Though Temerius did state the bond was strongest between two humans. So many different hypotheses have spawned from this quote alone. Factors such as cognition, emotion, species compatibility, Willpower, and Experience could be at play. It is best practice, at the moment, to believe that none save the gods understand them entirely; and even that might be a stretch.
----------------------------------------
“Come again, my lord?” Yoric replied. His mind began to race, the worst case scenario quickly becoming a potential reality. His worry must have been apparent for Lily grabbed his hand, holding on with a tight, comforting grip; fingers interlocked and squeezing with great force. Yoric looked to her, worry adorning her face like a mask. The Blue Bard was impossible to read. She seemed to have as much training in stoicism as Pierson, who faced them with a blank expression which indicated he knew not how awfully the implications of his words sat in Yoric’s stomach.
“I said that you were fine to take the job. It might be unethical to some crowds, but the Aegimari will not work to prevent you from moving, or even harming, those beasts. It would actually be illegal to stop you.”
“How on the Father’s Forge would it be illegal to stop someone from hurting them?”
The man’s eyes widened, the venom in Yoric’s tone taking him by surprise. He seemed unsure of how to approach his next choice of words.
“You see, Youngclaw, the changelings aren’t protected by Aegimari law. While the land is held by my companion, the Lord Heret, the High Lord of the Massif is their true owner. Seeing as he has not decided to pass laws which protect changelings, they can be harmed with impunity. If you were to go and move, fight, or even kill them, you would not be committing any illegal acts. If someone were to harm you, someone who is protected by law from being assaulted or killed, then they would be acting in a technically criminal nature.”
“Which means anyone who protects the changelings would be breaking laws regarding assault or murder.” The Blue Bard had said this, her breath catching as the final words came out.
“Aye,” Pierson nodded, a light grin on his lips. He seemed to revel in helping others understand the law.
- - - -
Anri could not believe what she was hearing out of Pierson. She had felt a tinge of satisfaction when she realized he had not recognized her. That had been smashed to bits when she heard the words coming out of his mouth. She had known of corrupt Aegimari, of pearly cloaks turned black. She had even met Aegimari turned Pathfinder, those who existed with absolute disrespect for the Ideal on a Hill. She had hunted them down, putting them in their place like the dogs they were. Never had she met one so truly prone to apathy; especially one who held a position of such power.
The sickness festering in her stomach dissipated, replaced by the fear only brought about by the dismantling of the control one had over a situation. When she looked to Yoric, she saw there was little she’d be able to do. His azure eyes had glazed over, his grimace activating Anri’s own fight or flight once she noticed. The girl held on to his hand, affection plain on her face.
“I didn’t accept the job,” the huntsman stated. He took a step toward Pierson, his fist igniting with raw Spirit. Aegis Kova; the manipulation of Spirit into a sheet of formfitting armor. She had seen it used plenty of times in her life, though it had always stuck to the surface upon which it had been applied. Skin, swords, hammers, armor, all of it. Never had she seen the power like this. The coalescing Spirit sat like an open flame from his fingers to his forearm, specks of Spirit rising from the surface like wisps of raw fury.
“I will not accept the job.” His Kova intensified. So much power was being concentrated into his hand that Anri felt her hair being blown back a bit, as if by a breeze. The Kova she had seen, even from the worst of criminals, had always held the appearance of control. The power was regulated by two concepts: Experience and Willpower. The great amount of Willpower required to mold Spirit into Kova forced the user to remain calm, disciplined, in control. It was like Yoric’s Kova had been forged in the opposite fashion. With Willpower, sure, but the will of a frenzied bear rather than a man in control.
Pierson began to pull his blade from his scabbard, showing Yoric the base of the blade. A cautionary measure.
The Master of Laws spoke. “Your choice is noted.”
Yoric continued to walk toward the night. He was going to do it. He was going to fight the man. An Aegimari knight. An appointed Master of Laws. Anri was frozen in place, unable to act against the sheer insanity of it all. The guard who had followed them in was similarly paralyzed, as though he did not believe his eyes.
The girl walked with Yoric, her empty hand reaching for a knife she hid around the waistline of her blue slacks. The consequences of her interference would be even worse than Yoric’s. Anri nearly exhaled in relief when the girl stopped reaching for the blade.
“Whatever they try to do to Ilya, I will do to them.”
“That could be construed as a legal threat, my child.” More of Pierson’s polished sword was unsheathed. Blue Kova reflected off of its sheen, lighting the throne room as though a blue sun were shining through its windows.
“Press charges then, my lord.”
They were hardly ten feet from one another. A confrontation was inevitable. She could see why he was to be the next Lord Captain of the Wardens at one point in time. She was equally awed and horrified, still unable to act, like the Kova in his fist had drawn from her own Willpower as well.
The girl swung herself in front of Yoric, wrapping her free arm around his torso. A hug.
The Aegis Kova flickered away, slowly diffusing back into the air from which it came.
Genius lass.
- - - -
“Hey,” Lily whispered, her voice quivering. “You promised.”
“I promised nothing.” The chill in his own voice shocked him. Lily remained stalwart, her arms wrapped around him.
“You said you understood. We have other methods to exhaust.”
“This is corruption,” he whispered despite the fact that Pierson could enhance his hearing with Prominence should he desire.
“Of morals, maybe, but you heard him. This is not against the law. We get nothing save their finest rat hole of a cell if you try to harm the man.”
He nodded. His mind understood what she said, accepted it as fact, a line of reasoning that he should definitely follow. Every inch of his heart and soul wanted to beat Pierson senseless, make him see what a fool he was for following such laws. How could he not challenge such putrid ideologies from his position? Pierson had a chance to make the world so much better and he just… didn’t.
“Let’s go,” Yoric said, and Lily’s arms unlatched from his torso. He looked to Pierson. This shell of a man was not worth striking; not when doing so would jeopardize their mission. They could do very little from a cell. He sighed, and Pierson met his eyes with a gaze which seemed to say that all of this disagreement was just a little unfortunate.
“I’ll be speaking to the Lord Heret when he gets back. I’ll let him know that you did nothing to help him.”
“And my lord will be satisfied with the fact that I did my job, that I followed the law to the letter.”
This man was a vessel; one made to enforce a bunch of letters written on parchment for the purpose of controlling the masses, providing their personal idea of stability. He was hardly a human, for he seemed to do no thinking for himself. Yoric had nothing to say to such a thing. The Blue Bard did, though for she had a question.
“My lord?”
“Bard,” he said with the same confident tone he had boasted through their entire conversation.
“Where might we find the find the Captain Percy at this time?”
The man grunted bitterly as though he had witnessed someone shitting in his soup. Rumors spoke of no love lost between the men, though Yoric had struggled to decipher whether they were rumors born in truth or those manufactured by someone who would like there to be an apparent rift between the two.
The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.
“You’ll find him at the Roost. The boy here will be familiar with it. I hear it is a tavern he frequents.”
“Are you keeping tabs on him, my lord?” Lily asked.
“He’s one of two huntsmen in a fifty mile radius. I’d be a fool not to.”
Pierson nearly left it all at that, though a sly grin covered his face like the pox.
“Though, I must say that your newfound fascination for the law is… interesting.”
- - - -
“You have to control yourself.” The Blue Bard words were as blunt as a blade’s fuller. Yoric remembered the entirety of his outburst, though it felt more like he had watched someone else threaten the Master of Laws rather than himself. His anger still sat deep in his bones, hot to the touch, ready to spread through his blood like Prominence Kova. He remembered the Kova exploding from his hand; power like he had hardly known. The stress of the situation was bearing down on him. Every moment without a reply from Ilya was another plagued by uncertainty. This was no usual uncertainty. This was the type one could only feel when they weren’t sure if their friend was lying dead in a ditch or not. He wanted to find Warden in the town stable, race for the colony, and use whatever he could muster in order to save them. That was what he knew how to do.
That was the most frustrating part of the ordeal. His solutions would not be enough. They were likely to hinder the lives of Ilya and the changelings.
Better they have a life to hinder than none at all.
Better to be a monster than to lose your loved ones. Your father knew that better than anyone. That is why you and I are alive, boy.
It is why you will keep us all alive, too.
Yoric lived in his head, unaffected by the nighttime chill and the argument occurring in front of him.
“Aye, control yourself better. That way you don’t need to depend on me in a fight. Cannot believe you pulled me away from Grace,” Abe whined. “Been working on that one for ages.”
“Forge off, huntsman. We’ve more issues than getting your stick wet.” The Bard spoke with her usual frankness. While her performances were graceful, elegant, or even striking, her interpersonal skills seemed nonexistent. If she did possess them, she didn’t bother to use them with Abe.
“Like? I thought you said the Master of Laws can’t do anything, and that we can’t really do anything either, and-“
The Blue Bard got in his face, causing him to yelp in an uncharacteristic fashion. Face red like a summer sun, she was clearly fed up with nonsense from all sources. She proceeded to yell as they walked down the street. “You think that lass is going to sit around waiting for you when I tell her that children could die and you did nothing to help? Could you live with yourself if anything were to happen and you didn’t even try? Is putting it in her worth the lives of those children? Is it?”
“I just, I don’t think there’s much to do, is all. Even if Percy decides he wants to do something, which he likely won’t, those two have always adhered to each other’s decisions when the other is left in charge. Never once have they contradicted one another’s rulings despite their famous inability to get along!”
“So we do nothing?”
“I think we wait for Yoric’s bird to get back.”
“And we do nothing while we wait?”
“I think we, at the least, don’t ask the man in charge of the fucking law for permission when it comes to something of such a sensitive nature. We now have no case where we can state we believed we were doing the right thing, that we didn’t know it would be illegal to help the changelings. Now we cannot feign ignorance, which often works when it comes to rulings for people like you three, because you’ve heard the legal truth of it from the man himself. You should ask forgiveness, not permission, as it’s so easy to declare an idea bad or illegal before anything has actually happened. It’s so much easier to spin the benevolence of your actions when you act in seemingly ignorant, yet good faith-“
“MY WORD, SHUT THE FUCK UP! BOTH OF YOU!”
Lily had erupted, volcanic anger spewing from her lips as she clenched her fist, staring molten daggers at the two as they looked upon her in disbelief.
“I apologize if arguing is just a manifestation of your need to cope with our current stresses, or if it is a way to distract yourself from the shit situation we are facing, but I can not focus on the issues at hand if the two of you are arguing! Please shut your mouths and get it together!”
They both grunted, obviously startled by the gentle Lily’s outburst. Neither apologized. There was no need.
A cloudless void painted the sky, the full beauty of the twin moons on display. Stars and worlds with names Yoric should have known floated above them, their beauty utterly undisturbed by the problems of the world below. While Yoric did not believe in life off of their planet, Sphoros, he and Abe had occasionally argued as to what off-world beings would be like. Abe believed cognizant life would be the same in all of the Celestos, the name for the entirety of the stars and worlds in existence. Yoric preferred to think that the issues of their kingdoms, their world, would be unique to them; that if off-world beings were to exist, they might teach them how to truly coexist, how to deal with the sheer moral degeneracy which plagued so many individuals.
A drop of liquid falling upon his nose took Yoric out of his stupor. He looked up, surveying the Arcwood lodges and stone streets for signs of rain, or perhaps a leak. His gaze went to the sky once again. Snowflakes fell with grace, moonlight shimmering through their translucent figures.
So beautiful.
The gods had given them a world with freshwater that collected in grand amounts and food that grew from the ground. The people of these lands could have gone through their lives eating fruit and loving one another. How had it all come to this? Why did hatred live in the hearts of men? Had that been an inherited trait from the gods themselves, or some unintended consequence? Stories said the Mother had gifted them bodies, the Matron had given them mortality, and Sol sentience. Did the hatred of men, this anger he felt so deeply, come from any of those?
“You care so deeply,” a sweet voice said to his side. Yoric looked to Lily. She was looking up at the snowfalls just as he had been, a faint smile on her lips. He had stopped walking. He had not noticed. Abe and the Bard were ahead of them, looking back with a look of exasperation. Yoric understood. His communication with them over the last hour had been sparse, him speaking only to hurry them up. Yoric could only imagine the storms of curses ramping up in Abe’s mind.
He began to take a step forward when Lily stopped him.
“Go ahead,” she yelled to the others. “We will be along quickly. Find Percy and have him ready for us.”
While Abe was still obviously bewildered, as evidenced by the throwing of his hands up into the air, the Blue Bard trudged on with a nod. Abe followed her quickly, whispering of insults Yoric figured he’d rather not hear. She put her head on his shoulder much as she had back at Tales. She still smelled good and clean despite their running all over town. She was warm, truly warm. Her familiarity was still confusing to him but, in truth, it was exactly what he needed to keep him grounded. Someone kind. Someone good. Someone who expected better of him.
“Watch the snow with me, Yori. Just for a bit.”
“Yes ma’am.”
As the flakes began to fall faster, the world was slowly colored white. The stone beneath their feet, the rooftops, the nooks between the logs which made up each of the buildings around them, all of them were covered in the essence of Wintertide. The Ward was silent save for the patter of snowflakes and the breaths of an overly familiar apprentice. Not even the crunching of footsteps could be heard. None would be out on the street at this time, not even to experience the first snows of the season. Despite this, the Sad Ward’s garment of winter white helped the depressing district feel a bit less so.
“You care deeply,” Lily spoke, breaking their short moment of peace.
“As you said,” he responded. An odd thing to say, that was. Lily had plenty of those.
“It is a wonderful quality. I think my master believes otherwise.”
“Aye. I don’t think she could afford to care much more than she does.”
She nodded, furrowed her brow as if to directly contradict the nod, and then frowned. “Yoric, I cannot understand that. Not a bit. That’s an odd thing to say for a man who was picking a fight with a Pearlcoat over his ideals.”
“She sees too much of the world. Too much of the sadness. I think she’d kill herself if she cared too much. Any bard would.”
“I do not think she would go so far.”
“Aye, she wouldn’t because she is able to dissociate from it all. She told me herself.” That had been a long while ago. Both he and the Bard had been in their cups for a long while. Despite his state of inebriation and the passing of time, her rant about the world and her passions had stuck with him thoroughly. The Bard’s views, upon reflection, were a toned down version of his mother’s.
The Blue Bard remembered the stories of legends and the underrepresented. She listened to their woes, recited them with passion, and prayed that she inspired others to make the world better. Of course she sprinkled in laughs and sobs and merriment. What bard would not?
Remember them.
“I can’t forget her, Lily. Ilya is always looking out for changelings. Who is looking out for her?” Steam rose from his cheeks. Why was he crying? “It’s possible that no one else cares for those changelings. Not a single person in this town, this Province, this whole shite-stained kingdom. If I forget them, if I stop caring, then I’m saying whatever happens to them is okay. I’m condoning it all.
“I can’t forget them. If I can’t forget them and they’re in danger, I have to help them.”
Remember them?
Snowflakes continued to dance in the night. Children could be slaughtered, yet the snows did not care. They would watch. The blood on their powdery coats would help remind them for a time. To remember was not to care. It was just the first step.
That is NOT enough.
“They deserve to live, Lily.”
She nodded. Her hands squeezed his. When had she grabbed them?
“What will you do, Yori? If this does not work?”
“I’ll ride north.”
“You will have the law against you. You could be incarcerated, beaten, tried for high crimes. An ordeal this magnitude could see you locked up in Winthrop!”
“Yes,” he spoke, his resolve deepening. “That’s fine. Someone has to protect them. Better I am imprisoned than them dead.”
Lily scoffed as if she didn’t believe him. Her eyes met his, disbelief turning into concern.
“You are serious?”
“I am. Someone has to care, else no one will think to.”
She actually nodded at that comment.
“I will come with you then, should it all come to that.”
“Lily-“
“I will not hear it. If you are going to look after them all, then someone has to care after you. It will not do to have you punching folks with that freak Kova of yours when they insult your ideals.”
“I didn’t ask-“
“I do not remember Ilya asking you to care for them.”
By the Forge. Who is this woman?
Where has a friend like her been all this time?
Happy tears streamed down Yoric’s cheeks. The deep pit in his heart felt a bit lighter.
“Aye, you’re right,” he said, sniffling as the words came out. “Won’t get too far without you, I reckon. I can’t ask Abe to fight the law like that either. Wouldn’t be fair.”
“You think he would?”
“I do. He’d complain, but he’d do it. He won’t need to if I have you, though.”
“And you do,” she said, still holding his hand. She began walking down the street again, leading him to their destination. “This captain has been waiting long enough, and I am ready to see whether or not I am going to end up in a cell.”