Corvayne jogged, pacing himself and giving the stumbling woman about twenty feet to his side plenty of space as she tried to veer away from him again.
“Let me know if you need water or want to take a break.”
“Stick... your spear... up your...” Bell huffed and stumbled and rolled onto the dirt. Corvayne slowed to a walk then offered his hand. The woman responded by covering her face up.
“You got a good distance away from our base, but you need to work on your running form.”
She slapped the dirt then started bawling on the ground. What would his masters have done here? The Watchers would just leave her behind. His old tribe wouldn't leave their recruits to die, but they would make them suffer in the sun for pouting or giving up. It had made them tough in a lot of ways, but looking at her he didn't feel superior, or smug, or the expected disgust at watching Bell break down. There was a little pity, but he let it slide off and focused on something else he was feeling.
How many times had he wanted to do the same, to give up, to just fall down? Slyly, he summoned a shadow hand, and the wispy limb gave him a thumbs up.
He sat down to face her, and offered her his canteen. “What can I do for you?”
“Just let me fucking go!” She yelled into the ground.
Corvayne looked around. “I will if you just tell me why the guild decided to dump you on us.”
“I-” She sniffled. “I don't know.”
Corvayne knew she was lying but shrugged. “Would you like a ride back to them so we can ask them together?”
“I don't need your pity!”
“I'm not offering you pity, I have devices strapped to the truck that go hundreds of miles in an hour. If you want to go home, or to your guild, I will give you a free ride. With all your gear.”
Bell finally looked at him. Corvayne didn't smile, or frown, or anything. He extended his canteen and this time she snatched it and drank, fast enough she started coughing. Corvayne went over to her and patted her back a little until she calmed down, then backed away again. In the moments that passed he started to wonder if she had heard him.
“You'd be back tonight. You'd lose nothing. I already say we are square, you attacked us, we forced you to go camping for a few days.”
“I heard you!” She snapped, rubbing her face. “It's infuriating! The fake mask you wear. The even tone. Playing at being a little emperor above it all. You've been messing with my head this entire time!”
“Because uhh, I've just told you the truth?” Corvayne felt pretty confused by what she was saying.
“Yes, your miserable straight face and bland stating of facts, has anyone told you it's humiliating?”
Corvayne frowned. “Fine. So, you have a reason you didn't say yes, right?”
She once more went from miserable to angry. “Hfm! Do you have any idea who I am!?”
Corvayne quietly checked off something he'd always wanted to hear. “I have ideas but as I said, I'm a total outsider. I really don't know who you are. All I know is you remind me of myself before I met my friends.”
“You think you're a... red-headed princess?”
“No, I mean being angry. Frustrated is a better word. When I watch you I see you get mad at the world around you, but I'm guessing you're more angry at yourself. You expect better results than what you get.”
Bell started to stand and hissed as she put weight on her foot. Corvayne forced himself to not roll his eyes at this, instead moving swiftly to catch her and gently sit her down before stepping back.
“What do you know? Hmm? Of failure? You stand tall, and have allies and women at your beck and call and even forsaken monsters bow to you.” There was a hint of envy or longing in her voice.
“I don't think anyone tells that spider what to do, especially not me. Figuring out why it saved me is on my list... we're getting off topic. I know a lot about screwing up. I was the worst warrior in my village. I was hated and an outcast, even to my own father. I had nothing, and I hated it, and I hated myself for being too weak to do anything about it.”
“I know! I was half-listening to you blather on about it the other day.”
“Well, I got a long walk back to the truck. If you want me to carry you, I can hear your story.”
She started to make a rude gesture but switched to clutching her swollen ankle. “I know what you are trying to do. I've had swindlers and philanderers after me before.”
Corvayne stood up. “I can carry you piggy-back-” “Absolutely NOT!” “Princess carry,” “I would slit my own throat before I let-” “Or throw you over my back like a potato sack.”
She stared at him. Corvayne nodded. “All right, option 3...”
“WAIT! Piggy back!”
He didn't need to wait long on the walk back across the dusty plains before she started rambling. Bell would have been heavy but he could maintain his strength power with a little bit of sloshing and sometimes shifting to vitality and changing gravity to keep her light.
Ah, her story. “The emperor, my father, who IS going to hear about this...”
Corvayne rolled his eyes. She was in her thirties, right? “Right. So why can't you go back home?”
“I refuse to be a breeding sow! I have a younger sister with five children already. I suspect the only reason I am free is that I.... I don't have a scrap of the royal gift.”
Corvayne hitched her up on his back with his shadow limbs, causing her to squeak and swat his head. “Impudent! You hear breeding sow and grab my ass? And DARE to call me impulsive.”
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“You were starting to slip downwards, and for as strong as I am I still need to stay balanced. Hold on while you talk.”
“Hmf.” Her grip tightened around his collarbone despite the obvious annoyance in her voice. Corvayne listened and tried to pretend she didn't have her legs wrapped around his back. “Should you start bragging about getting fresh with an imperial princess, I would remind you that it would be-”
Corvayne nodded. “You've told me I'm going to be executed enough times. Instead, please tell me why you can't go home to make good on it.”
“Well, I am gifted in swordplay, and rather than sit around as a brat factory, I decided to go on a quest to determine what malady is afflicting the royal clan... Wait! Ignore that!”
“Ignore what? Your empire has a magic set of defenses, and you're at about one in ten royal family members able to use them. They know about it here, in the middle of nowhere.” Thank Seru and Hari for dragging that out of Kirae with some well spent gold. “It's genetic drift.”
“You are speaking gibberish again! Tch! Cocky barbarian! I cannot wait until the imperial elites arrive, I will teach you your place under me!”
Corvayne thought about Seru bothering him and fought off a very real temptation to piss her off. Empathy. “I'm not cocky, and it's not gibberish. What you said about breeding... if it's not a dominant trait....”
“We have the blood of the empire!”
“Stop wiggling, I mean, you know how two people might have three kids that all have one parent's hair color?”
She stopped. “I have not spent much time thinking about such trivial matters.”
“I'm guessing that it used to be a long time ago royalty all could use the devices, but whatever traits that let you do it started to dry up... they are relics you can't replicate, right?”
“It's common knowledge!”
She gave him a little kick. Corvayne saw a stream bed coming up and walked down a sandy slope to the water, then lowered his and Bell's gravity and took a flying leap across, stumbling a little and using his shadow hands to steady them both as Bell shrieked from his back. He got his balance right before another slap on his chest.
“Warn me before you jump!”
“Sorry. Didn't think about it.” Corvayne thought about what she was saying. He wasn't going to bank on Mosh just waltzing up to the devices and recognizing them, as talented a crafter as the goblin was. He also couldn't imagine what the weapons looked like. His curiosity as a warrior made him want to ask her to lead them to an example, but he shook it off and went back to active listening. “So from what I'm guessing... You are looking for something else your empire can do to protect itself, or perhaps how to rekindle your own legacy, right?”
“... It's the only sensible course. My father had fifteen siblings, all duds.” Corvayne did not comment on the hypocrisy in her saying that. She continued, “My father cannot sire any more children, and the one prince with the gift has produced no heirs.”
Corvayne thought about it. “Is there a way to test for it? What if you find some commoner can activate the relics, too?”
“Testing commoners? The last one we found was married into the family after the census discovered her, but that was hundreds of years ago. A century ago they started asking non-humans to try, but it has been fruitless. We know our enemies have stolen devices we use for testing, and not once have they turned our tools against us. We've not seen the faintest of sparks outside the royal line in a century.”
“Right. And you are worried that if you go back home, you'll have failed doing things your way, and be hemmed into a life you don't want.” He was half speaking of his own fear, that he'd be stripped of his allies and pressed back into the role of desert cleaner. A risk he was willing to take for Wick.
Bell didn't dismiss his idea, leaning forward as her voice took on a husky intensity. “I'd rather die than return empty handed! It's inconceivable that the adventurer's guild kept trying to foist me off on SAFE missions rather than listening to where we should be looking for a solution! Nothing else matters!”
“Well, I understand why you feel that way, but they were right. You would have died on this mission. At the blades of our spider friend. Or the army of cultists would have killed your group. I killed a few of you and bested the rest.”
“You killed three adventurers, but nobody liked Erkus...”
Corvayne didn't feel as guilty as he had with the first group of bandits he had slain. The people he hurt and killed were trying to do the same to his friends. “You don't seem... close to them.”
She frowned. “I would have been more bitter but... NOT a WORD of complaint up about leaving me behind! The lot of them were BASTARDS!”
“Did you get to know any of them? Share food? Smile at them?”
“Of course NOT! I am a princess! They know the difference between us!”
Corvayne sighed. It wasn't going to be easy. He tried to think about how Grunt and Wick treated him when he didn't know the first thing about living outside The Watchers. “How many of them, do you think, risked their lives in the field hoping to achieve something they thought impossible?”
“What? I mean, they just wanted money, right?”
Corvayne was quiet for a while. They were getting closer to the black crystal near where the truck was. “Wick wants two things. To be safe, and to find out as much as she can about the world, the parts of how reality works that other people don't dare touch. Hari wants to be a great adventurer, but also seems to want love and acceptance. Mosh came along because he wanted to see how his work holds up. That and he thinks exposing his Tower-Folk girlfriend to more things will help her awaken faster. Grunt came because he felt guilty about us all dying last time.”
Bell tried to interupt, “Wait, What do you mean you all died?”
“Mister I wants to eat a lot of different meats, and I think he might be one of those kung-fu wizards. I was surprised Nyx came but he wants personal power and I think that's why he's friends with me, but him and Lady Blood Claw are hard to figure out. Horton I suspect is sort of like Wick, Gary still has something about the romance of battle... Spears? I think it's because I'm sort of a last straw she's holding onto for the past... even though Seru says it's for the story I can't figure out why she gave up her internet for this... there's a couple who are in for money yes, but it feels like that's almost an excuse for Brines... I should be spending time with them, because I owe them.”
“I thought we were talking about me!” Bell groaned. “ME!”
“Ah. Okay.”
“I suppose though you have a point. I've seen generals spend time with their underlings and it seems to... make them work better. What's your angle with me then? You got what you're after, as I've why I don't want to go back.”
“I... I'm helping you because I feel responsible for you, and I hope that extending some sort of help I can do better than the people who made me strong. They made me miserable. That, and dealing with someone who hates me, my old tribe, is the way I can see forward where I can marry Wick.”
“You say I hate you... Hmf. Don't you have an inflated opinion of yourself to tell me what I think?” Bell huffed, then sniffed. “It's cold out, can you hurry up?”
Corvayne heard her tone had soften, just a little. “If we had radios, I'd call ahead for more hot chocolate.” He finally could see the fishing hole and Mister I was still there, happily filling his cooler with smaller monster fish.
Bell for once sounded happy. “Oh, that would be divine!” Then there was a moment of silence. “Don't you dare-”
He spoke over her. “I won't tell anyone that you were happy for a single moment in our camp.”
“Good! Hmf. Seems this walk has some upside, as I seem to have talked some sense into you.” Bell sounded very satisfied on his back. Corvayne shifted from strength to vitality, spitting out a bit of black crystal that had formed in his gums.
“If I set you down, can you walk if I offer you a shoulder?”
He found it odd she paused for longer than a few heartbeats.
“I would rather not while my leg is injured and you exhausted me, herding me like a hound might his sheep. The least you can do is continue to be my personal mount.”
Corvayne winced. “Do you understand what you're implying?”
“Yes, that you're a beast of burden to be ridden into the ground.”
“Princess, if you were in a tavern, the lowly kind adventurers inhabit...”
He felt her shudder. “I've been in FAR too many of them.”
“And a woman said they'd ride a man like an animal, would that bring to mind me helping get you back to camp by carrying you, or something else?”
For a little while there was absolute silence, colder than the air around them, and Corvayne could practically hear the gears in Bell's head clicking.
“Inexcusable!”
“Yes, so please think about what you're saying about me. We both don't want people to get the wrong idea.” He nodded at Mister I, who waved and laughed the cupped his hands to greet them.
“Good job Corvayne! You'll bed her yet!”