She is at the practice field, chatting with Commander Imloth when he shows up. Adele feels distinctly uncomfortable butting in on what she observes definite friendship between the two and quietly excuses herself to work out some stiff muscles at a pell in a corner.
"Your guard is too high," she hears behind her a while later, when she decides to rest.
"Sir?" She turns to see Valen standing there, thoughtful frown on his face as he regards her. Adele for a second feels embarrassed to be seen like this, leather jerkin, vambraces and light open helmet instead of full armor, practice sword dangling from her tired hand as she blinks to clear her eyes from the gathered sweat.
"You're compensating for something." He frowns again. "Not sure if it's the lack of armor, or you're just used to a certain fighting style, or certain opponents." He extends an arm, and one of the drow soldiers from the side snaps to attention, running to his side with a smaller wooden version of the general's warflail. "I would see again what you can do with an… unconventional opponent."
"Ah." Adele raises an eyebrow. "Because golems were… an everyday enemy easy to defeat?" She quietly fumes to herself: as if he knows anything at all about all the opponents she'd faced in the past years as Errant Envoy Plenipotentiary. Golems are relatively low on her list of enemy ranking, true, but Valen really shouldn't be supposing she's that green.
"More so than what we face next." Valen grins grimly, hefting his weapon. "Something tells me that you haven't had a chance to fight a lot of mindflayer thralls in your life. Or their masters, for that matter."
"With all due respect, sir… are you patronizing me?" she inquires, probably a little more fiercely than she should be, even though it seems he really doesn't have a very high opinion of her experience. She had nightmares the past few days and although The Seer offered to help her somewhat by gently trying to coax some of her story out of her, that conversation didn't help. She is surprised herself that she is able to open up the way she did, but when meditating on it afterwards, she realized that this, too, was part of her Penance of Duty: not only aiding the priestess of Eilistraee against the evil that threatens to engulf her and her followers, but also allowing The Seer to help her, Adele Welters, once Hero of Neverwinter to exorcise the specters of her past, in a fashion.
So she's still a bit raw, and fragile from that long talk, and doesn't care at all about how he tries to question her ability to be what is needed; to do her duty.
I can't exactly brag about what I do; but one would think he got a measure of my capabilities on this trip. After all, that's why he came with me to the Isle of the Maker, isn't it?
Her apparent belligerence doesn't seem to have much effect on Lith My'athar's general, though, despite lifted chin and narrowed eyes and all.
"I could be… given the fact that I am probably much older than you," He rubs his chin slowly, and she hears Imloth chuckle gently from the sidelines.
"Do not be deceived by those smooth cheeks, Adele," the drow says, casually leaning on one of the archery targets. Adele realizes that by now a significant crowd (all the soldiers who were at the field when she arrived, practically) has gathered around them, and most of them are smiling. "The general is practically ancient."
"Yes, my bones are creaking every morning I get out of bed." Valen cracks his neck a few times, and Adele suddenly realizes that the two are actually joking.
Apparently at her expense.
And if she refuses to participate, she might as well give up the hope of ever becoming, in their eyes as well as in words, what the Seer needs.
What her god needs.
"In that case…" she says slowly, shifting her weight to one leg, and lifting her blade, "I promise to be gentle. Sir."
The bout is short, and vicious, and much needed, Adele realizes later. She has a ton of tension in her that has little to do with the actual enemies she faced this far since that night in the Yawning Portal Inn, and a lot with the fact that there's been no sunlight in her life for weeks now, that she can't understand the drow language and a lot of Lith My'athar's inhabitants don't speak Common, that for the first time in her life she is completely cut off from communicating with her Order for more than a few days, or have access to even a little wayside shrine of the god to focus her powers and connect with anyone…
And, moreover, that she is forced to work with, nay, to defer to, even, someone with a significant amount of abyssal blood, which, in and of itself, would probably throw a less experienced soldier of Torm into constant battle frenzy.
Pride goeth, Adele… she reminds herself at the first second she sees the flail arcing up in Valen's hand…and then she switches off thinking as the Lord of Paladins' battle-time pushes all else but here and now out of her mind.
Flails work with arcs and backswings, swords with lines along the six cardinals, she knows this, just like the fact that the outsider is taller and stronger than her, with significantly more muscle mass. Yet despite of that, she finds herself closing the distance and, after ducking the first blow, moving inside the flail's ever-spinning arc, reversing her blade while doing so and slamming the pommel with all her momentum behind it from a low thrust, almost crouching, into Valen's armpit, exposed as he twirled his flail in a high sweep.
And then they fall over, because just as she does so, the flail comes slamming down as Valen yanks the handle back savagely and connects with the side of her helmet with a clang that echoes in her skull for seconds and brings her out from battle-time with a deafening ring.
At least I got him down… Adele thinks, shaking her head and trying to understand why every sound around her all of a sudden is as if it is coming from under water.
"Are you…laughing?" she asks, disbelieving, when she finally realizes that Valen, lying under her on the ground and making no effort to get up at all, is shaking in his whole body because he, for some reason, thinks this is fun…
"But of course I'm laughing," he says when he can finally speak: Adele stares at him and entertains the notion for a second to insert her elbow into his sternum just for good measure. "I did exactly what you've done with your guard being too high and you did exactly how I would have countered it." His chuckle is low now and rumbling, and his breath on her face is warm. "It was perfect. Did you use some paladin trick on me to read my wicked, wicked mind, Lady?"
Adele's first instinct is to scramble up and stalk off, refusing to participate in this contest of who's alpha in Lith My'athar (because she recognizes the pattern, she's not a novice anymore), but she controls the impulse and draws in a deep breath, keenly aware of that tall, lean and disturbingly male body beneath her.
And of at least a dozen others who are watching, too.
So she shakes her head, forces out from the depths of her memory that slow smile combined with the lowering of her lashes that got her into trouble so much in the Citadel of Tathras (if she's honest with herself, she doesn't have to even force it that much), and responds.
"Why, sir… would you like me to?" She twists, quick as thought, and is up from the ground, hand outstretched towards Valen, surrounded by the appreciative laughter of the drow.
The outsider accepts her arm, and vaults himself up with lethal grace that almost takes her breath away for a second. Adele is slightly shocked to see that he is blushing, especially after one of the watchers, a lean female, calls out something to her companion at her side in drow, and she sees them both to look Valen over with unmistakable appreciation.
Oh. Not that wicked after all, the thought runs through her mind and a little, perpetually tense part of her soul starts to relax.
Valen nods at her, experimentally flexing his right shoulder and wincing. Adele understands immediately (and this starts to terrify her somehow), and rubs the side of her neck, gingerly unlacing her helmet with an expression of barely contained pain.
"Nicely done," they say almost exactly at the same time, and just like that, along with the surprised and relieved laughter finally bubbling out of her, Adele realizes something: her fear is gone, the path is clear and simple, and Torm, in his infinite mercy, led her to the right place after all.