• Mature • Before We Run

[Kasoria]

The fiddle player was good, but the singer was better. He had that sort of rich baritone that filled the air without seeming to deafen you. Thus his words were like the lilting poetry they were meant to be, not just shouted verse mangled by volume into... noise. Kasoria looked up from his stew and studied the pair of them. Fourth night in a row they serenaded the group, and they'd yet to repeat themselves. Over the campfire he watched them, roam about the caravan, the clutches of men eating or drinking or talking or choring or just watching, like him.

"Come bustle, bustle, drink about, and let us merry be! Our can is full, we'll pump it out, and then all hands to sea!"

"Sailor's song."

"Aye," he said with a nod as Raand spoke, mopping up the last of his meal with a chunk of bread. "They make fer the best ones 'round a fire."

"Or a tavern."

The old man snorted. Half his life he'd had ditties like this in the background noise of his waking. Fiddle, banjo, drums, piano, a dozen other instruments. Songs telling tales of hardy men with naught to their names but the voyage's purse and their clothes, who'd yet seen wondrous sights from across the world and every ocean. They'd filtered through the dockside taverns of Foster's Landing and found fertile ground in Etzos Proper. Rollicking and lascivious, they fit in well with the Oh'Pee. Wherever he'd gone, the songs had been waiting for him. The notes different, the tale the same.

Make merry while you can, mates, fer the fun can't last forever.

"Miki make this?"

"I did, yeh sarky shit, as yeh fuckin' know," Raand said, harsh words with no heat. "Belly bagged a deer earlier, though, so he'll be cookin' tomorrow. Sez the woods are chock wi' game."

"Aye, well, Manclin sez they're sacred or summin, so make sure he don't go wanderin' by hisself. Jus' with the party."

Raand nodded, and the matter was settled. That's why you always had a Raand: you didn't need to go into detail or repeat yourself. He looked around and saw nothing but trees beyond the tents and wagons of the caravan. A huge area had been carved beside the road to Yaralon, but big as it was, the forest was vaster. Two trials now, they'd seen nothing but green and brown surrounding them. Some places so thick an army could be just beyond the treeline, and they'd not know. Even the hunters who'd signed on with the caravan master, all bearing tokens that said they were permitted to hunt the Sacred Forest, said that they could only go so far. The trees could move about, they said. Paths could vanish, they muttered. Men wandered a wee too far, wee too long, and the forest just... ate them.

Ever the bloody dramatists.

"Speak a' the wanker..."

A youthful face smiled down at them, no offence taken and keen to give it back anyway. "An' he shall appear. Yer turn on watch, Raand."

The older man nodded and got up. Miki and Vaul were snoring in their tent. The delegation and The Band only bothered with one guard on watch, seated up top their wagon, forever scanning the endless wild darkness beyond the campfires. There were plenty of guards to this caravan, and almost all the men were armed besides. This was from Korlasir, after all, not going to it, like before. Th Eternal Empire was a martial culture, an expansionist nation, and that meant every man over thirty had some knowledge of weapons. He'd heard that all but two of the guards were former soldiers; several of the bands traveling in the caravan were sellswords seeking greater fortune in Yaralon.

Or seeking knowledge of neighboring nations that they'll send back to the Empire, he'd thought with a wry smile. Mercenaries. Can't be trusted.

Someone new came to the fire and there was a... change. Not an immediate end to noise and chatter, like one distrusted or disliked had arrived. But there was a pause, amongst the Etzoris. The woman was a new addition... no, a rehired hand. Cast away once before, but somehow, at the insistence of their security chief, serving with them again. Manclin and the few clerks still awake noted her arrival. The chief ambassador, face shining from the fire, flicked a glance at Kasoria.

The old man glanced up and chewed. He kept chewing as he studied her. He couldn't help it. No matter what had been said and confessed and argued and agreed... he still knew what she was. He looked for signs of usage without shame or subtlety anymore. He knew Raand and Belial were doing the same.

Well. Price you pay, isn't it?

"Eat." He nodded towards the cauldron. "Raand's stew, s'not bad."

If she made the protestation he was expecting, those black eyes would fix her dead and with no trace of pity.

"Eat. Appetite or not, yeh body needs wood fer the fire. Raand's up. Few breaks, my turn, then youse."

He knew he sounded harsh. He didn't care. The journey was young, and her time returned to them younger. Raand waited until his leader's eyes were back on his food, then did his best to catch Maxine's eye. He made a quick little eye-popping, point-with-your-nose, "over there, don't tarry" gesture and left it at that. Not giving her much; not choosing anyone over anyone else... but a little flexibility from The Band was a precious thing.

"'ere! Get an ale in yeh, too."

Belial was hardly as subtle.

[Max]

Maxine closed her eyes were she rested in the dark against a tree. All trial every trial, she was surrounded by others and their sounds. Idle banter, horses snorting, wagons creaking and groaning, and the sheer knowledge that she was never alone. With the fall of night most of that had subsided. The caravan had quieted. Horses were hitched and wagons stilled. She wandered out into the trees, within shouting range but farther than a man would venture for a piss, just for the peace of the night time silence.

Her body was itching. It had been all trial. She'd been working on staving it from its desire for longer periods, but the itch remained and eventually would need to be scratched. She hadn't scratched it yet. She wouldn't, not when the shadows loomed and half the men were vulnerable and asleep. When the next trial dawned she'd kneel before her vice and succumb to another dose. Then, inevitably, it would wear off and she'd be battling it back beyond what her body told her was survivable. She always did though. Manage to survive.

The Rusalka's eyes opened and she sighed. Any longer and someone might think she deserted. She quietly rose and abandoned her post against the tree. Then she walked back toward camp, waving to Raand when his vigilant gaze regarded her approach. She felt the eyes upon her when she entered the faintest glow of the campfire light. No sooner did she arrive did Kasoria bark her a command. She glanced from him to the stew and nodded, giving no protest. She grabbed a bowl and started slapping its contents into it. No sooner had she vacated the cauldron did Belial bark toward her, too, with more kindness. An appreciative smile, and she had her food and ale. Far more than she deserved.

Max chose a seat at the fire across from Kasoria. It wasn't out of spite that she chose the distance, but strategy. He saw her eyes flick over his shoulder first before she settled. She knew his eyes would do the same for her. First the ale went down, a few long sips after a long trial. Then she set the tankard down at her feet and dug her spoon into the slop. She shoveled the first bite into her mouth and chewed before pausing, suspicious eyes lifting from the bowl.

"Miki?"

"Oh, piss off," came the voice from the top of the wagon.

"Kidding, Raand," she smirked at the defiant watcher before digging back into the meal.

"Good ears," Belial snickered.

"Figured you'd be off in some pretty lady's bed roll by now."

"Ah, maybe when we reach the city. I try not to mix the job and pleasure. I've had my eye on a lass or two. When we're inside the gates I'll put my best foot forward." Belial danced his eyebrows at her, clearly pleased with his own pun while she shook her head.

After her display in Rharne, exposing what she was even if it was to save Raand, she was surprised The Band entertained her at all. She did not mistake these little slivers of kindness of acceptance or forgiveness. Everything she had before would need to be earned back, and then some. They hated the Immortals and their followers and the liability of junkies, and Maxine fell in both categories. Her battle was tenuous and uphill. An ale and a bowl of stew wouldn't make her forget that.

"We keep traveling further east," Max observed evenly. "How far east does Etzos plan to go for new allies?"

[Kasoria]

The politeness was a good sign, but it was early trials. Truth was, it came easily to The Band, when Maxine was concerned. It was the same with Belial, when first he'd been allotted to them, on the march to Rhakros. He was far from green, but he'd been the youngest. Full of all the horse piss and fire they remembered from their youth. Soured by loss and war and pestilence, but still there... and once he'd proved himself, the queer little brotherhood expanded a little more.

No-one took a vote or asked or even discussed it. One trial, it was just... understood. And it had started with just a tad more regard than usual. More patience. Until he was as comfortable with them as they were him.

Main difference weas, he hadn't pissed on all that trust like she had.

Long is the road, and hard.

Kasoria snorted softly, remembering the snatched like from an old poem. Something about coming back from the Beneath. Fitting. He watched the woman devour her food and quaff her ale, satisfied she wasn't just chewing the same mouthful for five bits like some moody kid who doesn't want her peas. They'd been riding long and the trials were getting hot. She couldn't afford not to keep her body sated... especially when she started every morning puking her guts up.

But that had passed. They'd taken turns observing her, watching silently and at a distance. Vaul expected the spells to stop and for her to be suddenly, mysteriously, tellingly refreshed... but he was only half right.

The puking stopped eventually. But she still looked like shit. Kasoria remembered what she'd said, and knew it was too much to hope she'd kicked the garbage entirely. But she was weaning herself off. Taking just enough to be functional, lessening the amount bit by bit. Fates, how much will that must have taken. To have all the powders or tinctures you need to make all the cramps and sweats and pain and confusion and sorrow go away, but only ever taking the bare minimum. Knowing that even as you do, it will be less next time.

The last night, Kasoria had paused by her tent and saw her twitching, fetal form on her blanket. Sweating and holding herself, dreaming dreams that left her moaning into the dark.

She was trying. She had not lied to them again.

"Oh, we have plenty of stops to make, Miss Maxine!" Fagan said from the other side of the bonfire, dabbing the corners of his mouth primly with a handkerchiefs. "Yaralon will be next for us, but Nashaki isn't too far from there. Then a ship to the Ivorian Isle, Athart after that..." The diplomat's words trailed off and he shook his head. As if suddenly overwhelmed. "The world is a wide place, though. I don't wish to double back or make longer the trip, yet I fear we must. Scalvoris is definitely on our list, but so is Quacia. I think we shall have to visit the latter first, then take a long voyage up around the bottom and west of our home continent to the former. After that, well... we won't really be going east anymore, what?

Those of The Band still conscious raised their eyebrows at that... most expansive possible answer to the question hey could imagine. Kasoria's eyes flickered around and made a note of anyone not in their group listening in a touch too closely. Their itinerary was hardly a state secret, but he didn't want too much familiarity from people he didn't know. He made a mental note to speak to Fagan about tweaking that path a little, when next they got the chance. Just in case the words spoken here and the future they divined fell into the wrong hands...

"Long time 'fore we see the Big Rock again, that's f'sure," was his only comment, focusing instead on rooting out a nice chunk of pork from the gravy and pulped potatoes in his bowl. "Not that I'm in a hurry."

"Speak for yourself, boss," Belial said with a smirk in his voice, picking his teeth with an arrowhead. "I'm missing some fine new plays, I'm sure. Fates, this could have been my chance to get back into... fuck me, that's hair. Did you skin this bastard before you cooked it, Raand?"

"An' youse can fuck off n'all!"

Another ripple of chuckles around the bonfire. Even Manclin and his handful of still-awake minions joined in, without getting so much as a sneer or a frown from The Band. Too much time spent on the road for such barriers to be so jealously guarded anymore. They'd fought and trained together, all of them. The horrifying mystique of The Band had been stripped away just as the meek, bookish presumption had from Fagan and his squadron of clerks and scribes. The former were not just brooding, silent killers. The latter not merely cowardly ink-stained dandies. Things were more complicated now, knowing the man next to you was, well, a man. Not just a label you could slap on him and stop thinking about.

But it made you fight harder for him. No-one was more surprised than Kasoria.

The song changed. Something slower. Almost mournful. Maxine could see within moments how it effected the Etzori. As the melody struck them and the words wafted over, she could see a chance come over the mercenaries... yes, and a handful of the scribes, too. The ones who'd been at Rhakros.

"Of all the money that e'er I had,
I spent it in good company.
And all the harm I've ever done
Alas, it was to none but me."

It started slow. Mournful. The lethargy of coming death and grief rich in the words. Just as it had been back then. Then Kasoria smiled. The beat stepped up. A new instrument joined and the dirge became a song.

"So, fill to me the parting glass
And drink a health whate'er befalls
And gently rise and softly call
"Good night and joy be to you all!""

Hands began to clap around the fire. The Band's eyes were glazed with memory. Eyes sad, but faces smiling. Belial was even singing along, lilting voice made for the stage carrying the sorrow but also the defiance these new stanzas carried with them.

"But since it fell unto my lot,
That I should rise and you should not,
I'll gently rise and softly call,
"Good night and joy be to you all!""

"Last night before we took the walls at Rhakros," Kasoria said lowly, if Maxine should turn to him with query in her eyes. Half his mouth moved into a smile. Rueful and not unpleasant. That smile that still took her by surprise. When he showed her the man beneath the myth. Though mayhap, of all here, she knew him best of all. But she hadn't been there. Kasoria was thankful for that. "Started at one fire. Then it... spread. Dunno why. Maybe cuz we all knew we'd nay see another dawn. But we wunt gunna be runnin'. Soon we were all singin' it. Knights an' pikemen an' bowmen an' even dirty gutter bastards like us. Din't matter. The words..."

He tapped his chest, and The Band nodded as one.

"Good night, and joy be to you all." He snorted again. Mayhap at his foolishness. Mayhap for those ghosts around a distant fire, who never made it home. "They heard us from the walls, I'm sure a' that. Dead men singin' wi' joy in their hearts. Hope that put the wind right up the cunts."

Raand chuckled darkly and his eyes flicked to Maxine. He wondered if she'd heard that story before. Because he damn sure hadn't heard Kasoria speak it to anyone but them until that moment.

[Max]

Fagan was quick to respond to her question. He prattled on about other places east, like Nashaki, Yaralon, and the Ivorian Isle. Maxine had been to none of those legendary places. Athart gave her a twinge of melancholy. No matter where she was, she knew the direction to turn toward the city of her dead matron Audrae. She continued to spoon food into her mouth and chew with an appreciative nod toward Fagan, who continued to verbally map their considerable trip.

Then he named Scalvoris.

Maxine choked on the ale she was sucking down. She pulled the tankard away from her lips, sputtering and coughing in such an abrupt manner that Fagan’s brow raised. She waved any concern away, shaking her head. She didn’t know why she let the prospect of the Etzori’s thought to sail there surprise her. It made sense. It was also just as repulsive to her.

She recovered quickly and fell back to silence, eyes on her food rather than allowing anyone a peek into her mind’s eye through her gaze. She went straight to social camouflage. When they laughed she laughed, whether she was present enough to appreciate the jest. When they talked she nodded her understanding. Her thoughts raced toward the necessity of an escape in the future while she also tried to reel them back in. Her mind had already been made up.

Still time before then…

The song changed and so did the mood in an instant. Maxine hardly noticed it at first. It was the demeanor of the men around her that drew her attention to it. She raised her head and put her empty bowl down on the ground beside her. The men were singing now, the beat stepping up along with their hearts from somber.

She watched as Belial rose from his seat and belted on the more joyful verses, his eyes alight with memories from a night long ago but heart full with the company that remained. Most of these men seemed to know the tune and revel in it despite the gloom it began with. Even the scribes, introverted and professional, lightened with the glee of the moment. Perhaps it was her detachment to the sentiment she did not share with the others that allowed her to hear Kasoria’s words.

It made sense now that he’s added context. This was never a campfire song, beloved for tradition or tune. It was something intimately shared, defeated, and lost all in one. Outsiders like her could never understand, but she did understand the feelings of people and moments long gone now. She raised a drink above her head and nodded toward Kasoria and the men.

"Cheers to the ghosts of dead men then,” the cursed woman suggested earnestly. "So long as it’s sung, may they never die.”

Then she drank her fill of her ale and set that down too beside the bowl. Belial seemed to fall down in his seat, a broad smile plastered across his face as the song died down again. The Delegates went back to their lounging, a couple even retiring to tents. After a bit of silence Maxine raised her inquisitive eyes to peer at each of the fighting men present.

"You’ve all seen a decent bit of world now,” Max pointed out first. "Cultures. Politics. Religions. People. Power of all names and sorts…so let me ask you this…”

She leaned forward to put her elbows on her knees. She raised a brow, and despite what some might believe to be the personal question she asked next, there was not an ounce of defensiveness or trickery in her face.

"Do you think the entire world would be a better place with no more Immortals at all?”

While she believed she an inkling of the general consensus, she remembered little bits shared. She remembered a mumbled name Miki used to make his point to keep her, and she wondered if that made any difference to the war-torn soldiers at all now.

[Kasoria]

"Cheers to the ghosts of dead men then. So long as it’s sung, may they never die.”

"By Fuck, I'll drink t'that..."

And so they did, Belial raising his tankard first among. Kasoria managed a smile, half-hidden behind the rim of his cup. She was worming her way back in, to be sure. Though that was hardly a charitable way to describe it. She was finding her... no... she was rediscovering her footing among The Band. She'd been excoriated from them for over a season, and rightfully so. They had moved on from her, both out of necessity and because they all knew even bringing her up around him again was a bad idea. She had to be relegated to the past, unpleasant and remembered but distant, where she could do no harm. The ranks they had opened closed again, and tightly... until she had returned.

They took her in, they cast her out. To do that all over again, it asked a lot... but on the plus side, there were footsteps already taken that she could follow.

Stories around the campfire never hurts.

It made the Old Man relax a little more. Of course his senses were never really dulled, as it were. Too many arcs of paranoia and living in places where death could come swift and merciless. No warning, no heraldry, no clues... just trust to luck and reflexes and maybe, just maybe, the prophecy of a split-trill that ears and eyes might give you. But even out here, in the wild, surrounded by looming tress made scarlet and crimson and black and shimmering green by the bonfire, Kasoria settled back against his pack. Using it as a rough pillow as he almost lounged.

She was doing better. Getting better. It encouraged him... and then, she went ahead and acted like Maxine.

It started simply enough. Innocently. That alone almost made his hairs stand up. Oh, aye. Well-traveled they were. From shitheap taverns and campsites and alleys from one side of Etzos to the other. Truly a cornucopia of experiences, to drink piss-weak ale in dozens of different ratholes. Only a few of them had even left their homeland. Kasoria most obviously and widely, but Raand... yes, something about his wife's family. Down in Viden, if he remembered right. Or was it Andaris? Belial had been to Hiladrith and even Rharne as a younger man, following his family's minstrel path.

Kasoria snorted as he pondered his own traveling. Little of it from his own choosing. Tossed through portals, walking through dreams, waking up half a world away and then clawing his way back home, only to leave it again for this jaunt around the globe... oh, he had seen much. But how much had he-

"Do you think the entire world would be a better place with no more Immortals at all?”

His contemplation was broken by possibly the stupidest question she could have asked. It had the exact effect she was expecting. The party around the bonfire went cold. Fucking Fates, snow practically dusted off them and ice dripped from their eyes. Scribes and clerks that had been meek men when they'd left Foster's Landing, now dared to glare openly at this woman they once quailed at the sight of. For a long moment, timer stretching unbearably out into the night, there was silence. Disbelief. Surely this was a jest? Surely she couldn't be so... blind, to think that they could-

"Is that meant to be fuckin' funny?"

It was Belial. Using a tone that made Kasoria sit up slowly and awake his Sparks.

"My people died t'the plagues uv' an Immortal," the young man wasn't even trying to hide his disgust. Like all the bottled up resentment and anger he'd felt towards Maxine was being unleashed, destroying the slow, painful accumulation of respect he'd been regaining for her. "An' I don't just mean the lads I ran wiv' in the forest. Cousins. Kin. Neighbors. Lads I knew from when I was wee. All cuz some magic bitch decided she wanted t'see how many of us she could kill."

The archer a hand around the bonfire. Taking in the delegation, sleeping and awake. All these men who'd had part of their hearts carved out and maimed forever by one of two Immortals. The Plague Mother who devastated their home and the Spider Queen who sought to usurp her in her traumatized weakness.

"I dun' give a cat's cunt who gets blessings or gifts on fuckin' Marks-" he snarled he last word so rabidly it was almost a spit "-an' I dun' care who or what they're fuckin' prayin' to. They ain't men, nor mortal. They dun' think like us. They dun' want what we want. They live forever an' all they got is boredom fer eternity." His face hardened into hatred. "So they fuck wiv' us jus' cuz they can."

Kasoria was back behind that gate in Korlasir again. This fucking girl would be the end of him. Painting him into a corner where he couldn't help her, because it would weaken him in front of men he needed on his side. No, it was more than that. It was deeper, older, more... Fates, help him, principled. He didn't disagree with anything Belial had said. He'd heard much the same from the man before, and Raand, Belial, dozens of other Etzori throughout his life.

Somewhere like Etzos, the Free City that needed no Immortals, didn't maintain that ironclad secularism by not discussing why they were better off. Without heaping reams of philosophy and propaganda (oft-interchangeable, if he was being honest) being written, published, disseminated, and devoured. Taught in schools, cried by politicians and even the unofficial theologians of Signalism. A whole sprawling tree of thought that rose like mental walls and barriers around the Etzori mind, enclosing but protecting it. Reassuring and defending it. Placating but always reminding, remembering what they had fought to be free from. Never blind to the wonder of what the Immortals were, but always, always following up their wonder with the truth.

They are not mortals. They could exist apart from mortals, but they do not. They war with each other and their battles and feuds leave wasted nations in their wake. We are not their comrades, kin, or equals. They cause chaos and death, because they know no other way.

Kasoria believed it all, and had long before his mother and sister were butchered. Dying with the names of their deaf gods on their lips. Begging for help. But, like every god Kasoria had ever heard of, when crunch time fucking arrived... where were they?

"I know Etzos would."

He spoke loud enough to draw attention solely to him, and away from Maxine. He couldn't erase her words but he could, maybe, steer the resulting conversing to himself. He leaned closer to the fire and stoked it with a stick, crackling wood and flashes of splitting logs drawing their eyes like his words did their ears.

"We sed, long ago, we wanted t'be left alone. No Morties. No worship a' them. Did they listen? Did they fuck. But 'ere's the thing: did we go all across the world an' say no-one else should? Nay. We did fuckin' not. If asked, we answered, like hones' men-" Fates, he nearly choked on that "-but we dinnae send priests an' prophets t'spread the fuckin' word. We wanted t'live, as we wished. But every generation... every century..."

He slapped the stick into the fire. It flared brighter and burning logs broke under the impact, making the whole bonfire shudder for a moment like a living thing.

"Woulda' been the same fer anywhere else inna world, girl. Youse seen 'ome. The grand city. Place we're goin' to, Yaralon. Place we come from a'fore Korlasir, Rharne. Men made them. Mortals. Thought an' planned an' raised it."

Distraction became evangelism, without warning or intent. The dogma of his youth growing into the words of a man bent on seeing the world made... clean. Pure. Safe. Maxine would look into those black eyes, empty save for the burning wood reflected in them, and see the same fires that had laid waste to Rharkos. Called it justice, even mercy, for all those he killed would not grow to be slaves to an Immortal. A fanatic without a god.

"We dun' need 'em. They need us. Cuz they need t'play their games, an' when we dun' wanna, they try t'break us. Like kids wiv' toys. Aye. We're better off." His eyes flickered past her towards Belial. Still glaring daggers and clearly dying to say more. Kasoria thanked the Fates that at least it wasn't Raand - or worse, Vaul - who'd heard her. Then lamented a moment later, that it had indeed been Belial. Who was warming up most of all to Maxine, for the second time... and now very much was not. "Finish yer stew an' get some sleep. Too late fer philosophy an' shite."

He fixed her with a look, more complex than just a glance. One that came with a flaring of his eyes and a subtle tilt of his head. That silently screamed "fucking go and don't fucking push me on this".

[Max]

Max stared into the fire blankly. She heard Belial’s words and weathered his ire without blinking. This storm was an expected one because it was one she’d wrought intentionally. She called for the words because she needed to hear them less so than she wanted to. So she was silent, letting the waves of anger and vitriolic philosophy fall on her without interruption. Not even at the spitting of her kind did she flinch.

Of course her question would trigger this reaction. She asked men who relied on some sort of mortal born, she gathered, but that had not wiped the irredeemable sins of the Immortal whole. It did not justify or erase the insufferable losses that left holes in their lives, or replaced their peaceful slumber with breaks of night terrors that simply would not vacate. They were veterans in a war that defined the city. Etzos would not be another slave city to greater beings with lesser intentions for their masses.

Then came Kasoria. His response was more controlled, pragmatic, and perhaps even just perfectly patriotic that the few left on the Delegation that eyed him suspiciously immediately felt a sense of common ground with him. At his words Max raised her gaze for a moment to his face. She knew what he’d meant, but it felt as though they had visited different worlds entirely.

Rharne fashioned their very army’s namesake after their Immortal, like their very professionalism, military victories, and culture were each an act of worship. Korlasir was on steroids compared to that sentiment. Raskalarn ruled that city personally, with Karem her closest ally of nearly equal respect. Yaralon she knew less about, but the only truly secular places in the world she’s visited were Rynmere and Etzos. The history and culture of all others seemed too enmeshed in their relationship with Immortals.

Kasoria was quick to make his suggestion when his perspective was finished having its voice. She knew better. She knew it was safer to obey, shovel what’s left of stew in her mouth and find a place to shut her eyes. Yet she hadn’t posed the question around this fire to play safe. Not even now. It was important for her to receive those answers and feel the emotion behind them.

They too would receive her’s.

"You see Immortals the way I see mages, because of what they’ve done and I’ve seen them do.” Max lamented evenly, half-obeying the least important bit of Kasoria’s suggestion with a final spoon of stew chewed and swallowed

"But that’s the thing of it, isn’t it? They’re just the answer man came up with to challenge the absolute power of Immortals. It all…circles back.”

He could maintain his restrained silence no more. Belial’s dagger-like gaze snapped upon her and she felt the flare of his anger even as his jaw was loosening to let words fly. Max stopped him dead with her own cutting stare, the neutrality gone.

"There’s no pride or honor in how I came to be marked. I did not ask or choose. Do not think I have not suffered Immortals and their little favorites, or been betrayed and turned a pawn on a whim. When that bond was all I had left, I put a blade in my only surviving matron for a mortal loyalty when I believed it dead. Your army defied an Immortal and won. I defied one alone and I lost.”

Max was on her feet now. Though her words were sharper than the gladius in her sheath, she did not raise her voice beyond the campfire.

"You lot fall on a sword while we’re out here, and you get to follow whatever path it is we are meant to go when we die. I’m cursed.”

Max looked from Belial to Kasoria now. He might’ve noticed chains were shed and orders were not obeyed, but any perception of true freedom was a farce. She was still a slave. Doomed, and knowing that full well. She came and fought anyways.

"I know where I go and who will torment me, and even if I shed it, it’s been said she will simply reclaim me when my time comes. I am owned by Famula for all eternity. And there is nothing I can do about it. My fate is written.”

Silence. Tense silence. It followed, and she knew Kasoria wished she’d just quietly put her bowl away and let the moment end before she had her piece to say. Max did not regret it though. The Band welcomed her back. They did not want secrets. Well, there was another ugly truth for them to swallow. Just like the one they spoon fed to her when they answered her question.

When the anger had ebbed it might dawn on Belial later the gravity of what was shared. That every time she bore her blade with them, to fight and not selfishly run like most of the Delegation would if their protectors did not protect them any longer, she was flirting with an end that would make most Etzoris quake. She was not even an Etzori. For the time being, it wasn’t even clear that she was even completely one of The Band. That full return was still to be earned back. Yet, that was the truth of it.

"Don’t think it hasn’t crossed my mind,” Max said quieter, expression falling again toward a perhaps alarming neutrality. "Maybe you’re right. Maybe, they all should go.”

Because some trials, being blessed feels like being cursed, too.

She finished her tankard and started to walk the dirtied items to the wash.

"I’ll walk the perimeter again. Make sure it’s clear.”

[Kasoria]

If you're expecting sympathy, you chose the wrong fucking group.

It wasn't a fair assessment, but Kaoria was hardly one for fairness where the Morties were concerned. He sat in stoic silence as Maxine gave what sounded very close to a series of justifications for why she was what she was, had chosen what she chose. He was sure that in the moment, desperate and burning and deafening, it seemed like the better end of a bad deal. He'd been there enough times: no good choices, only degrees of bad. But never, not once, had he hitched his sword and soul to a fucking Morty.

None of them ever asked. Well... apart from the one.

She was up and strolling into the dark before Belial got a chance to launch another volley at her. Instead the archer just watched her go, eyes dripping venom, not moved an inch by her story. Although... Kasoria hadn't just been looking at her during the speech. More than once, the younger man's face had tightened as if in sympathy. To be cursed by an Immortal... that was a ticket to the bad place when you died. What were a few decades suffering here compared to that? Centuries, millenia, until the stars fell and Idalos crumbled into just more dust floating about the endless black beyond. All that time, suffering...

Young folk, Kasoria thought with just the trace of approval. More agile minds. Good thing, and a bad thing.

TOOF

But tonight, it didn't stop Belly from hawking a hateful gobbet in Maxine's wake. He flashed a look at Kasoria, as if daring him to defend his precious protégé yet again. Kasoria just looked calmly back up at him. Neither condemning nor supporting. Cursing under his breath, the archer walked away from the fire, leaving the handful of Etzori to a supremely awkward silence. Even the musicians had wandered off, determining with the acuity of the traveling entertainer that this crowd was not fit for joy and song anymore. Kasoria stared into the fire for a little longer. Mulling over her words. What she'd illuminated for them... what she had been blind to... and then he sighed.

Fucking girl.

The perimeter was a place of refuge for Maxine, if only because it was quiet. Quite a walk, too, when you took the rest of the caravan into account. The forest was naught but silence blackness beyond the torches and fires. The trees were thick with leaves and vines, hard together and beyond any sort of taming by the hand of man. There could have been a city a hundred paces away, and that mass of vegetation would have hidden it all. But when she made her loop, like she said she would, she spotted at once the curious orange glow in her path... and the hint of pulsing green to one side of it.

It wouldn't take her long to see it was the Old Man. He hadn't taught her not to mind her eyes.

He was sat cross-legged, pipe in his mouth. Smoke lifting languidly out of it. Staring out into he darkness as if he could conjure or reckon some tally from the black that had nothing to speak to man. Nothing in there but things crawling to hunt or crawling to hide. Every now and then a distant call rang out, so ragged and far he couldn't tell what kingdom it was, let alone what species. But he knew terror when he heard it. Knew pain. Always just the one cry. Then silence... which told him they were far enough away not to hear the eating following the kill.

He didn't move. Didn't acknowledge her. But she she started to walk around him, he would speak.

"They talk t'm, y'know? Me Sparks."

She would either stop and listen, or she'd keep tramping along. Either way, Kasoria would talk. She could listen, or not. He was about done putting himself out for her petulance. Time to remind her what she was missing, instead of what she'd lost.

"Not in words, like youse would. Nah, s'jus'... feelins. Like when yeh look at summun an' see sad, angry, excited, scared... the feelin's jus' come into me. The Abro? He's old, so he's like me. Dun' trust easy. Dun' like new fings. Trans? Oh, he never shut up. Always excited 'bout new things. Always eager t'tell me what they are. An' the new one? Sov?" He chuckled in the dark. "Like a kid. Wants 'fun. Wants t'fly."

He turned and faced her. Eyes black as the beyond she'd been staring at for the last few bits. Voice completely at odds with it, and Kasoria hoped she understood how... difficult, that could be for him.

"I chose 'em. All of 'em. They give me power, like yeh say. An' now... I'm this."

He gestured to himself once. To the pulsing green in his veins. The eyes in his hands. The black pools his eyes were and always would be. The writhing chains on his arms and the fact he never, ever, was alone in his ow head. Without the talisman he wore, a drift of black smoke would whisper around him, making him look the very image of Vri himself. He'd once thought that Llyr's true for was hideous, mutated and twisted by his Morty-blood. Now, when he looked in the mirror... well, who was he to judge?

"But I didn't have t'beg 'em nor make a deal. If ain't cursed if I die, cuz I got these three runnin' aroun' between me bones. They ain't jus' things, an' I know it's likely diff'rent fer every mage, but fer me? They're real. Almost alive... but not quite."

His legs folded under him and he got to his feet in one fluid motion. Knees creaking and toes sore as a consequence, though. Couldn't outrun age, just like...

"I ain't gonna answer every fuckin' fool thing yeh said, an' I ain't no scholar a' fuckin' arcane, but I'll say dis. Man didnae tame magic cuz a' the Morties. We tamed it because dats what mortals do. We find new fings, we find out what they are, an' we make 'em useful. Frum fire t'steel t'crops t'wind in sails... an' magic. Fuck knows how many poor cunts had t'die before they figured out how... but they did. An' no Morty was fuckin required."

Kasoria took a few steps closer to her.

"Wunt right what happened to yeh. Bein' cursed. Wunt right what happened t'me mother an' sister," he paused, gauging her reaction at him mentioning those two out loud; wondering if she had any idea how many times in thirty arcs he'd done so "but magic? Mages? We choose dat. An' we master it. An' if we let the power drive us fuckin' mad, well, it ain't the Sparks, girl. It was in us already. Morties dun' do dat. From the first prayer t'he markin' t'when they twist cunts into Champions or Adore or whatever they're called... s'all jus' slavery. All jus' monster makin' toys... until they break... or they break 'em."

He was close enough to her now that she could see his face clearly. The calm in his eyes that matched his voice. That oddly contemplative side he rarely showed to others in The Band, because they didn't quite know him like she did. He was cursed in how own, minor way: he thought too much. Even after a lifetime of cultural programming and propaganda, he still doubted, and woe to the man who did such in a nation of fanatics. His faith was indistinguishable from hate, this was true, and he still believed in the cause... but when one like Maxine spoke, one who knew intimately their Last and True Enemy... he listened.

"Yer story ain't done. Book ain't closed. An' yeh have an army at yer back now, yeh fuckin' eejit," he smiled, gesture oddly affectionate even on that worn face. "We stick by yeh. Not cuz yer a poor unfortunate fuckin' soul, but cuz yeh stood by us. Cuz yeh swallowed yer pride an' came back t'us. Cuz yeh better than yeh were, an' even now, yer better than any Morty could hope t'be."

He tipped out his pipe. Orange and red spilled hissing and sparking and died on the dewy grass.

"Folks can change. Morties can't. Dat's why they play their games. Dat's why they hate us. Cuz we live more in dese little sparks a' lifetimes, than dey do in a hundred. Cuz we find fings... bigger'n ourselves, out dere, in the world, t'give that spark meanin'.An' when we lose, we try t'find again."

He sighed, and seemed more tired than one would think. As if the act of talking for so long as more taxing for him than carving through a squad or armored men (which she knew damn well he was capable of). He pocketed his pipe and scratched under his chin. Looking like the scruffy old man she'd first met arcs ago, swaddled in grey and brown and black and with his hair loose about his head.

Kasoria looked up at her again and sighed. Children. They existed to trouble us.

"Yer sill goin' on watch in a few. So get t'bed. S'an order."

[Max]

Max shook her fingers through her hair. Her pocket felt heavy. If she dipped her hand inside she knew exactly how the little felt baggie would feel on her fingertips, and just how the sensation of a rolled joint into her hand would soothe her nearly instantly with the promise of the flicker and inhale to come after. A denser, more animalistic part of her brain thought very briefly about turning and driving a fist into Belly’s scornful face. That idea was fleeting. Toward that end she truly lacked the genuine desire.

That’ll always be the line with them. It will never not be so.

She knew this when Kasoria asked her to join up with him. No Etzori would accept a marked willingly, and truth be told, she never set out to change hearts or minds. Emotions put her nerves on end though, and through the frustration and anger was the true devil in addiction that kept trying to make its case. The inner battle was daily and favor tilted from one half of her to the other often. For now her mind was still set. This evening would not be the one in which she crumbled, evidence aside. She would stay the course and the little schedule she carved out for herself. All temptations be damned.

Max used the walk and the dark and the quiet to find control where she felt it slipping earlier. By the time she looped back she didn’t know how long it had been, only that it had been just enough. It was when she was quietly trudging back to camp that she spotted the Old Man waiting for her. He was sitting with his familiar pipe burning, and she knew this was different than the harsh admonishment she would’ve expected if she were still a child. She came to a halt a couple feet from where he sat with hands in her pockets. Without a word she watched him puff smoke into the darkness.

She frowned in the dark when he started about his Sparks, the insatiable parasites he greedily fed. She recognized the internal recoil for what it is: the same in which Kasoria and the group harbored when they were reminded about her affinity toward Immortals. Instead of stomping off and deciding to hear no more about the arcane she let herself be educated. Max knew mages. Besides Kasoria, whether she liked it or not, a select few of them had once been very important to her. Like family. Each used magic to their advantage, and hers, and she stomached the reality of it as a necessary evil she allowed because it kept those she cared for protected and alive. But this, the relationship between the mage and their Sparks beyond the mere fact they were bonded at the soul, was conceptually new.

Kasoria spoke about each Spark he harbored as though it were a person. Something with traits, likes and dislikes, and inclinations like they were truly sentient beings a part of his greater whole. It humanized them but she didn't love that either. She didn't want to know them like that. She turned her head away from him, back toward the darkness. She didn't want to think about the Spark, like a living thing attached to Rey'na, that she tore apart and destroyed. When the Old Mans seemed to desire her eyes on him again she relented.

Maxine looked at Kasoria. Really looked at him. She looked at his opaque eyes, the pulsing green light in his veins against the night around them, the eyes he wore on his hands, and the chains he wore on his arms. She crossed her arms, a stubborn child seeing his point but slow to take it like medicine that tasted of poison. He stepped toward her and shifted some of his attention from magic onto her, mentioning her curse. She stiffened at that but her eyes on him were not unkind. The mere smell of the pipe he puffed on, the scent of familiar smoke she attributed only to him, was more disarming than she wished to ever admit.

The cursed Rusalka knew what it was like to be a toy in the Immortals' games. He could not lecture a worse subject on the reality of Immortals choosing their pawns, moving them around the board, and sacrificing or smashing them to pieces when they were tired, bored, or it simply just suited them. Chrien plucked her from a sea of unfavorable circumstance and marked her because she identified Max as a weapon against the humanity she hated. Audrae appeared and laid her mark for reasons Max never got the chance to truly understand. Both provided boons that aided her in all her trials in a way that could never be disregarded or downplayed. They allowed her to survive.

But Chrien was a fickle matron that constantly changed course on her. She made an honest attempt to kill someone, who she knew Max cared for, due to the most minor of slights and then weaponized the situation to manipulate her marked. Audrae sat in a chair next to Maxine and participated in the farce Famula put on, watching with full knowledge as the Lantern Bearer put on her performance before Condemning Max with the curse she still bore.

Befre she could generate an impulsive response he dug further. Deeper, holding her there while he addressed her with those black eyes and earnest tone, drilling a sentiment that was designed to impact her very core. Kasoria always had a knack for that: seeing what was beneath her surface. Under the defiance, unrelenting belligerence, and perpetual defensiveness was a flailing, bleeding wound that could not be plugged and she refused to willingly expose in its existence. Her sins and their impact on her identity: that was the affliction that diseased her most profoundly.

Max watched him dump his ashes and nodded her head at the pseudo command. On that she would not fight him, and for the sanity of the band she wouldn't be late to relieve the watcher. Yet as he gathered himself up a compulsion fell upon her and moved her lips before she could stop it.

"What I said was true: I didn't choose," the words came spilling out before she had the chance to instantly regret them. "I sunk a ship and the crew I was with. Only me and another survived the wreck and we were adrift for trials until a ship appeared on the horizon..."

No putting it away now.

"He was my first, my best friend. I took his sword and ran him through before it reached us. So no one would ever now it was me." The painfully ordinary gladius was still sheathed on her hip, and her fingers brushed its pommel softly like a whisper. It was a stolen relic from a time long ago, the start or end of an era, and either a trophy or a trinket bearing her shame. "Chrien came in a storm and marked me for that. She made no other demands. I continued to be what I was on that red morning, and every time she rewarded me for what I'd done all on my own."

That was the ugly truth of it. She was a much a pawn of the Immortals as she was her own impulsive whims. Chrien only took an interest in what was already there. A storm gathered naturally regardless of the desires of all below the clouds. Only the wind guided its direction and lent strength when it suited.

"The ship landed on Scalvoris and I stayed to let the life I left behind think me dead. Some terribleness happened on that island and I blamed the Elements there for what only a few had done to me. I started a bloody riot over it, but I couldn't follow it all the way through. I was weak and didn't want to kill the two that came for me. Audrae marked me after I let them take me instead, just before they hauled me off to that Beneath they called a prison..."

Her eyes were distant for a moment like she'd vanished to some horror she almost managed to forget. Then she snapped herself back to where they were standing in the dark, shrugging her shoulders.

"Immortals. They're everything you said they are but I know they look for little bits of reflections of themselves. That's what they saw in me. I have to live with that. I have to figure that out. The story isn't over but there's a lot of bloody ink on that pages." She started to move her feet, a sign of lukewarm obedience he was likely relieved to not have to elicit with more force. "Find some sleep. Change or not, whether they win this gamble of opinion on me or you do, time will tell. My only focus is doing the job and earning back my place right now."

The sleeplessness over curses and the various powers-that-be could torment her alone until she rose for her turn at watch.

[Max]

Rewards Requested

Notes/Warnings: None.

Thread: Before We Run
City/Area: The Imperial Regions

Max:
Skills Used:
Expert: Resistance, Socialization

Just XP for both characters, please.


Renown: None
Wealth Points: No
Collaboration: Yes
Local Language Thread? No

!	Message from: Jackalope
	Done!

[Jackalope]

Kasoria

That was a lot of stuff. Exposition, philosophizing, reminiscing. It can be good to write a thread that lets characters breathe and develop. Kasoria clearly still considers himself a mentor to Max, and does what he reasonably can to get her on the right path. The little talk near the end about magic and what mortals are really like was a nice counterpoint to all the cosmic tragedy stuff bewailing the cruelty of the Immortals without the latter off the hook for anything.

Enjoy your rewards.

• XP: 15

Max

Max presses all the buttons! Including her own. It can be tricky to write a character less self-aware than the author, but you manage it well. While I imagine Max would be hard for just about anybody to be around, she is really just another flawed and vulnerable person, trying to make her way through Idalos. A character at once diagetically unlikeable and yet someone the reader can empathize with. A lot of would be "edgy" writers end up achieving the reverse, but not you. Good job!

Enjoy your rewards.

• XP: 15