Review replies:
Okuri-Chan: Not gonna lie, it was a bit of a hassle. As you're aware, I thrive on comments, so I had to content myself here by spamming my best friend with spoilers lol.
LPK9: political intrigue! I don't know what's going on here but it's definitely not anything good.
Stephen's hand slipped where he gripped the tree branch, and he yelped, scrabbling for a handhold with his other hand.
"Focus!" His mentor shouted from below. "Don't rush yourself. You know what your body is capable of, use it to its fullest."
"Yeah, I do know what my body can do!" Stephen grunted, pushing off of the trunk to get a better grip on the branch and pull himself up. "Teleport!"
"That isn't the point of this exercise." His mentor called patiently. "Focus on what you're doing, I'm not catching you if you fall." Stephen scowled, but turned his attention back to the tree, soon finding another handhold and scaling the remaining branches. Reaching the top of the trunk, he grabbed the metal ball that rested in a hollow of the tree, then turned back to the branches to plot out his trip back to the ground.
The way back down was slightly more treacherous, given that he only had one hand to climb with, but gravity was on his side this time. Soon enough, he was jumping the last few feet, rolling as he hit the ground and scrambling upright to present the ball to his teacher.
"Good." Lucius nodded, accepting the prize from his hand. "You were quick." Steve grinned, leaning back to look up at the sky as he caught his breath. "Now put it back."
Steve's smile dropped. "Oh come on!"
"A soldier must be prepared for unexpected challenges." Lucius held up his stopwatch. "Clock's still ticking." He offered back the ball, and Stephen growled, snatching it from his hand and scrambling up the tree again.
At least it was a good day for practicing drills, Stephen mused as he set the ball back in the hollow he had found it in, starting to clamber down through the branches again. The sky was blue and cloudless, a light breeze blowing, and the air was warm for mid-spring. Not too warm, though, which he was thankful for, as he was starting to sweat from running back and forth.
He could see the camp from about halfway up the tree, just over the hill. They had moved every 3-6 months throughout his childhood, and every tent had been replaced at one point or another, but this place was still his home, and these people, the Sons of the Aether, his family. Even though he didn't look like them. Their current residence was on a small hill in the middle of a forest, sheltered by the huge spruce trees that grew in patches over the primarily flat terrain. This, coupled with the river that wound through the woods and gave them easy access to water, made it an ideal location for them to train as the trees would help shelter them from anyone who wished them harm.
"Eight minutes and forty-three seconds." Lucius reported as Steve dropped onto the ground, immediately collapsing into the soft grass. "Not bad."
"Yeahhh. Please tell me we're done with fetch quests for today."
"We're done." Lucius walked over, smiling down at him. "Go get a drink and wash yourself off, I'll meet you back at camp."
"Yessir." Steve remained on his back until the valkyrie had taken off, taking the shortest path back to their camp. Finally, he pushed himself up, dusting off his hands on his pants before lugging himself upright and trudging through the trees to where the small river flowed. He stripped off his shirt as he approached the water, kicking off his boots, and splashed into the shallow water to relieve his sweat-soaked skin.
After a quick dip, Stephen retrieved his clothes and hurried back to camp. He didn't want to leave his teacher waiting.
Lucius was standing around the campfire pit that had been dug in the center of the campgrounds, around which the tents that made up the camp had been arranged. He was discussing a sheet of paper with Malech, but rolled it up and handed it off as Steve approached the two of them.
"Finished?" He asked as Malech hurried away.
"Yeah." Steve bobbed his chin in a nod, glancing around the camp. "What do you need me to do?"
"Since you're already wet, take the laundry down to the stream and wash it." Lucius nodded to a basket of white and ivory fabrics that sat by the fire. "Then I'm sending you out with Faliel and Cafos to forage."
"Yes sir."
Stephen lugged the basket of clothes down to the riverside, once again thankful for the cool water as he was out of breath again by the time he reached it. Doing the camp's laundry was one of his many chores, but he was happy to do them. He owed them his very life, after all, the least he could do was help out around camp.
The sun crested in the sky, and had begun to descend by the time Stephen finished his chore. A cord hung between two trees beside the stream, and it was on this that Steve laid over the clean clothes to dry. Finished with his task, Stephen picked out a sun-warmed rock on which to sit down on, hoping to catch a few minutes of rest before being sent off on his next assignment.
The air was cool, but the sun was warm, and Stephen had nearly dozed off when he heard a twig snap nearby.
Immediately, he jerked up, anticipating a lecture for slacking off, but there was no sign of any of the regal valkyries he swore allegiance to. Cautiously, he glanced around over the riverbank, searching for whatever had caused the sound. Just a rabbit or a squirrel, maybe?
On his second pass, he realized that one of the shirts was missing from the clothesline.
Stephen was on his guard at once, scrambling off the rock and teleporting up and onto a strong branch. Had it just blown away? Surely the breeze was much too weak for that. And a tunic blowing away didn't make twigs break, unless the sound was a coincidence. Either way, he had to find it, or he would get quite the scolding when he returned to camp.
A flash of color caught his eye, and he turned to see a small person fleeing into the woods with the shirt bunched up in his arms.
Steve's adrenaline spiked, and he teleported to a closer tree to get a better look at the thief. Upon closer inspection, it wasn't a 'he', but a 'she', a girl who looked close to his age with a fiery orange ponytail. She was making little attempt to be stealthy, maybe she thought she'd already gotten away with it.
Well, she hadn't. Steve teleported in front of her, crossing his arms, and the girl drew up short with a small cry.
"Stop right there, thief!" He ordered. Instead of stopping, the girl lunged at him, and Steve was forced to throw up his hands to block her reckless attack. "Hey!"
"Get out of my way." She growled, shoving off of him.
"You stole from us!" Steve protested. "Return the tunic at once and maybe I won't turn you in."
"Yeah, well, I kinda need it, so you're gonna have to live with that." She tried to duck around him, and Steve's hand shot out to grab her arm. The moment it closed around her bicep, she was jerking away with a cry, her free hand flying up to press over her sleeve and leaving Stephen staring at her in confusion.
"Are you hurt?"
"Leave me be." The girl growled, and this time Stephen let her pass him by, heading deeper into the woods.
"Do you need help?" He pressed, starting to follow. "Who are you? What are you doing out here, I thought there weren't any towns for miles?"
"There aren't." Coming to the bottom of a small cliff, the redhead sank to the ground, fumbling with her loose sleeve and pushing it up to reveal a bleeding, oozing gash. Stephen winced, stopping a few feet away. The skin around the wound was red, and the edges of the wound were beginning to yellow.
"Do you- hey!" He exclaimed as she ripped a strip from the hem of the tunic. "For Notch's sake. Now I'm going to get in trouble."
"Boo hoo." She snipped back, fumbling to wrap her wound in the strip of cloth. Steve hesitated, then took a couple of steps closer.
"You- look, that wound's infected, it won't heal without proper care." He told her. The girl glanced up at him, green eyes narrowed suspiciously.
"And what kind of 'proper care' do you recommend?"
"Well, you'll need alcohol… and wrapping it will just make it worse. Look," Stephen crouched down to her level. "If that thing isn't treated correctly, you'll get sick. Really sick. Let me go get the others, and they can help-"
"No." The girl cut him off. "No way. Your friends will kill me."
"They would not!" Steve exclaimed, but he didn't entirely believe his own words. This training camp was supposed to be top secret, in all his years living here Steve had only seen an outsider once or twice. And to keep that secrecy, those outsiders had been disposed of. "Alright, well, fine. If you stay here, I'll go get materials."
"And why should I trust you?" The redhead snapped. "You're just as likely to go rat me out to your friends."
"Well, either I go, and maybe I call the others, or I leave you here and you die of sepsis." Steve straightened up, folding his arms. "Some choice, huh? And you can't really stop me." The girl glowered at him, though the hostility in her eyes seemed to fade, as if she was considering her options.
"Fine." She said at last. "Go on."
"Alright. Stay here." Steve took a step back and prepared to teleport, but paused. "What's your name?" The girl hesitated.
"Alexis." She finally replied. "And yours?"
"Stephen." He turned away. "I'll be right back, stay where you are." With that, he teleported.
When Stephen returned to the cliff, Alexis was nowhere to be found.
It took him about five minutes to locate her, now curled up at the base of one of the giant taiga trees. Irritated with her for running off, he teleported directly in front of her.
"I told you to stay there." He said, voice raised to be heard over her shriek of fright.
"You d- well, how was I supposed to know you w- had good intentions?" Alexis stammered, her ferocious glare returning. Steve sighed, sinking down to sit cross-legged before her and pulling his filled bag off his shoulder.
"Well, it's just me. I'm alone, and none of them saw me leave. Let me see your arm." He held out a hand. When she didn't move, he went on. "If I wanted to hurt you, wouldn't I have done it already?" Alexis scoffed, but finally offered him her arm. He pushed up her sleeve to find the wound haphazardly wrapped in strips of the tunic, and he again lamented the lecture he was sure to receive for losing it. "Alright, now just hold still." Neither of them spoke as he unwrapped the wound, and Alexis was mostly still and quiet except for a small hiss of pain as he pressed a cloth soaked with alcohol onto the gash.
As he treated her, Stephen studied her appearance as subtly as he could. She was thin, and not thin like he was, slender but built with lean muscle. No, Alexis was scrawny, making her look even younger than she probably was. She was dressed in a green, long-sleeved tunic that was doubtlessly made for someone twice her size, as it came down nearly to her knees and was cinched around her waist with a piece of thin rope. Probably, Steve mused, she wouldn't look so small if she was wearing clothes that actually fit her.
It wasn't until he was dabbing a healing salve onto her wound that she spoke, voice low and grumpy.
"…what are you doing here, anyway." She muttered, and at his quizzical look she went on. "There, at the camp. You don't look like a valkyrie."
"I'm not." Steve sat back, wiping off his hands on the ruined shirt. "They took me in. And I could ask you the same thing, what are you doing in these woods?"
"I'm a nomad." She twisted her arm, trying to get a look at his handiwork. "Got chased out of the last town I was staying in. Aren't you going to wrap this?"
"No, it'll heal faster if it's exposed to the air." Steve explained. "It lets the bad humours out."
"Having it exposed is putting me in bad humor." Alexis grumbled.
"No, it- that's different." Stephen realized he didn't actually know how to explain medical terminology, and instead changed the subject. "How did you injure yourself?"
"I fell." Alexis shifted her weight, leaning her head back against the tree. "Turns out wolves will attack humans if they're hungry enough. I made it up a tree, but getting down was a different story." Stephen winced, nodding.
"How long ago was that?"
"Two… or three days ago." Alexis picked at a blade of grass growing up through the dirt beside her, only stopping when it snapped. "It bled a lot the first day, and I couldn't find water to clean it until the second. Guess that's why it got bad."
"Yeah. Well, as long as you keep it clean and dry, it should heal." Stephen held up the remaining scraps of shirt. "Let it sit for two or three hours, then wrap it to keep dirt out. Okay?"
"Alright." Alexis seemed to have finally relaxed around him, though she still didn't look him in the eye except when she was glaring. As he packed up his borrowed medical supplies, she asked quietly, "Are you going to turn me in?"
Stephen paused, shrugged. "Wasn't planning on it." Her shoulders slumped with relief, but he kept talking. "It still wasn't right to steal from us."
"If I hadn't stolen it, I would've died."
"If I hadn't helped you, you would've died." Steve corrected her. "And that's not an excuse."
"It's not an excuse, but it's a reason." Alexis fired back. "I was trying to keep myself alive, the only way I knew how to. What good would it do me to follow the law if I died in the process?"
"So your only consideration is your own well-being?"
"Who else am I supposed to consider? No one else wants me!" She snapped. "Not everyone can be picked up by a band of Notch's immortal warriors."
Stephen frowned, but abandoned this line of questioning for the moment. She clearly was in no mood to listen. Instead, he asked, "Where are you going to go after this?"
"I've been heading east, and I see no reason to change my course." Alexis glanced towards the sun, beginning to set towards the west.
"Right…" Steve's hands slowed as he closed the fastener on his satchel. He'd only just met her, but the thought of her leaving struck him with a heavy feeling of… what was it? Loneliness?
"Or you could stick around here." He suggested, trying to sound casual. "I could get you food, and maybe some new clothes." Alexis shot him a glare, which he was becoming surprisingly familiar with.
"And get murdered by your band of killers? No thanks."
"They're not killers, they're soldiers." Steve countered. "And they haven't seen you yet, have they?"
"I've been here for less than a day, and I'm not going to pretend I'm stealthy enough to avoid your trained killers."
"Not even for food?" Stephen slung the satchel over his shoulder, standing up. "I'm not gonna force you, but… think about it." Alexis heaved a sigh, looking away.
"Sure. I'll think about it."
"Alright." Stephen took a step back, casting a dismal glance at the remains of the tunic on the ground. "I'm going to go get chewed out for losing this."
"Have fun." Alexis told him, deadpan. As he glanced around for a destination, though, she added "thank you" under her breath. Steve shot her a little smile.
"You're welcome." And he blinked away, heading back to camp to return the medical supplies before anyone noticed they were gone.