Two days after their swift departure from Prince Ithacles' camp, and nothing of interest had happened - no threat from above, no threat from the east, and the only battle they'd had was staying warm. Shine seemed to be doing well enough, but the other two phoenix plainly suffered - even with the mean provisions they purchased at the outpost Vedette had so kindly suggested. They were all a desert people, in truth, and to be thrust into so viciously bitter a climate was more than a shock; it was crippling. He knew the feeling. For himself, Ilyien experienced many mountainous adventures through his years in the Outer Realms, and although the cold affected him just as much as the other two, he knew also how to manage himself with it, how to endure. Endurance was a brutal but welcomed mistress. He could not have lived his lives so long in this world without her, but the suffering sometimes felt unbearable. It wasn't. Nothing was unbearable until one died from it.

If Vedette's hastily spewed instructions were correct, they were very close to the promised home where the villagers could make their new lives. Home. It was nearly foreign, the concept. His home was his duty; his residence was the dark places of the world. But he had no comfort from the word or from the idea. Sending up a brief prayer to the god of justice, he commended them to their new home, and pleaded that those villagers find welcome in that place. Another day, and they would be turning south again. There was relief in the thought, but only a whispering ghost of it; the stronger emotion was tension, wariness. His vigilance had only heightened as the days passed. They were out there, those unknown phoenix with their obscured duty. Were it not for his first duty to the villagers, he would already have begun the search for them. Better by far to encounter trouble than to have trouble encounter you.

Across the campsite, Sabev turned in her sleep, one arm folded under her body, and the other flung over her head. She was a sprawler, and something about that made the corners of his mouth turn up. The Speaker's granddaughter was something else. He would miss her when she was gone.

Perhaps it was the turn of his thoughts that distracted him from what should have been a slowly-growing presence in his mind, a niggling awareness. But when he recognized it at last, the feeling was so strong that he was surprised the other two phoenix had not woken from it. The cold was truly affecting them, and Ilyien could only hope that those approaching were just as weakened as the ones in his camp.

"Shine," Ilyien said, and as quickly as that, the elegant woman stirred. His call to Zavaith and Sabev was the same - their names - but silent. Still, it was for them a far louder thing than vocalizations could manage.

They, the other phoenix, the ones responsible for the massacre at the camp, were coming. They weren't far now. Ilyien drew his blade from its scabbard. A minute, perhaps. If they were lucky.

One naked hand firmly in the small of Sabev's back, he pushed her forward. She wanted to stay - and doubtlessly to try to help the burns they'd both seen on the captain's hands - but there could be none of that. The Prince had given his orders and it was to Ilyien to follow them. Apart from that, the sweet temper of the younger phoenix in front of him probably had never dealt with the closed hearts of the ones in the Outer Realms. At home, assisting others was as natural and as common as fire-building. Birds who never met before would assist in mending the wounds of another. Here.... Here it was different. It always had been.

His mind was on other things - how to proceed, how to lure the others to him, how to keep the prisoner from escaping - and he had just begun to lower his mental defenses long enough to mindspeak to Sabev about his formulating plan, when the unforgettable, unmistakable strains of a certain song filtered back to him. He stopped mid-stride and turned around...

Tidraq. Of course, Tidraq.

Two wide steps closed the distance between the two men. Ilyien swiftly, firmly set a hand over the strings spread over the opening of that instrument. "It would hardly seem the time, old friend," Ilyien grit between his teeth.

Tidraq was enjoying this. The merriment in his eyes, that impish twinkling, was too prominent for Ilyien to mistake. With a growl that was so stifled in his throat that it almost seemed a grunt, the firebird swept his free arm backward, catching the edge of the tent flap that he'd just pushed Sabev through. "After you," he said. And then, seeing the one who had saved him from the curses of the Deadlands, he added to Shine, "And you, Lady."

Odd. Ilyien expected that Shine would follow him and Sabev. She had come with them on this endeavor. Of course she would see it through. But what of Tidraq? Ilyien's eyes had missed the flecks stained on Tidraq's collar - old blood, not new. What exactly had happened that Tidraq had been stained with blood? It was strange; the dragon had no need to ever draw blood, to ever be around blood at all. Such was his skill.

Perhaps he had been healing some of the villagers.

Idle thoughts. They were hardly relevant now. Ilyien ducked through the tent flap and followed Sabev, Tidraq, and Shine.

The need to know just what had happened banked most of the accusation in eyes trained on him -- most, but not all. He needed no inborn phoenix ability to read their emotions; they were written clearly now in their expressions: dismay, betrayal, anger, and desire for retribution. Those expressions were why he was not looking at the ones gathered with him in the small tent now. Raking a naked hand through travel-greased hair, Ilyien continued to squint into the lamplight. His human eyes hurt from it, but the phoenix in him couldn't stop staring. He had never before felt so separated from his people than tonight. Tonight, when he refused to return to them. It had not been the wrong choice. But it had been a choice. His own choice. ( His one choice. )

They were in the foothills of the Central Mountains - not high enough for the cold to be painful yet, but high enough that Ilyien could feel the difference. Cold was to phoenix as mud was to fleshlings - wearying after a time, and difficult to shake. In the silver glow of the winter moon, it had been impossible to miss Sabev's discomfort. Surely, she couldn't have learned of how mountainous areas could drain their kind -- not after such a sheltered life as she'd led. She must have known, of course; she would have been taught at some point about the chill of other regions of Caeleste before she left her city walls. But knowing and knowing were two things entirely. The Guard still recalled - even after the Risings between now and then - the first time he spent the night in the mountains. He had done it alone.

And so, not so long after they'd made camp and finished their meal, not so long after most had bedded down for the night, Ilyien drew Sabev silently to his side. As he suspected, she was burning too hotly, overcompensating for the weather around them. It was better, he told her without words, to keep a lower, more stable temperature -- which cost less to them and still provided some measure of relief. She would learn it for herself soon enough. For just then, however, he set his arm around her and shared his warmth. As intimate as the gesture seemed, for Ilyien it was an extension only of duty, of honor. He could not allow her to suffer needlessly. Sabev seemed to understand, or perhaps it was just exhaustion -- but whatever the cause, she'd dropped into a grateful curl against his side and into sleep almost immediately.

His was the second watch of the night. There were enough warriors in the party that it was not necessary for him to take any other shifts, and the rotating schedule allowed a full night's sleep between watch nights. Ilyien could have chosen to take a few hours rest before his shift began, but tonight felt... different. As the moon crept higher in its orbit, then began its shift toward the opposite horizon, a tugging presence grew in his mind. He could not place what it was -- but it was terribly familiar, even for its faintness. He turned the sensation over and over again, examining it as a child would examine a puzzle - with equal amounts of frustration. But the awareness would not be named before the appropriate time. Only after the barren branches all but obscured the moon overhead did Ilyien understand what the feeling meant.

They - he and Sabev - were not alone.

The eagerness that swelled in his chest at the recognition of his own kind was nearly enough to push him to his feet. Were Sabev not sleeping soundly beside him, he would have moved, would have saddled and rode out to meet the approaching phoenix. As the minutes ticked by, he could finally make out the number of them - four, to be exact, all males. And all, he realized minutes later, Guards. They were his brothers. And from the as-of-yet tenuous connections he made with them through this distance, he understood their intent: they had come to find him. Him alone.

That got him on his feet. He was grinning as Sabev lifted her head. "Do you feel them?" he asked her silently. But he could see from her expression that she did. Offering his hand, he helped her stand before he turned toward the closest elven guard. "Four men approach from the south," he said. "They are colleagues of mine."

The elf seemed ready to argue, but in that very moment a short-range scout ran on silent feet to the Thunderbolt in front of the Guard. His news was the same - four soldiers riding with intent toward the camp. As the Thunderbolt turned to look at Ilyien with an expression that read, How did you know that?, Ilyien himself found questions of his own. How did the four know his location? Ilyien had long ago ceased reporting to the Praetor. And why now did they come looking for him? There could be only one answer: one of the Guards was an Ascendant -- if not a Psion.

"I'll go out to meet them," Ilyien said. But even as the words left his mouth, the sure and steady sound of hooves on rocky ground sounded at the far end of camp. Odd indeed that they would ride with such urgency in the night. His initial excitement had quickly faded. Something was amiss. He had never before been sought out - not even at The Breaking.

Ilyien turned on his heel and started immediately for the other side of camp. Their side of camp.

Orc blood reeked.

Even after having changed clothing, even after having covertly changed forms briefly to burn all traces off his skin, Ilyien could still smell the stuff on him. It hung as a miasma in the air around him - and the other warriors who marched with him up the mountain pass. They were not, as he had learned, Prince Ithacles' men. After having heard the tale, Ilyien selfishly found himself grateful for being turned away from a city rife with such dishonor. Still, the soldiers of this Lord Ilúvatar Voronwé had proven themselves valorous and capable. They lost but one of the refugees at the beginning of the skirmish; the thirty-three others were still shaken, but unharmed.

( Ilyien was not certain he could have claimed the same. )

"I'm sure it's all very tragic," said the elven guard at Terestai's south gate. "It always is. But refugees still cannot pass into the city."

There was a short pause. Behind the phoenix came the sound of a rasping, wretched cough. Ilyien's gloved hands tightened at his sides. Leather creaked. The exhaustion, the hopelessness, the fear that wafted off the sad group behind him was a constant reminder of his duty. Defend the helpless. Shelter the weak. Protect those who have need. There were only thirty four of them. Thirty four were brave enough to leave their dying village behind them in the hopes of escaping the creeping sickness of the Deadlands. Thirty four who had trusted in Ilyien, Sabev, and Shine to take them to a place where they could start over. Now they stood at the gates of that place, only to find it barred. Anger rose sunset-bright over him.

"I'm sure," Ilyien said at last, gritting the words carefully and distinctly through his teeth. "That an arrangement can be reached. If I might speak with your superior." It was ignoble to think of running the guard through --

The elven guard looked down his aquiline elven nose and smiled without mirth. "He's occupied, I'm afraid."

"I'll wait."

"You will go."


( Ilyien waited. )

Dying was easy.

Dying.

Ilyien stared up at the close thatched ceiling and wondered, in this bright and tidy room, when he had begun to think of it as 'dying'. He had been too long away from his people. Returning to flames... was different from dying. For the tenth time in surely the same number of minutes, the firebird lifted his human arms and stared at the swaths of bandages covering them to his shoulders. The pain was excruciating, a wholly different fire from the flames from which he drew his substance, and his movement earned him a stern but silent glance from the woman who tended him. His chest, too, was wrapped in the same clean, well-knit cloth. It seemed a waste to use such fine materials on him. He knew what he would do with himself once his flesh finished regenerating under that pale cloth. His body was an instrument for the protection of the weak, not a structure to shelter. Sooner or later, he would find himself in the same situation - or like enough. It seemed almost pointless, this use of good supplies on his body. But then, the Deadlands had worked peculiar things on him. He should have healed by now, with the drenching of his blood's potion with which he was covered. Instead, the insidious destruction that was the wound of the world had seemed to carry into him.

Dying would have been far easier than this. It was always the living that was painful. He took a searing breath and gingerly set his arms back in place again.

Shine said many things without speaking. Eloquence lived in her eyes, her movements, the delicate raising of an eyebrow. Despite being forever locked from the minds around him, he seemed to know her thoughts when she looked at him, then. A satisfaction in her eyes... a superiority, a knowing of what was best -- and she certainly earned it.

It was her face that he had seen when he stumbled, delirious and faded, from the hungry northern border of the Deadlands. He thought at first that he hallucinated; he recalled her from at least centuries ago. Recalled her from the wretched waste of a city, Charisat, where diamond mining meant more than life itself. But she had been the sole spot of reason and of civilization in that place. He could not have forgotten her - or the aid that they traded with each other - or the secret that she kept behind her lips. She knew about him, about what he was, although he had never admitted that she was right.

The first night under her roof had been worse than most he could recall. She returned his flesh to what had become raw bone in places and only his determination kept him from dropping into the ease of primordial fire. But she did not deserve to be repaid for her kindness to him by the great explosion of a phoenix' return to flames, nor did this village. Both Shine and this place had suffered enough, being so close to the expanding Deadlands as they were. He remembered bits and fragmented pieces of the trip to her home, and the village was dying under the pressure of the Asharan refugees. It had never been built to accommodate so many bodies, but it struggled as its people struggled, and for now, for now, it was surviving.

Barely.

But living... ( living always hurt. )