(A/N: Shout out to actforhim for lighting the fire under my butt on this chapter. Someone likes my soppy fan stories! Yes, delicious fulfillment, it nourishes me! *cough* I mean, eh, thanks man.)
Jarvis shaded his eyes from the sun and stared out over the landscape at a group of black dots in the distance. Massive sand dunes towered before them, casting their own shadows in the blistering heat. The unlikely pair had reached the Hadarac Desert a fortnight ago and things had gone from bad to worse. The pack mule that they had bought with all the gold they had left had collapsed dead a few leagues back. Jarvis could still hear the vultures crowing. His elfin companion had immediately packed the books and scrolls they were carrying into her own pack. He still marveled at exactly how much she could carry without showing any visible signs of strain, while Jarvis felt like his legs could have been used as stone pillars at this point.
And despite all this, fate had conspired with all the crueler elements of nature to throw them in an even worse predicament. The shapes on the horizon had turned into men on horseback with weapons, and they were now galloping full speed towards them The assassin drew his cloak tighter around him and sighed.
"I suppose it's too much to ask that these be Imperial horsemen." He remarked dryly, although deep down in his chest there was a twinge of fear. Bandits were bad news, everybody knew that.
"They shall not touch any of my things, I swear that much to you." Arien said
"Let's just see what they want." Jarvis replied. And more quietly, to himself he muttered "I hope our heads aren't on the list..."
"They may very well be." Arien said, surprising him with her unnatural hearing for the umpteenth time.
The procession took several minutes to get down to where they stood at the base of the mighty dune. They carried no standard, and were dressed in the light cotton robes of the desert folk. Each one carried a spear, which were soon pointed at them both, as the group of men surrounded them effortlessly. There was a tense silence, with much stomping of hooves. Jarvis instinctively reached for his sword, but Arien's smooth palm snaked out and caught his hand.
"It's too late for that."
Out of the corner of his eye, Jarvis could see some of the riders parting to give room to another steed. He turned and beheld a pale grey horse pushing it's way solemnly through the crowd. On it's back sat an elderly man with a long beard. Despite his age, his hands did not shake even one finger as he grasped the haft of his spear and placed it's broad leaf-shaped blade under Jarvis's chin. When he spoke, it was in a deep, commanding voice.
"Who are you that dare trespass upon my lands, that have been handed down since the making of the world? Name yourselves!"
Jarvis opened his mouth to tell the man exactly what he thought of his land and which orifices of his body into which he should stuff it, when Arien cut across him.
"Please sir, we are but scholars, trying to reach my home in the great forest away north!"
It was not entirely a lie. They had indeed been making for Arien's childhood home of Ceris, the great Elvin city hidden on the banks of the Edda River. If anything however, this seemed to make the man even more serious.
"Du Weldenvarden, you say? Humans are one thing, but Elves..."
He moved the spear so it's tip was now resting on Arien 's throat
"...that is another matter entirely."
Unable to stand it any longer, Jarvis reached out and grabbed the spear just behind it's head and wrenched it away.
"If you're going to threaten anyone, threaten me!"
There was an immediate uproar at this and he could feel, with some trepidation, hard and sharp pieces of metal prodding his back. The old man however, looked triumphant.
"So, you challenge me, do you, young man, over this elf? These truly are strange times."
"Challenge? Wha?" Jarvis sputtered as the spear was yanked out of his hand. The old man passed the weapon to a comrade and drew a long curved sword. Jarvis had seen these before, but only in the Empire's treasure troves. They were called scimitars, and their inventor had one thing in mind when he created them: beheading. Another scimitar was thrown to him and it landed at his feet. With slightly trembling hands he picked it up as the circle widened to allow the combatants some room.
Never in all his travels had Jarvis heard of this particular local custom, but it was for this very reason that he avoided these parts. They were as feral as an unbroken wolf.
He heard Arien yell in protest and turned to see four bandits struggling to restrain her. She thrashed like an eel, fine muscle and sinew straining as she punched and kicked every square inch of them she could reach. Then a black cloth strip was tied around her mouth and Jarvis lost sight of her behind a forest of horse legs as she was dragged away.
Turning back to his opponent, he saw the old man standing there, a wicked smile on his face. This was probably the highlight of his day. The man raised his sword, bowed and ran at Jarvis with surprising speed.
The ring of steel penetrated the silence as the combat was joined. The bandit was a peerless swordsman, Jarvis could already tell. Even as he tried to shift him onto the defensive, his opponent deftly deflected his blows and kept the assassin close to the edge of his reach at all times. He is toying with me Jarvis thought with a pang.
One and two, and one and two again the fighters met in the center of the ring. Jarvis had a slight advantage in strength, which he pressed whenever the old man got too confident, bending his wrinkled arm back as far as he could before leaping back to dodge another flurry of slashes.
He was one second too slow, and the wicked blade carved a dancing pattern on his stomach. He recoiled and cried out, pressing a hand to his wound. It was a superficial cut, he knew, but any more pressure and it would have separated muscle from bone. Either way, the fight was coming to a close, and as he desperately parried, Jarvis cast around franticly for ideas.
Then he realized that, for once in his life, he had no out. No clever solution would save him from these merciless horsemen and their leader. He would die out here in the sand and vultures would eat him.
I promised my sister I would visit her someday, and now I will never get the chance He thought miserably. As the image of his youngest sibling floated across his mind, something stirred inside him.
At first, he thought it was just his stomach wound, giving him more pain as he flexed to defend himself. But then he realized that the feeling was all through him, like a wonderful, joyous energy, a waterfall of power. He glanced down and was shocked to see his fingertips glowing ever so slightly.
Jarvis would look back on this moment in later times and wonder exactly how he knew what to do next. With his right hand he batted the old man's sword tip into the sand and pressed a hard boot down on it, trapping it. The left hand he placed graciously, almost lovingly on his forehead. The effect was instant. A spider web of white streaked out in all directions across the man's skin, freezing each wrinkle like a valley in the midst of a great storm. Only a few seconds later the effect had consumed him, and a pale white statue of a bandit, eyes still wide and mouth still open in shock, stood before them.
There was utter silence. Jarvis moved his boot heel away from the scimitar and the now solid man crashed face first into the sand. The other riders stared at him agape, and then started shouting. There was a cacophony of noise as every single one of the bandits wheeled their stallions around and rode away at top speed.
Jarvis suddenly felt weaker than he'd ever felt in his life. He fell to his knees, the pitted scimitar dropping from his slack fingers. A firm pair of arms caught him before he hit the ground and turned him over. Arien's pale face appeared in his field of vision, haloed by the sun.
"How did you do that?" She demanded
Jarvis shook his head
"I don't- I have no idea, I just put out my hand and..."
"And he turned to glass! Look!"
The elf turned and snapped off the Bandit's nose, shaking it in Jarvis's face like it was an omen.
"You did not tell me you knew how to perform magic."
"That was magic?" Jarvis asked, amazed.
He had heard of some human beings with magical abilities, and had dealt with it on more than his fair share of occasions, not least of which being the elf that now stood over him, but he had never envisaged himself as having any talent whatsoever. X grasped his hand and hoisted him up.
"I feel like a boned fish..." Jarvis groaned
"That is normal. Your body has not been trained and so even the slightest magical exertion drains you. It will pass."
"Then we should get over that dune and make camp. I don't think I can go any further today, and this wound needs to be bandaged."
Thought the night was warm enough, spent in each other's arms, but the morning was not nearly so forgiving. Windblown sand buffeted them in an almost horizontal direction, stinging exposed skin and resisting every footstep forward. Jarvis had lost count of the number of dunes they had walked over. Each one seemed longer than the last one, and even the elf was showing signs of weariness.
"We need to find shelter soon!" He shouted above the gale, but his voice was whipped away by the wind.
They continued, making sure to walk in a straight line so as not to loose their direction, whichever direction that was. Eventually the assassin was simply staring at his shoes, counting one step after another, focusing all his effort on simply putting one foot in front of the other. It was because of this that he did not see the wall until he walked smack into it.
He saw Arien cover her smile and hastily pulled himself up so as not to look a fool in front of her. It was a fairly tall wall, in good repair, made of mud bricks left to dry in the sun. It was at least twice as tall as Jarvis, and although he had scaled taller walls with Arien, he didn't feel like this was the place to push his luck.
They skirted the wall for a few hundred more paces until a gate materialized from the gloom, seemingly unguarded. Jarvis rapped the large wooden door several times with an ancient metal knocker and a slat pulled back.
"What do yew want?" A gruff voice demanded from the other side.
"Please just let us in, we need to get out of the storm!" Jarvis shouted over the howling wind
The eye regarded them critically, as if sizing them up, and then the slit shut again and the gate opened just wide enough to admit them.
"Get in then, get in!"
They both slid through the crack and emerged into an arched stone entranceway. The man who had just admitted them strained to close the door against the wind, turning his back to them and revealing an insignia of a red fist on a background of flames emblazoned on his tunic. Jarvis twitched slightly and threw Arien a look. The elf pulled her woolen cap farther over her conspicuously non-human ears.
Jarvis had no inkling that there would be Imperial troops all the way out in this remote corner of civilization, but apparently times had changed. The streets were almost completely deserted, no more than sand blown corridors of tan brick. Unwilling to stay out in the gale any longer, Jarvis led them to a large two story building with a sign that read in faded runes: The Sandy Camel.
The inside was remarkably clean, if a little deserted. The barman could be seen behind the counter sitting on an oaken stool, fast asleep, the filthy cleaning rag that was so ubiquitous of bartenders everywhere clenched in one hammy hand. The grizzled regulars, mostly farmers and soldiers, paid them no heed as they stole off to a quiet table in the corner.
Arien reached into her pack and unfurled the map. She stared at it pensively for a moment, resting her chin on her hand.
"I believe we are here. This is the only settlement anywhere near where we set out, but it's too small to be on the map."
"We will need to find a place to stay the night, and acquire more food and water." Jarvis said.
"I will talk with the barman about lodging."
Jarvis grinned and glanced over at the still catatonic man.
"If he ever wakes up."
As Jarvis strolled down the main avenue, he marveled at the villagers efficiency. Only a few hours before the whole place could have passed for a ghost town, and now it looked just like any other marketplace in the Empire. Dozens of stalls had been erected, selling everything a man stranded in a remote place such as this could ever want or need.
He briefly entertained himself with a display of ceremonial knives, but was shoed away by the fat merchant when he realized he was not going to buy anything. He perused the other stalls, turning over a fruit in his hands, but his thoughts were a thousand miles away. So much had happened over the past few days, he felt like his whole world had been put in a bottle and shaken vigorously.
The sudden manifestation of magic in the desert had set his head buzzing with questions, which he had plied Arien with many times. She had politely refused to tell him anything more about it, simply saying that he should be taught by a proper teacher when they reached Du Weldenvarden. Despite the heat he shivered and rubbed his fingertips where the magic had seeped through.
Arien was a question in and of herself. Although the past few days had been intimate enough, Jarvis hadn't read anywhere of any elf and human marriages, although admittedly he hadn't been near a library in years, except on business. Some nights, when the elf went off to gather firewood or conjure up water from the sand, worrying thoughts crossed his mind. What would they do when they reached Ceris? Their being together would probably not go down smoothly with her family, and Jarvis didn't even like to think about having to make her choose between her family and him.
"Are you going to buy that, or just stare at it?"
Jarvis was jerked forcibly out of his reverie by the young woman working the stall. He looked at her for a second, puzzled, and then realized he was still holding the fruit.
"Sorry..."
The woman smiled and shook her head.
"Don't worry about it. So, you want to buy it?"
"Sure, how much?" Jarvis asked
"One gold each."
Jarvis laid a coin on the counter and flicked it across to her. Pocketing the fruit, he walked away from the stall and shook himself. There would be time for daydreaming later, now he had to focus. After extracting as much water as he could carry from the well he bought a few loaves of bread and wrapped them tightly in linen to preserve them, although with the air this dry it was hardly a problem.
Jarvis was just about to turn and leave for the inn when he felt a hand reaching gently into his pocket. A small smile tugged at the edges of his mouth. Honestly, the nerve of pickpockets...
With one clean movement he drew a dagger from his belt, whipped around, and grabbed what turned out to be a young boy by the wrist. The child was only a few years away from manhood, but thin and a little sickly looking. Jarvis could tell he was not a thief simply because it amused him.
"You know, you ought to chose your marks with more care. Another second and I could part you with that hand."
"Oh please don't sir, I was just, just-"
Before the child could finish Jarvis put away the dagger, reached into his pocket and produced a coin. He thrust it into the boys hand and released him. The would-be pickpocket looked stunned.
"Next time don't try and take money from someone wearing breeches, they can feel it every time." Jarvis said and winked
The youth speed off, probably to buy a much needed loaf of bread, and Jarvis continued on to the inn, feeling, for some reason, much lighter.
(Stay tuned chillins, I'm a lazy bastard, but I will write more if people are interested. You can express that interest by scrolling down and clicking on the review button and telling me what you think, even if you think it was the biggest plate of tripe you've ever had the misfortune to lay eyes on. I even proofread this one for you, aren't I nice?)