Private Tales The Last Resort

[Seska the Dragonslayer]

She said nothing at first, and then shook her head with a slight shiver through the rest of her. "That 'damned demon' battered my defenses to the brink," she said. There was a touch of bitterness there; on a different world, she could have unleashed nigh world-ending sorcery upon that entire demonic incursion.

She took a deep breath. "Maybe I can help craft you some more wards as well. I don't know how you make yours, but I am sure I could contrive a way to weave my style of warding into a charm or something for you." She offered him a bright smile. "We shan't need for money, though," she said. She never lacked for it, but she seldom had a need to use coin for anything.

"There's a stump over there," she said, gesturing by hand. "We should take a seat, and see how to go about doing that."

 

[Draedamyr]

"You say that without seeing the kind of wine bills I can rack up," he replied.

In truth, he had accumulated enough coin over the years. He had been young long ago, by human terms and not hers. He had been driven to reclaim family heirlooms looted from the city of his birth.

Draedamyr had found a place in a city that wasn't always friendly to his kind. He had carved a place with the sword. He had been driven to do better, to do more. That had carried on well into his fifth century of life. There was enough coin to his name that he could drink himsekf stupid for the last of his days if he truly wanted.

"I normally use iron. Something hard to shape with magic."

 

[Seska the Dragonslayer]

She laughed in a soft, sultry way, and grasped his arm with both her hands, bringing it to rest against her cheek as she continued to lean in. "Hard for novices, my dear," she said in a smoky voice. "Hard for novices."

She turned so she was facing him and drawing him along by his arm towards her chosen seat with a bright eyed smile on her face. With a girlish giggle, she let go and danced back a few steps, taking a seat on the sunbleached wood. She patted the open space beside her and beckoned him to her with a smile and a nod in that direction.

"We can worry about wine bills later, Draedamyr. Come, sit with me!"

 

[Draedamyr]

"Don't worry," he laughed, "we're not returning to a pack of angry loan sharks. My finances are quite secure."

It was not as if he was building an empire for his family. His children had long since found their own paths. He did not even know when they would cross each other again.

Humans always seemed so determined to fit their children into the same mold. He supposed that made sense when it took several generations to achieve anything of not. They often died before their children were fully grown.

Her smile was infectious. She seemed brighter, less laden with worries. He felt it too. It wasn't just putting the danger behind them. The last night had released a lot of pent up tension, let them see the world - and one another - more clearly.

"Well, the experienced wizards to tend to learn what not to mess with. Which means they don't normally attract a price. Or at least, they know to do their misdeeds out of sight," he mused as he sat down.

Draedamyr still had a flat coin on a chain around his neck. He pulled it out, rubbing his thumb over the surface.

"Worn smooth," he observed, the wards visible burned away from the metal as they were stripped from around him.

 

[Seska the Dragonslayer]

She snorted. "Like there are many 'experienced wizards' in this world worthy of the name," she said in a dismissive tone. It reeked of arrogance, but the sharpness was mellowed quite a bit by her smile and generally chipper mood. "There have been very few worthy adversaries on Arethil."

She took on a more serious expression as she put her hand out in front of him, palm up. "Let me see your coin," she said and then, after a moment, added, "And a knife with a point on it."

 

[Draedamyr]

"Good job you weren't in my business a few centuries ago. I would have been out of work in fairly short order."

He lifted the chain up and over his head, dropping the coin to her palm. It was followed by the role that curled and formed a silver blanket across it.

Draedamyr had a knife, which he held up.

"Not really a good point on this one," he admitted. The knife was better suited to cutting.

 

[Seska the Dragonslayer]

She colored a little at his remark. "Not like many people challenge me, and I certainly do not go looking for a fight. Youthful idiots seek that kind of trouble, but not those of us that have met with Death once or twice." Cold iron hit her palm, and for a moment she closed her eyes, small thumbs running across smooth metal. A trace of what had been there before still remained in the metal, bits and pieces of a ward that were about as useful as mud.

She opened her eyes, and took up the knife, and began to idly scratch the surface of the iron without really looking at it. "Good enough point to do what I need to with it," she replied. The sound of steel on iron as she made slow, methodical strokes, seemed out of place in the nearly pastoral beauty of the town green. "There cannot be too many people that rise the the level of needing an expert to take them down, can there? In my day..." Her eyes went distant a moment, then she shook her head. "I mean, a long time ago, only a handful of particularly difficult people would crop up a year. Only a few of those required the assistance of the High Mages to contain."

Scratch. Scratch.

 

[Draedamyr]

"Many of them. They have built these great colleges where any human with a little magical talent or a lot of coin can study.

"Five years. That's all they give them. A blink of an eye. Some stay on, but many carve their own path. They seek out artefacts of forgotten magic or become house magicians.

"Its like a young general being given free rein over an army. Sometimes they do the right thing, sometimes they take the power they've been gifted and sack a city and declare themselves a king."

 

[Seska the Dragonslayer]

"Magic seems to breed a wildness of the mind in...well, in other races," she said, correcting herself mid sentence. She had been about to say lesser races, but out of deference to Draedamyr she did not. In any case, she didn't see any problem calling the mages of other races lesser. They were, and she had spent thousands of years at least proving the point. After all, she was still here and they? They were not even dust on the wind.

"It is not surprising," she said absently. She spun the coin so the edge was foremost, and concentrated as she used the tip of the knife to scratch something on the edge. The going was painfully slow, and no wonder why. "Humans reach maturity in what, fifteen years? Elves, as I recall, take decades to reach full adulthood; Sidhe do not reach full maturity for perhaps a hundred years. Five years is a fair portion of their short lives." She turned the coin a little, to expose more of the edge. "They have to devote generations to study something either of us could do ourselves, were we so inclined."

She squinted at the coin, absently brushing a strand of silvery hair out of her eyes. "And they do not vet their trainees well, or at all. I myself have had to put down one or two rabid dogs in the last several years. They should never have been taught." She turned the coin some more, her attention more or less focused on it as she scrawled something on the edge with steel.

 

[Draedamyr]

"It's their success too," he mused. "Well, not the giving places for those with coin instead of talent. The fact that so many of them run through those colleges.

"If you have a hundred people launching flaming arrows at a target and you don't care about what else you burn to the ground.

"Maybe the analogy should have been blind children trying to build a monastery. Or maybe when actual demons are trying to burn the world I should stop worrying about a man finding an old book he should know better than to read."

He watched with unhidden interest as she started etching the rim of the coin. He was trying to work out if he knew the script.

 

[Seska the Dragonslayer]

"When actual demons are in the actual world, it is the last time for the uneducated to meddle in things they should not be," she said absently. She was very focused on her work. It was clear that every line needed to be placed just so, but the level of precision could only be guessed at, since she did not speak of it. The script flowed like water, and though it was in no language known to the denizens of Arethil, one could almost understand it.

"These children scarcely know with what they play. We called it the Prim, the primordial force that underpins everything. Very likely, some children from the age of legends, as you call it, brought the demons here." There was a touch of anger in her voice. "Not the first or greatest if the sins the unworthy have wrought with the Art," she muttered. She paused a moment to wipe a drop of sweat from her brow. For a moment, the hint if subtle magic at play wafted from her, though nothing she did seemed to be arcane. Nevertheless, she wiped her brow, and then turned the coin to the reverse side, and began the elegant series of markings and flowing script once more.

"Surely these...rogue 'wizards' cannot pose too much of a threat? What can they possibly learn in five years, or twenty?"

 

[Draedamyr]

"What can a child do with a tinderbox in a dry forest?" he asked. "And unfortunately not all of those who dark intentions are fools. They're just better about keeping it quiet."

He felt an odd flutter in his stomach as Seska continued to work the coin. Strange how being subject to so much attention and having a kindness like this could make him feel. Not long ago he had not thought to feel anything but pain for a very long time.

"So much knowledge has been lost from this world. Elven magic was once...beyond anything we have today. The dwarves built fantastical machines. All gone."

 

[Seska the Dragonslayer]

The scratching continued. It seemed like it had gone on for hours already, but in truth not a great deal of time had passed. "The cannot hide the truth of their folly when I am near," she said absently. Her sensitivity to magic was appallingly acute, but that should have been no surprise at all. It had been her life for longer than could be put to words.

"Time is a wheel," she whispered softly. His thoughts, spoken aloud, echoed her own from centuries upon centuries of time. What had come before the Sidhe? The Prim had been pure, then, and perhaps there had been nothing but pure, undistilled power. The essence of gods before there could ever be belief to give rise to them. The lore, such as she could remember of it, had the Sidhe as being among the first of all the worlds. Too much was lost, though, even to her.

"Sometimes, the loss of a thing is not a tragedy." She didn't have the heart to tell him that the glory of elfin kind had paled in comparison to the glory of magic that those who were the embodiment of the Prim itself, in essence, had crafted. It was a moot point, in any case; those days had been long gone when the elves of this world had been in power.

She made a final mark on the coin, and then wiped her brow again. The metal was hot in her hands, now, but something still seemed wrong with her creation. Iron was, after all, hard to work. Just not impossible. "This needs something more," she said, and cocked her head to one side. She blinked, and loosed a single, brief laugh. "Of course!"

Before Draedamyr could even hope to react, she had put the marked coin in the hand that held the knife, reversed her grip on the weapon, and then stabbed her open, unfettered palm. It hurt, for the tip was dull after all her work, but it did what it needed to. Luminous blood welled up, quickly spilling over the sides of her palm. She dropped the knife to the ground, and quickly clasped his iron coin in her hand. Her blood dripped as she closed her hand tightly on it, the searing heat in the metal ratcheting up several degrees as her essence flooded all the little channels she had carved into the metal, carrying some portion of her soul into it as it went. She could feel the hungry pull as the iron took her into its cold embrace, nevermind that her flesh was being seared where the iron touched her.

She couldn't help a gasp of pain escaping, much as she did not want to alarm the elf she sat next to. It took but a moment, and then all her breath rushed from her in a single great sigh. She slumped against him, sweat soaking her dress and dampening his clothes where she touched him. Her hand fell open, and the coin and all hit the blood-smirched dirt, still glowing red. There was no heat though, only the light of such intense heat. It quickly began to fade. Her blood, still dripping from the wound on her hand, sizzled where it landed on that metal, and vanished as though drank by dry soil.

 

[Draedamyr]

"Wait..." went Draedamyr, but it was too late. She had spilled her own blood into the coin. All thoughts of their philosophical debate on the dangers of magic were forgotten when she softly cried out.

"Seska!?" he hissed, holding her close as she fell into him. He didn't even look to the coin. She had done something drastic. It was the same as with the pony. Some flare of magic that he could feel, but not recognise.

Draedamyr wrapped his hand around hers, keeping it closed but drawing it up to his lips. He kissed her, tasting the metallic tongue of her blood.

"What did you do?"

 

[Seska the Dragonslayer]

It took a few moments for her to reply, but when she did it sounded a lot stronger than would have been expected. She sat upright, clearly tired but clearly healthy enough. Whatever she had done, it was not on a level with what she had done with the Ascended in the forest.

Steadying herself with a hand, she bent over and picked up the coin again with a slight grimace. "I created a ward, of course," she said tiredly. She held the coin in her uncut palm for him to see. Now that the glow of heat had faded, the faint script she had scratched all over the piece of iron was plain to see. It glowed very, very faintly wherever there was writing. "Iron is...hard...to work with, but not impossible."

It was a true statement, but it was also true that not so long in the past iron had been the bane of her people. As it was, it was not a friendly material to keep around her, but it was not something she couldn't handle.

"I put a piece of myself in the bindings place on that coin." It was delivered without any fanfare or special significance. "The warding was strong enough without it, but someone will have to work very hard to get past this entirely. It is not designed to stop bad actors from harming you, but to blunt their attacks by an extreme degree." She paused for a long moment, and then sighed softly, resting her head against his body again. "Even I would have a difficult time pushing through this ward. The essence of myself in it will not allow any harm to befall you unless its something really quite nasty." There was a hint of pride in her tired words, of a craftsman who had done well with a creation.

 

[Draedamyr]

Draedamyr looked at the coin for barely a moment before he looked to her hand. The wound was gone. There was more than physical damage here, it must have been terribly draining to tear at herself like that.

It was a magic he didn't understand, but he suspected it wasn't so different from the link she had forged with her steed.

He could have said you shouldn't have done that but she had made that decision already. It was hers to make.

"Thank you," he said softly. He turned to look at the profile of her face as she rested against his shoulder.

He slipped his fingers into her hand to retrieve the coin. He held it tight, close to his chest. His own little piece of her.

 

[Seska the Dragonslayer]

She murmured something inaudible by way of reply, and dozed leaning against him for a time. When she came back round, the sun had climbed in the sky a hands' breadth, and she blinked in the brighter light.

"Sorry," she said as she straightened up. She was still tired, but the worst of it had faded. She stretched, bones popping one after the other, and yawned. "Took a bit out of me, but it was worth it."

Others had joined the green, and they eyed the odd pair as they went about their business. At least here, it was with curiosity rather than distrust. It was a good thing about larger towns: they were much more accustomed to outsiders of varying shapes, sizes, and colors as it were.

"What do you think they think, in their day to day lives?" she asked, suddenly. She was staring at a couple with a child skipping along to keep up, on some errand. "I...fear I cannot remember anything of what it means to be mortal, with a limited span of days ahead of you." She could die any day, or never. She had long ago ceased worrying about it so much, beyond what she would do when all the others had gone.

 

[Draedamyr]

"I imagine," he said, "that they are mostly worrying about what is directly in front of them. That might be the next meal or the next harvest."

"I don't know where you see me and my kind in the relative order of things," he mused. It was certainly somewhere between the gods and the insects.

"I couldn't imagine living a County village life," he said thoughtful. "Just ploughing fields day by day. Every year the same. Children doing the same thing. Then death."

"What do you think about from day to day?"

 

[Seska the Dragonslayer]

She was silent for a long time, contemplating a question she did not every really think about too much. It would have been nice to have had an answer ready, to be spat out immediately...but there was none. Her life was, for all intents and purposes, empty and meaningless. She looked up at the long-eared elf surreptitiously, and smiled faintly. Had been, anyway.

"I...don't. Sometimes the bliss of holding the Prim in my heart and mind is enough to sustain me, but as to actual thoughts?" She laid her head on his shoulder again. "Usually, thoughts of things that have gone by. I do not look...to the future, so much as backwards at the past."

She took a deep breath, and let it out slowly. "I am not immortal. Probably; I have tested the limits of my...resilience, and found them to be impressive. What if nothing kills me, between now and eternity?" The words were bleak. It was too easy to imagine a world bereft of anything they now understood as life, time marching ever onward. "Sometimes I think of that, if I dare look ahead. But I rarely concern myself with the here and the now, other than as a passing dalliance." She was silent a little longer. "Sometimes...sometimes I envy their simple lives. What must it be like, to know that your time isn't over? What must it be like to live in the world, rather than living apart from it?"

 

[Draedamyr]

Draedamyr gave that plenty of thought. He watched her in silence for some time after she had finished. It was surprising to have his perspective challenged to abruptly. There were not many surprises left for him. Or at least, that was what he had thought.

"I have lived a long life. And it does feel like a long time to me. It has not flashed past me. I think of what I have left and then I try to imagine what the world was before me, knowing I cannot."

"I try not to think of the world continuing without me, endlessly. Not peaceful, just...without me. As devoid of me as it was for all of time that came before. I never like those thoughts."

"Maybe we can both think of the immediate future and have some hope that we can truly enjoy that time together?"

 

[Seska the Dragonslayer]

She pressed into his side even harder at his words. He was right, of course, not to dwell on the far future. The darkness would be there when she made it that far - if she made it that far - and there was no sense in dwelling on the loneliness of an era that was yet to come. She did not point out that her fear was not anything to do with the world moving on without her, but rather the opposite - she moving on while the world fell to dissolution.

"I wish I could remember more of mine." A pause. "Well, more of some things, less of others."

There was a timeless moment where she just enjoyed the company, the closeness of what she was beginning to think of more and more as her mate. It was not a word to use lightly, and held many deeper meaning than the simple meanings the people of the now would ascribe it. It was almost inevitable that the Sidhe, with their long lives and a host of other attributes that made stable relationships so paramount, would develop especially strong bonds to those they chose to mate with, speaking in purely practical terms.

"A year or a hundred years, or a thousand...every moment spent with another is deeply fulfilling," she said softly.

 

[Draedamyr]

There was really nothing else to say to that. He nodded against her silvery hair. He sighed, breathed in the scent of her and let that understanding settle between them. At times he realised how little of her past he still understood.

For the next few days they did almost nothing at all and yet the time seemed to fly past. Draedamyr hadn't done almost nothing at all and truly enjoyed it for some time.

There was much to be said for a lack of excitement. Although there was excitement there too. The slightest touch that set them on a different path, pulses racing. A lot of time was taking up simply walking and talking. Almost as much in simple, content silence. No demons. No monsters.

There was a pth ahead. One that held every promise of being long and difficult. Exciting too.

When the sunlight snuck around the edges of their curtains in protest it was the beginning of the day they left this town.

"Morning," he said before drifting again. "Mmm you think the Smith is still coming?"

 

[Seska the Dragonslayer]

Brilliant light, the dawn of a new day. A certain eagerness to be away from the civilized lands (although hshe was certain that Draedamyr would laugh at the notion of this sleepy little town being civilized), back into the wild lands that made up the vast majority of Arethil.

She lay curled into her self, head buried in his chest and covers drawn up over her head. "Mmm," she offered as she felt the light and his movement, the closest to a coherent thought that she could offer. She uncurled. head popping up from under the blankets, blinking blearily at the elf with sleep filled eyes. She stretched to a chorus of popping joints, and then snuggled in closer to the heat of his body. "Don't know," she managed, closing her eyes again. "Haven't seen him in days. Maybe already left."

She groaned when he got out of bed, rolling over into the dent where he had been and looking up at him with bright eyes. "Today?" She said, yawning. There was no need to say what that was about; they had discussed seeking out her ancient associate a few times in the preceding days. But it seemed it was time to actually put action to words.

She sat up, baring herself as she stepepd from the bed to find her clothes carelessly tossed to the floor. "We can see if Red is still around quickly before we leave," she said, muffled by fabric over her face as she tugged her dress back over her head.

 

[Draedamyr]

He was slow to draw his gaze away from her. Even slower to actually get on with actually dressing. His brain was still quite foggy. They'd been afforded plenty of time to themselves but had not dedicated quite all of the nights to sleep.

"In a way I hope he doesn't come. I hope he finds somewhere to settle down and get on with life."

They hadn't left much behind of his old one. That entire town had been laid to ruin.

"You think we can track her down without his directions?" he asked.

 

[Seska the Dragonslayer]

"I...do not know if we can track her down with his directions," she admitted. "Lia is...was, a spymaster. If she doesn't wish to be found, it can be damned difficult to find her."

Which was the understatement of the century. Milennia. Whatever. In those long gone days, it had not been unusual to kill out of hand any of the spies that were caught, along with delivering violent assaults against the originating lands. Those were definitely more savage times than these were though.

"I will go ahead and get Respite ready. You go and eat something, and I will meet you outside," she said.