It was late in the evening when the vicious battles outside the city walls had finally come to their conclusion. The snow had barely tapered off, as it continued to fall from the darkened sky in thick clusters and shimmered against the heavy fires stoked at each of the city gates. Those who had fought valiantly now returned in a battered queue, with some able to walk back on their own and many unlucky numbers who had to be brought back in the healer’s carts—fortunately enough, Lex counted herself amongst the former.
Many of her colleagues at the Cathedral had volunteered that evening, and it certainly hadn’t been the first time that she’d ever gone to join them. And while no great undead monstrosities had hindered her path at any point, there had been more than enough monsters to contend with--say nothing for the brutal might of the snowstorm itself. Was there any other perfect reason to dislike such weather, she had thought countless times, where even the simple task of walking in a forward path proved difficult.
Now she found herself standing in line with a group of strangers, the church mages she had exited the city with having long splintered off to tend to the wounds of various citizens. Small and unassuming in the midst of these armored fighters and other combatants, Lex shrugged deeper into her cloak and tried not to shiver. The wounds and exhaustion helped little of course, even if she had already dealt with the worst of the bleeding. All that was left now were masses of bruises and open gashes that had stopped their bleeding some time before and would need to be tended to upon her return. It was difficult to guess how long they’d been out there, but to her bleary estimation it must have surely been half the evening.
It was in the midst of her tired introspection when the mage caught sight of someone familiar. Lingering around the gates, he was easy to identify in the firelight. Feeling a sudden and peculiar sense of panic (as if she had done anything that would warrant being caught), Lex pulled the hood of her cloak lower and tried to go about unnoticed.
And it might have worked, were he not part of a trio checking the people re-entering the city as an extra form of security and triage. They occasionally swooped on an injured party and ushered them over towards the carts, rescuing them from the long walk back to the city centre. Rictor’s exhaustion hung on him in drips and drabs, like a weight knotted around his ankle and dragging him further to ground, but he kept looking at each face, each citizen, each fighter and mage and bard as they passed by.
“Hey, you,” he called out. The cloaked figure was attempting to scurry past the checkpoint without notice. The quick steps and lowered hood instilled suspicion where it wouldn’t have otherwise; Rictor broke from the other two and approached, a hand instinctively drifting to his gunblade.
But between one step and the next, he recognised her. Amusement, surprise, confusion, and then concern all flickered across his face within short measure, a cocktail of emotion like a fist to the gut. She was here?
(Then again, he shouldn’t have been surprised—she had a perfect tendency to end up underfoot, and Ric almost smiled at the thought of it.)
“Lex.” The nickname slipped out unbidden rather than the formal surname, the barriers he’d once insisted on maintaining between them. Long since crumbled, of course.
She had stopped in her tracks, caught between the urge to move toward Rictor and an attempt to try and keep moving. People continued to shove their way around her unhindered, a weary sea of the battered and wounded, eager to make its way back inside the city, and she utilized the crowd as something of a buffer—even if it was a momentary obstacle—to collect herself, or to try. A sudden feeling began to swell up inside her regardless, suffocating the icy breath from her lungs and clenching her chest.