“I told you the bath was gonna be worth it,” Qingxi said, leaning her head over to glance at Pallas as they rode atop the two horses. The three of them were now refreshed and no longer stank of fish, having taken a handful of minutes to wash off in the river’s cooling waters and perhaps engage in a… minor amount of tomfoolery.
“Yeah, fair enough,” she responded. “Would’ve been even better if you hadn’t pounced on me, though.”
“And whose fault is that, exactly?”
Pallas averted her gaze, eyeing up the distant rolling hills out west from the river they rode alongside.
“Hmm?” Qingxi insisted.
“Why don’t we ask Rumi?”
They both turned, waiting expectantly for Rumi’s verdict.
She, in turn, returned their looks with an empty gaze, her hands still placed idly upon Pallas’ hips as Strapi trotted beneath them.
“Huh? Oh,” she responded, jolting herself from her trance. “Erm… I would say…”
Qingxi pulled her mare a little closer in.
“Uhm…”
She could feel both of their stares boring into her.
“Mm… mine…”
They sighed simultaneously, Qingxi pulling back away to give their horses some space.
“Don’t be scared, Rumi,” Pallas reassured her. “You shouldn’t let Qingxi intimidate you from speaking your mind.”
Qingxi scoffed, rolling her eyes.
“Right, yeah,” she responded. “You know I wouldn’t pressure you, right, Rumi? I’ll support you no matter who you say started it.”
…
“But it was definitely Pallas.”
Either way, the three of them continued on hastily, unable to wait any longer to be able to chow down on the feast Rumi had promised them.
Except, when they got back to the wagon, Soleiman was not there.
All three beds the girls had used the previous night had already been packed up and stowed away neatly, yet his remained thereupon the wagon floor. Empty, personless.
And wet.
They broke out into a mad gallop out onto the hill directly adjacent to where their wagon was stationed. Though by them, really it was just Pallas, who urged Strapi on despite her fellows’ protests.
“Pallas! Stop!”
She couldn’t hear their cries. All that filled her ears were the pounding of her heart and Strapi's hooves, and all that filled her mind was a berserk, blood-boiling panic. One that emanated and screamed all throughout each and every vein and artery in her body, setting her very body afire.
Strapi crested the hill, emerging out onto the rolling plains of the Corridor. Pallas swiped the tears off of her eyes, brushing Rumi’s hand off of her shoulder as she tried to soothe her.
Her eyes combed the landscape, searing the grasses with her gaze as they swept from one end of the infinity to the next.
And she saw it.
Two little figures, galloping off into the distance.
“Pallas, wait!” Qingxi shouted, her voice just barely coming into earshot as she urged her mare to catch up to them, having to use her winds to help the poor horse along.
“He’s there!” Pallas responded.
“What?”
Pallas hopped up onto the saddle mid-gallop, gathering Strapi’s reins as she turned to hand them to Rumi.
“Pallas," Rumi said, closing her fingers hesitantly around the reins Pallas had shoved into her hand. "What are you-”
“Throw me, Qingxi!”
At once, she leapt from the saddle, rolling through the air straight towards Qingxi.
Reflexively, Qingxi brought her arms up, letting Pallas’ boots dig into them as they made contact.
Her eyes rose to meet Pallas’, glimmering with a sinister crimson glow.
And she nodded.
Pallas hopped slightly once more to reposition herself as Qingxi extended her two arms and locked her fingers together as though she were to strike a volleyball. Except, in this case, Pallas was the volleyball.
The air soon burst into a torrential flurry of currents, Qingxi forcing Pallas into the sky as she threw her arms forward and sent columns of wind screaming after her.
Pallas tore through the air, careening above the verdant waves as bursts of misty blood erupted from her skin; rocketing her even further ahead. Regaining her composure as best as she could, the blood within her right arm began to build in pressure, all the stress and adrenaline and fear rushing into the very tips of her fingers despite her fighting to keep them under control.
In the corner of her eye, she saw a ball of blood began to coalesce at the tip of her index finger; the fuming orb of red-hot fury threatening to burst out into a wild beam at any moment.
Just in time, her eyes landed upon the two figures in the distance, now close enough that she could make them out in better detail. Two horses. One of which, had a limp body laid upon its-
The beam of blood screamed through the air, covering the two hundred or so metres between her and her target in a near instant. It struck one of the horses directly in its hind, tearing through its body and rupturing into a series of smaller beams that split back out like liquid shrapnel and struck the other.
Seeing as the two horses collapsed onto the ground, she made her landing, rolling out onto the grass before grabbing Rumi’s right hand and leaping back upon Strapi’s back as she and Qingxi rode by.
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Hurriedly, they rode up towards the wreck, quickly closing the gap between them as Soleiman's kidnappers struggling back to their feet.
“Stay back!” One of the kidnappers said, stumbling back up just as they began closing in. Hoisting Soleiman up by the ropes bound about his torso, he placed a singular finger to the back of his head.
“I said stop!” He repeated, glimmering crystals of ice now forming where his finger met Soleiman’s head.
They stopped in their tracks, Pallas raising both of her arms and pointing them at the two aggressors as she felt her blood surge within her again.
“Pallas, no!”
Qingxi grabbed her arm, pulling it down.
“They’re going to kill him!” she retorted, fighting to try and pull her arm back into position.
“Calm down,” Qingxi said. “Just hold on a moment. A standoff is the last thing we want right now. We need to try talking instead.”
“I…” she seemed to struggle to find her words.
Pallas gave in, relaxing her arms a bit and realigning Strapi so she could face the kidnappers head-on.
“What do you want?” She asked.
“First off,” the one holding Soleiman hostage began. “We want compensation.”
“For what?”
“The horses!”
“You were the ones who-”
“Pallas,” Qingxi said again.
Pallas sighed.
“And secondly, we would like to apologise.”
Soleiman's brow eased up a little bit, the look of anticipation on his face for the oncoming agony of a point-blank ice blast retreating slightly.
“Apologise?”
“Yeah,” he responded, pulling his finger away from Soleiman’s head. “Because this is all a misunderstanding.”
Much to the bewilderment of all four party members- and the bewilderment of his fellow, the kidnapper began undoing the ropes about Soleiman’s torso, freeing his arms and letting him go without so much as a scratch. Ignoring all the dirt smeared across his body from the tumble that came with Pallas sniping the two horses, of course.
Soleiman turned back to look at the man- no, boy in bewilderment, the shadows cast upon his young face by his flowing keffiyeh unable to conceal the complete lack of malice he held. He even caught a glimpse of his comrade in the corner of his eye, her mouth agape in a stunned silence.
“We don’t get foreigners very often around here,” he explained, bringing his eyes back up to face Pallas as she lowered her arms and as Soleiman slowly backed away to her side. “So when we saw your horseless wagon parked by the river and found your friend inside, we assumed he was a member of the Sahlbarid.”
“The… what?” Pallas asked.
“Banu Sahlbarid. They’re another Saracenic tribe that lives in the north, and they use wagons and other vehicles instead of horses,” he said. “They’ve recently started feuding with us and encroaching upon our territory, so I’m sure you can understand why we decided to take the measures we did when we saw yours.”
“Oh, right,” Soleiman said softly, audible only to the three girls. “They’re the ones who invented the dunesailers.”
“I… suppose so,” Pallas said. “Feels like dragging a lone traveller out of his wagon while he’s asleep is still a bit drastic, though."
"Sorry about that," he responded, entirely genuine in his apology.
"Any reason why they’re invading you?” Pallas asked.
“They're just trying to suck up to the Banu Ahd,” he responded. “There’s some nonsense rumours about hordes of people from the far north swarming their lands and about the Otian beasts of old reappearing, but that’s all just a bunch of propaganda from Burkannar to try and justify them persecuting us.”
The boy seemed to lose himself in his words, falling silent as he gazed off onto the open plain.
“Bloody mountain dogs,” he spat to himself. The venom seeping through even the tone and timbre of an adolescent voice. An adolescent that couldn’t possibly have been older than them.
“Alright, anyways,” he continued, snapping himself out of the stupor. “Let’s talk about compensation!”
“We don’t really have much on us in terms of material value, though,” Soleiman said. “We just barely have enough to support us on the way to our destination.”
“No worries about that,” he responded. “All I need you to do is complete a task for us.”
Pallas and Soleiman eyed each other, being the only two party members able to completely understand soft Plataic.
“...What kind?” Pallas asked.
“There’s a living cemetery just upstream from the river here, about ten or so kilometres in-land from the nearest town, Sayda,” the other said, her voice even softer than her fellow’s. “We need you to check up on it and count any captives still alive. Then, report that number to the town hall.”
“That’s it?” Pallas asked, tilting her head.
“Yeah,” she responded. “Try not to visit the cemetery anytime outside of noon or if it's raining. You might run into some of those diseased wretches at those times.”
“You mean ataphoi?” Soleiman asked.
“Yeah, ataphoi, if that’s what you call it in Minerva,” she responded. “And be wary of other Janubis; our kind don’t take very well to vehicular machinery, if you couldn’t tell. Just make sure your… Saracenic friend isn’t alone in the wagon, and you should be fine.”
She seemed a little uncertain of how she’d address Soleiman, given that he evidently wasn’t of either the Janub, Sahlbarid or Ahd tribes; and that there was little to suggest he had any affiliation with neither the Menzoic-speaking Merkez nor the distant Tariq. So she simply went with the umbrella term for those who lived in the former lands of the Maftuh Tribal Confederation.
“Alright,” Pallas responded, placing a hand atop of Soleiman’s head and giving him a reassuring rub. “So all we have to do is check out the... living cemetery?”
“Mhm,” she hummed. “Please don’t hoodwink us. It really isn’t that hard of a job, they’ll even pay you for-”
“Okay, okay,” Pallas responded, cutting in. “We won’t. Promise.”
The girl nodded, and Pallas nodded back.
“Alright, off we go then-”
“Wait!”
The party froze again just as they began turning around, Soleiman freezing mid gait on his way to Qingxi’s mount.
“What was that move you used?” The boy asked. “I’ve never seen anything so accurate and deadly at such a distance!”
For a moment, there was silence. Nothing but the slow whirring of the northerly winds flowing atop the rolling hills of the Corridor. And nothing but conflicting thoughts filled Pallas’ head, tugging and pulling and yanking on her in all directions.
“Well,” she started, her eyes meeting Qingxi’s as the Chitite urged her to proceed with caution. “You guys… don’t like the Ahd, right?”
“Absolutely not,” they said almost in synchrony.
“Alright then,” she sighed, pausing a little to collect her words. “What I did wasn’t a Technique,” she said, moving a hand forward and pointing a finger up to the sky. “It was a Blessing.”
A fountain of blood then spurted momentarily from the tip of her finger, springing forth like a miniature eruption of red.
“Pallas, what are you-”
“It’s okay, Soleiman,” she reassured him. Turning back to face the two floored Janubis, she continued, saying, “Because I am the 3rd Soteira. Defender of Minerva.”
They didn’t respond.
“But you cannot let anyone know where I am, okay?” she continued. “Part of my plan to succeed involves defeating the Ahd, but I am in no condition to do that right now. Which is why I’m heading away from Minerva, and why I’m currently here.”
“I…” the boy started.
“Listen, okay,” she said. “Give me a year or so, and I will return to defeat the Ahd. I will free Minerva, and I will free you and the rest of the Banu Janub too. All I need you to do is to not tell anyone about what we’re up to.”
“Okay,” the girl said weakly, evidently still in the process of drinking in the gravity of the situation.
“Instead, tell them vague prophecies about the 3rd Soteira and how she’s planning on fighting the Ahd,” she said. “Leave out important details, and make it seem as mystical as possible. But spread the word. Let the idea of me be known.”
They closed their mouths.
“Can you do that for me?”
“...Yeah.”