Crimson Dawn cont.
The archers moved as the bloodmarked did, and behind the cracked door, Tiriok swore, grip tightening on his sword as his free arm reached back to Kyensi's elbow, "...Incoming. Stay behind me, and keep sharp."
Kyen'delsia repressed a shudder as the hand grasped her elbow. It was not radically unfamiliar. Similar to Jargra, the blacksmith's son who asked her to dance last year's Spring festival. Laced with callouses. But cleaner. Probably washed last night. "Sharp to what? I can't see whatever's coming behind your big back."
Joking to try and make light of the deadly situation. Joking to hope that this new hand didn't start showing up in her nightmares. Joking because, beyond her opening, she didn't have time to do almost anything, except prepare to shout or be hoisted around like a sack of potatoes.
"You can't even see my big back." Tiriok noted, and while there was an edge of humor to the words themselves, the expression he wore was anything but… Readying his blade, he took two steps back from the door, leading Kyensi as he did, and as the door swung swiftly open, the first of the archers was nearly felled by the forward lunge from the Phoenix Knight. Fortunately, and by some dumb luck, the archer managed to parry the thrust with the hilt of the blade he was prying free. The man behind him gave a shout of surprise and readied his own weapon, as the first clashed steel to Tiriok's.
"Three steps, straight back!" Tiriok yelled over his shoulder and his movements mirrored the words, hoping… praying that he wouldn't find himself instead tripping over the young blind woman, instead.
With a combination of sense, luck, and skill, Kyen'delsia took three steps straight back in perfect sequence. Mimicking his steps exactly, she strode as if preparing to slip into a dance. Though the clashing of steel mere feet away shot her heart-rate through the roof. In desperation, knowing where her impromptu dance partner was and roughly where the foe was, she scooped a Winter boot of her sister's off the floor and hucked it at the archer. At least, the person she hoped was the archer.
As the boot sailed past his ear, marginally closer than Tiriok was comfortable with an whaled the encroaching archer in the clavicle, the knight swiftly shifted to the left and swung his blade in an arc towards the hip of his target. The archer twisted to block and as he did, Tiriok flipped his blade from his left hand to his right, carving down into the chest of the offending man. With a thud, he dropped. Recovering from the sudden assault from the footwear, the second archer roared in anger, and his blade crashed against Tiriok's with unexpected ferocity.
For several seconds, their weapons whirled, one against the other, and Tiriok shouted back to Kyensi again with each motion.
As he called for her to back up again, he just managed to duck beneath a sudden swipe from the surviving archer and as he did, he found the pommel of the man's weapon meeting him in the center of his nose. Light bloomed before his eyes as he staggered into the blind woman, a harsh oath uttered from his lips as blood seeped down his face. The archer raised his blade to bring it down again and Tiriok parried, but a second more aggressive blow carved into the edge of his hilt, then a third. His shoulder wrenched as he tried to adjust his posture, and with a cry he tightened his grip, even as the archer assailed again, driving Tiriok's blade from his hand.
It clattered to the ground and there was a blinding flash and a sudden spray of crimson as the archer found another blade protruding from his chest.
In the confusing seconds that followed, there was an uneasy silence, before a voice, strangely familiar to the blind Klerion, spoke from behind the dying man, "It's alright. You'll be safe, now."
She was already shuddering from the first body hitting the floor with a thudding splat. When she heard the blade clatter to the ground, Kyen'delsia instinctively surged forward. With a cry, she threw one arm in vain protection around Tiriok to draw him back while the other in warding against the oncoming blow before strange droplets splattered onto them. Hot as if water on the verge of boiling, yet she knew it wasn't sweat. And that voice. So nice and sweet that it made Kyen'delsia want to curl in on herself and scream.
"H-Hexar?" she managed to stutter out in some , "what? I d-don't understand. Why're you…"
"Hexar!?" Tiriok rose a little swifter than he meant to, positioning himself before the blind woman as his hand clasped his shoulder with an agonizing hiss, gritting his teeth, "Stay back, this--"
"Peace…" Laying his weapon down, Hexar rose again, hands before him as he shook his head, "I mean no harm."
"So called King of the High Tower." Tiriok spat, retrieving his own blade with his left hand, "No harm, right? Meanwhile, your Bloodmarked is--"
"I favor no Bloodmarked! I-I only came to apologize to Kyen'delsia… I… I'm afraid my visit yesterday may have… But I saw the village, the fires, and I thought perhaps I had…" Taking a cautious step forward, he kept his hands aloft, "My dreams of late have been quite distressing. It seems I was right to worry. First the Iron Citadel burns, now this…? There were rumors of those speaking out in my name. A means to… to confuse my followers, to gain goodwill, but this was back in Maglin. I had not thought it could come this far north."
"Just...it's fine," Kyen'delsia replied in a voice that attempted and, unsurprisingly, failed to sound fine. She was well aware that, given her and Tiriok's position, that angering Hexar could well result in their deaths, "look, Tiriok. Can we please just deal with the details later? Please? You too, Hexar. I...we need to go. We need to get out. We need to help Elwyn!"
Seizing upon the goal to dispel worries and wonders of dreams. Possibly shared dreams, and go. Flee from the horror that had become her home village as everything threatened to smash down upon her. So strong was her desire that she sought to rise, despite being still half-pinned, half-held, and half-clinging to Tiriok. Yet she didn't care if she failed. Kyen'delsia had one goal and a single spell.
Steel clashed with its infernal counterpart as Elwyn expertly parried off a ferocious assault from the bloodmarked. She could sense that he was toying with her like Leander had at dawn, driving her blood hotter with agitation and a desire to prove the hellspawn wrong. His motions were swift as a viper in its den, faster than any swordsman Elwyn had ever seen. If not for her plate armor deflecting as twice as many cuts as her sword, she would have been cut to bloody ribbons by now. For every blow the chaplain deflected, at least two scraped along her armor with a hideous screech and display of sparks.
As they clashed, the bloodmarked hellbent on chewing his food before swallowing it, Elwyn began to notice a pattern to his attacks. Though he wielded the blade with his right hand, all his cuts started from his left side, which made it not only more difficult to predict his movements and match his stance but also wasted efficiency in every swing and cut he leveled at Elwyn. A plan formed in her mind as she cast aside a thrust that managed to leave a sizable dent in her breastplate, temporarily driving the wind from her as it collapsed in on her chest, compressing tight enough to restrict her movement but not so much that it broke a rib.
Wheezing, Elwyn parried the bloodmarked's next blow and willed the fire to surge from the blade of her glowing sword towards the right side of his face. The sudden flare drew a cry of surprise from the bloodmarked, and stumbling back, he raised his arm to his face. It was an opening. Not much of one, but an opening, all the same.
Elwyn seized the opening, gripping her sword by its handle and halfway up its blade by the flat with her gauntlet-clad hand. She surged forward as well as her partially crushed breastplate would allow, pushing up and to the left to grapple with the bloodmarked's sword arm, trying to wrench the plate from his hands or knock him to the ground. With no magic left, she could not will the flames back to her blade and risk burning his flesh, but still she pushed forward, threatening the right side of his face with the pommel of her sword as they grappled.
With the sudden speed of her charge, the bloodmarked had only a moment to adjust his stance, and skidded back a step or two as her hand gripped his wrist. His own grasp on the hilt of the falchion tightened, but the pressure of her fingers digging into the tender nerves was relentless, and strength waned just enough for the blade to slip free.
As it felt, there was no clattering sound. Instead, as it had formed, the falchion faded, and a streak of red colored the earth. Eyes flashing with rage, the bloodmarked reached his free hand up as if to grip her own sword arm. Instead, however, his fingers wrapped around the blade and swiped swiftly upwards. Blood splashed, then the glint of steel as a small blade formed in his deeply wounded hand, angling down towards the chaplain's shoulders.
Elwyn did not have time to flinch as hot blood splashed against her face, for a split instant later steel flashed in the sunlight, its point aimed right at the gap between her breastplate and her pauldrons. The chaplain heard - no
felt - a guiding voice whisper across her, like silk over skin. Hands guided by a will that was not her own, Elwyn wrenched her blade back and brought it about in a tight swing with its pommel, clutching it in her hands by the weapon's blade. The pommel struck the bloodmarked in the side with a resounding
crack as the hilt bent and the pommel came loose.
Something like a wheeze escaped as the pommel cracked into his ribs and jarring to the side, he stumbled a few steps, nearly toppling fully. Catching himself, half upright, he pressed a balled hand tightly to his side, "Now we see the fight in you… Good."
Fingers curving around the hilt of the barbed blade that he'd formed, he straightened fully and with his other hand, hurled a clot of dirt at Elwyn's face, then lunged towards her, dagger diving for her thigh. Pain lanced through Elwyn as the blade sunk into her flesh, pressing right in the gap her tasset left between her hips and the armor lower across her thighs. It took all of her willpower to stay standing as blood shot from the wound, splattering the ground to join the blood left behind by the outline of the dissolved falchion.
Unarmed hand reaching up, the bloodmarked's fingers snapped around Elwyn's neck, and with fire in his russet gaze, he raised the dagger up to strike again.
Surging outside and half-guided by Tiriok and half by fortune alone, Kyen'delsia bellowed. "Stop!" But the voice didn't come from where she was. Instead, it blasted right next to the Bloodmark's ear. The spirit who had agreed, snatched her voice the moment it left her and carried it as close as it could to the man's eardrum. It was a call of desperation and a plea that mingled with rage from all the dead. A plea she wished she could have begged to the enemy before they had slaughtered her home. Tears streaming down her face, she reached out to try and move something. Change something. Kyen'delsia wasn't sure what she even wanted to change in that moment, so long as, for a split second, Elwyn would be saved.
In that brief second of Kyensi shouting, the plunging blade met the steel of her pauldron instead, glancing off harmlessly. The bloodmarked exclaimed violently, staggering away from the woman, and his free hand clapped to his ear as he held the blade in front of him with an unanticipated fear…
"Enough!" Hexar's voice echoed behind the blind Klerion's, and with a wave of his hand there was a sudden and nearly deafening popping sound, as in a flash of bright white light, the bloodmarked man vanished from sight.
"Wh-where is he? Is he gone?" Weariness was sapping Kyen'delsia's strength to stand as she vainly tried to hear any sounds of battle or any other chaos. She didn't want to ask, again, for what was going on directly. Tired of asking with grief rushing to pull her down, it was all the young woman could do to stand.
Tiriok kept a cautious hand on Kyensi's arm, but his gaze was fixed on the scarlet Klerion as he spoke.
"For the moment, yes…" Hexar answered, solemnly, "A banishment spell of sorts, but not long lasting. It's best we don't linger. Are you alright?" He asked, then, directing the question to Elwyn, as he took a tentative step towards the chaplain.
Elwyn lifted a hand to halt the approaching Klerion, other hand quaking by where the bloodmarked's dagger had been just seconds before. The blood used to form the dagger had mixed with her own, and the chaplain found it a small blessing the blade had missed piercing an artery. Blood oozed from the injury, rather than pulsed.
"Oozing blood'll stay well enough," Moira had told her when instructing her how to tend injuries with bandages, and she recalled the words now as she looked at the red-stained steel and cloth at her thigh. "Pulsing, and a man'll be dead within the hour."
"You… you're the one that thing claimed to serve," Elwyn spat, head raised defiantly towards the Klreion as one hand stumbled for the blade she had dropped once the knife had plunged into her thigh.
"So I've heard…" Hands raised once more in surrender, Hexar gave the woman a deep look of concern, "But before you decide if you'd like to kill me, you should see to that wound. Hemomancy is tricky, and their blades tend to leave a lasting mark."
Ensuring that Kyen'delsia was stable, Tiriok looked beyond the Klerion to the chaplain, "I can heal it, if you give me a moment. But we shouldn't stick around." Turning to look over his shoulder, he grimaced as he eyed the village, "...Don't suppose it'll do much good to look for survivors?"
"You won't find any." Hexar answered, shaking his head, "Living or dead. That bonfire… there's a rune around it. A bridg--"
"...Bridge portal." Tiriok's voice deepened as his eyes narrowed, "I know exactly four people in this world capable of a rune of that strength…"
"Then you know of four more than I… Yet I know it from sight. The question is less how, and more why… What purpose would they have for taking an entire village of people…"
"A question we can answer once we're as far from here as possible. Can you walk, Elwyn?"
"Well enough," she grunted, staggering to her feet as if to prove it to all gathered around her. "But I am going nowhere with this
fiend until I have answers."
She held back a choked sob, swallowing back the hard lump in her throat.
"My Brothers and Sisters
died at the hand of a man claiming to follow
your orders," she stabbed an accusatory finger towards the red Klreion. "And now you come to our aid, and cast away this man who claims to speak for you.
Why?"
Kyen'delsia took a staggering step outside after Tiriok left her. Exhaustion dragging at her body as she stepped out of the home she'd known all her life. Vaguely, her eyes wandered as everyone spoke. Words sliding slowly into her brain. And broke her down. Nobody was left in the village. Who knew how many dead. Alla was dead, a corpse, no doubt, and not some horrid walking mimicry. The rest were beyond sight. Her spell, pointless. Her actions, fruitless. The screams and wails of a blind girl who was utterly and absolutely useless. Kyen'delsia knew she couldn't save anyone. Deep down. Somewhere. Yet she tried, she smiled, she danced, she had thrown everything her Sister had ever taught her about hiding and surviving to the wayside and for what. For what! A scattered village of gone and dead who had raised her in her blind carcass that should have been cast aside the moment she was born. And what had she repaid their generosity with? Invaders. Murderers. Drawn to some blasted eggs.
And the sheer, welling despair smashed the last supports of her stage and toppled her into a wave of loss as fierce as if an entire sand dune were crashing down upon her. With a wail of finality, she lost the strength to stand and went sprawling down onto the ground. Weeping and crying mostly incoherent words. The few that could be made out seemed to be the names of everyone in the village before finally settling onto Alla. "Alla? Alla! Where are you! Alla!"
The once proud woman began to crawl, searching for the dead child.
"I can't begin to--" The Klerion's words were cut off by the nearly inhuman wail as Tiriok reached out to catch Kyensi, before his injured shoulder protested the motion. For a moment, Hexar watched in silence as the woman's remorse washed over the small group like a wave. As she began to crawl, he moved and gingerly, crouching down before her, he reached out a hand. His grip was strong, but not demanding, as he stilled her, and when he spoke there was an inarguable tenderness to his voice.
"...Kyen'delsia… You will not succumb. You have endured so much, and you will endure this. The child is there… to your left. Come. I will take you to say goodbye." Releasing her shoulder, the back of his fingers found her hand, turned and lightly clasped it, "Come."
Blindly, she accepted the hand. Caring little whose it was and with a fervor followed along until she reached Alla. Sinking down, she scooped the broken body into her lap, cooing softly. Stroking her face, brushing hair back. "Oh, little Alla. Sweet Alla. I'm her, your Kyensi's here. Yo-you'll be dancing under Lioris's bright gaze now. You'll need flowers in your hair to look right. Right as rain looks. Remember the rain Alla? When you asked me what was so special about it. I said it was because I could feel every drop. Almost see it as it danced and sprinkled across my skin as sweet as a million kisses. Then, my Sister gave us such the telling off when we went to my home, soaked to the bone. Dryed us off by the fire, wrapped us in quilts with piping mugs of spiced tea. She put extra honey in yours, I could smell it. Reading us a story she was working on while the rain just pounded away. Do you remember, Alla? Make sure you tell Lioris it, when you see the Golden Dragon. Make sure. Make sure!"
Tears were streaming down her face as she simply sat there, not even thinking to move and caring less and less of the world slowly grinding by beyond her.
Standing above the woman, Hexar reached out as her emotions tumbled along her pale cheeks, but his hand only hovered briefly, before falling back to his side.
Tiriok, meanwhile, had made his way over to Elwyn, and without a word, pulled his quill from the pouch at his side. Ink and quill tip digging into his palm, it flickered back and forth in a complex and strangely beautiful pattern, before almost absently, he pressed his hand to the wound on her leg. Warmth bled through the calloused skin and wrapped like bandages around her thigh, tighter and tighter until at last subsiding, leaving little more than an indent like scar.
Breathing in, Hexar eventually knelt low again beside Kyen'delsi, and with a hand to her shoulder, he nodded, "It's time to go."
She didn't move.
Rising, Hexar wrapped his arms firmly around her shoulders and with a stern but gentle grip, he eased her upright, "Kyen'delsia… It's time to go."
She immediately strained against it, though, weakened as she was, the young woman had little power to do so. Trying to return and cling to the body of Alla, already slipping free of her grasp. "No! Let me remain! Let me stay!"
With a sturdier grasp, Hexar pulled her up fully, and while one hand remained fixed on her arm, the other shifted, instead cupping the side of her face, forcing blind eyes up to his, "She's gone. And your grief will not bring her back. But if you are to do anything for the others… the rest of your village, then you need to steady yourself, and we need to leave."
"They're gone! You all said they're gone! Gate gone! I can't get them back. Who could get them back! Let me stay, I deserve to only stay!" She jerked and twisted, trying to break free. Thrashing against the now ugly touch.
Grip unrelenting, yet no less gentle, his other hand rose to meet the first, "I can. But not yet. I… I'll need to learn. To study it. But I can find where they've been taken. But you must trust me. I can help you… to get back to them. I can help you."
"You can help?" Suddenly, born with a glimmer of hope, Kyen'delsia stopped struggling. A single ray of heat that bespoke of the sun. While she wasn't fully flinging herself at his feet, Kyen'delsia clasped onto the perceived chance. "Tell me. We must, begin. All of us!"
Turning her blind face to the vague sounds of her other companions that had survived the attack. A single, soft plea to join in. To help in some manner.
Tiriok rose to his feet again, returning the quill to its pouch, and his eyes carefully moved to Kyensi, back to Elwyn with uncertainty, "...Once again, I'll defer to you. I believe you had some questions for the man?"
"What business have you with this girl?" Elwyn demanded, glancing between the two Klerions with a burning zeal that cast her face into a creased, fiery light all its own. "And what business have you with those blightspawn called bloodmarked?"
"As I told the fellow there… I've no connections to any bloodmarked. Were it my choice, I would largely keep to myself, but as it is, I've… something of a retinue among the people in Maglin. I imagine his intentions are to use my name as a means to intimidate… to draw attention to his cause, and potentially, to encourage those who follow me towards his own goals." Looking up from Kyen'delsia, he turned fully to Elwyn, "I came here only yesterday, and while I admit my arrival is… unfortunately suspect, my intentions were only to seek out Kyen'delsia, here. I… I cannot fully explain my business, as it is of a great personal nature, but I intend no harm."
"Whatever business puts you in the company of monsters like that one called Augar paints you in a dark light,
Lord Hexar." The last words were mocking, almost as if in an attempt to provoke the Klreion to outrage. "You should be wary if ever our paths cross again. You may have well saved my life, but as far as I am concerned, your ilk have cost me the lives of men and women I knew as family. How long until Augar is loosed from whatever enchantment you have wrought upon him?"
"For one who seems so dedicated to the Knowing Mother, you seem to hear very little of what is said to you." Hexar responded, a little sharply, "I don't keep his company, for I do not even
know your bloodmarked. I am no more to blame for the loss of your family than you are of mine, and I would thank you to remember as much." With an inhale, he breathed out again, more even as he spoke, "It will last long enough for us to leave this place. That is if your interrogation is finished?"
"I am inclined to doubt any involved with hellions such as bloodmarked, even if it is in name only - but I will go along with you for now,
Lord," Elwyn said, sheathing her now-useless sword.
"At any rate…" Tiriok chimed in, looking slightly awkward between the pair, "This is a conversation we should likely have far from here, and reunited with the others? Here…" Holding out his blade to Elwyn, he gave a dry smile, "I'll want that back, but yours looks beat to hell and I can't raise my shoulder over my head to be any use with it, myself."
"Keep it," Elwyn said softly in a tone bordering jesting, patting the dagger at her belt, then the mangled hilt of her sword. "I have already ruined another man's loan, I wish not to make it two."
"Yeah well… better a sword than its wielder. But if you're sure that'll do you alright?" He gestured to the dagger, "We'd better get moving."
Collab with @ze_kraken and @Elle Joyner
