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Message: <blockquote data-quote="StalkingBlue" data-source="post: 1204570" data-attributes="member: 645">The Pool of HepiThe Moon climbs.  Beyond the line of trees, the sands shiver and whisper in the night breeze.  A fig drops somewhere.  As the night deepens, cold creeps up and clouds your breath.  Slowly, the path ahead turns into a serrated blade of pale light curving towards the Pool.  Waiting.  Tarquin’s words of last night turn around and around in the monk’s mind.  Would you retrieve the Staff of Urnus Gregaria if you could?  she has asked him.  He would;  if he could see a way of going about it without being suicidal.  He is a perfect companion to Leo, of course.  They are so similar in many things – then again, so different in others.  Would you go ahead with it even if a friend stood in your way?  The priest has looked strangely at her as he replied that surely, no true friend would think of standing in his way;  and one who did could not be counted a friend at all.  Simplicity.  A thing Cho is starving for:  for life to be simple again.  Not likely.  A figure moves into the moonlight from the far left, breaking the pattern of shadows of the trees that lean over the path.  As Cho rises, Elros strides up, unsurprised:  he has long seen her, of course.  The talons, dull with dried blood, are handed over and accepted in silence with a wry look of gratitude.  As they turn and walk towards the Pool together, both warriors know that this is also a farewell.  Decisions have been made at last.  Tomorrow, Aos will head towards the Gorge of Osiris with Elros and Titania and the Champion of Toth, while Leo, Tarquin, Saphie and Cho will go with Astragard to explore his tomb.  Xiang plans to remain at the Pool for a while to explore his bond with the Spear in more depth.  Sigurd is to stay with him.  The sundering is complete.  By a strange alchemy of their own, five mistakes committed in a single day have led up to this splitting.  Five mistakes, five elements.  ***By the time the party had made its way back to Artuat after the bandits’ ambush the previous night, the sun was sinking fast and the elation of victory had faded before the stiffness of unhealed wounds and unspoken disagreement.  Tension had returned.  In the morning Saphie and Sigurd arrived via Dovistar’s sending teleport spell.  They were gladly greeted and provided with news by the group and by the Champion of Thoth, assembled in a back room of Artuat’s single tavern.  Sigurd cursed at Leo’s mention of the flamestrike and fireball that had hit the group the previous day;  this promised no good for the two dogs panting under the table, which he had purchased and brought with him to be trained for war.  Definitive decisions were again postponed, partly to give Tarquin time to regain his arsenal of spells that he had all but exhausted in the morning’s long healing queue.  Leo would take the time to identify the magic booty taken from the bandits.  Aos was going to talk to a fisherman in the village whom the Champion of Thoth had mentioned, the brother-in-law of the sorcerer who had been killed by Elros’s arrow in the ambush the previous day.  When Cho offered to go along to help observe the fisherman’s reactions, Aos actually appeared surprised but accepted gladly, shaming the monk.  How had they come to allow themselves to be on opposite sides of such a gaping rift?  Surely the balance must be restored.  No information of value was gained from interviewing the fisherman, who was remarkably difficult to see through.  When his eleven-year old son stole away, Elros followed him invisibly into a merchant’s store.  The sidhe scout had no Aryptian, but observed that the boy spoke fearfully to the angry merchant, then in the company of a number of muscular men.  At Elros’s report, the group decided to go see the merchant.  They found him alone with his wife in the store and spoke to him at length, again without obtaining much valuable information other than that the priestess had been in the store and questions about her made them nervous.  Then suddenly Elros shot and wounded the merchant’s wife when she nervously fingered an amulet at her throat.  He apparently expected her to start attacking the group with spells.  Mistake, of the element of Fire.  The archer all too ready with his bow.  At the outcries Cho, who had been outside the door and unable to follow the conversation, somersaulted into the store past Saphie, in time to see the merchant’s wife sag with an arrow in her flank and the merchant stumble back, grey with fear.  First things first.  She quickly moved through into the back room to cut off the merchant’s retreat.  Aos’s rapier snaked forward and stopped an inch from the shuddering merchant’s throat.  The man was begging for his life now.  Titania started singing spell notes, while in the back room, the fisherman and his son saw Cho and promptly ran away through a side door.  The monk stood for an instant, undecided.  What was going on?  Aos was shouting at the merchant, his wife screaming about invisible demons until she was cut off by Titania’s spell.  Within a heartbeat, somehow the store had turned into a bloody witches’ cauldron.  Whatever Aos and the others were doing, they had instants at best to accomplish it before the fisherman and his boy could bring in guards from the caravanserai – or possibly worse, the group of men Elros had reported seeing with the merchant earlier.  Prevent that?  Unlikely, as they were already out in the street in broad daylight.  Slow them at least, then, buy time.  Neck hairs dancing with misgiving, Cho launched herself out the side door in pursuit of father and son, intent on containing what essentially had become un-containable.  Mistake, of the element of Lightning.  The monk whose feet outrun her mind.  She had not expected the fisherman to turn back at her command.  Then again, she most certainly had not expected him to attack and club her twice, heavily, before she had time to gasp, while his son drew a dagger and moved swiftly around into the monk’s back.  Again, the monk acted with the speed of lightning.  The Talons found and slashed through iron-studded leather underneath the fisherman’s tunic.  Moments later, the man was down and Cho was dragging the boy back into the store to throw him at Aos’s feet.  The store seemed to have been frozen in time:  everyone stood where they had been before.  Questioning seemed to be going on but going nowhere.  Mistake, of the element of Earth.  The questioners scratch at the bedrock of lies lacking effective tools, or failing to use them to good effect.  Already Cho was sprinting out through the back room again, hoping to reach the fisherman in time – Too late.  Six guards came running just as Cho reached the unconscious and bleeding man.  The monk suffered herself to be disarmed and arrested and led towards the caravanserai, purportedly for questioning.  She hoped she would not have to find out exactly what that meant.  The guards could not possibly have failed to notice where Cho had come from and gone to;  yet by some strange twist of fortune and even though the store was mentioned in passing, none of them remembered to go and check on the boy.  That at least was good.  Let them forget there were other strangers around.  Buy time.  Once Aos had finished whatever he was doing, surely the next steps in the path would become clear.  Doubtlessly involving some discomfort, possibly involving a breakout.  It would be up to Aos to mend the group’s relationship with the village guard if he could.  So far, so acceptable;  in the circumstances.  Only then came Sigurd.  He rounded the corner of the tavern, Xiang and his two dogs trailing in his wake.  Both men looked like they had spent the greater part of the morning happily alternately drinking and puking.  Nothing new in that – except that Cho recognised a sinister quality to Sigurd’s swagger.  He had looked precisely the same the afternoon of the Battle of Jarrakig when he had stormed onto the battlefield eager to wrest back command of an army already engaging the enemy.  A spark of fear fluttered inside the monk, was instantly stamped upon.  Sigurd stopped in his tracks, blinked, lurched towards the leader of the party of guards bellowing in outrage.  None of his companions was to be arrested and so forth.  The guards drew closer around their prisoner in response.  One guard now held his scimitar to Cho’s throat.  This was getting dangerous.  With hands tied behind her, there was little the monk could do to save herself if the man got nervous and decided to cut.  One way out remained, of course.  For the briefest of instants, Cho focussed inward, touched her reassuring thread to the Void.  Xiang moved around to one side asking politely to be allowed to speak with the monk.  Hurriedly, in Verdorian, their common native language, Cho started to explain about the tension in the store, the wounded merchant’s wife – Which was when the sergeant of the guards slapped Sigurd’s hand away in anger.  Gold rained into the sand.  Evidently, an attempt at bribery had gone awry.  Mistake, of the element of Water.  The warrior’s fury drains and gushes like date wine spilled onto hot sands.  Immediately guards moved forward and engaged Sigurd.  Blades rang against his armour as he swayed, swinging his sword above his head.  Puzzled, his eyes found Cho’s, widened in sudden realisation of unforeseen consequences.  “I surrender,”  the monk heard him bellow, fading out of her focus as the man guarding her pressed his blade harder against her throat,  “I surrender but nobody touches my sword!!”  More guards were being waved forward by their leader.  What a waste.  With deep regret, the monk breathed out and dropped backwards into the Void –     … the guard’s fingers on her arm clawing, clenching, loosening … – stumbling out into a jumble of weapons and armour spread out on the floor of Leo’s tavern room and narrowly catching herself from falling into Leo hunched cross-legged over a ring set out on a black cloth.  “Go away.  Can’t you see I’m busy,”  the wizard grunted, then startled and looked up.  “I know.  If you will just cut this rope for me.  I have to get back there.”  Leo was still shaping a reply when Tarquin stepped over from his window seat and drew his knife.  Astragard looked on, blinking with mild interest. Again Cho hastily tried to explain what was going on in the store, that Xiang and Sigurd were being arrested … No one appeared to be listening particularly closely.  As she bounced down the stairs, still staggered by the realisation that she failed by a hair’s breadth to drag that guard with her when she stepped through the Void, Leo and Astragard were already deep into discussion on whether to save the rope or burn it – presumably for spell components or some other outlandish magic research.  No signs remained of either the guards or Xiang and Sigurd by the time the monk arrived at the spot where she had left them.  At least no blood appeared to have been spilled here.  Just in time to evade a group of guards rounding a corner, Cho dove back into the tap room of the tavern and headed out the back way.  She might have time for a final warning.  The monk made it to the side door of the store without being caught, but the village was crawling with guards now – and with a sinking heart she found the scene inside the store just as before.  She stopped only long enough to warn Aos that guards were searching the village.  Then, as she must, she went to the caravanserai to give herself up.  A brief interview with the commander of the caravanserai followed, unsatisfactory to both sides because Cho remained determined to say nothing that would draw attention to the store or merchant and volunteered only the bare bones of information.  The guards promptly dragged her to a cell and chained her to a wall.  It was not long before the monk heard voices proving that her companions were being brought in.  An eternity passed before anything else happened – which rather unexpectedly turned out to guards coming to release her.  It was only half a blessing.  Sigurd had seen himself forced to pay a bribe, large enough this time to be accepted (and to make him grumble and spit);  and amidst much squabbling amongst them, the group was being turned out of the village.  It soon became clear that Aos and the others had not succeeded in their goal – this had been to force the merchant and his wife to assist them in tracking down the priestess Amitha, which the monk now learned had been kidnapped that morning.  Nor had anyone succeeded in being heard by the commander of the caravanserai.  It appeared that rather than try to give a full account of the crimes they suspected the merchant and fisherman had been up to, each had spoken by himself, each with a different strategy and goal in mind – most concerned only and too narrowly with how to obtain a release of the monk.  Mistake, of the element of Void.  Divided in spirit, the party finds itself unable to rally.  After various hot-headed suggestions of returning to burn the village or heading for the gorge of Osiris to take on whatever had kidnapped the priestess had been rebutted, the party finally went south, walked out of the village by a tight line of guards.  Elros soon turned back invisibly to get the monk’s Hawk’s Talons from the commander’s room.  The others, guided by the Champion of Thoth, went on to the Pool of Hepi where the resident priest bade them welcome for the night.  ***The Moon floats quietly on the Pool of Hepi.  Without a word, Elros and Cho part and walk each to their own spot in the group’s small camp.  The monk picks up her waterskin and dampens the blood on the Talons, sparing with the water because tonight is not a night she would wish to ask anyone for oil.  Or for anything.  The cleaning complete, the monk lies back, willing herself to drift downwards to that murky surface beyond which the nightmares wait.  Titania’s soft murmur drifts from Aos’s tent.  Five mistakes;  five elements.Tomorrow they will split.  The balance is restored – but at great cost.  Regret again, at losing Aos, and Elros.  And then, already mostly submerged in sleep, Cho drifts past a thought thinner than a wisp of river mist:  what a cruel thing it is to have a task placed upon one by a god.</blockquote>

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