Jon Potter
First Post
[Realms #396] Training for Battle
"I had never seen somethin' like that," Karak mused as he swung his waraxe half-heartedly through the air around himself. He harrumphed. "'Course it take more than a mere word to rattle a dwarf, but it seemed to have the rest of ye in its grip." Ayremac's eyes grew wide with disbelief at the dwarf's words.
"Karak!!" he hissed, placing one finger over his mouth. When he had the warrior's attention, Ayremac pointed out to the woods and said, "Listen..."
The dwarf cocked his head, his lips set in a firm line. After a hushed moment, he gave the holy warrior a dismissive wave of his hand.
"Ayremac, I would nae stray too far. I know you be likin' yer new wings an' all, but if that elf has slipped inta the wood, then I say let him," Karak said, turning away from the woods. As he did so, he stepped on the corpse of a large black bird. "I'm just wonderin' if'n I can 'ave a Word like that for me axe. Hmmm... I'll have to speak to Balazaar about that."
Undaunted, Ayremac took another cautious step into the trees. Karak ignored him and continued to address the rest of the group. He looked appraisingly at Morier's armor and said, "Speakin' o' Balazaar, I've been thinkin'. I think it be time to head back to Floxen."
"So you're just going to let the elf get away?" Huzair asked, incredulous.
"He's slunk away with his wee fairy tail 'tween his legs!" Karak grumbled. "Good riddance, says I!"
"Short-sighted fool..." Huzair hissed and turned invisible.
"Hold on!" Morier said loudly, stepping out from behind the cleric. "I think it's a good idea to search for this mage while we've got him weakened. But let's not go rushing off without a plan. Let's cover each other from all directions that we're able to cover, and centralize back at this thing that Ixin found." The eldritch warrior looked down at the strange bit of flesh and curled his lip in disgust. "Let's head off in pairs in maybe a 500 pace radius. If you find nothing after that, come back to the group here at the center. Agreed?"
Shamalin, Karak and Ayremac nodded. Huzair reappeared and shrugged.
"Come on, Huzair," Morier said to the wizard. "Let's you and I see if we can't go shake this thing out of the bushes." Huzair hesitated.
"Uh, shouldn't I go with Ixin?" he suggested. "I'm the only one who can speak to her, after all." Morier sighed.
"Fine," he said and turned to the dwarf. "Karak? Any objections to pairing off with me?"
"Nope," Karak replied, hefting his waraxe and marching off toward the trees. "But I'm still thinkin' this be a fool's errand. We have a might big load of items here that we could sell and transfer inta belongings we need..." His booming voice started to fade as he hacked his way into the brambles.
"Be careful, Karak!" Huzair called. "Remember how I found Morier last time he was off running around in the woods!" He indicated his lower body, paying particular attention to his pelvis, and winked when Morier turned to give him a dirty look.
Well, if Huzair's going with Ixin, I guess that puts us together, Shamalin," Ayremac observed with a smile. She nodded.
"So it seems," the priestess replied with little interest. She was consumed with thoughts of the Word of Chaos and did not see the holy warrior's face fall as she clanked off into the trees.
"Well, don't move too quietly now," he joked, half-heartedly. "I'll need you to provide some cover noise for me."
They found nothing on their brief reconnaissance of the area although both Shamalin and Ayremac were filled with the foreboding sensation of being watched by someone (or something) hidden. It was decided that they would break camp and press on at once rather than linger more than was necessary in the area of vague threat.
"I need the practice," Shamalin said simply as she appeared in the firelight that night dressed in her armor with her hand on Waveblade's pommel. Morier looked up to find her gaze directed squarely at him. He regarded her levelly but said nothing. She waited. Karak and Ayremac were gone, searching for small game to supplement the nuts and berries that Morier had gathered during their day's travel. Shamalin had waited for the dwarf to leave before approaching Morier. While Karak had been helping to instruct her, he did not have an elemental sword. Their training stopped short of Shamalin drawing Waveblade and she felt that she was missing a valuable opportunity.
Huzair barely gave the exchange a glance before returning to the scroll he was studying. Ixin guessed at the meaning of their words and watched silently. Shamalin shifted, waiting for a response ...
"You'll hurt yourself," the albino muttered dismissively, "or worse yet: I'll hurt you. I don't need that on my conscience." Morier looked back to the parchment splayed before him and resumed scribing. It was a measured reaction, but he thought it had seemed genuine enough.
"Look," Shamalin began, far more pointedly than in her initial tone, "if you have reservations or doubts, I respect your thoughts on the matter. But please don't dismiss me."
Morier let the now palpable tension linger for a moment while he slowly rolled up the parchment and placed his quill in its case. "If my remarks sounded dismissive, I apologize. It was not my intent," he told her. "I do however have very real concerns about you holding a weapon of the stature of Waveblade."
"Yep," Huzair added from his reclined position by the fire, "I was afraid she'd kick your ass too. But you really needn't worry about it, old chum, I certainly won't tell the others, and besides everyone around here knows that she can heal you up real nice once she's done filleting you."
Morier took the opportunity to demonstrate true dismissiveness as he rolled his eyes and ignored Huzair's comments.
Shamalin spoke first, "You began to train me in swordplay once before, but you stopped at the first signs of anger and frustration. Now you refuse to assist me in learning to use one of the most powerful weapons we have? Why?"
"Because anger has no place in battle. Anger and hatred bind the mind and prevent energies from flowing as they must in order to be effective." Morier closed his eyes as he recited that bit of Eldritch code. "The only emotions I saw in you during your training were the ones that will one day get you killed, and I don't want to be responsible for that."
Shamalin looked almost as if she had anticipated such a respose. She shook her head.
"Can't you understand? My mind works differently than yours Morier. I'm not a warrior. Anger is one of the few emotions left me. Have you forgotten how you found me?" He said nothing, but the images flashed in his mind. Shamalin continued in a whisper. "I live with it every day. I fall asleep at night with it coursing through my blood, and wake each morning with the taste of it in my mouth. I need anger in order to do what we must to win these battles. It's what you do... to kill without anger or hatred that seems almost... obscene to me. It is as foreign to me to think that you can kill without hating your foe."
Somehow Morier was struck heavily by Shamalin's last statement. His existence had been so solitary for so long, that he had never really considered a reason to see another point of view about this. The Eldritch code was so ingrained it flowed through his veins, and he assumed it did to others as well, just to a lesser extent. He paused a long moment while the words bounced through his head, unaware for a moment that the Florian had begun talking again.
"..so often about doing whatever we need to do to be rid of the evil. Well, this is something..."
"You're right," Morier interrupted. "You are absolutely right."
Waveblade was both larger than she remembered and lighter than she expected; it now looked more like a shortsword despite the fact that it felt nearly as light as a dinner knife. Her muscles seemed to adjust to its extension in a way they had not with her previous weapon. It was a dichotomy almost too bizarre for her to even consider - Waveblade, one of four elemental swords, forged by the powers of good in one hand. And Blackheart's heavy shield, tainted by evil and the blood of her own loved ones in the other hand. Shamalin pushed the absurdity out of her mind and focused as Morier advanced. That is, until the weapon spoke.
Waveblade thundered in an alarmingly loud voice as she wielded it, like a wave crashing against a rock. It was all she could to do keep it in hand, having nearly jumped out of her skin at it's proclamation. "IT'S ABOUT TIME YOU UNSHEATHED ME!"
For a moment she stood transfixed, staring at her sword. Morier attacked quickly and deliberately, forcing her to redirect her attention in order to protect herself. She managed to deflect his first thrust, and he nodded his approval. Waveblade, however, was not as discreet.
"YES! YES! NOW SWING BACK. NO, NOT THAT WAY! GO FOR THE ELBOW!" Again Shamalin hesitated, perplexed. And again Morier gave her no latitude. He executed a smooth spin followed by a flurry of attacks, two of which caught sparks against Shamalin's heavy armor. She grunted and struggled to maintain her balance. "GO FOR HIS ELBOW!" Waveblade bellowed. "IMMOBILIZE THE ARM AND YOU NEUTRALIZE THE SWORD!"
Suddenly a second booming voice joined the chorus. "DO YOU DARE TO THREATEN ME, YOU DRIBBLING WAVE OF WEAKNESS?!" the echoing voice of Stoneblade taunted its counterpart. Morier's face was a mask of concentration, betrayed only by the twitch of his mouth. Shamalin gaped openly.
"WHAT DID YOU CALL ME?!" demanded Waveblade in return as Shamalin sliced upwards with the sword in an attempt to catch Morier's arm. "I'LL NOT BE CHIDED BY SOME TWO-BIT PIECE OF RUBBLE! ATTACK, WOMAN! ATTACK!"
"Stop talking!" Shamalin insisted as she barely managed to sidestep Morier's advancing thrust. "You're distracting me!"
The swords relented and the combatants continued. Once the verbal dueling had abated, Shamalin found she was able to settle into a rhythm of attack, defend, and counterattack. Morier coached her quietly from time to time. And in a small corner of her mind that wasn't completely occupied with trying to anticipate his every move, she began notice things.
The first was that when she arced Waveblade through the air, the sword emitted a strange and faraway surge of sound. It was a sensation utterly unique and foreign to Shamalin.
The second was even more intriguing. Totally unaware of when it first began, Shamalin found that in her mind she could touch the existence of that sound with her own pitch and produce surprising results. Where she had been tiring quickly, she suddenly felt a renewed sense of energy wash over her. Buoyed by this discovery, she applied herself anew to the task of combining her essence with that of her sword.
Morier sensed the change as well. Though Shamalin's maneuvers were still rough and unrefined, her responses still strained, she was sustaining her efforts much longer than he thought her capable of. When he finally drew things to a close with a nimble step out of the dueling circle, he noted that Shamalin was looking much as she had at the onset of their practice. She beamed - face flushed from excitement more than anything else. Morier nodded acknowledgement and then watched thoughtfully as she made her way back to the fire.
He had been right all along: she truly did have the heart of a fighter. It was not that he took any particular pride in the feeling that he'd been right. No... not at all. What he felt could better be described as a sense of relief in knowing that the events of her past had not completely destroyed her spirit.
To Morier, what Shamalin had endured back at the manor house could only be imagined, and even then only by the most disturbed of minds. But perhaps his was one of them. He thought back to his earliest memories of his real parents, and how they had treated him. Therein lay the parallel between the two of them... survival.
The fact that she survived was what had made him believe that she was a fighter at heart. It would have been easier for her to die in that room than to live, chained to the floor amidst the gruesome remains of those she had once been held captive alongside. But she fought to live, and that was the very reason he had been glad that the group had decided to bring her along when they left Floxen.
As she made her way out of the dim light of the torches that encircled their arena, he made a decision to do something even he felt was out of character. He quickened his step and fell in stride alongside her, never once lifting his eyes from the ground.
"You did well there," he said. "Very well."
"Thank you. It still feels a bit clumsy, but it's all very new to me," the priestess replied, looking over at him awkwardly. He did not look back at her and his profile was inscrutable.
"We're not so different, you and I," he began, and the words stopped her in her tracks. "Maybe there's more to each of our stories than the other knows, but I've thought you had this in you from the moment I saw you shackled to the floor in that manor house... still alive... somehow. I know a small something about the will to live against those odds, and how it opens the door to making a fighter who he is. It's what made me who I am, and it's why I picked up the sword. It's the only time I feel comfortable in my own skin, when I'm in battle. You seemed to be settling into a comfortable place inside yourself back there - something almost inexplicable, isn't it?"
He didn't wait for an answer, but instead continued on. "It's a part of your soul finding itself again."
"I'm not sure if that's what it is or not," the priestess said slowly, "but you know something? That's the most you've ever told me, or anyone in this group, about yourself since I've known you." Shamalin replied, still surprised at the revelation.
He paused, knowing that again she was absolutely right. "Nah... Huzair knows. He's just too self-absorbed to mention it."
"Off the top of me head," Karak was saying later as he gnawed on the leg of a spit-roasted squirrel. I be thinkin' we need a ring or amulet o' translation for Ixin. Morier still could go for a mite bit more armor and a barrel of healing elixir." He winked at Morier, grinning broadly and Huzair clucked his tongue.
"Yeah, Morier. Nice job in that last battle" the mage sneered mockingly. "Good job using up the healing." Karak shook his head disapprovingly and went on.
"Me and Shamalin probably need our plate tended to. More than what I've done in the field, that is. I imagine Huzair may need more spell components and the like." He sighed and slapped his hand on his knee. "I guess what I am sayin' is: it's time for a restock."
"I could use some supplies for my new hobby," Huzair agreed, looking up from a sketch he was working on. "I plan to make everyone tattoos." There were numerous skeptical looks around the campfire, but Karak stroked his beard thoughtfully.
"You should tatoo yer face, wizard," Karak suggested. "That is what the Battleragers do!"
"Yeah Karak, that is just what I want to do: look like a dwarf," Huzair said sarcastically, shaking his head in disbelief.
"Aren't ye supposed to be on watch?!" Karak grumbled. "Ye said ye had to take first watch so's ye could get a full night's sleep an' now that ye have it, yer spendin' yer time drawin' pictures and chattin' it up with us. Get to work, ye lazy anvil-droppin' goblin-spawn!"
"Stop getting your beard in a twist, dwarf," Huzair said with a grin as he closed his eyes and clasped his hands behind his head. "It is being taken care of." Karak's teeth ground audibly as he got to his feet.
Morier grabbed the dwarf's arm and shook his head when Karak turned to look at him. "He's baiting you," the albino said. "He's got his familiar watching while he sits here and gets beneath your skin. Let it go."
Karak considered this and finally settled for spitting on the ground near the wizard and settling back onto his rock. "I will nae lie to ya either," he went on, losing almost no steam in his arguement, "but seein' you all wield those mighty weapons is givin' me a hankerin' to visit Balazaar to get me axe upgraded a bit. So I say we take a breather after what we've all been through. I'll tell ya something else too. I been wonderin' how the manor house be. I mean, we should check in on our little experiment to fight chaos. What say you all?"
They were taking a vote, then, but Huzair was distracted by the voice of Sparky crying out in his mind, "Boss, we got trouble, I think. There's a lot of guys heading toward you with bows. I think they're elves, but there's also something-"
Sparky's thoughts cut off in mind stream and Huzair felt his link with the hummingbird go instantly dead.
"I had never seen somethin' like that," Karak mused as he swung his waraxe half-heartedly through the air around himself. He harrumphed. "'Course it take more than a mere word to rattle a dwarf, but it seemed to have the rest of ye in its grip." Ayremac's eyes grew wide with disbelief at the dwarf's words.
"Karak!!" he hissed, placing one finger over his mouth. When he had the warrior's attention, Ayremac pointed out to the woods and said, "Listen..."
The dwarf cocked his head, his lips set in a firm line. After a hushed moment, he gave the holy warrior a dismissive wave of his hand.
"Ayremac, I would nae stray too far. I know you be likin' yer new wings an' all, but if that elf has slipped inta the wood, then I say let him," Karak said, turning away from the woods. As he did so, he stepped on the corpse of a large black bird. "I'm just wonderin' if'n I can 'ave a Word like that for me axe. Hmmm... I'll have to speak to Balazaar about that."
Undaunted, Ayremac took another cautious step into the trees. Karak ignored him and continued to address the rest of the group. He looked appraisingly at Morier's armor and said, "Speakin' o' Balazaar, I've been thinkin'. I think it be time to head back to Floxen."
"So you're just going to let the elf get away?" Huzair asked, incredulous.
"He's slunk away with his wee fairy tail 'tween his legs!" Karak grumbled. "Good riddance, says I!"
"Short-sighted fool..." Huzair hissed and turned invisible.
"Hold on!" Morier said loudly, stepping out from behind the cleric. "I think it's a good idea to search for this mage while we've got him weakened. But let's not go rushing off without a plan. Let's cover each other from all directions that we're able to cover, and centralize back at this thing that Ixin found." The eldritch warrior looked down at the strange bit of flesh and curled his lip in disgust. "Let's head off in pairs in maybe a 500 pace radius. If you find nothing after that, come back to the group here at the center. Agreed?"
Shamalin, Karak and Ayremac nodded. Huzair reappeared and shrugged.
"Come on, Huzair," Morier said to the wizard. "Let's you and I see if we can't go shake this thing out of the bushes." Huzair hesitated.
"Uh, shouldn't I go with Ixin?" he suggested. "I'm the only one who can speak to her, after all." Morier sighed.
"Fine," he said and turned to the dwarf. "Karak? Any objections to pairing off with me?"
"Nope," Karak replied, hefting his waraxe and marching off toward the trees. "But I'm still thinkin' this be a fool's errand. We have a might big load of items here that we could sell and transfer inta belongings we need..." His booming voice started to fade as he hacked his way into the brambles.
"Be careful, Karak!" Huzair called. "Remember how I found Morier last time he was off running around in the woods!" He indicated his lower body, paying particular attention to his pelvis, and winked when Morier turned to give him a dirty look.
Well, if Huzair's going with Ixin, I guess that puts us together, Shamalin," Ayremac observed with a smile. She nodded.
"So it seems," the priestess replied with little interest. She was consumed with thoughts of the Word of Chaos and did not see the holy warrior's face fall as she clanked off into the trees.
"Well, don't move too quietly now," he joked, half-heartedly. "I'll need you to provide some cover noise for me."
They found nothing on their brief reconnaissance of the area although both Shamalin and Ayremac were filled with the foreboding sensation of being watched by someone (or something) hidden. It was decided that they would break camp and press on at once rather than linger more than was necessary in the area of vague threat.
"I need the practice," Shamalin said simply as she appeared in the firelight that night dressed in her armor with her hand on Waveblade's pommel. Morier looked up to find her gaze directed squarely at him. He regarded her levelly but said nothing. She waited. Karak and Ayremac were gone, searching for small game to supplement the nuts and berries that Morier had gathered during their day's travel. Shamalin had waited for the dwarf to leave before approaching Morier. While Karak had been helping to instruct her, he did not have an elemental sword. Their training stopped short of Shamalin drawing Waveblade and she felt that she was missing a valuable opportunity.
Huzair barely gave the exchange a glance before returning to the scroll he was studying. Ixin guessed at the meaning of their words and watched silently. Shamalin shifted, waiting for a response ...
"You'll hurt yourself," the albino muttered dismissively, "or worse yet: I'll hurt you. I don't need that on my conscience." Morier looked back to the parchment splayed before him and resumed scribing. It was a measured reaction, but he thought it had seemed genuine enough.
"Look," Shamalin began, far more pointedly than in her initial tone, "if you have reservations or doubts, I respect your thoughts on the matter. But please don't dismiss me."
Morier let the now palpable tension linger for a moment while he slowly rolled up the parchment and placed his quill in its case. "If my remarks sounded dismissive, I apologize. It was not my intent," he told her. "I do however have very real concerns about you holding a weapon of the stature of Waveblade."
"Yep," Huzair added from his reclined position by the fire, "I was afraid she'd kick your ass too. But you really needn't worry about it, old chum, I certainly won't tell the others, and besides everyone around here knows that she can heal you up real nice once she's done filleting you."
Morier took the opportunity to demonstrate true dismissiveness as he rolled his eyes and ignored Huzair's comments.
Shamalin spoke first, "You began to train me in swordplay once before, but you stopped at the first signs of anger and frustration. Now you refuse to assist me in learning to use one of the most powerful weapons we have? Why?"
"Because anger has no place in battle. Anger and hatred bind the mind and prevent energies from flowing as they must in order to be effective." Morier closed his eyes as he recited that bit of Eldritch code. "The only emotions I saw in you during your training were the ones that will one day get you killed, and I don't want to be responsible for that."
Shamalin looked almost as if she had anticipated such a respose. She shook her head.
"Can't you understand? My mind works differently than yours Morier. I'm not a warrior. Anger is one of the few emotions left me. Have you forgotten how you found me?" He said nothing, but the images flashed in his mind. Shamalin continued in a whisper. "I live with it every day. I fall asleep at night with it coursing through my blood, and wake each morning with the taste of it in my mouth. I need anger in order to do what we must to win these battles. It's what you do... to kill without anger or hatred that seems almost... obscene to me. It is as foreign to me to think that you can kill without hating your foe."
Somehow Morier was struck heavily by Shamalin's last statement. His existence had been so solitary for so long, that he had never really considered a reason to see another point of view about this. The Eldritch code was so ingrained it flowed through his veins, and he assumed it did to others as well, just to a lesser extent. He paused a long moment while the words bounced through his head, unaware for a moment that the Florian had begun talking again.
"..so often about doing whatever we need to do to be rid of the evil. Well, this is something..."
"You're right," Morier interrupted. "You are absolutely right."
Waveblade was both larger than she remembered and lighter than she expected; it now looked more like a shortsword despite the fact that it felt nearly as light as a dinner knife. Her muscles seemed to adjust to its extension in a way they had not with her previous weapon. It was a dichotomy almost too bizarre for her to even consider - Waveblade, one of four elemental swords, forged by the powers of good in one hand. And Blackheart's heavy shield, tainted by evil and the blood of her own loved ones in the other hand. Shamalin pushed the absurdity out of her mind and focused as Morier advanced. That is, until the weapon spoke.
Waveblade thundered in an alarmingly loud voice as she wielded it, like a wave crashing against a rock. It was all she could to do keep it in hand, having nearly jumped out of her skin at it's proclamation. "IT'S ABOUT TIME YOU UNSHEATHED ME!"
For a moment she stood transfixed, staring at her sword. Morier attacked quickly and deliberately, forcing her to redirect her attention in order to protect herself. She managed to deflect his first thrust, and he nodded his approval. Waveblade, however, was not as discreet.
"YES! YES! NOW SWING BACK. NO, NOT THAT WAY! GO FOR THE ELBOW!" Again Shamalin hesitated, perplexed. And again Morier gave her no latitude. He executed a smooth spin followed by a flurry of attacks, two of which caught sparks against Shamalin's heavy armor. She grunted and struggled to maintain her balance. "GO FOR HIS ELBOW!" Waveblade bellowed. "IMMOBILIZE THE ARM AND YOU NEUTRALIZE THE SWORD!"
Suddenly a second booming voice joined the chorus. "DO YOU DARE TO THREATEN ME, YOU DRIBBLING WAVE OF WEAKNESS?!" the echoing voice of Stoneblade taunted its counterpart. Morier's face was a mask of concentration, betrayed only by the twitch of his mouth. Shamalin gaped openly.
"WHAT DID YOU CALL ME?!" demanded Waveblade in return as Shamalin sliced upwards with the sword in an attempt to catch Morier's arm. "I'LL NOT BE CHIDED BY SOME TWO-BIT PIECE OF RUBBLE! ATTACK, WOMAN! ATTACK!"
"Stop talking!" Shamalin insisted as she barely managed to sidestep Morier's advancing thrust. "You're distracting me!"
The swords relented and the combatants continued. Once the verbal dueling had abated, Shamalin found she was able to settle into a rhythm of attack, defend, and counterattack. Morier coached her quietly from time to time. And in a small corner of her mind that wasn't completely occupied with trying to anticipate his every move, she began notice things.
The first was that when she arced Waveblade through the air, the sword emitted a strange and faraway surge of sound. It was a sensation utterly unique and foreign to Shamalin.
The second was even more intriguing. Totally unaware of when it first began, Shamalin found that in her mind she could touch the existence of that sound with her own pitch and produce surprising results. Where she had been tiring quickly, she suddenly felt a renewed sense of energy wash over her. Buoyed by this discovery, she applied herself anew to the task of combining her essence with that of her sword.
Morier sensed the change as well. Though Shamalin's maneuvers were still rough and unrefined, her responses still strained, she was sustaining her efforts much longer than he thought her capable of. When he finally drew things to a close with a nimble step out of the dueling circle, he noted that Shamalin was looking much as she had at the onset of their practice. She beamed - face flushed from excitement more than anything else. Morier nodded acknowledgement and then watched thoughtfully as she made her way back to the fire.
He had been right all along: she truly did have the heart of a fighter. It was not that he took any particular pride in the feeling that he'd been right. No... not at all. What he felt could better be described as a sense of relief in knowing that the events of her past had not completely destroyed her spirit.
To Morier, what Shamalin had endured back at the manor house could only be imagined, and even then only by the most disturbed of minds. But perhaps his was one of them. He thought back to his earliest memories of his real parents, and how they had treated him. Therein lay the parallel between the two of them... survival.
The fact that she survived was what had made him believe that she was a fighter at heart. It would have been easier for her to die in that room than to live, chained to the floor amidst the gruesome remains of those she had once been held captive alongside. But she fought to live, and that was the very reason he had been glad that the group had decided to bring her along when they left Floxen.
As she made her way out of the dim light of the torches that encircled their arena, he made a decision to do something even he felt was out of character. He quickened his step and fell in stride alongside her, never once lifting his eyes from the ground.
"You did well there," he said. "Very well."
"Thank you. It still feels a bit clumsy, but it's all very new to me," the priestess replied, looking over at him awkwardly. He did not look back at her and his profile was inscrutable.
"We're not so different, you and I," he began, and the words stopped her in her tracks. "Maybe there's more to each of our stories than the other knows, but I've thought you had this in you from the moment I saw you shackled to the floor in that manor house... still alive... somehow. I know a small something about the will to live against those odds, and how it opens the door to making a fighter who he is. It's what made me who I am, and it's why I picked up the sword. It's the only time I feel comfortable in my own skin, when I'm in battle. You seemed to be settling into a comfortable place inside yourself back there - something almost inexplicable, isn't it?"
He didn't wait for an answer, but instead continued on. "It's a part of your soul finding itself again."
"I'm not sure if that's what it is or not," the priestess said slowly, "but you know something? That's the most you've ever told me, or anyone in this group, about yourself since I've known you." Shamalin replied, still surprised at the revelation.
He paused, knowing that again she was absolutely right. "Nah... Huzair knows. He's just too self-absorbed to mention it."
"Off the top of me head," Karak was saying later as he gnawed on the leg of a spit-roasted squirrel. I be thinkin' we need a ring or amulet o' translation for Ixin. Morier still could go for a mite bit more armor and a barrel of healing elixir." He winked at Morier, grinning broadly and Huzair clucked his tongue.
"Yeah, Morier. Nice job in that last battle" the mage sneered mockingly. "Good job using up the healing." Karak shook his head disapprovingly and went on.
"Me and Shamalin probably need our plate tended to. More than what I've done in the field, that is. I imagine Huzair may need more spell components and the like." He sighed and slapped his hand on his knee. "I guess what I am sayin' is: it's time for a restock."
"I could use some supplies for my new hobby," Huzair agreed, looking up from a sketch he was working on. "I plan to make everyone tattoos." There were numerous skeptical looks around the campfire, but Karak stroked his beard thoughtfully.
"You should tatoo yer face, wizard," Karak suggested. "That is what the Battleragers do!"
"Yeah Karak, that is just what I want to do: look like a dwarf," Huzair said sarcastically, shaking his head in disbelief.
"Aren't ye supposed to be on watch?!" Karak grumbled. "Ye said ye had to take first watch so's ye could get a full night's sleep an' now that ye have it, yer spendin' yer time drawin' pictures and chattin' it up with us. Get to work, ye lazy anvil-droppin' goblin-spawn!"
"Stop getting your beard in a twist, dwarf," Huzair said with a grin as he closed his eyes and clasped his hands behind his head. "It is being taken care of." Karak's teeth ground audibly as he got to his feet.
Morier grabbed the dwarf's arm and shook his head when Karak turned to look at him. "He's baiting you," the albino said. "He's got his familiar watching while he sits here and gets beneath your skin. Let it go."
Karak considered this and finally settled for spitting on the ground near the wizard and settling back onto his rock. "I will nae lie to ya either," he went on, losing almost no steam in his arguement, "but seein' you all wield those mighty weapons is givin' me a hankerin' to visit Balazaar to get me axe upgraded a bit. So I say we take a breather after what we've all been through. I'll tell ya something else too. I been wonderin' how the manor house be. I mean, we should check in on our little experiment to fight chaos. What say you all?"
They were taking a vote, then, but Huzair was distracted by the voice of Sparky crying out in his mind, "Boss, we got trouble, I think. There's a lot of guys heading toward you with bows. I think they're elves, but there's also something-"
Sparky's thoughts cut off in mind stream and Huzair felt his link with the hummingbird go instantly dead.
