Aleksei, on his way to gather the kobold horde, led me to the hall that Syjen had claimed for his own. It was rather far from where Ylyssa's room was, but Aleksei smirkingly told me that it was close enough for him not to get lost on his way between the two.
I didn't dare question that statement at all.
At any rate, the writing on the walls was too strong of a tip.
Aleksei and I found that there were three Elven rangers standing around a door at full alert. I was about to push ahead, but found a scaled hand blocking my path. I knew Aleksei wasn't just copping a feel by the strength behind the arm- he nearly winded me with it.
"No bard will sing of the courageous death of the rogue who is trying a frontal assault," he whispered fiercely. "These Elves are ready for your blades; it will be better if they meet mine, instead."
"Where is your sword, then?" I asked. "Is it stone?"
Aleksei just smiled in response, moving away from me with a wink and a stagger. I crouched down, making myself as small as possible, and nodded.
As though he'd just gotten through winning a drinking contest with five old Dwarves, Aleksei leaned on the walls and sang just slightly off key. "Gde ved'ma? Ved'ma mertva. Ja kljanus', chto ona mertva; ja kljanus', chto ona mertva. My sozhgli ee telo, no Io szheg ee dushu. Ja kljanus' Vam, ved'ma mertva."
The Elves at the end of the halls looked around themselves with some degree of concern, but only really saw Aleksei when he was a few feet away from them. They seemed to have a brief conversation among themselves, during which Aleksei affably leaned on two of them. The third Elf turned to try to squint down the hall again, and with a quickness that astounded me, Aleksei ran him through with one of the other Elves' blades. The sound of the guard's scream apparently was enough to bring someone to the door- light from beyond it spilled into the hallway, illuminating the blood on Aleksei's borrowed blade and making it gleam as though the edge were on fire. I skittered down the hallway quickly, and as I slid around and under one Elven guard, Aleksei managed to move his arm from that guard's shoulder to his head, and literally snapped it back. I pushed myself into the room, finding Syjen with my knives on one side of the room, and Silveredge blankly staring at him from the other side.
The first thing I did was kick the door shut.
"You do realize that you've cornered yourself, correct?" Syjen began. "You won't even touch me. I'll just command her to fight you."
With a simple smile, I turned and extended Silveredge's katars to her, hilt first. "Then let her bear her own arms," I replied, "and give me mine."
Syjen squinted at me, probably attempting to figure out the situation. "Come," he commanded Silveredge, who walked right by me and stood at his side, back to me. "You will fight in Uirrigaen's hall."
I stepped aside, not wanting to start something I couldn't finish right away, and he left the room, with Silveredge trailing behind him. I walked out behind them both, stepping over the Elven rangers' bodies. Syjen didn't even look down, but I stopped to notice the arching slashes, the discolorations and the disjointed limbs Aleksei had left behind. One of the swords had flown away from its master and down the hallway, but the other two were gone.
So the beast who made me work so hard with one two-handed sword is also adept in swinging two one-handed swords around, I thought with a measure of respect. Are all of Arkhosia's soldiers trained that way, so that they might use whatever weapon comes into their hands as though it were their own?
"You thought I wouldn't notice the sudden darkness. Or the miraculous freedom Bahlzair and Aleksei suddenly experienced. Or the writing on the walls- no, that wasn't obvious at all. How many of Ylyssa's lies did you believe?" Syjen charged suddenly.
I did not respond.
"Did she tell you how terrible of a mate I was? How I would not touch her? Did you ask her why?"
"No," I sighed, "But I suppose you'll tell me all about it now. You seem like the melodramatic type."
Syjen laughed, strangely enough, and we walked the rest of the way to Uirrigan's exceedingly slender hallway in relative quiet. I say relative, because Aleksei's work became quite loud indeed, and one gravely wounded Elven messenger managed to escape to reach the halls. He screamed as he ran like a coward, tearing in front of Syjen, who hollered after him for a few moments before he was cut off by the sound and stink of six kobolds. The kobolds, chasing the Elf as though he were the only food they'd had for months, fell upon the hopeless creature, taking him apart with their small knives and their piercing screeing noises. In mere moments, the Elf's glistening bone was visible. Syjen, possibly annoyed more by the delay the attack caused than the actual attack itself, cast a merciless frost spell. The kobolds scattered, crying in frigid pain. One of them was trampled, dying underfoot, but his compatriots did not stop to help him at all. Syjen scoffed, and stepped over both bodies.
As we squeezed through the corridor, Silveredge reached a hand back and began feeling around. I immediately pushed up a bit closer to her, and she brushed my side slightly. When we reached the inside of Uirrigan's study, it looked as though nothing were wrong. Not a thing was out of place.
But Uirrigan was not there.
"So you killed him," I said flatly as I gazed around the place. "You didn't just hurt him, you killed him."
"No," Syjen replied, standing still with his back to me. "I was taught to respect winged Elves. I have simply... misplaced him. Even if he did manage to somehow... escape... he is the only one of his kind, and will most certainly find himself unwelcome in the world he has been locked away from for more than half of his lifetime. He wouldn't survive long."
"So then your task is finished, isn't it?" I shrugged. "Can you not just simply leave?"
"You should scry a bit more deeply next time, witch," Syjen scoffed. "I'm a trader; I always have been. I don't... jail anyone. I market their talents; match them to others who have need of them. Uirrigaen was a talented alchemist, until stubbornness and age gripped him. Once that happened, things became... increasingly difficult." He turned at last, handing my weapons to a motionless Silveredge. "Take them," he commanded.
Like a simple creature, she simply held out her hands.
"Good. Now kill her."
Silveredge turned slowly toward me and picked up her head all the way so that her beautiful eyes gleamed in the light of the few torches that existed. Behind her, Syjen sat down and crossed his legs as though he were about to watch her dance.
"I am for you," I smiled, dropping down to a defensive stance.
She couldn't quite get the hang of my weapons- in her hands, they obviously felt light, and far too slender. She didn't use most of the moves that I had seen in our first fight, and I wondered if she noticed that my fighting was a bit stilted as well. Since Bahlzair had already poisoned her blades, I didn't want to even graze her arm, even just for show.
"Stop," Syjen commanded after ten minutes of half-hearted fighting. Silveredge's arm stopped in mid-swipe, as though someone had used a paralysis spell on her, and I simply dropped my arms and backed away.
"So there is mercy in Baator," the Eladrin smiled wickedly. "Can't bear to harm her, I suppose?"
"I can't even give her a good working this way. Your spell has dulled her senses, has slowed her reaction time. Why do you think you found her without a pacification spell?" I turned the katars, blade toward me, and put them down on the ground. "Worse yet, although I can work with these, she cannot bear to hold my blades. Your spell must be keeping her quiet, but they are burning her hands even as we speak. Who could work well under such conditions?" I walked fearlessly up to Silveredge's frozen pose and jiggled my weapons until they came free of her hands. "I can do more than this, you know."
Syjen got up from where he had been sitting on the ground and suddenly appeared in Uirrigan's chair. "What you can do, go ahead and try to do. I dare you."
I stood close enough to Silveredge to hear her breathing, to feel her body heat rising from her as she still stood in her position. "The wound the kobolds gave you, it's healed?"
And Silveredge gave a very short, very quiet hum.
"Bahlzair fixed you up, I trust. And he gave me what I needed, too. How good are you at juggling?"
Silveredge put her head down so that her forehead just barely touched my shoulder. "Anything to draw the crowds," she whispered.
The sound of her voice, which I didn't even know I missed, thrilled through me. I put my own weapons back into their places in my armor, then picked her head up off my shoulder with both hands.
And just at that moment, Aleksei, probably accompanied by every kobold he could call, pushed through the cavern entrance. Silveredge calmly stepped to one side, pulling one of my knives back out. I took my hands away from her, and in one gorgeous, liquid movement, she turned to throw one of my knives at Syjen, who didn't disappear fast enough to keep it from burying itself into his thigh.
I quickly grabbed up one of her katars, surged up the dais, and planted it into Syjen's other leg. Either that, or the force of my run to get to him, pushed him back down into Uirrigan's stone chair. Behind me, Aleksei and his kobold army began to fan out into a semicircle. The Eladrin made only one low, deep grunt of pain, but must have been really in agony, since he didn't move to defend himself.
"Scream, Syjenge," I commanded, gritting my teeth. I pulled my knife out of his other thigh and quickly tossed it to Silveredge, who caught it, put it down, then picked up and threw her other katar. I caught that one and dug it into the leg that she'd first hit with my knife, maybe about an inch above the place where it had bit into his flesh. The kobolds, stinking to the heavens with their recent effort and Elven blood, screeched their enjoyment. Some of them even clapped or stamped their feet as I began cutting his clothing.
By the time I had Syjen mostly bare, his eyes rolled in his head- slowly, as though he were going to fall asleep or faint. I pulled both katars out and threw them to Silveredge, who caught them effortlessly, tossing them up into the air above her a few times before she put them down on the ground.
"What- what have you- what is this?" Syjen dared, his dilating eyes suddenly staring into empty space. "It is- cold- I- I see- I see Ylyssa-"
"Of course you do. You belong together." I turned my back on him and walked calmly down the dais. "You deserve each other."
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