Completed The Reward of Loyalty

[Kristen Pirian]

CORTOSI BORDER
WAR CAMP AT FORT ETRICH​

The Lord Banick had a devil's luck. For Garron had not himself planned to have impeccable timing, yet it fell into his lap anyway. Fortune, it would seem, eloped often with the wicked.

* * * * *​

Kristen Pirian went about the camp with a demeanor of despond. At best she would be merely steady, neither finding cause for good cheer nor exuding the warm friendliness that was in all other times her wont. She withdrew even from her squad, treating with Lieutenant Reeve and Arn and Rhory and Felix only when she had to, which truly wasn't much, given her ad hoc attachment to their small unit.

She was, as Vel Anir's war with Cortos drew closer to the ready, dealing with no insignificant personal loss.

Often, Kristen would merely walk about the camp. Walk with no true aim in mind, but only in the vain hope that the constant motion of her legs, the soreness and fatigue built up in them, might be the thing to distract her—if but for a fleeting time—from her sorrow.

It was during one of these walks that she turned the corner of a tent, one of the many tents of the war camp, and chanced upon Lord Garron Banick himself. She had seen him at Fort Etrich prior, before her meeting with Alistair Krixus, but it had been only a glimpse, and this from afar. Now, she could've reached out and touched his shoulder.

Garron had his back to her. He was speaking to a small group of young and sturdily-built Guardsmen.

"...to think about your future, gentlemen. You may seek your opportunity in the Guard, as many do. Or you may consider my offer. That choice is all yours."

One of the Guardsmen looked past Garron and at Kristen. Garron, seeing the young man's gaze gone astray, half-turned and saw her there and smiled and said to the group of Guardsmen. "That will be all."

The Guardsmen all went off, each going their own way, joining in with this flow of foot soldiers or that throughout the camp. And though Garron and Kristen were certainly not alone, Kristen, looking right into the eyes of the man who had caused her and House Pirian so much pain, felt very much isolated.

Because she was.

 

[Kristen Pirian]

"Lord Banick."

"Well," Garron said warmly, "if it isn't the Lady of Vel Numera. Congratulations on your ascension."

"Excuse me. I must be going," said Kristen, and she made to step around Garron and hurriedly walk away.

She only took one step.

"Haven't you wondered?"

And froze. She did not look at him, and he did not look at her. They talked in a sideways manner to each other now.

"Wondered what."

He didn't answer. Merely smiled.

Kristen looked to him now, and she was not pleased.

"Fancy a drink?"

"No."

"My dear Lady." And now Garron slowly turned his head and cast his gaze upon her. "It would do you some good. To talk."

They looked at each other for a long moment; in Kristen's eyes there was nothing but severity and dubious rebuke; and in Garron's eyes a surface warmth, but underneath the baleful glimmer of well-concealed malice.

Garron slowly nodded his head off to the side, indicating a tent somewhere near into which they could go.

"It would do you some good," he said again. Coaxing with a voice made of silver and poison.

 

[Kristen Pirian]

She could have simply left. She could have walked away, for Garron had no authority over her, and, powerful noble figure of Vel Anir though he be, he surely was only allowed at Fort Etrich at the Guard's pleasure. The Republic had upended the old dynamic of power, and Garron surely lacked the teeth his influence may once have held as threat. What was there even to talk about? They had not even properly met, or truly shared words, before this chance moment. And she knew well that Garron, perhaps more than any other Banick, hated House Pirian, for she had heard it from his own cousin, Walter Banick.

But she did go.

And this would prove in time to be quite the fateful decision.

* * * * *​

Two Banick-sworn men stood outside the tent that was Garron's object. They pushed open the flap for him and Kristen, and when they entered, the Banick-sworn men stood before the tent's entrance and guarded it. This was what privacy could be afforded in the bustling war camp.

"Forgive the sparse accommodations," said Garron, lighting a lamp on a small table adjacent to the tent's center pole. "Though, I assume you have gotten used to such by now. And not even from the austere necessary of this particular military camp, hmm?"

"I have seen splendor and I have seen poverty," Kristen said levelly. It would be an effort, she knew already, to keep her tone so.

"Of course, of course. The Darling Daughter, jewel of House Pirian, taking it upon herself to do her part for the greater good of Vel Anir, enrolling into the Academy and dutifully answering the call for war, doing her country and people proud." Garron bristled excitedly. "Ohhhhh, doesn't that just roll off the tongue beautifully? A play ought be written about you."

He produced from nearby a bottle of wine, two wooden cups, and set them on the table. He poured wine into both of the cups, and he took one for himself and reached out his arm in offer to Kristen with the other.

"I shall pass on the wine."

Garron shook the offered cup slightly, as if by doing so it would be made more tantalizing. "No? Aren't you parched...doing whatever it is that soldiers of your rank do about a busy, busy camp?"

Kristen frowned. "I am not so fond of spirits."

Garron quickly drank his cup. Then set both down on the table. "See? It's not poisoned, if that's what you were suspecting. And I hope it wasn't. Kress, what a tawdry way for the Darling Daughter to go. Poison. Where would be the spectacle in that? One poisons vermin, my dear Lady—so a fitting death for an inconvenient and bothersome lowborn, but for a noble?" Garron waved his hand dismissively of the idea.

"I have yet to see how this talk is to be doing me any good."

"Can't we have a civil chat? Let me congratulate you again on your Ladyship, truly, it is deserved. It's quite the breadbasket of Aniria that you've now under your sway."

"It is my charge, and my responsibility." Kristen furrowed her brow. "And I will hear no talk of my people as 'vermin'."

"Very well, very well. I did say a 'civil' chat, didn't I?" Garron poured some more wine into his cup. "And speaking of responsibilities, as Lord of House Banick, I suppose I am in need of an heir. You wouldn't happen to be available, would you?"

Kristen's bottom lip curled in disgust, and she planted her hands on her hips and looked off to the side, shaking her head at the sheer, repulsive audacity of the question.

Garron shrugged as he held up his cup. "Oh. Just thought I'd ask. You didn't seem to be doing anything at the moment with that womb of yours. A toast, then, to fertility."

And he drank heartily of more wine.

 

[Kristen Pirian]

"Is this your design? To make uncouth propositions of me? You would do better to drink yourself into a stupor and toss yourself from a cliff, believing you could fly, for sooner would you actually take flight than for I to accept any offer of yours."

Garron's lips puckered in a silent "Oooo" as though he had been stabbed, and he said, "My Lady, what happened to civility?"

"I am afraid this is the utmost politeness I can spare for one such as you."

"In any case, do keep my offer in mind." He smirked. "Especially if I do surprise you with flight." He pressed on, before Kristen could respond, and he asked in abrupt fashion, "What fortunate timing for a proper war, hm? Certainly in your case. Tell me: are you excited?"

"Why concern yourself with my fortunes? It is known, Lord Banick, that our houses have endured a longstanding feud, simmering for generations, and that it is perhaps the foremost of any such enmity among the Great Houses. Is it not unseemly to you, as the very Head of House for the name of Banick, to entertain a Pirian?" Indeed, Kristen knew well that Garron's uncouth proposition had been put forth merely as a means to upset her, and that Garron likely found the idea as disgusting as she herself.

"Come now. Isn't it a brave new era for Vel Anir? Hm? The dawn of the Republic, which you Pirians hold so dear? Why, hadn't Theodore entertained you at Ostia Anir? I do clearly remember myself and all my kinsmen, at Theodore's beckoning, offering gratitude to you and Lord Krixus for your service."

"You are not Theodore," Kristen said, low and sharp.

"I distinctly remember you saying that it was your hope for our Houses to 'come together in goodwill and solidarity.' Lady Kristen, is it now I, Garron Banick, who esteems your own hope more than you do?"

"Had a better man succeeded Theodore, that hope of mine might have sooner been realized."

"The better man was chosen on the battlefield—as I'm sure you've heard."

Kristen remained silent, glared at him only, but took note of Garron's words there. Was he being careful in their selection, or did even his vast knowledge have its limits, its blindspots, and he still knew nothing of Kristen's presence at the Battle of the Banicks?

And then Garron said abruptly, "Has Neil told you?"

Kristen's heart froze.

 

[Kristen Pirian]

"Speak not my father's name," Kristen came to say, slowly and with menace, after the shock abated.

"And why not? We served together in the Guard, after all."

Kristen's whole countenance took on a suspicious slant.

"Perhaps I've given you a wrongful impression, asking the question the way I did. Oh, my apologies." He smiled, and Kristen knew that there was no contrition in him, and that he had meant to ask the question precisely the way he had—to shock and unbalance her further. "He probably didn't tell you. It's not as though either of us had a big war to fight, like you have now. We were merely doing our year. Good Anirians, the two of us."

Kristen offered no barbed retort, but instead came straight to it, "And what is your purpose in telling me this? So you happened to meet my father while both of you served. What of it?"

Garron spread his hands. "The divide between our Houses isn't so wide. But of course it's there, yes, but not as yawning as you suggest. Don't give up on your hope so soon, Lady Kristen! It's been there even before Ostia Anir."

Kristen did not look very convinced.

But Garron paid no heed to her dubious visage. He paced about the table as he talked, saying, "Regardless, Neil and I had the chance to get to know one another back then. We talked—you don't have to take my word on this, Lady Kristen, if it troubles you. You can ask Neil yourself, and he'll tell you. But talk we did, and he told me about his beliefs, his ideals, his vision of Vel Anir and what he could do for it. So..." he came to a stop then in front of the table and before Kristen now, "...I was merely wondering if the apple has fallen far from the tree or not. How like your father are you, Kristen Lucretia Pirian? How do you hold your country? What are your beliefs, your ideals, your vision?"

"This is why you invited me here?"

"We've never spoken, you and I. And as I said: haven't you wondered what I, now the Head of House Banick, believe? You have that hope of yours, and I am currently the man on the other side of it. You made great headway with Walter and Theodore, did you not? Let's not get too ahead of ourselves, we're likely not to leave this tent with any true cordial understanding between us, not yet. But there is no harvest if there is no sowing, hmm?"

Kristen studied him carefully. Still she felt her apprehension, and much of it came from not knowing what Garron's true aim was here, for surely it had nothing to do with her hope to heal the divide between Pirian and Banick.

And now he took another step and they stood before one another face-to-face and Garron looked up to her, and he said, "Let us merely share our beliefs. We can have an understanding, even if it doesn't blossom into cordiality yet. Share with me yours, and I will share with you mine."

 

[Kristen Pirian]

Kristen didn't trust him.

If she had been studying him carefully a moment before, now she was scrutinizing him, searching his countenance for anything and everything that might be the clue to unravel and lay bare his true motives. But this she knew to be a fruitless endeavor. Garron was a fox, a sly creature, and worse, one that had gotten to his seasoned age; he would not let slip anything he did not mean to.

Yet, as it had been with Edric in the jail, so now the same sort of impulse arose in Kristen again. She wanted to distance herself as much as possible from Garron. Where in the jail it meant ensuring her presentation was pristine, here with Garron the way to distance herself from him would be through her belief. She could lay what she thought down onto the proverbial table, assert herself with the strength of her devotion, and prove, no doubt, that she was anything but kin to Garron in the contents of her heart.

And so she began:

"I believe Vel Anir is the pinnacle of human achievement upon Arethil. For millennia have we stood in defiance of the many terrors of the world, we, humanity, who lack all the natural gifts inherent among other races, save only our tenacity and our spirit. And yes, while other predominately human nations do prosper—Elbion and Alliria to name two—I believe that our greatness, our Anirian greatness, eclipses theirs.

"It is not wrong to fight for the preservation of one's people, and this is what Anirians do best. War is the means by which a nation defends itself or asserts its just cause, and we who are Anirian ever strive to perfect the means of it. We must. For while it is only right to hope for peace, it is folly to depend on it. This is the world all who are mortal have inherited. And so it is the sword only which is the guarantor of the better things in life—Aniria understands this more readily than any other country. And of all these things, I am proud.

"But we are not without our woes. Vel Anir and its people have suffered, and we have suffered for a long time. I have seen it in the eyes of my fellow Initiates when I attended the Academy. The old ways, in both the Academy and outside it, were horrid, unspeakably so. We allowed ourselves to fall into the throes of corruption, and we lost our way. Evil took firm root in men's hearts.

"Yet hope prevailed. Though the day was dark, it was through the intervention of Talus and Zana Morid, and of many other brave Anirians, that the Revolution delivered us from our sinking plight. It is the sign of a healthy body if it is able to expunge sickness. And so we have. Our course has been corrected. The sun sets for men like you, Garron, but for those of sound heart, the new dawn has come.

"And now I come to it in full: I love my homeland, and I love my people. I love my family, and I love my House. I love my friends, and I love those whom I have the honor to stand and fight beside. I wish only to see them all prosper. Onto me has fallen the duty incumbent upon all Anirians who are possessed of magic, and now, here in this effort against Cortos, have I been properly called to it. So I shall. I shall do my duty as an Anirian, for indeed there is no better time, as I bathe in the light of that dawn which has come."

She ended, though she could have expounded far more on the topic. Relentless was her gaze upon Garron, all but daring him to challenge her. What could he say? He was a man who indulged in all his worst impulses, and denied himself no vice which he craved. Though he was a sly and smart man, his folly surely lay in the fact that he had no sure grounding, no true spirit of living.

But Garron at last came to smile.

"Your duty?" he said. "My Lady Kristen, the only reason you are even here...is because of me."

 

[Kristen Pirian]

Kristen blinked, shook her head first in bafflement, then in flat objection. "I do not answer to you, Lord Banick. I am here at the command of—"

"Major Charles Huntington." And Garron drank in the shock on Kristen's face. "You reported to him in Vel Anir, did you not? Or maybe the name of Sergeant Barker, who delivered your orders to you in Vel Numera, might convince you? I could name more, but frankly, I don't think there is a need. Your face is stunning to behold in this moment."

"...These men...?"

"What? Are in league with me? Is that the frightful thought running through your pretty little head, Kristen? I'll leave you to wonder if any one of them is or is not. Because you see, they don't have to be—not necessarily. One merely needs to know how to set things in motion. How to play the game, Kristen."

And now Kristen, pallid and reeling as she was from shock, nevertheless summoned defiance and said, "Your tongue is a cesspit of lies."

"Really? You yourself have not had any doubts as to why you're even here? It hasn't clawed at you? Gnawed at you? An unremarkable Fourth Level Dreadlord, with substandard training, sitting in the Reserves, and this is the person specially called at so late an hour in these preparations for war to join in the effort? But you know your role is superfluous. You know that the Army has more than enough fodder, at least for this first wave. Ohhh, my dearest Lady Kristen, I need you to know just how painful it was to get this done! I had to do so...much...convincing!" Garron tilted his head back and laughed and ran a hand through his silver and brown hair. "Your duty. Kress, if only you knew how truly unneeded you are here. You believe so naively in your 'country'...but your country doesn't at all believe in you. And even if you had been called without my intervention, it still wouldn't. Because you aren't what you think you are. You think yourself loved. But Vel Anir sees you as only one thing..."

Kristen's brow, her jaw, quivered with horror and anger.

Garron's eyes like blades pierced through her gaze, and his smile suggested that he gorged on the storm of emotion which beset and tormented her. And then he said it:

"...Disposable."

 

[Kristen Pirian]

That summoned defiance, that anger, even that horror—this mostly at the depths of Garron's depravity—formed a steely outer shell, ostensibly a worthy defense against Garron's spiteful words.

Yet unbidden came the chilling words, spoken by Edric in the jail, whose true weight she did not then, and even still now, fully know:

"But you?" He scoffed. "You don't even know what the fuck you're actually fighting to become."

And so for what steel Kristen had mustered on the outside, inside her resolve was becoming ever more brittle.

"You would have me believe you've painted the whole world black, merely to have me despair at the darkness. What manner of beast are you?"

Garron mockingly pressed a hand to his chest, as though wounded by her response. "Such coarse language, calling me a beast. I thought we were having a 'civil' chat?"

"Damn your notion of civility," said Kristen, heated enough in the moment to actually use coarse language, as was very much against her character.

"Ask me."

Kristen pinched her eyes shut. With colossal restraint she came to say, "Ask you...what?"

"Ask me why I have done this."

Her eyes slowly opened and she glared at him. "Merely say what you intend to say."

"Very well. Rob me of the chance to hear you ask. Oh, how I am injured!" Garron flashed a grin at his own theatrics, and then he said, "Regardless. It's quite simple, really. I brought you to war so you could die. I brought you to war so that you could prove yourself an utter embarrassment to House Pirian, and even to the country you love so much."

"Yet you have told me your design."

"But that's the fun part! That's! The fun! Part!" Garron thrust his arms out to his sides in a lavish display of power and grandeur. "What are you going to do, Kristen? Hm? Are you going to disobey your orders? Your lawful orders? KRESS! Please do! Now that would be a delightful spectacle, seeing you torn apart by the very Republic you love so dearly! And so, likely, you resign yourself to what you are bidden to do, and you go to this war. Now, Lady Kristen, this is when the paranoia sets in. Every situation you encounter, every enemy soldier, every so-called "ally" even, those very men and women ostensibly fighting at your side, you just won't know if I am standing behind them, if I have convinced or coerced or cajoled them into working my wishes and sealing your doom."

Kristen's porcelain hand curled into a fist, and yet for all the arcane, unnatural strength inherent in that artificial limb, she could here do nothing with it.

Garron, as if preternaturally sensing this, said with a low and quiet triumph, his gaze unbroken from hers, "I told you because you are helpless."

Edric

 

[Kristen Pirian]

"Helpless?" said Kristen, the anger which coursed in her veins now infusing her voice with a keen mettle. "I am a Dreadlord of Vel Anir, a member of a cadre of warriors whose formidable stature the world has not seen before nor shall ever surpass! And my rank matters not, for I suspect it has less to do with my ability, and more to do with malice against House Pirian. Even so, in spite of your threats and your taunting and your loathing, I shall accompany my brothers and sisters-in-arms to war, and I will return to Vel Anir with honor and glory whose radiance cowardly men like you shirk from, as the lot of you skitter like rodents back into the dark to plot and scheme."

Garron glanced about as though a crowd of sycophants were at his back, and then he turned a fell gaze onto Kristen. "Oh, how I wish we had this talk sooner! To think, for years—years!—I stood ignorant of the truth about you, Kristen! Augh! I feared the Academy might have beaten all this out of you!" Garron made a grand show of a cough to interrupt himself. "Well, let me not get too ahead of myself. I didn't think you were going to survive; it would have been magnificent to see you undone by your own choice. But, oh, goody, here you are, quite the ripe fruit, ready for the biting!"

"It will be my pleasure to disappoint you again."

"Disappoint me? My lovely Lady, but you misunderstand me! Why, I am this close!" Garron held up his hand, his thumb and forefinger nearly touching. "This! Close! To hoping you actually do survive the war in Cortos. Truly I am. I'm so torn, you see, between a delight I could have in short order, and a greater delight which could come with effort and patience."

 

[Kristen Pirian]

"Is that all you do? Is that all you live for?" Kristen said, disgust now making its mark in her expression, for the well of it bubbled over as Garron gave his elaboration. "Do you merely crawl from vice to vice, gorging yourself on all the worst indulgences of men?"

Garron smiled. "Ah, but I gave you a promise, didn't I? You shared with me what you believe, and now I think the time has come for me to share what I believe. I'll tell you much the same thing I told your father, years ago."

He turned and went back to the table and poured some more wine into the cup. He held it up as if proposing another toast.

"Vel Anir...is a means to an end."

And he drank of the wine and set the cup down.

"Your beliefs are terribly antiquated, my dear Lady. I can't say in which century of our past they became outdated, but those beliefs have been dead for a long, long time. You are so incredibly alone, Kristen, and even if you bring to account some few friends and family of yours that think as you do, all you will have done is provide the exceptions which prove the rule.

"The truth is, Vel Anir is the great, rotting corpse that all of us are crowded around, devouring, tearing what meat we can from the bone. And some eat more lavishly than others. Men take what satisfies them, what suits them, so long as they can get it. Lip service is paid to the name of the King, to Aniria, to "honor" or "glory" as you say, whatever lofty ideal it is, but no one—no one smart, anyway—is truly any more loyal than he needs to be. Loyalty is like tax here in Vel Anir: you pay it only because it is demanded of you. No one is a "good" person for the sake of being a good person, whatever it is you may mean by "good". And why? Because it is foolish. All of Vel Anir has become a system to crush the good, so that the ruthless can prosper. Everything is offered to you, but only if you have the stomach to take it, Kristen. Didn't you see this in the Academy? Didn't you hear of it from older Dreadlords? From seasoned Guardsmen?

"There is no 'new dawn' in the Republic. All that has happened is that some of the dogs eating from the great, rotting corpse have scattered the wolves. But the wolves will return, Kristen. Wolves are among the dogs even now. But do not misunderstand my metaphor: the dogs are just...as...hungry as the wolves. They make a fanciful pretense of appearing just, of scorning the nobility in favor of the commonbloods, but they dine on the same meat the Houses once devoured in exclusivity. And so those 'Councilors', those Generals, they too are like me, and treat Vel Anir as it ought to be treated: as a means to an end. And their ends, as are the ends for anyone ruthless enough to realize them, are whatever they desire.

"But what about you? You and your House, and all the things you and your lot say. Isn't it obvious? Your House—your father, your mother, your uncle and your aunt and many cousins uncounted—they all lie to you not because they hate you, or wish you ill, but because they are all, each and every one of them, delusional."

His tongue slithered out and Garron licked his lips.

"Just like you."

 

[Kristen Pirian]

And to all of that, there was only one thing Kristen, with all her horror and revulsion, could say:

"You're sick."

"Do you want to know what one of my greatest pleasures is, Kristen?"

"You. Are. Sick."

Garron stepped close to her again, the sheer delight in his visage nothing short of demonic. The very shadows inside the tent seemed to bend to his will, spreading and receding across the features of his face as he moved, enveloping him in malevolence beyond that of mortal men. "The one thing...I love to do above all else...is destroy innocence. And I see it in you, Kristen. You have the same eyes of the trusting dogs I have tortured in their kennels, of the young children I have purchased and killed in dark cellars, of the naive virgins I have bedded and made to bleed on the bedsheets. There is nothing so exquisite as taking something which can never be had again. I see it. I see it in those eyes of yours, Kristen. Something for the taking."

"One day," said Kristen, "I will do all Arethil a kindness, and drive a sword through your black heart."

"Will you now?"

Garron raised a hand. Slowly. Let it hover near Kristen's cheek. She glared at him and he feasted on her anger.

"Then the race is on...don't die, Kristen! Don't die in Cortos! That would be most unsporting. For you see, I think my turmoil is over. I think I know which delight I'd savor more."

The tips of his fingers ever so slightly touched her hair.

"I want to see them...your eyes...the very moment you discover the true reward..." And now his face twisted suddenly in a violent throe of rage and hatred and spite, "...OF LOYALTY!"

Garron gripped a fistful of Kristen's hair and in an instant Kristen with her flesh and blood hand slapped Garron across his face with such force so as to make him release his hold and go stumbling a step to the side. A small trickle of blood gathered at the corner of his mouth, and as Garron turned his head to meet Kristen's gaze one final time he licked the blood as though it were his prize for victory. His eyes burned with an infernal glee.

Kristen could stay no longer.

She turned sharply on her heels and swiftly departed from the tent, her heart beating like caged thunder in her chest and her hand quivering from torments untold.

 

[Rhory Grimmere]

The camps were laid out in a way that felt stifling to Rhory. There was barely room to breathe in most parts, driving the anxiety in her to an extreme. No matter where she went to seek solitude, someone else would appear in her space and an overwhelming sense of needing to lash out with a blade in hand would take over.

But those violent urges never came to fruition.

The silver haired Guardswoman collided with someone else that walked with the same determination and speed as Rhory had. The surprise jolted her from the anxiety filled thoughts, but the stumbling of her feet then caused her to slowly take in her surroundings before she was peering up into the sky.

This is what it looks like. She thought to herself. The number of times she laid on her back and felt death about to take her. She had been in this position once, a Rogue Dreadlord choking her to death, but in order to escape, she brought up a knife, slice her own throat and chin in the moment to drive the blade into the neck of her attacker.

Soft brown eyes blinked, then took in the vision that was the Lady of Vel Numera, Kristen Pirian. There was a worry on her visage that Rhory never saw before. She casted aside her own dark thoughts and quickly recovered to standing, not bothering to dust away the dirt that clung to her.

"Kristen? You've got storm clouds in your eyes."

 

[Kristen Pirian]

Kristen moved as if speed alone was the cure to all which assailed her. She walked as fast as one could walk, long legs striding with furious purpose, arms swinging and her hands now balled into fists. Her gaze she held downcast, as though to look upon any of the Guardsmen she passed would be to incinerate them. She had but a vague idea of where she was going, but the truth was that, right now, it was simply unimportant to her—she needed merely to move. To put distance between herself and Garron.

And so this was the arrangement of Kristen's circumstance when she took a swift turn around a tent's corner and collided with someone—Rhory, as she would in a second come to find out. And where Rhory had been jolted from her anxious thoughts, so too had Kristen been jolted—to some degree—from her horror and fury.

To some degree, because Rhory upon standing made mention of it at the first glance.

"Rhory," she said with a quiet, mostly controlled urgency, "can we go somewhere? Talk?"

So upset was she by her encounter, and beset by the tide of emotion caused by it, that it had not yet occurred to Kristen to apologize.

Rhory Grimmere

 

[Rhory Grimmere]

Rhory did not need to say anything else.
When it came to herself, she didn't fight for solitude or peace. She allowed noise and chatter consume her, but to see another friend — because that is was Rhory now considered the Dreadlord — in distress, Rhory would fight.

"Move!"

She was not a threatening character, but her voice held all that was needed for command. The Guardswoman cleared a path, leading Kristen to the outer reaches of the camp where it certainly died down from activity. She didn't stop there.

Rhory kept marching the pair to the nearby stream that trickled lightly past the large stones in it's way. No matter how many or how large, the water still found a way to continue it's path. The Guardswoman rarely made it out this far when her own thoughts began to spiral, but for Kristen, she was glad to have brought her here. "Come, sit." She smiled, climbing and jumping over the stream of water over the pebbled floor. She settled atop a large stone, draping herself across it so that her hand could dangle off the side and play with the ice cold water.

"You looked like you needed to be far from all of that." She began, not lifting her eyes just yet. Give the other young woman time to collect her thoughts. There was understanding between the two, and Rhory finally withdrew her hand and shoved it into her jacket to warm as she sat up. "I'm here to listen, Kristen." Truth and strength, that was was Rhory offered in her visage.

 

[Kristen Pirian]

The journey out from the camp and to the stream did wonders for Kristen's mind and heart—both had the chance to slow down. Some calm had come, but yet was there turmoil to unravel and soothe.

Kristen sat down on the ground by the stream's edge, her boots only just shy of it. She covered her face with her hands, less like one in sorrow and more like one in pain, and with the tips of her fingers she rubbed at her forehead, and gradually at her temples, until at last her hands came to slide down over her cheeks and then off the edge of her jaw and to finally settle in her lap. She nodded in agreement to Rhory's observation, for the din and busyness of the war camp did Kristen no favors.

Gods, Kristen had only known Rhory for a small matter of days, and yet it seemed to her as though they had known one another for many months, so quick was their bond, so firm did it feel. They were both women of the same number of summers, both with sword in hand doing their duties and overcoming hardships and according themselves with dignity and honor. By Aionus, there was no better person for Kristen to have run into.

But, goodness, she had quite literally run into her, hadn't she?

"I am sorry for knocking you over, Rhory," Kristen said, keen on apologizing now that it held precedence in her mind, but also, much like anyone suffering a great turmoil, because it made for a slow start to their talk. And slow, at present, was comfortable.

Rhory Grimmere

 

[Rhory Grimmere]

Rhory graced the quiet with a hearty laugh. "Please! All I can say is that I am glad none of the boys were around to see me fall on my arse. They would have been glad to see it after I bully them down to the ground."

Whatever was on Kristen's mind was not so simple for her to reveal so abruptly. She didn't press for specifics, only noticing how calmness began to seep into the Pirian the more they sat out here.

"Honestly, I was running from things too. It must have been, what's his name? The one you serve? Well, must of been his doing to put us on the same path so that we could come out here." The Guardswoman gave a smile. "You don't have to apologise for that. We are on the same squad. We are a unit. A team. We look out for our own."

 

[Kristen Pirian]

All I can say is that I am glad none of the boys were around to see me fall on my arse. They would have been glad to see it after I bully them down to the ground.

A small dose of levity proved a great balm, and even a smile, if meager, made its way briefly onto Kristen's expression.

The invocation of Aionus, and of divine providence, made for a heartening thought. Such were the subtle ways of the gods, whose designs accounted for even the smallest of things, that even a "chance" meeting might not be by chance alone.

And now slowly again would Kristen come to speak:

"I mean not to pry...yet if my sense of the matter is keen, then you and I may share some kinship in the similarity of our troubles."

If this was so, then Rhory would be well-positioned to deeply understand Kristen's own torment. And with gentle regard she asked, "May you speak on your ordeal with Commander Olem? His ire toward you seemed to be more than merely a tardiness concerning the delivery of maps."

Rhory Grimmere

 

[Rhory Grimmere]

Rhory sat up straight, her spine turning rigid as she practiced stillness. There was a hardness in her soft brown eyes, something that spoke of her anger towards the Commander.

"I am reaping the fallout of my father's crime. They served together in the past, and my father is well respected back home in Vel Cirak, but Olem did not like that my father got a promotion before him. It soured things, turned their words into poison until it became their very blood." She crossed her legs and brought them up to her chest so that her arms could wrap around them and resting her scarred chin on her knee. Her eyes went to the light stream, watching the water push over smoothed pebbles.

"He sold out my eldest brother in order to get the promotion before becoming Commander. I... thought that would have been the end of it, but then I was put into the 44th and... well... all my efforts, all that I have done to prove myself as a fourth generation Guardsman? It means nothing in his eyes. I am one of the best swordsman in the regiment and my military career is to be in a tent, redrawing maps."

There was bitterness on her tongue. As much as she came to love her friends, she could not help but compare herself against them, thinking she deserved a promotion from Private just as they all had...

 

[Kristen Pirian]

Kristen regarded Rhory attentively, listening to all that she had to say. Rank disappeared, and they were two women, each with their own woes—and as her father Neil once said to her, when Mother was distraught about something dire, and he listened and let her speak the fullness of it all: "She wished first to release the burdens of her heart." And here would be much the same.

And struck was Kristen when Rhory said that Olem and her own father had served together in the past. A chill, even, cascaded down her skin, for so alike was this to what Garron had said about her own father! Let alone the ire Olem carried on from the past to bring down upon Rhory.

"The unfairness, the injustice, of our Commander troubles me, and laden is my heart with sadness, that you now bear the brunt of his assaults upon your family name."

She looked down to the stream's water. Watched it flow.

"And it is as I sensed. We are kindred in this way."

Rhory Grimmere

 

[Rhory Grimmere]

Rhory had never thought much of Kristen's title, not even when her speech was heavily influenced by the noble upbringing she had received was a dead give away. She had always seen the Dreadlord to be an equal, for she was here on the front lines. That first day they had met, she did wonder why the Lady of Vel Numera was called out from the reserves to be here.

And Private Grimmere looked to Kristen now, the meaning of the last words she spoke resonating with her. "Who's giving you grief?" There was a hardness to her expression, as if she would blatantly stand against this individual as she did with Olem the day she delivered the new maps.

She was intrigued, curious, and all the more eager to hear Kristen's story. "No matter who they are, what station and power they hold, do not forget that we are young women that have power too. I do not speak of magic or gifts, I speak of our courage and the friends we have made. We are never alone in this." And Rhory would swear it here if that was what Kristen needed to hear.

 

[Kristen Pirian]

For all the emboldening which attended Rhory's words, raising aloft Kristen's beleaguered heart, there came now a fear and concern for Rhory herself. To tell her was to, in some real and frighteningly tangible sense, involve her. All of what Rhory had said was true, and Kristen believed it without reservation.

But the man who stood as Kristen's tormentor had a great and baleful reach, and knew no barrier to his evil.

Hesitation stilled Kristen's tongue, and her face made plain all her dreadful thoughts. But at last she said, "If I tell you, Rhory...there may come with it a terrible weight of knowing."

In her lap, Kristen cupped her flesh and blood hand within her porcelain one, as if to form a protective shell about it. She squeezed. Squeezed until her artificial hand began to pain her true hand, and then relented. Even after this delay she still wasn't sure what to do.

"Shall I...proceed?"

Rhory Grimmere

 

[Rhory Grimmere]

She took in a deep breath, and exhaled just as slowly.

Kristen was right, that information could be deadly just for knowing, could be harmful just by being in possession of it, and it could be heavy just by bearing it.

But she did not fear what words would come from her new friend.

"Let me share in this with you. I'll help carry it's weight on your shoulders." Rhory smiled sadly. She could see it in Kristen's posture, how this weighed upon her. Rhory hoped that it would ease the moment she began to speak of her worries.

 

[Kristen Pirian]

Rhory's smile, at least, brought a smile in kind from Kristen. A fleeting smile, yes, short-lived, but even this did as Rhory said and took some of the weight from her ordeal, for merely to have Rhory there, willing to listen, worked a great remedy to the ill besieging her mind and her heart. There truly was no substitute for companionship.

She felt herself on the precipice, like standing on a cliffside, knowing she must jump and fall and all the while hope that the waters below would catch her, and not the rocks.

At last she came to it. Said:

"It is the Lord Garron Banick himself."

The quiet trickling of the stream filled the pause.

"Do you know of him? Have you seen him? About the camp?"

Rhory Grimmere

 

[Rhory Grimmere]

Rhory's eyes widened with recognition.

"Oh..." She immediately said, chewing on her bottom lip as her brows furrowed deeply in a tight knit. "Banick, yes, I heard of him. What I have heard, it is enough to tell me that I would not like to be in his presence." In fact, anyone that had some authority to make life miserable, Rhory avoided to keep from herself from retaliating.

But her brown eyes held warmth, peering at her friend across the way.

"I take it he is no friend to the Pirians? You have a cousin, a Dreadlord too, in the Crosswind Squadron of the Western Army. I didn't see them, but everyone on that side of the camps heard their feud. He was merciless, scented blood and unable to keep himself in check." She returned to frowning, "A lot of us thought it was simply an argument, but now... now I am remembering what was said. I... I hesitate to repeat any of it since your cousin didn't have kind words to say." Rhory did not like the idea of repeating slander, especially to a name she respected and their Lady was right in front of her.

 

[Kristen Pirian]

Was Garron's arrogance growing? He had a fiendish intelligence and shrewdness to him, and that made him monstrously dangerous, and he, at least here in Fort Etrich, was careful enough to invite Kristen to a secluded tent before unleashing his venom. But to have a feud with a Pirian, openly, as Rhory described? It worried Kristen. For while a swelling arrogance would inevitably prove ruinous to himself, it also would embolden him to acts a more cautious and calculating Garron might not have done.

"He is no friend to House Pirian, and no friend to Vel Anir as a whole. And, Rhory, it troubles me immensely...for while he is no Councilor yet, doubtless he may try—and succeed—at gaining the office. It is the very office to which I aspire. How...?"

Kristen struggled not merely with how to say it, but with the very act of speaking it, this thought, this notion, which ran so counter to everything she believed.

"...what will become of us all, if our Parliament, our Republic, has naught but men like Garron, or Olem, in it?"

Rhory Grimmere