Arlette reclined in her seat in her office, her feet propped up on her desk, and took another swig of beer from an earthen jug. The liquid stung as it went down her throat and it tasted like garoph puke, but she didn’t care. She was well past the point of caring about anything at all, which meant the booze was doing its job and doing it well; so well, in fact, that she didn’t even react when the nearby door slid open without warning and a large armored and masked man marched inside. Well, two of them marched in through two doors, but who was counting?
“Yo, what’s this I hear about an elf getting past the border?” Blake huffed. “Why didn’t you tell me about this?”
Arlette hiccuped, her gaze going back to the jug in her hand as she wished for Lord Ferros to go away. She didn’t want to deal with him right now. She didn’t want to deal with anything; that was why she was already on her third jug. All she wanted was to recline in her office and enjoy the mental quiet under an alcohol-induced haze, a mental fog so thick that she couldn’t put two thoughts together if she tried.
Her employer sniffed and took an instinctive step back, waving his metal-clad hand in front of his mask. “Oh, wonderful,” he said. Arlette could hear the frown in his voice, though she couldn’t imagine it; he’d never once let her see his face in all the time she’d worked for him. “Just how drunk are you, anyway?”
“Not enough,” she replied, taking another gulp. “Come back tomorrow.”
“No. I want to know now. Tell me what you know,” he demanded.
“It’s Tehlmar,” she slurred.
“Who the fuck is Tehlmar?”
“He’s a guy I knew,” she helpfully informed him. “He died though.”
“He what? But...” He took a slow, deep breath. “So he’s a ‘guy you knew’ who ‘died’ but is now somehow locked up in my dungeon, alive.”
Arlette nodded slowly, the room drifting with every movement.
“So he didn’t die after all.”
“I watched it happen. It was real.”
“So what are you saying, that he somehow came back to life?” he asked with obvious disbelief.
Arlette took another large swig and let the silence do the answering.
“Okay... okay okay okay...” Blake muttered to himself, putting his metal head in his hands. “We have an elf that not only got through my border security somehow, but also is apparently back from the dead. So, as my head of security, WHY ARE YOU HERE GETTING WASTED INSTEAD OF DOWN THERE GETTING ANSWERS!?!”
“Don’t want to see him right now. Don’t want to see him ever.” She put a hand on her stomach and a hand over her mouth as she felt something begin to traverse her food tube in the wrong direction. Puke? Nope. A large belch erupted from her mouth and nose, with a hint of bile found within. Yum.
Blake clenched his fists and looked up towards the ceiling in aggravation. “Ahhh, I hate drunk people so much!” he said to the lights above. Arlette didn’t comment, hoping that this meant that he would go away. Unfortunately, he did not.
“Do you know anything?! What do I even pay you for?!”
“You do it, Mister Smarts,” she slurred at him. “Mister I’m The Smartest Person Here. Go be smart at Tehlmar and leave me alone. I’m done. Tired.”
And she was. So very, very tired. Of everything.
“You know what?” Blake huffed a few moments later. “Fine. Looks like, as always, I have to do everything myself. Be ready for a long talk about your professionalism tomorrow.”
Turning about sharply, he marched back out through the newly reopened door, only to come to a sudden halt just paces outside the room, his head turned towards something down the hallway that she couldn’t see. “Oh great, now what are you crying about-”
“BLAKEHEWON’TTELLUSHOWTOBRINGPARIBACKANDITRIEDBUTICOULDN’TDOITAND-”
Thankfully, the door shut and returned the room to blissful silence. Arlette’s hand fumbled with the control panel embedded in her desk until one of her three right hands hit one of the three buttons to lock the door, after which she leaned back even more and proceeded to stare at the ceiling and not think about anything at all. It felt nice, not thinking. She burped again.
Arlette wasn’t sure how much time passed after that. Time seemed to slip away when she got drunk; that was one of the reasons she did it. At some point, she thought she heard the door open again and some sort of background noises, but she paid them no mind. At least, she did until there came a massive WHAM from the desk beside her, causing her to jerk wildly and fall off her chair.
“Got your attention now?”
Arlette clutched at the side of the desk as she tried to get up, the world spinning around her. The best she could manage was to prop herself up on her knees, leaning against her desk. She looked up and saw Blakes. A lot of Blakes. Far too many Blakes.
“Alright, listen up,” the metal man said, his words forceful and stern. “You’re going on that date. Tomorrow. If you have a problem with that, go complain to the HR Department. Oh wait, those don’t exist here, so tough shit! As your employer, as your boss, and as the ruler of this fucking country, I order you to do whatever you have to do until you get some fucking answers. I want to know both how he got in and how he’s alive at all. Period, no if’s, and’s, or but’s. Capiche?”
“Ugh...” she moaned.
“Great. Glad we could have this talk.” He turned towards the door and made his way out, but stopped just before he passed through the doorway and looked back. “Oh, and I’m letting the other elf go. He’s basically their Ambassador and I don’t want to start shit with the Drayhadans right now. I stripped him of his protections for a while, so he won’t be causing any more trouble.”
With that said, he stormed out, leaving Arlette to sink back down to the ground and become a human puddle.
It was okay, Arlette told herself; she was so hammered that there was no chance she’d remember any of this the next morning, and everybody knew that you didn’t have to carry out orders you can’t remember. It was a rule or something, right? Or was it just something she’d made up right now? Whatever. She’d remember in the morning.
The tightness in her stomach was back. This time, it wasn’t just a burp.
----------------------------------------
“You know, my nanny told me as a child that your face will get stuck like that if you scowl for so long,” the accursed elf across from Arlette told her before taking a bite of bread.
Arlette refused to take the bait and continued scowling, letting her meal sit untouched on the ornate table before her. The only action she took was to bring a hand up to her temple and give it a short massage. Remnants of that morning’s hangover still lingered, especially the headache, though the pain in her head was likely less alcohol-induced and more Tehlmar-induced.
“How nice of this place to give us a private room,” the elf continued, taking another large, slovenly bite. “You think it’s because they didn’t want the rest of the patrons to know I was here? Wouldn’t do for such a fancy place to be serving Elselings like us; a restaurant’s reputation is a cherished thing, after all. Or do you think the Lord sent word ahead of time?”
Arlette crossed her arms and glared at him in the candlelight. The two of them were at a restaurant known as “The Gilded Vine”, named after an old Otharian legend about a king before the time of Othar who demanded that everything, from his furniture to the vines growing up his castle walls, be coated with gold leaf to properly show off his power and wealth. The place had been in business for over a century and was known as one of the most popular dining locations for the Wroetin elite.
“Yeah,” he conceded, “you’re right. It’s probably both.”
Picking up an ornate, delicate fork in one hand and a shining silver knife in the other, Tehlmar sliced off a piece of his meal, a large cut of meat from something called a ‘quellon’, a large waterfowl that lived only in southern Otharia. The rare birds were apparently a delicacy among the richest strata in Wroetin, though she’d never had one nor even heard of one before.
Putting the piece in his mouth, the elf’s eyebrows rose. “Hey, this is pretty great!” he observed. “Reminds me of the refalca back home, but with a saltier flavor.”
He chewed a bit more before swallowing, whereupon he leaned forward and stared her in the eyes from across the table.
“So, are you going to say anything or are you committed to ensuring this goes down in history as the most awkward outing of all time?”
Before Arlette could ignore the question, the door to her right leading to the main dining area opened, filling the room momentarily with the soft murmur of public conversation. Then the attendant closed the door and the chamber returned to its previous icy state.
“Is everything satisfactory?” the man asked. He seemed to be trying to keep the anxiety out of his voice and was doing a better than average job at it, but Arlette could still hear the fear hidden within. She’d had ample experience with such things since she started living here. She also noticed the way he subtly eyed their outfits, barely hiding his disapproval. Neither of them were wearing the fancy dress that other diners here would be required to wear—her because she didn’t want to honor this waste of time, and him because he literally only had one outfit to his name. “Can this servant provide you with anything else?”
“Alcohol,” they both said at the same time.
“Lots of it,” she added, sending Tehlmar a venomous glare.
The attendant glanced at the sword in its scabbard hanging from her hip with a wary glance but wisely chose not to comment on it. “Of course, of course. We have several wines, as well as-”
“Don’t care,” she interrupted. “Just pick something.”
The man nodded and beat a hasty retreat, once more flooding the room with sound before returning it to silence. Arlette had to give the architects and builders of this establishment credit: these private rooms were incredibly soundproofed, providing great privacy. The windowless walls were thick and solid stone. The door, though wood, was equally thick, with a sort of velvet around the edges to muffle any sound that might come through the cracks.
This sort of place seemed perfect for conspiratorial gatherings. Was this where the Otharian elite used to meet to broker decisions? Did she need to start keeping an eye on the people who entered these rooms?
“I was starting to think you’d lost your voice,” he chuckled.
“It would be better if you lost yours,” she replied.
“Aww, come now, Letty. I’m just trying to make conversation.”
“I don’t want to talk to you. Just tell me what I need to know so this can be over and done with.”
“No!” he objected. “You have to give me a fair shake, or it doesn’t count. That’s the rule.”
“I’m giving you the fairest shake you’re going to get out of me, ‘Prince’,” she shot back.
“That’s ‘ex-Prince’,” he corrected her with a cheeky grin.
“Shut up.”
The crushing silence returned as Arlette turned her gaze down to her meal sitting in front of her. It smelled delicious, but being forced to sit across from Tehlmar ruined her appetite. Seeing his face brought forth so many roiling emotions that she didn’t know how to handle. This was the man who’d abandoned her, who’d nearly crushed her ability to trust others after she’d finally recovered from the trauma Sebastian had inflicted on her as a child. For a long time, Tehlmar and Jaquet had been two separate people in her mind—an attempt to hold on to the joyous times she’d spent with the loud, boisterous mercenary. Then, when she’d read his postmortem confession letter after the final battle at Crirada, she’d found herself unable to maintain that partition any longer. They were the same person, and she’d come to accept that.
But, as she’d learned the night before, there was a massive difference between accepting this in the abstract, where “Tehlmar” and “Jaquet” were merely names and memories, and accepting it right in front of you. Just staring at his face as he chewed on his meal made anger flare up inside her, but at the same time, she kept seeing enough glimmers of Jaquet in the elf’s mannerisms to trigger feelings of nostalgia and even a bit of joy. These warring emotions twisted her insides up and she hated every moment of it. She didn’t know what to feel. She didn’t know what to do. All she knew was that she wanted to be anywhere but here.
A whisper of a sound graced her ears, and she looked over to the door. Had that been a scream?
Tehlmar glanced at her, then the door, and then back at her. “What? Did you hear something?”
Arlette’s scowl deepened. Shouldn’t her alcohol have arrived a while ago? What was taking so long? “Just going to check...” she said as she rose to her feet and made her way to the door. Gripping the long, ornate handle, she turned it and pulled.
Cries of terror filled the room, accompanied by the roar of fire.
In a flash, Tehlmar was out of his seat and standing beside her, looking around at the chaos. “What in blazes?” he muttered.
Smoke filled the air as people pressed towards the back of the main dining room, everybody’s attention on the large fire making its way across the large chamber with alarming speed. Unlike a lower-class restaurant, such as Kozak’s Tavern, The Gilded Vine was built almost entirely out of solid, fireproof stone crafted by a stone Observer, but unlike places of lower repute, it also contained a plethora of highly flammable furnishings. Flames crept along the high, plush wall-to-wall carpet, catching on curtains and licking soft, cushioned chairs.
For a moment, Arlette wondered how such a blaze had come to be, but then, through the flames and the smoke, she spotted the front double doors of the establishment wide open, a pile of blazing logs high and wide enough to cover the entire opening blocking the exit. Her hands curled into fists as she realized this was another terrorist attack. However, unlike the last time, there were no actual terrorists around to fight.
“We need to get out of here,” Tehlmar stated. Arlette agreed, but so did everybody else at just around the same time. The panic of the diners reached a crescendo and people began shoving and trampling each other to get out of the dining room through the kitchen entrance.
As they passed through the kitchen and out into the cool spring night air, Arlette’s instincts sent alarms blaring in her head. There were far too many people here in this alley; the exiting patrons should have spread out, leaving the alley for the more open streets nearby, but instead, everybody was still crowded close together, almost as if their way out was... blocked. Her eyes caught the silhouette of a person perched lit by the three moons on the rooftop of the building across the alley, the telltale outline of a bow in their hands. Then she spotted a second.
“AMBUSH!” she cried out, just as shrieks of terror began to ring out from both ends of the alleyway.
Arlette’s hand shot into her pocket, her fingers wrapping around the panic button used to summon her bodyguard skitters. Since the last “incident” where the skitters tasked with protecting her well-being had quite decidedly not done so despite her pushing the button, Blake had installed a new extra feature to the buttons to make her feel better. Now, when she pressed the button a small crystal would shine green, meaning the signal had been received and the robots were activated.
Her bodyguard skitters were stationed out by the front of the restaurant, set to not respond unless she pressed the button. All she had to do was press it and they would come swooping in to save the day.
She pressed the button. The crystal lit up red.
She pressed it again. Red.
She was going to kill that metal bastard.
It looked like she and Tehlmar were on their own, though not forever. The smoke and fire would draw more robots soon enough. But until then, they’d have to survive without her employer’s assistance. Well, she reasoned to herself, she needed to vent her frustrations anyway.
The archers began to fire into the crowd, so Arlette concentrated and conjured an illusion of thick fog to block their sight. She couldn’t stop the archer from firing, but she could at least make them do it blind.
From what she could see, the alleyway was as barren as could be; no crates, barrels, or other random assorted items normally found in trash heaps deep in alleys were conspicuously missing. Try as she might, Arlette couldn’t spot any easy way up to the roof where archers stood.
“We need to get up there,” she told Tehlmar, who nodded in agreement. “Shame you can’t just throw me like we used to do.”
Tehlmar quickly sized up the two-story distance. “I think I can do it. Probably.”
“What?”
“We have to do it fast before they choose us as targets. Squat down.”
“What?”
“Arlette, I need you to trust me.”
Fighting down her unsurety, Arlette bent down into a low squat, keeping her eyes on the enemies above as they blindly shot down into the alley. Her ears picked up the sound of somebody, surely Tehlmar, moving on the ground behind her. Then, two hands placed themselves squarely on her buttocks and squeezed, sending a gout of murderous rage flaring up inside her.
“What are you doing?!” she squealed furiously.
Through her anger, she thought she heard him say that something would hurt. Before she could fully process what that might mean, twin painful impacts slammed into her butt cheeks and threw her wildly into the air.
Arlette let out a loud, involuntary yelp as she flew skyward. It hurt like a motherfucker, like getting kicked by an angry garoph square in the ass, but it did the job. She shot towards the roof opposite of the restaurant, her arms and legs flailing as she tried desperately to keep from rotating upside down. It worked, sort of.
Arlette crashed flat into the sloped roof, her left leg hanging dangerously off the edge. She scrambled desperately to gain purchase before gravity pulled her over the side and barely managed to get herself fully lying face-down atop the slanted surface.
The archers recovered from their surprise quickly, drawing their bows in her direction. She pushed off with her left arm and leg, rolling up the roof just as an arrow zipped through her last position. Pushing her upper body up so she was balanced on her knees, she leaned wildly to the side to avoid a second arrow. The second shot went low, slamming into the roof in front of her and splintering into pieces. Sharp wooden shrapnel sprayed in her direction, but thanks to her dodge, she only took a few pieces in her right arm.
The two archers stood by the roof’s edge, about ten and thirty paces in front of her respectively. The closer one, a woman, was drawing a second time, and Arlette knew she wouldn’t live long if she let them both keep taking shots at her. Pulling out a knife, she whipped it towards the female archer as best she could from her compromised position. Caught off-guard, the woman tried to dodge but still took the blade to her thigh just above her right knee.
Arlette launched herself onto her feet and rushed the archer as the woman stumbled. Arlette hadn’t been aiming for the leg, but like any good warrior, she was ready to take advantage of the opening regardless. The alarmed archer redrew and fired off a shot at Arlette, but thanks to the archer’s unsteady stance caused by the slope and their injured leg, the shot went wide. Arlette was upon her a beat later. The archer tried to pull out something—a knife maybe—but Arlette was far too swift. The mercenary’s right arm swung and with malice and fury, driving another knife deep into the archer’s neck.
The woman’s body jerked and went limp just as an arrow drove itself into and through her body from behind, emerging from her chest with a sickening ‘ptch’! Sticking out of the archer’s chest by nearly the width of a hand, the arrow would have punctured Arlette as well had she been just a little closer.
Releasing the dying body, Arlette drew her sword and charged the other archer with a snarl, her path arcing up and back down the roof’s slope like a crescent moon so she would have the height advantage and more room to maneuver. Her already poor disposition soured even further now as she bore down upon the second archer. That shot had been no accident. He’d pierced his own comrade to try to kill her, a scummy move that only pissed her off more.
The man in her sights backed away with a frightful grimace on his face as two copies of Arlette appeared, presenting him with three indistinguishable, side-by-side targets closing in fast. He drew and fired on the middle one, but the arrow passed right through. Then it was too late for anything else. He put his bow up to try to block an overhead slash from the right-most Arlette, only to take a sword to the knee from the real Arlette on the left instead. His legs buckled and he toppled backward and over the edge to his demise.
Skidding to a stop just before she followed the archer off the roof, Arlette paused for a moment to survey the scene below. The flames of the burning Gilded Vine lit the scene. It was a largely windless night, and so the fire sent massive plumes of smoke straight up, covering the area with a haze. What she saw in the light of those flames was a massacre in progress. Five terrorists blocked each side of the alley, penning in the rich patrons of The Gilded Vine like farm animals ready for slaughter. And slaughter they did. Their victims were not exactly fighters, rather the type to hire others to do such “dirty business” for them when the need arose.
The terrorists on the left were quickly killing their way towards the center, leaving a trail of corpses in their wake. The group on the right, however, were advancing much slower, thanks to one infuriating elf. Facing down all five on his own, Tehlmar was putting up a great fight. In fact, in the short moment she stopped to watch, the “ex-prince” managed to take one down by catching the terrorists with a small sickle on the end of a chain. Swinging in from the left, it sank into the side of the woman’s gut. Tehlmar gave the chain a hearty tug, violently ripping the blade out of the terrorist’s torso and taking much of her intestines with it.
That settled things for Arlette. Better for her to help Tehlmar, making it a two-on-four, instead of taking on the opposite five on her own. Once the right goons were taken care of, the two of them could turn back against the rest. Looking around, she considered her options. The first archer’s bow and arrows were still up atop the roof with her, but she didn’t trust herself to use it safely. She had never been much of a talent with a bow, much to her adoptive archer father’s dismay. She also didn’t have many throwing knives left and she wanted to save them for more crucial moments. That left getting down to help in a more up-close manner. But how?
Sprinting along the edge of the roof towards Tehlmar’s end, she looked for some safe way back to the ground but found nothing. But a fall from this height was dangerous. Even if she were to land with a roll, she was likely to severely injure herself or worse if she landed on the hard, unforgiving stone surface. Then a bad idea came to her. There were several “soft” targets right where she wanted to be.
Arlette didn’t have the luxury of waiting, so, sadly, a bad idea was still much better than no idea at the present moment. Moving further to her right to line it all up properly, she sheathed her blade, took a running start, and jumped.
The terrorist never saw her coming. Arlette collided feet first with the top back of his left shoulder, the force of her fall sending him crashing face-first to the ground. Arlette followed, her flailing body spinning the opposite way so that she landed flat on top of him with her butt atop his head and her head atop his butt.
With a groan, she immediately rolled off the man’s twitching form. Even through the high of battle, she’d felt that. When that high wore off, she was sure to be in for some major aches and pains. But that was for later. Right now, there were more important things to worry about.
“Ha!” Tehlmar chortled as Arlette drew her sword and took up a position beside him. “Good one, Letty! Really got the drop on him!”
Arlette didn’t dignify that with more than a grunt as the three remaining terrorists pressed forward. Without a single word spoken between the two, Tehlmar engaged with the two on the left, leaving Arlette to take the one on the right.
Her opponent struck immediately and quickly, lashing out at her with a stab from his spear. Arlette barely spun around the powerful thrust, the spearhead barely missing her throat as it shot by her. She turned her spin into a rush forward, quickly closing the gap between her and her opponent.
The spearman had bet too much on his attack, his body badly off balance. Arlette capitalized on this, grabbing the shaft with her left hand to hold it still while she thrust her blade deep between the ribs on his right side with her other arm.
“Bull!” she called out as she continued with her momentum, throwing her shoulder into the side of her dying enemy’s rigid form and sending him toppling as she yanked her weapon free.
Tehlmar reacted immediately, his right blood weapon forming into a whip that wrapped around his right adversary’s leg as he smacked his left adversary hard in the face with a small shield. The left terrorist stumbled back, woozy from the blow to the head, while the right one was held in place as Arlette’s dying enemy bowled into her, knocking them both to the ground. Before any of the three remaining terrorists could recover, Tehlmar’s two blood streams merged into the form of an axe with a massive head. That head came crashing down on the two prone terrorists with deadly force, the long blade bisecting them both. Arlette threw one of her three remaining knives at the last enemy, who didn’t see it coming until it was already embedded in his eye. He slumped over, dead as all the rest.
Amateurs. These were amateurs. Just thugs with little training and nothing more, not anybody who could hold for even a moment against seasoned fighters. But then, one didn’t need much training to butcher non-combatants. Had they not expected the two of them to be here?
As if an invisible dam had broken, the remaining diners began to pour past them, running for their lives. Arlette and Tehlmar turned around to find the other five terrorists, having witnessed the end of the first group, were already turning tail and making a break for the other end of the alley.
“Oh no, you don’t!” Tehlmar growled, fighting against the flow of the diners to chase after their fleeing foes.
Arlette hesitated for a moment and then joined him in pushing against the rush. She needed to take those terrorists alive, so she could finally wring some information out of somebody who knew something... assuming they weren’t more copycats. Her little pause made all the difference, as it was why she saw the figure plummeting towards Tehlmar’s back and he didn’t.
The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
“Look out!” she shouted, reaching out as far as she could and just barely shoving Tehlmar forward.
The figure landed forcefully beside Arlette, two oversized knives lashing out and down towards Tehlmar’s back as the sudden ambusher’s fall came to an end. The shove made all the difference. Instead of diving deep into his back and lungs, the blades barely scraped him and drew two thin cuts below his shoulder blades.
Tehlmar reacted with reflexive speed, using the force of Arlette’s shove to drop and roll into a crouch with a large, flat crimson shield between him and his attacker. Said attacker wasted no time, launching forward with a flurry of swift strikes that put Tehlmar immediately on the defensive.
Arlette paused momentarily to stare at the sudden new arrival. Once she got over the shock of his sudden intrusion, she recognized him as Jerithim, the other elf who’d been locked up beneath the fortress the night before. What was he doing here?
The new elf out-sized Tehlmar by more than a hand’s width and looked beefier overall to boot. Arlette noticed what looked to be some sort of light armor underneath his tunic, as well as a strange-looking metal canister hanging from his waist.
“Stay back, Letty!” Tehlmar shouted as Jerithim pushed him backward with blow after blow. “This is Mask business!”
Arlette ignored him, rushing forward for an open stab at Jerithim’s unguarded back. Meanwhile, Tehlmar let out a growl and pushed forward, even more crimson blood pouring from his hands to envelop the larger elf’s blades.
“Got you, you son of a whore!” Tehlmar snarled as his blood hardened around the attacker’s weapons.
Instead of pulling desperately to free his knives, as Arlette had expected him to do, Jerithim growled and lifted, using the new solid connection with Tehlmar to drag him around into the path of Arlette’s sword.
Arlette pulled her blade up and tried to spin around the sudden obstacle, though it came so quickly and suddenly that she found only moderate success. Her shoulder clipped Tehlmar and knocked her off her path, while Tehlmar quickly released his hold on Jerithim’s weapons and rolled away.
Jerithim took a step back as Arlette charged him, two new Arlettes stepping out to either side. Each Arlette went for a strike at a different height, one at the knees, another at the waist, and the third at the throat. With two blades, the elf could choose to defend two of the three strikes. How many would he be able to handle before he chose wrongly? Most never made it past the third move.
However, Jerithim didn’t do what she’d expected. Instead of blocking, he jumped. It was a mighty leap, the sort that only a feeler could manage. Arlette desperately skidded to a stop as he flipped right over her head and landed by Tehlmar, knives out and ready.
Luckily for Tehlmar, he had already climbed back to his feet and was ready when the next series of strikes came. The two exchanged blows in a flurry of swings and thrusts, Tehlmar still working at maximum as Jerithim spun, swerved, and ducked wildly, striking like a snake from various unpredictable angles.
By now she knew what they were dealing with: an agility Feeler, the sort that used their enhanced strength and coordination to move quickly around the battlefield, dodging blows instead of blocking them. She hated fighting agility Feelers. Her greatest physical advantage had always been her agility over her opponent, which she used to avoid many strikes that she, as an Observer, would not be able to block. But agility Feelers were a different category altogether, and just touching them was a pain in the ass. At least, when she was alone.
But she was not alone this time.
“Fence!” she called out as she came within range, bending low to slash horizontally at her opponent’s ankles. The elf seemed to have a sixth sense for danger, as he immediately leaped into the air.
Arlette smirked.
Over years of fighting, the Ivory Tears had developed a long list of call words used to signal specific multi-person maneuvers during battle. “Bull” was one, where the caller would let their cohorts know that they were about to send their opponent reeling off-balance. Others could use that to their advantage to cause enemies to trip over each other, as Tehlmar had immediately done when they had fought the terrorists just moments before.
“Fence” was another signal, a tactic to use in a two-on-one situation. The caller would go low, trying to force the opponent to jump. And when they did...
Tehlmar thrust his hands up, a long, thin spike shooting quickly up after the leaping Jerithim. The enemy elf twisted as best he could, but could do little in midair to keep the crimson lance from piercing straight through his thigh.
Arlette couldn’t keep a small smile from peeking through her battle face.
With a hiss, Jerithim chopped at the thin pole with his blades, breaking off the blood that had pierced him from the rest connected to Tehlmar. Tehlmar immediately drew the rest of the blood back inside with a hiss of his own.
As he fell, Jerithim’s free hand flashed inside of his coat, pulling out a small unadorned bag. Before either of them could react, he hurled it at the ground and a large plume of smoke erupted, blocking their view of him. An improvised smoke bomb of sorts; Pari would not have approved of its construction, but it did the job well enough.
Both Arlette and Tehlmar took defensive positions, wary of anything that might come through the smoke. Without even having to say anything, the two of them split up, circling the smoke from opposite sides.
Arlette’s ears heard a metallic clang from somewhere up high but further down the alley. Her circular path finally led her to a point where she could see Jerithim’s previous position. To her surprise, he was still there, but his arm was extended outward in the direction of the clang from before. In that hand, he held the canister that had been attached to his waist.
The elf pressed a button on the canister and shot down the alley, his body flying up into the air as if pulled by an invisible giant. Only then did Arlette see the thin wire leading to the hook latched onto the corner of the roof where she’d fought the archers earlier.
“Shit! He’s getting away!” Tehlmar shouted, lashing out with a whip of blood, but the other elf was already too far away. With a moment, he was pulling himself up onto the rooftop.
Arlette pulled out her last knife and reared back, but before she could-
Crackcrackcrackcrackcrack!
Just as he climbed to his feet, Jerithim spasmed, fountains of blood and gore erupting from his chest. His body tumbled off the roof and landed with a resounding thump of finality. The elf had died before he’d hit the ground.
Tehlmar made to rush forward, but Arlette grabbed onto him and pulled him back as hard as she could. “Stay behind me,” she ordered, her tone uncompromising. “Don’t move.”
As if on cue, the first of Lord Ferros’s robots turned the corner and entered the back alley, its gun trained on her. Arlette held still as it approached, its long legs somehow deftly avoiding all the corpses littering the ground. A second robot came around the bend behind the first as it stopped just a few paces in front of her, its forward eye pointing straight at her upper body and face. She stared back, unflinching, and spoke the words her employer had required she speak into something called a ‘microphone’ on the first day of her employment.
“Arlette Demirt, access blue quilt seven, situation resolved. Cordon area.”
The robot released a series of beeps, turned around, and started to head back down the alley. The second one joined it and they headed back out to set up a perimeter. More robots would be arriving soon, along with members of the Ministry of Justice.
Arlette let out a shuddering breath once they’d left. She had no idea how those things worked, and in all honesty, she still didn’t trust them to not shoot her head off.
The spell now broken, Tehlmar grabbing her roughly by the shoulders and spun her around to face him. “Letty, what was that!?” he growled. “I told you to stay back! He was only here for me!”
Arlette grabbed his hands and threw them off her. “You idiot! He would have come for me the second you went down! He wouldn’t leave witnesses.”
“Ah... true, I hadn’t thought of that,” he replied, properly chastened. “That’s why you’re better than me at this whole cloak and dagger crap.”
“Tehlmar, you’re an actual spy.”
“Yeah, but all I had to do was wander around, keep my eyes and ears open, and not run my mouth,” he admitted. “Never had to care much about the plotting side of things, really. There weren’t many problems I couldn’t solve with my strength and my halberd.”
Arlette harrumphed and turned to look at the aftermath of the ambush, a dull, caustic self-loathing rising up to fill the hole left by the quickly fading rush of battle. Dead bodies lay strewn across the alley, dark blood from the corpses flowing together to form large puddles of sticky red failure. Her failure. Dozens of people were dead again on her watch, and she’d been unable to do anything to stop it. She hadn’t even managed to take any of the attackers alive for questioning!
Or had she? Quickly, she ran over to the man she’d fallen upon when she’d jumped from the roof, hopeful that she’d just knocked him out. The hole in his cranium, likely from his impact with the rock-hard ground, quickly dashed all hope. Unless...
She whirled back towards Tehlmar. “Can we bring these people back!? I need to interrogate them!”
The elf shook his head. “It’s not that simple.”
Of course it fucking wasn’t. It never was. Impotent rage howling inside her, she slammed her foot into the corpse’s side.
“Gods-”
Her foot slammed into the terrorist once more, her body trembling with futile anger.
“-mother-”
And again. Her vision began to blur as tears formed in her eyes.
“-fucking-”
And again. Her voice quavered.
“-damn it!”
Fighting just to keep on her feet, Arlette staggered over to the nearby wall and sank down against it with her head in her hands. The tears started flowing and she couldn’t get them to stop.
What had she been thinking, taking a job like this? What had possessed her to believe that she, somebody who’d never done anything more complex than lead a small mercenary band, could handle something as complicated and important as the security of an entire nation? She was a nobody, a nothing, a miserable failure.
For more than a season, she’d been powerless to stop these attacks. They came without warning, striking quickly before fading back amongst the general population before her forces could react. Somehow, not even Lord Ferros’s omnipresent surveillance operation could track them for long. They’d enter seemingly random buildings nearby and just vanish like spirits, leaving no trace they had ever been there. What few terrorists she did manage to corner before they could disappear would kill themselves rather than be taken in, leaving her once more without leads.
This ambush was just the last in a long line of failure. The blood pooling on the ground was just more blood on her hands.
“Tears aren’t like you, Letty,” Tehlmar’s said from nearby, his voice interrupting her spiraling thoughts. “After all the death we’ve seen, this is what does it?”
“You don’t get it. I’m supposed to be able to stop this, but I can’t!” she sobbed. “These people are gone because I’m not good enough. I’m supposed to be protecting them from danger and I can’t even make the slightest difference. If I was worth anything, I’d be able to do something and these people would still be alive. If I was worth it... if I was worth it, Pari wouldn’t have died.” Her body shook as she vented her deeply-held inner thoughts aloud for the first time. “I should quit. I don’t deserve to be here. I’m just making everything worse for everybody.”
“Bullshit,” came the immediate response. “Since the moment I first met you, I’ve never seen you quit at anything. You’ve made it through much worse stuff than this. Are you really willing to let this be the end?”
“What does that matter? All that matters is that people are dying and I can’t do anything.”
“That’s bullshit, too. People lived today because you were here. Everyone in there would have died without you.”
“A few. I barely saved anybody.”
A hand wrapped around hers, its touch soft and warm. “You saved me,” Tehlmar softly reminded her.
The words sent a small tremor through her and she looked up towards him with tear-filled eyes. He was right. She’d saved him. If she hadn’t acted in that last moment, he would have died, his lungs perforated by Jerithim’s blades.
All this time, she’d felt adrift in a stormy emotional sea, unable to resolve the questions Tehlmar brought out from within her with his mere presence. Her spur of the moment actions were all the answers she needed. When faced with the prospect of losing him twice, she’d acted without hesitation. Deep down, she’d forgiven him long ago.
Arlette sniffed deeply, sending gobs of mucus dripping down her throat and forcing her to cough. She wiped her face and nose on her sleeve.
“I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I’m glad you’re back,” she told him.
“Me too,” he said with a large smile. Pulling her to her feet, he threw his arm around her shoulder and led her towards the alley exit. “Now, I think it’s time we stopped feeling sorry for ourselves and started celebrating our continued survival the proper mercenary way, the cheaper the booze, the better. That’s the kind of ‘date’ I was talking about. This place was far too stuffy for the likes of us, anyway. Come on, I know a better place.”
----------------------------------------
“I had to make sure I had my hands placed properly, or you would have gone flying into the wall,” Tehlmar explained, taking a sip from the large tankard in his hand.
“And that required you to take a squeeze, did it?” Arlette inquired, arching an eyebrow. She took a gulp from her own tankard, enjoying the soothingly familiar experience as it trickled down her throat.
“Well, I couldn’t have you moving right before you launched, now, could I? I only had the energy to do that once, so I had to get it right.”
“Uh-huh.”
“It’s true! My techniques take a heavy toll, especially something like that. I’m feeling pretty beat just from that short fight. I bet that’s why that bastard waited until the fight was nearly over and I was the most worn out. He would know I’d be worn down at that point.”
“Why, exactly, was Jerithim trying to kill you, anyway?” Arlette inquired. “You’re both masks, right?”
“Jerithim? That’s his name?”
“You didn’t even know that? Yeah, he got Sofie and Pari out of Crirada and snuck them into Otharia, so Sofie kind of considers him a friend of sorts. He’s been living here ever since as a sort of pseudo-ambassador until the Drayhadan government sends over a real ambassador to replace him. Until tonight, I guess. Sofie’s going to be very upset when she finds out what happened.”
“Feh. Let him rot,” Tehlmar spat.
“You haven’t answered my question,” she reminded him.
“Well... simply put, I deserted. Nobody joins the Masked Battalion because they want to, and it’s a lifetime conscription to boot. So they take a hard line to keep people from bolting. Anyone who leaves is killed,” he informed her. “You desert, you die.”
“And you decided to desert even knowing that?”
“My resurrection brought with it the opportunity to start over. Since the Battalion and my family thought I was dead, for the first time in my existence I had real freedom to carve out a life that I wanted for myself. No more spy crap, no more etiquette lessons, none of that shit. So I came here.”
“But then Jerithim found you,” Arlette chimed in, starting to put the pieces together.
“There hasn’t been a Mask in Otharia in centuries. We don’t grow on trees, you know? So the higher-ups chose to use us to keep tabs on places that actually matter. By the time it became clear that this place mattered, your lord already had his border in place, so getting in was deemed too risky until they could come up with a safer way in. I thought this was the only place in the world I could safely expose myself.”
“Whoops.”
“Yeah,” he glumly agreed. “Now they know I’m alive, which means I’m a deserter who needs to die. My clan knows too. So much for freedom.” He tipped his tankard back and chugged the remaining half of the container in one shot.
“The ironic part is that he wouldn’t have even been here if it weren’t for you,” she told him. “Sofie only convinced them to help us by using your name.”
“Of course she did,” Tehlmar groaned. “I swear, that girl exists only to cause me headaches.”
“Well, she stayed by my side through thick and thin, even when I tried to get her to leave, which is more than I can say about certain people.”
Tehlmar at least had the decency to look abashed.
“Besides,” she continued, “by coming here, she kept us all alive. Without her here on the Eterians’ behalf, Lord Ferros wouldn’t have cared enough towards the end of the siege to help us as much as he did, holding off the Monster and all that. So if she didn’t bring Jerithim here, I and the others probably would have died when the Ubrans swarmed over Crirada with the Monster leading the way. Then they would have had days to prepare for you and the Stragmans. You wouldn’t have even stood a chance.”
“If you say so...” he shrugged, though her arguments seemed to have little impact on his morose disposition. He flagged down a server who brought over another tankard, from which he immediately took a large gulp. “Well, what’s done is done. Do me a favor, would you? Let me stay here. Otharia’s pretty much the only place I can sleep safely now that my cover’s been blown.”
“I’ll think about it,” she replied. “Keep in mind that if Lord Ferros decides to throw you out, there’s nothing I can do about it. So perhaps consider making yourself useful and telling us what we want to know, hmmm?”
“We’re getting there, we’re getting there...” he said, leaning back in his chair with a contemplative look in his eye.
The two of them settled into a short silence as they each retreated into their own heads to deal with their own worries. Arlette finished her beer and ordered another. Just as the server retreated—though the staff had been polite so far, Arlette couldn’t help but notice the speed at which they left the pair’s proximity—Tehlmar spoke up again.
“You know, you talk about the Earthlings like they’re gods,” he observed. “I don’t think you should.”
“It’s the truth though, isn’t it?” Arlette shot back. “You know just as much as I what they are capable of. Do you still have the nightmares?”
Tehlmar nodded. “It’s pretty rare nowadays, but every so often it happens. You?”
“Same.”
“You know, I’ve actually met the Mother of Nightmares a few times now. She wasn’t what I expected.”
“Really? What was she like?”
“Old. Impossibly old. You can just feel it, looking at her, like she’s lived a thousand years. She’s surprisingly somewhat nice if you get to know her. Her servants adore her too, or so I hear. But mainly, she’s just this tiny old human woman. Nothing terrifying, and most definitely nothing like a god.”
“That tiny old woman who took down an army of thousands all on her own,” Arlette pointed out.
“I know, but I just...” His face scrunched up as he fought through his buzz to find the words he was looking for. “They don’t scare me, I guess is the best way to put it. I’ve seen a god, and now I’m maybe the only person to have seen a leviathan up close as well. I cannot properly describe how absolutely insignificant I felt to both of them. Those are the beings to be feared. To elevate a person to that level seems... wrong.”
Arlette’s face grew grim. “Then you don’t understand just how powerful Earthlings are. I get it. The Mother of Nightmares is one thing. The Monster and Lord Ferros are another. Honestly, I think that, if they wanted to, Lord Ferros and the Monster on their own could conquer the entire world in a matter of seasons, just the two of them,” she admitted.
“You can’t be serious. Those deathbeasts are terrifying, but-”
“Take one of those two out of the siege of Crirada and it ends in an hour.”
Tehlmar still didn’t seem convinced, but Arlette knew how to properly explain just how terrifying the Earthlings were. “I encountered a god a few days ago,” she told him quietly, the memories bringing an unbidden frown to her face.
Tehlmar’s eye went wide and he stared at her, mouth agog. “Another one?”
“Yes. This one wasn’t as big as the one in Zrukhora, but it was still a god.”
“Spirits’ mercy upon us,” he muttered. “But you got away, at least.”
“The Monster beat it so hard that it fled.”
Tehlmar blinked and Arlette leaned in.
“She ripped out one of its teeth and jammed the tooth into its eye. And you know she can’t be killed, right? The god burned her to ash and she came back within moments, good as new. Are you starting to get it yet? Even gods fear these people. We Scyrians are nothing in comparison. We’re insects just hoping to not get stepped on as they pass by.
“Luckily for us, the Monster isn’t interested in conquest anymore; it doesn’t seem like she’s interested in doing much of anything, really. And as for Lord Ferros...” She looked around warily, making sure nobody was close enough to hear. “...this is just a feeling I get, but I think he regrets conquering Otharia. I think that, deep down, he feels he made a mistake but he can’t admit it to anybody, not even to himself. But that’s it. We are safe only by their whims, not by our own power.”
Tehlmar’s face looked like he’d taken a bite of something rotten. “There’s nothing I hate more than the feeling of powerlessness.” He paused for a moment as if an idea had just popped into his head. “I bet that’s why you’re feeling so down, Letty. These days, you’re comparing yourself to Earthlings instead of to us normal people. It’s warping your expectations for yourself, setting up an impossible standard.”
Now it was Arlette’s turn to blink. “You know, you’re probably right.”
“Drop your expectations down to at least Mother of Nightmare levels,” he said with a smirk. “Or better yet, Sofie levels.”
Arlette couldn’t help but laugh. “I forget, sometimes, that she’s one of them. At least until she opens her mouth.”
Tehlmar raised his tankard towards her. “A toast to Sofie, for so generously serving as a reminder that even Earthlings can be underwhelming.”
“I’ll toast to that,” Arlette chuckled, clanking tankards with his.
Together, they laughed and downed their drinks and ordered more, and more, and even more still, until the tavern threw them out at closing time. It was, truly, a proper mercenary celebration.
----------------------------------------
Arlette dropped her sword on the small table by the door, flopped down onto the bed—her drunken coordination unable to manage anything more graceful—and stared up at the inn room’s wooden ceiling. How had she gotten here? The last few hours had passed like a blur, filled with laughter and emotion and lots and lots of booze, and one thing had led to another and now here she was. Arlette tried to recall the details but the alcohol left her memory jumbled.
A moment later, Tehlmar plopped down beside her, the impact causing him to release a loud belch.
“How regal,” Arlette giggled. “You sure you’re really a prince?”
“Not anymore, thank the stars,” Tehlmar replied.
“How did it all happen, anyway? An elven prince clomping around Nocend with a gut and a halberd, not to mention that horrid mustache?”
“Oh, come now, it wasn’t that bad!” he protested.
“Yes, it was!” she laughed. “All the women thought so!”
Tehlmar went quiet for a moment, his gaze lost in the past. “Letty, want to make a deal?”
“What kind of deal?”
“Just for tonight, no secrets. I’ll answer anything you ask, and you do the same for me.”
“That’s...” Arlette hesitated. She habitually, perhaps even instinctively, kept as tight a lid as possible on her past. The thought of just completely opening up scared her, but at the same time, it beckoned to her seductively with promises of freedom from her burdens, at least for a little while. “Are you sure you’re willing to do that? You’re a spy, after all.”
“I hate secrets, Letty. All they’ve ever done is make my life worse.”
“Says the man who won’t tell me how he came back to life.”
“Well, here’s an easy way to get the answer.”
“Ha, ‘easy’ you say? Alright. I accept. Just for tonight.”
“Alright. Well, it all started when I was a young child...”
Arlette listened as the elf beside her stared blankly up towards the ceiling and recounted the tale of his childhood, of the discovery of his powers, of his father’s attempt to hide them, of his sister’s betrayal. He talked about the horrible years of training, of the beatings, the punishments, the immense physical and emotional pain inflicted upon him. He spoke of his life on the road, wandering from contract to contract, looking for something, anything to give some sort of meaning to his life.
Arlette listened, not saying a word lest she break the spell. She found herself tearing up slightly as he went, shocked to discover just how much pain he’d been through. She would never have suspected it, given the man she’d come to know over the course of more than five years. Speaking of which...
“-and then I met you, and you know the rest of the story.”
“How much of Jaquet was real?” she asked.
“What do you mean?”
“The man I knew... How much of him was you, and how much was made up?”
“All of it was me. Almost all of it, at least. Maybe a few people have the talent to take on a whole new persona, but I’m not one. People can feel inauthenticity. You might be able to get away with it with people you only meet once or twice, but the people you interact with often will start to sniff it out pretty quickly. So what they taught us was just to be ourselves, with a bit of a twist if necessary. So that’s what I did.”
So that was why tonight felt so refreshingly familiar. She found comfort in the fact that the person she’d become such good friends with wasn’t just a facade.
“Alright, my turn,” Tehlmar continued, turning his head towards her on the soft straw mattress. “I have so many questions.”
“I’m regretting this already,” Arlette returned.
“Let’s start with this: who is this Peko person you used to talk to in your sleep?”
“Of all the things you could ask, that’s what you’re going with?” she replied.
“Consider it a warm-up then. And why not? I’ve always been curious, and I wasn’t the only one. The others and I had a betting pool going over who he turned out to be.”
Arlette sighed and crossed her arms over her chest. “...Peko is my... imaginary friend,” she mumbled.
“Are you serious?! Ahaha, looks we all would have lost!” Tehlmar guffawed. “Wait a moment, ‘is’? As in you still have an imaginary friend? How old are you again?”
“Shut up! I... He...” She curled up on the bed, hugging herself. “He helps me. When I think I’m going to fall apart, he helps me. Without him, I would have lost myself so many times, maybe even ended my own life...”
“Okay, okay, I’m sorry for making fun of your imaginary friend,” he apologized, placing a hand on her shoulder. “So, is he handsome?”
“Why, are you jealous?”
“Maybe.”
“Then yes, he’s far better looking than you could ever hope to be,” she retorted, sticking her tongue out at him.
Tehlmar laughed again, this time loud and boisterous. “Looks like I’ll have to work harder, then,” he chuckled.
“Good luck. Not only is he prettier, he’s known me for longer too.”
“Then maybe it’s time I got to know you better. The real you. Who are you, Arlette? You would never talk about your past. You would get angry whenever the Ubran Empire came up in conversation, though you tried to hide it. The leader of a group powerful and well-connected enough to ambush us as we left Drayhadan territory called you ‘princess’, but the King of Gustil only ever had sons and the King of Kutrad is without heirs. You seem to have at least a passing education in subjects that no daughter of a mid-rank soldier would ever need to be taught. Nothing about you adds up. Who are you, really?”
Arlette gulped. “I was born in the Kingdom of Ofrax with the name Arlette Faredin, all the way on the other side of the Divide...” she began, her words coming slowly at first but picking up speed over time. Unlike the last time, this didn’t feel like an interrogation. This time, she was telling it willingly, and with each word it felt like the burden of her past became just a little lighter.
She told him about the death of her father, of the arrival of Sebastian, and of meeting the royal family and the terrible news that came with it. She told him about the fall of her homeland and her fearful escape from the Ubran invaders. She told him about her arrival at Redwater Castle and her adoption by a kind soldier stationed there and his wife. She told him everything, and she found it liberating. At some point, she realized he was squeezing her hand, but she couldn’t recall when he’d first grabbed it.
“Why did you choose to go by Demirt instead of your Faredin when you struck out on your own?” Tehlmar wondered.
“I didn’t want to bring light to my past, for one. Also, my second father knew a good number of people in Gustil and they would have found it strange if I had a different surname,” she told him. “But really, I did it because I loved my second parents. They were my parents for longer than my original, and even though I was not their true daughter, they always treated me with love and patience... which, looking back, is more than I deserved for a good while. I was an absolute nightmare of a child for the first couple of years, but they never let it bother them. I felt like the least I could do was keep their name.”
She let out a sad, self-demeaning laugh. “So yeah, that’s my story. Not exactly a mesmerizing tale of adventure.”
“I don’t know, I think it’s poetic,” the elf replied. “That the woman who pretended to be a princess would gain the love of the prince trying to be anything but.”
Arlette hummed a non-committal acknowledgment and looked away again, a question forming in her throat. The question, really, the one that had been bubbling away in the back of her mind for over a season. The one she wanted an answer to more than any other but was terrified to ask. Without the assistance of alcohol, she would not have found the courage.
“Why do you...” Arlette felt her face heat up as she stumbled over the words, finding them hard to say them aloud. “...love me?”
Tehlmar blinked and looked her way. “I don’t understand.”
“When you went back to Drayhadal and were a prince, I’m sure you could have your pick of all the women in Drayhadal. Beautiful women with grace and power I will never have who would do anything to be your partner.”
“Letty, stop.”
“Women with smooth, flawless skin and long, flowing hair and a face that takes your breath away,-”
“Stop.”
“-not somebody like me with my boring looks-”
“Stop!”
“-and a body covered in ugly scars. I’m not like them, I’m not special. I’m just a woman who grew up a fraud and-”
“Will you just-!” Tehlmar lunged towards her, losing his balance and falling atop her right hip, whereupon he began to vigorously tug at her pants.
“W-wha!” Arlette cried out, repeatedly whacking him in the back and head with her palm. “What do you think you’re doing, you pervert?!”
Tehlmar powered through her drunken blows, working the right side of her pants lower and lower as she fought and squirmed until he suddenly stopped and touched her bare upper leg with his finger.
“Look!” he said, tracing his finger along something on her skin. Looking closer through her fuzzy vision, Arlette realized he was gently brushing a thin scar the width of about three fingers. “What is this? Do you remember?”
“Uh?” she bleated, confused by his actions.
“We were up past Olenset, saving those village kids from those slavers who were pillaging the locals with the noble’s support. You were fighting somebody while this kid cowered behind you, and you saw an arrow coming your way... and you realized it was going to miss you, but it would hit the kid instead. So you kicked your leg out to the side and blocked it to save him. Remember?”
“Uhhh...” His story kind of rang a bell, though the memory was still pretty hazy. She’d taken a lot of injuries over her career and she was still fairly inebriated.
Tehlmar shifted his gaze up her body. Quickly, he crawled forward and grabbed the bottom of her shirt, pulling it up to expose an abdomen covered in blemishes from years of battle.
“What about this?” he asked, his palm rubbing a burn scar above her left kidney.
“No, not really,” she replied.
“We were hired to hunt down those bandits hiding in the Red Mist marshes in eastern Eterium. So we went into the marshes and it rained and rained and rained. I don’t think we saw the sun once in ten days.”
“Oh, yeah.” It was starting to come back to her now.
“Everything was wet. Water up to our knees more often than not. Nasty critters everywhere, and the less said about the insects the better. On the tenth day, we finally found their hideout, and instead of scoping them out, we all just charged in and caught them by surprise. The leader was holding a torch and you went after him when he ran. You caught up to him just before he made it to the waters. He tried to hold you off with the torch for just a moment so he could dive in, but you just let him burn you as you tackled him and beat him unconscious with your sheathed sword. When I asked you why you hadn’t just avoided the torch, you said to me-”
“‘If I had, he might have escaped, and I would rather take a mace to the head than stay one more day in this star-forsaken swamp’,” Arlette finished with a giggle. “It was true, the food went bad within two days, everything grew mold and rot... I hated it there. Those local merchants afterward even offered us a contract twice as good as what we could have found anywhere else to hire us as their local militia longterm and I still turned them down.”
“And it’s a wise thing you did, too, because if you had taken the contract, the band would have gone from sixteen members to two overnight.”
“Tehlmar, I-” she mumbled as he pulled himself up even farther until his face and hers were aligned.
“Surely you remember this?” he asked, his fingertips lightly caressing the back right part of her neck, where an ugly, mostly circular scar the size of a large coin could be found.
“Yeah...” There was no forgetting this one. She, Jaquet, and several other members of the Ivory Tears had left a tavern late one winter night. During the trip back to the local barracks, she’d slipped on a patch of ice she hadn’t noticed because of her less-than-sober state and toppled sideways onto a low, rough wooden fence at her side. Her neck had slammed into the jagged end of a fencepost and the wood first stabbed into the side of her neck. Then, as she continued to fall, the weight of the rest of her body had pulled her head and neck further down so that the wood ripped out a large chunk of her flesh. She’d been lucky to survive. The only reason she still breathed today was that the wood had pierced the part of the side of her neck closest to the back. If the wood had penetrated just a little further towards her front, she could have died on the spot. Instead, she ‘merely’ lost a large amount of blood and had to spend several days in bed to recover. Ever since, she’d never forgotten how carelessness, alcohol, and chance had conspired to almost accomplish what hundreds of enemies never had.
“When that happened, for the first time since my training, I completely lost my cool and panicked. If you had died that night, I don’t know what I would have done. I thank the stars every night that you made it through.”
“Tehlmar, why are you...”
“Letty, please, just listen to me. Yes, there were many beautiful women back in Drayhadal, girls who can sing and dance and recite entire volumes of poetry, but I didn’t want them. I never did. They’re nothing but vapid creatures who have spent their whole lives barely ever stepping outside their courtyards. They know a sonnet, but they don’t know the world. They’re just little flowers raised in little glass cases, a pretty view and nothing more. You’re not like them. You’re not empty. You’re real.” His thin thumbs caressed the old scars running across her cheeks as his desperately pleading gaze bored into her soul. “These scars... they’re not blemishes, they’re proof that you’ve lived a life worth living! I don’t want just a pretty face. I want a woman I can be proud to call my wife, somebody who’s seen the world and survived against everything life could throw at them. That’s you. I want you. And there’s nothing anybody in the world could ever say or do to change that.”
Arlette looked up at him as he gazed back down at her with shining eyes, his hand placed on the bed by her armpit as he propped himself up over her.
“The Stragmans,” he said.
“Huh?”
“They have an Earthling too, one who can bring back the dead with as little as a toe, or, in my case, an ear. He reverses your time and takes you back to a point before you died. That’s how I came back.”
“Oh,” she said, sheepishly. She’d forgotten all about the initial reason behind all of this. “Why are you telling me when I didn’t ask?”
“Because if we’re going to go any further, I want it to be because you want to, not because you think you need to.”
The flush on Arlette’s face deepened as she locked eyes with his earnest gaze. Maybe Sofie was right; maybe elves could be attractive. Or maybe it was just the alcohol. As she reached out and pulled him close, Arlette found that, at least for one night, she didn’t much care either way.