"We should reach Antioch by the evening." Eden said.

Arielle merely nodded. Eden, with reins in hand, was leading the horse, giving him some well deserved rest; it was a warm day. Arielle was walking beside the raider, her hands clutching the strap of her bag.

"Assuming we don't meet any of your... friends along the way." Arielle added good-humoredly.

"Yes, assuming." Eden replied with a very tiny snicker.

Arielle tried to tally up all that they had encountered during their journey to Antioch. There had been the raid that started everything. Then they escaped Karas's men in a mad flurry of hooves. Arielle almost stepped on some desert snake. Arielle insisted they help repair a pilgrim family's broken cart wheel on the road. Eden left Arielle at camp to find water without telling her and almost gave the blond a heart attack. She learned the hard way that no one touches Eden's horse when they both decided to ignore her in anger for a day after Arielle had tried to mount the horse herself. Arielle tried to chase a rabbit across the brush and Eden thought she went mad. Eden took an entire minute to teach some stray marauder who had decided to bother them a lesson. Every morning, Arielle awoke to the black raider glaring down at her impatiently. All in all, Arielle had concluded, it had been quite an adventure. She found herself growing a little sad with having to see it end already.

"You know," Arielle began in her usual chatty tone and Eden took a deep breath in anticipation, "I happen to be very perceptive if I do say so myself. And I noticed that your sword is different from the others I've seen."

"It is." Eden replied simply and flatly.

"Everyone here seems to carry sabers, but you, you carry a Frankish sword, don't you?"

"I do."

Arielle sighed, seeing that getting anything more than two worded answers out of the raider seemed next to impossible at the moment.

"It's..." Eden said tentatively after a few moments, making Arielle turn to look at her, "it's... I've had this sword for a while. I, I like it."

Arielle observed the raider's rare, slightly personal admission and how her one hand had unconsciously slid down to the hilt of the sword, holding it firmly as if she was afraid it might suddenly be taken from her. She seemed to be more at ease with one hand on her sword and Arielle could see that it really was something special to her.

"It's a beautiful sword." Arielle admitted with a smile, "So much in fact, that I would almost want one too. But, I've never carried any weapons or taken part in fighting. My father sometimes took me along on hunting parties, usually because I would moan about be bored for so long that he would take me along just to shut me up. It's unladylike, he would always say..."

Eden noted that a hint of sadness had entered Arielle's tone again.

"Swords aren't for princesses." she stated with a slight shrug of her shoulders, "But then again, neither are Arab demons."

Arielle glanced at the raider momentarily and smiled, seeing the compliment. Eden found that there was, in fact, a part of her that was rather proud and even impressed with the blond's handling of their journey. She had expected complaining, fainting, and wailing, but experienced none of that. True, if left alone Arielle might have begun to cry like the time Eden had gone off for water, but she really couldn't expect a Frankish lady to be able to survive days in the desert lands with ease. Arielle housed a calm spirit of adventure and Eden realized that of all the people she could have been traveling with now, she could have done a lot worse.

Their day was a quiet one and the sun had begun its descent when they reached an outcropping that overlooked a great city.

"There it is. That's Antioch." Eden announced and saw Arielle smile in delight out of the corner of her eye.

Antioch stretched out before them. Its long walls seemed to stretch on forever and its five gates stood like immortal sentinels. The front of the main gate bustled with activity even late in the day and a thin stream of people could be seen entering and exiting the city.

"It's... remarkable." Arielle wondered.

"The queen of the East." Eden added, "Let's go, it'll be dark soon."

An uneasiness settled over both the travelers as they neared the city. Arielle was finding it hard to deny that she had enjoyed their adventures and even the company of the brooding raider. She was finding it even harder to get rid of the idea to tell the raider all this, but next to impossible to find a way to do so that would leave all her bones intact. She grew quieter with the passing moments, sad to see the complicated, stubborn raider go and wondering how she would fare now on her own to Jerusalem.

Eden grew agitated with the memories of the vision in her dream. She had had these types of visions before and she knew that they weren't simply some haphazard product of a bored imagination. This particular vision she had seen before, though never did it have as specific a message as it did this time. The explicitness of the vision worried her; there was more to come, this was just a beginning, something was amiss. Yet, Eden was troubled because she had come to Antioch with her own plan and purpose. She was tired of the fighting, killing, and battles for survival, but mostly she was sick of disgusting herself. No matter how fast she could ride or how well she could wield her sword, she couldn't escape herself; there was only one way to do that. She didn't understand why it had to be Antioch, why now, why she couldn't just be left alone. But there was a dangerous truth she knew all too well; God's will was one thing, man's free will was another.

They walked through the main gate and were immediately swallowed by all the people, sounds, and smells of the lively city. Arielle absorbed everything around her through an open, smiling mouth and wide, captivated eyes. She thought that she could spend weeks there and not fully discover everything Antioch had to offer. Eden's sullen voice tore her from her enchantment.

"So..." she said slowly, looking at the ground and fiddling with the reins, "I guess this is it."

"Yes... you accompanied me to Antioch just like you promised you would. And you didn't cut out my tongue." Arielle said, trying to add humor, but something in the raider's presence made the humor sink like a stone, replacing it with a strange heaviness of being.

"Yes, I did."

"Thank you, for everything. It was a great adventure. It's a story I'll never stop telling." Arielle said nobly. Can it wait perhaps one more day?

"Yes, well, I said I'd get you here and that's what I did. All's well, I guess."

The dejected stance of the raider tugged at something in Arielle's heart. She wanted to touch her hand in comfort. She wanted to suggest eating supper at the local tavern. She wanted to know if the raider was perhaps traveling to anywhere further later. But she didn't know how to make any of these things be.

"I'll be staying here a while..." Arielle mentioned timidly and saw the raider's eyes glance at her and then return to the ground.

"You should." she replied shortly. Why now?

The tension was getting to be more than Arielle could handle and she found her fingers tangling and untangling over and over again. She finally sighed loudly under the pressure and the raider mistakenly understood it as a sign of annoyance.

"Alright then, I think I should get going." she said.

"I don't even know your name." Arielle suddenly blurted out with a look of dismay.

Eden lightly nodded her hanging head, sighed, and looked at Arielle defiantly. Arielle was shocked to see a mixture of heavy sadness and submission in those arresting eyes and she drew in a small breath.

"Take care." Eden said simply and turned to leave.

"Please," Arielle added hurriedly, "take care of yourself too."

It was all she could manage to say. Eden nodded and then walked off with her horse and was lost in the commotion of the streets. Arielle took a long, heavy breath.

"I am so indescribably silly." she muttered to herself, shaking her head.

She then stood up straight, straightened out her dress, and immersed herself in the nearby marketplace, full of colors, sounds, and smells that she had never encountered.

Eden finally found a good place to stable her horse.

"Be good," she whispered to him, stroking his forehead and nose, "then go."

The horse stared at her with gravity and made no noise. Eden patted him once more and turned to leave.

Her vision was so firmly burned into her mind, that Eden decided that she had no choice, but to adhere to it. Or at least in part. She spent the better part of the next day scouring the city for what she saw in her dream. Finally, in an armorer's shop in some small alley on the edge of the city, she was rewarded. She walked in and her attention was immediately caught by a red gambeson and a breastplate that was placed over it. She walked up to the burly, but friendly armorer who was wiping his thick hands with a cloth.

"Nice display." she ventured, motioning her head towards the armor.

"Aye. You interested?" he asked.

"Maybe. Seems alright."

"Aye, it is. Frankish, you know. Wouldn't shame a Templar. Have a looksee if you want." the armorer suggested quite warmly, motioning Eden towards the armor.

She walked up to it almost hesitantly. She slowly picked up the breastplate. The gleam of it was exactly as it was in her vision and the feel of it sent a hum through her hands telling her that it was hers to take.

"You know, most folks don't even notice that there lot. Seems to almost be waiting around for you though." the armorer mentioned.

Eden glanced curiously at him and he just shrugged. She looked back at the breastplate and caught her own reflection looking at her. She stood silent for a few moments, caught in that stare, the flames of the hearth dancing in the corners of her eyes, the rushing of its heat pouring into her ears. She brushed her fingers along the gambeson, the coarseness of skin against fabric that was waiting to be worn flooding her ears.

"Looks like that there lot found itself a proud owner." the armorer noticed with a smile, "Good thing too. Meant to see the world, that suit. Have stories told about it."

"Stories?" Eden asked curiously, turning to him with slightly furrowed brows.

"Sure. Why not?" he replied, shrugging.

Eden looked at him for a few moments and pulled out her coin purse.

"So how much?" she asked and the armorer's grin widened.

Eden took the armor back to her horse and packed it into the saddlebags. The stable keeper looked at her a little warily, wondering why someone would leave things that valuable out in the open, but Eden knew very well that just the sight of her horse made everyone take a step back and no one would dare to either steal it or anything near it. She then turned on her heel and quickly walked away.

She had done what was asked of her, she fulfilled God's will and now she wanted to be left alone to fulfill her own. She slowed her step and breath, falling into unison with the capitulation inside her. She let everything that was outside of that slowly seep out of her and spill onto the streets of Antioch until she felt completely empty. Time slowed down for her as she felt the night fill her, the black she wore on the outside matching the icy black now within. She walked in time with phantoms, the people she passed hardly noticing her except for the slight chill she left behind. She slowly unwrapped her turban, the fabric unwinding like a giant, dark serpent and she let it finally float to the ground to be trampled underfoot like it so rightly deserved. She meandered in and out of alleys and streets and the dancing shadows caused by flickering torches, the inner death wish steering her to the place of her choosing. She had waited so long for her peace. She had seen too much, paid too high a price, become an abomination. She had forgotten the feeling of being human and being a monster was too much like a second skin. There was that one piece of her, that one minuscule ray of hope that refused to fade and go out, that one remnant of the essence of a chosen one of God. But it wasn't enough and the strains were too many and Eden finally decided to surrender to the shadows that had her surrounded and give herself and the rest of the world some final peace. She noticed and sensed nothing, driven now by a deep seeded resignation. She finally felt like she was a part of something that was meant to be.

"Leave me be you whore's son!"

The scream tore through Eden's mind all of the sudden and she raised her eyes to find its source. She saw that down the alley, a group of guards were pushing around a woman and jeering. Although she thought it a rather pitiful form of entertainment, it wasn't all that uncommon. She was about to turn the corner to evade the conflict when the sight of the woman caught her eye. It was Arielle.

"We're just going to teach you some manners, wench. A little lesson to dull that sharp tongue of yours." a guard who was holding her by the hair growled into her face and then took to roughly cutting her hair with his dagger.

"Help, someone, please!" Arielle began to scream and tried to escape but with every attempt, one of the guards would kick or hit her back into place with a loud laugh.

Something in Eden imploded. Her heart stopped for a beat and then started again, now sending a fire through her blood. The flames licked her skin and surged up her spine, crackling in her mind and lighting her eyes. She heard nothing but that screaming and laughing. Without the slightest thought, instinctively, her feet turned her away from the corner and back into the alley and towards the men. When she was close enough, she suddenly stopped and simply stood there glaring at them. She was steeped in shadow, only the hilt of her sword glinting in the dark on the faint flickers of the light it caught. Slowly, the men noticed her there and stopped what they were doing.

"Who goes there?" one yelled.

Eden was silent. Her mind flooded with the sounds of an infernal blaze and each one of Arielle's whimpers. A brilliant, almost god-like force filled the entire fabric of her being and pulsated off her skin and she let herself drown in it. What is this force?

"It's a little late in the night for a walk. Perhaps you're looking for trouble? Or maybe... entertainment?" the leader of the group growled jeeringly and roughly threw Arielle to the ground and turned fully around towards Eden. The men let out a collective chuckle, but she still said and did nothing, hearing Arielle's whimpering and moans of pain. The leader grew impatient.

"Perhaps I'll just skin you alive instead!" he threatened.

This time Eden let out a low, chilling laugh that made the men uneasy.

"Oh," she hissed lowly, unsheathing her sword slowly, "that's nothing compared with what I'm going to do to you."

Arielle heard the men rush over to attack Eden, kicking up dust and pebbles as they did. She heard the clashing of blades and the grunts of the guards who completely underestimated who they were dealing with. She raised her head after one of the guards flew backwards and landed with a heavy thud next to her, his face bloodied, his eyes transfixed in fear.

"You're not human! You're a demon!" the leader cried out, on his knees, Eden holding him by the hair from behind and with her sword at his neck.

Her black was now sprayed with the blood of all the men and her eyes flashed with rage. Arielle had managed to somehow turn and propped herself up on one elbow to see what was happening and saw Eden standing over the leader with sword drawn.

"Zauba'a." she whispered.

"You, you , you're Zauba'a?" the leader sputtered out and began to shake in growing fear. "You, you are a demon among, among demons."

"Yes," Eden hissed straight into his ear, pushing the sword hard enough against his neck that it began to draw blood, "that I am. And now I'll send straight to the hell that I come from, you worthless shit."

A whimper brought her gaze up to catch Arielle's eyes and she was touched for a moment by something beyond her recognition. The fire in her remained, but the rage was snuffed out with perplexing ease by that green. Arielle finally slumped back down in exhaustion and closed her eyes. A moment later, Eden returned her attention to the man in her hands, her fury spent.

"If I ever see you again, I will tear your skin off in little strips until you curse the very fact that you were ever born." she promised him in a tone so low and cold that it sent shivers up and down the shaking guard, drawing her sword down the side of his face and leaving a trail of blood.

"Get out of here!" Eden shouted and kicked him in the back and watched him scurry away crying.

When he was gone, Eden took a deep breath and walked up quickly to Arielle, who was still lying on the ground.

"Are you alright?" she asked as she quickly wiped and sheathed her sword and crouched down next to her.

"Yes, I think. Mostly. I don't know." Arielle said weakly, looking up at Eden.

Eden sighed heavily. Arielle's face was a variety of scrapes, cuts, bruises and blood mixed with tears and dirt and Eden could only imagine what other damage was most likely done, but could not be seen. Arielle began to tremble uncontrollably and it jolted something in the raider. She felt a great bitterness, but this time it didn't concern her, but another human being. She resented Arielle being treated that way, subjected to such danger. She didn't deserve it, it was unfair beyond any words and it made Eden angry.

"You seem to invite trouble." Eden said a little absently, looking at her for any other visible signs of damage.

"It seems I do." she acknowledged in a trembling voice with a smile on shaking lips and absently moving slightly to rest her heavy head on Eden's knee.

Eden's first reaction to the touch was to jump away, but as soon as that reflex appeared, it faded away. Arielle could feel the woman stiffen, but was too tired to be concerned this time. And now the inferno in Eden suddenly shifted from a blaze to a milder, warm fire.

Eden looked at the sight for a few moments with a great stillness and sensitivity. She sighed heavily again and looked up the alley both ways and then back down at Arielle who was having a hard time keeping her eyes open. What is this?

"I have to get you out of here." she decided, "Can you walk?"

"I don't know."

Eden said nothing for a few moments, weighing two diverse paths with gravity in her mind.

"Do you trust me right now?" she suddenly asked.

Arielle looked at her for a couple of moments, surprised by the sudden question and thinking of how to answer. There were several different conflicting responses in her head, but she decided on a simple nod.

"Alright. I'll get you out of here."

Eden turned to let out a high-pitched whistle out into the night. She then put her arms around Arielle, picking her up and then curling one arm around her waist and placing Arielle's arm around her shoulders and holding it there. She took one step forward. Arielle moved with some pain and awkwardly, but she could walk.

"Alright, steady now. I've got you."

Eden walked Arielle towards her horse that had just trotted up as if he had just been waiting around the corner. She lifted her onto the horse as gently as she could. She then mounted it herself, in front of Arielle and wrapped the blond's arms about her waist.

"Hold on to me." Eden said and felt Arielle's grip tighten.

In a slow but steady trot, they left the streets of Antioch and moved out into the dark outskirts of the city. With the bigger bumps and jolts of the streets, Arielle winced and moaned quietly in her pain, her head falling from one side to the other as she tried to keep awake.

"Lay your head on my back. Between my shoulders." Eden instructed and Arielle complied and it made the ride more bearable.

When they finally left the walled city so far behind that Arielle was afraid that the night might swallow them, Eden slowed down and stopped.

"Here we are. Let me go now and I'll help you down." she said and once she unwrapped Arielle from herself, she slid off the saddle and then raised her arms towards Arielle.

Weak, frightened, and exhausted, Arielle reached down towards Eden and when she felt that the raider's arms had her, she practically collapsed into them. She spilled down off the horse and Eden scooped her into her arms with a bit of a huff and walked towards the seemingly abandoned hovel that Arielle only now noticed.

Once inside, Eden lay Arielle down on a bed of straw.

"I'll be back in a moment." Eden mentioned quietly.

Eden tended to the horse and took the saddlebags inside. She took a quick inventory of the place and saw that everything was mostly where she left it and then went towards the fireplace to make a fire. The nights were cold and the hovel a little drafty; it needed work that Eden had never found the time for. The fire began to spread warmth and light around the one room hovel.

Eden took off her sword belt and placed it on the table, picking up one saddlebag and then sitting down next to Arielle to tend to her wounds. Arielle couldn't decide which one of them probably looked more fragile, her or the raider. Eden busied herself with cloths and water and wiping away the dirt and blood, but did it so delicately as if she was afraid that Arielle might shatter if she touched her. Each cut or scrape she cleaned was one too many and stirred Eden's anger at the injustice of it all.

"This is not right." she whispered to herself, but Arielle had heard, sensing the raider's strange frustration.

"Am I bleeding wrong?" Arielle asked in a try at humor.

Eden looked at her, but Arielle saw that her anger was too much for a tiny remark to quell. She felt sorry for the raider then. She didn't want to be the cause of such commotion, such unease. Distracted, she gently placed her hand on the raider's wrist. Eden tensed and waited for some overwhelming admission to come and scare her half to death, but Arielle only smiled lightly and Eden found that that smile told her exactly what she needed to hear and she took a deep breath and calmed slightly. She then returned to her task. What is all this? What is this about?

Once Eden finished cleaning the wounds on that bard's face and hands, her brows knotted and her face betrayed some confusion.

"What it is?" Arielle asked in slight worry.

"Well, the rest... um, your um... I have to... maybe something's... broken or..." the raider stuttered and Arielle tried to hold back a grin.

"It's alright. Go ahead." she said soothingly.

"I'm just going to feel for breaks... or ruptures. I'll try to be gentle." Eden assured her.

She then ran her skilled hands down Arielle's torso, first checking if any ribs were broken and then down to her midsection to see if any organs might have been damaged. Arielle told her that she didn't feel any great pain anywhere except for probable bruises. Eden nodded in agreement and she then took out a few different salves and ointments and applied them where necessary. Feeling the warmth of the fire fill the room, the safety of being far from immediate harm and the care of the raider, Arielle felt very at ease.

"You know," she began a little dreamily, "I could get used to this."

Eden replied with a little snort, mixing amusement with disapproval.

"I'd rather you didn't. What if I wasn't there?" she replied and a heavy sadness tainted her voice. So close.

"But you were."

The statement brought Eden back to the present and she wondered at the bends and breaks of every day that could actually lead to changing someone's life completely. They had come close. If Eden had taken a different alley or left earlier, if Arielle hadn't had screamed. They had come so very close.

Eden finished applying the salves and wrapped one particularly nasty cut on the blond's forehead in a bandage. She glanced at her and was rather proud of the job she had done in repairing the young maiden. She eased herself into the chair and let out a deep breath, relaxing a little for the first time that day.

"You know duchess, we really need to stop meeting like this." she said with a slightly raised eyebrow and Arielle chuckled.

"I know, I'll quickly grow destitute from constantly having you properly rewarded."

And in that moment the both of them knew that they had just jumped over their first hurdle.

After a moment Eden got up and started to bustle about the hovel, unpacking this, moving that, rearranging the other thing. Arielle watched her for a while and then succumbed to her heavy eyes for a time. Eden tried to make the hovel as comfortable as it could be since she knew that they would be staying there for a while. When she finished, Eden sat back down in the chair next to Arielle, leaning back in it, stretching her legs out in front of her and crossing her arms over her chest. Arielle's eyes fluttered open to the sounds near her.

"Shame about your hair." Eden said after some time.

Arielle raised one hand and felt around her hair, scowling somewhat.

"Yes, well, better my hair than my throat. I can go to the barber when I'm better."

Eden observed the floor while Arielle stared at the door, an easy silence hanging between them. Eden noticed the blond's eyelids begin to droop.

"You should get some sleep. You had an eventful day."

"You too." Arielle noticed.

Eden got up, checked the windows and door, and then arranged a nice pile of sacks of hay at the foot of the bed, near the fireplace. When it seemed comfortable enough, she stripped off her armor and boots, placed her sword by her side, and lay down, her body beginning to feel the exertion the day had demanded.

"Good night..." Arielle began.

"Eden. My name is Eden." the raider suddenly added before she could stop herself.

"Sleep well, Eden."

Eden didn't see the smile that had crept over Arielle's face right before she fell asleep.