Dragon (S)Layers Ch. 50

Chapter 8 -- Of Vulgarity and Murder

"It was once asked of god and dragon alike whether it is better to serve on one's knees or wield the power of the infinite and unknowable, and while they both provided different answers, they seemed to agree on a fundamental concept-- power and service can be one and the same. Wielded properly, power is a quill that can stir emotions, condemn the guilty and praise the righteous with nary a thought to what consequences may befall it.

Truth is simple.

If only the humanoid races of this world would learn from that simplicity, instead of insisting that their version of it was somehow more relevant than the objective truth staring them in the face. It's made worse when they turn their 'visions' and 'ambitions' upon each other as if they somehow mattered. Wars are waged in the names of benevolent gods, lives lost by the thousand and they carry on without thought to what their actions do to those who breathed life into them in the first place.

No, if it is one thing I will never understand, it is the self-destructive urges these creatures engage in. . . .but then I run a casino that takes full advantage of their competitive spirit and through it have amassed a great deal of my own power while still in service to the Holy Elisandra, so perhaps my words are meant to be taken with a grain of salt.

Or perhaps in your eyes, the words of a Sphinx are worth some value; I care not.

They are a truth. Like any other."

-Nyx

"Tales from the Unknown Bard Volume 3"

~Felicia~

Felicia wanted to sit down for a while, to wipe the dirt and pond scum for her face and pretend that her full body shivering would go away before she would have fallen to a fitful, empty sleep where dreams didn't exist. In this fantasy world, she'd be forgiven by Lostariel for doing so and for one night she'd not have to worry about pleasuring the insatiable killer for her share of dinner that she caught in the first place.

She chuffed a laugh. She liked to pretend a lot of things. . .

It hadn't been since she got lost on the plains that she'd become so familiar with the bottom of a body of water, but during the day's training, Lostariel had been trying to impart on her the value of patience by having her stay submerged at the bottom of a lake sipping air through a long straw from high noon to sunset. She'd come up several times, of course, more out of fear that Lostariel had left her there than a lack of discipline, though someone somewhere would probably claim them to be similar issues.

Every time she'd surfaced she was pelted with mud balls flung with startling accuracy, one of which had jostled her breathing tube into her throat sending her into a fit of sputters and coughs which earned her no sympathy from her teacher who continued to hammer her with mud until she went back down.

So when she came across one of her snares missing its bait, she allowed herself a curse, just one, before recovering it. On the plains such things happened quite often as the prey was often magically influenced and intelligent, but out here? It felt like she was being a sloppy hunter; it was an actual failure. An insult to her family name and her tribe as a whole.

She groaned involuntarily, suddenly very aware of the weight of the kukri on her belt-- a relic of an elder warrior's life she had no business handling. She was a hunter, a girl at that; nobody but warriors and sages were meant to handle sunless steel and men under twenty summers had no business touching the metal at all. It was a dishonor of the highest order that she would fail as a hunter while carrying such a weapon.

Profane. That was the word the religious used to speak of such things; profanity. An affront; Felicia was profane. If she was doing as she was supposed to, she would have been heading towards the southern plains to bury the weapon and sing the song of thunder so that it would be stricken from the world and reabsorbed into it.

But there were lives at stake, her only chance at stopping this killer was to be with her; to serve when necessary and learn everything she was going to teach. The elder had shown he understood, he'd allowed her that forbearance to carry on until such a time that the proper rites could be observed. She was doing the right thing, she could get better at this she promised herself. Yes, she just needed to have some patience and eventually it would pan out.

She'd stop Lostariel from killing Sarah and when that particular demon was laid to rest, she'd return to her homeland and go searching for her family. They needed to know of her mother's passing and she. . . She deserved better than that man who called himself her father. It was a solid plan as any, she decided. She just needed the patience to enact it.

Almost as if the gods were testing this new resolution, she found almost all her traps empty. In her increasing despondence her mind turned to thoughts of abandoning this ridiculous burden she'd taken upon herself in favor of going back to the plains, or even to Sorash. She had friends there that could probably be counted on if she was in need. And it wasn't like she didn't have enough coin to get her through the rest of her life.

Strangely absent were thoughts of her father or what might happen when the mortgage wasn't paid off. It occurred to her much later than it should have, but as far as she was concerned, he had ceased being a man the moment he let alcohol and his own desires for physical comfort take him away from their family bonds. He was a stranger that had used her, a pathetic empty shell of a person who she and her mother had once loved and known. But her mother wasn't alive any longer, and neither was he.

She was alone. With nothing more than her name and a history of a people she embodied; she had grown up on the great plains, she had learned their ways and she was for all intents and purposes a Mawik girl born and raised-- even if half of her parentage had been from the east. It was this pride that kept her going, it was that pride that drove her mad with her failure.

It was also that pride that reminded her she'd left a snare unchecked. She wasn't about to face the consequences of failure before Lostariel or herself before she had made damn sure she'd indeed failed. Begrudgingly, painfully, she climbed the crest of the hill that ran alongside the valley bed she'd been scouring, navigating by the pattern of trees she'd mentally marked out in the morning when she set the traps to begin with.

Something was scrabbling, thrashing violently and crying out with an eerily human 'creeeeee' now and then. She snuck through the underbrush carefully, prowling to her hands and knees to avoid making herself a target for anything with two feet and a weapon-- an affectation of Lostariel's training-- and made her way towards the sound, carefully drawing the elder's kukri when she got to the bush between her and the sound. She emerged from the shadows like a wolf, but somehow even in her heightened state of awareness, she hadn't been ready for what hung from her snare.

It was small, four legged. Felicia took a glance around to make sure there were no predators nearby drawn by its crying and snatched it by the neck firmly and held it for a moment. The curious animal thrashed and jerked trying to free itself but it wasn't crying any longer, giving her time to inspect it in closer detail. What a strange little animal it was; four legged and long eared with a fluffy dollop of hair on its rear end the color of snow.

"Easy," Felicia cooed as she brought the creature to the ground and undid the snare from its leg, careful not to get bitten in the process. "Easssyyyy. Relax." Once her trap was recovered she bundled the animal into the crook of her arm and held it to her body as she made her way back to camp. It thrashed and pissed on her along the way despite her soothing murmurings and by the time she got back to the camp she'd picked up a few scratches along her forearm for her troubles.

She wasn't bitter, though. Lostariel was more familiar with the northern way of life and the woods and its animals and this cute little animal had made Felicia curious-- there was also the possibility that it was poisonous, something she wasn't about to kill it and skin it without knowing what she was getting into.

The fire was a smoldering glow that threw weak shadows over her saddle bags and the horse they were supposed to be on, the same horse that had somehow managed to move from the heavy cover of the tree Felicia had tied it to to a smaller one several dozen feet from the warmth of the poorly maintained fire. All this and no Lostariel to be seen. . .

Felicia sighed. Another gods damned thing she was expected to do--

Something moved in her periphery. She froze, training her gaze towards where she thought she saw an outline, letting her vision fill out the rest of the form. It was Lostariel. The woman was wearing her light absorbing leathers but no mask, making her look like a disembodied head with her mane of raven locks. Felicia straightened up and looked right at her mentor. "You left the fire to cool, and you moved my horse. . ."

"I wanted to see if you were paying attention," she said simply. "Good. What else?"

Felicia was ready to call her on that particular lie but she didn't have it in her. She was tired and these ridiculous games the woman used to mask her laziness had already lost any appeal they might have had. Before Felicia spoke, though, it occurred to her that the horse and Lostariel had a very antagonistic relationship-- one based on mutual fear and distrust. The same reaction the killer seemed to have with all animals.

It probably meant Lostariel planned to camp in the tree. She squinted up. Sure enough, her bag was there along with a strap dangling there like a noose. Felicia took a quick moment to survey the rest of the camp, finding her own bag tucked up under the crook of one of the branches which meant her saddle bags were probably empty. She looked around for a moment, searching against the wavering light.

"Time is up." Lostariel announced coldly. "If you had to defend yourself right now, how would you?"

"I have my weapon." The young plains walker said without much conviction. They both knew that was a joke in the extreme, but that wasn't the question she was being asked. "I'd knock your bag down and take it," She pointed to indicate where it was. "You've already got mine tied up, I can't hope to get them in time if things go badly, so I need to focus on getting out of here. . ."

A beat. "What else?"

"I suppose, uh--" she felt the creature against her body attempt to thrash. "I'd throw this thing at you and hope it was magical in some way."

"What 'thing'?" Lostariel stepped into the halo of light looking vaguely curious, her gaze fell to the creature and then she looked to Felicia as though she'd lost her mind. "This is dinner?" She sounded distinctly unimpressed. It wasn't the first time.

"It was the only thing that the traps caught." Felicia said quickly, defensively. "If I had more time during the day, I could--"

"Time is a commodity in short supply; you chose how it is spent and you force the consequences of that on both of us. . ." Lostariel eyed the little creature warily as a wolf might a piece of questionable meat. "You chose- you begged me to train you. I do and our stomachs suffer for it. Are you telling me you can't handle both obligations?"

Felicia gaped at her mentor, anger boiled up inside, burbling along with a million other aches and pains, and the icy chill clinging to her like a wet blanket. It was only because of Felicia that they ate at all, and only because of her they made good time through the winding roads that crossed the mountains. When the horse wouldn't continue she coaxed it along, when he got tired and wanted to rest but Lostariel insisted they make it another league, it was only her voice that he listened to. How dare she blame Felicia for their current state?!

Lostariel watched her impassively. Cold, self-righteous, somehow knowing that anything Felicia did wasn't going to have the same effect she'd had on the girl. They stared at one another for a moment and Felicia thrust the animal out at her mentor like a dagger. She recoiled slightly, eying it. "And?"

"What is this thing?" Felicia managed to keep her anger in check. Barely.

The woman's purple eyes fixed Felicia for a long moment before she eventually spoke. "It's a rabbit."

"Rabbit. . ." Felicia tested the word out before she nodded. "Can we eat it?"

"I don't see why not," The woman backed up, hiding that subtle twitch of her fear by crossing her arms over her chest and leaning against the tree she'd set up in. "There's not enough for both of us to eat well."

'There might be if you'd pull your weight. . .' But of course she couldn't say that, no, that would be suicide; she'd lose her only chance at stopping the woman from killing Sarah, and in some small part, she'd miss spending time around the pale northerner. Sure there was that undercurrent of danger about her, but the thought of trying to catch up to Sarah's head start without knowing the trails or the land itself? Her 'enjoyment' of Lostariel's company wasn't just platonic, it was practical. Instead of challenging the woman up front, she aimed for something a little more tactful. "You know, where I come from, there's a saying. . ." She knelt down with the rabbit, stroking it and flexing her hand out as she looked over the creature.

In a couple moments she had come to a general accord on how to handle its end. "Everyone carries their own water. . ."

"You came to me," Lostariel said with finality.

Felicia set her hand on the rabbit's body, pressing it down and drawing the kukri. "I know, I'm just--"

"Stop."

Felicia looked up. The woman had halved the distance between them, she crouched down and pointed at the animal's head. "Under its chin. Hold its body and wrap your hand around its skull, then pull back until its neck breaks."

"But, the blade--"

Lostariel held up a hand and for a moment her purple eyes caught the flickering fire. "Pay attention." The animal struggled a little in blind protest, maybe to Lostariel's presence more than his impending doom. "Do as I instructed."

And so Felicia did; carefully she cranked the rabbits head back until she felt the bone give and his body go slack. She looked at it, "Huh, that was easy." She smiled to Lostariel.

"Now cook it, dress it like you do the squirrels and save the pelt. We can sell it in the next hamlet." Just like that she was back to the distant, cold person Felicia had first met. It was probably just as well, really, but it still bothered Felicia how quickly she could change.

By the time she'd finished dressing it and starting up a stew, she'd forgotten about the reasons she was upset earlier, simply content to linger in the warmth from the fire and pretend once more that the world didn't exist beyond it. It wasn't until Lostariel edged up to the edge of the light, now wearing one of Felicia's blouses and her own trousers that the pleasant quiet time came to a crashing halt.

Lostariel had a faintly unusual shape about her; wide hips, thick thighs and a fairly small overall form that made her seem more exotic than maybe she was. The people of the Mawik plains were larger and tended to be darker complexioned, owing in no small part to the purple skies that roiled over head. On the flip side, the northern lands seemed to produce pale individuals and apparently their closeness to the elven lands meant people like Lostariel could exist; exist and be beautiful in the right light.

If not for the fact that she was a hardened killer, she would've probably enraptured anyone from Felicia's homeland. However, even warriors knew when to leave the battlefield behind, something Lostariel never seemed to do. And yet Felicia found herself drawn to this woman, hoping against hope she'd find a way to stop the blade that would befall Sarah Kettar without having to draw her own. "Lostariel?" She ventured tentatively.

"Yes?"

The question came surprisingly easy. "Why do you kill people?"

Lostariel glanced at her out of the corner of her eye as she produced a wooden bowl. She took the ladle from Felicia's hand and served herself, drinking deeply without hesitation-- as though it was somehow owed to her. She glanced over at Felicia when the bowl was nearly empty.

Then she surprised the girl by ladling out the remainder from the pot and giving it to her. "How am I any different than what your political figures and nobility conspire to do on a daily basis?" She didn't wait for a reply. "I am the practical end of every thought of anger and hatred; I am an expression of the darker parts of the mind. I am the strength that they don't have."

"That--"

"How many die of hunger and disease while those with the privilege to avoid the former and the distance to avoid the later continue on as though their choices had not informed the end of those with neither privilege or distance?"

Felicia ate her meal quietly, watching and waiting for the other shoe to drop. With her it always was that way. There would be a 'but' or some backpedaling that forced her to question herself.

But it didn't come. Lostariel waited, comfortable in the silence, until the girl eventually asked. "I don't know, where I come from our family and tribe takes care of one another-- we have to."

Lostariel chuffed. "That is something many will never experience. They would rather fight and creep around behind one another's back, smiling as though nothing was wrong." She warmed her hands for a moment. "They are sheep. I am not."

"You're smarter than that. . ." Felicia whispered carefully. "I see it in you, you know? I see it when you speak, and I see the way you do stuff like that," she nodded to the tree, "you're hiding from the world--"

Another chuff, this time it almost became a laugh. "You misunderstand. I do these things because I can, I survive because I am intelligent."

"Are you so sure?"

Lostariel gave her a quizzical look.

"You're like my mother in some ways; she thrived in adversity and enjoyed it, but you. . . You want something." She almost added 'you are a slave to your pride' but she wanted to see how comfortable the woman had become with her. "Do you think you have something to prove?"

The northerner shook her head. "Wishing you could prove something to me isn't going to make it happen. No, perhaps you're trying to justify something to yourself, hm?"

It was Felicia's turn to wince, she scooped up more of her meal and stuffed it home, glancing away.

"I have earned my title with skill in my trade, Felicia. I am where I am because of who I have become. To the world, I am the Ace of Diamonds, not Lostariel." She watched the flames dance for a little while before casting a sidelong glance Felicia's way. "I need no other reason."

"But why? What's so 'good' or moral about killing people? So what if you say they're 'bad' people, they're still lives. They're still thinking creatures, with hopes and dreams and experiences and--" She cut herself off when the woman's gaze turned to her. She was pushing into dangerous territory and they both knew it. . . But she'd come too far now to turn back. She steeled herself and launched her second volley. "What good's a name written in blood? So you can see fear in people who hear it? So you can be hunted by those you kill?"

Throughout the entire monologue Lostariel sat quietly, her impassive face cast in shadow from the increasingly dim fire. Eventually she turned her hand out in offering as though the flames would have some answer to Felicia's question, edging closer and closer until her forearm was wreathed in the heat mirage. "Control," She began.