Shesua was a man of his word.
The battered group kept up with his furious march through that evening and most of the next day, crossing back out of swamp land and into the more familiar grassland that they had been dealing with before. Deciding to return to the road that had been previously avoided, Shesua led them through through two small towns where the inhabitants nervously kept to themselves upon seeing Purple Dragon escorts. Hophni was sent into the small general stores to purchase health potions, extra food and water with what was left of their rationed money, but the time his errands took was all that was taken to sit or stand still. By the time Shesua himself was tired of the frenzied pace, the salty smell of the sea overpowered nearly everything else, brought in by a pleasant breeze swept off a relatively nearby body of water that Rafa referred to as the Dragonmere.
The group made camp on a small grassy knoll just barely higher than the flatland around it. Shesua insisted that Hophni be tied to Aleksei, Niku be tied to Rafa, and that both females remain with him. Mi'ishaen violently objected, and was tied hand and foot instead, but Silveredge laid down with Shesua as though she'd always been his mate. Aside from Rafa muttering to Aleksei that he'd probably kill Shesua if he were forced to allow his wife to be separated from him that way, there were no further complaints made. There was a terse silence at first, but after a little more than a half hour, sleep visited most of the group.
Except for Mi'ishaen.
Both of her daggers had been confiscated, along with the rest of her belongings. She looked over at Shesua, who had rolled her satchel up into his pillow and put her weapons into his pack. When she was certain that he was no longer merely floating between waking and sleeping, she scrunched her upper body as close as she could to her thighs. She breathed out and began to slide her bound arms under her tail and backside, fighting hard not to inhale too deeply. Once she reached her knees, she folded her legs and forced one hoof through her arms at a time, rolling onto the ground momentarily as she did so. A few grimace-laced attempts got her arms in front of her body, where she wasted no time in picking and biting the rope bonds apart. In a little more than twenty minutes, she was completely free.
High on the parapets of Letherna, where the dim light from the braziers reflected in the thick, crystaline icicles without melting the thick surrounding pools of ice, Silveredge sat in utter silence. Eyes closed and legs crossed, the Shadar-kai lifted her opened palms up from her bare thighs as she breathed in. She held her breath for a few moments when her lungs had completely filled and her palms had reached the height of her shoulders, then released it as she turned her palms outward and pushed her arms away from the center of her body. The tranquil sensation of complete inner balance lasted for the kind of eternity that fit into a single second, and Silveredge relished the delicacy of it, until she felt the brush of distinctly familiar wings at her back.
With a sharp intake of breath, she awoke into the reality of the moonlit night, then sat up as quietly as she could. Niku, whose store-bought strap was much shorter and stronger than the previous one had been, rested on top of Aleksei. Since the Dragonborn was turned on his side, the hound had perched himself precariously on one thick, scaly arm with his paws hanging down on either side. Rafa had turned himself in the other direction, forced by Niku to be nearly back-to-back with Aleksei, but seemed at least relatively comfortable with all his plate armor still on his body. Hophni was curled into a strange ball with his armor laid to one side, and seemed to have trouble breathing. Either he or his charge made sure that they were as far apart from each other as the strap between them permitted them to be.
Silveredge studied the strap that was holding her to Shesua for a few moments, then made the muscle of her thumb as flat as she could. With a bit of gentle tugging, she -pulled the knotted rope up and over her entire hand without undoing it, intending to simply slip it back on when she returned to the roadcaptain's side. She got up to see about Hophni, but paused when she heard a thump from some distance away. Her weapons had been confiscated by Rafa, but she listened for the source of the sound anyway.
I am a weapon, she reminded herself with a slow, cleansing breath.
The sound did not repeat, but other whispered movements did. Carefully tracking them brought her to a scarlet whirlwind of movement nearly five hundred yards away from the camp. Silveredge didn't have to think twice about what it was.
Mi'ishaen noticed the approach, and so was less than surprised to see Silveredge suddenly step into the way of her practice strikes. Like two dancers in a piece so familiar that neither one had to even open their eyes as they moved, the Tiefling and the Shadar-kai fought with a new and seamless grace. Mi'ishaen soon learned that Silveredge had learned to remain closer to the ground, protecting her soft and easily-punctured places with precise blocks. Silveredge noticed that Mi'ishaen had honed her natural athleticism, springing, flipping and turning like a circus performer so that she was difficult to hit at all, and that her strikes came from daring angles. One of them caught her in the back of her ribs, prompting her to sit down for a few moments as she recovered. Mi'ishaen's movement ceased immediately, and she thumped to the ground.
"I woke you up," she breathed as she pulled some stray hairs away from her nose and mouth.
"I had a disturbing dream," Silveredge managed, rubbing the soreness out of the struck area. "I would have woken up eventually."
"What was the dream about?" Mi'ishaen asked, scooting over to help Silveredge massage the area.
"I- was remembering," Silveredge replied with a distant tone. "When whoever it was held the master ring.... I was beginning to remember what happened, somehow. But I could only go so far. Afterward, I dreamed of meditation- as though I were doing it."
Mi'ishaen put her head over Silveredge's shoulder so that their cheeks could have touched each other. "What was that like? With the whole ring thing"
"Like nothing," the Shadar-kai sighed. "Whoever held it didn't give me a command, and did not know what they were holding, so everything just went blank. But they may get it appraised, soon. Any decent mage will recognize the spell."
"We're going to find that ring," Mi'ishaen stated definitely, getting up and rolling her head from one side to another.
Silveredge looked up, then got up herself, shaking her muscles free of their momentary rest. "And I will thank you."
"Sure, when we find it."
Silveredge sunk low to the ground, spreading her arms slowly. Mi'ishaen, remembering the kobolds' mistake, flipped herself up and over the crouching Shadar-kai to try to win another strike to the back. Silveredge leaned back and caught Mi'ishaen's leg in mid-air, but had to let go and roll out of the way when Mi'ishaen picked up her other leg in the effort to catch her neck or arms underneath her weight. The two scrambled up quickly, then poured themselves into fighting again.
"You- can talk- to me, you know," Silveredge managed between parries.
"Not everything needs talking about," Mi'ishaen replied simply. Her strikes glanced away from Silveredge's counters, but when the Shadar-kai countered one of the attempted strikes by planting a punch on the inside of her shoulder, the two backed away from each other for a few moments.
"Would you rather it distract you?" Silveredge breathed as the two circled each other like stalking animals. "It's the weight of your mind, not the acid spray, that disturbed you so thoroughly in the swamp. That slaver could have killed-"
"We're just sparring," Mi'ishaen shot back, charging at Silveredge with a chambered punch.
Silveredge grabbed Mi'ishaen's leading arm with one hand and put her other hand behind her shoulder, easily pushing her down to the ground. The Shadar-kai immediately stood to her full height and turned her back on the grounded Tiefling.
"We have never 'just sparred,' " she said pointedly.
Mi'ishaen sat up on her knees for a few moments, watching Silveredge move away from her as though she would return to the camp. A deep sigh slumped her shoulders and dropped her head, but it also stopped Silveredge from continuing to leave.
"You're right." With a low grunt, Mi'ishaen rolled forward and sprung back into a fighting stance. "Come back here- training be damned."
Silveredge turned quickly in response, and the two paused for a split second. Calm silver eyes met stormy crimson ones, then fluttered closed.
"I am for you, mistress."
"Damn right."
With new found energy, the two women threw themselves at each other. For no less than ten minutes, they threw grace and form to the winds- faces were slapped, hair was pulled and open skin was bitten without shame. After an attempted choke hold that only won Mi'ishaen another powerful toss to the ground, the two circled each other again, panting, bleeding and bruised.
"Does it hurt enough?" Silveredge dared, not much of her natural voice coming through.
Mi'ishaen launched into a flurry of vicious straight punches. "Why- why can't mages leave the past where it belongs? Gone- dead- buried?"
Silveredge fought hard to block the strikes as she replied. "The gods- give us- talents- and- expect us- to- use them."
"Screw the gods!" Mi'ishaen hollered, unleashing two wild-armed slaps. One was blocked, but another snapped Silveredge's head to the right with its severity. "If they exist at all, they do nothing for us mere mortal scum!"
"If there are no gods," Silveredge charged, stopping the third slap and stepping in to Mi'ishaen to deliver a low punch, "or rather, if they do not care, then perhaps it is some cosmic revenge for my mother's poor choices that spat magic in my blood- or simple bad luck that breathed the whispers of the dead into Seyashen's soul."
"What?" Mi'ishaen choked as she crumpled to the ground. "No- it doesn't make sense for one person's bad actions to affect their children, and I'm talented, not lucky. Losing both parents and a brother is not lucky at all."
Silveredge dropped to her knees, putting Mi'ishaen's face between her hands. "Then, if there are no gods, no cosmic retribution and no luck, is there nothing but chaos? Has every thing- every action, every word, every opportunity- been merely part of a series of mindless accidents? The result of unknown, unseen and uncared for things tirelessly crashing into each other, day by day, age after age, until our existence was formed from the void?"
"I don't know," Mi'ishaen conceded at last, throwing herself backward onto the ground. "How should I know? Ugh, that old man in the catacombs took a toll on you."
"Yes- I suppose he has." Silveredge thought about that statement for a few moments, then slowly crawled toward Mi'ishaen, pulling the stray hairs back up out of her face again. The Tiefling trustingly closed her eyes, which seemed to Silveredge as good as an acceptance of her unspoken apology.
"Seyashen walks burdened, I know, with conjuration and necromancy. Those two schools do not usually prefer each other in the same mage," she continued, lying down next to Mi'ishaen with her head on her chest. "Yet, it seems that he can do no other than obey those forces, for if he denies them, then they will tear apart his sanity. Now, if we will believe him, then we believe that the dead retain those feelings they had while alive. If they feel as we do, then they may also push those feelings down, as we do, ignoring them until they are too powerful to contain. If this is so, then perhaps your brother was at last so stricken with his grief that he could not help but compel Seyashen to speak for him, against even his better judgement. He must well know how little stock you put in the words of mages, even those mages that share your blood."
"I can't- I just can't- ugh." Mi'ishaen put her hands over her face and sighed deeply, and Silveredge listened closely to the breath in her lungs. "I don't know what to do. With what he said- any of it."
"He told you to your face what your brother was like- told you the name and the temperament of a male he's never met. And from the look of you as you asked those questions afterward, he answered every one of them correctly. Further, think of the caravan," Silveredge pointed out. "Who told Seyashen these men were coming for Aleksei?"
Mi'ishaen rolled over on her belly, laying her forehead on her arms as Silveredge sat up. "Maybe there was talk about town?"
After a few moments of silence, Silveredge reached over and began to undo Mi'ishaen's braid, marveling at the how thick and heavy the hair was. "Maybe there was. And maybe Iaden told him. And maybe some demon or god who desired to addle your brains whispered it in his ear- we don't know. Maybe it is enough, for now, to simply accept that he told you because he knew you would want to know. It is good that you have one family member alive that cares very deeply about you- and if you like, I will write to him for you."
There was a very long pause, and Silveredge closed her eyes as she laid her hands back in her own lap. She was surprised to feel her messy braid being taken apart.
"Sorry. About... your sisters. And your mother, too."
Silveredge opened her eyes and turned around to find that the Tiefling had sat up as well. Her fingers trailed in the silver hair without coming out of it, since it was so long, and Silveredge gazed deeply into her earnest eyes as she put her own light blue fingers into the midnight black hair that now fell over Mi'ishaen's shoulders.
"Hey- hey!"
Both females looked around to notice Rafa and Niku. The hound bowed his head and chest to the ground, picking his stub of a tail as high up into the air as he could to wag it. Mi'ishaen was surprised he wasn't bouncing around and barking, but Silveredge smiled at him knowingly.
"Come back, won't you? I don't know what you were doing, but you made quite a racket," Rafa urged. "You're lucky that Hophni has no manhood and that Shesua sleeps so deeply, or one of them would have come."
And without explanation or complaint, the two battle-warmed women got up to follow the male and the dog.
"You both look a wreck- I won't ask."
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