Well, sorry for the delay but hers the next chapter. Half of me hates this chapter, the rest of me hates it like the plague. And yes I know the last paragraph is confusing as hell and should technically be several paragraphs but I like the confusing, gibbering effect it creates as is.


Chapter 2

By Breaeden Swordwind

The snow whispered over the Traum Mountains caressing the jagged rocks the scratched the wind and rolling down into the empty valleys. A large wasp was moving through the snow and in pursuit of rat that was scrambling away from the insect. Suddenly, another wasp cut of the rat's retreat and as they closed in on the creature and repeatedly stung it is terrified gibbering entered into the snow-drenched wind.

The wind carried the snow along the rolling cliffs and embankments and cuts and around and around in a small whirlwind that hung over the heads of four travelers that were becoming more and more bogged down in the pilling snow. A blonde simian was leading the group, using his massive strength to push through the waist high snow. He was followed by a ocean-haired boy who was as skinny as the blonde was muscular and so took to using the blonde as a plow. To the two men's right was a cloaked boy who cleaved his own solitary path through the snow. He had not the bulk and raw muscle of the other man and by now he was exhausted but he had said several times that he would not follow them. When he did he tagged on a sarcastic, "Your Lordships".

Nel was following the pathway of the two engineers and was pulling up the rear so that she could watch the others incase the scytheman tried to kill anyone or the others tried to bolt. She had tried using the pathway cleared by the shadow but he had yelled at her that he did not clear a path so people could become weak behind him. She had wanted to follow him because she considered him to be the greatest…liability to the group.

She hadn't argued though because she didn't have the energy to fight with him, she had enough on her mind as things stood. The wagon they were supposed to take all the way to Kirlsa had been attacked and had been left to fend for themselves while Tyneave and Farleen drew away the pursuit. She hoped that the two women were all right but as things stood she had problems to go round getting these three men to Kirlsa. It seemed one problem was there solely to take her attention away from another problem which was there to take her attention away from another and…

She sighed and a thin trail of mist wound up from scarf only to be captured in the white streaked wind. Carried away in to the setting sun.

They would need to set camp and she said so to the men who all stopped except for Black Bird who kept pushing through the snow. "Where are you going?" shouted Nel, she had grown quite used to being the one to give orders in a field situation and did not take kindly to her responsibilities being ignored.

"Where are we going to stop, ma'am?" the shade said twisting his words into a river of raw loathing as he continued pushing through the ever-growing whiteness. "I'll tell you where, I know of a cave in the direction if your lordships would care to follow me."

Cliff and Fayt began to follow the boy and just like that Black Bird had become the leader of this pathetic journey. And Nel just stood their seething and to her chagrin was forced to follow Black Bird towards this cave of his. He was a graver threat then she had imagined and was beginning to regret letting him come along.

He followed the twin paths through the snow and went along Black Birds for no other reason then to spite the bastard. She began to loathe him when she realized how petty she was becoming. The war-loving bastard had managed to get inside her head and she didn't like it one bit.

When she found the cave it was a large hole bored into the cliff face and it led to an even larger chamber. The chamber was dome shaped it had wood stacked to one side and a hole in the room, which she assumed, led to the surface eventually. She could make that assumption because in addition to the wood other supplies were also laid out on the side of the cave and it gave the cavern the appearance of a station that Glyphian troops would use while they were on patrols. She wondered how Black Bird would come to know of this. In addition, she had been wondering how he came to know of the thunder arrow. As far as she was concerned the boy knew far to much and when they arrived at Arias his capture would take top priority.

It was little time before a fire was started and as soon as it had begun a coversation came up between Nel and the two Greetonites, Greetonites she was becoming more and more sure were not from Greeton. It was a general conversation about the states of things in and between Aquaria and Airyglyph, nothing of any great interest to anyone. It was of particular lack of interest, apparently, to Black Bird who said nothing the entire time. When food was distributed, he at but it was with speed and silence. Nel ate with slow refinement but with purpose, she spoke not a word for she had grown used to having to be ready to move at a moments notice and knew she could not waste precious eating time on idle conversation. Still when she had finished she rejoined the conversation with the engineers.

Cliff was a bit shady and appeared to have a few things in his that seemed suspicious but he did not bring these forward. He seemed nice enough though constant making some wisecrack, though the wisdom involved in them was debatably, and though he had a rash boyish streak, he was for the most part compent.

The other, with his strange blue hair, seemed guilty and dishonest about something. It wasn't in anything he said literally but the way he spoke and his awkward speech gave the impression that something was eating at the back of his conscience but Nel could not figure out what this might be. Otherwise he was kind and empathetic, all and all he was much more tolerable then his obnoxious companion. The boy was green though, and didn't look like he had seen much combat before like Cliff did. When they had been traveling through the snow and had been attack by the various beast that made their homes in the snow-swept highlands, the boy had always shown a hesitation before engaging. Well, it would have been more noticeable if Black Bird didn't kill the wasps before anyone, but herself, could react to the new presence.

Black Bird, however, was more revealing in his disloyalty. He flat out said he had no loyalty towards them and that he was working for his own goals. Goals that Nel did not trust. He was suspiciously silent at all times, never offering anything about himself or even bothering to become involved with the others. This bothered her because a Glyphian spy would try and endear himself or at least talk enough to allay suspicion but Black Bird just kept up a stone wall of silence. And his omniscience was frightening. She would not sleep until he was, she didn't trust him to be alone with their sleeping bodies.

The cold night weaved its shadowy tendrils across the sky and devoured the last remains of the day and everyone was bedding down for the night. Cliff and Fayt took the part of the cave far from the entrance and slept near each to other facing Nel. They obviously didn't quite trust her. Nel claimed the area near the entrance so she could monitor the others and prevent their escape. She faced the center of the cave, though not because she would be looking at Cliff and Fayt. Black bird remained sitting near the center of the cave look at the ebony embers that glowed placidly at the edges and occasionally kicked up a small flame. Just barely enough to see.

Fayt and Cliff went to sleep quickly but Nel stayed awake, lying on her side faking sleep, and watched Black Bird who was still awake. He was staring into the glowing embers, which his drearily making her eye lids heavy as she struggled to stay awake. Finally, she gave in to fatigue and was letting a familiar memory of regret play in the back of her mind, when Black bird poke. He voice was cutting and it tore into her a ripped the fatigue from her body as fear set in, "Part of you wishes you had killed him, right?" he turned his cloaked head to her and she stared at him. "That you had let die the man who would become the bane of Aquaria, the Scourge of Seven, and The Wicked One. But the rest of you can't bring up the antipathy to hate someone so pathetic and deserving of pity. How can you hate someone who hates themselves? How can you despises a man who spends his nights cuddling up with mewling weakness while and fritters his days away in empty strength and bears only the burden of frailty and past shames like a millstone that he carries to a place he doesn't want to go? Have even the demons of hell so little pity? No, no demon of hell could be so pitiless. It would take the corporations and federations of man with their desensitizing and nerve-killing pacts of conscience to create a creature of contempt so great as to be call man and be without the thought of mercy. That is you. You beat yourself up for being weak, for that is what you are, and not killing the one who now harms your faceless conglomerate of man's hopes and dreams. So what will you do when you meet him again O' maggot of the north's bounty? Will you grant him mercy and give him life or grant him mercy and give him death? Will you side with your baser instincts and save him or side with you baser instincts and kill? Will it be for you or for others? For love or for hate?" The cloaked boy moved from were he was sitting to near her, talking as he shuffled along letting the scraping sound of gravel hone is already pointed words. She was bleeding profusely, though her skin was unmarred. She was terrified in ways she had never been before and could not even muster the courage to quail in fear or wet herself in horror. A stray ray of light briefly illuminated a single eye within his hood. It was predominately blue except for lapping tongues of orange the sprang from the pupils like towers of fire from the pyre. The eye was almost crazed, filled with the desperation, like the animal that sees the trapping being sprung and frantically wills itself out of the trap's reach before the twin steel jaws of the contraption close around its leg. The eye disappeared and the boy began to whisper hoarse and mocking, barely containing his budding joy as she swirled in a nimbus of the netherworld's own gripping fear. " Will you find solace or only an empty act of defiance? Will become everything you hate in the process of killing that which you hate or become that which you pity or your granting of mercy? Will you find strength in the cesspool of weakness or merely sink into it siren sludge? Will you define the world by knowing yourself or by knowing the object of your scorn, your love, and your pity?" He began talking slowly letting each word slowly scrape through her, "Who are you? For you are not Nel Zelpher of the Crimson Blades, the people's and the queen's errand girl! Or maybe that is who you want to be? You wish to be Nel Zelpher? To be worthy of that servile name? If you do then you already are." He began to walk away, back to the embers which were now hissing piles of darkness but suddenly turned to look at her, "Goodnight, ma'am" He drawled in his mocking humility. Nel never went to sleep that night and neither did Black Bird who stared into the fire as if he had slept for hours already. How could Nel sleep, when she was half numb?


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