Rudolf Sagramore and Esben Mathiassen
True to Rudolf’s predictions, the short dunk in the placid sea nearby the cove and bout of furious scrubbing hadn’t quite rid his pale hair of all the hemoglobin tinge— but it felt miles better all the same. Clean enough to get back to work, at the very least.
With two days’ travel at minimum ahead, and everyone off in their own worlds or otherwise indisposed with tasks of their own, Rudolf had ended up enlisting the help of the most proven commodity of their number he knew of, behind the inspired recruitment drive that only came from familiarity.
“Hey, you’ve got a steady hand and you’re good with a knife. Bears aren’t built too different from people, gimme a hand and we might get this guy broken down in time for setting off.”While taking a dangerous beast like this down on his own was more than proof that he was stronger than the average joe, even the steel-bodied auxiliary definitely needed an extra pair of hands to divide labor on something this big and tough— as well, Esben’s eyes were just as keen as his dexterity. If there was anyone Rudolf trusted to double-check his work before he went and did something stupid like cut too deep and slit the belly prematurely, it was either him or Izayoi.
“So that was a real shitshow, wasn’t it?” He idly muttered, some time in the midst of them carefully working the pelt off with gentle, considered draws of their blades.
“Whole country’s just been going from bad to worse for us.”And between the two, if they had a few hours to burn the former was much easier to shoot the breeze with, to use an understatement. While he couldn’t deny that his opinion of the Mystrel woman had been shifted drastically for the better over the course of this journey, the place they had left off was…
Ground not worth treading. Not right now, but maybe at some point later. He doubted he’d properly processed either of the main admissions she had offered in Costa del Sol, let alone reconciled them with how he now judged her.
A sigh. Not a big one, heaving the lungs out with the shoulders, but that slow release of breath through the nose in between spouts of work.
“…You see it coming? You didn’t sound too surprised by her.”He had his doubts on that subject too— judgement.
Esben’s knife passed smoothly beneath the bear’s skin, severing connective tissue and freeing it for Rudolf to pull it just that little bit further towards complete freedom.
”I expected something of the sort,” he replied, going in with his blade again.
”Whether from one or all of them. But Isolde, specifically? I can’t say that.”He’d chosen his position in skinning the bear carefully. While he and Rudolf were both working with their knives to free the pelt, Rudolf was the one in a position to actually put the effort in to pulling it back, keeping it taut and out of the way. Of course, the younger man had still chosen his partner well—Esben’s skill with his blades extended towards both keeping them sharp and pristine, and in using them for mundane tasks like this, so Rudolf wasn’t having to fight it nearly as much as he may have otherwise.
”It makes sense, though. Think about her reaction when Izayoi dropped Cid’s name in front of them. Zacharias’s reaction would be hard to fake so believably, and he didn’t strike me as such a good actor. Alambert made a point not to react at all. Unless all three are all compromised in entirely different fashions, Isolde was the only one with a response that suggested she saw something to gain out of it. I’m doubly unsurprised that came at our expense.”A pensive pause, the two quietly continuing their work while the smaller man digested Esben’s words behind the ghost of a grimace. They were making good time thus far, but had yet to get towards the real nitty-gritty— knuckles, paws, anywhere where they had oblong bone and dense tendon to contend with and work around. Those were where they’d run into the most sunk cost of time and knife sharpness— so best to keep a steady pace through the easier tasks.
“I see.” he finally grunted, adjusting his grip as they worked their way towards the arms.
“On the other hand, I was completely blindsided. I even brought him up in passing when I entreated her guidance for breaking the seal on that sword of mine,” a nudge of the head in the direction of where the offending article of defanged steel lay.
“But I paid little heed to the way it seemed to give her pause then, too. That’d make twice.”The words left his mouth almost colorlessly. He accepted these things as being on him, as much as they were anyone.
“Careless of me. I let myself get disarmed too easily, I’ll have to be better about that. It feels… telling that, for all the mess it was back there, I was the only one who thought there’d be reason in her to appeal to.”An unkind memory appeared before his eyes, prompting a furrowed brow.
“I should know better, with her type.”Esben stopped, looking up at Rudolf with a raised eyebrow.
”Did she give you any concrete reason not to trust her?”He didn’t meet the look, replying after a moment’s consideration.
“Well, no. Not without the benefit of hindsight. If anything, her reaffirmations of faith that I’ve worked to pull myself out of the holes I’ve dug, would keep the greater good of those I’m responsible for in mind—”Here his knife drew a lazy circle through the air, rolling the concept along.
“— left me more inclined to trust what she said, at least that night.””Hindsight can be a dangerous thing.” He’d been nodding along as Rudolf answered, but after the momentary break he got back to skinning the bear that lay between them.
”It’s easy to lend it too much weight. If we fall into that, at best we can delude ourselves that we won’t let whatever happened come to pass again...something we can’t guarantee.”The worst case, of course, he doubted he even needed to say. The Edreni swordsman wasn’t a helpless idiot, after all; he’d likely already come to any number of reasonable conclusions as to the dangers of letting himself get consumed in analyzing the mistakes of the past. Indeed, if there was much that he
could stand to learn from hindsight, Esben figured the white-haired swordsman would be better served learning how not to focus on it too
much.He peeled back the skin further, holding it up for Rudolf to take in hand.
”Hers is a position that is supposed to inspire trust, even beyond her role as a Grovemaster. That she would prey upon that isn’t your failing, and it isn’t a failing to have hope that she might change her course even to the last. Or do you think my arguments were only for the benefit of those behind her?”Rudolf took hold of the flap of integument, shrugging his shoulders.
“I think what sets you apart from the rest of us is a clear eye on what’s in front of you, and knowing when best to cut your losses. A white mage like her with a full head of steam isn’t easily dissuaded from going after the profane— by neither the threat of violence nor pleas for calm.”He made a face that clearly came from realizing that sounded bitter. Esben, as was his wont,
was largely correct regarding the younger man’s tumultuous relationship with the rear-view mirror, and long battles against letting it consume him. He had lost many, and in this most recent ideation of exercising his frontal lobe, was trying to redouble his efforts in winning them.
It was going to be a lifelong process. That much was clear.
“So to answer, yes, I really kind of did. I was even wanting to start picking your brain regarding not being lead around by the nose by impressions and emotions in those moments, since so many of us seem to already. Compartmentalization, if I remember right?””It sounds insollan put that way,” Esben quipped after a moment.
”Maybe it just is.”A distant, thoughtful look. Rudolf didn’t seem terribly unfamiliar with that idea.
“I wouldn’t doubt it. One of the things my father always told me was that a good soldier has to kill some of his sollanity to function in war. That it was why he took to it so easily.”The knife stopped halfway along a pass, Esben falling almost completely still, but for the slight movement of his chest as he breathed.
”Ja?” he replied, quietly. He hadn’t expected Rudolf to interrupt him so rapidly, he’d been about to follow up with the rest of his thought, but now—
He looked up, icy blue eyes locking onto copper. Entirely expressionless, he studied Rudolf for a moment, before shaking his head.
”And would your mother deign to dally with something so profane, then, if that were so true?”Rudolf tried not to flinch at that. He really, truly tried.
“I see you’re putting some things together. I was about to call you on it, after you told me what you knew on the docks.””Indeed, and I also know that your father was the chief influence on Earl Demet after the death of his parents, and he was rather young when that happened—István, too, for that matter. Was it an accident how the earl turned out, I wonder? Or an accident that you were supposed to learn from the man?”Esben pulled the knife along the last of the pass, continuing to free the pelt. Damnably large animal.
”I don’t necessarily mean to say your father is a shining paragon, and I don’t doubt that on some level he believes what you just said—but when we’re stuck in this business of killing, we shouldn’t be looking at other opportunities to kill off parts of ourselves. If our success hinges on the ability of anybody in the group to do so, then leave that to me, and focus in on the core of what you were taught before all this.”He looked back down at the corpse, adjusting his seating as he began to strip the flesh from one of the beast’s legs.
”I wasn’t in the best mood myself, leading up to that meeting with the Grovemasters. So I stayed quiet when I already knew I should have been one of the ones to lead that discussion. What can we do with any of that in the past, but take the lesson at face value and keep moving forward?”“We’ve bled a lot of people in the past week.” Rudolf replied, electing to address the prior point first. His gaze drifted to regard a passing songbird, pensive frown on her brow as her blade seemed to fight her steadying hand.
“If we’re invoking what I was taught, there’s value in redundancy and contingency. With the state our lot is in, the party is practically at half-strength already— I don’t think it’s unreasonable to look at that, and believe it’s time to make sure we cover as many bases as we can. I don’t mean to kill my emotions off completely, but…”He returned his eye to the work, taking a breath and carefully applying tension to the leathery, claw-lined pad of the bear’s foot, giving the Skaeller ample space to sever the cartilage and sturdy tendon that jointed it to the leg they had stripped down.
“At the same time, I think it’s reasonable to expect I can try harder to keep on top of them, if only to help counteract the thunderhead and powder keg in those situations. It was no accident that the Earl’s fury still never did see him burn half the border down, he can still plot a sensible course through it. If anything, a moody kid like me should have learned that more than anything from him.”He wasn’t quite sure how shocked the SEED expected him to be regarding the throwaway connections he had made to begin framing his broader point. It being folly to assume incompetence, and doubly so with someone he both knew this well and was aware knew so much already, he expected it likely wasn’t all that much.
“...Anyway, the advice I received from him to ask you for help in keeping a low profile was in retrospect obviously pretty doomed, but the spirit of ‘Enlist Help To Cultivate Weaker Skills’— learning opportunities, to your point— still holds as well as any.””I’ve never really gotten the feeling that you’re so distracted with whatever your emotional responses are that you lose track of what’s important in front of you,” Esben countered.
”Out in the desert, even, I think it was that same knee-jerk response that saved us, given that you saved Izayoi. Maybe you just need to trust your instincts more, rather than thinking so hard through everything?”The knife paused, and faintly rosy brows furrowed. The narrower lines of the young man’s face betrayed how the last line seemed a spike through his train of thought, even as a wry quip floated out his mouth. A flippant defense, but one no less ineffectual for it. He probably knew as much, the way he seemed more comfortable staring into the bloody steel beneath him than the clear blue ice on high.
“Ha! There’s a shock. The spy’s telling me I should let my guard down more.”That much would have been enough to ward off a few people they both knew, either in turning the face of what they said back onto them quickly and confidently, or in simply frustrating them off in a huff by refusing to engage on their terms. Either way, a conversation could be killed if he kept at it.
But reality and experience were both quick to reassert themselves when this pair got into the weeds. Rudolf knew that sharp tongues were no different from the knives they held— waving them about randomly, with no follow through, only scared off people that didn’t know what they were doing.
See? There was a failure of instinct playing out right in front of you, Master Cadon. A brittle reaction that you can just stare down with a flat affect and beat.
“Respectfully, I think your confidence is misplaced. Those same instincts told me to let go when Siren had me. They told me to run to the deepest point of the ruins of a kingdom at least a thousand years under the ground and start taking whatever deals the new voice in my head offered. You had Eos follow me when I was tracking this thing down, because you know my instincts get me into just as much trouble as they get other people out of. Because I get scared, confused, and start trying to run— or worse, I just become a passenger on the road to self-destruction.”A wet pop sounded from below, as the thick joint was finally wrenched apart. There was, of course, an elephant in the room— the logical part of him he was so covetously trying to safeguard, asking
why? from his very own back line.
“Lucking into the right move one time doesn’t change that. It’s not reliable— luck never is. Definitely not for me, after I went and trashed whatever ties I had to Etro and Ithar. I need the structure. I need to be sure.””It’s not luck,” came the flat reply.
”Nor was it the only time. Your struggle isn’t one with your instincts, it’s one with keeping your focus when it isn’t down to the wire and with trusting yourself after everything is done. This conversation seems an obvious enough example of that.”With the foot severed, it was simple going to strip the rest of the leg free, just to move on to the next leg for the same process. Between the two of them and their familiarity with their blades, it was a very good thing that it wasn’t a complicated or difficult task—losing a finger because they were busy chatting didn’t seem like something Eos or Miina could easily fix. Nor, whichever of them it happened to, did it seem like something Rudolf would be likely to forgive himself for letting happen when the conversation was his idea.
”Whenever we’re not in the middle of something, you’re focused on everything else around you. Siren’s ability to manipulate minds was enough to pull Eve out of the fight, even. I sent Eos with you because I was worried you’d convinced yourself that you deserved sequestration away from us, and didn’t want to risk something happening because of what you think you should get. And I’m sure Earl Demet would have some words for you regarding that choice to run off in the face of everything he was trying to cultivate in you, and I sincerely doubt it would be blaming your instincts rather than your thought process.”“So— I should exercise greater focus on what I can control. That being getting the reins in on how I actively synthesize my conscious reactions when I’m faced with a revelation I don’t like.”He didn’t care how informed the man across from him was. Unless he had met the Earl
personally, he couldn’t have any cause to be
that sure of what Rudolf’s mentor would have to say about the psychological trainwreck he’d spent eighteen months trying to foster into a respectable second son. Esben probably
did at least believe it, knowing him and his hatred of lying.
But that being the case, the swordsman instead chose to pick at
what they were arguing instead of letting that detail bog him down. It was good bookkeeping on more than one level to note that the part of him on the inside that always kept score logged the pivot as an implicit concession— he could muster no satisfactory counterpoint, beyond simply reiterating his beliefs on where the problem truly lied. He knew what he had felt of himself.
In the face of stalemate and deadlock, of course, real or perceived, the best course of action was to reorganize the field. Find a different angle that could take you forward. Mechanically, this suddenly sounded pretty similar to his original thesis, if you boiled it down past this contextual disagreement. “Planning better and more actively is probably good” was an easy truism to return to, regardless of where they respectively attributed the hangups. Downwind of “getting the head on straight” all the same.
“What was the saying from the Garden, then? ‘Trust but verify’? I’ve run into a couple regular SEEDs sellswording before you, I think that was how it went.”He could offer a draw.
Esben let the silence drag on between them as he continued working at the next leg. He did, of course, have a chance to let the topic end and move on to another; Rudolf
had started getting at the point he was making, after all. Not entirely, but it was close. All the same, he didn’t entirely want to let up when so near the finish.
Perhaps it was some pent-up frustration boiling over making him not feel as charitable as he normally might. Perhaps he was just greedy, and would sooner try for a mate than take the guaranteed not-losing. Either way, he didn’t let up like Rudolf possibly hoped—merely changed tactics.
”You’ve also talked with others about some of this, ja? Izayoi? Galahad?”“Some of it, yes.” the younger man replied readily, seemingly unperturbed by the pivot— new angles of attack, after all. His knife seemed to glide along with the reply, heedless of the muscle it pared off as he seemed the greed.
“You’re not the only person to field concerns and questions regarding how we’re to move forward in this place.”With the methodology already having passed its trial run a leg ago, in short order they had mirrored their stripping of meat from bone, and pried the pelt away. Somewhat terrifyingly, this was the
cleaner work of the carcass— the torso was going to be much, much more involved, even though it was where the traditional idea of the best cuts sat. Rump, back flap, all that— it would be a lot of Rudolf maneuvering and maintaining position of the carcass so Esben, the defter hand, could focus solely on the knife work. Downside of working on a sandbar— at least in Sagramore, there was no shortage of stone you could work into an ad-hoc butchery table.
“It was really enlightening.” He quipped out the side of his mouth.
“From the former, I confirmed that one more drop of sin in the bucket was a small price to pay for getting the mission done, even if that drop was reliving the time she almost kidnapped me or another of my family. From the latter… well, I found myself playing devil’s advocate for why the Grovemasters might have sent us off on the trial in the first place. The ceremonial adherence and withholding of Neve seemed to grate, to the tune of active obstruction. From there it was into making good on my promise to report in when I thought my ill-gotten gains might become an active problem.”Esben winced at the off-hand mention of Neve and Galahad’s reaction to her sudden re-departure. Indeed, he’d been suspecting that her loss was part of their ostensible leader’s downward-trending mood, after what he’d seen of them aboard the ship. That was just another source for the things that were troubling him as of late.
”So, in another sense,” he started slowly, electing not to comment on those troubles,
”Stay focused on what’s in front of you, not on castigating yourself for any past transgressions, perceived or true?”It was a pretty sudden extrapolation from the little portion that Rudolf had said, but imagining the pair of them in private conversation...it made enough sense to Esben’s mind that it could well have boiled down to that.
”Otherwise, he trusts you. We all do, and when the chips are down you’re often one of the soonest of us to act. Who was it that kept Ciradyl from outright murdering Mizutani Tane? Who was it that I chose to join me infiltrating Hien’s prison?” He lifted his knife from the bear’s corpse, one finger lifting from the grip to point at his target.
”That ‘trust but verify’ applies to yourself, here, not just to everything else. Take some heart in the things you do right, rather than just focusing in on the things you do wrong out of some misguided attempt to be perfect. And it applies to how you look at all of us, too, though I’ll be charitable and assume this is you verifying that our trust in you isn’t blind. At the very least...”The knife shifted in his grip, now becoming the implement with which he pointed at Rudolf.
”Remember that there are multiple of us who would not hesitate to inform you if we felt you weren’t pulling your weight, or were becoming an absolute detriment. Neither of which has been the case, nor is it the case now with this latest betrayal. We were all taken by it, and the only benefit some of us had was that we were either angry enough with the Grovemasters to want them to give us more reason to be, or were expecting any one of them to be the sort that Isolde proved herself to be...but none of us suspected her specifically.”At some point, what felt like a fair while back now, this had stopped being quite about Isolde. Rudolf realized that promptly, finding himself all but handing the material over with a deep breath through the nose. Instead, his new line of defense was simple to the point of seeming childish—
“Yes, that’s… what I meant. Trust but verify. Me.” he replied, his knife coming to a standstill.
—But earnest in that simplicity. What the hell? That was what he’d been getting at the whole time. Trust his gut instinct more? Fine, but make damn sure he could follow it through without it blowing up in his face.
“Look, I’m well aware that perfection isn’t attainable.” he began to hedge, sensing the loss in tempo a moment too late.
“But refinement certainly is, even if I need to focus on what’s in front of me primarily. Because that’s still the situation we’re in right now, and it’s gonna take a lot of legwork to pull ourselves out of the hole. Whole country’s against us. We should all be trying to play our cards as wisely as we can, especially since we’ve got more than one ‘murder Mizutani’ impulse to be worried about.”He glanced to a shock of pink further down the sandbar, hard at work trying to cobble together her greatest joy in life.
“So she finally got those all dug up. That must’ve made for a fun date.”Esben sat in silence as Rudolf worked his way through trying to fully articulate his thought process, laying off the attack for the moment. It almost seemed like he wouldn’t need to point out just
why he felt the need to turn Rudolf’s words back on him, when instead—
”Hva?”Rudolf said something so disconnected from the conversation that it was like he’d started stacking dominos between his pieces and Esben’s on the chess board. Esben’s forehead furrowed in a frown that didn’t quite reach his lips.
”Sær.”A beat.
Of the two of those, Rudolf had definitely figured out “Hva” by now, and thus chose to work with what was familiar.
“A long walk on the beach is a nice followup to the day out in Costa del Sol. I’d thought that one was just for the audience’s sake, but there’s no guards here to sell it to.”A smirk crossed his lips, even as he set his blade down and began to lift the bear’s hulking frame. It had been an idle thought given voice much sooner than an actual planned path of escape, but…
“What were you guys getting up to, anyway? I was kinda surprised the arlettes actually happened.”Esben stared for a moment. His head cocked slightly.
”What are you insinuating?”The head tilt was more or less mirrored now, owing to the power of suggestion. You didn’t need to be from Skael to feel the fundamental human impulse to mimic an odd movement, but maybe you did to understand the full breadth of how they operated after all.
“Oh, was that actually just for the bit?”Painful as his Mom was to think about, she
did always say it was a lot easier to take the blood out of Midgar than Midgar out of the blood.
Esben’s furrowed brow remained for a moment longer before finally relaxing.
”You really do get some strange ideas,” he mused after another moment of silence, turning to look down the beach at the woman Rudolf had just been asking him about.
”I really have no clue what she and I were talking about before you showed up. She said it wasn’t anything important, at least. I don’t think she would lie to me about that.”Well, not intentionally. Rudolf quietly chose not to say. Though he’d hardly spoken more than twice with her, it was clear that pair had very disconnected ideas of what was “important”, even if he’d evidently misread one angle of it.
Esben cocked his head again.
”The arlettes were Elly making good on something she promised me on the ship. I wonder if she knows a good recipe for krumkaker...”“You really just zoned out the whole day?” Rudolf asked, somewhat shocked that there wasn’t even a cursory idea beyond ‘nothing important, I’m told’.
“What, like a sleep thing, or…”Hey, maybe you were on the right track after all.His eyes narrowed as he casually redirected his gaze back towards the carcass. So that had prompted this guy to wake back up. Odd. He kind of believed in it less, now that he heard the actual worst influence he’d been gullible enough to believe choosing to back it.
Wouldn’t you zone out completely walking along a nice painting-like beach with the girl you liked?I genuinely have no idea.Rudolf had no idea how he got the impression that a disembodied voice in his head was smiling cryptically after that dry rebuttal. Maybe
he was the one that needed better sleep. Would be a good start on the case he’d just argued for, certainly…
Esben rocked his head back and forth, thinking for a moment, before he shrugged.
”I haven’t been sleeping well,” he admitted.
”For the same reason that you may be sleeping better, I imagine.”“Not really. Dreams have been getting real weird. Existential. Confrontational.” ”Mmm. That’s a shame.”He turned back, catching Rudolf’s narrowed eyes focused on the bear, and raised an eyebrow in response.
”Is it really so surprising? I’ve got a lot on my mind lately, and she wasn’t really demanding too much of it there.”Rudolf cocked his head and shrugged the less load-bearing shoulder after a moment’s thought. That wasn’t a terribly hard concept to get his head around when explained that way, in fairness, more just…
“A little unlike you, is all. Until now, it didn’t seem like anything really got past your notice or that you ever weren’t as on top of things as somebody could… well, reasonably be, given the circumstances. That’s part of why I started the whole ‘I should ask for pointers’ talk.””I suppose I can just...trust her not to do anything that demands much of my attention? At least at times like this. In front of guards or Grovemasters is a different story, clearly.”“That makes sense,” Rudolf replied neutrally.
“She’s more of a known quantity to you than the rest of us, or something.”Or something. The voice unheard agreed, mirthful in a horrible way Rudolf had only ever believed his direct family capable of.
“But, yeah, part of me wonders if we shouldn’t keep a hold of some load-bearing mechanism to that thing while we aren’t immediately needing it.” he then agreed, nodding along to the final point with a mostly-quelled huff.
“Like a…”He blinked as he ran into the twin brick walls of technological and educational gaps. For all the good ensconcing himself in a village of very traditional artisans of the blade had been, he was suddenly very aware of how little they cared for what the hell a “gun” even was, even the rudimentary ones that Edren was beginning to adopt— let alone something so advanced as those the still-faraway invaders from Valheim had brought to bear upon the people of Osprey.
“Gear for the winch thing, maybe.” he finished lamely.
That, he needed to shore up ASAP. He had the general concept down between news passed along through his mentors and now a good helping of lived experience staring down the business end of them, but if he somehow got to the point where one had become his last option, given his worrying tendency to
lose his preferred tools of the trade recently…
He wasn’t all that certain he had much in him beyond “point, pull trigger, and hope it’s loaded”. Good thing they were looking right at somebody who evidently lived, ate, slept, and breathed all the rest.
“Well, clearly I’ll need to ask her for advice on her specialty too.” he muttered, shaking off a dark cloud of embarrassment that wouldn’t do any of them any good, taking his foot out his mouth, and clearing his throat.
“That being said, everyone’s always asking me, so it’s my turn for the question— what’s been eating at you?””Deciding what to do about the Grovemasters that hopefully won’t push Drana Asnaeu into a period of lawlessness or potential civil war. Or overly strain our own resources preventing either.”An eyebrow rose.
“And nothing little miss Logistics Are Mythological said to you while you were thinking about that registered as important?”Silence. Lasting longer than was normally customary for Esben, even when he
did decide to let it drag on for effect.
”...I think I would have noticed if she said something that applied.” He paused again, trying to think back to anything she may have said to him while they were walking...finding a completely empty space.
”Was it really so noteworthy that I was walking with her?”“It’s a bit of a pattern. A lot like us and being wanted fugitives in warm places.” he grunted, clicking his tongue.
“I really don’t see any deposition attempt not leading to the exact type of fracas we wanna avoid, as you said— leaving the country with a power vacuum is gonna have about five Valheim airships here by yesterday. As would suddenly electing to start intracontinental infighting. That whole idea’s a mess from every angle I can think of. You weaken their self-defense capabilities, split both nations’ manpower and attention away from the actual problem, any applicable force projection’s gonna have to go through our territory— Whiiiich I understand you already know.”He stopped abruptly, realizing he was starting to ramble and preach to the choir. He’d had an easy time brushing that off for the moment it had popped up, but it was now clear to him that the idea had crawled under a rock and lived somewhere in the back of his mind for a while now. He held up a hand, coated in a violent red but all the same apologetic.
“My bad. Back on topic. I guess one of the primary concerns would be the apostasy argument getting to Zacharias, given he seems the old conservative fogey? If we assume Isolde to be a lost cause, then… we’d have to at least isolate as much of her pull as possible, right? Keep the possibility of two versus one to our favor, and all.”Esben nodded.
”Exactly. I may be hopeful that she can see reason, but I really do not think it’s feasible to get Isolde to reverse course, especially after trying to alert half the country to our presence. Alambert is a wild card, keeping things as close to his chest as possible. Zacharias—for all that he was opposed to us from the start—was also the easiest to read, and, perhaps, may be one of the easiest to get to.”“Makes sense. Better the devil you know.” Rudolf let the Isolde portion of the problem hang. Nothing more to be said on it at this point.
“So from there, it’s a question of getting him isolated from the other two, and getting the right words to his ears in the right context. Stack the deck as much as possible against chance.”The frown folding over his expression grew, as he ran what he’d gleaned from the Team’s brief encounter with the ancient sage. Not a lot to work with, regrettably. For all he knew, they’d held Neve back because she was to be brought up as his successor, or something— he knew that you had to be old as
dirt to look so wizened as a regular practitioner of white magic.
The older you got, the more you set in your ways, and the harder your mind was to change once it was made. They were fighting an uphill battle no matter how they played it.
“We’d have to take the messenger into account too. We know his opinion on Izayoi. We can probably guess them about Galahad, given they’re related to the war. Then there’s the question of you yourself— Being from Skael at all probably puts you at a disadvantage in trying to persuade somebody who I’m sure thinks of Materia as an affront to the Mothercrystal. Even before ‘military intervention’ was threatened…”Rudolf himself was of course right out. He doubted Isolde would be the only Grovemaster to sense that there was something
else in the room with him— and whether her faith in his character beyond was sincere or not, first impressions left him doubtful Zacharias would offer the same grace.
“It’s looking pretty messy, isn’t it?”Esben nodded.
”Challenging, to be sure,” he agreed. That was why he’d been putting so much thought into it, after all.
”But not impossible, I think. There may be ways to make use of what little information and what few advantages we do have. If not...”He shrugged.
”The mission comes first, as it always does. We may just have to apologize to Neve later.” He worked on in silence for a bit longer, before speaking up as though he’d only just remembered something
else important:
”Thinking of, I haven’t had a moment to bring it up to the others, and I doubt Éliane has either, but we need to go to Skael after we’re done here.””Meaning we bypass Edren for now? he asked, tone refusing to give anything but careful neutrality away.
”We’d need to get another favor from Bikke, or something. Taking any overland route I can think of would make not verifying the Earth on the way a wasted opportunity.”Of the two remaining nations, both had more robust self-defense capabilities than these warmer northlands, but so far only
one had seen its highest authority directly threatened by infiltrators. If Valheim had managed to push all the way into Balmung, then there was no getting around that Edren
was under more threat— at least with what they knew right now. To say nothing of sharing a land border with Occupied Osprey, albeit through a classically defensible mountain pass.
He was curious if he’d hear the reasoning— there had to be something pretty time-sensitive to demand the detour, as far as he could tell.
”Maybe. Depends on if we just followed the coast, and moved down by Lunaris and the Demet marches,” Esben mused after a moment, though taking a ship would be faster by far—even accounting for the possibility of another maritime attack.
”Ideally, Edren’s crystal is somewhat more secure right now, even if Leonhart had to be bypassed for it. We may be able to rely on the land to keep us a bit more hidden if that’s the case. That might give us a better chance to make it to Solitude in one piece.”Ooh, yeah. Do Lunaris. We’ll all have fun there. I’ll have something neat to show everyone, once I’m back home. After all, you’re taking forever to do it.He mulled it over after telling the nonverbal peanut gallery off, looking a little apprehensive.
“I’m… sure the Earl’s already been working on that front, at least in calling in favors. He’s as up to speed as we were the evening we hit Costa del Sol. If I could manage to get word out ahead, he’ll at least be ready for us once we hit the marches if we do as you suggest. He’ll be a good host, we might be able to use the archives for further research, Wulf’ll be there, we can cross reference plans of action with him, it’d be helpful.”In his mind, he could trace the winding march south along the sandbar, dozens of coves, inlets and deltas similar to those they had tucked themselves into now along the path. Eventually, it’d give way to rockier bluffs and cliffsides as they hit the true lowlands— a billion nooks and crannies to hide a fighting force of less than ten within. If they could guarantee a good pace, it made a lot of sense.
”It may just be a redundancy by the time we’re at that point, but I think he’d have a few ways of getting us across the border without raising much alarm from potential third parties— but if he is under surveillance, than we can’t expect much movement for him to meet us on the way to Lunaris, and that’d make sense, he’s got a big chunk of Edren to worry about… What’s got us detouring?”He fell silent, spinning away at it, the question almost an air-filling afterthought. If he didn’t need both hands to keep their carcass properly braced, he’d have been cupping his chin by now.
”I miss the Laruelle bakery,” Esben replied drily.
…
”She’s right there. The arlettes were good.”…
”Also, orders.”“Ah. Orders.” Rudolf echoed, in that way you did when you knew damn well that was going to be where that conversation ended. The way SEEDs operated, there was every possibility Esben himself didn’t know beyond ‘we need you to reroute down to Solitude ASAP’— or that he had been instructed to keep it brief. Even if he
was the type that lied, it wouldn’t serve him in the long run. If he knew and was at liberty to say, he would. If either of those prerequisites were untrue, this is where they’d end up.
“No helping it then, I guess. We’ll need to go there anyway. And I’ve got black pearls to find while I’m down there, presuming Isolde was honest with me regarding breaking curses.”He thought about it. A diversion at this stage of the game could be a real blunder if it didn’t pay off…
“She did think we’d play ball when she demanded Cid, so I have to assume there was something to that. Fine, Skael it is. But since you bring it up, Castle Demet would be… wise to hit on the way.”To tell the whole truth, if they did move in that direction, he wasn’t quite sure what would be waiting for him there. A good dressing-down by the Earl for the mess he’d gotten into at the very least, now a wanted man in two countries… to say little of anyone else that might just happen to be
visiting. Hell, even Wulfric might just give him a good hiding the way he did to “check up” in Sagramore.
But the other Kirins could probably get something out of it, aside from just a chance to recover from the long sojourn.
”Mmm. I found a grey one once when I pulled open a mussel. But it wasn’t worth anything, I think.” He didn’t really have any comment to add on the matter of visiting the Earl Demet, so he focused in on the pearl situation.
”That may prove difficult. What else did she say you might need? We may take some time to verify it when we get the chance but I can’t imagine any reason she’d have to lie about any of that. It would be pointless.”He took a moment to himself before speaking. Logically, leveraging the abilities, knowledge bases, and skillsets of everyone he was alongside to get this objective done made sense. Any idiot could see that. None of it
had to be accomplished by the swordbearer— otherwise there was an immediate failure baked into needing a mage of exemplary caliber to actually do the cursebreaking.
But he was human. He had been raised a certain way, and valued certain things. He couldn’t help it—
“It’s middle of the pack. Easiest ought to be the diamond dust,” push came to shove, he could haggle a jeweler out of an uncut stone and crush it himself.
”Haggling”.A subcategory of the art of “persuasion”, typically one tier up on the scale from “suggestion” by introducing sharp objects to the talk. A good use case was discussed just a few minutes ago, where the SEED intends to “haggle” with Zacharias until he gives you guys what you want.“...The bad one is going to be the still-beating heart of a dragon. I’m gonna have a lot of legwork to do, even if I enlist you guys’s help.”—He did
want to get it all done off the back of his own work. Some things were just that way.
”Well. Good thing we have a dragoon.”A pained expression.
“You’re right, but that spearwork is hard to adjust to. Not to mention, our other lance is now at the bottom of the sea.”Rudolf very much wanted to worry about sorting the other two components out first. The detour was looking more and more enticing by the minute— the dragons of Midgar were famously tough-hided, to the point that the only blade he wielded that might have gotten through was the very same he needed the heart to truly leverage in the first place. He wanted more time. A lot more. At the very least, enough to figure out how the hell he was to get ahold of a heart that kept
going after being carved out of the cage of steel scales— as he understood it, Dragoons typically aimed to sever the spinal cord at the base of the skull.
Most hearts stopped when the brain went dark.
There’s a metaphor in that.Present company included, he noted, now all but freed of its hide and a good selection of its meat. How long had they been at this?
”Mmm.”Esben shrugged again, and looked down at the carcass. But for the head, they were essentially done.
”Was there more you needed of me?”Well, that was a good question. On the face of it, that was just about everything he’d meant to enlist Esben’s help in, for better or for worse manifestations of it. The guy clearly needed a break, too, so if nothing came to him in the next few seconds…
Ask him if he’s fine with you calling her Elly too, see what he feels about it. Maybe he’d learn it makes him protective.A slow exhalation, followed by a shake of the head. Caught in a salty breeze from the water, the beast-blood anointed locks hung a little more wildly.
“No… No, I should just be finishing up the pelt and figuring out what I wanna do with the offal. Maybe… fishing bait, or something. Like chicken gizzards on catfish lines. I’ll talk with Izayoi and Galahad about it, go get some rest, man.””...I don’t know how likely that is. I’ll wash up at least.” With a nod, Esben stood, and left for the water’s edge a second time.
Rudolf watched him go, not sure what help he could really offer beyond praying it settled soon. Surely at least a little time to decompress, stop thinking while they could, and listen to the waves lapping against the shore… ought to do
some good.
You’re no fun. You should’ve bugged him. And you’re hardly a good authority on relaxing, either. I’ll show you how it’s done.After that, silence, like somebody had quietly left a room beneath his notice.
Once again, Rudolf had his thoughts, his knife, and his task, all to himself. He grunted something that wasn’t quite a word in any of the languages he’d learned, and all the same got back to work.
