The Other Eye (Story)

[Caspar]

(It's not my best writing, but I hope it proves enjoyable. I will also port my previously written background setting story over here at some point after some edits for lore consistency.)

 

When she stared at the white expanse before her, a rolling desert of pale sand and cyan crystal, the small girl finally grasped the enormity of the world beyond the islands of Lymlaen's Necklace.

 

Traveling to Eorzea had been a study inthe incomprehensible. Such a wilderness could fit ten of her insignificant atoll homeland within itself easily. Yet the Ishgardians and their foes, of which Virara knew little, did not use the snow-draped landscape for much other than as a place to slay one another. It was a burial ground for memories, frozen in time. Snow was still a new experience to the island girl, an alien phenomenon she'd only heard of when half submerged in a mountain of moldy imported tomes and bootleg parchment scrolls. A few trips to the foothills of Ishgard to test the limits of her stamina early in her journey had done little to mitigate its power of fascination.

 

If Ishgard could not build upon the highlands, and the Dravinians did not nest there, then perhaps it was a sea and not land. The snow's depth was indistinct, fluxing with each fulm seemingly at random to an outsider like her. The hilly current of snow waned and waxed like an unending cresting wave, repeated upon itself infinitely, only parted by the occasional cliff or frozen hulk. Long abandoned wrecks would make sorry abodes compared to the myriad flat-bottomed boats the refugees had salvaged from their beached vessels. Lashed together with thick ropes like those of a Doman shrine, Virara could glance downward from their Even in such an inhospitable wasteland, the island was not far from her mind.

 

Likewise, the calming heat of the midday ocean breeze was within her, but it proved little succor against the Western Highlands' chilling breath. Virara thick hide coat, worn and threadbare along the edges from countless suns of use, trapped her body's irregular heat well. Most of her kind were not accustomed to the cold. They were either of desert or island stock, and while Virara found the sparkling vapors suffused with ice captivating in a way she never put conscious thought to, the endless winter registered on a neglected list of things she recognized as unpleasant. Within her a furnace boiled, a cauldron of flame that never went out. Others recoiled at her touch when she was riled up, one of the more mild effects of her particular constitution. Yet in the Highlands frosted wasteland, the telltale sign of Virara's strength carried added perks.

 

The cold scourged her bare cheeks when she lowered her hood. Her every breath and exertion would become a torment under duress. If she carelessly lingered, as she had in the Pillars square that one day, she would pay in flesh. It was a hard land with no semblance of mercy. The perfect place for Virara to test the limits of her stamina once more. It would deliver unto her overwhelming strength, the power to slay her foes, to obliterate all that stood in front of her fist. A force like a god or demon, the force befitting her Master's style. Only then would the thirst inside of her subside. When Virara swung her fists and felt her lungs greedily devour the cold air, every nerve in her body sent a flood of sensations and thought to her mind. How to position herself, the distance of her hypothetical foe, the shadow she boxed with, a solo dance. How to fold her fingers upon themselves so as not to shatter their fragile bones. When Virara swung her fists, her mind and body devoted themselves to the tasks her Master felt she had been born to do. There was no room for doubt, or feeling, or extraneous thought. She became an engine of causality, a law that erased everything it could grasp, a beast without reason, without sentience.

 

When she obtained that sublime state, she no longer felt what she had in the square. She no longer recalled the misty depths and the crumbling stone at the edge of the Pillars' great railing. Her shattered concentration pieced itself into a haphazard mosaic, and Virara found it obscured the face of the girl with pink hair. Her other eye, whose cheap facsimile of her own eye patch still rested within her coat pocket. The utter senselessness behind her disappearance, the yawning lack she left behind, were concepts she could not spare thought to. Wounds were for the flesh, Virara reasoned. The world in which Master resided was a place where softness and light could not reach.

 

“She could not follow me.”

 

Virara's utterance crouched wretchedly beneath her tortured white breathing. That was what she'd told the other girl. There was a widening gap between them that had only grown into a chasm with time. For as much as one wanted to bridge it, Virara moved only in one direction. To the place where Master resided. Her mounting pace had proven too much for the girl who would call Virara friend. A term she understood poorly and yet was somehow eager to oblige. It had been farce, hadn't it? A waste of time that could have been spent training. What strength was gained there, from knowing that girl, from purging her demons? The terror she knew paled in comparison to what lay at the end of Master's hellish path.

 

Her hand trembled with a familiar warmth, the grasp of soft fingers utterly unlike her own. The feeling of one other, unlike Master and yet like Master, a person who seized Virara's concentration, like the boy who desired to be a 'hero.' They spoke nonsense. They confused her. She desired something from Virara the island girl could not offer. And yet, much the same, she could not be apart from them. No thought was spared, none that she could recognize, for Virara had nothing to offer. To triumph over the immaculate being that trained her, her sole goddess who ruled the realm of force itself, every unbidden process had to be wrenched from the throes of idleness and thrust onward towards her goal. She was a zealot and a heretic, desirous of accord and conflict. Until her fists found their destined resting place in Master's chest, Virara could not afford to be distracted. But an invisible gravity drew her to the girl that fell, and her strange toy.

 

“Why?”

 

Virara's monotone voice resounded unconsciously against Coerthas's winds. As much reflex as a question, it had no inflection to define it as either. The nonsense of the leather eye patch in her pocket and its likeness upon her face, the symbol of her training, stabbed deep into the furthest reaches of her mind, the muscle she could not harden and steel against pain.

 

She could not think of that eye patch,but neither could she throw it away. It would cling to her unbidden until she trained hard enough to escape its grasp. Virara's eye remained covered, and she could not afford to be blinded by a second one. Beneath the shield of goatskin and bronzed rivets, the skin of her face and the tightness of her pupil retained her Master's touch. The naked eye was disaffected, calm, almost sleepy, a star ruby set in milky ivory. The covered eye was dark with dilation, a trembling red point paralyzed in murderous rage, the feeling in it numbed until it could harbor no other expression. Only one woman had seen that frozen eye. Virara believed so, at least. To show it to anyone else was akin to being laid utterly bare, and no one had the right to gaze upon her in such a way.

But the impossible girl who clung to herand asked things that didn't make sense knew the eye. No shield of calm expression or a barrier of goatskin could conceal the black desire within Virara, and she knew it, despite all of the island girl's wishes. Virara recoiled in disgust, feeling the probing half-stone gaze upon her even in its absence. Her thoughts belonged to no one else. They were simple, uncomplicated, monomaniacal because they had to be. There couldn't be any other way, so why did she insist on complicating things? If Virara was precious to her, and she to Virara, why the fall?

 

“You trouble me.”

 

Had they never met, Virara would not know the distraction that grasped the instinctive, lizard part of her brain. Her neglected byways of thought would stay in the shadows, and her brain could focus on firing the bursts of intent that jolted limbs into position and gauged distance, predicted movement, weighed options within the comfortable, safe confines of the melee. The unmentionable force pawing at the back of her mind since the square was a far greater threat.

 

“You troubled me.... Mel-”

 

She seized upon the sound of crunching snow behind her with a starving girl's hunger. Her ears would not deceive or confuse her, not in the emptiness of the wasteland. Had she been followed? Virara's mind raced for the succor of regimented thought, and immediately set about the task of identifying threats.

 

Two. Three. Four. Elezen. Male. One female? Walking in single-file. The crunches of hardening snow grew softer in their succession. The sound was confident, assured. They knew the area and were without fear. 'He' did not have such clumsy steps. The spider that shadowed her every move, even from La Noscea would never be so careless as to let his footsteps be heard. Then, were they of the Ishgardian banner? No, Virara reasoned in silence, such soldiers, no matter how trained, exhibited wariness when in enemy territory. They were of the heretics party no doubt, too trained to be bandits, too calm to be of the Holy See's enlisted. Virara had done her research, but in typical fashion, she cared nothing for motivations or the history behind their hostility, only their way of doing things, their manpower, their equipment, their method of killing. She had no sympathy or interest in the cause of their grievances towards the city state, and felt no desire to protect the citizens the Ishgardian military swore to protect. What only mattered were their numbers, their skills and their intentions. These were solid, tangible things. Virara liked it better that way.

 

Virara exhaled into the collar of her winter coat, feeling the rising heat of her breath. Her sinews twitched in anticipation, a boiling sensation coiling up within her innards. Her eye trembled, darting about as the crushing footsteps spread out in long, winding paths about her. She was being encircled, a cautious move. Most of the larger folk didn't bother with such shrewd positioning, given her relatively small size. They were not men and women who took risks. A wise choice given the hostility of their crystalline home and its bounty of fatal promises.

 

“A child? Out here in the snow?”

 

Virara's soft-ear twitched at the hissing whisper that followed the snowy winds behind her. A single glance over her shoulder revealed to her the gaunt shadows slouching through the white mists.

 

“No.They're uncommon. 'Round here. Might be she's just a 'venturer, not of the Holy See.”

 

“Even so, she's unwelcome.”

 

The Lalafell girl was certainly an unusual sight. Clad in raven tones that stood out stark as a sun in the depth of night against the tundra, her posture betrayed no exhaustion or doubt. Her controlled breaths, long since sanded in the merciless hands of her Master, were even, identical puffs of white steam, too uniform and large to belong to any normal girl her size. And her crimson gaze overflowed with a muted hostility that followed Virara everywhere she went. A gaze that could flay alive, an eye that promised agony beyond mortal comprehension. The stare was a gift from Master's empty smile. When Virara's two mismatched gazes aligned fully, she would become a demon that thirsted only for battle. Within her tiny, compact form lay the groundwork for a fatal art centuries in the making, forgotten to history and Hydaelyn itself, for it was a mark of vile shame that should not have existed. Master, for all her strength, could not change the course of history back in Othard. But even the tiniest fraction of that power would be enough for Virara to bury them, if it proved necessary.

 

Skulking deep within her mind, a tiny child,lost on an island in Sea of Jade, hoped it proved necessary. She did not know doubt, or the agony of Memeli's gaze, or the confusion of Chachanji's words. The child knew hunger and thirst, and one language, spoken with hands, feet and teeth.

[Caspar]

They'd shadowed the strange foreigner for almost a mile. It was no easy task for them to judge whether the stranger was aware of them or not from such a long distance, but Juliembert had grown up in the craggy plateaus of the Highlands since his youth. To say they had changed much since then was understatement to its very extremes, but he still felt confident that he knew more than his share of how to stalk prey out in what the pampered city dwellers of Ishgard called the wilderness. He flattened his steps, streamed across the surface of the snow with whispering motions, careful not to let the bits of loose maille protruding from his ragged furs clink against one another too loudly. Juliembert even occasionally ate a loose handful of snow to hide his steaming breath, though he felt the extreme chill also kept his nerves primed. At the distance they had followed the traveler, however, that behavior was more affectation than distinctly practical.

 

The band of harriers had waylaid thousands of unprepared, would-be dragon-slayers about those parts, killing some and robbing others throughout his lifetime. Brigands though they were, the harriers had given their violence a sharper purpose. Juliembert blinked, eyelashes encrusted with snow nigh invisible against his blonde hair. He glanced over his shoulder to see his commander, Prosperlain, following slowly behind. The aging man, square face framed with a ruddy beard, cradled his cloth-covered spear close. Juliembert liked to think of his orders as suggestions, but Prosperlain was his spear master. Though his dreary, sleepy voice and shaded eyes gave him a more age-addled appearance than he deserved, the elder lancer's techniques, honed in service to the Inquisition, often made Juliembert ponder the weight of the heresy accusation that purged him from their number. Such accusations, that made a fugitive of even a dour and loyal subject like the old man were the erstwhile recruitment tool of the heretic militia.

 

Close behind him trudged Lunnie, a gangly, awkward woman with a left foot for every limb. It was worthy of praise that she'd managed to make it as far as she had away from their camp. Lunnie's arm swung carelessly by her scabbard and sword, her round shield leaving curved canyons in the snow as she let it hang low. Of wretched, peasant stock like Juliembert himself, Lunnie had only the most rudimentary of combat training, and swordsmen were easy enough to come by. Finding her a tutor had been the simple part; training her the nightmare. She was always the short straw left with guard duty when the other three foraged for food. It was hard for him to believe they'd been born in the same hamlet.

 

Her careless movements provoked a cruel hissing from Hobriaut, the quietest of their number, who held up the rear. Hobriaut said little of himself. The others from their band, when they had been more numerous, had characterized the scarred bowman as a former poacher, but no one was particularly sure where he'd come from. Juliembert did not care, so long as his arrows were pointed in the other direction. He dipped the things in his chamber pot, which only served to make him slightly more revolting than usual. At his spot on point, the blonde man brushed at his long ears beneath his hood and silently prayed in thanks that he did not need to stand shoulder to shoulder with his “colleague” once fighting started. He was reliable, to be sure, but the stench was certain to distract him. Juliembert had a sensitive nose. A childhood half-empty grew him into a man filled with hunger and wolfish thirst, not that he'd ever acknowledge such himself. Hobriaut shared his intensity, but could not even charitably be considered any more than a useful ally.

 

A stirring had begun within the great city, a tumult beneath its venerable pillars that Juliembert could not easily understand. The patrols from Falcon's Nest had gotten lax. Fewer and fewer hunters foolishly braved the plateaus looking for a drakeling or sickly aevis. In the encampments surrounding the highlands, where many of his brethren gathered to raid and plunder the Ishgardian hamlets and revenge themselves upon the ecclesiarchy, the conversation had turned to separating from the horde. True, Juliembert had admired the Dravanians. The vial at his belt, his most prized possession, spoke plainly of that. But had it been anything greater than the aching of his empty stomach that drove him against the city? He had no right to pass judgment upon the ragged men and women who left the harriers for putting up their spears. Juliembert simply did not envy their chances in the Brume. A life of hard-fought suffering was more satisfying to him than a life of suffering from paucity. Better to take than have nothing. His father and mother would not have agreed. Small mercy it was, Juliembert supposed, that they had perished in the Calamity rather than lived to reap the rewards of that belief.

 

The small figure trudged in the great white wilderness ahead, between a great chasm where once the river lay and terraced frozen cliffs. Their path was uneven and winding, either the telltale sign of a foreigner or someone already wary of them. Juliembert's sharply honed gaze was what allowed him to lead their party on such hunts, and he followed the gradually shrinking ant trail of her shallow footprints. It was when they'd closed to nearly a hundred yalms that the figure's shape was completely distinguishable. Small and childlike, her pigtails did her little favors. Juliembert had met perhaps one Lalafell merchant growing up in the hamlet, for a single solitary sun. He'd rarely been into the city, and given that he'd heard their race loathed the cold, they scarcely needed the added encouragement of Ishgardian isolationism to stay clear of the north. Countless questions reached his mind as to why she was out there alone, walking with mechanical purpose, when he gradually realized the trail in front of him was widening. She'd quickened her pace, judging from the depth and frequency of her footsteps. With such short legs, she would need to take many strides to outpace them, but she seemed to be doing so handily.

 

Prosperlain grunted, seizing his attention. The elderly spear man, his face pallid and deeply creased, motioned silently with his hands. She saw them, he seemed to say. The increased pace, the occasional wary turn of the head, her irregular, curving path of travel; all seemed to suggest increased awareness on the adventurer's part. There was no longer any reason for them to stay concealed. Juliembert felt naked beneath the wide sky, their pale clothing and attempts to shroud themselves in the frosted highland foothills accounting little for themselves. Delicacy's tenure expired and audacity stepped in. He favored the latter anyway, but trained for both.

 

Heeding his ally's counsel, Juliembert raised an open palm and ushered the others forward. Full speed. They'd hurry on towards their quarry, no need to alarm her, but she hadn't started fleeing just yet. There was no need to betray open hostility until they had her at pike's push. Juliembert puffed and spat the last of the snow from his lips. No matter what snowdrift the miniscule stranger tried to conceal herself in, no matter how far she ran, this was their home and had been for cycles. They wouldn't be given the slip. She had to have supplies, food, warm blankets in her pack. The lack of manpower amongst their encampment left their stores dwindling. Aside from that, its emptiness left all of them choked with an invisible nervous energy. They needed to be out there. In recent suns, even the brigands who hadn't forsaken their number seemed to disappear, as if they'd been of less substance than the ice collecting on their steel. Prosperlain and Hobriaut shared occasional whispers about the troops at Falcon's Nest, but the old man's countenance betrayed confusion. Had the Ishgardian patrols simply taken a different approach, rather than called back to the capital? The uncertainty between the two older men gave Juliembert chills, and he was a child of the cold. Ishgardian or no, they all had an unspoken instinct that to dawdle too long in camp each day, to stay stationary for any extended period of time, to even stop hunting prey was to fade noiselessly into the white emptiness surrounding them.

 

A thought came to him unbidden. Perhaps the others hadn't simply abandoned their posts. Perhaps the Ishgardians were out there, lying in wait, blued steel bare and smoked in the fire to keep the sun's glint away. The girl was a bait. Juliembert wanted to run, but Hobriaut was at his back. A festering unease seethed within him, without satisfaction. He couldn't run, not with that man's chastising gaze at his back. An arrow would be an unwelcome follower still. Surely the girl was alone. Then how should he account for the strange feeling of unease, the stare of unwelcome eyes upon them? Without thinking, Juliembert reached beneath his mail coat, finding those familiar, ragged folds of cloth, seeking out the concealed vial and tumbling its comforting shape between his fingers. Even in the darkest of nights and coldest of days, the contents swirling within felt faintly warm, but Juliembert thought perhaps it was merely his own.

 

“Steady lad. I'm with you.”

 

Prosperlain was at his side. His mentor drew the shortened length of his lance to the ready as if it were a quill brush. Juliembert envied the levity in his motions, the tranquility that came with a life of killing. He could care less for the cause or thought behind it; whatever feelings lingered within Prosperlain towards his house could not have been present in such steady hands. That relaxed, slate gray gaze was one that only belonged to experienced soldiers who understood the flow of battle, who felt as much at home there as Juliembert did in the tundra.

 

Lunnie gulped loudly behind him, jarring their lead out of his focused pursuit. He and Prosperlain turned back to confront the woman, who cowered behind her shield. It had been the path of least resistance to endow her with the bare minimum of martial skill necessary to swing a sword properly, but the shield lent itself towards cowardice, Juliembert thought. It should have been every bit as much a weapon as her blade, a tool to help her create opportunities to triumph, but to a peasant girl with little experience in combat, it was the blanket for her to hide under. Particularly galling to Prosperlain in particular was her habit of obscuring her line of sight, lowering her head in a wince that left her blind behind the hefty round shield. He'd scolded her for that countless times, and her response was to naturally hide. Juliembert scowled at her, but for once Lunnie was not following them with her gaze, waiting for instruction.

 

Her pale blue eyes darted amongst the terraced cliffs behind them. From above they could be seen clearly now that they'd made no effort to hide their pursuit. Had Juliembert's suspicion proven correct, they had already long ago passed the safest window of escape. Somewhere within him, he felt his blood quicken.

 

A clump of ice tapped its way down the cliffs behind them, provoking a piteous flinch from Lunnie that Juliembert shamefully echoed.

 

“J... Julie? D'ye s'pose we've been … f... fol-.”

 

Prosperlain hissed back at her. There was an odd vibration in his thick, astringent tone that didn't belong there.

 

“If we have then we've already no chance to make it out and to the camp again without a fight. What did I train you for if not for this?”

 

“But... M'lord...”

 

When unsettled, Lunnie resorted to bowing at Prosperlain's feet. It was self-preservation instinct. As a young girl, Lunnie had unpleasant dealings with the Temple Knights in the city, quite a few of them never too proud in their famous pedigree to torment the peasant girl, equal to the Brume rats in vulgarity. The display of subservience would have normally enraged the older man, but he held back the bile behind his steadily reddening expression.

 

“Keep your blade ready, damn you. It's just a single girl, but don't get careless. We'll circle her, keep close,” Prosperlain paused to lick his dried lips, “and being of sound mind anyroad, she'll see the virtue in simply giving up her pack. We'll take it and head home, and move camp a moon later than planned. That'll do nicely. Right Juliembert?”

 

The younger man groaned. “Lunnie, it'll do, aye?”

 

“Aye m'lord. But... but... methinks she's just a little traveler. Supposin' the knights are about, we could jus' let her go and split... M.. Maybe they'd show pity...”

 

Juliembert forces a reassuring smile that stank of insincerity, the best he could afford her in such a tense moment. He swore a shadow passed across her face in that instant, and her eyes focused on something past him, rather than upon him, in a way that gave him pause. Lunnie had never been a smart woman, and the agitated man was certain she'd not turned her chin down in displeasure. It was a passing cloud that darkened her face. Surely nothing else.

 

“If the little morsel's bait, 'tis the most baldfaced one the like we've ne'er seen before. Back at the camp, right as a sunny day, we'll be. Methinks we ought t' consider supper this eve. Not yak again, I hope.”

 

She nods, eyes wide like a scared doe. Her lips trembled, holding back her words. Not the slightest trace of reassurance had crossed her expression. Her lanky arms clattered the shield close to her chest. Even for a coward like her, Lunnie was beside herself with worry, a cut far above her normal fretting and endless apologies. Juliembert grimaced. Dragging her with them, even as undermanned as they were, was unquestionably a mistake, but neither did he relish leaving her alone at the encampment. He did not want to return to find her cook pot empty, the snowy dunes already blanketing the remaining traces of her existence. Lunnie was too timorous to leave the comfort of their tent on her own. If he returned to find no trace of her, then his mind would spin unwelcome questions about who or what dragged her away.

 

Juliembert exhaled deeply, his breath forming a thin mist he'd tried his damnedest to keep hidden since the morning. He hoped that Prosperlain's uncharacteristic optimism would prove worthwhile. Tightening his grip on his spear, he and the others sprinted forward suddenly, their boots slashing through the snow, gaining on their diminutive target and encircling her like the jaws of a bear trap.

[Caspar]

-... The one who stands atop all is alone. This is an inescapable law.-

 

A voice like cooling magma. A scent of apricots, suffusing everything. The sensations filled her mind with a passionate scarlet, intoxicating her. When she retreated into her memories and felt with blind hands for those days before, every sensation, every stimuli was etched into the deepest recesses of her mind.

 

-... Shichiseiryu and Meikyuuken entwined. The two halves comprise a whole that is more than just a school of fighting. It is a labyrinth, like the twist of entrails or the hollows within your bones, a maze within yourself. A man could look inside and find infinity. A self-important man once did.-

 

It was all there. The lazy, half-shaded glare. The messy fringe of black hair casting a shadow across her face. The dark-steel tsuba covering her bad eye. The crooked twist of flesh that was nominally a grin. The sensation of static on the back of her neck that no other being could provoke within her. A phantom, she wasn't there and never had been and yet her power was so tangible Virara's body shook with its approach. Like the cavitation of a great ship traveling through the Indigo Deep, one could not help but be held captive by its billowing wake.

 

-Many other traditions have used the law of the fist to order the universe, to shape the world about them into a reflection of what lay inside. A Monk of Ala Mhigo, for instance, builds a shrine to their god within the bodies of his foes. He tempers his hunger, his fear, his desire. Every blow an act of devotion.-

 

Even if unseen, even if unknown, the Master could walk alone among thousands and still be found by those who understood her inexorable gravity. She hid but never was truly incognito, was nameless but still known. A law unto herself, engraved upon her single student's soul. Master was all that was, and would be. In the endless cycle of winter, spring, summer and autumn, the apricot grove grew, bore its blossoms, gave up its fruit and were cut away by their arms. Within her the cycle continued. Virara was still there, in the flooded grove. She could feel the island winds upon her skin whenever her mind wandered, smell the fragrance of the blossoms seeping in from the shadowy gaps of her senses, hear the clash of the waves and the creek of flat bottomed boats swaying in the ocean tide.

 

-Ah, but you know better. So do I. For what use are the mental calisthenics of the monastic orders? The piousness of the Destroyer's followers? The posturing of the buke? We have a hunger to answer to. A diet of airy dreams makes for a poor supper. An empty stomach must be fed. Who can reason with it?-

 

Before her, Virara saw the tall shapes of the harriers file in like monoliths, circling about her in naked aggression. No hunting party would move to talk peaceably in envelopment. The one with the heavy shield hefted it with an awkwardness that betrayed unfamiliarity. The blonde with the spear's hands jumped with the tightness of their grasp, while the graying man, his beard encased in a thin sheath of frost, handled it casually at his side, making every effort to seem as modest and conciliatory as a man could be bearing steel. A fourth followed in the distance. Virara's ears twitched as she huddled deeper into her warm coat. A bowman? He'd covered his weapons with cloth, but she could still faintly make out the sound of his quiver rattling against his mail.

 

-The fist is a tool for killing. A technique that does not slay is useless. A lesson that does not aid in conquest is worthless. That is an inescapable law.-

 

They'd found themselves a suitable spot to corner their quarry. North of them only a short distance away lay a long crevasse. Virara could perhaps have outrun them, despite the Elezen's remarkable stride, but that would require many steps and much expended energy. It was unwise to do so in the unfamiliar white wilderness. In the forest, on the island, even in the city, Virara's sense of direction would always serve her well, but there was little but white fog in every direction there to gauge her bearings from. What would become of her should she sprint into the mists, straight over another cliff like the one she backed towards now?

 

“Only four.” Virara muttered under her breath as they approached, her mouth working unconsciously.

 

The lead man cocked his head curiously, and crept closer, spear readied.

 

“Hold. Your travel pack, lass. No need t' getting' yesself skewered over a bit o' jerky and heating oil.”

 

As if in response to this, the graying man raised a corrective palm. He had a look about him that would have seemed grandfatherly, had Virara any grasp of what that impression entailed.

 

“No need for threats. Young lady,we're travelers in dreadful need of provisions. Though we bear you no ill will, we must relieve you of your pack. You won't be harmed.”

 

He-shaded his vision with fuzzy, frost-coated eyebrows that looked like silk moth cocoons.

 

“You'll be left enough to make it back to Falcon's Nest safely. I'll direct you to the path most commonly patrolled by the Holy See's servants. Now, please...”

 

Virara gazed up at the tall, thin man, his thick glove extended with gentlemanly poise. The mail practically hung off his bones. He was the least threatening of the four, even compared to the encumbered woman crouched behind her, shield raised. That of course meant he was by far the most experienced one there. Virara could sense no desire to kill, no hostility from him whatsoever. Taking a life was likely reflexive to such a man. Yet, bathed in blood enough times, Virara knew that even an experienced warrior could not hide the aura of slaughter that followed true 'monsters' of the battlefield. Every ilm of their body exuded a suffocating stench of mortal danger, no matter how they tried to hide it. That man had no such body-language. Virara never had to think deeply about it. She only compared the economy of their movement, their open confidence, the look in their eyes, and something far more immaterial to a very familiar woman.

 

The small girl gazed up at her soft-eyed captor. He held his spear ready in the other hand, but extended his leading arm for her pack. His legs were braced ankle-deep in the snow, already securing footholds for a lunge. The aged lancer must have noticed her glancing about his posture, for his faint smile faded and his arm grew tense.

 

“Not much for talking, are you? Young lady, do you not speak our tongue?”

 

Virara's scarlet eye blinked once languidly. Her subdued voice crept out from behind her collar.

 

“I cannot.”

 

The man blinked, shifting in the snow with a soft crunch. A forced smile stretched his hardened face thin across the cheekbones, like a leathery mask.

 

“... I see you've good humor in you still, even set upon by us lowly thieves. Look lass, we don't want violence. With the great city as it is now, surely you'll be able to get back in without much trouble. You won't find yourself wanting of supplies, what with the airship coming and going now.”

 

He chuckled to himself, brushing his forehead in feigned self-mockery.

 

“But of course you'd know. Forgive me, suppose age has addled my brain. You'd have to have taken one to get here from the south.”

 

".. Mm... An airship. Though I have no such home in the south."

 

Virara nodded her round head, hair drifting across her shoulders. She'd taken her hood down. The cool air played across the nerves beneath her skin until they could discern the length and coarseness of each thread in the lining of her collar.

 

"... A foreigner twice again, ah? You're fortunate, miss. Weren't always the case the Holy See would allow folk such as yourself to walk about unfettered in their lands. Even contested land, like ours."

 

She gazed up and down the head harrier, her red eye sliding from side to side, glancing at the others, and the shadowy figure in the distance, raising what could only have been a longbow. The boyish one with the fair hair was trying to scuttle to her left side, doubtlessly attempting to hide in her blind spot. He didn't know, as many did, that the patch was merely cosmetic. Not that it mattered. She didn't need sight to gauge his distance, or strike him, or even avoid his blows. Master had made sure of that.

 

The breadth of the scenario flickered through Virara's conscious mind. They were vulgar criminals, though not without some martial professionalism. She could gain little by fighting them, and an injury would be unwelcome. The highlands were vast yet, and she had to hunt hardier game to benefit from the miserable foray out into the wild. The unconscious mind was as it always had been. It tightened her muscles and tickled her nerves in anticipation. Virara ran her tongue across her dry lips, a hot breath escaping, then knelt, as if in prayer, no stranger to worship despite her faithlessness. Her small, overladen pack tumbled to the snow beside her.

 

The old man nodded, spear tapping at his side.

 

“Come now, no one travels this far alone unarmed. Your dagger and belt as well, miss. Come on.”

 

Virara reached for the belt beneath her coat with sluggish compliance. Her gloved fingers brushed against familiar metal grips, somehow cool to the touch beneath the layers of fur and leather, scornful of the mounting heat within her body. She shivered, but it was not from the cold. Her fingers wouldn't cooperate. Those knuckles were his. They belonged to him, a gift to her, not hers to offer.

 

"Come on." The elderly harrier repeated, more insistently now.

 

Her fingers trembled across the painstakingly shaped metal. Her other hand found the folded leather eye patch in her pocket. Even if they stripped her of everything else, she wouldn't allow them to take those, nor that which her Master gave her.

 

The man sensed her hesitation. His smile faded slightly, craggy face betraying a faint trickle of impatience flowing beneath his pale expression.

 

"... I cannot."

 

"We can't very well let you go armed."

 

"My weapons. These knuckles. They are not mine to give."

 

"Oh? Might be they'd make fine paperweights."

 

A hoarse laugh from the gaunt blond young man. He curled up on his spear from behind Virara's eye patch.

 

"I will not."

 

The blond man grinned widely. She imagined it was meant to be friendly, but Virara was prone to misunderstanding such gestures.

 

"Though I s'pose it'll be much too small for me hands, I'll take good care of 'em. Ye've nothing to worry about lass."

 

The remark provoked a pointed look from the older gentleman. Virara heard a faint clattering of metal on metal from behind her. The girl was struggling with her shield again, sleeves of mail ringing against the hard wood and steel on the inside.

 

Virara searched for her buckle when, darting a glance to the shield-bearing woman to keep track of her position, she saw a cloud in the sky above them darken briefly. It was for a fleeting instant, but a stripe of shadow crossed her face, cast from above.

 

"A scaled one? A flock of buzzards?"

 

Her ears twitched. Upon the curling mists the unmistakable groan of twisting, spinning, stretching metal scraped the inside of her skull. She felt the hairs on the back of her neck ready themselves at attention. Virara knew that gaze.

 

Her visible red eye began to flood with black. Her tiny, sharp, perpetually glaring pupil widened, as if her veins were engorged with stimulants. Her small nostrils released a hissing sigh of visible hot steam. Behind her parched lips her teeth wanted to chatter, so she ground them together as if to triturate them to dust.

 

"The gaze. It is here."

 

She recalled the feeling of the watcher's eyes upon her. Virara could not see him, but the churning of her innards, her body's natural fight or flight response, never lied to her before. Somehow she knew the spider was there, crawling upon metal webs, twisting its many legs with nauseating grace.

 

"The Spider. It comes.  It crawls on its web. It followed me from Mist. Persistent thing."

 

Furious sensations poured through her numb body, the feelings overwhelming her in a dark navy flood. Virara felt the phantom bite of the garrote, the tautness of thin metal wire across the skin, and shivered once more, teeth gritting until the bitter taste of blood filled her mouth.

 

The harrier's leader smelled something in the air. He raised his weather-worn face to the drifting clouds, but discerned nothing his face would betray. Somehow, Virara's agitation infected him.

 

"Lass, come on now. Hurry up and surrender your weapons and we won't get rough with you."

 

His tone provoked an odd look from the blond youth, and more chattering of metal behind Virara. She heard the screech of metal wire in the opaque mists, louder now. The man cringed. Finally he'd noticed. His milky eyes struggled to focus, not upon Virara's darkening, savage expression, but over her shoulder, at something unseen, squinting past the shivering swordswoman. He drew his spear slowly from his side to both hands before him, expression trance-like, and Virara's fingers crept to the gifted knuckles long before her brain could issue any commands.

 

".. That would trouble me."

 

Virara's words, soft as velvet, betrayed none of the dark ichor boiling within her. The air was polluted with a thickening haze of hostility that could only be from her foe. Were the brigands preparing to face whatever hunted them in the mists? Or were they merely discomforted by their vague dread, driving their aggression towards Virara forward in haste?

 

"Y' thick little runt! Hurry up and disarm!"

 

The blond man yelped, glancing from side to side, hearing the shrieking whine far too strident to be a mere highland gale.

 

Virara raised her chin. Set within the placid face of a doll, an eye like a star ruby affixed the old man with a far off, unblinking stare.

 

"I think you should leave."

 

A whistling. The childish hairstyle her Master entrusted to her twirled with the motion of something streaking over her left shoulder. The momentary distraction of the screeching in the murky depths of the chasm left Virara momentarily unaware, as the distant harrier loosed an arrow. Tilting her head out of the way in a walking daze, purely on instinct, she felt the bite of an arrowhead nip at the soft tip of her oft-pummeled left ear, drooping slightly from years of abuse throughout training. A widening of the eye was all that registered as shock upon Virara's face.

 

"You blasted idiot!"

 

The gaunt lancer with blond hair was looking frantically between the shadowy figure in the distance, lowering his bow with hesitation. The woman with the shield crouched awkwardly, bare steel peeking out from behind the round wood and metal structure. The elderly ringleader cussed hideously beneath his breath, not turning to look at his wayward follower.

 

Virara listened for the whistle of the traveling arrow behind her and heard only the singing wires in the white nothing. The enemy's concentration was shot. That would be her first and perhaps only window to act.

 

The scent of apricot blossoms filled her, lungs filling with the last gasp of summer from a place that never knew snow.