprecise. Scouts would have drawn the real army in this direction, not ransacked the farmstead on their own. He tried to think ahead instead of backward. The twisted corpse of the child was a mental block that faced him as soon as he dared turn back.

"How many soldiers could you stop now without sending yourself into another sleep?" he asked as they rode on.

 

[Seska the Dragonslayer]

"Enough," she said in cryptic reply, and if she had seemed to be cold before, had seemed to be winter's frigid heart...well, that had been summer. "I was reckless before. That will not happen here."

She did not even consider the question of numbers. With measured strength, even hobbled as she was on this world, she was a terrifying dynamo of arcane power. It was more about what could be achieved with the minimum of effort and maximum of efficiency, working with the world rather than forcing things too hard.

For the Sidhe, it did not matter. She saw the dead girl. She had not been the first - not by a long, long way. She would not be the last. Seska might loathe the parents, vapid and short-sighted as they might be...but the child had never had a chance to fall afoul of her or the world at large. Despite evidence to the contrary. The common nature of this crime should have made her immune to the tugging on her heart, but it did not.

Hers was a quiet anger, but implacable and lethal.

The narrow track they followed barely warranted the title of road. They past another farmstead, this one still intact but with no chickens in the yard, no cattle in the pasture. Curtains fluttered in the wind, windows open and doors creaking as they swung lazily open and shut, their latches left open. She had no interest in them. It was in the column of smoke rising in the distance, growing closer, that her attention was held.

"Have you been to war, my dear?" she asked. Her eyes were forward, but her words were cold. "I pray it is not so, but you are about to experience that horror now if you have not before." A part of her wished it did not need to be so. Fighting against demons was one thing. The horrors that man could do among themselves to themselves could be more cruel, more terrible, than any beast or monster could imagine.

 

[Draedamyr]

"I once rode into the battle of Harradarl on the back of a giant gryphon," Draedamyr replied. There was a touch of pride in his voice. Perhaps more than I touch.

"We scattered the entire left flank and defeated Prince Zirkoff in single combat. War is not my place, but this isn't war. It involves soldiers who should feel shame to take the name."

He knew full well what Seska meant. Most of a war was not honour on the field of battle. It was an army marching on its stomach. The flight of fancy of some Prince or lording who wanted a name. An army that devastated the ground it marched across. A siege was the worst. If a wall was breached after a long siege it was the citizens of the city who suffered the worst.

This cold fury she wrapped about herself like a cloak was different. He was not convinced that she could not lose herself in her power, but she had not lied to him yet.

"By now they may be scattered, enjoying their spoils. We should strike them fast before they can group together."

 

[Seska the Dragonslayer]

She felt some sadness that he had had to endure the horrors of war, even if it seemed to have been a tame encounter. It was not a place to take pride, nor honor, from. She knew this full well, having been on many different battlefields herself. She could scarcely remember any of them specifically, but some pointed lessons remained long after what taught them had faded.

"Single combat," she said, trying to put some warmth into her words and failing. The cloak of cold fury, so aptly named in the elven mind, was drawn tight about her. It was a shield to defend her soul from what would need to be done, but it was not a pleasant thing to don. She had no desire to make it pleasant, either. "I never offered such honor to my enemy. Often, they had to be hauled from their ruined fortress and identified posthumously."

She has quietly opened the floodgate within her mind, and now sat her saddle awash in chaotic power. It was very nearly painful to sit there with so much potential and do nothing with it. Equal parts sweetness and pain.

Something about all of this seemed wrong, and she could not put her finger upon it. "This makes no sense. The men and women we saw did not number enough to cart off entire farms. Kill inhabitants, yes, but take their livestock?"

The road began to climb a hill, wending this way and that. Beyond that hill, smoke rose into the sky, and this close it was black and white, but not as thick as it had appeared from afar.

 

[Draedamyr]

So close to Seska, he could feel a slight tremor in the winds of magic. He did not know how she drew such strength to herself, but he remained concerned that she would push the laws of magic to a point that punished her body.

"You haven't recovered yet," he observed. "Let me sword start the conversation, even if you have to finish it."

As soon as they crested the hill the scene would become more clear. The town was not so far now.

"Though if we find ourselves looking down on a full war camp we might have to take more care in the matter."

That was an understatement. If it was a force of thousands then who would be to blame for what had been done to the nearby farms? How would they reach them?

 

[Seska the Dragonslayer]

She did not immediately reply to his request, instead focusing on the crest of the hill ahead of them. Power bled from her body - a thing that the magi she had sensed earlier could surely feel at such close range, if they were still present. Power of her own flesh and blood, and so even if she did nothing with it, it would still drain her. Glacially slow, but as surely as the sun rose and set.

"We will see," she said. His desire to protect her from her own excesses was admirable, and again stirred unfathomable feelings in her heart. The icy mantle drawn about herself muted them, but did not kill them entirely.

And see they did. As they drew up on the zenith if the hill and could finally look upon it's far side, a picture was painted that made little immediate sense.

Below, a town barely more than a village stood, and it stood mostly intact. Around it stood smaller farms,buildings untouched save one on the far side that still billowed smoke. Another building within the town itself was aflame, and it was from this that the stark white and black smoke billowed from. The beginnings of a wooden palisade surrounded about a third of the town, which consisted of eight dirt streets laid out in a grid. Even from here, it was easy to see the logs were roughly hewn and hastily erected.

Most impressive, however, were the people. A town this size should only have held a couple hundred at most, but there were clearly hundreds more than that gathered. Many were pulling down stone walls lining the fields around town and carting the rock back to the palisade, reinforcing wood with rock or else building stone redoubts where no wall yet stood. Others were busy herding animals to walled and fenced off sections within the town itself.

If an army this was, it was a poor one. From this distance it was hard to tell, but easy enough to see no regular uniform even if the weapons were too distant to discern.

She looked to Draedmyr, confusion in her eyes. "That does not look like an army," was all she said.

 

[Draedamyr]

"It does not, no..." he agreed.

He carefully traced the line of the defenses. They were clearly trying to achieve some kind of wall. There was a field of tents beyond the wall. Much like the men doing the work there was no uniformity to their colour and arrangement.

"I do not know what this is. The start of a rebellion? Some officers from a deserting regiment trying to carve out their own little fiefdom?"

Draedamyr shook his head and started looking for any kind of leadership. It was hard to make slant sense of the movements of the people working on the wall. Little order to discern in the chaos.

"I don't see many horses. Not that we can outrun a bow. Can your magic defend us so that we can go down and ask?"

 

[Seska the Dragonslayer]

"Only if I know the attack is coming. Maintaining barriers of note is taxing for extended periods of time." She was accustomed to forming such shields as part of a group of magi; on her own, she could block attacks but only in the short term.

She surveyed the field below with a trained eye. This rabble would have been easy to sweep aside if a real military unit were to show up. A couple hundred soldiers could crush this group with little effort. An incomplete wall was no defense at all, and the lack if order and discipline - if not feigned - would spell a rout in minutes.

"No soldier worth their salt would try and conscript commoners in a rebellion or in seizing power." She felt safe with that statement. "Who even controls this part of the world that they should rebel against them?"

She remained where she was, sitting straight upright while Respite cropped at the browning grass at his feet.

 

[Draedamyr]

Some of the same thoughts ran through his own mind as he watched the group at work. A small group of soldiers would have made a mockery of that palisade.

"I don't know what this is," Draedamyr sighed. "If we wait until night then I could slip in and get one of them out. Ask a few questions."

Men like this were liable to do as they were told when a sharp blade was below their chin. Unless this was a cult of some kind. The magician could have been a hypnotist. This was too many thralls for anything but a truly great mage.

"What do you want to do?" he asked Seska. He had leaned closer until the words were spoken right across her ear.

 

[Seska the Dragonslayer]

"Night," she said without inflection, without a trace of what it was she thought of the plan. Others of her kind, the true faeries, could have slipped in with little notice. She wondered at the city elf's spycraft.

There was too much unknown just to march down and ask in person. His plan was likely as good as they could get.

"Skulking ill suits you, I think," she said, but nodded anyway. "Safer than dealing with a direct approach. But..."

She leaned out, and whispered across his ear as well. "That sorcerer will have felt me, if he or she is worth their salt. I have been clinging to my source for the last hour. It would be a beacon for any wizard. I cannot hide it, and so they will know I am here, at least."

She looked over the scene, and sighed. "I could continue on beyond the city at the same pace, and then extinguish my flame and double back," she offered.

 

[Draedamyr]

Draedamyr watched the ants scurrying about below. He liked to hope that he might just catch sight of a pointed hat or a gnarled old staff. No such luck.

"Skirt the town, continue along the road. Maybe they'll just assume that you passed them by on the road. I'll meet you on the...east of the city. That clearing in the trees beyond the rocks."

Draedamyr slipped off the side of the horse and set off back down the path. There was enough time before the sun set to take a long path around the trees and cut back towards the town. It was good for him, he found. For too many hours he had been crushed into the chair at Seska's side. His legs appreciated getting stretched out.

It had seemed a good meeting place from above the town. Now he was meandering through trees it was much harder to know where he was an which direction that clearing would be. Draedamyr strayed too close to the town it self whilst there was still evening light. The slow rhythm of axes striking trees warned him away. Eventually Draedamyr could see the rocks that rose up from the woods. The same brave trees clung to the mound that he had seen from above.

Draedamyr walked to the edge of the clearing and sat down. He waited patiently for darkness and for Seska. He knew he was probably going to have to kill some people this night. Sometimes it worried him how little that seemed to play on his mind now. At least he was aware of it. Perhaps that seperate him from murderers.

 

[Seska the Dragonslayer]

"Maybe they will at that," she replied. The fires burning in her blood filled her with life, but it was an edged life; one slip, and it would be over. For her, for anyone nearby. Still, it was sweetness bordering on pain, similar to the carnal. That was the deadly trap, or at least one of them.

She did not have to kick the horse into motion, but did anyway. She looked back, once, to see that slim elfin profile slip away. A city man, to be sure, but one capable of handling himself. She could not devote much in the way of thoughts to him now, though, in light of the present circumstances.

If he had any reservations about the task at hand, she had none. She did not like killing people indiscriminately but she did not let it weigh upon her too much. A few bodies here and there amounted to nothing in the grand scheme, and if they were a part of this group then they were complicit in the crimes of all its members, much in the way she was complicit with the death of a world.

She did not hurry about her business, horse riding at any easy walk that would tire neither of them very quick. The sun rose in the sky, reached its zenith, and began to start it's slow journey to the horizon. At first, the solitude was welcome, but it did not take long to feel the absence of a man she had to met scant weeks ago. There was something missing in the silence of the road, broken only by the sound of hooves on the hard pan of the road.

She found herself lonely for the first time in a long while.

It was late in the afternoon, and she was perhaps five miles past the little town when she began to consider turning, releasing the power she had held onto for four hours already. There was nothing to give warning; no sound, no presence of magic. Nothing.

Just the swift whir of something, such as might be made when spinning something quickly...and then and explosion of pain in the back of her head. A sensation of falling, and then darkness.

 

[Draedamyr]

Draedamyr had spent much of his life in silence. Even the last few weeks had been spent with little more than Seska's soft breathing. Just the brief interjection of a bad dream or pain slipping through to her consciousness.

The elf was quite comfortable immersed in it now. With his eyes half open he let his pulse slow as he watched the sun blaze a trail back down towards the treeline.

He did not wait for sundown to get back to his feet. Seska should have returned by now. Even if he could imagine that she would flee his presence because she felt she deserved solitude he could not see her anger dissapating enough to turn her back on this situation. A little knot of concern formed deep in his gut.

Maybe half of an hour passed before he decided to move. Doing something that would have brought fury from his woodland cousins he carved a simple message into the most obvious tree in the clearing. Then he picked a quiet path through the woods to find somewhere to observe the town. He could no longer hear them felling trees. In truth he could think of nothing else to do.

 

[Seska the Dragonslayer]

There was pain, piercing her skull like an ice pick. For long minutes, she was conscious but did not move, not even to open her eyes.

She could hear voices coming from somewhere, and confusion set in. She tried to listen, but found them muffled and indistinct. She lay quiescent for long minutes, hearing the words but not understanding them, then finally opened her eyes.

It was dark. Her eyes were as accustomed to it as could be had, the dull light coming around the edges of a door up a short flight of stairs the only illumination. The place had an earthy, musty smell to it, and after a moment she determined she must be in a root cellar. Pressure at her wrists told being bound tightly enough to restrict circulation in her hands.

No recollection of how she got here. The Sidhe sat upright, and found herself struggling with a wave of nausea at the sudden movement and the blinding pain in her head that accompanied it. It took a moment to stave off the sickness, but she managed it.

Now what? The thought was sluggish. Apt, but sluggish. She had reasoned she had been taken captive by-

Misshapen form lying on the ground, silent and accusing.

The farmhouse. Dead child, town with...well, not an army encamped,but something. A swift recollection of parting ways with a swordsman, of intending to return and then blank time.

So. She had been captured by whoever was in charge of this camp. And she needed to...to what, deal with them? Escape. She needed to get away.

Sudden shadow in the light, the sound of keys being turned in a lock, and then blinding light flooded the cellar, a shape outlined above. The brightness made her want to vomit again, but she managed to keep her gorge down.

"Ah, awake! Alive, yes, yes you are. Good, good." The voice was feminine and held an uncertain edge to it that Seska did not like. So close, it was easy to feel the sense of potential coming from this woman. This was at the very least a wizard, if not the singular spellcaster she had discerned at the farm. "Is she safe? Are we?" A giggle, of nerves and fear. Other shapes stirred behind the woman in the door, and one roughly pulled her aside.

"That's enough, Lore," said the one pulling her back from the door,and the woman tittered nervously as she was drawn away. Seska could now see her for what she was: a scared youth no older than twenty by her looks, eyes wild. Disheveled chestnut hair made a messy frame of her heart-shaped face, her clothes in disarray as though either hastily donned or simply not cared for.

"Are you sure this is the one, 'Issa?" This from another standing outside the door. Male, tall and imposing with a hard face and dark hair and eyes. "Doesn't look like much t' me."

The girl nodded emphatically, pointing a trembling hand towards the diminutive captive. "Y-yes, she is. So strong. Strong, strong..." She regarded Seska with wild, haunted eyes. The one who had pulled her from the door way patted her on the shoulder, bent and whispered words into her ear. She nodded, but whatever he said to her did not seem to allay the terror in her eyes.

"Stranger, I do not know what someone like you is doing here. You can tell Fal'adaas we have nothing to give them. The mists took it all, and...and..." The speaker was chestnut haired as well, and the similarities between the one called Lore were striking. Brother and sister, perhaps? "And you can just stay here until we've gone."

"Sh-she might be one of them!" The girl was visibly trembling now, and Seska could feel a building pressure. The girl was readying something, but the why of it was beyond her to discern.

"Lorissa, they are gone." This from the dark haired one, a little roughly. "They are not coming back. Everyone is not trying to get inside your head, girl!" He looked down at their captive, face hard. "What were you doing on the road, stranger?"

She stared at him. What was their game? "Passing through. Fought some demons not far from here, been laid up for weeks." The look in his eyes was hard, saying he did not believe it.

"Not some spy for the city? Or some drifter looking to steal our food? We do not have any for you, or for anyone else! The mist took it all, killed it all..." He shook his head. "We will let you go if you are not lying to us, but not now. Maybe not for a long time, until spring..." But if they were short on supplies, and she just a prisoner, why would they keep her around?

They wouldn't.

Muttered exchanges above, and then the light was being shut away again, to leave her in darkness. Planning her escape.

 

[Draedamyr]

He did not need to be a woodland expert to keep from sight. The people had retreated within the hairstily constructed border. All Draedamyr had to do was keep ten paces within the trees and he was all but invisible to anyone watching the woods. When he came to a halt he could watch them at his leasure.

The trip taught him very little. They were watching the gaps in their 'walls'. One or two people posted to watch the open entrances. That was enough to let Draedamyr know that he would have to wait until darkness to get any closer.

Right now the open ground between himself and those routes into the town were too well lit. The defences would have been swept away by any concerted attempt to attack the town. They were far more effective at keeping a lone elf from walking by without being seen. Many towns actually kept walls just to ensure trade flowed through gates watched by guards.



The first thing he saw in the clearing upon his return was Respite. A weight lifted from hit gut.

"Seska?" he called out. There was no reply. Draedamyr sauntered towards the horse, reaching out to place his hand over his nose. "Where's she gone then?"

 

[Seska the Dragonslayer]

Respite bucked the hand on his nose, and the action itself was not playful in the slightest. The liquid eyes it turned upon Draedmyr held more humanity in them than many actual humans could muster. There was a murky intelligence there, like the brightness seen in a child's eye. An awakening, if you will, that was but in the first tentative steps of its birth.

In a single glance, the beast of burden seemed to be trying to convey something to the elf, but lacked the faculties to be able to communicate what was needed. At best, the stallion was able to communicate a sense of urgency, passed on to him by his mistress in the moments before she had lost consciousness and been taken away by strangers.

The horse frisked, and the tack that was still strapped to his saddles jostled and clanked. Of particular note was the stave still in its place along the horse's flank, a thing that the ancient sorceress would never be without willingly.

Respite frisked some more, starting towards the town before turning back and trotting up to the elf.

***

If not for centuries spent honing her craft - thousands, tens of thousands of years - she might have been truly helpless. As it was, no amount of practice could allow her to easily remove herself from the situation she'd found herself in. The kind of power she was limited to on this world would not allow her to carve a path out of this town without dire consequence.

And, of late, she'd had as much dire consequence as she cared for.

The amount of power she drew upon was so minute that only a very powerful sorcerer could have sensed it from anything closer than eyesight, and even then would likely have not even thought much about it. It was the barest trace of power, the least she could handle and do anything meaningful with. Happily, it was all the more she needed.

It was always difficult to work on something you could not see, and for long minutes the Sidhe fumbled about in the darkness, plying faint chaotic power welded into fiery life. When the flow came to close to her own flesh, it frayed and fell apart. Half blessing, half curse; she could not burn herself with her own magic, at least not in this manner...but neither could her own sorcery affect or interact with her own flesh and blood. Scholars had likened it to magnetism. What was drawn from and given form from her flesh was diametrically opposed to it, and would destroy itself if forced together.

She let out a breath she didn't realize she was holding when the flaming lance held in the hand of her mind finally parted the cords, and they fell away to release her hands. Shaking off the binding, she rubbed at her wrists, wincing as blood flowed back into them once more. A moment later, she was unbinding her legs and sitting upright.

It was time to make a decision. What was she to do, now? She had come here full of righteous anger at what had been done to a child, only to find out that - like so many things in life - it wasn't as simple as bandits or thieves. She had met the mage responsible for the fire at the farmstead, but the girl - a girl, not a woman, but a girl - seemed unstable. There was no way that she was in control of anything here, and if she was...

Lord have mercy on these people.

There was simply no simple explanation and no straightforward course of action for her to take. Beyond one, anyway: escape. Draedmyr was likely still in the clearing outside of town, beyond the reach of the army if you could call what she had seen before an army. That was assuming he hadn't simply abandoned her to her fate here, or else realized that he had been a fool with her enough and escaped while he could. She shook her head, dispelling that thought not only for the pain it brought, but for the silly, girlish nature of it. She was grown, damn it, and did not need to toss her brain out with the bathwater just because...

...whatever.

There was only a single course of action to take. She rose - a bit unsteady, nausea rolling over her in a sickening wave - and then made her way carefully towards the door. The wooden steps gave her pause for a moment, for a creak might give away the fact that she was up and about. They did not such thing under her slight weight, and an unrelated weight was lifted from her mind. She ascended the short flight, and stopped at the top, breath held and listening as hard as she could. There did not appear to be anyone outside the door, standing guard. The door itself, though, was locked.

With a grimace, she let the feathery flow of power wink into existence again, and spent long minutes fumbling with the lock. If there wasn't a need to be inconspicuous she would have been able to easily unlock the door, but she did not want to risk anything now. And so she worked at it, trying to - once again - work on something she could not see. She had to stop, once, to let someone walk by. With her breath held, and a certain burning desire to pee filling her. Once the walker had moved on, she went back to work.

Until there was a click. She tried the handle, and the door opened silently onto the hallway she had seen before. It was dark here, too, all the lamps with the occupants of whatever the place was.

The Sidhe took a breath, and turned to follow the apparent direction of the walker, reasoning that either direction was as likely to bring her face to face with someone.

 

[Draedamyr]

He didnt even touch the staff. His fingers glided over the coarse fur of Respite's mane, over the smooth leather of the saddle to rest on the straps holding it in place.

Draedamyr frowned. This did not make sense at all. The horse could not have continued here on its own. Seska would not have left her staff and gone far.

Perhaps he had not been as stealthy as he had thought. They could have sent people here and caught her off guard. A few minutes wandering the clearing revealed no sign of the Sidhe.

His typically endless patience was pushed beyond its limit quickly. As soon as the sun was down he gave up on finding any trace of Seska nearby. He returned to Respite, who had slowly trotted after him at a distance. As if the horse wanted to keep Draedamyr in sight.

"You stay here," he said. Draedamyr decided to loosen the burden carried by the horse. Respite meandered away to a patch of soft grass and laid down.

There was only one course of action he saw ahead of himself: return to the original plan. The elf crept back to the edge of the woods, daring to move beyond the treeline. He could not see so well as a dwarf or orc in the darkness, but he imagined that with a few minutes to adjust his eyes he would see better than the guards stood beside burning torches.

 

[Seska the Dragonslayer]

Her senses were alert, ears straining to pick up any hidden watches, any night time skulkers. She felt like a coiled spring, muscles tense as she moved down a corridor un darkness,the lamps all out. She did not like this kind of work at all, sneaking about and trying to remain unseen. Small she might be, but she did not like to be ignored.

Drawing attention here could kill her, though. There were enough people that there was no hope of subduing them all if they took it in mind to pursue her.

The corridor ended in a small room, stairs climbing to a second floor. A door stood closed in a wall, flanked by windows to either side, and through those she could see outside. Darkness had deepened such that it was difficult to make out the woods beyond town. Star glittered in a purple sky, the first of the evening.

She took a deep breath, looked up the stairs, then practically scurried to the door. Haste made her a little less precise about what she was about, and the flare of power made her wince. Her heart set to pounding a moment, wondering if her mistake would have immediate consequences or not.

Breath held. No shriek of outrage, no outcry. Seska let her breath out slowly, then went back to the task at hand. The lock was easy to pick, and the low creak of the door again made her wince as she stepped outside into the middle of the town.