Vael sighed. His friend was hurt. Only thing in question was whether Ryland was also physically harmed. But Ry was right. They didn’t have time. They had to keep moving.
The tunnel did not remain straight, and they took several turns before coming to a crossroads of sorts. One path continued ahead while two doors set into stone frames stood on either side of them.
Ryland let out a small sigh of relief. “Something…”
Thank the sun and moon. Vael pressed an ear up to the door on the left, holding his breath as he listened for anything beyond it. They needed out of this tunnel. They needed out fast. He heard nothing tell-tale, though, and he wasn’t sure if that was a good or bad thing.
Well-oiled pair that they were, Kiran mirrored him with the door on the right. “I don’t hear anything.”
“They locked?” Ryland asked as he kept an eye on the way they’d come.
Leaning on the door did nothing, so Vael pulled—success. “Nope.” Another small blessing.
The other side had what looked like a storeroom if the half-empty shelves and handful of small, stacked crates toward the back wall were any tell. Not exactly unused, but not worried over much by whoever did come in and out. Likely patrolmen who needed access outside of the fort and didn’t want to constantly head back inside for basics.
“Barracks over here,” Kiran called. “We gonna barricade ourselves in one of these?”
Ryland nodded. “Fast as we can.” He glanced over Vael’s shoulder into the storeroom, then swept past Kiran into the room she discovered. “Gather some cots.” He grabbed two ill-cared-for swords standing in the back corner of the room. “Anything sturdy. Bring them over.” The scout took Kiran’s lamp off her and rushed into the storeroom.
That’d do for now. Vael helped Kiran move one of the free-standing cot frames across the hall. “Not much else in here,” he muttered to Kiran.
“We’ll make do.” Her scowling eyes could have melted snow.
“Guess we will.” Vael set his side down once they were in the storeroom, and he shut the door behind them. “What now?”
Ryland set one of his found swords on the ground. “Now…” He took the other by the hilt with both hands as he came right up to the door, raised it well above his head, and shoved the point down into the ground. Once he’d done the same with the other sword, he turned and nodded to his companions. “Start stacking crates. Heaviest first.”
“Wait!” Vael hurried to one end of the cot and picked it up. “Kiran?” When she had her hands on the other end, he got her help turning it onto its side, and then slipped it into the narrow space between the standing swords and the door. “There.” He stepped back with Kiran in time for Ryland to slide the first crate into place. “That should be steady, right?”
“We can pray,” Ryland grumbled. “All the crates, come on!”
The three of them made short work of moving what there was. What Vael wouldn’t have given for any number of those boxes to be just a touch heavier than they were, though.
Kiran was on the same page. “Ry, this isn’t gonna hold forever.”
“Doesn’t need to.” The scout stood up from shoving the last crate against the door as hard as he could. “It just has to hold long enough.”
“And if it doesn’t hold?” Vael could not have asked a more useless question. He was chiding himself even as he let the words loose. He knew the answer.
Sure enough, Ryland said the words Vael knew were coming. “We fight.” If only Ryland could have said them with a little more assurance.
Confident or not, though, Vael would stand and fight. He had the gauntlet he’d grabbed from his shop and his ball pein hammer. Not the best kit, but…
Well. At least if he died, he would die on his feet. But that wasn’t his first aim. He closed his eyes, breathed deep through his nose, and let his lungs forge the air into the calm and resolve they all needed. “Ancestors,” he whispered, “keep watch. Send us the strength and resolve of the sun, the moon, the brightest star, so we might see home one more time.”
Neither of his friends added anything. Vael didn’t expect them to. He was pretty sure Ryland had a fear-hate relationship with their shared ancestors, and Kiran had no respect for the parents who’d abandoned her at sixteen, let alone any of the people who’d led to their existence. And that was alright. They didn’t need to pray. Vael would take care of their souls as best he could, like he always had. Like he always would.
The three of them stood together, weapons in hand, with Ryland just in front of the other two. All of them could take down a drunk sellsword with ideas of overstepping decency, but Ry was the only one with formal combat training and experience. He’d taken care of them, taught them enough to be threats to idiots. But the force they were waiting for was no idiot.
Vael would stay on his feet. He would stay on his feet.
Easy to think, but so much harder to do in the near silence of an icy cave. Kiran started shifting from foot to foot. “How will we know—”
“Sh.” Ryland didn’t turn his head back, just shot the warning into the dim, cold air. He remained motionless, like a hare hoping the nearby fox wouldn’t notice his hole of a home in the snow. Not likely, though. Silence and stillness were their only hopes now.
When the silence outside the door broke, it came across as a soft, windy wail at first. Then Vael felt his guts start to wither as it slowly grew louder, and the sound developed a repeating pattern. A song. A soft, lovely song. Lovely, anyway, if it wasn't ever so slightly—and intentionally—off-key.
Kiran shifted, bending her knees a bit more, and gripped her short sword harder. She and Vael met each other’s eyes. They didn’t have to speak for him to know they were both hoping he would walk by. Pay no attention to the doors. Pay no attention…
“If you can,” Ryland whispered, “run. Don’t engage. Just run.”
“Ry,” Kiran hissed, but she didn’t risk more noise just to tell him he wasn’t allowed to sacrifice himself for them. Not necessary. Vael would drag the stubborn ass out if he could.
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The assassin stopped singing. “Where aaaaaare youuuuuu....?” His heavily accented call echoed down the hall.
Ryland shook his head as the enemy’s voice faded to nothing. Vael closed his eyes again. Ancestors preserve—
The door shifted and tapped quietly against the upright swords.
All breathing stopped.
THUNK. The assassin started wailing against the door, causing their barricade to shake with his force. Vael moved closer to Kiran. Surely they could rush Ryland and get them all out past the assassin if they were fast enough.
“Give up,” Ryland whispered. “Give up, give up, leave us be, give up…”
The singing monster did not give up. His force shook one of the blades free enough for him to break through. What iron resolve Vael had built up in his stomach faltered as the sword hit the ground with a crunch against the gravel. One more shove brought the assassin sprinting into the room, a black streak of grins and cackles and knives—
And then he stopped. Even as the three of them raised their weapons, they were shocked to stillness as confusion and dismay overtook the stranger’s face. He didn’t come at them. He didn’t even seem to see them. His umber eyes darted to every corner of the room, but his gaze slid off of them with every shift. Even Ryland stepping forward and lifting his sword did nothing to put the assassin on alert. Instead, he planted a fist on his hip and frowned as he looked elsewhere.
Ryland lowered his sword. “…Don’t. Move.”
Vael had no intention. Instead, he observed the enemy with all the intensity that the man called Death Drums was denying them.
Tienja was dressed from jawline to toe in black leather armor meant to facilitate movement more than provide protection. His armor also had built-in sheaths for knives, half of which were now empty. He held the longest of his weapons in his left hand. Like all other Te’ils, his hair was long and split into many braids, all of which he’d gathered up into a topknot to stay out of his, admittedly, smooth and beautiful face. His narrow brown eyes twitched slightly as he contemplated the air and his confusion. "...Hm." He sneered as he turned to examine their ruined barricade.
No sense. It made no sense. There they were, ripe for the killing, and the assassin didn’t even notice? Vael opened his mouth to speak, but where would he even begin? And would speaking break this blessing? Or was it a curse? What had their ancestors done?
While Tienja shuffled around the fallen crates, a new noise came from down the hall—fortress soldiers and mercs. He froze at the sound of their scuffling boots, then wasted no further time escaping back out the door.
Rylan’s shoulders dropped, but only for a moment. “Close the door,” he ordered, then repeated as he ran for it. “Close the door, close the door!”
Kiran was hot on his heels, and Vael followed. They all shoved the nearest crates back into place, then sank to their knees on the floor, breathing in the burning cold air around them as hard as they dared. Moments after, the sound of gravel and ice crunching under hard leather passed them by. No one stopped to investigate.
No time for Vael or anyone else to relax though. His heart kept pounding in the back of his throat as they sat up against the crates, waiting, listening.
It was too long a wait before they heard much slower, calmer steps walking through that same tunnel. Wasn’t enough to warrant rest, but Vael couldn’t help but feel it all the same. Especially when Ryland reached over and gripped his shoulder. His cousin kept staring in front of him, barely breathing, but he was there to touch Vael at all. They were there. After months of wondering where Ry had disappeared off to, after looking death directly in the face, all three of them were together, watching out for each other, like they always had.
Maybe it wasn’t the time to get emotional, but Vael still felt a part of himself that he’d only just accepted he needed to let harden start to crack. Even if things went south from here, that was a sweet, welcome pain.
He couldn’t stay in that moment long, though. Kiran broke his sweet relief with the reality none of them could ignore. “What,” she hissed, too calm for the bite behind her tone, “in the frostbitten fuck was that, Ryland?”
The scout closed his eyes and let his head fall back. “…I don’t know. I don’t…”
“He…didn’t see us,” Vael spoke, almost asking more than stating. Had that happened? How could it have? They were eye to eye. Or they would have been if Tienja had managed to look at them properly. “Any of us could have reached out and touched him, and he just… He acted like the room was empty.”
“I noticed.” Ryland shifted his head forward and rubbed at his eyelids with one hand.
“But…” Vael pushed one hand over his hair. He’d have to re-braid it. It was a mess. Easier to think about that than try to comprehend what had just happened.
Kiran wasn’t letting it go, though. “That man was intent on murder, and he looked right through us.” She leaned in to look sternly at their friend. “You said give up and leave us alone, and he did. Why would he listen to you? How would he have even heard you? Is this some ancestor—”
“I don’t—” Ryland nearly lost his grip on his volume, but bit back his words and hissed, “I don’t know! I don’t know why anything—” He huffed and shook his head as he gathered his feet under him. “I have to get out of here.”
“We, Ryland!” Krian spat while she scrambled to stand, and she moved in front of him. “We. We’re going back to my place and figuring this out. That little creep is gone, and you apparently need sleep. And if you think we—” she gestured between herself and Vael, “—are letting you out of our sight after this, then maybe you got snow-brained out there. You don’t get to turn up after eight months and just disappear. Not again!”
Vael pushed up to his feet and placed his hands on Ryland’s shoulders. “She’s right,” he said. “Whatever happened, wherever you were, you’re not leaving without us again. We’ve always worked better as a unit.” He squeezed his cousin’s shoulders briefly before releasing him. “You said you need sleep; we should find you some. And food. … and maybe a change of clothes.” The Te’iltic garments were excellently crafted, but they wouldn’t be taken well around the fort.
“No,” Ryland shook his head, “Kiran, Vael, I can’t—you don’t get it, he will come back, and he will bring more people, I cannot stay!”
“How quickly?” Vael asked as he quirked one brow. “Quick enough that we can’t gather provisions and get you a nap?” Why was Ryland making as little sense as…well, anything they’d just witnessed?
“Yes!” Ryland barked back. “Because if the fort finds me, I’m just as fucked at this point!”
“What?” Now Vael knew his cousin had lost his mind to the winds. “Why?”
Both men were distracted from saying further as Kiran yanked the nearest crate down and toward her before throwing the lid off. “You better have a damn good explanation, Ryland T’Vair, or so help me I will flay you right here and wear your ass as a hat.”
Ryland blinked and stared at the unexpected rifling. “What are you doing?”
“We need to leave, yes?” Kiran sneered at the obvious, not stopping her search. “I don’t see a pack hiding under that cloak, and Vael and I were just sitting down at the tavern for dinner. If we’re leaving we need supplies. This is a storeroom. I’m looking for supplies.”
“Good call,” Vael said, following suit with another crate. “Why would you be fucked if the fort found you, Ry?”
Ryland sputtered, “You—no, you can’t—”
“Can’t what, Ryland?” Kiran wheeled on him, crowding directly into his space. “Tell me what I can’t do. I dare you! Because if it doesn’t start and end with ‘stay behind while I galavant off without another word,’ they will be the last words you utter before the sun rises.”
Even in the low light, Vael could tell Ryland was turning red. “I didn’t galavant anywhere! I got dragged out! And if you come with me, I can't get you back in!"
“What do you mean you got dragged out?” Vael replied, brows raising as he paused to look at his cousin.
“It doesn’t—” Ryland started with a scream. He immediately stopped himself, though, and looked to the door, holding his breath as he waited to see if there would be consequences for his unbridled temper.
Vael gave it a moment, listening for anyone coming their way. When it stayed quiet, though, he turned right back to his cousin, his face set to neutral at the moment. The sort of neutral anyone with sense knew was a sign of danger.
Both he and Kiran asked with a similar threatening tone, “What did you do, Ryland?”
Ryland didn’t feel quite so secure in speaking again for a moment longer. But he couldn’t ignore the two people staring through him for long. “I didn’t do anything.”
“Then why—”
“You wanna know?” he hissed as he undid the brooch of his cloak. “For this.” He let the cloak drop, then turned around and pushed the back of his shirt collar down.
From under his shirt, reaching up and ending in a V lining the base of his short hairline at the base of his skull, was a trail of thick, gleaming, silver scales.