Private Tales The Mountains Ahead

[Kasim Areth]

Kasim smiled, though he didn't say anything. Not because he didn't want to continue the conversation, but more because he had to focus to keep from falling off his horse.

The pain was not anywhere near as bad as some other things he'd felt, but it was bad. Instead of sharp spikes of agony, Kasim was entirely covered dull throbbing pain. The sensation was not at all pleasant, and made it incredibly difficult to actually remain sitting upright.

Thus he hunched himself over, shifted quite a bit, and kept himself seated as best he could. "There should be a river near the entrance to the Deep Roads."

At least from what he remembered of the map.

"We'll stop there for a bit." Kasim took a breath. "Maybe catch some fish."

 

[Aviana Sabel]

The jester kept shifting his position in the saddle, and then he hunched over awkwardly. If he was trying to hide the fact that he was hurting, he was doing a horrible job of it.

Aviana gave a soft sigh. Calling him out on the fact wouldn't accomplish anything. She knew that he would dismiss her concerns with some quip or another. Her mouth quirked to the side in thought and she shifted somewhat in her own saddle. Then, an idea came to her.

She pulled on the reins slightly and squeezed her legs together, bringing Erodin to a halt in the middle of the road. Yawning, she slid out of the saddle and hit the ground a little less gracefully than she normally did. The reins were brought around to the front of the elk's head and she started to walk down along the road, rubbing at her eyes with her free hand.

"I'm going to fall asleep in that saddle." She muttered, walking in between Erodin and Kasim's horse.

 

[Kasim Areth]

Kasim glanced down at Aviana, perking an eyebrow but decided he wasn't going to ask her about it. With women it was often better not to address these things.

Ninety percent of the time it wasn't a conversation you wanted to have. "We didn't get as much rest as I wanted."

The Jester commented dryly. He had half a mind to let them sleep another night or two before entering the deep roads, though he didn't think that was a good idea. They were only a days ride from the village, even at the entrance of the roads, and those wolves likely traveled fast.

"We'll have to think of something." He told her. "Maybe set up camp inside the gates."

That way they had the protection of where most wouldn't go, but without being in any real danger.

 

[Aviana Sabel]

She rubbed the side of her neck, closing her eyes as she walked alongside him. It hadn't been that much of an excuse, she was truly exhausted and had not slept. If Kasim told her that they were going to stop and make camp in the middle of the road, she would not have complained in the slightest.

The one problem with walking meant that resting her eyes was a little trickier.

Initially, she considered asking Kasim if she could ride with him, under the pretense of how tired she was. It would have let her help him keep his saddle without him having to admit that he needed it. Now that she was walking, however, she decided that this would work just as well. If he started to fall, she could grab the reins of his horse and catch him if need be.

"You know what would be a good business investment? Making a ring out of those barrier runes of yours. Kind of like a net. Set them up around your campsite, and bam. No sudden monster attacks in the middle of the woods." She was tired, so her usually refined manner of speech had slipped somewhat.

 

[Kasim Areth]

"Wouldn't work." Kasim said simply. "That rune works off of a barrier that was already in place, like the door."

Rune Magic was tricky like that. "You could do what you're talking about, but your writing component would have to be something strong. Dragon Blood would work, Great-Spider Venom...a few others."

It would actually be a relatively simple rune, but the component was the difficult part.

"Otherwise you're asking the rune to do too much work." He continued to explain. "The spell would fail completely, even if someone just threw a rock."

It was sort of the trade off with Rune Magic.

 

[Aviana Sabel]

She glanced up at him with a tired smile, waving a hand. It wasn't intended to be a serious proposition. Kasim knew the magic far better than she did, and she didn't know the intricacies of rune magic. It was unlikely that she ever would.

Her free hand reached up, scratching at the side of her nose.

"So, the effect of a rune doesn't compound if you add more of them?" She asked after a brief pause, moving her hand to rub at the corner of her eye. Every so often, she would glance over her shoulder in the direction that they had come from, afraid that they might be followed.

 

[Kasim Areth]

"It does and it doesn't." Explaining this was a bit more complicated, and in truth it was actually far beyond what she should be focusing on at the moment. Still, he thought it best to answer the question and actually tell her, rather than let it remain a mystery.

"You can...stack runes." He didn't know how else to word it. "But they have to work first."

Otherwise you just had compounding failures to deal with. "That Rune wouldn't work under those conditions. There are other Barrier runes that could...but they're so complex that you would spend half a day drawing them just to make sure that they actually worked."

Which was again why many thought of Rune Magic as outdated.

An Elf he had traveled with once had set a barrier in the time it took to snap a finger, and that barrier had been ten times as strong as the one he'd made at the Inn.

 

[Aviana Sabel]

"Ah." She said, as if what he had said had made any sense at all. In a vague sense of the word she had understood the concept, but was still playing through the events that had unfolded in the room. She had hoped that talking would have distracted her enough to pull her out of the cycle, but it just kept repeating.

When Kasim mentioned more powerful barriers, she fell into silence.

Her shoulder lightly brushed against the side of Kasim's leg as she accidentally stepped to close to the horse. "Sorry." She murmured, moving a few feet away.

She glanced up at him with a sheepish smile, then over her shoulder behind them, and finally turned her gaze down the path ahead.

"Heh. Guess I'm just a little... distracted." She explained off-handily, watching her feet as she walked along the dirt road.

 

[Kasim Areth]

"Maybe we should head straight towards the gate." Luckily the wolves hadn't touched any of their supplies. They still had rations for nearly three weeks, plus he knew there was a Dwarven custom of leaving some supplies within the entryways to the deep roads.

It was supposed to allow for better and safer passage through the roads, a way of wishing good luck. Kasim didn't know if it ever actually did anything, but he found himself hoping they would be there. It would be a nice little bit of luck after they had.

"We can get some rest." He told her. "Safely this time."

The Deep Roads themselves were dangerous of course, but if they closed the gates behind them they would be safe. No bandits or monsters came to the entryway, and as long as you stayed away from the cliff edges there would be no thread.

He was confident of that.

 

[Aviana Sabel]

She hesitated at the suggestion, pressing her lips together slightly.

"The river is fine, Kasim. Might even be able to bathe for once." She mused. That was something she desperately found herself missing. A warm bath. The servants she didn't really need. Sure, it had been nice not having to make her own meals; but it was utterly stifling to have someone else dress you.

A river wouldn't give her the warm part of that, but it was at least some running water. Kasim could try to catch some fish, or something, in another part of the river while she washed herself. Her mind had already drifted away with the premise, trying to work out the logistics of how she would make it work.

 

[Kasim Areth]

He nodded in response. "Alright."

There wouldn't be any arguments from him. Fresh fish over a fire sounded just about better than any other meal they could manage to create right about now. Rations weren't exactly the tastiest thing, and if they could get a chance to eat something decent The Jester wouldn't knock it away.

Not if he didn't have to.

After that decision their journey was relatively short, though they continued on their slow pace. Eventually the sounds of a nearby river could be heard in the distance, and Kasim slid off his own horse in order to lead Aviana and her mount into the forest. They walked for a time until they reached a large stream that could almost be called a river.

On one side of the river lay a small beach that seemed to stretch down the the entire side of the bank as far as could be seen, trees and boulders interjecting every now and again. The other side was a solid cliff face that seemed to build into the slow slope of a mountain.

 

[Aviana Sabel]

Erodin's ears perked up at the sound of the water rushing nearby. Aviana couldn't help but smile at the elk's reaction, then she led him down onto the beach. By the time they reached the sand, the elk was prancing impatiently in place. She laughed a little, the first time she'd done so all day.

"Settle down. I'm working on it." She spoke softly to the animal, murmuring in that strange lilted language that she occasionally used.

He tossed his head as she freed him off the saddle and bridle, letting the beast go to enjoy the water himself. In a prancing trot, the great elk danced to the water's edge and then he promptly leapt into the middle of the large stream.

She pulled the satchel off and set it down next to the saddle; then she knelt down to start unlacing her boots. "I'm going to go around the bend and dip in for a bit. Is that alright?"

 

[Kasim Areth]

Kasim frowned for a moment, thinking of how to answer that question.

He wasn’t entirely sure if it was appropriate to say no, mostly because he didn’t want to deny her a bath but also knew that it wasn’t exactly safe. He doubted that there were any bandits around, and same went with the wolves but...well with their luck lately he was more than a little weary. ”I…”

The Jester stammered for the first time since they’re meeting. They had somehow in their travels never quite managed to cross this bridge together, and now after what they had been through it seemed odd in a way. After a moment the Jester cleared his throat and put down his sword.

”Don’t go too far.” Kasim finally said. ”We’re not entirely sure what’s out there.”

Plus, he needed to bathe as well. There was still some werewolf blood on him.

 

[Aviana Sabel]

She'd never seen the jester falter, or even stutter for that matter. That was certainly a first, and she was mildly concerned that something might have been wrong. Her boots were set down next to the saddle moments later, but she didn't go so far as to start taking her clothes off in front of him.

No matter how long the two of them had traveled together, no matter what they had been through. Modesty was a difficult thing to ignore. She blushed a little, tucking her silver hair behind her ear, and thumbed over her shoulder with her free hand. "I won't go out of ear shot. I promise."

Just to assuage her own anxiety, and Kasim's as well, she opted to take her sword with her this time. She had been leaving the weapon with the saddle in the stables in her attempts to maintain the visage of a simple woman traveling with nothing notable about her whatsoever. Last night had changed that line of thinking.

Gracefully, she spun on the ball of her bare foot and trotted across the sand towards a thick line of bushes that lined the bend in the stream. That would be as good a place as any, and it was close enough to Kasim that he'd be able to reach her in seconds if something went wrong.

 

[Kasim Areth]

Kasim nodded, noting approvingly that she had taken her sword with her this time.

He wasn't sure if that made him any more confident in the situation, but truthfully he thought that their luck had been bad enough and that it might now turn. At least he hoped so.

Waiting until Aviana was completely out of sight behind the brush, Kasim began to strip as well. He pulled his tunic off, then his boots, and then of course pants. Standing in his small clothes the Jester looked around, making sure that Aviana wasn't coming back for something, and then he stripped fully.

The animals seemed to be entertaining themselves with whatever, and with a shrug Kasim headed into the river.

As he had suspected the water was cold, run off from the mountain snow, but oddly enough The Jester found it more pleasant than anything else. A soothing balm on his broken body.

 

[Aviana Sabel]

Aviana waited until she was behind the relative privacy of the bushes to peel her own clothes from her body. She laid each article of clothing carefully over a low hanging branch in a tree. Her hair was freed from the simple knot that she had put it in earlier, tumbling past her shoulders in gentle, loose curls.

The part of the beach that she had selected was actually river rock, that jutted out into the water. Unfortunately, that meant there was no gentle rolling slope to stride into the water. She would have to jump in.

Back home, there was a ledge her and Kieran used to jump off of on the western shore line. The plunge was frightening, but the water had always been refreshing. Her mother caught them once and she'd personally assigned him to latrine duty for a week for endangering his charge. Of course, a week later they'd just gone back.

That had been a good summer.

Smiling softly to herself, Aviana stepped off the edge of the rock and dropped down into the water with a delicate splash. It was much colder than the waters off the western shore of Sheketh.

When she surfaced, she pushed now soaked hair out of her face and yelped. "By Kiva's frozen tits! It's cold!" She laughed, a genuinely amused sound.

 

[Kasim Areth]

Kasim's head whipped to the side.

He heard something from beyond the brush, a yelp, a cry of something, and then what he thought was a muffled screech of some sort. Immediately The Jester felt his stomach drop, his entire body twisting around as he practically jumped out of the water and ran up onto the beach.

With one smooth motion he swiped his sword from where he had let it dropped it on the floor, drawing it from the scabbard and rushing through the brush that Aviana had disappeared through. "Aviana!"

Kasim shouted, fully expecting to be met with a pack of wolves or another clutch of Harpies

His hand shot down to his torso, hovering over the carved rune that lay directly on his ribs. He crashed through the bushes, taking three steps forward and coming out onto the rock that the half-elf had jumped off of. There he stopped, freezing as he saw Aviana simply standing in the water.

Oops. Kasim thought as he suddenly froze in all his heroic glory.

 

[Aviana Sabel]

"Aviana!"

She heard Kasim cry out her name and she frowned, standing up a little in the water to look towards the sound of his voice. Her heart sank, terrified that some beast had arrived on the scene. Or a bandit. Or naga. Or whatever it was that was chasing the jester.

"Kasim?" She called back to him, already moving towards the shoreline to pull herself out of the water, her sword was leaned against the trunk of the tree.

Seconds later, Kasim's naked form came crashing through the brushes; sword in one hand and the other resting against one of the runes on his chest.

She felt her heart leap into her throat. Her first thought was the horror that he was about to activate a rune that was carved into his chest. With how much the magic from earlier had taken out of him, she was terrified that using a rune in his current state would kill him.

"No, no no! It's okay! I'm alright!" She exclaimed, throwing up both her hands towards him in the global gesture of 'stop'.

Then she realized that second piece of important information. Kasim had come charging to her rescue, naked as the day he was born. Her cheeks turned as red as a freshly picked strawberry, creeping her slightly pointed ears; and she quickly averted her eyes from him, clearing her throat.

"Unless you plan on rescuing me from this frigid water... I don't think the tearing part of your soul out is necessary. So uhm..."

She sank back down into the water, turning slightly to the side and wrapping her arms around her chest. "You can put your sword over there... if uh... you wanted to get in..." She said meekly, waving a hand towards the tree where her own blade was resting. "Or... something."

Telling him to leave seemed cruel. It was natural for him to overreact and come rushing towards the sound of a cry, she couldn't blame him for that. Especially after what had happened the night before. They were both on edge, though she had found herself in a situation that she had no idea how to handle.

 

[Kasim Areth]

For a few second Kasim remained frozen. His fingers were tightly wrapped around the hilt of his sword. His eyes fixed on Aviana. He tried to drag them away, but it was somewhat difficult given the situation. Only after she dropped away back into the water did he manage to turn and look up at the sky for a moment, his still red eyes watching for any sort of deity that might strike him down in that moment to provide him a convenient excuse for no longer living.

When nothing came he sighed, then quietly cleared his throat. The sword in his hand dropped from its aggressive stance, and slowly Kasik began to step back. He was about to make some excuse for walking away and forgetting the whole thing, and then, much to his surprise and chagrin...she invited him in.

Kasim stopped in his tracks. A frown appeared on his face and he wasnt entirely sure what to do. Did she actually want him to stay? Was she being polite? The Jester briefly forgot everything he had learned about reading people, his mind forming a conflux as he decided to lean his sword against one of the nearby rocks. ”Ermm…”

Kasim cleared his throat.

”Alright.” Should he have left instead? Kasim had never had confidence issues, never in his entire life, but this was a tad different. He hadn't been pursuing Aviana. He hadn't been trying to get under her skirt. They had flirted but it hadn't been because he intended on sleeping with her. To him this situation was...odd. Not that she wasnt attractive, he just hadn't really ever had the idea. ”I guess.”

The words were said quietly as he moved to get into the water.

 

[Aviana Sabel]

She'd half expected him to retort with a dry quip, and for him to saunter back to the beach with his head held high. When he fumbled slightly, it was a humanizing moment. Kasim didn't always have all the answers.

Nevertheless, he took her up on the offer and be slipped into the water. The surface of the stream was disrupted enough by the movement of the water that it was difficult to see through it. Rough shapes and outlines were still visible, but at least Kasim wasn't standing above her without anything to cover himself with.

She splashed some of the water over her face, trying to get the vibrant red blush to dissipate from her cheeks. Instinctively, she turned in the water so that her back mostly faced him. Just above her left shoulder blade was a rather pronounced scar from what could have been an arrow.

Her silver hair floated gently on top of the water, swirling around her form in the gentle current.

"Didnt mean to scare you. I'm sorry." She murmured after a brief pause, trying to think of anything to say to him that would break the tension.

 

[Kasim Areth]

It did not cut the tension.

He knew what she was trying to do, but Kasim realized that it was probably hopeless in that regard. Confidence had always been something of a trademark for him. The ability to take everything and anything in stride. It was so true that most people would have called him a narcissist in fact. Some people already did. He took a breath, trying to summon up some of that and then began to speak.

”Its not your fault. “ He admitted. It was true after all. He had overreacted entirely to what turned out to be a simple, and probably even joyful screech. He should have taken the hint if the situation when Aviana's great elk didn't take a step. The beast would have known better than him if its master was in trouble, and reflecting on that The Jester felt rather foolish.

Odd how that worked out.

With another small breath Kasik submerged himself a bit within the water, closing his eyes as he focused himself a bit and drew once again upon that supreme confidence. ”Sorry for seeing you naked.”

The words were obviously a jest, mostly because he wasn't entirely sorry for the sight. Aviana would be able to hear it in his tone, though he tried not to make it obvious.

 

[Aviana Sabel]

Aviana wrinkled her nose at Kasim and lashed one of her arms back towards him, splashing a wave of water over him as she laughed.

"Guess that means I should apologize for that, as well then." She quipped in a matching tone, then turned to face him with just her head floating above the water. There was a soft blue glow just below surface -- the runestone pendant that she normally kept hidden away beneath her clothes was visible as it glimmered in the water.

He'd gotten her to laugh, which caused some of the awkwardness between them to dissipate. His casual demeanor returned when he resurfaced, and she smirked a little at the rather apt metaphor that had physically manifested in the world for a brief moment.

 

[Kasim Areth]

”Really the only thing I have to say to that is…” He trailed off with a smirk. ”You're welcome “

There was the confidence and narcissism that clung to him like nothing else. He said it in a way so that it was an obvious joke, the smirk on his face and the mischief in his eyes denoting that more than anything else.

”First look is free.” The Jester continued.

The tension had been broken now, it was easier to joke and bandy about.

”Second time will cost you I'm afraid.” He shrugged. ”Standard rate of course. “

 

[Aviana Sabel]

"Oh? I didn't realize that on top of being a bard and a jester that you moonlighted as a male prostitute as well?" She grinned back at him.

She knew that he was joking, of course, but that didn't stop that obstinate blush from refusing to leave her cheeks. Part of her wished that she could just crawl into a hole and just pretend this had never happened. Another part of her wasn't complaining one bit that it had. It was that second part that worried her, something that hadn't even crossed her mind until he'd come barreling through the bushes.

 

[Kasim Areth]

It was a well placed retort, but one Kasim was more than ready for. Idle banter was truly where he excelled. It was a gift given to him by whatever god of pleasure and joy had decided to watch over him even before he was born. It had always annoyed his father, though his sister had delighted in the way Kasim had been able to verbally cut down others. A sign of her more humorous side.

”The road is tough, sometimes you need a little extra money for the road.” Kasim seemed more amused than anything else.

”Besides.” He grinned even wider. ”Don't act like youre not tempted.”

Oh yes, he would push those buttons. Mostly because he knew exactly they were there.