3. Frenzies and Fountains
"Report," Elowyn addressed Nishi shortly, only to cast an annoyed look at the small woman when she didn't respond immediately.
"She's not one of your troops, General," Valvyn drawled sarcastically, coming up to the loot pile at the same time as Elowyn and TrocaÎre, "None of us are."
Elowyn gave an ineloquent snort in response to his observation, glancing quickly from Alice and Jorge, arguing as they approached, to Balthor, still mindlessly beating the corpse. "Don't I know fucking know it," she muttered hopelessly.
"We could be!" Alice piped up happily, riding the high of her kill and ignoring the still disgruntled Jorge who smelled vaguely of smoke and burned hair. "What are your orders, General!?" she smiled, raising her hand in a snappy salute.
Gods, Elowyn wanted to hate the little female elf, she really did, but she was so nice, and her damn smile was so bright that she could feel that resolve wavering as the ends of her lips tipped up in the barest grin.
Valvyn felt no such reservations.
"What kind of fucking elf are you?" Valvyn snapped, charming façade dropping for a terrifying moment as he stepped in front of Alice and slapped down her raised hand, "How dare you salute her as if she isn't some godsdamned genocidal maniac?"
"Wh-what?" Alice stuttered
"We were at war," Elowyn stated boredly, turning her back on the fuming Valvyn in the ultimately disrespectful dismissal one could give an elf.
"And that justifies the wholesale slaughter of families!?" Valvyn yelled at her back causing TrocaÎre to stop Valvyn's forward approach with a hand on his chest.
Elowyn paused in her perusal of the loot pile and looked back over her shoulder at the enraged elf with un unreadable look that was laced with an unspeakable, and oddly out-of-place, sadness. "No, it does not," she whispered, turning back to the pile.
Nishi looked around uncomfortably at the somber faces around her. "I think Valvyn's just mad because he sucks at fighting," she said airily, breaking the tension, "I'll report. Here's what we got and, sadly, it isn't much."
"A small flask, a backpack with what I think are navigator's tools in it, a shortsword," she said ticking off their loot on her fingers, "a long bow and a quiver of arrows- which isn't bad I guess-, a ratty piece of parchment, and the coward's quarterstaff."
"That's… underwhelming," Elowyn breathed out, blowing her escaped bangs from her forehead again in frustration.
"Oh, I almost forgot," Nishi perked up, reaching out to drop of the severed hand of Bathor's victim on the pile, still gripping a thick length of coiled rope, "Rope! I estimate about 50 feet of it, already conveniently tied into a lasso."
"Well, isn't that nice of Mr. Hand," Valvyn quipped, his dandy mask fully snapped back into place.
"There was also a stick-club thing," Alice said in a small voice, "but I'm pretty sure that Balthor already claimed that."
Matching grimaces displayed across the faces of the six assembled party members as grunts of effort and accompanying wet, squelching sounds travelled across the valley of the dunes.
"Is the flask-" Jorge licked his lip as he eyes the bottle, "does it have water? I don't feel so good."
"Empty," Elowyn said, picking up the little flask and giving it a shake for emphasis before tossing it back on the pile, "which is probably the worst news of all."
"You don't look so good, Jorge," Alice murmured, noting the orc was beginning to look more yellow than green."
Unceremoniously, Nishi picked up the flask and popped the lid, dripping fresh, clear water directly from her fingers into the flask before handing it to Jorge. He gulped it down with wide eyes, but everyone else turned startled looks to the woman.
"What?"
"You didn't tell us you could do that," Alice licked her lips as Jorge's loud gulps rang in her ears.
"You never asked," Nishi shrugged, "I mean, I am half genasi… I figured you knew."
"You can never know what to expect from half breeds," Elowyn frowned with a sigh, "Look at the differences between Jorge and Balthor. We didn't want to assume."
"How much of that can you make?" TrocaÎre rasped, eyeing a stray drop dangling on the ends of Nishi's fingers.
"Less when it's hot," Nishi said with an apologetic shrug, "I would say a good two or three gallons a couple times a day."
"Can we- I mean-" TrocaÎre stumbled over his words, but Nishi took pity on the large, coal black dragonborn whom she assumed, rightly, had to feel at this point like he was burning alive.
"C'mere," she said gently, holding out her hand like a cup, already full of water.
"Praise blessed Gilean," TrocaÎre breathed in relief, delicately but quickly drinking down the cool liquid from Nishi's hand.
Valvyn did the same as she help out the other. Refreshing quickly, the healing qualitied of his elf lineage aiding him in no small amount, he jogged over to the raging orc off to the side of them, Alice quickly taking his place.
"Balthor!" he called out, hailing their errant companion, who didn't seem to even acknowledge his existence and kept at his ravaging of the former thug. "Oy! Ya big lug!" Valvyn exclaimed, grabbing onto Balthor's arm, "Water!"
Balthor turned with a growl, reaching to tear the elf apart but was stopped in his tracks by Valvyn appearing directly in front of his eyes, locking their gazes.
"Stop," Valvyn seemed to order him, "Drink water."
Balthor shook his head slowly as if clearing from a fog. Before the troops curious eyes, his skin began to recede from its mottled brown back to its normal greenish tint and his eyes faded back to white.
"Water?" he questioned dizzily.
"Yes!" Vanvyn exclaimed, back to his chipper self, "Courtesy of our lovely Nishi and no thanks to General Grumpy Pants."
Elowyn rolled her eyes at his pointed look but couldn't help but be impressed at his taming of the beast as she stepped up in TrocaÎre's place for her turn with the water. She couldn't help noting that the water that had escaped onto his scales was still steaming off them and Jorge still hadn't regained his full coloring.
"How did you do that?" Alice asked curiously.
"As I mentioned, sweet Alice," Valvyn waved a dramatic hand, "I am a wood elf, friend of the fauna there, and-"
"Yeah, yeah," Jorge muttered, still eyeing the flow of water and hoping for more, "Just cut to the good part."
"Animal speech," Valvyn said flatly, his mouth downturned into an annoyed straight line, "I can speak to animals… sometimes."
"I'm not an animal," Balthor growled, grabbing Nishi's wrist and flipping her still watering hand over his head like a shower before groaning in pleasure.
"Save some for the rest of us!" Valvyn exclaimed, pushing the wet orc out of his way and sitting under Nishi's now down turned hand before being yanked out by Jorge, taking his turn to get soaked through.
"And no, you aren't an animal," Valvyn finally agree after the tussle, "But I have found that an orc coming out of a rage is not much different from one."
At Jorge's and Balthor's twin growls, Valvyn held up his hands submissively. "What I mean is, you are running on animalistic instinct. It only works as an orc is going into or coming out of the rage," he shrugged lightly as he wrung out his hair onto his own neck, "but it has gotten me out of more than one sticky situation."
"Elowyn, Alice," Nishi interrupted, "I have a little more in me, do your hair too. It will help."
"Gladly," Alice jumped over, quickly dousing her short hair.
Elowyn pressed Nishi's palm directly to her scalp to wet it, but ignored her long length. It would take too much. She held out the flask which Nishi quickly filled for them to take, but her eyes were on TrocaÎre, still panting on his knees.
"Soak him with whatever is left," she ordered Nishi quietly before walking nonchalantly back to the small pile of loot.
She could hear TrocaÎre sigh in long-suffering relief behind her and she bit back a smile before picking up the short sword. It was old, and not the best balanced, but it was well made and sharp. It would do the trick.
"Sword's mine," she announced to everyone and no one in particular.
"Hey," Balthor grumbled, "I didn't know there was stuff to grab."
"You already got a club," Valvyn told him, hopping to his feet as he eyed the blood and viscera still sticking to the weapon, "and I assure you it is yours to keep."
Balthor turned an upset look at Jorge, hoping for an ally to look for more, but Jorge just shrugged. "I got shoes."
Reaching the pile, Valvyn quickly snagged the bow and quiver, slinging them over his shoulder.
"You plan on actually contributing to the next fight, then?" Nishi asked eyeing looking perplexedly at the Navigators tools.
"I am just not good at hand to hand! When will any of you realize what it means that I am a wood elf?" Valvyn whined, throwing his hands in the air in frustration.
"Let him prove himself," TrocaÎre told them absentmindedly as he reached for the parchment and began to gingerly unfold it, "he isn't wrong about his lineage."
Elowyn through TrocaÎre a dirty look. "Really?"
"Yes," TrocaÎre mumbled, valiantly ignoring the weight of her glare, "Sweet Gilean! Look at this!"
"Always comes back to the damn breeding with the elves," Elowyn muttered, stepping to see what TrocaÎre held, "It's a drawing."
"A bad one," Alice chimed in.
"Is that crayon?" Valvyn asked in disgust.
"Is that even common?" Jorge asked, tipping his head sideways at the sloppy scrawl on the page.
The parchment was nothing but two lines and a circle with a sloppily written 'WATRE' under the circle, but TrocaÎre held it like a prize.
"It's a map!" he exclaimed, "It may just be our salvation!"
"I don't get it," Balthor said quizzically, scratching his head, "It looks like a youngling drew it."
"This is the wall," TrocaÎre instructed patiently, pointing a talon delicately at the first line that ran vertically on the left of the map, then following the horizontal second line across the page to the right to the final circle, "And this circle here I believe represents water of some kind, if we ignore the misspelling. It could be a well or it could be an oasis, but either way it is worth looking into it."
"We can't live off Nishi forever," Alice agreed.
"And I've never tested exactly how long I can be a fountain, either," Nishi added.
"You trust this map, dragonborn?" Elowyn asked quietly.
"My name is TrocaÎre, halfbreed," he told her with a pointed look, "But as for the map, I don't see that we have much choice."
"Okay, then," Elowyn stood back up and held her hand out for the navigation tools which Nishi happily ceded to her skilled hands, "Which way do we go according to that map?"
"If its right, then it Is east from the wall," Trocaire told her, "And we took off south originally."
"So, east-northeast- got it," Elowyn told him as she carefully aligned the tools to the sun under Alice's curious watch. "This is an astrolabe," she found herself explaining to the sweet elf, "you align its central line with the ground and tilt this scope toward the sun to determine latitude- where we are on an east west axis.
Getting the reading she needed, Elowyn next pulled out a short stick. "Now hold still," she told Alice, puling out a notched stick with a small crossbar that she placed in her shadow, "This is a backstaff. It will give us directionality based on the angle of the sun."
"So that's what it was," Nishi thumped herself on the head, "I'm used to a compass."
"That way," Elowyn pointed unceremoniously, "Now what do you all want to do with rest of this stuff? Alice? Nishi?"
"Don't want it, don't need it," Nishi shrugged, rolling a small ball of flame over her knuckles before extinguishing it."
"I think I will stick to honing my magic," Alice said sheepishly, "TrocaÎre?"
"Let's load the rest in the pack," he said, rising from his wet spot on the sand," I'll carry it."
"Suit yourself," Elowyn said, frustration lacing her tone, but she didn't know if it was at the big lug for carrying stuff with his heath in question or at herself for caring at all. "Maybe on the way you can tell me why you thank the god of magicians instead of dragonkin, especially when you have done no magic."
"Aw, look who wants to talk to me," TrocaÎre hissed out a laugh.
"Don't flatter yourself," Elowyn spat, "Figured maybe you could be the one I detested hearing the least. Guess I was wrong."
TrocaÎre's hissed laugh followed her into the desert where she took lead.
