Jeshin wanted to fight something. Or break something. Preferably that bigoted, cowardly, incompetent wall guard that had picked a fight with her charge then hid behind her sergeant’s skirts when Jeshin had shown her what a real soldier could do.
She could have dismantled this entire gate garrison single handedly, then bullied the commander of the city militia into covering for her. Doing so would have been a terrible risk, admittedly, much more so than letting Gzoh try to deescalate. Jay had been right to hold her back.
But, gods, doing nothing was a risk as well. For a few agonizing moments she had been disarmed and marked by a full line of gunners. A single itchy trigger finger or sadistic impulse could have killed her, and if Jeshin had to gamble her life she would prefer to bet on her own skill over the discipline of militia rooks.
Whatever, Jeshin thought, Just drop off your charge and go get drunk or something. Let the paladins deal with protecting someone stupid enough to freeze in deadly situations.
Jeshin was being unfair to Jay, but she did not much care at the moment.
The pair stabled their mounts at the cheapest place next to the gate, then made their way towards the center of the city on foot. There was no need to ask for directions; a small keep on the central island towered over the rest of the buildings in the old town, and sported a banner a hundred hands long embroidered with Ishkur’s symbol of a bull shrouded in lightning. That was a bit of a hint of where to go.
There were a few people about, mostly craftspeople and burghers running various errands, but not as many as Jeshin expected for a city this size. People must be staying indoors more than usual.
"A coin for my sister’s medicine?" A voice called from Jeshin’s knee. She looked down, and saw a grubby faced Lua boy of perhaps ten years pulling at her skirt. He was clad in rags, and his pointed ears were short and stunted. He was so small! No boy of ten should be that small.
Her heart broke.
"Here," She said, giving the boy a full silver signet, "Get something for yourself, too."
"Yes miss, thank you miss," The boy said, then scampered away down an alley.
Jay tutted.
"You know you are just encouraging them, right?" They said, "That waif doesn’t even have a sister, I’d put a full gold piece on it. If he really needed the medicine he would ask the House, not bother productive citizens."
Jeshin glared at Jay. What was their problem? This harshness was unlike them.
"He wasn’t a bother," She retorted, "Unlike you."
Jay shrugged.
"Your money, your loss," They said, in the cadence of an idiom, "But encouraging begging just harms more people in the long run. The least unproductive people can do for society is get out of the way of the productive ones."
Jeshin ground her teeth. This was definitely unlike them. Or well, it was like them and unlike them at the same time. The same judging of worth, the same obsession with value, just... callous. As if someone had held a dark mirror up to Jay’s mind.
"And who gets to choose the worth of someone?" Jeshin challenged, "A Doge? A Pryns? You curse both regularly."
She expected Jay to reply that coin did, like most rich fucks. That the cult of economics could quantify worth where individuals failed. But Jay had never been a monster. No, their response was much worse.
"The individual," Jay said, voice cracking, "No one else decides for you. But you can feel it, Jeshin. When you are an unproductive waste to society, you know it. You have to be crazy not to."
That sounded suspiciously like a self-condemnation. Jeshin’s mind stuttered, caught between needing to help and needing to be far, far away from this person.
Why did Amber choose them? Jeshin thought, The very last thing they need is responsibility. One wrong step on a stressful mission and Jay is liable to off themself. You’ve seen it before.
She’d never been there before, not even after Mirrin. But she had seen it. Jeshin decided to take the cowards way out and push the problem to someone else. She was not trained to handle this, and the paladins were. Maybe.
"Oh look," She said, frantically, "We’re here. Go show the nice soldiers your gem and get some rest. Medic’s orders."
Jay said something, but Jeshin had already fled.
PIC [https://scythiamarrow.org/archive/SplinterGuard/Art/FullSectionJeshinTrauma.png]
Two pubs and five drinks later Jeshin had comfortably forgotten her concerns. Besides, even if she remembered them it was not like Jay was her responsibility anymore. No one was. So she was quite free to get absolutely wasted if she so chose.
And she had probably imagined that look anyway. Jay would be fine, they were just a rich fuck who hated waifs like every other Varmyr businessperson. They would get whisked up to Mountaincut on a private boat, babied by a paladin the entire way, then get all the riches and glory for themself.
Enough riches and glory that they would comfortably retire and not shoot themself behind the armory after second patrol, having been smiling and laughing with her just an hour before.
"Stop," Jeshin mumbled, speech slurred, "You just imagined it. Get a grip."
The other patrons gave her weird looks, apparently never having seen a soldier getting drunk after a hard day before. Buncha pricks.
"I think you have had enough," The bartender warned. He was a broad-shouldered Leru man with transparent skin covered in intricate golden tattoos. Cities were home to all sorts, but he was an unusual sight all the same. Jeshin oggled him, and he slapped her across the face with a bar towel.
"Leave," He said, more forcefully, "Before I get Levy to throw you out."
She nodded and stumbled out.
PIC [https://scythiamarrow.org/archive/SplinterGuard/Art/SectionMarkerJeshin.png]
Jeshin shuffled down the street, careful to place every step so she would not sway and reveal her drunkenness. It did not work.
The drinks at that last place had been terrible anyway, and it was not the pub where the city militia liked to drink. She was looking for that one.
Perhaps the next one would be it, and she would get that fight she wanted. But first she would rest her eyes a bit. Wait for the world to stop spinning.
She sat down on the curb next to an alley, and leaned her head against the rough wooden boards of an apartment building. It was nice to be out of armor for once, she had stashed it in her inn room along with her halberd and most of her things.
The last dregs of sunlight shone across the rooftops, bathing the street in the golden red glow of sunset. Jeshin closed her eyes.
"That’s the one!" Someone said. A young boy’s voice, trying not to be heard, "She’s loaded. And drunk as a gull on peach pits."
There was some nervous steps, four sets, then Jeshin felt her purse being lifted. Whatever. She never got drunk on more than she could afford to lose. She’d just run up a tab at the next place, then pay it off in the morning.
Someone touched her dagger, and Jeshin slammed their head into the alley wall. She heard the screams of children and the clattering of coins on stone. There were only three sets of screams.
For an agonizing moment Jeshin thought she had killed the pickpocket, but she had managed to soften the blow in time for them to be merely dazed. The pickpocket turned out to be a Ukoji girl with surprisingly rich clothing and neat pigtails. She was bleeding heavily from a gash along her forehead, spotting the ground with flecks of red.
The girl turned to run, and Jeshin grabbed her arm.
"Stop," she slurred, "Let me look at that gash."
"Get off me, crazy woman!" The girl shouted, "Help! Help!"
A few passersby looked over, but none stopped or responded to the girl’s shouts. No one in this hell of a world cared about waifs. Not a single dammned soul.
It was vile.
Jeshin felt nauseous, and she let the girl go. The child pretending to be a waif scrambled away and ran headlong down a nearby alley, leaving behind a trail of bloody drops.
"Get that cut looked at!" Jeshin shouted after her, "It needs stitches! And don’t rob weapons! Stick to the purses of rich fops too kind to hang you over them!"
Jeshin winced at the sound of her own voice, she was too drunk to appreciate loud noises. She slowly gathered up the dropped coins, only a few were missing, and stumbled to the next pub down the street.
This day was just determined to ruin her first chance to relax and have fun in weeks. Well, Jeshin would not let it. She would have fun, and she would relax, and maybe she would even get some work done by convincing Amber to give her part of the reward they promised. Partial pay for partial success; that was fair, right?
She just needed to find a temple to Nanaya. Amber had said they listened to prayers from there. Well, if she kept pub hopping she would find one eventually. Nanaya was the goddess of alcohol, after all.
Jeshin forced a spring to her step and got to work. Delicious, brain soothing work.
Three hours and five stops later Jeshin found the temple. The time had passed in a blissful daze, a delightful cycle of drinking herself near unconscious then being thrown out to sober up on the way to the next pub. Or dive, after all the pubs had closed.
The city had grown truly dark, enough that no one sensible was still about, and Jeshin felt much better. That nervous energy of needing a fight, that panic of hurting someone without meaning to, that desperate fear of... something, she forgot what, had gradually bled away and been replaced by a woolen feeling of contentment. She would pay for this day tomorrow, in both headache and coin, but she had banked enough of both to be fine.
Not being responsible for others, for once, felt amazing. How had she ever thought that being a captain was a good thing?
You’re spiraling, Jeshin thought, If you make a habit of this it will destroy you. It happened before.
But Mirrin was different. Sure, she had spiraled after Mirrin, but who could blame her? Anyone would have. And besides, she had put herself back together. Gotten a handle on her promotion, pulled through for the sake of her soldiers. Archon gave her responsibility, and she rose to meet it.
Compared to Mirrin this was a cakewalk. So what if she was a deserter? So what if she failed a holy quest? She had overcame worse before, and she would do so again. She was just taking a well deserved break before getting back into the swing of things.
Jehin strode into the temple, surprised that the door had not been locked. The last wisps of some incense smoldered in the statue of Nanaya’s left hand. The goddess looked much smaller in the dark.
"Amber!" Jeshin prayed, "I know you can hear me. Get your fine butt and chiseled abs in here."
After a couple heartbeats of silence the aether appeared in the form of a dumpy old bee with nary a backside to be found.
Jeshin frowned.
"You’re no fun," She complained.
"You, meanwhile, are drunk," Amber said, "And not for the right reasons."
They shifted back into their normal form, that of the ethnically ambiguous young bee with an impressively fit body.
"I’ll be fine," Jeshin said, "You aren’t the only person who needs to distract themself to forget how shit the world is, once in a while."
"Distraction and forgetting are different," Amber said, "I never forget. I just, prioritize. Choose to pursue the good over wallowing in the bad."
Jeshin failed to see the difference.
Amber sighed.
"I presume you have a purpose for this visit?" Amber asked, "Other than undressing me with your eyes?"
Of course they could tell. Jeshin looked away, abashed. But really, who could blame her for sneaking a few glances? Amber was gorgeous, and Jeshin was drunk.
Fuck it, Jeshin thought, In for a piece, in for a signet.
"I thought we could help distract each other," Jeshin said, "Would that be so bad of a purpose?"
Amber walked up to Jeshin and gently cupped her cheek, turning her face to meet their stunning blue eyes, speckled with flecks of gold. Their expression was filled with unabashed lust, and Jeshin’s stomach flipped right over. Wait, that terrible line had worked?
"It wouldn’t be so bad, no," Amber murmured, still holding her gaze, "I am tempted. But it’s not why you are here."
"It could be. I mean, I want it to be. Too, I mean. Uh..." Jeshin babbled.
Fool girl. Was she really going to throw away a chance at riches just for a lay, even one with an aether?
No. She was years beyond that teenage impulsivity.
"I got Jay here, but they don’t want to travel with me anymore," Jeshin said, "So pay me a third of what you promised. I got them a third of the way, after all."
Amber sighed again. Their breath tickled Jeshin’s nose.
"It’s always money with you mortals," Amber whispered, lips brushing hers, "There are more important things in life than gold, you know."
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They kissed her, and in that wonderful moment they were right.
PIC [https://scythiamarrow.org/archive/SplinterGuard/Art/SectionMarkerJeshin.png]
It turned out that the temple had a few fully furnished rooms tucked away in the upstairs of the support building on the other side of an interior garden. Rooms that were well maintained, clean, and perfect for temple rituals. The door had not been locked when they arrived, and Amber had not bothered to lock it after them either.
In the moment Jeshin had been too distracted to bother with that, but now the lack of security nagged at her. She was exhausted, and drunk, and suffused with the soporific afterglow of a good fuck, but she could not sleep. If she did, anyone who wanted could burst through that door and attack her.
Jeshin knew the fear was irrational. Who would attack her right in front of an Aether? But still, it itched.
Amber ran their fingers up her side, tracing patterns across her skin. Jeshin felt a warm wash of pleasure run through her, and her eyes fluttered with exhaustion.
"Get some sleep, Jeshin," Amber said, "We can talk in the morning. I won’t let anything happen to you."
The promise did make her feel better, but not enough to sleep. She still had too many lingering thoughts winding through her head.
"Why us?" Jeshin asked, "I know you said that you did not want to bother the paladins, and I suspect that you can’t get too near Mountaincut without provoking Othuxtai. But you can teleport. You could send anyone, many of them closer and more skilled than us. And Jay..."
Jeshin swallowed, thickly, and pulled Amber closer. They draped a wing around her.
"Jay doesn’t do well with responsibility," Jeshin mumbled, "I’m worried for them. And I’m even more worried that I can’t help them."
Amber brushed a few locks of hair away from her face.
"I could have sent anyone, yes," They said, "Not from Mountaincut itself, you are right about that, but I could probably get as close as Hinuia or Cherthills without Othuxtai taking offense. If I sent someone from there they would already have arrived at the monastery."
They mussed her hair, which sort of defeated the purpose of their previous action. Jeshin huffed in annoyance, and Amber laughed in response. Their laugh sounded like the world itself was bursting with joy.
"I don’t actually know why I didn’t, besides a vague feeling," They said, "I trust you and Jay, in ways I don’t trust most mortals. You both fundamentally try to do what is right, which is a vanishingly rare trait in humans."
Jeshin frowned. That made absolutely no sense, in any way.
"Most people try to do what is right, it’s not a rare trait at all," Jeshin objected.
"You only think that everyone seeks to do what is right because that is how you think," Amber said, "Most humans try above all to do what is right in the eyes of others."
Jeshin again failed to see the difference. She was too tired for abstract philosophy. Not that she normally thought about abstract philosophy, if that was even the term for it.
"It’s called philosophy of mind," Amber said.
They pulled away from her and sat on the edge of the bed, staring out into the garden. Jeshin grumbled at the sudden chill, she had been sinfully comfortable under that wing, but she let them take the time they needed to get the rest of their thoughts together.
"I understand your worries about Jay," Amber finally said, "They are wounded in both mind and body, and I really should not have sent them on this quest. Responsibility is not good for them, no."
They dug their fingers into the bed frame, leaving deep gouges in the wood. The display of strength was slightly terrifying.
"But I feel a kinship with them," Amber said, "I have only gotten a few glimpses, but looking into their mind was uncomfortably like looking into a mirror, sometimes. One in which I saw a younger version of myself: unpolished, angry, and frightening.
"Jay is a rich fop who desperately needs perspective, and is caught in one of the deepest pits of self-loathing I have ever seen. But they have a sense of duty to rival any aether I have met.
"Yes, giving them this quest was a risk. I should have chosen someone else, someone not teetering on the raw edge of breakdown. But if I was in their shoes, I would have desperately needed this quest, no matter how much I lied to myself about it."
Amber looked up at her, eyes burning with faint traces of divine light.
"I hate this world for what it does to people like Jay, for what it does to people like you," Amber said, "I will make it better. And unlike my brethren, I don’t have much of an issue with breaking things in the process."
Jeshin suddenly felt quite awake, and quite naked. In that moment Amber looked much like Archon sometimes had, back when he and Jeshin were hours deep into a strategic disagreement.
She pulled the sheets up around her.
Amber winced and looked away, their burning intensity snuffed out in an instant.
"Sorry," They said, "I did not mean to frighten you. Be not afraid. While I may be more inclined to violence than my brethren, I’m still an aether. Just imagine me as a fire ant waving my feelers about, proudly boasting that I am slightly taller and more menacing than a house ant."
They made antennae motions with their fingers. The tension broke, and Jeshin roared with laughter.
Amber smiled and climbed back into bed. Jeshin caught their arm and pushed them down, straddling them. The feathers of their wings were gloriously soft under her knees and shins.
"You know," She said, "I have heard it said that being with an aether would ruin mortal lovers for me. But here I am, thoroughly unruined."
Amber scoffed.
"It doesn’t work that way," They said, "Sex is just a skill like any other skill. I may have lifetimes of practice, but there is a physical limit to how good one can be at it.
"Besides, it would be irresponsible to ruin mortal lovers for you. You deserve a mortal partner, one who can support you in ways I simply cannot."
That made a disappointing amount of sense.
"And if I asked you to?" Jeshin inquired, "Support me, I mean. Romantically."
"I would have to refuse, I am afraid," Amber said, "Any arrangement we attempted would be much too unequal to be ethical.
"Does that bother you?"
It did not.
PIC [https://scythiamarrow.org/archive/SplinterGuard/Art/SectionMarkerJeshin.png]
Jeshin woke up to the late morning sunlight shining directly into her face. She had a pounding headache, one made even worse by the sunlight, and she felt her stomach threatening insurrection. Perhaps even full blown rebellion. Ugh.
She let out a long, low groan then shuffled to her feet and began searching for her clothes.
"Amber, where’s my left sock?" Jeshin started, then realized what was wrong.
Amber was gone. They had left a small note on the door handle.
"I’ve locked and sealed the door, don’t worry," Jeshin read out loud. She was glad Amber had started with that, the itch had never truly left her. "So you were protected during the night, as I promised. I thought I could endure the temple long enough to wake you with breakfast, but the sheets were scratchy and you desperately need a bath. I had to improvise."
Well, she did need a bath. It had been near a week since her last one. She continued reading.
"I’ll be indulging in perfumes over in Soren for a bit. If you need me, you know how to find me.
"As for, ugh, I can’t believe I’m writing this, business,"
They had scratched the word into the note with furious strokes, nearly breaking through the paper in places.
"Yes, in the highly unlikely case that Jay decides to move on without you I will ask the paladins to pay you the sum you requested. But that’s not going to happen."
Not going to happen? It already had.
"Jay is a fundamentally reasonable person," The note continued on the back of the paper, "I would advise you to..."
Jeshin crumpled up the note into a ball then tossed it out the window. She had what she wanted, money enough to buy an officer’s commission in Juvelin, and while Amber’s aims were noble they were not her problem anymore.
Sure, the full reward would have set her up with both a better commission and a set of full plate, but despite a couple of decent fights this contract had been an overall terrible experience that Jeshin was not inclined to continue. If Jay wanted to retain her services they would have to beg her for them. Grovel a bit, too.
Until then, Jeshin would finally get to enjoy being back in civilization. First she would take a long, luxurious bath, then she would eat some good food, go see some art, catch a play or two.
She could maybe even find a local fighting ring. Those were illegal in Varmyr, but most cities had one or two anyway. They would be attracting a lot of new fighters and watchers now that no one truly died. The spectacle could afford to be more gruesome than usual.
Jeshin snuck out of the temple and made her way down the street. She did not remember the name of the inn where she had stashed her things, but she did know its general direction. She would recognize it when she found it.
She grabbed a bite to eat at a breakfast stand, then set out towards where she vaguely recalled the inn had been. Three blocks later she passed a small pub where a group of people in city militia uniforms were sharing a few pre-shift drinks.
How undisciplined. If those had been her soldiers drinking before duty she would have had them flogged, but given her recent experiences it was not all that surprising.
One of the group was a Rhin woman with short, straight black hair tied into a ponytail.
Jeshin finished off her breakfast, gently made her way into the pub past an old delivery man carrying a stack of empty boxes, and slammed her fist directly into the bigot’s temple.
The blow pushed the guard off of her chair and sent her sprawling onto the wooden inn floor where she lay still. The tankard she had been nursing bounced off the breastplate of her comrade, soaking the sleeve.
A part of Jeshin hollered about how incredibly stupid it was to pick a fight with a full line of soldiers in broad daylight, no matter how untrained and undisciplined they were, but Jeshin told that part of her to go stuff it. This fucker had tried to kill her charge. That injustice would not go unpunished.
Sheer surprise was on Jeshin’s side for a couple more moments, and she used them to throw another two beers into the faces of the two militia sitting across the table, then shift to the left so the enemy on that side would trip over their friend trying to reach her. It would also place her left flank against the wall, which was good because her arm was still broken on that side and therefore vulnerable.
Sure enough the first two militia on the left stumbled, and Jeshin punished the misplaced footing with two quick kicks towards their knees, breaking bone and forcing them to the ground. They were not experienced enough to keep pushing past that and overwhelm her with raw mass, thankfully, and Jeshin whirled her attention to the right.
Four enemies on this side, but they attacked one at a time, which was a sloppy mistake. Jeshin caught the unarmed blow of the first militia then twisted their arm behind their back, guiding them into the truncheon strike of the second.
They grunted in pain from the blow, then screamed as Jeshin broke their wrist and pushed them into the path of the fourth enemy.
The second continued to flail at her with the truncheon, and she took a blow to the face and two to her right before she managed to break his footing and plant an elbow into his jaw, dropping him. The third tried to tackle her, and though she held him off at arms length he pushed her towards the back corner.
That was bad. Jeshin could not afford to get boxed in or take this fight to the ground. She had to swing right, keep the enemies between each other, and...
And the fourth slammed a truncheon into her right cheek, shattering both stitches and bone. Jeshin’s world spun. She tried to ward the new attacker off with a series of jabs, but the last enemy on the left had finally managed to get past the blockage of her friends and swung her truncheon into Jeshin’s arm, rebreaking it.
Jeshin sagged against a sudden and overpowering burst of exhaustion and pain. Her spell was still trying to keep the break together, and drawing upon her alertness to do it, but it was bad and refused to set. At this point all the spell was doing was agonizingly grinding her bones together. She dropped the spell and kept swinging at her target.
Just get through this, Jeshin thought, fighting through the exhaustion, Break the line and escape out the door.
The third tackled her to the ground, and Jeshin’s entire world descended into pain.
PIC [Art/SectionMarkerJeshin.png]
Jeshin was not dead, which was unpleasantly surprising. At least she assumed that she had not died, given the amount of pain she was in and the fact that she was lying on a cot in a dark windowless prison cell instead of the second best couch at her parent’s house.
The last thing she had seen before losing consciousness was that third militia fucker looming over her clutching her own dagger. He had really not killed her? That took discipline. Or maybe he just preferred the impersonal justice of watching her hang to the personal vengeance of sticking a dagger through her eye.
Well, the joke was on him. Jeshin would be much harder to hang than he thought. She was an officer! A knight, even! She was going to throw up.
Jeshin crawled over to the bucket in the corner and voided her stomach into it. Her bile tasted like burning refuse, and some got stuck in her hair, which was waving towards the early afternoon moon it could not see.
Had she been unconscious for a few hours or a full day? The depth of her thirst made her lean towards day, but she had no way to tell for sure.
Jeshin collapsed onto the ground and groaned. She had been too nice to the rooks. She would not be in this mess if she had been willing to use her dagger.
True, Jeshin thought, You would be in a much bigger mess instead. Brawling is one thing, but cold-blooded murder? You really would hang for that.
Someone had set and splinted her arm. Jeshin replaced the splint with magic, then set her cheek with magic too. It was a rough fix, she would need to spend some time in a mirror to get the fine details right. Not that her face had been anything to brag about in the first place.
There were some footsteps outside her cell. Jeshin was too tired to rise from the ground, not for some shitty jailer who was just here to make themselves feel better by mocking her. But the actual voice was not that of a jailer. It was one she knew well.
"Jeshin?" Jay asked, "What happened to you?"
Jeshin felt a deep well of shame burn through her chest. What were they doing here? They were supposed to be on a boat by now, not slumming it in a dungeon with the common criminal rabble.
Jeshin picked herself up from the bucket just enough to slump against the rough stone wall instead. It scraped the back of her head, but it was progress.
The position let her get a good look at Jay and their shiny new paladin escort. Literally shiny, that breastplate must have seen more layers of polish than a Doge’s behind. Jeshin felt a sudden, intense surge of jealousy over that.
"I killed a waif," Jeshin said, acerbically, "For looking at me funny."
Jay frowned.
"This is serious, Jeshin," They said, "That’s absolutely despicable, but you would only have been arrested if there was a wronged party to petition the court. Waifs don’t have legal guardians."
"Senseless killing wounds the gods themselves," The paladin said.
Even his voice was boring. Monotone and clipped, as if every sentence was a prayer. Jeshin had preferred Pujunin.
"The gods don’t pay taxes," Jay said, absently, as if paying taxes was in any way a reasonable precondition for safety. As if it was unthinkable for it not to be.
Jeshin ground her teeth. She thought of shrill screams, of red blood on brown cobblestones. Of the face of a boy who was much too small for his age. She hurt, and she didn’t know how to fix it.
"I knocked out that militia bigot who called you a thief," Jeshin spat, "I should have cut off her index finger. Maybe then she’d learn to have some trigger discipline around the people I’m protecting."
Jay looked at her like she was dung under their boot.
"You mean that you threw a tantrum after not getting the gold you wanted," They said, "And took it out on the first person who slightly wronged you. Since when do you care about Ufriq honor? You sullied it far more than that poor woman you attacked."
Ever since you became responsible for one, Jeshin thought, But good luck convincing them of that.
A different approach was better.
"She tried to kill me," Jeshin said, "She tried to kill you."
Jay laughed softly and shook their head, as if they could not believe what they were hearing.
"That woman you struck?" They said, "Her name was Tharo. She had a wife, and two children. And she died a few hours after the brawl, from a cracked skull.
"Justice is abstract, and this was someone’s life, Jeshin. I don’t know why I even bothered visiting. Maybe I needed to hear your confession in person to truly believe what you’d done."
They left, and Jeshin was back at the siege of Mirrin. Back at first time she had killed a human being.
PIC [https://scythiamarrow.org/archive/SplinterGuard/Art/FullSectionJeshinDeath.png]
The green eyed knight hefted her greatsword, still covered in Yiau’s blood and chips of their skull, and thrust downwards towards Jeshin’s heart. Jeshin tried to sidestep the blow, but was hit by a flash of vertigo and stumbled instead. The sword rammed straight through the armor covering her left side, shattering the scales and piercing the cloth, but the padding underneath slipped, turning what would have been a killing stab through her kidney into a deep cut instead.
Jeshin screamed in pain, and she could not hear her own voice. She tried to crawl away, but the knight levered her sword into the ground, pinning Jeshin in place, then planted a boot on her chest and pushed.
Jeshin’s breath left her, and she gasped for air against the heavy boot. Her ribs were straining, her vision blurred and spotted.
"Please," She whimpered, "Please."
The knight kept pressing. Her eyes looked bored, and slightly amused. As if Jeshin was nothing more than an insect to her.
Jeshin drew her dagger and frantically tried to find a seam in the knight’s armor, stabbing again and again. The blows were weak, and did not even dent the steel. She felt a rib pop like a log in a fire, and nearly blacked out.
No, Jeshin thought, No!
She wove magic, and changed the muscles of her arm.
Almost no one memorized spells. The formula were complicated, and why memorize them when physical copies made by a master could be printed en mass?
But Jeshin kept a handful in her heart, like was done in the ancient days. Her diagnostic spells, for example. And this one, a simple spell that cost nearly no mana. The formula for self-destructive strength.
She slammed the dagger through the armor at the knight’s knee, then pushed herself to her feet. The knight cursed and tumbled to the ground, dropping control of her greatsword. Jeshin ripped it out of her side by the blade, then swung the pommel towards the enemy’s helm. The blow hit with a satisfying clang, and the knight fell, dazed.
The shock of the hit jarred the sword from her grasp. Jeshin tried to snatch it out of the air with her left, but fumbled the catch. It went flying over twenty hands away.
Blood ran down the inside of the knight’s visor, clogging the mouth pits. Thick bubbles burst through them with every ragged breath she took.
Now! Jeshin thought This is your chance!
She didn’t have a weapon. Jeshin tried to grab Yiau’s spear from where it lay, broken, but her right arm was a mess of shattered bones and bruising. She picked it up with her left, and stumbled forwards. Ever forwards.
The knight got to her feet and lifted her visor to clear her breathing. Her face was streaming with blood from the split cut on her brow, and matted with hair, but she wasyoung. Her nose was mousy, and her cheeks were still wearing the fat of youth. She must have been only sixteen, barely a woman grown. And already a killer.
The knight drew her sidesword. A dainty, gilded thing encrusted with gems but no less sharp for it.
They stared at each other, peering through the dust that still hung in the air. Neither moved.
Jeshin tried to muster up the will to kill a child. It kept fleeing from her. She tried to think of a way, any way, for them both to live. They stayed that way, staring at each other, for over a minute.
Jeshin moved first, and stabbed the knight straight through her left eye.
PIC [https://scythiamarrow.org/archive/SplinterGuard/Art/SectionMarkerJeshin.png]
It had been the worst experience in her life. Two days later, she got a medal for it.