The room seemed to be alive. Water could be heard, running down the inside of the wall, wet and full in its impatience to meet the ground. There were creaking boards as one drunk couple or another stumbled back to their room to consummate their relationship. Skandra paid it no mind. At least, he tried not to. Thinking of Uathis with them was nonsense. Thinking of putting Uathis back in charge of that organization which had nearly killed Skandra several times over, impossible. But he needed the Ether - secure in his pocket - and he needed the access to this Satharine. There was little he could do about the fat mage except bring him along. Even though he still had this thumb the fool complained enough for ten women, all of them nursing an aching tooth. He complained about the heat. About having to walk. About Skandra's smell. It was almost enough to make Skandra want to cut off his fucking thumb, but there was no reason for it now. That might lose them the fat mage's cooperation. It would be a net loss, but Skandra might sleep better if they did.

( Drip, drip. )

There was no city in all the world quite like Agethlea. He didn't hate it as much as he hated Trone, but the hatreds were close. On a map, which might have been drawn by some ancient fool, it should say "Here There Be Mages" in block letters. Treacherous, cheating, lying, stealing, filthy miserable mages. Skandra's greatest wish was that the tidal flood which claimed Trone would come just far enough this way to destroy Agethlea, too. Both of them washed out to sea. Both of them obliterated by the wrath of the gods for being what they were. Awful places where no joy could reside. Technically, he recalled, he was banned from Agethlea for a dispute with the Hands of Prabhat that ended in one of the mages believing he was a chicken for all time. Crossing spells by mistake was a terrible business Skandra was told. This was no exception. They would trot the fellow out now and again to the students as an example. What could go wrong. Despite all of that, there was one advantage to being in Agethlea again.

( Large cities, urban places, were his homes. )

Lightning streaked across the sky, impatient, and when the first roll of thunder hammered home it began to rain. Skandra pulled the collar of his coat high; with his hands he checked each button of the front to ensure it was secure. You could, after all, catch your death of cold. He laughed like he'd never laughed before, like he was testing the sound, as the rain began to roll off the brim of his hat. Sita was carrying the shovels. And Elemmire... if he looked closely, as he tried to once over his shoulder, it looked as though the rain was sliding off her form without wetting it. That was the sort of thing he might have expected, but it was also unnerving to see. Unnerving to witness. Nothing in her face told him if it was the magic or the other. Nothing was going to tell him, either, he decided. So he also decided not to think about it. Despite the fact that he hadn't touched them in hours the dice in his pocket sounded loud when they ground together. A whispering click-click that he felt to his bones. Spring and summer storms were all too common this close to the border mountains.

( And this close to the Deadlands? )

It wasn't hard to track night and day in the forest. Just as it wasn't hard to see it when something moved, something that shouldn't have been moving. What was more difficult, and perhaps more frustrating, was figuring out exactly what moved. And why. Skandra was not a man of the forest - cities were the jungles that he combed, and to great effect. You could move between one place and another without being seen if you wanted to. This place with its green and its red and the insects did not appeal to him. Yet here he was. Only now was he starting to understand - if not what had happened, then what had happened to him. The world seemed slower when he looked upon it now, seemed to crawl, grasping desperately for something faster, but his eyes never failed to adjust. Those shadows became forms.

"Stay alert," Skandra said with a cheery smile.

( Humanoid forms. )

He opened his eyes.

The first thing he saw was fire. It wasn't there, but it was in his mind, the whole of it. On fire. Skandra knew what he'd witnessed. But what it meant... what it was supposed to mean. Salvation had come at the cost of horrors that no mind should have to endure. Was it salvation? The last thing he remembered was... that fire... burning all around him, sword in his hand. Sword. His sword. There was a reason for it. He knew there was something he was staring at now. Beside the torch, beside the sword, was a burning clove. His clove. Still burning. How long had it been sitting there? Skandra knew the dryness of his throat, as dry as a prostitute in the desert sun, but he didn't dare drink the water again. Not after what he'd seen. Would it be different this time? Leironuoth had called this his spring. Said it was his, and he could give it to whomever he wanted. But that wasn't the truth. It didn't belong to Lorien, or to the Champion of the Lion. That they'd claimed it was material, and that it had given rise to the Champion of the Lion for centuries was certainly worth noting.

( Poor, poor Drow. )

And she might have told him the same thing if he hadn't the temerity to just drink out of the fountain - instead her hands reached out for him as he fell backwards, grabbing him for that brief nanosecond before the sheer weight of the man tore himself from her fingertips, jerking herself away from the wall and onto the floor beside him.

Elemmire had expected fire and brimstone - holy by nature, to descent on them as per the stories told to her as a young acolyte but so far, the entire journey had been nothing but a joke and even divine comedy of sorts - which she half suspected if the Gods were indeed laughing at the duo for all the precautions they had taken.

On the ground for a moment, all she could hear was her own rapid and shallow breathing before it was interrupted by the incessant sound of water beating on the marble basin. Her eyes slowly moved around the room and before she knew it, the elf was standing before the mythical fountain numbly by herself as the water chimed in a melodious pattern akin children singing a rhyme.

How much did she want this? To live?

She who could not even acknowledge the slow circling of drain of the curse to Skandra earlier. She who in many ways, seen too much, heard too much, done too much - was she also too far removed from any ecclesiastical power's aid? And she, who never quite believed too much in anything.

Elemmire thought she saw something as she inched closer to the water. What did she have to lose, the elf wondered to herself as she stared at the frightening apparition in the water, nothing. To be struck down now would be more of a release than torture.

I'm sorry. She heard herself whisper as her hands plunged into the fountain, cupping and she leaning in to drink deeply from her hands like child.

At first, she felt nothing but the coldness of the water that quenched her thirst like any other drink would. Upon the realization that nothing had happened, a wide smile of relief cracked on her lips as she took a step back. Elemmire wanted to turn, wake Skandra and get out of her but as she did, her legs seemed to stop responding to her will and instead, sent her tumbling onto the floor, next to the immortal. The sound of her hand smacking on the floor was all she heard before darkness enveloped her.
( In Lorien's eyes. )

From the first of it Skandra wanted to go back. It was clear from everything he could see that they were the first eyes to see this tomb since... well, since Leironuoth had come here. The traces of his battle all those years ago were gone. No dead bodies. No spider web. No mist and no fog. As if all those memories he had of being strong, of fighting with the chosen force of an unstoppable goddess, had just been dreams that his mind had conjured for its own amusement. Skandra remembered humping it through this gods-forsaken jungle once before. Remembered the desperate fight against those drow. The tomb itself had long since forgotten. Its memory lasted as long as the leaves of a tree, and no longer. Maybe that was how it should be.

Now they were here, beneath the markers that called out names of fallen heroes to the ages, and he wanted to be anywhere but here. Anywhere but here. A sleeve wiped across his brow, and the free hand held a torch at the darkness as if brandishing a weapon. Just one torch. There was nothing to see but ... shadows. Here in the darkness he would have expected moonlight, or perhaps some kind of ... he didn't know. They were clever creatures, these elves, but something about this wasn't right. A great stirring of blood in his chest reminded him that he was alive. Hot blood. Heart beating faster. This was it, the answer to every question he'd ever had. And maybe a little bit more. One way was going to lead him to death, and the other to salvation. Yet something in him couldn't believe it was that simple.

( It never was. )

It was just like a thousand other wilderness hikes that he'd taken. The only difference, if you could call it that, was that he felt it in his bones. A weariness that no rest could mend. If his mind was not addled by drink then he felt ill enough to vomit on most days. The vomit was too often mixed with other things, so that he did not finally know what was contained in the wretched fluid. A disease? A sickness? Pieces of himself that clumped together like boiled fat? Skandra had tried to stare at it once and then went on his way, content with what it was. And what it was not. Too long spent on that was the road to madness, and he was close enough to feel her fingers on his face as it was. Didn't want to depend on that. Didn't want to rely on that. Sooner or later he was going to have to answer for a lot of things. Later. He hoped it was later. And somewhere in his heart was the still-growing ambition that this might not be the end of everything for Skandra Tyullis. The hope was just an empty thing. If he survived he didn't know what the hell he would do with his miserable old self. Bereft of the strength and ferocity of his youth.

( They'd all been young once. )

He stared at the assortment of things as if they would leap up and bite him. It was a set of throwing knives. To replace, he supposed, the ones that he'd in theory lost. Longer blades, narrower than his last set, but well-balanced. Skandra didn't know what he was supposed to do with them at first. Beyond the obvious. He would be dead soon. And dead men, he'd heard, were without need or desire of throwing knives and other weaponry. Was his aim still true? Could he still hit something if he wanted to? There were a thousand questions and none of them had answers. He knew he wouldn't stay. He knew he didn't want to stay. Beyond the obvious. What was left for him? To go somewhere and die? But not the tomb. Despite what he'd said to Leironuoth, he wasn't going to that gods-damned tomb. There was nothing in it for a haggard old creature that felt no kiss or touch of magic. What Leironuoth was describing was ... well, it was magic. It had to be magic.

( What else could it be? )

If there had been a clock in the room Aeotha would have smashed it by now. There was no clock, but time was ticking away. Every second she was a second closer to being done with the past. Every second reminded her that soon Eiron would be no more. Or, if Eiron somehow survived both the fury of the real Leironuoth, and the fury of Aeotha Easaahae, they'd both be dead. Finally they would rest, either in death, or with his death. It was all she could think about, even while she slipped away from them all to have a bath. Every second passed her by like hours did. How could she live another moment while Eiron sat pretty thinking he'd won everything. When she was clean, and dry, Aeotha dressed again. There were things that needed to be done before Eiron came.

( Like praying for strength. )

"No matter what happens, say nothing," Ithacles told him firmly.

"No matter what."

"I mean it."

"I know you do."

"And you're just going to do what I say?"

"Sure, why not?"

"You're a liar."

"True."

Skandra gripped Ithacles' sword in his hand, and would have admired the craftsmanship of the basket hilt, if he could see a damned thing in front of him. This staircase must be the one installed for access to the very bowels of hell. Walking without making a noise was easy. All you had to do was hold in your coughs. Behind him someone else was walking. Quiet. Too quiet for him to remember the name of the person. In the darkness you couldn't rely on anything like light to give you aid. Light would have died here. More darkness was welcome. He could make out the edges of stairs well enough. Could hear the clanking of an armed guard's gauntlets. After being so close to death he was surprised that he felt this good. Then he remembered. Laying off the tonic made him feel worse. Physically he was better. He was seeing the ghosts that followed him again. He was seeing them and hearing them and -

"You want to raise an empire, but what would you build it on?" Gershul's voice asked him from the shadows.

"What were you gonna build yours on?" Skandra laughed low. "If you take a thousand people and move to an island, it doesn't count as raising an empire. That's taking your ball and going home."

"I shouldn't expect you to understand."

"So why do you keep talking?"

( It was Eiron's prison. )

I am exhausted, I am exhausted----
Pillar of white in a blackout of knives.
I am the magician's girl who does not flinch.
The villagers are untying their disguises, they are shaking
hands.
Whose is that long white box in the grove, what have they
accomplished, why am I cold?

-- The Bee Meeting, Sylvia Plath


Her bandages were ultra white against her skin even in the orangish glow of fire light. It was difficult to ignore them when her next visit with the priestess was due. The healing hands of Lorien's follower were welcome and Vera was suddenly glad for her elf friend's connections within the country, even if she knew little of them. But the idea of ridding herself of the worst of her pains was distracting Vera. The thoughts that kept spiralling back to the things she had to accomplish in Tyrus' court and what had occured on the road...they chipped at her focus too.

Floorboards shook beneath her as Vera dipped her pen into the inkwell by her knee. The celebrations had begun the second night after arriving in Tyrus, after the proper pause was taken for the ones everyone mourned. Vera tried to stay away from the villagers and her friends, for her ability to smile was nearly as wounded as her body. She feared pulling them all into the blackness she'd inhabited since waking in one of the wagons. Eragos had lifted her up from the mud, they'd said. He'd carried her for some undetermined amount of time despite his wounds. No one would tell her how long, as if it were some type of betrayal of trust. She'd given up asking the villagers, but there were phantoms of memory: seeing his face in the rain, feeling the shadows of his hood. She wasn't so sure that what stirred in the depths of her chest, the thing that kept distracting her above all else, was shame...but it should have been.

Vera dipped her pen in the ink and wrote:

'Captain Agrippa...'

The name was drawn with care, the sharp scratch of the pen tip ringing over the subtle shaking of the room. Vera paused and listened for a moment, then leaned over the parchment, her heart squeezing tight in her chest. Pen strokes came in a sweeping rush, slanting like fire against the paper. And she knew this letter would burn her. She was telling him everything, as her honesty with the Captain was always brutal and forthright. When she returned to Simanel with broken pieces of her mask in hand to receive the Captain's judgement, his words would be worse than lashes from a whip. Vera refused to fear him. Or the consequences.

This would be the last trial she would endure for the sake of Tyrus. After Sisenand.

***

( The rain was pouring down again when she arrived back at the inn... )

Mud clung on Dinaden from his hooves to his knees. Collecting rainwater made the road slick and sloshy—-impossible to navigate without getting dirty. The day was made miserable by torrential rains coming down in spurts and blasts, as if Armas was emptying a bucket of rain he’d forgotten by the back door some weeks ago. The water and the low clouds made it difficult to see down the road or very far past the trees of the surrounding forest. This wasn’t the reason for the slow pace Dinaden and his rider took, however. They had ridden together through windstorms in the Acierran Plains and blizzards in the Central Mountains, which were far worse than some mud in the summer months. Vera’s held the reins tight for the first few hours, knowing that her horse wanted to dart forward and run as if the two of them were alone again. Dinaden was impatient because Vera never made him stay so long in one place and when they were finally on the road, she held him to a steady trot. The rhythm of Dinaden’s hooves squishing in the mud, the turn of the wagon wheels behind them created the odd rhythm of a march in Vera’s ear. Even when she encouraged the wagon drivers to pick up their speed the rhythm never changed. The beat morphed into a memory: sitting cross-legged on the balcony of the Red House, listening to the loud field drums on the spring fields of Eistocene that urged the city into competition and battle once more.

( The caravan that Vera led from Gali was unconventional at best... )

It was the light that filtered through the drawn shades that woke her, the warmth that bathed her skin lifting her sunken deep state of unconsciousness. Elemmírë stirred slightly - her vision blurring before coming into focus again. The shapes and shadows sharpened as her eyes fell on an every day earthenware bottle tipped onto its side and its conents spread out across the coffee table like a dark stain.

Elemmírë sat up suddenly but stopped as her body responded sluggishly to her command. Rolling slightly to her side, she eyed the bottle and the sickly sweet smell coming from the spilt contents. A deep sigh escaped from her lips as she leaned back against the bed head and held out her hand with the other, palms crossed. The grey elf knew the sluggishness and the brackish taste at the back of her tongue would soon fade but there were many things that wouldn't. Like the darkened welts that ran across her body, hands and arms. Elemmírë's hands trembled as she raised them to look at them in the light. Shadows fell between the gaps of her fingers and covered some of the welts as she drew in a deep breath and fought to concentrate. Her brows knitted together as her hands shook, with the welts blurring before disappearing form view.

The grey elf stared at her hands for a moment longer before rising from the bed slowly. While the battle had left her unharmed but drained, it was the attack of spasms that plagued her ever since Ellecdral that drained her even more. Even now, after recovery and study, the healer of Feinharad could only prescribed a temporary relief in the form of an opiate potion to alleviate the symptons While Elemmírë appreciated the held, she couldn't help feel a sinking sense of despair each time these attacks occurred.

Forcing herself to turn away from those thoughts, she focused on the present - the battle and the aftermath. She had done what she had promised to Vera and the council will be waiting for her report soon. The only way was to send a message discreetly from the next town or somewhere else. Elemmírë had no way of knowing what Vera was up to after this but she can only guess that the White Riders would have a higher calling somewhere else, like taking care of the survivors to somewhere which may or may not include her. The grey elf rose slowly from her bed, holding onto nearby surfaces as she moved across the room gingerly towards her packs. It was a few days journey to the capital and from there, there should not be a problem of sending a message back. Elemmírë had a feeling that this attack was just a small test of what was to come - for all that she knew, the cultist seemed to have acted out of fanaticism which did not fit the bigger scenario. If Eragos was right, then there is someone out there who is shrewdly strategising each of the attacks and that the someone escaped this time.

The council needed know.

Her fingers reached her pack, scratching across the surface searching for something and coming into contact with a smooth glass vial which she gripped for a moment before her fingers grew numb and dropped the vial onto the floor with a small crash - splattering the contents onto her shoes.

From a distance, Elemmírë watched stonily, her face a masque of impassiveness, as the surviving archers dragged the remains of their comrades over to the makeshift graves. Conscious of their lowered voices and fearful looks that they cast towards her, the elf chose prudently not to reply to their looks nor their whispers "witchcraft" that seemed to run through the village after the battle. Standing as still as she could in an effort to mask her own weariness, Elemmírë watched as they gathered before the graves, each removing their hats in plebeian obeisance, pledging to take care of the families that the dead had left behind and as well as to keep save whatever secrets that was exchanged between the dead and them.

The grey elf watched them calmly, wondering if they as humans could truly know what it was to be alive while other had left before you? To survive and the weight of survival. Elemmírë had her doubts and wondered which one of these men would wake up in the night, screaming of the horrors that he had seen. Her eyes flickered from one to another as she waited for them to say their peace before taking their first steps away from the scrap collection of religious objects that they had salvaged from their houses and temples. Ignoring them, she moved silently in a straight line that seemed to cut through their shadows and crossing the gulf before them.

Pausing to bend down slowly and pick up a handful of earth, the elf ignored the sudden rise in whispers behind her. Hefting the handful of earth on her palm into the air while pulling away her hood, she crumbled the earth between her fingers and allow the earth to fall between her fingers onto the fresh graves before her. Her voice shook for a moment out of exhaustion before steadying to rise to a lament of her own people, the grey elves and one that had not been heard out of the Central Mountain Range in years. The lamentation spoke of the mountains, the vales.

Rest your swords
Your trials and journeys have ended
Forever in Lorien's grace

Elemmírë scattered the last of the handful just as she repeated the last verse, allowing it to fade off into the thin air. The grey elf knew she could hardly be named as a priestess of Lorien but she did not cared what the temple elders would have thought but merely that these people had given their short minute lives to protecting their right to worship as well as Lorien's right to be worshiped - so protocol be dammed. Stumbling back slightly as a wave of exhaustion overwhelmed her, she quickly steadied herself without the help of anyone and turned to head back into the village without another world to the surviving archers. Waiting silently for a few moments, she stopped before a long figure furiously shoveling out another grave. The figure attacked the earth as though it was her enemy and that with every stab of the shovel, there was something to be begotten. The elf paused for a moment, trying to mask the fatigue and numbness that was slowly encroaching on her. Giving the lone figure a long enigmatic look, she spoke at long last,

"Are there really so many dead that you would rather bury them all then to tend to the ones who need you?"

To the naked eye it would seem as though nothing was moving in all of Gali. Night lay across the small village like a blanket. Bringing stillness to arms and legs in its quiet the night sought to stamp out all life. Eragos' hood was up, casting his face in shadow, and the ornate mask which was his by accomplishment covered his mouth and nose. Only the eyes were visible beneath that hood, and those just barely. He was crouched on the lee side of a cottage, with darkness hiding his white uniform as best it could, and watching the wall as it vibrated. They were trying to break through without making any noise. For the most part, it was working. What the attackers could not see was a blanket of archers lying on rooftops. Waiting for the time to strike. Elemmírë was up with the archers, where the best view could be had of the approaching enemy. That gave him enough time to collect himself and offer a prayer before the battle. Prayer was not his usual companion at such times. Bahamut had long ago stopped being a part of his life.

( Long ago, but the prayer was the same. )

Late evening stretched its fingers across the sky with determination both beautiful and terrible. Eragos caught himself for half a second watching those red appendages of the gods fading into black, replaced with black. It couldn't hlep but give a religious man the feeling of something ominous. He recovered himself just in time to block the swing of a stick with his own, and then another, and then another. The young men who had fought against him for two days' time were improving greatly in skill. Someone who was watching and knew nothing of swords might not have agreed - none of them had managed to strike him, after days of trying - but Eragos could see the progress. Variable attacks. Never repeating the same motion. He'd told them not to set themselves into any mental pattern but simply to fight. The Lady Vera had given a helpful speech on focus, pointedly not said anything directly to Eragos, and then gone on with her business. That was the way it was to be, then, with both of them pretending the other didn't exist or finding in their quiet moments that nothing of substance needed to be said.

( Which wasn't true. )

There were times that Cael disliked what her job entailed – in particular, moments like these. With her hands clasped in front of her as she sat at the chair, she couldn’t help watching her guest, a tall, dark haired elf sitting still as a statue in the chair in front of her. The price of power perhaps, Cael thought silently to herself as she cleared her throat to continue her conversation – albeit being a one way communication when her basic niceties were met with perfunctorily deadpan answers.

“The Council of Galadhad has received disquieting news coming from our northern neighbours of Tyrus.” Elemmírë’s face remained as placid as ever, almost as though she was somewhere else and lost to Cael’s words. “Word goes that a group of miscreants going by the name of ‘People of Aumzahad’ has banded together wrecking havoc and anarchy while trying to enforce their belief of atheism.”

( Cael allowed a moment of silence to fall between them. )