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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Emperor Valerian" data-source="post: 1685861" data-attributes="member: 15043">Nothing, Raven’s mind reflected darkly as the light patter of a rain shower pelted her hooded frame.  She idly kicked a loose cobblestone on the street as she jogged between carts and carriages.  Nothing at all about the Fire Stone......but there was much about many other things...  She hurriedly pushed through the gates of her family manor, and dashed towards the large front doors, already held open by a worried look Rose.  How is he doing?  Did he eat more after I left this morning?  Is he sitting up?“Is he better?” Raven asked, taking off her wet hood.  Her mind still recoiled at the image of Val two days ago... her disguise for him peeling away, his real face blanched, eyes rolled back, his breathing coming in swift, labored gasps.  For an instant, all thought of the Fire Stone, or of assassins vanished.  Instead, she found herself over these few days focused on two things... Valaron, and what caused him to collapse so violently.To her relief, her sister smiled.  “Much better,” Rose replied, “he’s eating again, and those fits he kept having didn’t come back.”“Has he uttered anything since I left this morning?” Raven asked, already rushing towards the stairs.  “Nothing... he’s quite coherent now.  I asked him if he remembered some of the stuff he said during his hours of delirium, but he all he recalls is pain,” Rose said, before looking at her sister funny.  “My, aren’t we in a hurry... I told you he was fine.  I had to tell him repeatedly to lay down!  Hey, did you find anything out about-““Yes,” Raven called from the top of the stairs, already dashing towards the bedroom the Prince laid in.  He needs to know what I now know!  Maybe it can help us piece together what happened!Part of her feared that when she opened the door, Val would be up and about, despite strict instructions by Raven, and presumably Rose, to lay down.  He was a very headstrong and stubborn young man, and Raven was relieved he was merely sitting up on the bedcovers... looking rather cross.  That alone showed he was feeling better.  “I am forbidden to move from this bed?” he eyed her defiantly.  “That is what Rose tells me your command is.  What other things may I do for my lady?” he added mockingly.“Continue to get better.  And you would not deny a lady’s wishes, would you?” Raven shot back.  A smile came to her lips, as well as a sigh of relief.   “You are looking much better this afternoon than you were this morning, even.”  She headed towards the dresser across the room from him, where several of the few herbal remedies she knew from watching her mother were waiting to be mixed.“And I am feeling better... good enough I should be allowed to get up!  Every time I move, your sister threatens to turn me into a jackass, because of my stubborness!”“And you believe her?” Raven asked, carefully removing a few cloves of parsley, king’s wart, and other small flowers and plants to form a mush.  “One can’t be too careful with your family,” Valaron rejoined.  “We need to get going.  Rose says I’ve been down for two days now... we need to find-“  Raven heard covers shifting, and spun around in time to chase Val’s dangling legs back onto the bed with her disapproving gaze.“Be patient,” Raven said, finishing her mixture by adding some water to it to make a cold tea.  “While she watched you, I went out and did some searching of my own.”  She poured a cup of the mess... altogether it did little more than relax the muscles and slightly dull pain.  She held the cup out to him.  “Drink.”“I’m fine.  Much better,” Val protested, before her stern look made him finally take the cup.  Raven blinked, and suddenly realized that her hand was poised within less than an inch of his forehead as he closed his eyes and drank as she commanded.What are you doing, Raven? her mind jumped.  His eyes flashed open, and he made the now familiar look of terrible pain on sipping it, as if all the Nine Hells were playing in his stomach as the liquid landed.  A sharp rebuke ran through her head, and Raven snatched her hand back before he could notice.  She rolled her eyes to cover up her action.“It’s not that bad.  If you keep that horrible acting up, I won’t tell you what I found out.”  Valaron immediately stopped his looks of horror at her statement, and Raven grinned.  “I’ve spent the last two days looking at the small libraries at the Temple of Pelor, after you made those cries in delirium.”“Which one?  The one about you?”Raven shook her head, as the memory of his night of sickness came back.  Instinctively, a knot of worry formed in her belly as a result.  Among his many calls to the figures of fever dancing in his mind, two had struck her.  The first, even as Rose, Ari and Raven managed to manhandle the prince up towards a bedchamber, exploded first as bits of idle chatter, that suddenly coalesced into a frightening series of words.”I see it!  I see him!  A mountain flanked with snow, boned beast rising from the green sea!”It had then degenerated into worthless drivel.  For the first day, she’d puzzled over the phrase.  From his eyes, whatever or whoever ‘it’ and ‘him’ were, they were frightening.  She had heard of this before... those with magic in their veins struck low, visions of the future and the past flashing before their eyes.  It was later that night when his second meaningful utterance came.  His feverish mind was seeing many things... he mumbled out about beasts, his family, for home.  At one point during the soft, feverish chatter, his eyes looked directly into hers, and she had seen something far different in those blue and red orbs.  It was as if they were searching her soul, her past, her future, her very being.  A second or two later, they narrowed, and a soft, rasping phrase came from his lips.”You’ll make the broken eaglet fly again.”“No... you never said one about me,” Raven said quietly, her mind disturbed by the second, the one she hadn’t been able to find an answer for.  I don’t understand what this meant?  The broken eaglet?  Him?  His family used to have an eagle as its crest... but Val’s not broken...  maybe I’ll never understand...  Val needed rest, and she didn’t want him stretching his mind trying to figure out something meaningless.  “Did Rose tell you that?”“She said I muttered something about flying... she couldn’t hear the whole thing,” Val replied.  He looked slightly downcast.“Well, I did find something that resembles the first one you muttered about... the mountain and boned beast?  Have you ever heard of White Spine Mountain?”Valaron’s eyes narrowed briefly, his eyes flashing as his mind made a connection.  “Yes... that was where our parents defeated a creature of some kind.  It was early on... I don’t think our mothers had even met at that point.”  Val slid himself further down the bed, so he could lay flat on his back.Raven nodded.   “Yes... according to the records in the Church of Pelor, it was an Ice Demon, the remains of a tortured soul that had abused evil magic.  The ancient King Ananias.”“Oh!” Val’s mind laughed.  “Of course!  Where mum says she was encased in ice, and father had to rescue her!”  Raven could see in Val’s eyes the story replaying.  “And Ananias was the ancient King holding the original Ice Diamond!”  His brow then furrowed.  “So, what makes this significant?”“Um...” Raven said quietly, “White Spine Mountain is only five days ride from Kulloden... to the east.”  The same direction the column of light came from when you fell out...Val’s eyes widened in understanding of what she was thinking.  “Something happened under White Spine?”“Do you remember if you parents ever completely destroyed Ananias’ body?” Raven asked quietly.  If not... we might have solved where our adventurer’s looking for a Caladron corpse might have gone...  Val’s brow furrowed again, and after a few moments, he shook his head.  Raven sighed.“Well... Val?  Ananias was originally a King of Holstean... and a member of the Caladron family,” she said softly, deciding bluntness might be best here.  “He accepted the powers of undeath given to him by the staff, and it was he your parents killed under White Spine,” she burrowed onward.  “And that light we saw two nights ago, something happened to you then... a magical resonance, like some magic power had blasted through your very blood...” Val nodded slowly, following her yet unspoken thoughts, his own eyes wide in understanding of their implications.The sky seems so red... deep crimson... like blood, Vintressa’s mind wandered, as a distant headache sounded in her head, much like the beating of the distant drums that rolled into her ears.  The boughs overhead seemed to rock as her horse cantered onward, the dirt underneath dulling the sound of her movement... and that of the riders behind.A black roan cantered past, slightly faster than her, Royukgan’s form laid low along its back.  She watched as he gave his horse spurs, and she joined shortly afterwards into a light gallop, ducking as branches swung by her head.Both kept an attentive ear, for their goal lay ahead.  Once it was little more than a line on Vintressa’s maps.  Now, between the trees up ahead, its brownish form was visible between the leaves of oaks and birches.  Above the noise of their own horses was that of the five mounts behind them... the rest of the scouting party.  Royukgan suddenly reined up, his hand held up.  Vintressa followed suit.“Do you hear that?” he whispered, his eyes sharp, his slightly pointed ears swiveling.  It was one thing about his ancestry that did unnerve Vintressa a bit, and even in this tense situation, her stomach knotted slightly at the movement.  He is of the princely blood of his realm... it is common, her mind corrected her momentarily thoughts.Instead, she concentrated on her own ears, and she heard it as well.  Murmurs, a few louder than others... laughter.  Clanks... like that of someone repairing a blade or armor.  Horses whinnying... steeds far less trained than their own.“Yes,” she whispered back.  A second later, she was already off of her horse, and the dark bay was quickly tied to a nearby tree.  She looked up in time to catch a look of surprise from Royukgan, and gave a small, tense smile.  He still thinks I should be back with the main group.A few seconds later, he was off of his animal as well, his mounted tied next to hers.  Slowly, carefully in the deepining night, the two, now with the five other guardsmen caught up, slipped closer and closer to the noise... coming from the brown strip up ahead.The forest here was congested, the undergrowth thick, ivies and small trees covering everything.  A recent heavy rain had thankfully merged the dry leaves in the underbrush into far more quiet muck that mixed with the muddy ground.  As the slipped closer, the brown ahead seemed to shift, and move.  Soon, the shifting revealed itself to be a company of soldiers, clad in dusty brown liveries that now had the shade of mud from a wet march added to their colors.“Soldiers... the coat of arms is from Baron Haldris... an ally of Lord Erelion,” Vintressa whispered, as the company of soldiers marched by slowly, their spears waving lazily like long, black fingers pointed into the sky.  As she watched, an order by some unseen sergeant was barked, and the group stopped, breaking to make camp.  A glance further down the road, from whence the small group came, showed lights of dancing fires as far as the eye could see along that brown ribbon in the forest.“There’s got to be a thousand or more,” Royukgan said quietly.  There was a slight tremor in his voice, the noise of someone weighing odds already set heavily against them.Vintressa looked at the fires, the soldiers putting up tents, running further back to an makeshift armory likely set up further back, two officers or knights in platemail looking at papers.This is merely the head of the first snake... the first of at least four, her mind visualized the maps she had seen in Iskeldrun.  Erelion’s columns were approaching Thuyciden, and Vintressa’s parents, from four directions... the north-east, the north, east, and southeast.  This is the Myrnon Road...the north-east column, she reasoned.  The column that if nothing was done, would take her parent’s army in the rear.  The Princess was not a formal student of military tactics, but anyone with half a mind could easily see that having someone strike you from behind as you were being struck from in front was a very bad thing...Can we take them? her mind wondered, looking at the numbers again.  On hundred and fourteen versus easily a thousand... and that was only those belonging to House Haldris.  There were at least ten other houses with soldiers stacked behind this vanguard... a line of steel that probably stretched from where they were to maybe twenty, or thirty miles back.  A long river... a river of steel... her thoughts turned dark.  How can we stop such a river?And then it hit her... it was obvious.  Her mind whirled into motion, plots going.  She quickly grabbed Royukgan’s arm, and started pulling him back to their horses.  The guardsmen followed.“Vin?” he asked.“We’re going to get the rest.  We strike them tonight,” she said, confidence brimming in the voice that had been wracked with pain for the past three days.</blockquote>

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