Hours passed, and as noon turned to early evening, Qingxi began to stir from her slumber. The rhythmic shifting of the golden steed gently rousing her, she slowly picked herself off of Pallas’ back- feeling almost immediately as any attempted facial expression she made was met with thick resistance. As if her face had been glued shut.
“Qingxi?” Pallas asked, noticing the Chitite’s awakening.
Qingxi groaned groggily, instinctively going to rub her ears down as she tried regaining her bearings.
“Pallas?” she asked. “What happened to Rumi?”
“She’s with Soleiman now,”
“Oh, alright.” Absentmindedly, she reached out to rub her eyes too, though her hands met the ceramic of her faceguard instead. She traced her fingers swiftly across the length of the ropes that buckled together and kept the piece of armour on, planning on taking it off so her skin could feel the air for but a moment. Maybe that’d shake off the gluey sensation.
But the moment the buckle clicked, Pallas intervened.
“No! Don’t take that off,”
A little perplexed, but convinced by her friend’s sudden sincere concern, she quickly buckled it back in place.
“Why? What happened?”
“You don’t remember?”
Qingxi paused for a moment.
“Would I be asking if I did?” she replied.
Pallas hummed.
“Well, this is going to be a bit of a shock, so prepare yourself,”
“Consider me prepared.”
“...You had your face burnt off earlier, fighting off the Hashashiyyin.”
…
“Seriously?”
“Mm… yeah. Don’t worry though, I put a blood coating over it- that’s why it's so sticky. We have a few Edenberries on hand from the Estate so once we get to the village you’ll be alright,”
“Okay, that’s fine then.”
Thump-thump, thump-thump. The drum-like beating of hoof against dirt.
“Really?” Pallas asked.
“Yeah. I can still feel my tongue and teeth, and my nose and eyes are still working. What’s there to worry about?”
“I… fair enough.”
Pallas thought it was strange, definitely. That someone would come to terms with losing their face so quickly. Perhaps that's just how they were in Shafraturriyah- brutally practical and impressively efficient. Or maybe that’s just how Qingxi was.
“Oh, the village we’re off to, it’s Mesimeos, right?”
Pallas froze momentarily in her response. The scene resting at the back of her eyes surging back to the forefront momentarily. And then of more scenes, the splattering of blood and the sound of skull cracking under stone, the shuffling of dirt over blood and the dragging of bodies against the ground.
“No. Somehow, Mesimeos was… ruined, when we got to it.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“I don’t really know for sure what happened, but, by the looks of it- some sort of creature came along and ravaged the entire place. Leaving not a single survivor aside from a few Deathblighted men,”
“The whole village?”
“...Yeah. The whole village.”
“....Oh.”
Pallas nodded in response.
“So what did you do?”
“Left them there. We’ll just have to keep moving, and hopefully the next village isn’t destroyed too.”
“Okay.”
Thump-thump. Thump-thump.
“We had a few cases of Death back in Xiafa too, when the Council decided to recall warriors they’d sent to the Silent Valley to fight the Ahd,” she added, trying to take Pallas’ mind off of the destruction. “When they came back, some of them had caught the pestilence. And when they ending up dying without people realising it, it started a whole fiasco where people became too scared to leave their estates- in case they caught the disease themselves,”
“I see,” Pallas replied, her interest piqued slightly. “Were you and your family affected?”
“No… thankfully. I used to worry a lot about whether my mother would be safe, but she never ended up catching it.”
“That’s good to hear,”
“Mmh.”
The two of them resigned from conversation, Pallas putting her attention back on the grassy road ahead while Qingxi sat up straight. Qingxi had nothing more to say, and Pallas was in no real mood for talk.
It had been a while since the Chitite had last rode on horseback, since she last felt the roaring winds in her fuzzy ears. So it was admittedly a bit of a shame she wouldn’t be able to feel as the forest air brushed against her face. But it was alright, so long as she was alive and still had all her senses about her.
Speaking of senses, she noticed something. Strangely, she only heard the galloping of their horse against the ground. And, last she checked, she and Pallas were the only ones atop it.
Looking back, sure enough, there was no one horse in sight. No signs of neither Rumi nor Soleiman.
“Hey, Pallas,” she asked, the confusion peaking in her voice subtly.
“Mhm?”
“Where are Rumi and Soleiman?
“They’re going through the forest,” she replied. “We decided it’d be best if I rode out ahead with you to find some help since we couldn’t all outrun the Hashashiyyin at once. So they’re taking the slower, stealthier way.”
“With the beast that attacked Mesimeos roaming around?”
“It headed west from Mesimeos, and they’re approaching the village from the east,” Pallas said, reassuring her. “And, in the awful case they did come across some threat, Rumi has your sword.”
Qingxi put a hand to her hip.
Yeah. Rumi did have her sword.
“I…”
Pallas glanced over her shoulder, seeing as Qingxi stared blankly into her back.
“Qingxi? Is something wrong?”
She didn’t quite know what to say, the sinking feeling of dread and fear in her stomach festering and diving deeper within her the longer she struggled to get her words together.
“Can… Can we go back and get them?”
Pallas turned around again, to give her a look of incredulity before turning back to face the road.
“You want to go back?”
“Yeah,” Qingxi nodded, her voice still unsure. “I… I don’t think they’re safe.”
“We can’t, Qingxi,” Pallas replied. “We need to get your help, and we don’t have enough Edenberries with us to fully stabilise your wounds.”
“I’m fine,” Qingxi insisted. “We can’t just let the two of them die to the beast!”
“They’re not.”
“But what if-”
“We cannot go back, Qingxi,” Pallas said, pausing to breathe in deeply. “Right now, there is only one certainty. And that is that you will die if we don’t get you recovered in time.”
“I…”
“Whether or not Soleiman and Rumi get… killed… is something we cannot say for sure. And whether or not we evade the Hashashiyyin and manage to even meet up with them if we turn back is also something we can’t guarantee,” Pallas said. “You know? I don’t know a lot of things, and we can’t do a lot of things given our limits. But what I do know is that you need help, fast.”
Qingxi gave no response.
“Okay? Please, just trust me,” she said. “Because I don’t want them dying either.”
Qingxi rubbed down the side of her hip, feeling the rough fabric of her gi’s skirt against her hand. The alien feeling of not having her sword with her, even if she wouldn’t use it, stoked the smoulders of anxiety within her.
But she quenched the flames before they grew too large. Dousing them and calming her nerves.
“Alright, Pallas,” she said, trying her best to keep herself together. To keep her mind off of her fears. “I trust you.”
Strapi stumbled into the next major clearing, the only speck of habitation amidst the sheer mass of the forest that spanned kilometres in all directions. Though joined only by the meagre half-maintained pathways that the two of them had been painfully navigating for the past few hours, Pallas nevertheless hoped for some sign of life. Of friendly faces. Lest they be forced to make Soleiman and Rumi trek through more treacherous landscape just to ensure Qingxi’s survival.
And never had she been more relieved to see shambling wooden huts donned with thatched roofs.
But she held her breath, unsure if this settlement had met a similar fate to Mesimeos.
She urged the exhausted mare onwards gently, nudging her into a slow walk forward. And as she approached the collection of huts huddled together, she spotted a few figures sitting around a little campfire- making their preparations of dinner, she presumed.
Pallas reached her hand out to wave at the people, opening her mouth to call out to them. But even before a single word had left her mouth, one of the figures began hurriedly running towards her- leaving the rest of them motionless around the campfire.
“Hello,” Pallas said, hesitating before and during the word as her mind jumped from one possible greeting to another in fickle indecision. She began introducing herself, though the person quickly cut her off.
“Who are you,” the elderly man asked, the mild wrinkles on his face and the strands of white in his eyebrows and beard standing out as he drew closer to her.
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“I’m Pallas, and-”
“What happened to Mithri and the others?” the man asked, denying her the chance to speak in his desperation.
“Who?”
“The- the hunting party, they went to Mesimeos! What happened to them?”
…
She didn’t know how she’d break the news to the man, who looked old enough that he could keel over from merely learning what had happened to the poor village. But, her face betrayed her. The hesitation not masking the look of discomfort that had dawned upon her face as she recalled the tragedy that had befallen the Mesimeos people.
“No…” The man coughed.
“I’m sorry, Sir. But they are no longer with us.”
Putting his hand up to his face, he covered his eyes. And slowly, he wept, falling to his knees.
“I’m sorry,” she said again as she tried to reach out to put a hand on his shoulder, though he sank to the earth too quickly for that.
Some of the other figures from around the campfire got to their feet, and each one began shuffling towards the broken man to console him.
Pallas shifted awkwardly atop her saddle, unsure of if she should dismount and join in consoling the man or not.
“They…” he continued, even as the other people, all who looked like they were well into their twilight years, began consoling him. “They were all we had left…”
Pallas looked back at Qingxi, seeing the concern even in her masked face. She turned back to the man, seeing as he wiped his tears against the sleeves of his dirty cotton shirt. The creamy beige of the fabric stained yellow from long-time use and improper cleaning.
“We were too late.”
One of the other people consoling the man turned to face the two of them.
“Thank you regardless, traveller,” the old lady said. Her crooked, sunken form only barely able to crane its neck up to look them in the eyes. “What brings you to Naphthalia?”
“Well,” Pallas responded. “I am Pallas, and this is my companion, Qingxi.”
The Chitite bowed slightly in response, careful not to bend her back.
“And I am the Soteira.”
The small gathering of people suddenly turned to look at Pallas, the broken man even stopping mid-sob to stare at her in shock. All other feelings put in paralysis, paling in comparison to their disbelief.
“Would you mind hosting us for a day or two?”
The people looked at her in stunned silence. Not saying a word. Beholding the sight of the two armoured women, both in gear styled in the fashions of foreign lands, atop their golden steed. The orange warmth of the evening’s western sky enframing the two of them in a golden aura.
“S…Soteira?” one of the older men said, his eyes barely visible behind the massive squint that sat unwaveringly as a permanent landmark on his weathered face.
“Yes, Sir. Have a look,” she said, pulling off one of her gloves as she opened her palm up.
Slowly so as to not startle them, little lines of crimson red blood began forming along the creases of her skin. Starting as individual dashes, then joining one another to form a spiderweb of blood across her hand, before finally culminating into a trickle that fell from her middle finger and onto the soil below.
“My powers lie in blood.”
The perpetually squinting old man fainted, having to be propped up by some of the other folks.
“You came… you finally came,” the old woman said, her voice wavering, on the verge of tears.
Strapi shifted away slightly in discomfort as the group shuffled closer to her.
“Finally,” she said, taking Pallas’ bloody hand in hers. “Our saviour…”
Shaking violently as she did so, the old lady got onto her knees, pulling Pallas’ arm down with her as the rest of the group followed suit. She put Pallas’ hand to her forehead, falling silent even as the blood slowly began to trickle its way down onto her face.
“I-it’s alright,” Pallas responded abashedly, flustered by the sudden show of reverence. She swiftly pulled her feet from the saddle’s stirrups, finding that Qingxi had already undid the rope that bound the two of them loosely together. She hopped off of Strapi to, herself, get to her knees.
“Thank you for coming.” The old lady slowly pulled her face away from Pallas’ hand just as she got to the seiza position. In the background, Qingxi too began her dismount, though with much greater difficulty as she fought to lift her feet up and out of the stirrups.
“And thank you for having me.”
“Of course, dear. How could we be of use to the Soteira?”
“We need somewhere to rest while we await the arrival of some of our other fellows,” Pallas said as she helped the old lady get back to her feet. “We’ll have to stay out in the forest, but we don’t have many supplies on us and my friend here’s a bit worse for wear.”
She turned back to look at Qingxi, now fully off of Strapi- though she could still clearly see the discomfort of the dismount in her furrowed eyebrows and in the fact that she kept her hands tenderly resting upon her abdomen.
“Why the forest?”
“Because we were chased from Kardia. We only just managed to escape and we’ve been on the run ever since. So we hoped that if we found some help we’d be able to hide out in the forest and wait to see if they’re still pursuing us.”
“I see,” the old lady responded.
Turning back to the other people gathered about Pallas, she called upon them, asking for them to return to preparing dinner so that Pallas and Qingxi could have something to eat before retreating into the wilds. She looked back at Pallas, beckoning her and Qingxi to follow her as she took Strapi’s reins in her hand.
The old lady slowly led the three of them to the campsite they’d gathered around earlier, the other residents rushing forward and moving in impeccable synchrony as they got to work preparing the night’s meal.
“Have a seat by the fire, dears,” the old lady said. “I’ll be back in a moment.” She led Strapi away from the congregation, presumably to join any other animals they had penned up elsewhere in the village.
Pallas offered Qingxi a hand, letting her hold onto it as she slowly, gently, lowered herself onto one of the little wooden circular seats arranged about the campfire. The one furthest away from where everyone else had taken to working to so they wouldn’t be getting in the way.
“That really hurt,” she said softly, placing both of her hands onto the seat to try and take some weight off of her torso.
“Mmm, just hang on a little longer, okay? It won’t be long until we get to rest.”
Qingxi sighed to herself.
As they sat next to each other, their little half-stools huddled up against each other, they noticed in the corner of their eye that a singular man hadn’t involved himself in any of the preparations. The same man that had ran up to them asking about a ‘Mithri’ and his hunting company.
Pallas noticed it first, turning to look at the man as he stared in apprehensive silence at the both of them. Certainly strange, especially considering he looked the most youthful out of the entire group, though the bar for that hadn’t been set too high anyway.
“Hello,” she said.
The man opened his mouth to respond, though he seemed to fight it back as he turned to look dismissively at the side for a moment. After a while he seemed to have regained his composure and turned to face the two of them once more.
“What happened to them?” he asked.
“I think it would be better if we addressed it once everyone’s ready.”
The man nodded, exhaling audibly as he did so.
And so they got back to waiting, watching as the old folks lit the fire and filled the pot suspended above it with a great myriad of ingredients. Each one a different leafy green, with the occasional spice or sprinkling of salt. The cherry on top, though, was the whole fresh raw chicken they produced from the hut immediately behind them, the pot just barely large enough to contain the whole thing without spilling any of the nutritious soup out.
The old lady from before soon returned, the satchels they’d left on Strapi’s saddle in tow. She handed them the bags, and Pallas took the liberty to explain to her everything they’d planned on doing between then and rendezvousing with Soleiman and Rumi. At least letting her in on their preferred course of action while the soup was doled out to everyone there.
And before long, most everyone had taken a seat and begun digging into their meals, listening to the crackle of the fire and the bubbling of the soup. The light of the sky slowly disappearing above them and being replaced by the fire’s dancing flames.
“So,” Pallas started, trying to draw attention to herself despite the fact that everyone already had their eyes on her. “As for what happened to the hunting party,” she said, pausing often mid-sentence to try and find an eloquent way she could break the news to them with. “They… and all of Mesimeos…”
She looked at Qingxi briefly, still looking for the right words.
“Were killed.”
…
“We’re not sure what did it, but, whatever it was, it likely was not the fault of the Hashashiyyin,” she continued, despite the group’s smothering silence. “We think it may have something to do with Deathblight, since the only survivors we came across were those on the verge of succumbing to it. Everyone else not infected by the plight was just killed, cut and mauled to death by… something.”
The crackling of the fire, the bubbling of the soup. And not a single other sound.
“We… we’re saying this because you guys should try and avoid leaving the village. At least until we figure out how to deal with whatever it is that did… that to Mesimeos.”
…
The squinting man spoke up.
“Do you know where it went?”
“West.”
The expression of the man who’d approached them earlier suddenly changed. The look of shock and doom on his face suddenly replaced by a very visceral, sudden fear.
“What?”
“It went west.”
“My only brother lives west of here!” he cried. “Why didn’t you follow it?”
“I-”
“Aren’t you the Soteira? Aren’t you supposed to protect us?” he continued, rising from his seat.
“Well, I…”
“Why? Why are you here?”
“Alexandros, please,” the old lady that had helped them lead Strapi to the stables interjected.
“Why?” he nearly shouted, voice cracking in his distress.
“I…” Pallas struggled.
Wasn’t she the Soteira? The one that had caused all hell to descend upon the people of Minlos and its surrounding cities all those years ago?
What good was she if she couldn’t even protect the people she had been born to save?
“Please,” she responded, the pleading look on her face begging for mercy. Not just from them, but from herself too. “We were being chased by the Hashashiyyin, Qingxi and I can barely even fight any longer, and we don’t even know where it’s gone exactly- or what it even is!”
Alexandros paused, holding himself still.
“I- I understand that I am the Soteira, that I’m supposed to protect everyone, but,” she said, voice wavering. “I can’t do everything.”
Pallas continued, watching as he sat himself back down.
“I’m sorry. But I’m still weak. I… I don’t know what lies out there beyond your village, beyond our Minerva. I don’t know how I’m supposed to fight two Empires off at once,” she said. “I don’t know how I’m going to be a Soteira.”
She felt the tears well up in her eyes, her vision slowly clouding.
“I’m sorry. I really am. But you understand, right?” she asked, looking up at the man, her tears beading up and trickling down her cheeks.
The man said nothing in response. But Pallas thought she saw as his face softened- even through her tears.
“Which is why I need your help. To survive. So that I may fight for you, for all of us,” she said, wiping her tears off on her shoulder and looking around at the rest of the folks. “Please, understand, that I cannot yet do everything by myself. That I need you.”
Some amongst the group broke their gaze off of her, eyes trailing across the ground in thought. Some others’ faces relaxed slightly, their initial shock melting away to reveal a slight tinge of compassion. Of understanding and patience upon their weathered, wrinkled, and worn faces.
“We won’t be staying here for much longer,” Alexandros said.
“Sir, we can help protect you from whatever it was, you just have to-”
“No… no. Look at us, young lady.”
He gestured broadly, leading Pallas’ gaze over the several other folks sat around the campfire. All of them old, all of them tired.
“Mithri and the lot were the last of the youngins supporting us,” he continued. “Now that they’re gone, and now Mesimeos is gone too… I’m afraid we won’t be able to last on our own.”
Pallas paused for a moment, staring at Alexandros as he sat back down in defeat.
“The last of the youngins?”
He looked up at Pallas, pulling himself from dejection.
“You’re not from around here, are you?”
Pallas wasn’t too sure what to say back in response.
“No, it’s alright. I should’ve realised,” he said. “You see, Soteira, the Hashashiyyin have taken all of our children away. All our hopes, all our legacies. Sent them off to who-knows-where. And now all that’s left of little old Naphthalia is us. Tired sacks of bones, stubbornly living from one day to the next.”
Pallas saw as the other folks too dropped their heads, hiding them from her eyes.
“But there’s only so much we can do before we simply cannot go on. And now that we’ve lost even the youngest amongst us oldheads… it seems like our time has come. To kick the bucket, and to abandon Naphthalia altogether.”
“...The Hashashiyyin took your children?”
“All of our children,” he responded. “And the children of most other villages around here.”
“Why?” Pallas asked, feeling as her blood surged momentarily.
“Said they were moving them to some other villages out east. That we could still visit them, if we wanted.” He scoffed to himself. “As if. It’s already hard enough to travel a few kilometres at our age. And with that thing that… that attacked Mesimeos, roaming out in the wilds,” he sighed, sinking even further. “...We’re not ever seeing them again.”
The silence fell upon them once again. Their ears filled only with the crackling of the fire and the bubbling of the soup, both now markedly weaker than before.
“I can change that,” Pallas said.
Alexandros looked up at her, defeat still plastered all over his face.
“It’ll take time, I’m sure, but… I promise you. If you help us survive, I will not rest until everyone here has seen their children again.”
He sighed to himself softly, looking back at the ground.
“Alright, Soteira. I’ll take your word.”