Whoof.

Hello to all of you! Let me tell you… it was exhausting writing this chapter. Simply exhausting. This whole scene (chapter, section, what have you) took about two weeks to write… Hell if I know why…

Anyway, responses. Let's get to 'em!

Kirei Ryuusei: Hah, it's annoying when the button refuses to obey. X3 I feel your pain. I'm glad you like it so far, and I'm thrilled you like Magiya! I tried to make her charming in her own way, but with very real and very human flaws.
It wasn't easy.
And heh, Artix is my favorite too. X3 Always has been. Although... Zhoom is a close second. U/./U

Thunder of Life: Hah, thanks. X3 And yes... I know that the ping-pong insults were really OOC... maybe I'll change that, maybe not. U.U I just wanted to show a little adorable stress between them. XD It worked. It took me almost half an hour to fix that up, I'm glad you laughed at it. ^^
And believe you me, that hammer may be my favorite weapon in the game. XD Maybe just because of the video... but I dunno. *shrug* From what I remember of the storyline flittering to and fro in my fiddlefudged brain, ruined by candy at the moment, he picked it up from the ground... O.o Maybe we'll find out. Maybe the DF creators shall REVEAL ALL!
...Yeah, and maybe a flying unicorn will come and let me skip school tomorrow. Thanks again! :3

Now, quick recap.

In the last chapter, Artix and Magiya got into a short name calling contest after Artix beat the Undead Goliath, and Magiya thoroughly embarrassed herself when she mistakenly called Rolith "Captain Constipation". Now, they are wrapping things up in Moonridge before going home.


"…And if you ever need anything, please let us know!"

"Of course."

"You have horses, supplies, potion refills, your reward… are you sure there isn't anything else we can give you?"

"Yes sir, we're quite sure."

I steeled myself to not roll my eyes and just lose my temper with the mayor of Moonridge. This had to be the fifth time he asked us if we needed anything else for the journey back. 6000 gold, split three ways, enough supplies for six men, and… grr… three horses.

As the three of us—Rolith, Krieger, and I—walked away from what seemed to be the entire town seeing us off, I finally let out a long, slow gust of air.

"Next time… stop him, please," I muttered under my breath. "If I had to put up with his 'Oh, thank you so much', 'We owe you our lives', or 'ALL HAIL' any longer, I would have ended up sealing his mouth shut."

"I'll keep that in mind," chuckled Krieger. In his right hand, the paladin walked with the reins of a simply massive grey horse, while his left hand was occupied by the reins of what was supposed to be my horse.

As I glanced sideways at the huge black equine, I shuddered at the thought. The mean-spirited creature was nothing more than 1200 lbs of solid muscle and bone, and could undoubtedly dent my skull from one kick easily.

"What's wrong?" asked Rolith curiously, looking over at me from the other side of Krieger. He held the end of the reins to a large bay stallion. I just shook my head vehemently, causing a few loose strands of dark brown hair to drift into my face.

"Nothing," I said hastily, perhaps a little too quickly. It was this that caught Krieger's attention. Those coppery-brown eyes latched onto me and followed my line of sight before I furiously looked away, and I swear to Lore I could hear that click as the gears in his head connected the dots.

"Magiya," he said slowly, and just by his tone I could tell he was trying not to laugh, "Don't tell me that… You're not scared of horses, are you?"

Damn.

"No," I nearly growled, praying he wouldn't notice how I was walking slightly apart from the two of them, because they were the ones leading the horses. In my peripheral vision, though, I could see him looking back and forth between me and the black stallion that was supposed to be mine, almost comical with how quickly his head was moving. "I am not scared of them."

Stupid man, he called my bluff. I could tell because his footsteps (as well of those of Rolith and all three horses) stopped.

"You don't like horses?" he repeated incredulously.

"Did you even hear me, stone ears?" I demanded, whirling to face him. The two horses Krieger was leading eyed me, and I took a step back. Hell if I was going to be the one kicked by these vicious animals. "I am not afraid of horses!"

"Magiya…" Rolith began, and a glance at my long-time friend revealed him to be goggling at me, as though I had suddenly grown two heads. "You're not… are you?" I thought he knew me better than that.

"No!" I spat as a slightly crooked grin split Krieger's face, and his eyes sparkled with humor. Damn that man.

"You really don't like horses?" he queried, staring at me as though I was the newest monster in Lore. "What is wrong with you?"

"Look in a mirror, you freak of nature!" I snapped back.

"C'mon, what's wrong with them?" he needled as we resumed walking.

"Everything!"

"Magiya!"

I grumbled crossly under my breath before mumbling grudgingly, "…They're dangerous at both ends, and crafty in the middle…"

The near-silence then was broken abruptly by the paladin laughing breathlessly, and causing the two stallions in his hands to jerk their heads back before quieting. I nervously kept an eye on them, almost forgetting my anger at Krieger in my sudden wariness. Over the stallions' backs, I saw Rolith with his free hand over his mouth, and his back was moving erratically. Laughing.

Idiots.

Then my mouth nearly fell open as Krieger, still snickering, held out the reins of the black stallion to me. The huge creature looked at me calmly with large, liquid brown eyes, set on either side of a white patch right in the center of its forehead. I stared back.

"Climb on," he said, grinning widely. I shot him a brief, venomous glare before returning my gaze to the black horse in front of me.

"Fuck no."

"Climb on," he said again, the grin fading slightly, though his eyes still gleamed. "He's not going to hurt you."

"How do you know?" I growled, still refusing to take the reins he offered with his left hand. I heard him sigh, and could all too easily picture him rolling his eyes.

"How about this; you get on, and I'll lead him along. Deal?"

"Not just no, but hell no."

"Magiya," he said exasperatedly, grin gone. "You need to learn to ride a horse. If you climb on, I promise you right here and now that I will not let this horse go faster than a walk, just like we've been doing."

I nearly jerked as I realized that, as he had been speaking, I was actually considering doing it. The absolute calmness and trustfulness in the black animal's eyes was beginning to win me over. But then I saw the solid, rippling muscle in its shoulders, legs, and hindquarters, and changed my mind.

He never makes promises, whispered that side of my mind slyly. He always keeps them whenever he does. I promptly crushed that side with a large rock.

"No," I said for what was hopefully (but unlikely to be) the final time. However, much to my dismay, the resolve in my voice was significantly less prominent than when I had last refused. To my increasing horror, Krieger picked up on this.

"Get on the horse!" he said triumphantly, his grin reappearing now that victory was near. But oh, he couldn't have been more wrong. I was not one to back down. He should have known me better than that.

I crossed my arms stubbornly, refusing to move. I saw Krieger roll his eyes before tersely tying the black horse's reins to his grey stallion's saddle and swinging up. Rolith, on his right, did the same. Next thing I knew, I was sitting far too high above the ground for my liking, with metal at my back and a saddle tied to over half a ton of pure muscle underneath me. I froze immediately, sure that any kind of a freak out right now would cause the grey stallion to spook, getting me tossed.

"Krieger," I hissed, beginning to turn around to give the Paladin right up against my back a piece of my mind. Then without warning the creature under us began to move, and I clung to the piece of the saddle in front of me with the grip of the damned. I squeezed my eyes shut tightly, hating the rocking feeling the horse moving gave me. If at all possible, I tightened my grip on the saddle.

I didn't even so much as twitch when Krieger whispered quietly in my ear, "I'm not going to let you fall. Besides, we're just walking. You can ease up the death grip on the reins of your horse." Cracking one eye open slightly, I could see that the part of the saddle I was clinging to was indeed the part where he had tied the black horse's reins to. Past that, I could barely see the ground going by under us past a pale grey shoulder. True to his word, we were only walking.

With that comforting thought, I muttered back, "As soon as I catch you without your armor… so help me, if it's the last thing I do, I will kill you slowly and painfully."

"Ah, princess, that will be a bit difficult, you see," Krieger said in a quietly cheerful voice. I could feel the slight wind his breath stirred on the back of my neck, where my hair had been pushed to the side over one shoulder. "Because the only time I'm without my armor is—"

"Don't need to hear it!" I snipped, finally opening my eyes all the way.

You know, it's not all that scary being up here, I realized, looking around at the forest path we were traveling on. If we're not going fast, then it's actually kind of… nice. Then I was suddenly distracted slightly by the tiny waves of air sliding over my neck as he chuckled a little breathlessly.

"You're relaxing," he murmured approvingly. "See? You're learning. It's not that bad."

"Not bad my ass," I grumbled, but with less malice than before. "This is horrible."

Now stop lying, the more docile side of my head chastised. It's not as bad as you thought it would be.

Go away, why don't you!

"Horrible?"

"Yes!"

"Really?"

It didn't really sound like a question when Krieger said it. It sounded more like a prompt of some sort, like he was waiting for the real answer.

Damn him.

"… I…" I opened and closed my mouth a few times before finally just huffing dropping my head. "Shut up."

I could feel the vibrations of Krieger's quiet laughter reverberating through the breastplate of his armor then, and surprisingly… I didn't feel any hatred or spite towards him for it. In my mind's eye, I could almost see the darker, nastier side of my consciousness trying to fan the flames of my disdain for him.

It worked.

I lapsed into a frosty silence on the massive grey battle horse, the black one still following along behind, its reins tied to Krieger's and mine's saddle. Several times in the course of about a half an hour or so, he attempted to start a conversation, but to no avail. Mostly, we simply rode at a walk in the near-quiet of the forest. Of course, there was the occasional birdsong and chatter of small animals; the complete opposite of how I felt right now. But that paladin just couldn't seem to keep his big mouth shut, continuing to babble on about trivial subjects and occasionally shooting a question at me that I either refused to answer or gave a short, concise answer to. Then came one that I honestly hadn't been anticipating.

"Why do you never call me by my name?" he asked curiously, and I could just visualize his copper-colored eyes shining with pure, honest wonder. I quickly destroyed the mental image.

"I do!" I protested, frowning. "Krieger. That is your name, isn't it?"

"You know what I mean," he persisted. "My name is Artix von Krieger. Everyone calls me just Artix. Except you. Why is that?"

"Because!" I grumbled. "Is it wrong that I really don't have a reason, 'just Artix'?"

"Not at all."

"Then why the hell are you asking!"

"Is curiosity a bad reason to want to know something?" he retorted from behind me and several inches up, and I muttered a few less than complimentary things before growing quiet again. He just laughed quietly in that way of his that I had grown to recognize. I swear that if I were blindfolded, I could pick out his laugh among a group of others.

Is that a bad thing? Damn that voice.

SHUT UP.

We rode along at a walk for a little while longer, and much to my surprise, Krieger had actually lapsed into a sort of thoughtful silence at my back. It wasn't… bad, necessarily, but… I had grown quite used to his chatter filling the empty pauses between conversations.

"Why are you always so mistrustful?"

It took me a second to answer, so unexpected was this particular question—even though I'd often wondered about it myself.

"I'm not!" I responded, my voice cutting like a whip. However, he seemed a little more resolute to keep this up than I was. To tell the truth (not that I wasn't before), I had no idea exactly what the paladin had in mind. Setting his jaw, he continued.

"But you're always so guarded. Let someone in so that someone can really care," he protested, and I turned my head sideways to at least get some semblance of eye contact when I spoke again. Even so, the scrap of brown I could see at the corner of my eye didn't help me decipher his expression any. Just like Rolith said, I thought grumpily, momentarily reflecting to that night when I had laid awake listening to them talking about me. I can't read him.

"I don't need anyone to care. I can take care of myself. And I do let people in," I added as an afterthought in a rather irritable tone. However, even as I said it, I knew it wasn't true. Krieger was right; I did have serious trust issues, and didn't let anyone in.

"Even without you telling me you had walls a few weeks ago, even without knowing you much longer than I have, even I can see the walls around you," Krieger hissed from behind me, sounding slightly angry. "I don't know why you have them, and I don't know how long you've had them for, but what I do know is that those walls you relentlessly keep up frequently keep people out. You need someone in your life, whether it's to take care of you because of how often you get into trouble or just to be your friend."

"That's not—"

"You need someone in your life," he repeated, cutting off my protests. "You probably have those walls for a reason—hell, anybody who has walls as strong as yours has them for a reason—but you need to let go of whatever it is that you're trying to hide." Before I knew it, Krieger's voice had acquired a hard edge, almost cold, and I'd never heard him sound this… serious before. Previously, he had always said whatever it was that he had to say with a sort of gleam in his eye, a funny tilt to his words—not this time. This time, he was dead serious, I could tell, even without the added benefit of looking at him to try and puzzle out his expression.

"I have nothing to hide." I replied to his accusation scathingly, not even attempting to hide the knives and daggers in my voice. And in my mind, it was true. At first glance in my convoluted mind, I had nothing that I needed to hide, per se; I just wanted to protect myself… keep my mind from any further damage than what I'd seen in my life so far.

"You have something to hide. Everyone does," Krieger continued. He didn't sound as livid as I must have right then, but he sounded reasonably annoyed. Hey, to me, that was perfectly fine; lots of people got annoyed with me. In this one case, though, past the irritation I felt at his criticism, I felt strangely… proud of myself, I suppose. It wasn't easy to aggravate a paladin like this, after all. His next statement brought me back down to earth, perfectly furious with him by now. "You just haven't found the right person to trust."

"And you're that person, right?" I cynically remarked, not expecting an answer.

I got one anyway.

"I'm trying to be," Krieger said quietly, almost so softly so as for me to have difficulty hearing. Again, when he said this, his breath ghosted over the back of my neck, causing odd little goosebumps to race all the way down my arms and over my shoulders. I fought my body's demand to shiver, because knowing him, it would only make him laugh again. And while the main part of my consciousness was irritably protesting making him chuckle, the little, dark, neglected, despised section of my mind that didn't abhor Krieger was… urging me to amuse him. It didn't want to constantly wish for the strength to kill him. It was just the part of me that wanted me to make others happy.

And up till now, it had never been quite this prominent (nor quite this much trouble) before. But my question was, was there any way to get rid of it?

"Tell me," he said cheerfully, and I could tell he was trying to use a more lighthearted tone, "Do you like me?"

"What?" I demanded, my head whipping as far around as it would go to confront him.

"I said, do you like me?" he repeated, and I could hear the wide grin in his voice.

Yes, of course you do, interrupted the hated part of my mind again.

GO AWAY! I angrily screamed at it internally. Some of this anger must have leaked out into the part of my head that handled speaking, because when I answered, my voice was cold and hard, and sent little chills down my spine.

"No," I gritted out. "I don't. Nobody could ever like you, Krieger, because you are such a pain in the ass. You annoy the hell out of everybody you encounter, not just the monsters!" I could almost feel his wince, but the sadistic side of me wanted to really hurt him this time. Meanwhile, my better part was trying to stem the flow of anger and insults suddenly flooding and overwhelming my head. Problem was… I couldn't stop. "You'll always be alone, because no one is ever going to want to spend more than maybe two minutes with you!" My voice had risen to a shout by the end, and even though I wasn't facing him, I could feel the tension, awkwardness, and hurt in the aura surrounding Krieger. It was a cold, icy silence.

Then I suddenly felt myself being lifted into the air and onto the black horse slightly behind Krieger's grey stallion. He stiffly turned towards the front again, having tossed the reins to my horse back to me. Without a word, he quickened his horse's pace, riding ahead so that Rolith rode between us. I nervously looked down at the black stallion under me, but he seemed content to just follow the bay Rolith was riding. Hell, I wasn't going to try and convince him otherwise.

But after a minute or two of just silence, instead of the strange pride I expected to feel at having finally managed to drive Krieger off, all I felt was… guilt.

He's not going to bother you anymore! the side of me that wanted to feel triumphant crowed jubilantly. You're not going to run into him anymore on quests, and he'll have no excuse to talk to you!

But should I really have done that? I wondered silently, frowning as I pondered the reins I held loosely in my hands. I wasn't even trying to guide the black horse I rode—I was comfortable with him following the other two home. For the first time, though, almost the entire part of my consciousness was doubtful over insulting the paladin. Should I really have hurt him like that?

He wasn't going to get the clue otherwise! the gloating part of my mind pointed out. After all, he was tracking you down and frustrating you on purpose every chance he got!

But was he really doing me any damage? I argued weakly. No, if anything, he was… drawing me out.

And that's why you needed to do this, the voice snapped impatiently. You need to keep your walls and barriers, don't you? If you wanted to avoid being hurt or scorned sometime in your life, you had to make him back off for good. And he wasn't going to!

But… I could have talked to him… I didn't have to rip into him like that, I sighed quietly, giving up the fight… for now.


Rolith urged his horse up a few steps until he rode almost right next to Artix, who was the very picture of discouragement. His shoulders were slumped and he didn't have a normal grip on his horse's reins. His head hung, several strands of copper-colored hair shading his eyes from the dappled sunlight shining through the forest canopy above them along the path.

"Hey," Rolith said quietly, reaching up to put a comforting hand on the paladin's shoulder, "Don't worry about it. She didn't mean it."

"Yes she did."

Artix's voice was as dejected as they come, and Rolith internally sighed. Why couldn't these two just get along?

"Look," he began, keeping his voice down so that they could talk without being overheard (by a certain mule-headed Mage behind them), "Remember when we were talking, and I told you about when we met? I told you that after she recovered, she went looking for me, put me on my back, and ripped me a new one? And then she thanked me?"

She found me and tackled my legs, and did her best to knock me down. Once she had me on my back, she cursed me for all she was worth… then thanked me.

"Yeah."

"Well, this is just her nature. She will—"

"So her nature is to hurt everyone close to her?" he demanded quietly, his brown eyes flashing.

"No!" protested Rolith. "She'll judge you, then test you. And if she feels bad about it, she'll apologize!"

"I don't think she's going to apologize about this," muttered Artix under his breath.

"She will. Trust me. Hell, just look at her face right now! She regrets it, anyone could tell!" Rolith hissed at last, gesturing back at the young woman on the black horse. She obviously wasn't even trying to direct her mount, and was content to let him follow they two. A confused frown twisted her face, and her dark blue eyes weren't focused on anything at the moment aside from her horse's muscular neck. Rolith saw his friend's face change slightly, from angry and hurt to mixed up and troubled. Then his expression solidified into something more certain that was slightly more icy.

"If she's as stubborn as I think she is," he said in a quiet voice that revealed nothing of his emotions, "She won't apologize."


. . .

Don't kill me, please.

So, yeah. Magiya's truly vicious side has made an appearance; the ruthless half almost all women have, myself included.

As always, if you liked, subscribe or review! :3

Also, I wanted to know if anybody noticed any inconsistencies in Magiya's, Artix's, or Rolith's personalities. If you did, please leave something in a review so that I can try to fix it or something.

Oh, and the reason I named this chapter "Crafty in the Middle"... It doesn't just apply to horses. Women, too. ^^

Thanks for reading, and I hope you enjoyed!