They were headed to the baths. It was only a couple of hours before they were due to meet the [Lord of the Deep Wood] and Ulric had worked up a considerable sweat in his two or so hours of solo training. Geyrt, was just glad to visit the baths. Anything, he supposed with another chuckle, to distract herself from the events ten minutes prior.

His Shadow was a right Elven thunderhead she was. He couldn't see the steam coming out of her ears but he could feel the anger in her footsteps, which had lost a little of their usual grace. The aggressive swish, swishing of her robes were as good as a string of curses. Another giggle rolled through him uncontrollably. Yeah, she might as well be stomping the ground. Her sniff, audible most of the way down the hall from behind him, told him that she was aware of his amusement.

Her status was a bit of an eye opener for him. He'd only seen two of those fucky glimpses into the nether: his own and Brighteyes'. Both of them were, for lack of a better term, vanilla. He had a few bells and whistles on account of his titles and the Watcher shenanigans, atypical markers for the relatively large splash that he'd made in the world in a relatively short time, if he was being honest about it. But, overall, fairly cut and dry.

Geryt was different animal. Her base stats left him fairly impressed, especially that dexterity, good goddamn, no wonder she moved so smoothly, and her modifiers were solid, expanding on her base performance in a rather well-rounded way. Ulric was dead certain that was probably a similarity shared amongst all the long-lived warriors: dedicated practice honed their coordination to an incredible degree.

He’d seen the refinement of the Iriel’en fighting classes in action but now he had a number against which to judge how vast the difference between he and they. He’d witnessed first-hand that most Aes’r were far better at moving than he was, more coordinated, fewer wasted actions, that sort of thing. Even so, it was telling to see numerically where he fell short of the inhuman mental and physical grace of the long-lived races. Fortunately, the other aspects of Geyrt’s status weren’t as imposing. Her titles and whatnot were also kind of unsurprising. Well, with one exception. Just thinking about it pulled another giggle from him, that he quickly staunched, before he lost himself to uncontrollable fits again.

No, her status was impressive but not completely out of line until he saw her classes. Holy shit. She had two advanced classes, expanded and refined towards her individual predilections and talents. They were both spooky as hell. Where Ulric had simple, broad skills and traits, hers were both more focused and of incredible immediate potency. And he hadn't even seen the half of them in action, it turns out.

Her Nightblade class was almost strictly, as the name implied, nocturnally based and he'd never seen her at play in the witching hours. By the way those traits and skills read, he actually wouldn't see much at all when she had her game face on. The entire class was devoted to being an assassin wrapped in darkness. As edgy as that sounded, it was literal truth. She could pull in shadows around her to form a cloak that masked the disturbances she made in air as she moved, muffling sound or air currents that were dead give aways since most creatures did not see well at night, thus their other senses, hearing and touch included, were amplified.

It also made her fucking invisible.

He'd have to see it applied, to examine the skill and to play around testing the limits of its action. Was it thermal too? Or just optical stealth? Did it respond to physical interactions like dust? So many questions. The old bag of flour trick was firmly in his mind as he thought about it. And that was only one feature of the class. She could also make hardened shadow out of her mana; Ulric didn't have any clue how that would even work. It wasn't physically possible in his brain. There were near to a dozen other similar, exceedingly powerful components to her classes.

In a substantial break from Ulric's own status, Geyrt had, essentially, zero spells. She, instead, relied on active skills that consumed mana to utilize. The real divergence, however, was in the sheer breadth, the scope of her passive enhancements. Geyrt was fully loaded. In the deep forests, the shadowed groves, the Young Miss Iriel was a force to be reckoned with. He'd always assumed she was dangerous. Now, though, now he really knew the depth of her advantage out there.

He felt a brief flash of annoyance at her when he thought back to her attack on him on their first meeting. She'd underestimated him to the point of treating him like swatting a fly. She'd put, essentially, zero effort into her attempted assassination. If she'd come at him in the dark, he'd have been dead, D. E. D. dead, zero questions. She hadn't even used her skills, except for, maybe, her ability to put arrows on target in quick succession, though that might have just been her normal archery ability. With agility and dexterity as high as hers, it wasn't unreasonable. Actually wait, he was no longer annoyed, he was purely thankful. He could have kissed her for holding him in such contempt, it saved his life.

None of that was the source of his amusement though. No, indeedy, that was in her titles. Most of them were appropriately spooky and intimidating. But, there, almost hiding, was the title that brought him real joy. He wondered when she got it. It raised all kinds of questions about how the Akashic record and the imprints left in the Vardic quantum web by the sentients that occupied it interacted. Ulric bit his knuckle, choking back another round of chuckles as he recalled the imposing woman's status.

[https://i.imgur.com/xsS0nUI.png]

All very appropriate for the eldest daughter of Bald'rt Iriel, an accomplished and respected huntress, bane of those who would trespass into her domain, especially if they hailed from Prosper, the home of her blood enemies. Except that, right there in her titles, was an outlier. A delicious joke.

One of her titles was Taipan. His nickname for her when he survived her ambush and the most appropriate way that he could think of to refer to her, especially at the time after she’d poisoned him and snapped relentlessly at every single move he’d made. Word had, evidently, gotten around about what the term meant, between his telling of Brighteyes and the trickle down from the warriors in attendance within Bald'rt's throne room when he'd recounted it. During the abortive scouting trip back to the glade several of the scouts, referred to her by his apt label, for which she had, of course, lashed out at him.

He'd long ago stopped using the term, out of an attempt to generate a more congenial rapport between them. It wasn't enough. No, she now carried the label in that most honest of magical reflections of one's self, her own status. That the appellative had resonated so hard it registered in the All-Knowledge gave him no end of amusement, and not only had an apt description it was a source of empowerment to her. Nay, not amusement. Full blown hysterical belly laughter. He'd laughed until tears streamed down his face back in his rooms. He'd laughed until he thought he might suffocate. Even now he couldn't help the intermittent sounds that forced their way through his attempts to regain composure.

Even better, when he couldn't restrain his laughter, she couldn’t help but bitch at him, demanding he stop mocking her. That only made it worse, which she quickly realized, mouth clamping shut and eyes attempting to peel skin through force of will as he doubled over, barely keeping his feet under him. She couldn't remain silent for long though, to her own detriment and Ulric's intensifying merriment.

"Yes, yes. Very rich, Glade Chief, very droll. You call me Taipan and now it sits here in my title. A grand joke you have enacted to bring me shame this way. What is this description!? How-I have never seen such utter tripe in a title! It is not so, and you should be ashamed!" She ranted, her bitter tone turning ever more acidic.

The irony of her complaint about the title being coupled to her clearly increasing anger brought Ulric, who had nearly recovered, back to uncontrollable horse laughs.

Her attempts to paint him as being childish were, similarly, to no avail.

"It is not funny!" Her remembered shout echoed through the apartment. "You have, have desecrated me for all to see! This juvenile, adolescent, insufferable naming of yours is going to follow me forever, you shameless human ape!" Her screech reached a higher octave at the last.

"Please! Please, no more, I can't. I can't breathe." He begged her between gasps. His howls of laughter continued for another five minutes before he was able to choke them back, wiping the tears from his face. When he raised his eyes to meet hers again, for the first time since she'd sent him into this downward spiral of hilarity. Her face was carved from ice, her eyes glittered malice. Since then she hadn’t said a single word or acknowledged him in any way.

Ulric saw how it was going to be when they reached the entryway, the mostly empty drawers evidencing the relatively small population in the baths at this time of day. Geyrt made no move to disrobe, waiting instead for Ulric to stow his gear, and said nothing when he went ahead into the steamy haven of heated water.

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He settled himself down into the water and it wasn't for another few minutes before he noticed his Shadow reclining into the pool in a distant pocket across the room. She was definitely pissed. Not that he blamed her, necessarily. Most of her life's problems could be laid at his feet, even if they were a direct result of her own choices. It was an avoidance, a scape goat, but it was an easy enough leap to make if she was keen on deflecting. Which, judging by her refusal to be in proximity with him, was exactly the case.

Ulric was, by this point, greatly familiar with his Shadow's moods and mannerisms. Normally, she clammed up when he managed to score a point in their jousting. She had a vast assortment of coughs, eye rolls, and other assorted ways to demonstrate her displeasure or exasperation with him, even grudging respect. Her demeanor now, was none of those, it was more akin to the way she'd treated him in those first few days, which was odd. He hadn't even taunted her, hadn't said even a single word in jest. No, it was the laughter that wounded her. Her features, her body language, her distancing, everything said that he had given her some great insult.

She was actually hurt, he decided, as the heat of the water settled into his bones, not just faking indignation, chalking up another mark on her invisible tally sheet to "get even" with him. He could only assume that he had damaged that incredible pride she carried around by laughing at her. Which confused him greatly. He'd gone well out of his way to poke fun at her before, they had traded barbs almost as a matter of routine and none of it had slipped under her armor as much as his amusement at her title.

It was confusing for the social nincompoop that was Ulric. Elves mocked and teased in private and, to a lesser extent in public. She was well used to her own people’s japes. Or…no maybe not. Pulling the pieces together, all those sideways mentions about the woman he’d gathered during his time in Irielhos, Ulric realized they’d all been pointing to Geyrt not exactly fitting in well with the rest of her kin.

He ducked under the heated pool and stayed until his breath ached to escape. When he came up, he drew deep breaths and had a hunch.

Somehow, somewhere along the way, this woman had developed a sensitivity about her own perceived worth, was Ulric's conclusion. She wasn't completely without humor. They'd established that early on. To be honest, beneath the thorns, was a fantastic straight man and a dead pan wit with sarcasm so dry it could slip past undetected unless you were really paying attention. It had become exceedingly clear to him that she wasn't above setting up subtle pranks or jokes on his account, though he might not always catch them because they were so deeply steeped in Elven cultural mores that they didn't find purchase. And, he found that his rebuttles were taken more or less on the chin without this level of anger.

Then it wasn't that she couldn't take being on the receiving end of a joke. More like, there was some bone deep insecurity which made her incredibly soft skinned about her place amongst her kin. That was baffling to him. And incredibly amusing to the asshole part of him, Geyrt’s inability to see the intense irony of it. Here was a person blessed by the fates to have a noble birth, the advantage of untold supports and resources, incredible physical ability, perfection of form, and massive talent. And yet, somehow, she could still be so easily wounded. What had created such fragility in her ego? He had a hard time imagining how she had avoided having that eggshell self-esteem crushed amidst the sometimes quite pointed japes of her Father or the cutting observations of her direct Mother.

She was spoiled, Ulric decided. As crazy as that sounded to him. And probably more than a little racist, which was a tougher pill to swallow. He’d thought himself finally past that with her.

He would bet that this all was a result of the death of this elder brother he had been told about. Her attitudes, her obstinate pride, he couldn't see it unless she'd been pampered by Bald'rt and Vedyr, those being unwilling to bring her further pain after her loss, he hypothesized. Maybe they'd been running from their own pain, in their hunts for the killers, and in being over protective of her. It wasn't unheard of for parents to overcompensate through their own grieving.

His own parents had tended that way. Ulric had heard nary a sideways word from his dad, who could carve tool steel with his tongue when he was irritated, after his sister's tragedy. That lack of corrective advice, delivered from a place of love, hadn't done Ulric any favors either. In spite of his having trouble seeing either of the Iriel’s as helicoptering gentle hands in their parenting, it wasn’t impossible. Especially in response to such traumatic loss. Hmmm…Ulric hummed bubbles into the water.

Whatever the case, Geyrt evidenced a severe lack of emotional robustness, an intolerance of real criticism or of being viewed with condescension, especially by a lesser human. Brighteyes was the only one he'd seen really jump her, at least until Vedyr had most recently gotten involved more directly and his Shadow's complaints, uttered with a hesitant check to ensure Vedyr was not nearby, suggested this was a recent development. She certainly viewed it through the lens of being an additional punishment though, not the attempt of a caring parent to rectify failings of their relationship.

If he was understanding the context of things, the young girl had latched on to the sympathetic crutch of her Uncle, who had also treated her with velvet gloves. That explained the incredible docility he'd seen in her there, Uldin was her safe place, her bastion of support. The Smith's kindness and tenderness towards the normally foul tempered woman was obvious. She didn't feel threatened in his presence, which was why she was so calm.

So, what the hell is eating at her that she stays so damned defensive all the time with him? There had to be something, it’d been, what? Seventy some years since her brother’s murder? Surely she wasn’t still holding him in some kind of one sized fits all Humans Are All Bastards box.

Ulric could be pretty tone deaf sometimes, and he wasn't above admitting that he could be an awful reader of people, maybe he was totally wrong. It didn't feel like it, though. Normally he just missed things, was completely unaware that some byplay was occurring. Whenever he actually recognized a situation, he, generally, was fairly spot on with interpreting it. This here, this was some kind of classical broken grieving, dependence, and emotional trauma. He wasn't sure how the situation had been allowed to fester.

Perhaps that was why her Mothers were pulling her aside all the time. They were trying to correct her and, if the bruising was any indication, she was stubbornly resisting their efforts.

Fascinating. If it wasn't happening right in his face with potential to blow up on him.

It occurred to Ulric that he was, in no small part, responsible for his Shadow's well-being. That included her emotional and mental status too. The need to intervene and straighten her shit out wasn't just for her own good, Ulric had a vested interest in his Shadow's psychological well-being. It would be up to him to assist in shoring up whatever frailty was causing her to be so sensitive, somehow. Dammit Jim he was an engineer, not a shrink!

Regardless. As she was, Ulric was now convinced that Geyrt was more or less useless to him in the upcoming conflicts.

She was too volatile, too easily tunnel visioned. Like a bull she would be relentless and powerful when she had a specific target, but a sophisticated enemy would exploit her emotional weakness and pull her apart. Like he had. He had no doubt that whoever was behind the attacks on Brighteyes and the Orlethrem in general would be aware of her shortcomings. The defining feature of their enemy so far was their seeming access to incredibly deep knowledge of the Elves' inner workings and the key personalities involved.

His mind jumped tracks suddenly at that thought. The assessment of his Shadow's wonky psychology, and its exploitability rang out a parallel to the conundrum of the strange attack being played out against the Elves as a whole, a mystery that had been turning over for weeks in the back of his mind. Ulric had the sudden inspiration that they were dealing with a Machiavelli. A deep strategizer willing to play a slow, incredibly cynical game. Whoever was leading this offensive against Orlethrem was utilizing the same kind of philosophy as Idra's Dance of a Thousand Steps. Incremental advantages built up to secure a certain, overwhelming victory. With one big difference: They wouldn't mind sacrificing potentially thousands of lives to create an opportunity for an opening in the Elves’ defenses, where the Orlethrem wouldn’t spend a single Elf without cause.

Increasingly, Ulric was becoming certain of it, the wheels in his head shifting into higher gear as he organized the disparate pieces of information into a more cohesive whole. It was a strategy, a way of thinking that was so completely foreign to what he knew of the Elven thought process. Each of them valued the individual with a near religious ferver. They lived so long that the loss of a single life represented the loss of hundreds of years of companionship, knowledge, and skills. Hell, the Iriels still sat a place at their dinner table for a relative dead a hundred years.

Bald'rt's eulogy of Serlic revealed that, while the Iriel'en accepted that loss was a natural part of life, an Elven life was never spent in vain.

The people of Prespang did not seem to share that reluctance to trade lives. The Humans and Beastkin of that nation, all lesser lived races, they didn't hold such value to individual life. When you only have a fifty to a hundred years, at most, an individual was a drop in the bucket. Especially for an ego driven set of sociopathic Oligarchs, which seemed to be who was calling the shots over in Prosper. It probably wouldn't occur to any Elven leader that a Human King would see his people as completely disposable if it gained them advantage.

Yeah, that fits, Ulric told himself, fingers snapping absently at his thigh, sending ripples up to the surface. Whenever he'd heard Bald'rt or one of the others speak of the wars with humans they always sounded confused. They didn't understand why those people refused to preserve their own lives, why they continued to throw themselves at the Elven tribes with such frequency. It was alien to them and they couldn't help but look down on any race that held its own people's with so little esteem.

Ulric's home world had known military strategies that involved spending lives like pennies for incremental gains of ground, until they had depleted the enemy's ability to supply their troops with the means to kill these suicidal pushes. It was like beating a wood chipper by shoving your arm so deep it clogged the blades. Unthinkable to anyone who valued anything but their own will.

If Ulric's instincts were pointing in the right direction, he had to tell Bald'rt that they were almost certainly missing the key thrust of the enemy. Whatever the Iriel'en had identified as the threat or target was, to Ulric's churning mind, a feint so callous as to be inconceivable. The Elves were going to butcher a bunch of sacrificial pawns while checkmate landed somewhere else.

But where? That was the part that Ulric couldn't figure out. That and how the Ancient's Plateau was involved. There was a connection somewhere but Ulric couldn't see it. He was missing something vital, something big.

He'd lost his good cheer completely now. Again. Fuck. What a rollercoaster of a day it'd been.

He hoped Bald'rt had some good news. Or, at least, could tell Ulric that they had already figured all this out and he was spinning his wheels for no good reason. He was a professional problem solver, his brain would chew itself apart until it found the solution. Currently, that meant identifying the constraints of the operating environment more completely. The problem was ill defined. It was like solving a partial differential equation, when the situation is complex, you can't make a predictive model absent the boundary conditions. In this case, that meant knowing what the end goal for the enemy was and what tools they had to achieve those goals.

What exactly did they want? What was the point of this stupid war? Thoughts roiled as his feet kicked idly in the water, his eyes closed as he let his conscious mind roam. He jumped from one idea to the next, as he tended to do, trying to make connections, when he was lost.

At some point in his meandering, Ulric realized that he sympathized with his angry, guarded, misguided Shadow. They were similar people, in many ways. The main difference was, he'd already killed himself avoiding reality once. He'd forgotten how to laugh at himself in his old life and that rigid refusal to change, grow, or entertain doubt had locked him into a death spiral. That wasn't something he would do again. Maybe he could help Geyrt figure out how to avoid it for herself. Probably not, he wasn't sure he'd ever make her actually listen. But he owed it to her to try.

He grimaced in anticipation of pain; you don't handle a Taipan without getting bitten.

Then again, he was a [Snake Charmer], wasn't he?