Michellin

Wanderers

Kire smirked at his suggestion of a tavern, grinned briefly at his question about Rab. “He’s very taken with her, isn’t he?” she remarked, facing him as he leaned on his makeshift crutch. “Can’t say I blame him, really. She’s quite the woman.” She smiled softly as she said this. “As for a tavern, that’s sorely tempting, but I don’t know how welcome any of our faces would be there if we’re spotted and recognized.” She looked him over as she spoke; there was something about his demeanor that told her something was weighing on his mind that made him more withdrawn than usual. She had this impression of a door closing between them, and for some reason she couldn’t explain, the thought made her feel melancholy, even if she had no real expectations that they’d get along better after their shared ordeal. “Maybe I’d rather just buy a whole barrel and bring it back here to drink before I go home. You do drink, do you? You should at least celebrate the fact that I’m leaving.”

Wanderers

Kire put her hands on her hips, observing their work, trying to picture what he was seeing. She snorted softly at Akuma and Ikegai's opinion of them both, though her derision was partly defensiveness. "They have a point," she muttered. Even now, working together on something mundane, both of them refused to be doing nothing, both too hardheaded for their own good.

When he spoke again, it took a moment to realize what he meant. "I wondered about that. Her hold was pretty strong back there, too." She glanced at him. "You were fighting hard, too. I didn't expect you to move the way you did." She had questions about that, but, as usual with him, didn't expect him to give a long answer. "Gods. It would be nice to have a good long drink," she murmured.

Wanderers

Kire was looking around, trying to picture what might be a good place for the pantry. When he spoke again, she straightened up in thought. She had lost track of who she had made privy to this information. Envy, yes. Oh. Right. Akuma. Kire sighed. "Yeah. You don't have those around here, do you?" She went back to work, carefully bending over to scratch lines in the soil. "I'd have thought she would tell you. I expected her to be someone who would wave that in your face."

Wanderers

As tight-lipped as ever. But he did answer her question. She watched him move stiffly between tasks, and it felt like trying not to scratch an annoying itch not to ask him if he wanted help. “I’m not fully healed yet, so I’ll give myself a day, maybe two, since bones are trickier even with magic. And then I’ll go home. Have to let them know I didn’t die from my foolish adventures.” She touched her hair, conscious of the spot where the injury had been. “There are a couple of loose ends, mostly concerning Gavin. I’ll sort it out with him when we’re both ready to talk about it but…I might ask him if he wants to go back to Amria with me. That’ll be a bit complicated, considering his kin usurped my throne, but hopefully my family won’t murder him on sight.”

Continuing to watch him, there was only so much self-control she could have. “What do you need done?” she asked, gesturing. “Can’t lift trees at the moment, but I think I can draw lines in the dirt.”

Wanderers

Kire, for once, didn’t volunteer herself into the task, having enough self-restraint to know she was in no condition to do so. When he spoke, Kire sighed; she hadn’t expected the question to be the first thing he said to her, but she had been anticipating it coming one way or another. “It’s…” Her voice trailed off. She had posed this question to herself, but she didn’t know the answer. Or didn’t have one answer. “A relief, for one,” she said after a pause. “It’s not like my other big problems had gone away but—it feels like it. Like I could do something right again. That I can cross out my list of impossible promises. It’s a well-worn phrase, but like a weight has been lifted, and I got back something that’s been stolen from me.”

She watched him toil. “Envy was right for not liking that plan. That was colossally dangerous.” She meant it as a light joke, but her tone came out more seriously than she had intended. Kire paused again before speaking. “You? How do you feel? You were alone with her for a while. That can’t have been easy.”

Wanderers

Kire couldn’t help but grin at how paternal Envy was to the newcomers, and even before Envy had explicitly said ‘yes’, she knew the answer. Though she did grimace at his ribbing about her tree-punching temper tantrum. Rab looked delighted. She looked to Gavin, who looked like he didn’t know how to be happy yet at a new opportunity. He raised his head to face Envy, already having felt more warmth within the few minutes of meeting the Kartaian than in the six months of captivity with Akuma, and the years before that with Briar. “I don’t mind work,” Gavin said, realizing more and more how new this all was to him: being welcomed, spoken to as an equal, being given a choice. “My hands get to do something good, for once.”

“You brought me back,” Kire said softly. “I’d say you’re off to a good start.” She looked at him, solemn, and Gavin met her look with a smile, his eyes welling up even as he tried to look composed in front of everyone. Kire looked away, giving him his privacy. “Alright. I am terribly happy to be back in—more or less one piece, but if you’ll excuse me, I haven’t eaten in a day, and I still have a lot recuperating to do. We’ll talk another time,” she added to Gavin. The young man watched her nod at Rab, then wave at Aeron, before heading off, presumably to find food.
Left behind in the main chamber, Gavin cleared his throat, rubbed the tears from his face. “So, uh. Where do I start?”

Just as she’d said, Kire settled in the kitchen and hunted down some leftovers. Making a note to perhaps ask either Gavin or Rab if they knew how to hunt, and to help replenish the pantry if so, she ate quietly, glad for the meal, glad to be smelling things other than the dank caverns of Cordon, or the blood-stink of taboo magic, or the rotting dolls. She had eaten too fast the first few bites, which hurt her throat, but she didn’t care. Somebody had made a simple soup, and this she slurped down with gusto. She wanted to bathe, but she was still exhausted, and now that she was full, quite sleepy again. Though it wasn’t even evening yet, the moment she found a spot to lay on inside the sleeping chamber, Kire went fast asleep.

She slept through the night, waking up in the early morning. She rose carefully, checked her torso. It was easier to rise now, and her ribs bothered her less. Wanting to savor the peace of the early morning, she quietly left the chamber, noting that Gavin lay curled in the far corner, and made her way through the kitchen, outside. The dawn looked so beautiful to her then. She remembered the burst of happiness she felt when they had escaped the mines and felt the sun on her face. Then, looking southward at the woods beyond, Kire remembered Ruli. He was the only one she hadn’t spoken to thus far since waking up. Though she recognized that wandering off to be by himself was, by now, par for the course for him, it didn’t stop her from being anxious about his wellbeing.

Before that, though, she needed to bathe. After what felt to her an agonizingly long time, she managed to get it off. She could devote most of the Ring’s energy to healing her body now, at least. She bathed carefully, shivering in the cold and slightly regretting the decision to do this with a sore torso to worry about, but feeling much better about it afterwards. She looked at her reflection as she dried her hair, cringing at what was left of the head injury. At least her hair had already been very short; getting some of it skinned off would have been more hideous if she had kept her long hair.

She took her time making her way south, following Ruli’s signature. Without any chores to do or a battle to look forward to, Kire could enjoy the walk and their surroundings better. By the time she found him she felt warm from the exertion and from the morning sun. He was already working, clearing out the forest. It looked like the others already had a headstart on the task, and he was slowly continuing it. To her credit, she didn't interrupt him just yet, observing from the edge. He looks alright, she noted, relieved.

Wanderers

Gods, it was good to see Envy and Aeron’s faces. It made Kire feel all the more that it was over, and that she had, in fact, survived the ordeal. At his question about Ysaryn and Ruli, she answered readily, minus Ysaryn’s greeting for Zeke. Kire felt Gavin’s death-grip on her wrist, however, and realized too late that there was one other thing besides Shadow-Walking they hadn’t explained to him. “Calm down, Gavin, he’s on our side,” she whispered. Gavin swallowed; nodding. If he could accept that Kire was a totally different entity from the doll version of her, he could accept that there was a good-hearted Kartaian. To Envy, Kire said, “The one to my left is Gavin. He’s the Gemini, just so you know, but he’s not what he seemed. He had been under their control, but he’s free now.” Gavin bowed his head at this, swallowing. Kire continued. “The one to my right,” she paused, looking at Rab, amused at his inquisitiveness, “is Rab. Similarly freed from Ikegai and Akuma. He’s half-Kartaian. He can’t speak. Rab, Gavin, this is Envy, and the boy is Aeron. They used to live in Ziad.”

“I—” Gavin swallowed again, then sunk into silence, not quite knowing what to say. He looked to Kire, waiting for instruction, realizing with frustration that despite being free now he didn’t know what to decide to do.
“May they stay here, for the meantime, while they figure out what they want to do with their hard-won freedom?” she asked in his stead, smirking at Gavin briefly.

Wanderers

Afternoon? “What the f—” Kire’s rasped words were interrupted with a coughing fit, “—fuck day is it?” She grunted, footing unsure as the two helped her to her feet, but she managed to keep steady once they’d released their grip on her. Kire touched her head gingerly where she’d had the injury, and found that though the Ring had done its job to speed up the healing, the slaver’s sword had shaved off a little of her short hair. Must be a pretty sight, she thought sullenly. The atmosphere around the room was somber, understandably, but Kire was glad to note that they were all there and alive. She gave each one a measured look: the half-Kartaian, curious like a child almost, the Gemini, her knife still in his possession, whose signature, though mostly the same, seemed to have shifted slightly, and Rulitus, sullen and sulky as ever. And Ysaryn—Kire was grateful to have her here, and to have her take on the role of Chieftess. Water, gods. Kire felt like she hadn’t tasted anything sweeter when she finally had her drink. While Ysaryn went off, Kire looked from Gavin to Ruli. “Someone fill me in on what I missed.”
Gavin looked at her, unspeaking at first. He had gotten a good look while she was still asleep, and now that she was up and about again, and without the threat of death crashing down around them, he continued to see how different she was from the Akuma he knew. But nobody else was answering her question, so with a sigh, he told her a much-abridged version of events, having already done this during the interrogations.

Later, when they finally took their leave, Kire stayed silent, both to conserve her strength and to contemplate what had just happened. The cast was uncomfortable but necessary till the Ring could heal her injuries completely, and till then she wanted to rest before jumping through another portal. She listened as Ysaryn posed her question to Rab and Gavin. “Mountains?” the young man asked. He had removed the black surcoat, which had gotten tattered beyond repair anyway, and wore simpler garb this time, his hair a mess he didn’t bother to fix.
“I still have questions for you,” Kire finally said. “I’d like you to come back with us.” Gavin paled a little at that. It sounded like a threat. When Kire saw the expression, she sighed, shaking her head. “I’m not going to hurt you if that’s what you’re thinking.”
“I—I don’t want to stay here,” he said, looking away. “I have nowhere, nobody, to go to anyway. Oh.” He pulled out the hunting knife and handed it to her. “This is yours, right?”
She took the knife, observed it. He obviously took good care of it. She hadn’t known a Gemini who would keep anything with the Wyvern sigil on their person. “Keep it. Seemed to have served you well.” The expression on his face then as he took back the knife told Kire this was the first time he had actually received a gift freely given. To Ysaryn, Kire said, “I’ll rest in the mountains, but let me know if your people need anything else I can help with. I hope they’re all right.” She offered a small smile to the chieftess. Not long later, they found a spot where they would be unseen, and Kire prepared to enter the shadows. “What’s happening? Are we waiting for horses?” Gavin whispered. Kire smirked.

To Gavin’s horror, they were not. They emerged in the mountains, where Gavin stumbled forward, breathing heavily from the shock. He knew the Kartaians could do this but hadn’t known what it was like. Kire breathed in the cool, clean mountain air, so very glad to be back here. Ruli had already walked off, still without having said anything yet. Gavin had mentioned this might be the effect of the drugs wearing off, but she was still worried about him. “Come on, let’s show our faces.”

Wanderers

The councilman eyed the elf-warrior, expressionless as she introduced herself and made her pleas. He looked to the other man, who, like his companions, seemed to have been dragged from the depths of hell by the look of him. His gaze fell to Gavin, a face he’d looked at several times already, but this young man—soot-covered, disheveled—had an expression on his face that made him almost unrecognizable, as if he was a completely different person to the one the councilman had seen serving Itallo. The thought of the dead lord curled his lips in anger. Some of the council who hadn’t been bought by him had found his movements of late suspicious, but this was something else entirely. Like the man had made a pact with demons.

“’Ysaryn’, hm? You are Scindere’s daughter then?” he said by way of question, still observing the rather raggedy group. He looked at the unconscious member of their party, gestured at the one on the ground. “I take it that woman isn’t Itallo’s bride-to-be?” He had met her when Itallo presented the woman to the council yesterday. A strange kind of alluring, the kind that was beckoning to them to give up their world, their own wives and families, to lay themselves at their feet. They were so enthralled by her, would do anything for her, in fact. Now, he wasn’t sure why he felt that at all, and he certainly didn’t feel it for the bloodstained woman lying exhausted with her sword at her hip. He had many, many questions, as he was the sure the surviving councilmen had, too. Some of their number, who had been at Itallo’s manor when The Madness had taken over the people earlier, had to be hauled away or put down, behaving like rabid dogs and attacking others. The price they paid for casting their lot with a madman.

He turned and gave orders to his people. They would be cared for, though under guard, at his estate. As much as there needed to be an investigation, he wanted to get away from this accursed place. Somebody came forward to give water to the group at his instruction. After arrangements were made for wagons to carry the rescued women and this group, they were off, the latter flanked by guards. Later, at his estate, they were put in simple quarters together, provided food and more water, while healers went in to look them over and treat their wounds. They didn’t quite know what to do with Kire, though, who was still asleep. She came in with a gash on her head that looked partly healed, and upon observation she seemed to have some broken ribs, which they had treated. But half a day later, the wound on her head already looked much better, as if it had been healing for a few days already. As they recovered in the room that was, in essence, a temporary prison, each member of the party, save for the one without a tongue, was questioned about the events of the day, with Gavin having been interrogated the longest.

Gavin wasn’t sure if any of them would even believe anything he had to say, both because of his closeness to Itallo and the sheer strangeness of every horrible detail, but he gave them what he could explain most plainly: that his former masters had been responsible for what happened to Ziad, that they had captured and enslaved him and, under pain of death, made him serve the lord Itallo to use him, that they were planning to do to Cordon what had happened to Ziad. Had the people of Cordon not seen The Madness themselves and witnessed the horrors happening at Itallo’s manor, he doubted he would be believed at all.

When it was Ysaryn’s turn, the councilman, pondered on the Chieftain’s daughter. Well-spoken, second language aside, rational, at least as far as he could tell. Save for the obviously very elfin appearance, she had the bearings of some foreign ambassador’s daughter. Too bad about being elf, though. But still. Given the events of the day, the councilman had many things to think over.

And still, Kire slept. It wouldn’t be till little more than a whole day later, when, finally, they were allowed to leave, that she finally woke up. The councilman had offered coin, too, for their trouble, with the implication that he was buying their silence on the whole truth. She opened her eyes at around late afternoon, finding herself in a chamber she didn’t recognize. The first thing she felt was thirst, followed closely by a raging hunger, and when she took a deep breath, pain in her chest. It wasn’t as sharp as when it had been fresh, and she felt a cast around her torso that meant she had been treated, too. Where am I? she thought, frowning at the ceiling, not yet daring to sit up. Gods, she was still sore. “Fuuuuuuuuck,” she rasped.

Wanderers

One moment, she was bracing against a wall of rock, her heart so close to giving out a second time, the next moment she felt arms around herself, shoving her into a familiar cold darkness, and a blink after that, sunlight. She was lying on her back, breathing heavily. Gods, it was as if it had been ages since she’d known sunlight. Exhausted to the marrow, in great pain, and her heart still thudding painfully in her chest, Kire let out a hysterical laugh, her eyes welling up as she vaguely registered Ysaryn swearing at her. Her body shook, withdrawal coming down hard on her after the Ring had burned through the drug—no, it wasn’t just her body, but the ground shaking beneath them. She didn’t want to move another inch, but her mind screamed for her to get up, anyway. Climbing to her feet, she dragged Ruli to his feet by his ragged, bloody sleeve as she half ran, half stumbled, back away from the makeshift entrance, finally tripping with exhaustion backward.

The ground collapsed, the unholy vapors from the rot and black magic hissing up from the great fissures. Kire watched it crumble just beyond her feet. A shockwave knocked back whoever else was on their feet, overwhelming Kire with the dying burst of Ikegai’s signature before, at last, it dissipated. The smell of the sea blew their way. “Finally…” she breathed, before collapsing back onto the soil. The hysterical laugh bubbled up again, though the tears fell freely from her face now, and each laugh sent a spasm of pain throughout her chest.

Gavin looked about, his own face wet with tears, too. “We’re free,” he said, daring to say the words aloud now, as if saying them a moment too soon would curse him to lose his newfound freedom. But when he stood up, he was reminded that there were still many loose ends. The women cradled each other, some blinking their tired eyes at the light as if blinking away a nightmare they had just woken from. And Gavin saw, just beyond them, an army approaching them, the banners of Cordon flying high, with some of the councilmen riding ahead. They looked to Gavin like they had just come from a fight, themselves. He whirled around, looking from Rab to Ysaryn, and from Ruli to Kire. They were in no position to fight, or even to flee. Soon, the armed guard of the Councilmen would surround them. It felt ironic, that he should be imprisoned or killed now as a free man, but Gavin knew he deserved it. The others, however…

“Wait!” he said, throwing himself forward, arms raised. One of the guards approached him and aimed a blow, sending him sprawling onto the ground. Behind them, Kire was back on her feet, scowling at the men surrounding them, though clearly she was too exhausted to be comprehending everything that was happening around her. They took a look at her face and recognized Akuma, and lowered their lances at her, to which she answered with a string of Amrian curses she didn’t bother to translate. Gavin felt himself being manhandled, and he knew no amount of explaining would help in this situation, not from him anyway.
One of the women, wrapping the rags she had been supplied more tightly around her, stepped away from the other freed captives and raised her hands at one of the councilmen. The man narrowed his eyes at her, then, slowly, a look of wonder dawned on him.

If Kire still had all of her faculties at that moment, she would have heard the councilman recognize her as a relation of his. Not too long ago, Itallo had told him the elves had taken her in retaliation for their discrimination, but now, in a trembling but resolute voice, she told them about their captivity, and about how these strangers had killed the man who had violated them. She would have heard the councilmen tell the group that, just moments ago, they had been in the middle of a battle that had broken out in parts of the city closest to Itallo’s property. People going mad, people heeding strange orders of a voice that crooned in their head. And the Lord Itallo himself, shrieking like some demon in his manor, before the other councilmen’s forces had finally broken through the barricades of the manor, slaying him. Kire would have seen the councilmen order the women taken care of, though now, unsure of what to do with the elf women and the strange, armed, half-dead rescuers. The other captives, including the councilman’s relative, insisted that they were the ones who had gotten them out.

Kire didn’t hear all that, because she had collapsed backward, her body finally giving out and sinking into unconsciousness.