A week in the Desolation had greatly changed Suraiya’s understanding of the nature, and burdens, of her place as the Karelian heiress; and her thoughts were troubled while she rode Valour through the heat-hazed wasteland. The day she’d left Stormharrow, she had still held onto the fanciful and optimistic perspective of a noble princess sallying forth to defend her land from the foul, blight-corroded beasts and mutants which occupied, and made their homes, within the vast expanse of the Desolation.
She had held a deeply rooted belief in the honour, the privilege, and the glory in being among her Kingdom’s Knights; to bring steel and force to bear against the enemies beyond the Lunar Gate.
She huffed a disparaging breath at her own delusion.
The only thing she had found beyond the wall were questions, blood, and a growing numbness to killing which deeply disturbed her.
Even with only a week behind them, Suraiya had found acceptance within the other combatants in the convoy, the very thing that she had yearned for upon first leaving Stormharrow. No longer did they regard her as the porcelain princess to be kept back, and all but bound to Valour’s saddle. Instead, she waded with them into the thick of the fighting, her flanks watched by Ser Gilbert or—on several occasions—Eluviale and her Party.
The elven healer had remained a semi-constant form of normal interaction for Suraiya, and though she’d held her suspicions close to her chest; she had allowed herself to at least enjoy the feeling of being a person instead of a title. Eluviale’s Party had also made appearances, and though she still held them to be more polite acquaintances than regular companions; the few times they had all spoken or enjoyed each other’s company had been a pleasant distraction from their surroundings.
Yet even with that acceptance, there came a measure of filth that she could not properly cleanse from her soul. At times she would wake up screaming, ensconced in the enchanted silence of her warded tent, and breathe rapidly until she found her way back to a calm centre. Other times she would go to drink water, or clean her saddle, or examine her equipment; and flinch when her hands were momentarily coated in phantom visions of dripping blood.
She had told Eluviale about those events in a moment of sudden vulnerability, and though she regretted it and puzzled over her lapse later; the elf’s advice had been sound: accept what she had done, and try to resolve it logically. The Soother had warned her it would be an exercise in futility, in many ways, given her lack of exposure to such things prior, but had assured her that there was support and willing ears all around her.
It had helped, if only a little.
The advent of her moonblood had added further complications to an already overwhelming boiling pot of killing guilt, battle fatigue, what Eluviale called post-traumatic stress, lingering anger, and disillusionment. She had packed enchanted and padded materials for precisely such an occurrence, but the sudden onset of cramps that felt as if her insides were attempting to claw their way out of her body had left her patience decidedly thin. It had rendered her sore, sensitive, and made riding Valour and donning her platemail that much harder, which only increased the strain on her already fragile composure.
That had been the morning prior.
The Princess swept her eyes once again over the death-covered, hilly landscape of the Desolation around the convoy as they marched ever onward. Death had finally come for them as well, with at least three adventurers and several of the less powerful support personnel falling victim to both Skarnids—horse-sized arachnids with eight legs, two immense pincers, venomous fangs, and a chitinous shell with a ridged and potent stinging tail—and Blightstalkers, which were themselves six-legged reptiles with fins and webbed claws adapted to swimming through the vile pools of toxic liquid dotting the Desolation.
Their bite, as a lovely bonus, also happened to be necrotic.
The Skarnids and Blightstalkers both had ascended from below the convoy in eruptions of corrosive dirt and poisoned soil, and set upon their targets with predatory savagery. Only the quick action of the highest ranked adventurers and Ser Gilbert himself, moving with the speed and violence of a lightning strike, had managed to curtail any greater damage; and force the surviving creatures back under the earth.
It had only been after the encounter, and a quick headcount, that they had all realised the creatures had taken several of their number below the earth with them, and a pall of grim silence had fallen over the convoy—broken only by the occasional murmur or quiet sob from the companions of the lost.
Between her exhaustion, cramps that made her want to curl into a ball despite Eluviale’s herbal tea remedies, sleep-depriving stress-induced nightmares, and a growing sense of despair in the pit of her stomach; Suraiya was even beginning to contemplate ordering the entire expedition to turn around and head back to Stormharrow. The only thing that stayed her hand, in truth, was pride—and a personal code which demanded she see through to the end anything which she started.
A sudden cry from up ahead snapped Suraiya sharply out of her reverie, and her nerves propelled her into action while her head turned up towards the front of the column. Her fingers were already curling around the hilt of her greatsword with a creak of leather, and clink of chainmail, when she realised it was just one of the scouts. A frown of self-recrimination found its way to her lips, and she worked to calm her breathing while releasing her sword, and focusing her gaze on the approaching rider.
The man returned to the column with speed, and kicked up an egregious amount of toxic dust in the process. His target of course was Ser Gilbert, which meant that—given his near-constant proximity following the increase in monster attacks—Suraiya needed only to remain where she was and wait. The report would be given within her earshot imminently.
When the scout eventually reached them, his face was haggard and sun-darkened from long shifts scouting near the front and flanks of the convoy. His eyes however were sharp, and when he spoke it was with the confidence of a man who knew what he was about. “My lord, there is a person waiting for us over the next rise!”
“A person?” Ser Gilbert enquired carefully. “What manner of person?”
“Sun as my witness, my lord, I cannot rightly say. They wear strange adornments and appear almost… well, at home in this accursed wasteland. Not bedraggled and degenerate like the Blightfolk, but honest-to-gods comfortable. You can tell a lot from a person by how they carry themselves, my lord, and this person is calm. Dangerously calm.”
Suraiya listened in silence and then shifted her gaze to Ser Gilbert once the scout had given his report. She was as interested as anyone else to hear his verdict, and when he glanced at her she knew he was considering how safe she was, which in turn meant he was considering riding forward to investigate for himself.
It made her decision for her.
Call it frustration, impatience, or the simple desire for something other than freakish monsters and deranged blightfolk; but Suraiya wanted to be at that meeting, and decided then and there that she would brook no refusal. Perhaps it was petulant, and perhaps it was selfish and irregular. She did not care.
“I’m going with you,” she stated flatly while already heeling Valour forward, and in turn forcing Ser Gilbert to catch up with her along with the scout. The Knight-Captain opened his mouth to speak, but Suraiya threw him a hard and pointed glance instead of allowing it. Something in her gaze must have shown him how serious she was, for he subsided immediately.
It was a relatively short canter from their position at the forward third of the convoy to the head of it, and even with Suraiya’s customary quartet of knights, the scout, and Ser Gilbert in tow they made quick progress.
“Halt the convoy,” she commanded to one of the Knights as she rode past, and again something in her tone must have conveyed the gravity of her intentions; for the man saluted with a crash of gauntlet to breastplate, and heeled his mount to ride along the length of the column while calling for a halt at the top of his Second Tempered lungs.
She loosely noted the sound of spreading calls for a halt but ignored them as the line of people, carts, and animals ground to a halt. Her eyes were fixed on the rising hill of desiccated dirt and dead soil before her and its rapidly approaching apex. A flicker of hesitation rolled through her for only a moment before, and then she crushed it down and urged Valour forward to crest the terrain.
Beyond its rise Suraiya surveyed yet more endless blight, and a lone figure standing near the middle of the landscape between the hill her small entourage currently occupied and the one some three hundred metres ahead of them. A glance around the area revealed nothing in the way of other people, and the Princess turned to Ser Gilbert to confirm he had seen the same.
His eyes met hers, he nodded shallowly. “They’re alone.”
Suraiya didn’t nod back so as to avoid alerting their mysterious guest, and instead clicked her tongue to signal Valour forward. The horse carried her down the much less elevated side of the rise with a snort of acquiescence, and she trained her gaze on the individual that awaited them with an ease that was harshly juxtaposed to the lethal environment surrounding them.
Only when Valour’s hooves hit something solid did Suraiya realise the reason for the person’s comfort: a shelf of granite under the dirt, and one which likely offered safety from the possibility of Skarnid ambushes or the attacks of any other subterranean-dwelling nightmares. The Princess nodded in consideration of the unknown individual’s wise choice of locale, and moved forward at the same half-canter until she was some ten metres distant from the unknown figure.
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There she pulled Valour to a halt and, after a moment’s thought, dismounted.
Suraiya hit the ground with a jingle of chainmail, and thud of plated body weight, though her gaze never left the stranger. A soothing stroke was given to Valour when she stepped forward, and the sound of armoured footsteps behind her signalled the accompanying movement of her entourage. She refused to glance back and show uncertainty, and instead focused her attention on the person before her.
They were adorned in a brown cloak that covered them from ankle to shoulders, with a heavy hood of the same colour—currently thrown back and unused—and white wrappings across every inch of their skin from the neck down.
Their face was hidden behind a wrapped white scarf which covered all but their eyes and nose, and they had an unstrung greatbow braced on the ground with their left hand, along with three short spears beneath what appeared to be a chitinous buckler on the ground to their right.
Based on the nature of their placement, the weapons had been willingly removed from the stranger’s person and laid in plain sight as a sign of peace. It was an assumption, admittedly, but one that Suraiya felt confident was correct given her studies on negotiation and diplomacy.
Standard practice in the Grand Ascendancy, at any rate.
Her eyes moved across the scarf, and down toward the figure’s chest, but the cloak was too thick and obstructed any evident sign of gender.
When Suraiya stood within four metres of the person she stopped, and her azure eyes met a pair of fierce green ones.
“Greetings,” Suraiya said with a polite smile. “You have aroused our attention, as was doubtless your desire. May I ask whom it is we are speaking to?”
Silence was her only answer for several long moments.
Long enough, in fact, for the Knights behind her to shift in muted agitation, and the horses to whinny and snort in discomfort. She was almost tempted to speak again, but instead held her peace. When someone else attempted to step forward—she suspected Ser Gilbert—Suraiya held out an arm to stop them, but never took her gaze from the stranger.
Only with the action of halting the Knight-Captain did the stranger finally speak.
“Greetings Princess-Royal Suraiya Karelian of Stormharrow, Knight-Captain Ser Gilbert van Ostland, and to the Knights of the Order of the Storm.”
Surprise, unease, alarm, and intensified wariness swept over Suraiya’s companions at the sound of a perfect, if accented use of their language. There was no ragged rasp or blight-cursed hiss in the stranger’s words. If anything, their voice sounded richer and more refined than most nobles, in its own way.
It was also decidedly feminine, Suraiya noted.
“It is my pleasure to welcome you to Elysea, Godsworn, and deliver unto you a simple warning: turn back, return to your white city, and forsake your quest for the Fallen Star.”
Ser Gilbert stepped forward before she could stop him this time, and his raised chin shouted his clear defiance of the stranger’s words. “Your warning means nothing to us, Blightspawn. If you know who we are, then you know well that you have no means of waylaying our convoy. For the sake of Princess’ honour, I will grant you the chance now to step aside, else you shall be moved.”
“The High Justicar and Regent thought you might say that.” the stranger admitted in what might have been a tone of regret. “Though not so quickly, I admit. You are more hot-headed than was described, Ser Gilbert. Is it true you are making headway toward your Expert Tier?”
“I am,” he confirmed simply. “Though if you know of me, that too should be common knowledge. It is hardly a secret. By design, at that.”
“A fair point,” the stranger said in a tone that made Suraiya suddenly uneasy, “but I had to be certain, in order to have a good comparison.”
“A comparison of wh—Oof!”
Several things happened in the same instant as Ser Gilbert started to speak.
Firstly, and most pressing of all, was the sudden impact of a figure that moved so fast they quite literally appeared to teleport in Suraiya’s gaze. She had but a moment of time to witness Ser Gilbert’s look of shock, confusion, and pain before an eruption of dust and earth filled the area. Several sounds of steel hitting rock, alongside helmet-muffled cries of pain and shock filled Suraiya’s surroundings.
When she turned to find Ser Gilbert, all she saw was a vague silhouette with its foot upon a silent, sprawled body covered in steel. Her blood froze in her veins, and she stumbled backwards and turned to look askance into the dust.
The only thing she noticed, when she did, was the scout walking toward the hooded figure that had first greeted them. The man appeared to be watching all the unfolding events with an attitude of boredom, and in that moment Suraiya realised the truth: they’d been infiltrated. The scout was a spy. The whole situation had been set up, and coordinated.
They had followed the route the scouts provided, and… oh gods.
Screams and shouts of surprise and fear echoed from the other side of the rise, and though there was no sound of combat, she couldn’t help but to feel the urge to run and check on the convoy.
They were only in the Desolation because of her. If anything happened to them—!
Suraiya half spun, and then froze in place when she found a long, curved blade inches from her throat. The wielder stood close to her, perhaps half a metre to her left, and regarded her with a casual arrogance which rankled. He stood at a glance over six feet high, though not by much, and while his body was similarly wrapped below the neck, he wore no cloak.
Instead he adorned himself in a sleeveless tunic and a pair of brown breeches with good, sturdy boots to tuck them into.
His face, unveiled and held with pride, bore a sun-bronzed tan with a half-elven sharpness to his cheekbones and the tops of his ears. He had a strong and squared jaw, full lips, and an easy confidence that came with being both handsome and capable. His hair fell in an attractively messy obsidian wave, and his eyes were a leonine gold.
The look he gave her seemed equal parts disappointment and revulsion.
“None of that now, Princess,” he said with a drawl that Suraiya could have sworn inferred a personal mockery, one that seemed odd given their lack of prior interaction. “The Regent wants you and your companions alive, but any funny ideas and I’ll have to risk the reprimand that would come from harming you too grievously.”
Suraiya watched him in wary silence as he spoke, and attempted to bury her dislike under a blanket of calm. That only served to seemingly anger the man more, and his wrapped fingers tightened on the hilt with a creak of leather. The blade moved closer to her throat, and…
…was pushed back by a linen-wrapped finger, this one belonging to the self-same woman that had met them earlier. “Enough of this, Titus. Keep your petty grudges in your head where they belong. The Regent—” she emphasised the title “—is expecting us. All of us.” this last statement she made while glancing toward Suraiya, who was observing the exchange with mounting confusion and no small amount of growing panic.
Grudges? She thought with a racing mind. I’ve never even met him before!
“Tch. You were the one that insisted on all the dramatics, Lycinia.” the man—Titus, she remembered—said with a hint of irritation while lowering, but not sheathing his curved blade. A scimitar, she remembered distractedly. He couldn’t have been much more than eighteen by her estimation, yet he carried himself like a man three times the age, and with a coiled readiness she had seen only in her father’s most veteran knights.
“Her protector has been handled. It is time to return to the Sanctuary.” the woman—Lycinia—said with a firmness that brooked no argument. “The Regent wanted to see her and her chaperone first thing, and then the Adventurers that came with them.”
“Did you see the looks on their faces when Nicoli took down their champion?” Titus asked while sparing a mocking glance at Suraiya. “Like frightened chicklets.”
“You mean like you were the first time you sparred with him?” Lycinia asked mildly.
“That—shut up!” Titus growled, before throwing a hateful look at Suraiya as if it were her fault, and storming off toward the hill.
“Ignore him,” Lycinia said lightly. “He just doesn’t know how to feel about you, or any of this.”
“I…” Suraiya licked her lips and attempted to find her words while looking once again to where Ser Gilbert had been. “I don’t understand what is happening,” she admitted, and noticed for the first time an above-average height man with a handsome face, and little to no other distinguishing features lifting her protector from the granite they’d obliterated.
Nicoli, as Suraiya assumed he was named, tossed Gilbert calmly over his shoulder, turned, and started jogging silently toward the east—where more people in wraps and cloaks were just as suddenly appearing.
“Your confusion is reasonable.” Lycinia said while turning and ushering Suraiya gently toward Valour. “But it is also incompatible with what we need to achieve. No harm will befall you or your thrice-accursed Godsworn allies, Suraiya, unless you fail to cooperate. So…” she paused only when they were close to Valour and lightly patted the horse, who seemed for all the world to be okay with the strange woman’s proximity.
He even nickered in approval at her touch.
“Hop onto your mount, and let’s get going.”
Anger, fear, concern, confusion, and above all shock consumed Suraiya as she automatically reached for the saddle to haul herself up, her mind racing at a million metres a second. “Where are we going?”
“To the Sanctuary, as stated.” Lycinia said with a smile audible beneath her scarf.
“That doesn’t explain—”
“It would be a problem if it did, Princess.” the veiled woman responded with a hint of impatience. “We have worked very hard over the millennia to keep you, and your Godsworn people, ignorant to its existence.”
“What is it?” Suraiya dared to ask despite the audible tonal shift.
Lycinia sighed and looked up at her, green eyes to blue, while shaking her head. “That stubborn streak will get you killed one day, your highness.”
“Please answer the question.” Suraiya persisted.
“Sanctuary is home,” Lycinia said after a few moments’ silence, “the last home we have, after what your ancestors did. The last home for the hope of the Realms,” she reached up to take Valour’s bridle and, with no opposition from the traitorous horse, began to lead them to the east.
Suraiya’s eyes widened in shock, several pieces clicked suddenly, and she swallowed at a sudden revelation. “You… you’re Elyseans.”
“We are.” Lycinia confirmed with a simple nod. “Or at least, we’re all that’s left of those that once bore that name. A shadow of a memory, and yet it is all we have.”
By all the gods in the Highest. Suraiya thought numbly as she was led off with the rest of her people. What manner of nightmare have I led us into?