Short chapter this time, friends, sorry about that. I do want to leave myself somewhere to go, after all. U.U
Anywho, responses. ^^
Thunder of Life: I completely understand. Sepulchure's an annoying character. -.- And yes... Artix is.. well, Artix. XD But what on earth did you fail at? O.o
Now, no dillydallying, let's get straight to the chapter! :3
I eased myself down to the ground, trying and failing to keep my soft groan quiet. Krieger's eyes flicked over to me from a little to my left, about a quarter of the way around the fire. A small sparkle of silent laughter appeared in his warm brown eyes for a moment before it vanished, though he still looked like he wanted to smile. Only a few minutes ago, when he, Rolith, and I had set up camp after taking on a portion of the undead army, Krieger had taken off his armor. Under it, I saw a steel-grey pair of pants that looked to be the same material as my robe, and a slightly lighter grey short-sleeve crewneck t-shirt. Somehow, I had almost expected there to be something else under the Paladin-issued armor, judging by how he moved in it.
"A little sore, are we?" he asked. Even if my eyes had been shut, I would still have heard the grin in his voice. As it was, I just glared at him venomously.
"Bite me," I spat, gingerly stretching my legs out in front of me. I couldn't help the grimace that flashed across my face as I felt my right calf twinge painfully. It seemed I'd pushed my body beyond the bounds of its usual (really pathetic) limits today when attacking the undead army. Krieger's eyes narrowed as I carefully drew the black hem of my Mage robe to my knee, and cringed at the sight of my lower legs.
"I'm going out a limb and assuming you ran out of health potions about halfway through," Krieger speculated, running a hand through his copper hair. My dirty look was answer enough. Rolith didn't look up from where he was fixing a loose hinge on a piece of his armor (hell if I knew which part it was), but I knew he was probably listening. I mentally shrugged, though; I didn't really care. Wincing as my sore, abused, almost nonexistent muscles stretched, I reached down to my feet as I pulled my knees up, gently tugging my white slip-on flats off. Once my shoes were off, I huffed, flopping back on the soft grass with my hands under my head.
"How many did we get?" I heard Rolith ask from across the fire. I shrugged as much as I could while laying horizontal, and Krieger answered.
"From what I could tell? Not nearly enough," the Paladin said dryly. I let out a snort. Well, duh. "But," he continued, and I was sure he was shooting an annoyed glance in my direction, "To the best of my knowledge… I think we might have destroyed almost a third of their forces."
"So if we can keep going another two or three days as we did today," I summed up from where I lay staring at the stars, "We can finish up and go home?"
"More or less."
We grew silent again. I studied the stars, and a tiny smile touched my lips as I realized I could recognize a couple of the constellations. Looks like the brief lessons on astrology a few years ago actually stuck. That little smirk grew wider as I recalled how much trouble I'd given my astrology teacher then, being bored out of my mind. Due to reading the stars not being my magic of choice, I had no reason to learn it, and decided to have a little… fun. I closed my eyes against the veil of the stars that blanketed the near-black sky, the afterimages of stray sparks floating upwards from the fire staining the backs of my eyelids. All was quiet for a long time, save the faint noises and occasional squeak of Rolith fixing his armor and the actually quite frequent snaps and pops of the fire. For once, I had the feeling that I was going to get a good night of sleep after having been sleep deprived for the past almost 72 hours. A pleasant drowsiness was starting to steal over my mind, making it feel like it was enveloped in cotton, and my breathing was starting to slow in the heaviness of slumber. And then, right as I was about to drop off to sleep…
"How do you do it?"
"Hm? Do what?" Rolith sounded genuinely puzzled.
"How do you get her to trust you?" Krieger asked again, his voice unusually soft, and it almost sounded to the nearly-gone awake part of me like he was… wistful. Rolith gave a dry chuckle.
"I didn't," he replied. A little barely-awake part of me wondered if I was in one of those sorts of wakeful dreams, where you know you're awake in some deep part of your mind, but still you dream. Daydreaming, I guess one might call it, only this wasn't during the day. I turned my head to rest it on the upper part of my right arm, not making a sound. This was a pleasant dream, with no snarky comments coming from Krieger and proving it to be real. I'd like this to stay a dream… He's actually halfway pleasant in this dream.
"Then… why does she trust you so much?" Krieger questioned, and it seemed to my drowsy mind that he might have sounded confused. Rolith was slow to answer this time.
"It… took a while, you might say," he began. "When she first met me, she liked me even less than she seems to like you now. You, at least, she's putting up with."
"What do you mean?"
"She likes you, Artix," Rolith explained, and I could just imagine the Captain rolling his eyes as he said that. My subconscious smiled at the fact that I knew him so well, then frowned at Rolith's statement. I don't like that snarky idiot.
"…How can you tell?" This didn't sound like Krieger at all, this voice; the four words sounded young and vulnerable, or so it seemed to me.
"If you were anyone else, if you had pissed her off any more when you first met, she would have verbally ripped a hole in you."
"She what?"
"Look—" Here, I could just mentally see Rolith shaking his head at Krieger. "—She may not know it just yet, but she likes you. You're good for her."
What do you mean? I wanted to ask. At this last statement, my consciousness was jerked wide awake, though I showed no outward sign of it. What the hell are you talking about, Rolith? This son of a jackal is most certainly not good for me!
"What do you mean?" Krieger demanded, echoing my thoughts, seeming to just remember at the last second to keep his voice down.
"I said you're good for her. You're not like everyone else; she can't read you."
"Read me?"
"Yes. She's learned how to read a person's movements, expressions. But she can't read you, and you keep her guessing," Rolith explained in a low voice. I was stunned. I… read people? …How the hell do I do that?
"That doesn't explain why she hates me."
"Artix, if Magiya really hated you, she wouldn't have come on this trip," Rolith said flatly. "She would have nothing to do with you at all. She would even start a fight with you, for all that she would want to throw something at you. When she met me, she routinely ripped me a new one when she got the chance."
"Then?"
"Hm?"
"What happened when you met her?" persisted Krieger. Rolith paused, seeming to me to reflect.
"Well… she showed up at the keep a couple years ago, knew almost nothing about magic, and was searching for Warlic. I had just been made a Captain, and offered to help her along the way."
A moment's pause, then Artix asked, "What did she do?"
"She told me to—in her words, not mine—'fuck off, she could make the journey just fine even riding a damn moglin'."
I heard a badly smothered chuckle from my left, and to my surprise, I almost felt like grinning sheepishly. Rolith still remembered that? I barely did.
"When she ran into the Hydra that usually gives travelers trouble on the bridge, though, I stepped in to help. Magiya evidently decided I was in her way, and pushed me off the bridge into the river before finishing the thing off herself," Rolith continued. His voice was quiet, I could barely hear it as I was lying there, but he was right. I had shoved him off balance before whacking him with my staff so he fell into the water, and clung to the Hydra, before evolving my staff into a different one with a spike at one end, and driving it into its heart.
To say the least, it was a thoroughly messy job. And I was wiped out by the end, being both mentally and physically exhausted.
"When I took her back to the infirmary, she refused to stay there," continued Rolith, and he sounded as though he too might be holding back a laugh. I was grateful to him for it. "However, she made quite a bit of trouble for Sir Junn, insisting to get up and search for 'that useless blonde tin can with a mallet and little stupid wings'." I heard Krieger chuckle again, but I did not feel malevolently towards him for it, much to my surprise. I internally scowled at him, throwing my anger back up. Jerk. Don't laugh at me! Within seconds, I once again wanted to hit him, for all the good it would do 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."
"Did she."
Krieger's tone was clearly unconvinced of the last bit. What, did he think I was completely indecent and inhuman! I wanted to slug him. I'm still human, you sunofa-
"She did, actually," Rolith confirmed in a low tone. "And from then on, I guess, she was a little less prickly; she needs to know she can figure you out. She needs to know what you'll do if something in particular happens. Which brings us back to our original point…"
"She doesn't understand me," Krieger murmured quietly, half to himself. "Is that all it is?"
"Well," reconsidered Rolith briefly, "That, and you annoy the hell out of her."
"Makes me unique," he whispered cheerfully. "Not everyone's brave enough to bug a Mage until she's ready to kill you. Still… when do you think she'll warm up to me?"
"It depends," Rolith answered honestly. How about never? Is never good for you? I thought viciously. My anger flamed up again, making it all the harder to lie there like I was asleep, breathe slowly, and not show any outward signs of wakefulness. My fury roared like an inferno at Krieger, and as the two men turned to different subjects that didn't involve me, I quashed my sleeplessness down. Well, actually, beating it with a rock, kicking it off a cliff, stomping on it, throwing it under 6 feet of dirt, and dancing on the spot would be more accurate. After a few more minutes of wakefulness, I began to drift off again, my consciousness calming down to the gentle, lulling internal quiet that was sleep.
My first sleep in 72 hours… happy, happy, joy, joy, and all that shit…
It felt like only moments after I had re-closed my eyes that I was opening them again, and Rolith was gently shaking my shoulder.
"Wake up, Magiya," he said quietly. I slid back slightly on the grass before sitting up so my head wouldn't collide with his; that had happened once before, and I was in no great hurry to repeat the incident.
"I want to go back to sleep," I grumbled crossly under my breath as I got to my feet and brushed off my robe. I frowned. Something I could see in the faint dawn light that I couldn't in the fire light last night was… stains. Brown dirt stains, green grass stains, and other ones that I would rather have not thought about. Annoyed, I picked up my staff from the grass beside where I had been laying, and looked down at my robe again. Muttering a few choice words to myself, I used what little I knew of magic in this respect to lift the worst of the stains off, with little satisfaction.
"There," I murmured in satisfaction, looking around. The area we had chosen to camp in looked exactly the same in daylight as it did at night, only with a little more detail. There was a dense forest on one side of us, and on the other, a rolling field beneath an open sky that was barely a minute's walk across in width. On the other side of said field was the town of Moonridge, which looked fairly battered. Actually, "fairly battered" was the understatement of the year. Several buildings just from the view of their campsite were still smoking, and one or two of the smaller ones had even collapsed.
The rasp of a sword being sheathed drew my attention, and I looked to my left to see Krieger glance over at me. Anticipation glittered in the deeper parts of his chocolate-colored eyes, and he grinned.
"Ready to do some serious damage?" he asked cheerfully, and I grimaced.
"Not really."
"Then let's get going," Rolith chipped in, hefting his big-ass hammer. He, like Krieger, took absolutely no notice of whatever answer I gave right now; only that I gave one. I ran a hand through my slightly tangled dark brown hair, cursing internally when my fingers caught. Oh well. I could brush it out when I got home, anyway, I reasoned as the guys set off, and I jogged for a moment to keep up with them. Once I was caught up, they parted slightly in the middle to let me through, and somehow, my heart warmed. I glanced up at each of them as we walked across the small field, and I got a clearly visible smile from Rolith, along with a rather boyish grin from Krieger. For some unexplained reason, I felt an answering tug of the lips at the latter. A faint smile almost made an appearance before I scowled at him, glaring at him briefly before continuing to look ahead at Moonridge, and the damage done to the little town.
Rolith sucked in a breath as he saw wave upon wave of undead monsters advancing almost painfully slowly on Moonridge. There was a moment of tense silence between the three of us, before I choked out a few words.
"We're supposed to fight… that?"
Not only was the army bigger than it had been (without us taking out more than a quarter of it), but now there just so happened to be a horde of creatures. I could almost feel the power radiating off them, even here, a half a mile away, and it was all I could do to not let my mouth hang open in astonishment. Rolith was all but speechless. Krieger, however, seemed only cheered at the prospect of these things. There seemed to be nearly a thousand of them. Judging from what I could see, they stood at around seven feet tall, had a basic human build, and wore burgundy armor so dark it seemed to be black at first glance. They had claws for hands, and over where their heads should be there was a massive, elaborate helmet. Through the eye slits, something glowed a toxic green color that in any other situation would have made me sick to my stomach.
"Yup," Krieger said, mood still unhampered by the sight of the… things.
"But… what are they?" I demanded, whirling to face him. I must have looked the very picture of terror; dark blue eyes wide, hair almost on end, and the grip of the damned on my staff.
"Entropic Soldiers," he replied easily, as though we were discussing what he was going to eat for dinner. Then again, he had proven he became utterly joyful when taking down anything undead. Personally, it dumbfounded me. But to each their own, yes?
"And… how are we supposed to kill them?" I asked, gesturing at them. They were getting closer to Moonridge, but oh so slowly. We were in no great rush, since most of the city had been evacuated anyway.
"Light works best against them, but whatever element you use, they're still difficult to kill," Krieger answered. While my stomach did an acrobatic flip at these words, they instead seemed to simply invigorate him, as he looked positively ecstatic now. Rolith just looked… solemn. And a tad green.
"I swear to Lore, you two will be the death of me if I don't kill myself first," I muttered, lifting my staff so my fist was at eye level. Using the same force of will I normally used to pick a staff, I allowed a ripple (barely visible to the naked eye, but very visible to my mind's eye) of golden magic run down the length of my simple oak staff. In its place appeared a very elaborate staff, yet nearly indestructible. It had a mostly black grip, while at the head were four scythe-shaped features that were gold-colored, centered around a large circle with what appeared to be black lightning running up the center of said circle. "Who's ready to fuck up some of these… What did you call them? Energizer Snuffliwumps?"
"Entropic Soldiers," corrected Rolith somewhat blankly while Krieger sniggered. My blonde friend's expression was still in shock, to say the least; I think number of monsters may have more than surprised him. However, as I watched, he seemed to shake it off, and blinked. "Well… let's go."
I nodded slowly, taking an extra step to keep up with the two men as we continued over the rise. "…We're probably gonna get our asses whooped, aren't we." I didn't phrase it as a question.
"Yes, but we're also gonna whoop some ass."
"That's what I'm hoping for."
I told you it was short. Also, it reveals just a bit of the history between Magiya and Rolith. ^^ Not enough to know every detail, but enough that you can get a mental image of it. :3 Heh, I particularly enjoyed writing the part where she wouldn't stay in the infirmary... and I can only wonder how she got Rolith on his back. O.o Most likely through the help of several spells, knowing her; she fights dirty.
I wrote a large portion of this while watching the movie the Labyrinth. I do love that old movie. ^^
Please leave a response if you enjoyed this, because any criticism (constructive or not) does really help me work on how I write. If you saw the Dragonfable fanfiction I did about a year ago, you'll understand I MAJORLY sucked back then. O.o
Anyway. *ahem*
As always, I hope you enjoyed, and I hope you check for the next chapter. ^^Thanks for reading.
