Twilight Eclipsed
Thirteenth Day of the Twelfth Month 293 AC
Staring in mild disbelief above a letter delivered by a Greater Raven just before sunrise that day, Aradia could only shake her head as the flickering of the campfire shone across the faces of the returning Ser Gerold and Ilias, the former sporting a rapidly bruising black eye and the the latter with mildly disheveled hair and a split lip. Pointedly, neither looked at the other and behaved as if everything was as normal, though there was little of the previous tension ever-present whenever they had just gotten into an argument. They had been quarreling over just about any martial matter you could name since their mission had started, and only now did they fill their camp with blessed silence?
"Well he wasn't wrong," Uriah replied, having followed her off to bag a couple of rabbits for the pot allegedly. The two ducked under a low hanging branch. "He was just determined to be an insufferable..."
"Ass, about it?" Uriah paused, as though considering the suggestion carefully, before nodding at her word choice as though supremely satisfied. Aradia tried not to laugh, though it was a losing prospect.
"She was looking for a fight," Uriah said, surprising Aradia as they loosed a pair of arrows which secured their dinner mid-flight. "The Sisterhood you see," she carefully did not smile so as to disguise how amusing she must have found the informal nomenclature the Erinyes had been gifted by some clever Legion captain somewhere, though Aradia knew more than one of the Bateezu had a sense of humor, even if it was usually off-color and private. "We've noticed more than one mortal with skill beyond what is normally exhibited outside of battlefields on the front lines of the War. It is normal, to be
curious that is."
"Oh?" Aradia said playfully, eliciting a rolling of the eyes from the fallen. "You lot are a gossip's bane, I tell you," she said with faux regret.
"Hm, perhaps I should tell the Inquisition to make a note of that in our files." Aradia whipped her head toward the devil. Uriah wasn't smiling, there wasn't even a crinkle at the corners of their eyes, but she knew that the fallen was laughing at her.
***
"All that anger over a sword," Ilias said, almost playfully, though the haughty tone she took wasn't as venomous as an hour ago Gerold noted. "It seems almost childish. Surely that spellsteel blade is just as effective?" Darkstar clenched a hand around the sword of Valyrian Steel at his side, before relaxing, knowing now as he didn't then that she was still deliberately provoking him.
"It's what it represents, more than what it can do," Gerold replied, knowing a sword was about as useful as a stick when not wielded by a true warrior. He was thankful for the blade of dragonsteel, the enchanted armor and the magic talismans, the tomes and philters and other accouterments that some fighter of myth might walk out of a page with, thankful for the trust placed in him by the King, enough that he was feeling some inkling of true loyalty to a cause outside of himself, though he was a cynic at heart.
He knew just as surely that there were stipulations that came alongside that trust. Killing monsters was just one part of that, working with the likes of the frigid bitches another. "Waiting for the right kind of Knight to rise up helped Dorne plenty, eh?"
There hasn't been a knight like me, Gerold thought. He wasn't Arthur Dayne.
"But isn't that to your advantage?" Ilias said coldly, staring at him with none of the dark amusement that glittered in her black eyes a moment ago, merely razor-sharp focus. "To not have the expectations of the virtuous hanging over your head." Would Arthur Dayne care about men being murdered on the road by monsters, for all that he had slain bandits at the King's command? Did he even care before he had been ordered to run them to the ground? The Kingswood Brotherhood had operated for years, for all they had ended with the swing of Dawn's milkglass blade.
"If being a hero were easy," Gerold hissed in true anger, the first flush of it that he'd felt talking to this vexing woman, "Then everyone would do it."
"Hm." She tossed her head, glamoured hair a flaxen curtain of pale locks. She scattered a handful of dust into the fire, making shadows flicker and dance to uncertain rhythms. "You claim to see the world for what it is. Heroes chasing glory and songs spinning wheels as if it were not their intent."
"Risk and reward," Ser Gerold replied, staring at the fire. "Men have vices like women and gold, but there are piles of both waiting to be grasped by merchants rubbing their fingers together or any man with a full purse or a ready smile." It's what was out of reach for most that he lusted for, but recent months had made him more aware of that, what he risked at times greater than his life which was temporal and impermanent. Sometimes one risked their very soul.
Realization struck him just then. "I will never be a mere pawn," he blurted, standing and nearly throwing the words back into her face. "I fight for..." What did he fight for? Months ago he would have said 'himself', as he hadn't met anyone he'd be willing to die for, even if the prospect of death itself was one he was willing to meet as all warriors must be.
She looked at him with an uncharacteristic weariness. "Everyone is a slave to something." Even Ilias realized the flaw in her logic a moment later, scowling, though not at the knight. "Though perhaps some less than others."
He thought long and hard about it, long enough for a skewer of roasted pigeon to be shoved into his hand by the archer spirit, long enough for the fire to nearly die to embers.
"What the Hells am I fighting for?" He whispered. Gerold looked up, startled by the woman's sudden presence.
"For now? The Realm," Ilias replied, almost bashful were she even capable of the slightest hint of shame or embarrassment at the unsolicited commiseration. Gerold himself missed the irony in the words, a Devil speaking of hope offered in a humble cup rather than a poisoned chalice. The 'Realm' indeed could encompass many things, hope for tomorrow, home and even a legacy beyond himself and deeds that might lie forgotten even as mighty giants like Brandon the Builder and Durran Godsgrief only had the monoliths left in their wake to remind men that they existed. If he did not build something and only dealt death, he would be forgotten, too.
Perhaps I should learn magic, Gerold thought. He had thought of all the ways healing and sharper blades could make him a better warrior, but he was not going to live forever that slaughtering murderous fey out in the woods would be recorded in a book as more than a footnote. Men always tended to get the details wrong, as well.
I could at least keep reminding others just what I'm capable of.
It was a prospect to at least consider.
