Carver wets his face with water from the buckets Case fills daily with [Create Water], and Carver lets himself remember fondly the days when his group didn’t have a sorcerer who could do that for them. Having water whenever you want is nice, having it wherever you want is nicer, but there was always something more personal about finding a good stream or pond that Carver does miss.
He stops reminiscing and pushes himself to his feet, taking stock of the agenda for the day as he stands. Jeet and Seka seem to think the village will be sending a militia of thirty or so men and traveling adventurers… we need somewhere to run if they come… Carver remembers the cave-in at the bottom of the tunnel, and shakes his head again. It’s our best bet if we get caught down here, sure, but I’d rather it not come to that.
“Cap’n!” Pidger’s voice is nasally because of that damn cold he caught, and it shoves Carver back into reality with his news. “Jeet and Seka came runnin’ said we gotta go today if we wanna leave alive!”
Carver sighs, curses his rotten luck, and starts putting on his clothes and armor. He considers the merits of trying to leave by the road-they have enough horses for all of their men, plus their loot, if they ride in pairs-but nixes that plan on account of them having nowhere to go. Trying to fight their way out will likely end up the same way Pidger said, with all of them dead. Well, maybe Carver can fight his way out, if no one sent after them is a higher level than him, at least. So that leaves packing their shit and finding another place to hide and lay low for a few weeks.
Carver estimates that with the food they’ve got and the rate at which the boys have been hunting, they can go two weeks without hitting any marks before things will get bad, and by then, hopefully the heat will have died down. Even if that’s true, I don’t want the village to find this cave… It’ll still be useful to us after this blows over, assuming we can keep it hidden.
“Tell Jeet, Seka, and Lucky to leave the horses by some of the fake paths when they get back, and take Bruce with you to make a dummy camp. We’ll pack up what we’re taking with us here!” Carver shouts the parts of the plan he knows they’ll be using, and starts following his own orders by moving to the pile of essential supplies in the back of the cavern.
“Boss, should I see about getting us through the cave-in now? W-we might be able to hide in whatever’s beyond it, looked like a proper room, all chiseled stone and stuff, ‘member?” Case’s voice asks a question Carver was hoping none of his boys would come up with, and he turns to look at the men still here and packing up.
“Skivs, kill the girls, we can’t take them.” Carver says offhandedly when he spots Barb, Shotty, and Sunner wrestling the camps four toys into travel restraints, and he looks back to Case and the rest of the men as he spots Skivs pull out his hatchet with a look of grim determination. “I don’t know if we should. I want to, definitely, but I don’t know if we should rely on that for an escape plan.”
Carver winces instinctively at the sound of the first girl’s head being split open, and Barb and Sunner mourning their favorite barely-adult human right after. He frowns as he spots that his favorite-the half-elf they nabbed when they raided the farms a couple days ago-is next. He shakes off such trivialities, and tosses a crate full of preserved meats to Mace as he listens to the opinion of the next moron to speak.
“C-Carver, we’ve got the dungeoneering stuff from before, plus extra from some of the wagons, I think it’ll b-b-be fun, to hide out down in an abandoned dwarf dungeon, or whatever it is down ‘ere.” Cuts voices his stupid opinion, and Carver groans as he hears all of his men start agreeing. He sort of expected this, they had wanted to go clean and become adventurers, once upon a time, but now is a really bad time to start delving into abandoned ruins hundreds of feet under the earth.
Carver closes the last two crates of foodstuffs, packed to the lid with anything and everything that’ll keep, and waves Mace and Sunner over to take them to the side entrance of the cave. He motions for some of the others to come over and help him move all the stuff they won’t be keeping. He hears the sound of the last girl getting the axe, apparently Skivs had decided to let the guys have one more go at feeling her up, and sighs in light relief that for a few days at least, he won’t have to listen to them when trying to sleep. He shouts for the guys to add the corpses to the soon-to-be burnpile, and cracks his neck to keep himself from contemplating the ridiculousness and tragedy of throwing once beautiful women over a pile of perfectly good supplies. If only they could keep it.
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It takes half an hour more to get everything they need packed up and ready to go, and so he sets out the cloth for Case to light with one of his spells whenever they actually start heading out. He gathers his men at the entrance to the tunnel leading towards the cave-in, steels himself, lights his torch, and takes point in the formation. He hears a couple chuckles after Sunner mutters something like ‘she’s still warm’, and wordlessly tells Skivs to give him a playful kick to the shin. Carver takes the first step into the tunnel, Skivs and Cuts at his side, behind them in formation are Lucky, Jeet, and Bruce, and after that, Carver doesn't know or care what order they walk in. He inhales deeply, then draws his shortsword. Into the dark below.
--
Max picks up June’s dropped pack as the girl complains about being tired from all the walking. None of the other girls admonish her for her complaints, so Max assumes they all feel the same way. Honestly, he’d carry all of the packs if they’d let him, it’s not like it would be hard to do with Godsblood enabled the whole time, but Marra and Setris specifically would never allow that.
He can see the capital in the distance, and his rage is growing with each step closer, and the group is getting quieter and quieter at the same pace. Fuck this place! Max shouts internally. If it wasn’t for this fucking kingdom, Edora would still be-
“Max, you know it’s unfair to blame the kingdom that much. Edora also made her choice, regardless of how horribly they treated her.” Marra’s voice comes from behind him, and he stops walking for a moment, simply looking down at his feet for a moment before continuing. If he was able to focus on coherent thoughts beyond those of unjustified anger and unachievable revenge, he’d have predicted what would be said next.
“They used her like a bomb and treated her like a rat! Even if she chose to do it herself in the end, not even I can forgive them for it.” Setris’s statement is laden with her own anger and frustration, and everyone but June silently agrees, even if they don’t say it.
Max can somewhat forgive June for being conflicted about it. She never met Edora, after all, and only knows the stories, and what emotions Max and the others were able to share with the Mindlink. Max looks down at his right hand, trying to recall the sensation of holding her hair in his arms, but failing. Two lives back is evidently too far to remember the way she felt and sounded, it seems.
Max knows June’s conflict is because her hatred of the kingdom is entirely directed at a noble who is apparently already dead, Marquis Plumwell. Max recalls that the dark elf slave trade is still well and truly alive in the northern reaches of Riverta, and he puts his arm on June’s should to calm her slightly. One of the girls, Kayle, judging from nothing other than how much less ‘cushioning’ there is, grabs and wraps around his other arm. Max doesn’t bother looking down at her, and instead looks dead ahead at the ornate carriage apparently waiting for them a couple hundred feet out.
“I’m not riding in that. We’re walking unless you want me to throw up before we get there.” Vaye’s declaration is mirrored by the simultaneous groans of all, and Max feels Marra’s subtle thankfulness for a distraction slip through the link for a moment.
--
James puts his hand over Marietta’s white gloves, prompting her to detach from his arm. He leans down, and puts his hand on the ornate marble plaque in the middle of the former queen’s garden. He brushes his hand over the words engraved on it, before standing up. James hugs his sister from the front, and lets her nestle her head under his chin for a moment as he holds her. He would've offered her a kiss, or maybe a more intimate embrace, but with stuff like this, he knows Marietta thinks less is more. He hears her chest heave once as her emotions take over her otherwise proper demeanor. Ah… here it comes… she asks this every time we come here…
“James… Do you promise?” Marietta’s soft, lightly sobbing voice cuts into his chest to the heart beneath like a knife. He squeezes her tight to his chest for a moment in response, and lets his legs sway lightly to give Marietta more space to shift her own weight around.
“Promise what, Mari…” James whispers softly into her ear, stroking the back of her head with his hand gently. He looks up at the sky for a moment, clear blue, with the sun hanging high and bright for the morning, and adjusts his embrace to do a better job giving his sister shade.
“Promise me you won’t end up like sister.” She asks for the same promise once more. James shivers at the memory. How many years had it been? Seven? Eight? He tries his best to shake off the phantom cold as he hugs his dearest sister and lover.
James knew what she meant, but this exchange had become something like a ritual, a way to assure her that he still wanted it, and that she still did too. He looks at Marietta’s maid and his butler, both standing silently at the entrance to the garden, looking onwards at the pair without saying a word. James spots a number of people looking through the glass at them, their father, uncle, and cousin among them, and inhales deeply before answering.
“I promise, I will live for you.” James replies softly, and ends the embrace by letting go of her shaky form. He brushes the two tears that had managed to escape her eyes off of Marietta’s face with his left hand, and waits for her to use [Silent Image] to fix the appearance of her makeup. He feels the weight of the gold ring on his finger like a brick tied to the foot of a drowning man, and exhales to shake off the call of the void telling him to tear it off, grab her, and run. He focuses his breathing once more, and extends his arm for her to take once more. “Come sister, we both have to leave for our roles in an hour, we should say goodbye to father and uncle first.”
--
Edora Elspeth Riverta
Beloved Daughter, Sister, and Hero of the Kingdom
654-673 P.I.
May her soul be with the God of Glory and Sacrifice