Her deft fingers slid under the woolen underclothes as she buckled in the small cot that held her, legs tangled in the soft sheets. Back arched, the silken tendrils of hair bobbed underneath her as she pushed herself into a more comfortable position. A small cry of relief erupted from her lips as her fingers slid into place in the deep crease in her back, drawing the blood into her shoulderblades.

The discomfort of the quarters provided by the Legion did not bother her as much as it did others, but it did nothing for the knots and aches that developed from pulling the longbow day after day. The exercise in blood magic had the side benefit of soothing her mind - quite a serene state to arise in, probably. In a fluid movement, her legs bent over the edge of the cot, and her torso twisted until her entire body stood erect in the Legion’s tent.

She pulled on the leather thing and the gambeson as well as some linen pants, which lay at a puddle at the end of the cot. Surely, no one really gave two aces about what she wore underneath the heavy, padded jacket, but Legion had their own dumb rules that Aeudla was in no position to question or disobey. Easily, she set about her usual tasks - the longbow was set against a corner of the huge, linen tent, a slice of morning sunlight warming it, making the wood soft and pliable. Her tentmates were mostly still asleep, or gone for a morning meal, maybe a meditative piss in the woods. The shaft of wood easily moved in her hands, now, the end-loop easily fitting into the horny nock as she strung the bow. In doing so, the light caught her eyes and she swatted a hand across her face to shade herself.

The order forced its way into her brain: Job to be done. Voice's orders. Meet at the Weeping-Gate within the hour. Pack light.

She nearly keeled over, her hand now ripping hair out of her scalp with the unwelcome invasion. Aeudla shivered a moment, pausing in the soft light afforded by the tent. Thankfully, everyone - regardless of rank - was subject to such creepy and unwanted behavior, and this was oddly reassuring.

It must have been Tarkus.

One foot crossed the other as she hobbled out of the tent, one hand reaching out to part the linen fold of the tent’s opening, the other fastened around her bow. The quiver full of freshly-spined arrows was flush to her back, though she could not feel it through the thick padding of the gambeson. They were beautiful arrows, with hawk’s feathers she’d threaded onto the shafts of wood. They rustled together pleasantly alongside some of the Legion’s arrows.

The puddle of mud right under - around - her foot yielded a curse. One of her stupid bedmates probably got drunk and pissed right outside of the tent. Aeudla very, very briefly wished she was an officer of some sort, with her own tent. Archers weren’t really leaders, given that they stood back all safe and rained hell while the real warriors did all the work, out of honor and glory. She was a competent blood mage, sure, but she didn’t really care about turning water into wine or whatever other stupid hound tricks the others did to curry favor. Blood magic was ethereal and sacred. Or so she imagined.

Aeudla went.

Soft plumes of smoke meandered through the battlements and did little to temper the harsh smells of blood, ichor, and salt carried in by open air. The smell of smoke persisted deeper and deeper into the Keep, throwing a sedative shroud over the throngs of people scattered through the tower. It eased itself into the lungs, as a beloved cat does, pressing into the crevices of the brain and inducing an artificial sense of calm. The immediacy of the tang of blood in the mouth was lost, momentarily, in the cloying odor of smoke.

It felt calm in here - safe, even - as if the last day or so had ceased to exist. As if the Keep had never been sundered, as if they were not in the torn-open heart of Aveless. As if the sharp, metallic tang of blood didn't bite at the fringes of smoke, as if there were no dead and dying scattered between smashed doors and crumbling walls. All in a moment, one could simply close their eyes and choose to ignore it if they wished, let smoke tease the oxygen from their lungs and feel some sense of safety after all that had transpired.

The sound of soul reverberating through the hall was truly deafening, as bodies wavered between dead and dying. Some persisted. One's own heartbeat was the only consistent meter in the mess of things, and only so in this moment. Silence melded into soft murmuring, into shouting, into cries of pain and sorrow. Explosions in the distance punctuated the mess of sounds, echoing across the Black Mountains. The ebb of sounds echoed in the massive, stone hallways, in the barren parapets.

The sounds hurt her head, already wracked with fatigue accumulated over the last few days. An incredible amount of raw soul permeated the air around her head, and the sharp edge of burning flesh among the scent of smoke kept her from drifting into sleep. The sense of euphoria from using blood magic was mixed up in all of the noise, still lingering in the back of her head, like warm tendrils of smoke. She was somewhere in between conscious and asleep, an easy medium, and the rustling of activity around her seemed to suddenly awaken her. Her brain was numb, overwhelmed by the sounds around her, by the smells, and the pains that bit at parts of her body, places where gambeson and leather did not hold against iron or blood-shards. She had managed, through it all, to stop the bleeding, to clot the blood. But she was no magician, and there were still open gashes which stung with each and every movement.

Aeudla vaguely recognized that her hands were still a deep crimson with dried blood, likely her own. Drowsily, she unfastened the dark-colored gambeson now decorated in deep patches of oil, blood, and flesh. The gambeson opened, revealing the hardened leather worn underneath, and her woolen underclothes, now stained with sweat. Unthinking, she absentmindedly began to unwrap her right index, middle, and ring fingers. The linen wraps had been necessary in the close quarters they had been in, as in such tight quarters, longer pause had to be given with each arrow. And longer pause with her longbow meant more direct strain on her ruined fingertips, which were similarly strained through use of blood magic. While the bow at three-fourths draw was enough to kill or incapacitate most that came her way, it was not a close-range weapon, so blood magic was necessary. And exceedingly easy, in the small quarters where there seemed an endless amount of it.

She remembered, dimly, that the longbow must still be drawn, and that was not good for it, to be open so long. That it must be unstrung, that the leather stringer was in a pants pocket, and that the warmth of the space around her would make the task easy. She reached around for the longbow, which sat besides her, lain across the barren stone floor.

The wood disintegrated in her hands. The natural light that streamed in through a high window contorted around the wood grain, reflecting the silvery hues of the yew into her hands and she stared at this for a moment. Everyone around stared at her, gazes boring through their heads like water through a leak in a boat, and the light reflected back into their eyes. A brief moment passed as a breeze rolled lazily through the hall, chasing away the prowling plumes of smoke.

She blinked, and the yew moved under her fingers as she tested the string, which hugged the edges of the bow. Her fingertips still dribbled blood, which stained the yew a deep shade of red, and the blotches of blood spread as ink does in water, wrapping around the wood. A line of glossy, delectable cherries, then a mound of cherries with curled, leatherwhite stems. Untasted and sweet-looking, gladdened by the light streaming in. The group around her seemed to draw closer though she dare not draw her gaze away from the sight in front of her, which was - in that moment - completely and utterly perfect. The light of their gazes seemed to penetrate her in a way that was somehow physical, as if the brightness of their eyes could contort her form as the sun did.

A thought entered her brain - she still needed to unstring the bow. It was too warm in the room and the voyeuristic gazes of her companions had drawn her thoughts back to the perfect mound of cherries. Which had, for no reason at all, suddenly become discrete drupes: that one had a deep purplish bruise, another was dried up around its stone, one was completely hard and unripe. Another thought entered her brain as quickly as the other had left and she swiped madly at the image until it disintegrated into a small mass of pits and folded back into the light which now shone bare across the stones.

The bow was already unstrung, with a leather hood secured over the string nock, Aeudla discovered, as her eyelids stretched. This satisfied her, though a chill still ran across the back of her head at the thought of the eyes around her. There was a small group around her indeed, though perhaps not really around her, but around the small fire that separated them. Resting, hobbling to one side or another as if they might tip over, or murmuring to each other. Minutes passed, and she stared intently at the flames which licked the small pile of tinder, turning brown into black into white into grey into the smoke which rose into the depths of the hall.

There was no bow in her hands to steady her brain amidst the rolling fog that obscured any sort of cognizant, coherent, conceivable thought, the words muddling together and chattering endlessly away in her brain as the soul seemed to - and there was soul everywhere, especially with the Undying who were veritable walking battlefields, different shards of soul cobbled together nonsensically, unending and impenetrable, like the smoothstones that made up the huge Keep which was now crumbling around them, crumbling as Aveless was, as the mountains were, as her thoughts were.

Only one voice cut through.

“Let’s move.”