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Larn
Tir Ral-Nor
‘Dar’ Eherdir O’ Lome
Fae O’ Elum
Fifth Servant of the Circle
Oras Own & the Circle’s lost children | Prelude (3/3)
-The Acolyte-
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image [https://i.postimg.cc/gdMDQCYX/taras2-low-res.png]
NYAERU!
The four-armed Fiend growled afore turning around. The two extra arms were taking the place of its legs and bent outwards under its thick torso. It had no observable head, but a meter-long swaying stinger where the neck should have been, a bucket-sized single eye on its scaly trunk-like chest, and a large shark-mouth right under it that connected directly to its stomach.
Dar Eherdir didn’t just have academic knowledge on the shade-kingdom’s species and inhabitants, as he had faced them before.
He had naught a single pleasant memory from the many encounters.
A scowling Ralnor jerked his head to the left and out of the snapping stinger’s way. At the same time, his drawn sword came down and severed the dark-green scorpion-like stinger, a handbreadth from its base. Foul-smelling acid and yellow liquid erupted from the wound, but Ralnor had already moved to escape the spillage. He ducked under a swinging arm, then leaped over a kicking arm again, an eye on the galloping figure using the ashen road ahead of him, the other on the fiend’s partner that had taken an interest in the dancing assassin.
Ralnor sidestepped away from the plunging stinger of the second fiend, kicked the retracting appendage to heave the point towards its owner and heard the pop of the fiend’s large eye when the stinger sunk into it.
NYAUUHU!
The unseen herd of many-armed fiends hollered in unison –sounding very disturbed and the grimacing Ralnor dived into a spastic roll, snatched out of the air using his left hand a baby sand-worm that had exploded out of the ground and then bit its gnarly mouth-head clean off. He spat the poisonous, gummy flesh away –the membranes of his mouth and larynx burning something fierce, as that little worm had managed to spit a bit of froth inside, and then hit the ashen road on a protesting shoulder. The peeved assassin jumped energetically to his feet to sprint –whilst coughing the poison down- after the figure.
Fucking hells.
He saw her again twenty meters away, faltering from the blow of a long-necked curious Cockatrice that had attempted to dart across the materializing desert road. The gigantic bill of the feathered dragon-kin swung angrily towards the cartwheeling away figure as it slowed down on its bird legs and then let out a shrieking, gurgling sound aimed at her.
VREILRRH! KRAEIL!
The figure tripped from the vibrating sound-spell and went down with a yelp, just as the burning incense to quick-step the distance Ralnor arrived at the scene. The assassin hacked at the feathered neck of the Cockatrice, but the three-meter tall dragon-bird reacted sensing the danger, and got a savage slash across the face from the also-readjusting mid-move blade instead. The hardened bill deflected the blow, but its fleshy fiery red Comb didn’t and detached from its skull in an explosion of gore.
The blinded by its own blood Cockatrice scythed its opened beak forward to chop Ralnor in two, but got stopped by a corkscrew uppercut blow delivered by the assassin’s steel peleg right in the wattles. The blade broke the lower mandible and forced the beast to spray a fresh torrent of dark blood out of its opened beak. Ralnor danced out of the wounded Cockatrice’s way, but not before he yanked the bloody peleg out and immediately moved towards the faltering to her knees figure.
Sword, Ralnor warned himself and parried down the materializing out of the darkness female’s blade with his Kopis. The swords loud clang reverberated on the dark open plains of the desert that extended on both sides of the road and bright sparks erupted illuminating his opponent’s face.
A young Zilan.
Eh, Ralnor grunted furious with himself for going after the wrong target and swung with the peleg at the returning sword, much faster than his opponent. The small axe caught the female’s wrist and chopped it clean off, disarming her.
Literately.
“ARGGH!” The hooded girl screamed and stepped back, the spraying blood severed limb blinding Ralnor momentarily. Taking advantage of the tiny respite, his opponent pivoted lithely on her retreating foot only to lunge forward again. Her drawn dagger got blocked by the flipped peleg and then Ralnor’s own sword tapped her under the chin in warning, the cut skin trickling a small amount of blood on the Kopis’ curved blade.
“Where’s the exit?” Ralnor asked hoarsely as he hadn’t spared the little bitch out of the goodness of his soul and the shocked female blinked her olive-green, or darkish blue eyes in disbelief upon hearing him speak, before attempting to swing her dagger again.
Curse all stubborn cunts! The grimacing Ralnor thought furious and almost bit his own tongue off when his sweaty forehead connected with the young Zilan’s in a devastating head-butt. No cunt was more stubborn than him. The female went down with a broken nose and her face covered in blood, while Ralnor stumbled over his own feet dazed and barely missed a four-armed Construct Adept -one of Suharto’s war creations- that had stepped on the lightly illuminated ashen road two meters away. This further mutated humanoid, based on Mardoth’s variation of the cave Ogre and the plains-roaming Orcs of Mistland per the war-diaries, promptly spotted the two Zilan fighting in the middle of the road.
Ralnor heard the thudding of very-heavy feet that barreled towards him, and instantly twisted around in alarm, whilst putting the sword between his body and the arriving giant. The extended blade of the Kopis sunk to the midpoint inside the Adept’s broad sternum, while almost at the same time the swinging angled peleg wedged under the Construct’s crooked right ear, splitting the bone for maximum damage.
To a normal living creature, which the Construct of course wasn’t, never had been, even when it roamed ‘free’ amongst the realms of the living, if that made any sense.
Which it sort of did for the snarling Ralnor.
And also didn’t.
Oh shit.
Anyways the double blows he’d delivered did fuck all to stop the moving freight of flesh and muscle from crashing on the unable to move out of the way Ralnor. The peeved assassin was hurled backwards, –with the Construct following after him due to momentum and mass- to crash-land on the surprisingly-hard sand road. Having no time to protest to Luthos, the battered assassin growled his way out of the Orc’s large foot instead, as it came down with force to flatten his head.
The giant war Construct’s foot exploded on the compacted sand, lifted a dust cloud between them and created a hole on the ground. With another curse the standing up Ralnor used his now free right arm to unsheathe a straight-bladed dagger, whilst swallowing his own vomit.
Constructs aren’t supposed to live here, based on the ‘knowledgeable’ veterans of the war tales at least. For they have no soul.
Well, this bit of knowledge I’d rather have learned from a blasted manuscript, Ralnor decided sourly just as the still-carrying his Kopis Construct attacked him again with a mighty roar that reached as far as the distant dark mountains at the edge of the horizon.
Waking up all manner of beasts and fiends from their stupor.
Which was the most concerning fact of the day to a person traversing the dark wilderness without a predetermined exit strategy.
He needed to find the blasted door. Since he hadn’t picked a spot beforehand, the assassin needed to use the girl’s.
After he survived the giant’s wrath that is.
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Ralnor jerked his head aside to dodge a massive right side punch, blocked a second coming from the left with a raised knee, but got mauled by another one on the right side mid-leap, lost the ground under his feet, and just as he started flying sideways from the heavy blow, the Construct yanked the assassin by his left arm right back down. Ralnor snarled maniacally hitting the ground again and the Construct pulled savagely at his trapped arm, dislocating the assassin’s shoulder to lift him up.
And do the same thing again, using Ralnor’s body as a hammer to beat at the ground.
The grunting assassin kicked with his legs to gain even more momentum and reaching stabbed the Construct’s gnarly, brute’s face repeatedly with the dagger. He gauged one bulbous eye out, opened a gash on the Orc’s left cheek, the blade breaking teeth and severing part of the tongue, afore he buried the length of the blade in one of the monstrous humanoid’s nostrils.
Then the Orc slammed the cursing Ralnor on the ground again with savage abandon, still holding his forearm in a steely grip. Ralnor growled in terrible pain, barely saved his leg from getting shattered by the stumbling forward, heavily injured Construct Adept’s foot, but got trapped under it when it caught his hip.
Ralnor jerked away from the heavy weight to save the hip bone, whilst his right hand plunged upwards with three long nails sprouting out of the clenched knuckles. The nails penetrated deep inside the Orc’s scrotum and the Construct shuddered, but remained towering over Ralnor. The giant creature used two of his hands –he’d four blasted working arms along with the normal two legs- to get the long nails out of his bloody groin and still had one more free hand to better grab at Ralnor’s trapped arm at the elbow.
The Construct pulled and twisted at the forearm, tearing at the leather sleeve, the flesh underneath and breaking the ligaments at the joint. The pain blinding. Just as it tried to completely rip Ralnor’s arm off at the elbow, the growling assassin stabbed his shortsword right through its upper right arm bulging bicep ruining its grip. The Construct released the flaying, mauled left assassin’s arm and tried to grab at the still moving blade with the other, but failed.
So Ralnor buried the shortsword he’d unsheathed in its diaphragm, just under the Kopis.
Oras Hells! Ralnor cursed yanking his useless arm away as the bleeding Orc dropped to its knees, but the dislocated at the shoulder and elbow, flaying forearm flew too close to the Construct’s gaping mouth and the horse-sized pointy teeth severed two of his fingers, when they snapped shut.
Fucking gnome! Are you plaguing serious with this shite?
“ARRGLH!” Ralnor groaned in mind-numbing agony, feeling ring and little finger disappear inside the Construct’s mouth, leaving two bloody stubs behind and then dropped to his knees as well in front of the massive humanoid.
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Fuck. Get the darn fingers, the injured Ralnor urged himself, and used his working arm to get the stuck dagger out of the Construct’s butchered bloody face. With a groan and a kick he forced the dead Orc on its back. It landed with a loud thud and an ogle-eyed Ralnor stooped over the large head with a blade in hand to dig his severed fingers out of the closed Orc’s bloody mouth.
He couldn’t feel part of the arm, and the part he could feel was screaming in pain, but he’d one of Ael’s healing potions in his weapon harnesses sheathes. Ralnor knew he could mend the arm with that and a cast given time. The fingers though… those he needed to stitch right back up sooner rather than later, if they weren’t too destroyed already.
Delay it too much and might as well use them as snack.
Did you have time to chew on them a bit afore you croaked you hairy cunt? A grimacing Ralnor asked the dead Construct, his blurry eyes scanning the terrain for another one popping out and hearing the in-between realms inhabitants slowly gathering up near both sides of the illuminated path. Two-headed monstrosities and the shapes of grotesque, gigantic sand-worms tunneling out of the ground. Many thousands simple humanoid figures, as many misshapen fiends and other horrors silently walking towards him.
“Who are you?” The pale-faced female asked hoarsely from where she’d dropped, still holding at her wound to staunch the bleeding. Ralnor used the blade as lever to crack open the Orc’s sealed jaws in the meantime and then widened the mouth cavity cutting down both of the cheeks. His mouth watered seeing the bloody flesh on display and his stomach joined with a growl, which was nigh awkward a timing.
“Where’s the door?” Ralnor rustled finding his fingers one after the other. The little digit had lodged in the Construct’s throat and he had to really dig inside the butchered, gaping lower part of its face to get it out. He took part of the tongue as a souvenir getting up with a scowl. “You picked a spot to exit. Think. Snap out of it!”
Is this amateur hour?
“I did,” the Zilan female hissed in her muffled tone, blood trickling down her swollen nose. A pretty nose once. Probably repairable, but equally flavorsome when carefully prepared by a savant cannibal, the suddenly very-hungry Ralnor thought and dropped his retrieved chopped off fingers inside a pocket. He used a cloth to wrap the wound and stop the worse of the bleeding next, while absentmindedly slotting the Orc’s severed tongue in his mouth to chew on.
The female gasped in horror at the spectacle and Ralnor raised his glowing ashen eyes to stare at her soberly. “Point the way, so I can discern it. Hurry up, I’m injured.”
“I won’t and you’ve cut my hand off!” She screeched hoarsely.
The slowly regaining control of his faculties despite his injuries Ralnor, chewed down on the apparently rotten flesh briefly and then coughed it out with a grimace of revulsion. “Nasty stuff. Eh. Uneatable. So it’s a problem camping here. Yep. We don’t have much time lass. They stopped coming at us because of fear, but it won’t last.”
A strange clacking sound could be heard and a distant trumpeting shriek. Ralnor approached the injured female, almost planting his face on the ground as he’d apparently a pretty hurt and dragging back right leg, to pair with a badly mauled ribcage. Great. He spat a blotch of foul blood down, the pain coming from his mauled arm devastating, but also pleasant as it kept the injured assassin alert to the surroundings.
“That’s a Hydra. They are twice as inhospitable when dead,” he elucidated and stilled his eyes on a group of silent humanoids that tested the illuminated path. Some coyote-like shadows wrestling about very near them and at the edges of the path. One of the humanoids had already stepped on it in the meantime and was examining the pair of intruders. A tall creature wearing a werewolf’s hide as a cloak. Or a camouflage. A howling was added to the raising ruckus birthed from the blackness. It reminded Ralnor that a pack could be roaming about as well. A pack of anything. “The door.”
“There,” the Zilan hissed through clenched teeth and stood up holding her hand over the wound. “I need to find my hand also.”
Ralnor glanced at the fighting for the piece of flesh coyotes, about five meters to the female’s right side.
“Forget about it,” Ralnor retorted and moved past her trying to locate the lit up exit amidst the darkness. He did and the path they were on that led somewhere far in the distance, turned towards the now visible to him twinkling oval portal, about thirty meters away. “Where the fuck did you pick to exit?” The assassin asked the hurrying after him female and she glanced his way with terrified eyes. The experience harrowing to her psyche probably.
A neophyte.
Or an acolyte taking her first baptism. Her first taste of the Trade.
“Across the street,” she replied, blood spraying from her bloodstained mouth. “An abandoned ruin had the most shade.”
“You don’t need a lot,” Ralnor grunted shaking his head and seeing her disbelief, he added. “You learn that with time.”
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The Zilan female stumbled through the opening with Ralnor following right after her. They exited next to the petrified wall of a ruin, about thirty meters from where they had entered, the dark alley visible across this parallel to the 3rd Street road.
“What’s your name?” Ralnor asked her and she turned around to answer.
“Labriel,” the pale Zilan rustled barely standing up.
“Sit on that pile of bricks,” Ralnor ordered, himself not in a better condition and whistled loudly to get Dar’s attention. The horse was parked behind the adventurer’s guild across the street. Dar would notify Toutatis.
“I have to report—”
“You’re dead.”
Labriel blinked, a short blue curl plastered on her bloody forehead, drenched in gore and sweat. The hood of her tight coveralls, a bodysuit almost white from the dust and grime gathered from the in-between realms. Her eyes were a gleaming cobalt color and she’d a refined accent to her Imperial, very pompous and ancient, but Ralnor could see that Labriel was very-young in years. Perhaps starting her third century at most.
She was going for a weapon.
“There’s no need for that,” the hurting in too-many places to count Ralnor cautioned her, but the female jerked back, letting go of her mutilated arm to reach for a steel peleg, similar to the one Ralnor had used earlier.
I left a lot of good weapons behind, Ralnor thought sourly and waited for Toutatis to climb down the collapsed wall that shaded them inside the old ruined house. Labriel hefted the small axe clenching her jaw, but then let out a deep moan and almost dropped it, as her muscles had started clamping down from severe blood loss and adrenaline can only carry you so far.
“Ah,” Labriel gasped and stumbled back even further, deciding to retreat from the injured, but stoically watching her actions Ralnor. Right onto the sneaky Toutatis’ drawn steel blade.
“Don’t,” Ralnor ordered the teenager and the scowling Tout poked the Zilan on her left buttock instead using the point of Lingos sword. Labriel recoiled with a yelp, faltered away from the steel blade, then performed a clumsy twirl on her feet to see her assailant, she never quite finished. Ralnor had made two quick steps forward to grab her nape with his maimed hand, using the other to secure the peleg.
Despite missing two fingers, his grip was so vicious it paralyzed the crying Labriel. “Sit down,” Ralnor ordered again, taking the peleg from her and securing it on the hook of his harness. That’s one weapon replaced, he thought and then glared at the gawking rudely at the sniffling female Toutatis.
“Got the bag?”
“Uhm. Not easy dragging the load across the street—”
“Bring the needles and a healing potion,” Ralnor grunted cutting him off and guided Labriel by the nape towards the pile of bricks again. This place was about to be repaired by a working crew that had stopped for the holidays, he decided, letting go of the weakened Labriel. “Have this,” he told her, and offered a tiny vial to the Zilan female.
“What… is it?”
“Just drink it,” Ralnor snapped, as using his maimed hand had opened up the wounds again.
Good. I need the blood to flow for this next part. It would help reconnect the nerve endings.
“I’m not…”
“It’s a god darn healing potion in a different bottle!”
“That’s too small… this is a poison vial! It has a label even,” Labriel protested, but uncorked the glass vial to sniff at the mixture. “Hmm.”
“I reuse the small vials, don’t bother with the labels. Wash them first obviously,” Ralnor elucidated, very annoyed he had to explain himself. Aelrindel’s high-necked, larger vials, were very pretty to the eye, but nigh-uncomfortable and unsafe to carry with you in a scrap. Having to stop a fight to dig glass shards out of your arse can be very inconvenient.
“Ah. How do you tell them apart?” Labriel queried distrustfully. “The fasting oil is very similar in color—”
“I don’t do diets and when I want to take a shit, I take a shit,” Ralnor rustled through his teeth. “Drink the blasted potion, or give it back!”
Labriel pursed her mouth, then breathed out, raised the vial and downed its contents. She blinked, the potency unexpected and gasped in surprise, eyes rolling to the white, before spilling down the pile of bricks. “Tastes of strawberries?” Labriel mattered just as she lost consciousness.
Yeah.
“You have the fingers?” Toutatis asked with a curious glance at the sprawled and unconscious female.
“In the cloak’s internal right pocket,” Ralnor grunted and dug them out himself. “I’ll do the stitching. You’ll wash them after with a bit of potion.”
“What about her?”
“She’s an Acolyte of the Circle.”
Toutatis nodded numbly.
Ralnor glanced at him with a clenched jaw. “A pupil.”
“Ah. I got that,” Tout replied indifferently. “Do they carry coin purses?”
“Just bandage her arm.” The sweating Ralnor grunted fixing the thread on the stitching needle.
“Where’s the other part?”
“The Fiends got it.”
“What happened in there Larn?”
“Argh!” Ralnor growled in pain, working the needle through his flesh to attach the ring finger again. “I’m busy here Tout!”
“Can I help?” Toutatis asked and dragged the saddlebag near him to sit on it.
“Hold the finger in place. It needs to touch the bone,” Ralnor hissed in terrible pain and wiped the sweat from his forehead. “Oras Hells. You need to go back to the alley at some point,” he explained to the silent Tout. “Search the body, but be on the lookout for Dar Nalta.”
“An assassin?”
“Nym’s mentor in a sense,” Ralnor grunted and took a deep breath in, not to faint on the job. “Never figured that part out fully. I think it lives inside the Circle.”
“Right.” Toutatis said and glanced at the moaning, and slowly coming about pale Labriel. “What about her?”
“We need to learn what we can.”
“Then what?”
Fuck’s sake. Stop talking.
“Give me some bloody potion,” Ralnor grunted irate, but the next moment he forced himself to calm down. Tout needed to know. “And I’ll tell you all about it, after we deal with her.”
Toutatis returned his stare in silence, but then nodded and got one of the larger healing potions out of the saddlebag. It even had a label on it. Summer of 3400, the witch’s beautiful calligraphy read. If you could read it, as she frequently used too much fluff in her letters. Flowers, roots and vines. Witch letters.
From afar Aelrindel’s script reminded him of a lavish garden.
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Half an hour later the fingers had been stitched back and encased in bandage. They had also swollen to twice their size and the left hand was useless. The pain, as it’s habitual in these type of cases had not lessened at all. It had increased instead.
“My hand hurts,” Labriel sniffled sadly, holding her bandaged stub.
“It’ll never stop,” Ralnor assured her with a grunt. “It’ll hurt in the winter, and when it rains. The flesh is gone, but the memory of it remains.”
“Fuck you.”
“Hah,” Tout guffawed and reached to touch the recoiling Zilan’s face. “She’s a lively one. Pretty enough. Torture material?”
“She’ll talk.” Ralnor snapped.
“Can I have her after? I need a girlfriend.”
“Ugh?” Labriel gasped in bewilderment.
“Who was the victim?” The grimacing in frustration Ralnor asked hoarsely and gave a kick to the severed head Toutatis had brought back from the alley. It rolled near the teenager and he kicked it right back towards the scowling assassin with a stupid grin. Idiot.
The head was familiar in a sense. The fat half-breed that had given Tout a gold coin yesterday outside the tavern.
“I don’t know,” Labriel hissed. “The call came and I asked to do it.”
“Was it Dar Nalta’s idea?” Ralnor asked hoarsely.
“How… I’m not telling you anything!” Labriel snapped and Toutatis stepped forward to deliver a hard slap on her left cheek, putting his small body behind it that almost sent her headfirst on the bricks. “You little creep!” She cursed angrily, trying to stabilize herself on the collapsing pile. “One-eyed goblin…argh!” Labriel words turned to a miserable cry of pain in an instant.
The reason for it was Toutatis, who had jumped on her hurt arm with both feet.
The kid was vindictive, no question about that.
“Please!” Labriel begged with a loud scream and tried to protect her arm from the mean-looking teenager that was now holding a brick in his hands, as if ready to pummel her with it.
Ralnor used his working index finger to scratch below his right ear in uncomfortable silence. Toutatis raised the brick threateningly.
“Fine!” Labriel cried out and curled up in a ball shaking.
Tout stared at Ralnor. The assassin was listening for anyone approaching the house from the street alerted from the noise, but the still standing wall blocked the view –perhaps some of the sound also- and his ears didn’t catch anything suspicious.
“Leave the brick.”
“What?” Tout protested. “She can walk the shades and you’re injured. How am I to catch her then? Maybe ye need to tell me how fast.” He added with a sly grin.
“She can’t walk that well and you’re not ready, so forget about it,” Ralnor retorted with a glare. “Give him a gold coin to leave you alone,” he told the sniffling Labriel.
“What?” The female gasped channeling the teenager in between sniffles. “I don’t have any coins! Especially for his likes!”
“Pfft.” Toutatis snorted and tossed the brick back in the pile. “Thrifty chick with small tits,” he added staring at the shocked Labriel with judging eyes. “Cheap cunt.”
Ralnor’s face got distorted by an angry tick that started at his jaw and ended at his left eye.
“Dar Nalta,” he repeated soberly at the end of it and put a stop at this sudden outburst of malarkey.
For a while.
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“Dar Nalta suggested I use the shades to escape,” Labriel said still shaking either from the potion’s effects, the injury, or both. “A test to make grandma proud. Aerien didn’t believe I was ready and she had objected. So grandma told me only to take care of the mark this time. Dar Nalta wanted me to surprise them both.”
“Who’s Aerien?” Ralnor grunted concentrating on the names he didn’t know. “Who’s grandma?”
Labriel pursed her mouth at the eating an orange fruit pie Toutatis. He paused to eye her warningly in turn. “Aerien is my mother.”
“Is she prettier than ye?” Tout asked with a sly smirk.
“You are naught but a street vermin—” Labriel hissed angrily, but Ralnor snapped at her cutting the irate Zilan’s outburst short.
“Enough! If I have to ask again, then you’ll beg for Tout’s touch.”
“I rather cut my other arm off.”
“Good.” Tout said meaningfully. “I don’t need yer arms wench.”
“Go stand on top of the wall and watch the street,” Ralnor ordered the smirking teenager.
“Are you going to eat her? You have that look.”
“Oras curse you!” Labriel rustled hoarsely. “Demons!”
Ralnor breathed in and out to combat the rising headache that accompanied his throbbing fingers.
“Aerien is a member of the Circle?” Ralnor asked after the sullen Toutatis shuffled his feet away, kicking at rocks and ancient plaster pieces in protest. “Who is the father?”
“Dinmeathor. A priest of Oras. Unfortunately we lost him in the Fall,” Labriel replied tensely. “He was a quiet, good man. Poor papa.”
“I’m sure,” Ralnor retorted in a mocking manner. “What about your mother?”
“I’m an Elderblood, born from an Elderborn,” Labriel told him clenching her jaw stubbornly. “My bloodline goes back to Vaelerthiel ‘of the woods’.”
Oras’ biggest Temple had been on Nureria.
Ralnor gulped down nervously. He stood up feeling all his senses waking up and listened to Taras preparing to celebrate Valimae Lilt. The three days prior a preparation, as much a celebration of King Garth’s late Cofol spouse. The new princess’ mother.
Bloodlines.
Ancestral ties.
A half-breed taken from the streets, or abandoned to die in the woods didn’t have to bother himself with that, he thought bitterly.
“You said grandma earlier,” the grave-faced Ralnor said hoarsely and Labriel watched him curious.
“You are a child of the Circle,” she said after a moment and her eyes opened wide at the realization. “What were you doing lost inside the Silent Desert?”
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Fuck’s sake.
“I followed you,” Ralnor replied a little insulted and grimaced. “What did I say earlier?”
“I meant great aunt, but it’s what I call her,” Labriel replied with a grimace. “Aerien left the Circle well before I was born.”
“When was that?”
“Eighty years before the Issirs came.”
She was almost Lithoniela’s age. “Aerien is Lord Elas’ daughter,” Ralnor said and Labriel nodded. “Aenymriel is your aunt. Why would Aerien follow after her?”
“She had the skill, but Lord Elas forced her to abandon the trade when he found out. Returned her to the priesthood again, but sent her to Abarat. The latter saved her life.”
Toutatis whistled from the wall and Ralnor glanced towards the sitting on the lip of the collapsed second floor and looking over the edge teenager. Someone has entered the alley across the street, signaled Toutatis lowering himself. They are about to discover the body. Expect an alarm.
Hmm.
“Why did she leave the temple in the first place? Nobody had to know,” Ralnor asked and tried to move his stitched, swollen and leaking fingers unsuccessfully.
“My grandfather found out about the other thing. Priests of Oras can’t have intimate relations,” Labriel said defensively.
“That’s an old rule, nobody adheres to anymore. Even Uher’s priests sleep around.”
“My grandfather was a very old head,” Labriel retorted. “Aerien was his daughter.”
Priest Dinmeathor was of a lower caste.
Oh, the hypocrisy of the privileged.
Oras rules be damned, Lord Elas was upset with the wayward priest more.
Distance didn’t break up the relationship of course.
“You said I was dead afore,” Labriel said carefully and Ralnor glanced her way, keeping an eye on Toutatis. The teenager raised two fingers. Another one had joined the first person entering the alley. Where is the alarm? There’s a headless, butchered dude in there, Ralnor thought increasingly more worried.
“You can’t walk the shades after your first kill. You were too panicked, too agitated. It’s a recipe for disaster,” Ralnor murmured. “You need to do it well afore that with an escort. Learn the ropes and take control of your emotions. Dar Nalta wanted to get rid of you.”
“No.”
“On Nym’s orders.”
“Are you insane?” Labriel hissed and pushed herself up with a grimace of pain. She put a hand on her swollen, but looking better nose.
“She’s a vindictive, calculative person. Aerien might take Elas spot in the Council now, which Aenymriel possesses finally. You are a liability to her plans at this stage.”
“Aenymriel would never go against my mother!” Labriel snapped furious.
I bet she has a plan for that, no one has figured out yet.
Weaved patiently over years, each added angle and each concentric circle, invisible to the naked eye, but serving a purpose. Like a spider’s net.
“Who ordered this dude killed?”
“You know I can’t tell you that,” Labriel griped. “What’s your name?”
“Turn around,” Ralnor ordered and she pursed her lips. “I need to tie your hands.”
“What if I tell you? Will you let me go then?”
You think this is a game with rules pure-blooded lass?
“Sure,” Ralnor lied.
“The man worked for the bank,” Labriel said with a pained hiss. “There. Now you know.”
Not really.
“Which bank?”
“The Imperial Bank… ehm, the Bank of Goras they call it now I suppose,” Labriel replied.
Interesting.
“Look at Toutatis,” he told Labriel pointing behind her back and when she turned, Ralnor landed a savage blow below the Zilan female’s long right ear that knocked her out cold.
“Tie her up. Watch her arm. Then bring the horse here,” he ordered the moving to climb down teenager.
Kill her, his cynical mind told him. She’ll tell them everything and they’ll piece together the rest.
Eh, she’s an Elderblood, Ralnor fought with himself remembering Edlenn’s teachings. He didn’t have any other guidance.
So is Nym.
Gods darn it.
“Where are you going?” Tout asked with a glance at the unconscious female. “She might have a concussion after the beating she took.”
“She’ll be fine, other than the hand,” Ralnor retorted, not really believing it. “I have to see why those two didn’t raise the alarm.”
“So we keep the girl?”
“For now,” Ralnor grunted at the annoying teenager and then sighed. “You said you liked her.”
Toutatis raised his brows. “She’s too old Larn. She won’t learn new tricks.”
“You were too old and learned plenty of new tricks.”
“I want to walk the shades.”
“Other than that.”
With a groan of frustration Tout insisted. “Her aunt doesn’t like us very much. She has a family already.”
“I’m not sure she does,” Ralnor retorted gruffly and waved Tout towards Labriel. “Head for the ruined part of the old city walls. Use the woods and avoid the guards. Find a spot to hide. I’ll find you there.”
----------------------------------------
When Ralnor reached the alley again the corpse was gone. The pool of blood was there and the ghastly mess Toutatis had left behind cutting the head.
Did they use the other end? He wondered walking about.
He couldn’t find any spillage on the cobblestone, despite looking carefully in the near vicinity of the gory pool and the walls. Ralnor could hear the people coming and going inside the adventurer’s guild and the main street at the other end of the alley.
You wouldn’t drag a body to a much bigger street to hide it.
Why would you hide an unknown body?
Ralnor smacked his lips seeing the threads connecting.
One dead body, left in an alley.
Two killers sent to do the job, but only one of them returned, the other lost in the Shadow Realms.
Two of Labriel’s still breathing kin possessing that knowledge returned?
Eah, threads connecting my arse!
He breathed out and hearing a very distant, very strange, strangled howling from the other end of the alley, Ralnor plastered himself on the wall’s shade. His right hand found Labriel’s peleg and carefully unhooked it, then decided against it. Ralnor hooked the peleg again with a scowl, feeling sweat rivulets trickling down his forehead and with his eyes following the hooded figure that walked towards him on light feet. He got a throwing knife out and kept it between mid and ring finger, as the figure examining the ground reached him, then went past the concealed Ralnor.
Oras Hells in witch’s visions.
Dar Fenog was preoccupied searching about for something, or someone, but had missed Ralnor, and the startled at his appearance Ralnor had lost an opportunity to sneak attack him.
For several reasons.
Two.
Two kin left behind.
Another two of them had perished in the Fall.
Minus one.
He was a good, quiet soul. Dinmeathor was, Labriel had told him earlier.
Poor papa.
Aenymriel’s murderous servant had bedded her niece, after probably seducing her inside the sacred Oras Temple. Lord Elas insane sister ever plotting behind everyone’s back and moving her pieces on the power board.
What’s your next move I wonder? Ralnor queried going after the walking towards the main street sullen Dar Fenog. Silent Dhin, wasn’t a quiet man, priest… whatever. He just couldn’t speak, unless he used a lot of magic. Dar Nalta had taken his tongue to show him the way.
Out of the Circle.
There was no point for him to go look for the missing body. Dhin had tossed it in the Shadow Realms as offering to buy himself some more time.
To search for his missing daughter.
----------------------------------------
Ralnor followed Dhin down the main street of Taras, hidden behind the crowd of tourists and citizens out in force. A good number of them already inebriated, especially the humans, after tasting the sweet local wines. They passed by Jinx’s villa, reached the center and made a left turn there to head towards Market Street and the lake’s taverns.
Ralnor expected Dhin to head back to the taverns, but he stayed on the east side of the busy street and then entered the market instead. The crowd around the stands suffocating, the noise piercing his sensitive ears and the goods on offer reminding him of the bazaars of the Peninsula, or the flea markets of Jelin.
Meat and pies.
Hides and leather products.
Drinks and house amenities.
Salves, potions and medicine goods for all known afflictions and some Ralnor had never heard afore.
Dhin had found his partner near the healer merchandise tables. The tall, regal, but austerely dressed in old-style black robes female greeted him with a nod. Ralnor followed a fleshy Cofol tourist, enough lard on him to make the perfect roast, ducked behind a stand run by a grinning Zilan merchant wearing a loincloth and used the shaded counter to cut the line of sight of the animated couple.
“Have a feel,” the Zilan offered pointing at his crotch and Ralnor blinked, a tick ravaging his face. “Or check a different material yourself,” the Zilan added seeing his reaction and showed him the goods displayed on the bench. Neatly packed loincloths, scandalous panties and other female underwear covered the whole table. “The softest materials are used, much care and soothing spells also, for the better result and maximum comfort.”
“I’ll need a minute to think about it,” Ralnor croaked hoarsely to buy some time.
“It’s a personal matter for some,” the Zilan agreed. “Others’ like to share, or experiment beyond society’s norms.”
“I don’t much use them,” Ralnor retorted awkwardly, trying to catch bits of the conversation Dhin was having with the unknown female. Not an easy thing, as they both whispered.
“Or revel in the freedom of naked skin, risking it all,” the Zilan added warningly, but in a negotiating manner. “If that’s what you prefer.”
Ralnor wanted to slit his throat and put a stop to their bonding, but they were surrounded by people and besides this wasn’t the best vantage point to see what the half-lost in the crowd Dhin was doing. His eyes darted to the surrounding buildings, picked the tallest one and turned around.
“You’ll remember me, come the cold winter,” the Zilan mused forlornly behind his back. Ralnor walked fast through the noisy crowd, despite the late afternoon hour, reached the side wall of the building and paused to check for anyone looking his way. When no one did, Ralnor stepped backwards into a shade, burning incense, stepped inside the Silent Desert again and dashed down the short illuminated path towards the lit up portal.
He got out the shades without a hitch this time, right in the terrace located on the ceiling of the building facing the market. A cheap hostel of sorts. Ralnor rushed to the edge and stooped behind a huge ceramic pot used for roses. The flowers had blossomed. Red and pink-leafed, they covered almost the whole pot and spilled out of the edges touching the tiled terrace.
Ralnor looked down at the busy market and after a while spotted the couple now standing near a showing plenty of skin healer’s table -or part-time model for the loincloth merchant, but still in deep conversation with each other. The assassin breathed out and listened for the many voices coming from below trying to discern Dhin’s characteristic hollow voice and isolate it, as he didn’t know how the female accompanying him sounded.
After a tensed slow minute, he finally heard it.
“I hear you make dead gardens sing,” Dhin told the girl selling potions. “But do you know how to work with rare local incense as well?”
What in Oras rotten bones?
“What’s your favorite?” Moira asked and Ralnor blinked in panic, realizing she was the half-dressed comely Cofol.
Shite!
“Sandalwood coals, frankincense drops, or raw olibanum, Agarwood powder,” Dhin replied and Ralnor looked around them for any danger, but saw nothing popping out. Moira’s stand had a line forming already behind Dhin.
The most customers of all the other healers as a matter of fact.
“How fortunate that I have some prepared!” Moira replied mirthfully. “You’ll take a potion too? Something to give you strength for the festival?”
“Just a bag of incense,” Dhin insisted seemingly oblivious to whom he was talking to. Ralnor breathed out, while Aelrindel turned around to search the boxes for the order.
“I can prepare some,” the female Zilan told her partner sounding jealous. “You should search again.”
Or worried.
“I can’t do anything. I already checked,” Dhin hissed not wanting to discuss it in the open. “It’s out of our hands.”
“You’ll go and find our girl,” the female ordered frostily. “Atone for your many sins.”
“You’ll blame me?”
“Yes. I would,” she retorted regally and asked the approaching the counter Moira in an abrupt sober tone. “You started early healer.”
“Hah, I haven’t really decided whether to celebrate, or not yet,” Moira lied with an earnest smile, not getting the mocking tone dripping from the Zilan’s words. “Everyone seems to want me to though. I wonder why?”
You start semi-naked whilst still sober? Ralnor offered. Most prowling cretins are looking for easy targets.
“You should Moira!” An apparently regular customer yelled from the back of the line.
“Yeah babe,” said another with a meaningful wink. “Show them how it’s done.”
There.
“Gratitude sweet Malik,” Moira gushed waving at the beefy Cofol.
Fuck’s sake! Ralnor thought increasingly worried. Just send them on their blasted way! Now, before you say something stupider!
“You’ll feel right at home, I’m certain,” the female Zilan noted wryly and Moira furrowed her brows troubled. “With so many slaves around.”
Ralnor reached the left side of his weapon harness with his right arm looking for his hanged there crossbow. He got it out, placed it on the parapet in front of him and got a bolt out of his boot.
“Mayhap thou should try it as well,” the insulted Moira told the stiff female Zilan in Imperial, “but I reckon Oras’ priests possess two left feet, and thou wouldn’t want to make a fool of thyself.”
“Perceptive and well-trained pet,” the female said frostily. “What’s behind all that paint girl?”
“What paint?” Dhin asked his partner and the Zilan, probably Aerien, made a dismissive gesture towards the grouching Aelrindel.
“Your healer is masqueraded. From the color of her hair, to her skin and eyes,” she told her grimacing full of growing suspicion assassin partner, “Why, she might not even be a Cofol at all!”
Aelrindel narrowed her eyes and a breeze came from the lake, just as Ralnor –who had guessed the witch was about to strike down Labriel’s mother- took aim with the crossbow, after scanning the nearby area for a target and fired before the witch acted.
Ralnor’s bolt zipped down from his elevated position, the sound of the crossbow drown in the ruckus coming from the market, traversed thirty meters in a breath and nailed a preaching bard’s raised hand.
Going right through.
“ARRRGH! GODS! THE PAIN!” The bard started yelling at the top of his lungs over-reacting to the injury, whilst clasping at his bleeding palm. “MURDERED IN BROAD DAYLIGHT!”
The voices stopped inside the market abruptly and then people rushed near the rolling on the ground bard to help him, others yelped twice as loud without reason, or ducked for cover. Some run away, jumping over the stands creating a mini stampede, while a few continued bantering unperturbed after a brief stop and a couple of shady-looking figures found the opportunity to steal whatever they could in the chaos.
Dhin had left Aerien behind to approach the injured bard, paused a couple meters from the gathered group of helpers discussing the man’s injury and looking about him located Ralnor’s blood dripping bolt stuck on a stand’s support some meters away. The assassin touched the nailed in a downwards trajectory bolt with a gloved finger and then turned his head towards the buildings overlooking the market.
Ralnor was already retreating from his hiding spot, still concealed behind the roses, but noticed Dhin staring directly towards him and frowned. He paused unsure, hurt hand slowly reaching for another bolt, this he’d hidden inside his right sleeve, when a voice coming from the other corner of the terrace was heard.
The voice and its owner concealed behind another large ceramic flowerpot full of blooming roses.
“I think Dhin might have spotted me, hehe,” Dar Nym giggled. “Now, where did that naughty sound come from?” She asked rhetorically stepping away from the edge of the terrace. The hidden eight meters away Ralnor had pressed the bolt inside the crossbow and was in the process of carefully pulling at the string to reload it, when a whispering, singing voice replied.
The apparently not rhetorical query.
“Strange creaking came from very near,” Dar Nalta replied making rhymes and Ralnor heard unseen feet, tip-tapping towards his position, “Hidden killer, hunting for deer.”
Ralnor retreated towards the terrace corner’s edge, an eye on the door three meters away leading downstairs, the other on the now moving stems and roses, where he was standing afore.
“Guard the door and all shall become clear!” Dar Nalta hummed bristling with excitement, whilst frantically searching the large flowerpot.
Hells and flaming buckets! The cornered Ralnor cursed, upon seeing Dhin below him moving towards their building’s entrance as well and without a second thought he jumped lithely on the parapet, just as a flash of light erupted half a meter from him turning everything a blinding white and six small blades screamed out of it cutting through the air.
Three of them hit the already leaping with his back to the void Ralnor, after he shot a bolt on the emerging out of the teleportation spell albino arachnid, the others striking the parapet he had been standing on a moment before.
Ralnor plummeted towards the granite tiles waiting fifteen meters under him, but had the presence of mind to glance towards a dark window fifty meters away, at the other corner of the square housing the market.
Without a second thought he used some of the blood filling his lungs and throat.
The blood hissed igniting and burned, blackening the dropping like a rock Zilan’s esophagus and gums, but Dar Eherdir whispered raspingly, “Ez Nigrein,” in the Old Witch Tongue and performed the Greater Gift of Stealth mid-drop.
This wasn’t how the masters of eons past had envisioned this particular spell to be used.
Fuck ‘em all to Oras Hells!
A meter from the grey tiles of the market and the likely pulverizing finale, Ralnor blinked out of existence.
----------------------------------------
He crashed on the ashen road for the third time in hours, a feat already too taxing in a normal day, and went into a roll to minimize the damage. A bruised Ralnor jumped on his feet at the end of it, faltered trying to get the darn knife out of his neck, drowning in fresh blood that replaced the burned one and almost went down in the attempt to reach the blinking oval portal ten meters away.
Grunting like a gutted beast and running on pure spite and dogged determination, he extracted another knife –a grip less steel blade the size of his palm- from his shoulder and a third stuck in his left hip. Ralnor stumbled towards the illuminated opening, his ears ringing and feeling the numbness of lithe coming, as his body had exhausted itself.
Motherfuckers, he thought stubbornly dragging himself to the finish line, not caring about the circling him fiends and beasts of the Shadow Realms, the latter reluctant to approach the familiarly smelling, and clearly struggling foe that had haunted their domain for centuries.
Those that had, Dar Eherdir had cut down mercilessly, killing them forever.
In another time and at another place of the endless realms, a brave fiend might have made the attempt, but not in this spot and not this day.
With an animalistic growl Dar Eherdir emerged inside the villa’s window and collapsed on the carpeted floor leaving the Shadow Realms behind. Feeling his eyes close, the battered Ralnor jerked awake with a pained grunt, crawled to the table on all fours and grabbed at the covering. With a heave he pulled it down creating a great ruckus, several plates and goblets clattering on the tiled floor.
“Ugrh,” Ralnor growled and teared at the linen covering to make bandages and plug the wounds leaking blood on the floor. His recently stitched, unhealed fingers not working properly –or at all- and making a simple action difficult. “Argh,” he groaned and spat blood down to clear his throat, slotting a piece of cloth in the deep gush. Using the needle and whatever thread was left there from the previous job, not that long ago, he mended the wound some, after getting the now blood-soaked cloth out. With the cut sufficiently closed, but not fully sealed, he wrapped a fresh piece of cloth around his neck to keep everything together.
Without losing time Ralnor tied his arm next, right at the shoulder and then worked on the left thigh, cutting his leather pants first to check on the wound. Gulping down blood, feeling his burned esophagus hurt so much he couldn’t taste its flavor, Ralnor sat down on the floor staring at the door leading downstairs and searched his satchel for the leftover potion he’d used earlier.
He found the fancy vial unbroken, which was a miracle unto itself, sucked a deep breath in, bit the cork off and then let the breath out ruggedly. Some of the air hissed out of his stitched neck.
Do it you slimy cunt!
With that bit of verbal self-encouragement he poured the mixture down his throat and swallowed it along with copious amounts of blood. The potion hit him like a sledgehammer between the eyes, because he was too weakened to withstand its poison and he’d already had another hours prior.
“Eh,” Ralnor grunted and then blacked out.
----------------------------------------
“There he is officer,” a human voice said as he came about some time later. “I didn’t move him. Someone stabbed him and left him in here.”
“Was there a break in?” Another voice asked.
“No. I was downstairs, but I heard quite the ruckus.”
“What where you doing downstairs?” The officer asked suspiciously. “We had an incident an hour prior in the market. A bard was wounded. A light injury.”
Ralnor cracked his eyes open and reached for one of the bloody knives he’d extracted out of him. The guard had his back to him and the owner of the house looked very worried at the question.
“I was inside all the time. I may have watched the market’s happenings from the window?”
“What happenings? Be more specific.”
Ralnor got up with a hissing growl and the owner gawked his eyes seeing him rise.
“He’s alive!”
“That’s optimistic, the man lost a lot of blood—” the officer stopped, grabbed at his nape and then went down without another sound. The gawking owner stared at the gory figure of Ralnor standing over the lifeless body shocked.
“I need raw meat to stand on my feet,” Ralnor growled hoarsely and the human gulped down in panic. “But you’ll tell all about it afterwards.”
“No,” the owner protested whilst retreating out of the room. “I won’t. Go ahead friend,” he started running towards the stairs afore finishing his words. Ralnor grunted, dropped the knife and unhooked the throwing axe from his harness, hefted it once over his shoulder with a grimace of pain and then hurled it at the running for his life human, who was already six meters away. The peleg whipped across the empty corridor and caught the owner at the right side of the head, just as he’d started leaping down the staircase. The blade split the cranium and shoved the unlucky human on the opposite wall with a bang. Then he tumbled lifeless down the rest of the steps and stopped a meter from the end of the stairs.
“Eh,” Ralnor grunted and stooping picked up the knife again. With a scowl he limped towards the staircase to retrieve his axe. Use it on the owner next. Yeah. He seemed well-fed and the better choice on the menu.
No time for fancy roasts, he decided rolling down the blood-covered stairs. Just get the best parts and we’ll season them properly later.
-
1st of Sextus 195 (First Bacchanalia of the year)
1st Norui (Sixth Moon of the year) 3401 IC
Early summer Valimae Lilt
Late night
“Close the door,” a sitting in the dark Ralnor told the sorceress, who had entered still soaked from her late-evening bath. “Use the chair. The Gish pops her pink head in, I cut it with the axe and it’ll be your fault.”
“Oh, for Goddess’ sake,” an exasperated Aelrindel protested and then turned around to place the chair under the knob. “I almost pissed myself.” She told him returning, her wet feet making squelching sounds on the tiled floor. Aelrindel sat across from him and crossed her legs, holding the towel over her breasts. “I need to sleep a little. The market might be closed today, but I want to see Taras.”
“You can’t go out again today. Or any day,” Ralnor rustled, having trouble raising his voice after the damage he’d caused hours prior.
“Hah. Very funny. I have a date,” the sorceress stared at him intently.
“Taras is teeming with assassins.”
“We know that,” Aelrindel replied indifferently. “Still, I had a visit while I was closing for the day and I get to see the taverns during the festival with company.”
Ralnor licked his lips and moved his left arm on the table slowly.
“I need you to fix this,” he rustled. “I can’t move the fingers.”
“What’s the problem? Broke them?” The sorceress asked and reached for his hand. “Oi,” she recoiled. “What did you do? Are these stitches?”
“What else? I ain’t into piercing, and I didn’t do shit. Lost two fingers trying to follow Elas’ granddaughter’s virgin foray inside the Shadow Realms.”
“Elas?” Aelrindel asked. “As in Lord Elas?”
“Yes doll. Him. He had a daughter Aerien. Did you hear the rest I just said?”
“Never heard of her.”
Apparently not.
“You were talking with her inside the darn market!” Ralnor growled, feeling jolts of agony coming from several spots.
“No, I didn’t,” Aelrindel protested indignant. “How do you know, who I’m—?”
Ralnor stopped her grabbing at her hand over the table. “I didn’t finish,” he rustled.
“Fine. Let me get a potion first—”
“I had two already!” Ralnor growled and the sorceress breathed out and then pulled her hand out of his.
“What’s gotten into you? Taking too much might kill you!”
“Are you listening? People are trying to kill me since I stepped foot in Goras! Gods damnit!” Ralnor snapped losing control and struggling to get it back. Fuck! “Aerien was at the blasted market. They stopped at your stand to buy incense with Dhin.”
“Wait…”
“There’s more!” Ralnor grunted stopping her and Aelrindel puckered her mouth annoyed. “Nym was watching the exchange with Dar Nalta. I had to… improvise to keep your cover.”
“Ugh? They obviously missed me.”
“You almost gave it all away!”
“Stop this angry attacking tone—”
Ralnor had cut her words short punching Dar Nalta’s knife in the table between them. “Six knives that cunt hurled at me. Didn’t see it coming and you won’t. We are horribly exposed here Doll. See reason!”
“I came here for Lithoniela.”
“No you didn’t. Not only for her. Stop lying,” Ralnor grunted and pushed himself back on the chair with a groan. “You came to see the king also. It’s the same story always. Although you’ve seen this kid afore and of course the boy turned out worse than you thought. Right?”
“I guess.”
“Wrong. The boy is Hardir O’ Fardor. You dreamed of a flirting king.”
“Isn’t he a king?”
“You tell me. Do you want me to start again? This is Hardir O’ Fardor, dabbling as the king of Wetull. The previous guy started as a pirate lord. Though he may have been just a prison inmate on death row originally. Out on a technicality because the world ended. I’m not confident you’ve seen the same person both times doll.”
The witch sighed. “You think I was wrong to be curious?” She asked silently. “I had to know.”
“You can’t know for sure. A person can change in an instant and for many reasons. To know you need to see his dreams and even this isn’t a guarantee. A person can change still, or smoke a lot of drugs. Leave that aside and look to the current situation. If Nym is following Baltoris’ decrees, you are not safe. Matter of fact, as long as she breathes, no one is safe.”
“Nym is doing the Monarch’s bidding,” Aelrindel retorted.
A man came from the bank, Labriel had told him.
Ralnor smacked his lips. “Would that cretin know what she’s up to?”
“I don’t know. Why would she ever risk her status with him? Why isn’t Aerien in the Council?”
“She had an affair with a priest of Oras. The death god’s priests rolling in the hay inside his tomb-temple. Dinmeathor. Dhin. Lord Elas opted to lock her up is my hypothesis. In his tower. It was standard practice for him I heard. Solved his problems by making the realm forget about them. Did it with Aenymriel and with Aerien, I’m certain.”
“He almost did it with me. I barely got out of there.”
“Possibly.”
“Dhin was a priest of Oras?” She asked next.
“Even killers have a life. Well, except for Dar Draug I suppose, but you never know.”
“They are together still?”
“I don’t know what they are after all this time, but at some point, Elas let Aerien out, as he had done with his sister,” Ralnor explained. “Now the girl wasn’t sufficiently reformed –no surprise there- and went back to her murderous lover. They had Labriel and by then Elas was more accommodating in his later years, I suppose, or they hid it better.”
“What would Aerien take in exchange for her seat in the Council and silence about her transgression?”
How to gauge another’s real values?
“What does a priest without a temple want?” Ralnor asked and Aelrindel nodded in agreement. She stooped over the table, forgetting about her towel that dropped leaving her heaving breasts exposed.
“Where is the… Oh, do you mind?” The sorceress asked with a coy smile.
“Not at all,” Ralnor replied evenly. “Go on dear.”
“Where is this Labriel now?”
“With Tout.”
“You left an assassin with Toutatis?” The sorceress admonished him.
“She’s not that great an assassin and the kid is crafty,” Ralnor retorted.
I didn’t have much of a choice at that point anyway.
“Rhu wants to take me to a tavern,” the sorceress said changing the subject.
“Tell the cheap bastard you’ll fuck him without the expense,” Ralnor grunted.
“He’ll pay. It’s a sign of commitment. How normal folk live.”
“No doll, it’s a sign he’s looking to get laid with a pretty Cofol healer,” Ralnor retorted tiredly and pushed himself up from the table despite the naked flesh on display. “And normal folk don’t go about using an illusion spell and makeup to mask their appearance. We are not normal folk. Ah, your adventurer might be connected to the palace by the way.”
“Eh? How?”
“The Guild is covering for him. Why would they?”
“He’s very famous?”
“Yeah, another Ebenezer Framtond. My goodness, what a colossal crook that skulk turned out to be right?”
Aelrindel puckered her mouth and reaching under the table grabbed her towel. She wore it over her chest and walked to the bed. “Why sent an acolyte to do a job for the Circle?” The witch asked. She was sitting at the edge of the bed now and had gathered her long legs under the towel. “Was it a meaningless job?”
Centuries later, Ralnor was still surprised about how intelligent she could be.
“Mmm. Nym might have wanted to get rid of the girl.”
“Sure. But why risk it? Why risk a royal contract to do it?”
It wasn’t a royal contract?
“What are you saying?”
“Nym might genuinely be insane Larn,” the witch said with a cute yawn. “There could be no logical reason for her actions, or if there is, it is something no sane person would ever pursue.”
“Like finding an imaginary ruler that lives in a millennia old dream?”
“My mother knew about the dream also,” the half-asleep witch murmured. She had collapsed backwards on a pillow. Ralnor walked to the bed and stretched the misplaced towel to cover her up. Then went to the window and closed it shut using the lock.
This isn’t a house, it’s an open hostel, Oras curse them!
“What did Edlenn say?” He asked not expecting an answer and headed for the door.
“That I should go back to Neil Dan. She thinks I’ll die here.”
Yet you took the risk. One could never accuse the witch for a lack of courage in the face of danger. Behind all the silliness, Aelrindel was a trooper and she would fight for what she wanted.
“When was this?”
“I saw her spirit in Sadofort, on our way here. Ah, I’d like to visit her grave,” Aelrindel replied sadly and opened her gleaming eyes. “You haven’t changed Larn, in all this time that I know you. Why?”
Ralnor paused with the chair in his hands. He placed it down and reached for the knob with a grimace. “I always knew exactly what I wanted,” he told her hoarsely. “Since I was a kid. Neither Nym, nor Edlenn could ever change that, but I have changed too doll. Now I need far more things than what I did back then.”
-
Hours later
Dawn
The cries of drunken joy of the wildly celebrating city could be heard in the distance as Ralnor led his ‘borrowed’ horse west following the old city’s ruined walls. Some still stood as silent witnesses of a bygone era, huge sharp pieces of petrified basalt alike a dragon’s teeth, pointing to the skies. For the most part only the base of the massive walls remained, a long white line of stone and rocks heading west towards Goras’ gulf and Hardir’s Port. The farmers had leveled the furthest parts to build their farmhouses and repair the road, but here behind the inner city’s half-repaired houses, the chasms at the still standing foundations whistled with the summer breeze, carrying songs of the past and words of the present.
“I’m sad,” the unseen Labriel told Toutatis. Her words distorted coming out of a chasm in the massive rock walls, the pair had camped into. Ralnor stopped the horse and dismounted, glad to leave the madness of Taras’ streets behind. Almost fell apart hitting the ground, every part of his body hurting, from toes to eyebrows. “I’ve lost my hand forever.”
“I’ve lost my eye forever and I didn’t have the chance to use it for as long as you did. I’m pretty pissed about that,” Tout replied from inside the cave like opening. With the vegetation growing near the walls, they were almost perfectly hidden. Dar had snorted sensing another horse near and gave away their position. Even if he hadn’t, their voices would have made Larn stop.
“How did you lose it?”
“A cunt of the Circle took it. I got her good though. She’s a goner.”
“Whoa, you have issues kid. Your friend is part of the Circle by the way. One of its lost children. Far as I know, no one ever really gets out,” Labriel argued and Ralnor paused with a scowl at the entrance.
Don’t give her nothing lad.
“There are lost children outside the Circle in this realm and he can do whatever the fuck he wants. You’ve no idea who he is,” Tout replied soberly. “Even if you knew, you wouldn’t know still and stand blind while he’s next to you. There’s a whole other realm out there and all who follow the dark trade, know his name and heed to his words. No assassin would ever stand in front of him, or offer challenge. It would be obscene and illogical, for without him there would be no guild and no rules, just a bunch of crazed killers running around alike strays. There’s a lot of that by the way.”
“There’s a story in the old Kingdom, about a powerful assassin like that,” Labriel teased switching to perfect Imperial for the next part. “Dar’ Eherdir O’ Lome, the Lord Master of Shades,” she said lowering her voice. “But simple folk called him Fae O’ Elum, the spirit of twilight. I can believe all humans would fear your friend, if that’s him. I feel rather lucky to have survived the ordeal.”
“As I said,” Tout argued. “You might know a lot of things, but you don’t know him at all. Fear is just one side of the coin, the other is respect and even love, for without his efforts when we needed him the most, all of us in the guild and many others would be already dead.”
That’s enough, Ralnor thought curling his lip upwards to show a sharp incisor.
It was more an escaped to the land of the living Shadow Realms ghoul's proud smile than a human's, but it was a smile nonetheless.
“Hah, you’re smarter than you look Toutatis,” Labriel sniggered, but stopped immediately alarmed, as the sober Ralnor’s thick and elongated, dancing shadow, blocked the crimson dawn’s dim light that crept inside their little hiding place, the moment the father of all assassins walked inside.