A Standup Philosopher
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On Ashen Wings Chapter Seven
🕑 Added 2024-11-19 03:48:44 +0000 UTCOn Ashen Wings
Chapter Seven
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To say that Gale, former lover of the goddess Mystra and current walking magical Armageddon, was less than pleased would be something of an understatement. Today had not gone the way that he had wanted it to. First, he had woken up to find the lovely Ciri rather entwined (even if not in an overtly sexual manner) curled up with that damn Sharran she seemed so fond of, happily sleeping in a mutual embrace with the other girl. If at bladepoint, he might have been willing to admit that the sight was cute, perhaps even intriguing on a purely animalistic level, despite the fact that Shadowheart was the other half of that little equation.
Ugh, Shadowheart. Leave it to the Sharrans to entirely lack subtlety to go along with their lack of empathy or basic morals. One would think the most reviled and head-hunted cult of the face of Faerun would learn how to send out their servants with rather less obvious pseudonyms, if only to make sure said servants didn’t inadvertently lead a group of rather more righteous sorts to their hiding place. The fact that he had warned Ciri of her wickedness and been told to be quiet or leave was galling enough, but to see them sleeping so closely together as that…well, it hadn’t been a pleasant sight, no matter how aesthetically pleasing the two of them were.
Of course, he was a rather mature fellow, and a wise one, certain other pieces of evidence notwithstanding. He wasn’t stupid enough to complain too loudly or too stridently, well aware that he would find himself out on his ass in short order if he did. Which would rather be a disaster for not just himself, but a significant portion of the Sword Coast. As such, he had resigned himself to a fulminating glower at the raven-haired half-elf and set about making breakfast amidst some rather vitriolic muttering in an ancient and dead tongue that he often made use of when he wanted to do such muttering without causing issues.
Not the sort of thing a man of his standing often had to deal with, but making himself valuable and companionable was rather more important than his pride at the moment, and it wasn’t as if there was much choice. Either he prepared the meal or one of the girls did, which not only would mean waking them, but also picking one to cook. If he picked Ciri, she could quite easily take issue with it for his gall or for his perceived laziness. If he picked Shadowheart, not only would he have to deal with that, but Ciri would likely assume that he had done so as a part of their little conflicts, which in all honesty would not even be untrue. Either way, of course, it was a losing proposition for him, so he set himself to work with the same careful efforts that had made him so powerful and learned a wizard.
That hadn’t done anything to improve his mood, and it certainly hadn’t made him any happier to see how closely the girls were sitting together when they finally woke up and ate, arms and legs pressed together as they talked in quiet tones with soft smiles on their faces. If it wasn’t for the fact that they never would have been able to keep him from noticing, for a multitude of reasons (not least of which being proximity), he would have thought he was looking at a couple the morning after they had engaged in carnal activities for the very first time.
The idea was more aggravating than it should be, given he was rather busy trying to do whatever it was Mystra wanted him to do to earn salvation from his imminent and explosive demise and win his way back into her good graces, warm embrace, and warmer bed. Gods, but she was a creative thing when it came to sex. The legacy of a mortal woman being raised to godhood, and godhood over a domain that thrived on creativity at that. And let it not be said that a divine woman lacked in stamina either, by all that was good and holy did it not mean she was lacking in stamina….
Well, the fact of the matter was, he shouldn’t be feeling quite so displeased by the fact that Ciri and Shadowheart might have been sleeping with one another, even when the fact that Shadowheart was a Sharran was considered. It was curious, really, and he couldn’t help but wonder why it was he found Ciri so magnetic. Shadowheart’s attraction, puppylike and yearning as it was, at least made some sense, thanks to the fact that Ciri had saved her life and helped her escape the nautiloid. He, on the other hand (though he had been trapped in the runic circle) didn’t think that she had made quite that much of an impression on him.
So, that being the case, why would he be so invested?
Hmph.
Whatever.
Something to consider quietly in the future, if he couldn’t just return to Mystra’s embrace instead and circumvent the entire issue of contemplation in the first place, which was really his preference. He had never been particularly fond of thinking about things outside of his magical studies, and he saw no reason to change that now.
Of course, the final thing that had made today a thoroughly shit day was the fact that they had gotten dragged into a sight with a large pack of goblins and wargs launching an attack on the local druid grove because a group of mercenaries that had been stopped over there had gotten caught sneaking around their camp…or something like that, the details were a bit fluid at the moment. The only saving grace during the entire affair was the fact that Ciri and Shadowheart together had managed to save the life of the young tiefling boy that had been helping guard the gate, which had bought them a rather healthy amount of good will.
With the tieflings anyway, because the druids seemed less than impressed with them despite their efforts.
“If you want someone to take a look at whatever illness you have, you’ll have to make yourselves useful first. Those tiefling refugees have scouts out, looking for a group of githyanki that they say they spotted in the area, so you had best follow up on that.” Kagha, the interm archdruid during the goblin-enforced absence of their actual archdruid (some fellow named Halsin, apparently.), had been rather unwelcoming when they arrived. Though, to be fair, that might be because Ciri had…aggressively entered the room and given her one hell of an earful for threatening a young child with a lethally poisonous viper simply because the kid had tried to take away the idol that would let the druids lock their grove away, leaving her family (and many others) trapped outside with the damn goblins. “And you had better do something about the goblins, too, if you want these damn devil-kin to stay alive when we close off the grove.”
“Fine, we’ll take a look, but I had better not hear about any more attempts to murder children when I get back.” Ciri growled back, clearly unimpressed with the other woman, her attitude, her life choices, and basically everything else there was about her. Gale could sympathize with that, but he could also understand why the druids would want to close themselves off from the world after a nautiloid had just crashed on their front step, never mind the goblins swarming all over the countryside.
He did take some enjoyment from just how shaky and less-than-impressive Kagha’s attempt at a dismissive sneer and flap of the hand was. Which was understandable really, given the fact that an angry Ciri was a rather worrying thing, even from the outside. What it felt like to be the target of her ire, he neither knew nor wished to discover.
“Well, now that we’ve been volunteered to march ourselves into the proverbial lion’s den -two, if the tieflings are right about there being a large number of Githyanki in the area-, what exactly is our plan? Because I assure you, we will need one if we mean to hunt either of these threats in their dens.” Gale remarked once they were outside of Kagha’s lair, watching streamers gold-edged green magic flow in swirls and spirals around the massive altar to Sylvanus that dominated the large clearing.
“We find the scouts first, they can give us a better heading on where to go next. After that, we make it up as we need. It will be just like a hunt back home.” Ciri responded, sounding rather more cheerful than she had not a few minutes before, and somehow Gale wasn’t surprised that the way she was used to doing things amounted to ‘go looking for a problem, figure out how to actually deal with it while fighting for your life.’
Most people, Gale reflected wryly to himself, would have heard his words and spent a heartbeat or two asking him if he would prefer to stay behind in safety instead of going out to search for the various violent, maniacal threats that might present themselves outside of the grove’s walls. Ciri, on the other hand, didn’t seem to question for a even a moment that he and Shadowheart would accompany her, and the worst thing was, he doubted it was out of callousness. Mystra, it probably wasn’t even due to being oblivious! Either she correctly assumed that neither of them would be willing to stay behind and leave her alone with the other, or it simply didn’t occur to her that someone wouldn’t go hunting for dangerous, violent, maniacal threats if one had the chance and the means.
In all honesty, he wouldn’t care to put the contents of his (rather small) coin-purse down on a bet for either option. It could quite easily go either way, and that was only if it wasn’t both to begin with.
“Well, it’s not the most detailed plan, but I suppose it will do for the time being. It’s not like we’re drowning in information at the moment, so we can’t exactly come up with something more detailed.” He finally conceded, shaking his head with a hint of amusement, as the gate out into the wilds slowly creaked upwards.
At least the day was likely to improve from here. With goblins and githyanki, there was little in the way of ambiguity or moral quandaries, unlike his struggles from earlier in the morning. And really, it was so very cathartic to lob fireballs, magic missiles, and other such things at such creatures. Why, by the end of the day, he could very well feel like a whole new man!
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Ciri liked to consider herself a fairly polite, ‘professional’ sort of person. For all that she had spent a large amount of her formative years amongst the people of Kaer Morhen, who were not by any means inundated with a fondness or talent in social graces, she had never really lost all of training that she had received as Crown Princess of Cintra. A scarred warrior-woman she might now be, but she could still manage to be the belle of a ball if she really needed.
All of that said, of course, was the only reason she wasn’t quietly snickering like ‘Heart was at the sight of a glowering (nigh on pouting) form of Lae’zel. The yellow-skinned githyanki woman was trapped in a wooden cage-trap, hanging nearly six feet above the grassy clearing, only a few hundred yards from the very ruins that they had slept in the night before. Whether she had been there all night or had only been trapped sometime after they had left to head for the grove, she didn’t know.
“Gale, why don’t you ask our new friends as much as you can about what Kagha wanted us to do, then make sure they safely get on the road back to the Grove. ‘Heart and I will deal with this dastardly foe.” She suggested, stifling a giggle at the way Lae’zel looked at her in response to her words. Gale didn’t look happy about it, but reluctantly obeyed all the same, ushering the pair of tieflings away. He had sensed it when their tadpoles had connected to one another, after all, and he could also sense the familiarity that the three women had with one another. Just like they could sense his [Resignation] and [Exasperation], alongside a very healthy spike of [Mistrust] towards the trapped gith.
Once they were safely out of earshot, ‘Heart finally stopped trying to contain her laughter entirely, chortling without restraint, [Satisfcation] and [Amusement] radiating off of her.
“Pa’vrylk shka’keth!*” Lae’zel swore at her, sounding so utterly incensed, her anger only growing as the link between them ever so helpfully pulsed her [Embarrassment] and [Humiliation] across the mental distance between them at the same time.
“You seem to have gotten yourself into a bit of a bind, Lae’zel. Too bad you didn’t stick with Ciri and I after the crash, you might not have ended up dangling like this. But then, the irony is just too rich. You leave us defenseless and alone on the beach, only to end up depending on us to safely escape your bonds now.” Shadowheart purred in response, a cold, almost cruel edge to her smile as she folded her arms over her chest. “And so soon after we were given a mission to find the gith roaming the countryside at that, as well. How fortunate for us.”
“Any idea how to get her out, ‘Heart? Without breaking her legs from the fall?” Ciri asked, feeling slightly less vindictive about the whole thing, but still finding a fair bit of…oh, what was that word that she had heard once from Geralt? It was from another country to the south-west of Cintra…
Ah, schadenfreude. Finding pleasure in the misfortune of another, usually in an ironic way.
Yes, she was certainly feeling a bit of that at the moment.
“Tsk’va! If it was not for my gratitude for your deeds on the gh’ath, I would have cut your throats as you lay asleep on the beach, as the ways of my people demand, as any other githyanki would have done! Better for you to die in such a way than to risk becoming ghaik yourselves!” she snarled in response, threads of [Outrage] and [Offense] and even [Bafflement] lashing at them like emotional whips, and Ciri actually blinked in surprise.
Lae’zel actually meant every word. She was being totally honest when she said that any other member of her race would have cut their throats while they lay unconscious and defenseless on the beach and moved on without a second thought. Considered it for their own good, as a matter of fact, though given what they had seen on the nautiloid, Ciri wasn’t entirely sure that she could disagree. Still, she could sense the truth of Lae’zel’s words, and she could sense ‘Heart’s begrudging surprise at them as well. Surprise…and a small (tiny, really) measure of gratitude.
“A fall from that height won’t actually be enough to do any real harm to her. If I had to guess, the only reason that she hasn’t broken herself out already is because she can’t break through bare handed. Goblins like to do minor spell-work on traps like this, make it harder to break them open. Either those trapped are abandoned by their comrades, or their comrades stay and try to break them out, only to get caught by the goblins themselves. It shouldn’t take us more than a handful of moments to break her out ourselves.” The half-elven Cleric explained after a moment, getting a hum of surprise from Ciri and a grunt from Lae’zel, and after a moment of consideration Ciri stepped forward.
Five minutes later, she and ‘Heart were watching a muttering Lae’zel do some stretches as she tried to limber up, having evidently fallen afoul of the trap the night before. In fact, from what she said, Ciri was willing to bet that avoiding notice by the group of would-be temple-plunderers that they had scared off is what had gotten Lae’zel stumbling into the trap in the first place. Not that she was going to tell the prickly swordswoman that, who knew how she would react.
“Ahh, to be free of that cage! It is good to see that the tadpole has not yet taken all sense and wisdom from you. Auspicious.” She said, in what Ciri had to assume was her version of a ‘thank you’, a thought that was oddly amusing. “My people possess the means to cure us of this infection. I must find a creche, and you shall join me.”
…well, at least she was being kind enough to invite them to a potential cure.
“We can’t, not yet. There is a large grove of druids nearby, and they said that their archdruid might be able to help us. We know where he is being held prisoner, and planned on rescuing him.” Ciri denied, shaking her head, before holding up her hands in a calming gesture as Lae’zel bristled. “Do you know where a creche is, or even if there is one nearby?”
She shook her head, and Ciri shrugged lightly.
“Then we don’t really have a choice. If we’re on a time-limit, like you said, before we turn into one of those things, we don’t have time to go wandering aimlessly through these hills while hoping for the best. Let’s go with the closer and easier to find of the solutions first, alright?”
She wasn’t happy about that, even without the tadpole it would have been painfully obvious, but she also didn’t argue or try to march off on her own. That, in and of itself, was enough of a win to satisfy Ciri.
“Very well, then. If this ‘archdruid’ of yours is unable to help us, however, we must search for a creche immediately. I will cut each and every one of our throats before I will allow us to be damned to the soulless existence of a ghaik.” Lae’zel growled as Gale returned, and to Ciri’s surprise the brunette seemed to be in reluctant agreement.
“As much as I dislike the gith, she isn’t wrong with the fact that dying as we are now would be a far kinder fate, nor is she exaggerating when she calls mind-flayers soul-less. It’s not something well known to the average member of the populace, and I doubt the Sharran’s superior’s would have told her, but the soul of someone turned into a mind-flayer does not enter the afterlife, nor is it reincarnated. As far as anyone can tell, or has ever been able to tell, their soul simply…stops existing. As though it never existed in the first place. There are very, very few fates that are as grim as that, and I can think of none worse.” He explained solemnly and seriously, though he did look askance at Lae’zel. “Of course, as zealous as this one seems to be, she might not wait until our time runs out. If she actually going to give us a chance to solve this particular crisis, or is she planning on murdering the lot of us in our sleep tonight and going to look for her little pack of reavers?”
“Ciri speaks sense. If this archdruid can help us faster and more easily than my own people, then I will not interfere. To be cleansed quickly is more important than who does the cleansing.” Lae’zel ground out in response, shooting Gale a very unfriendly look. There was clearly not going to be any love lost there, though to be fair Ciri rather doubted Lae’zel was going to get along particularly well with anyone. “As such, I will not kill any member of our group until we at least know of his fate and his ability to aid us.”
“I’ll take what I can get, I suppose.” Gale huffed, shaking his head before shrugging and looking at Ciri. “If we’re going to attack the goblin camp, I’m of a mind that turning down assistance, regardless of whom is offering it, is a bit foolhardy. And you can say what you like about githyanki, but they’re not generally bad fighters.”
“Well, I can certainly agree with that, based on what I saw on the nautiloid.” Ciri agreed as Lae’zel opened her mouth to fire back, cutting off the potential argument before it could get started, and she resisted the urge to rub her forehead as her three companions instead settled for shooting each other hostile looks. Keeping the peace had been troublesome enough as it was, and now she was expected to do it between three people that disliked each other?
And she was starting to get thirsty too, which wasn’t going to improve her mood by any stretch of the imagination. She would need to find an opportunity to sneak off and feed on something soon, preferably before any combat-related blood-shed. She didn’t yet know what the limits of her self-control were, and she wasn’t entirely interested in finding out.
“Come on, we know where the goblin camp is, so let’s head in that direction. According to the mercenaries that managed to lose the archdruid, the ruins of an old town are between us and the camp. Hopefully, we can find something resembling cover to sleep in.” Ciri sighed, deciding to deal with all of that later and settle for moving towards their objective and finding some shelter in the now.
“Ah, if I may? While you and the Sharran were otherwise busy, I had a chat with that Wyll fellow. Blade of the Frontiers, they call him. Anyway, he mentioned there is a detachment of Tyr-sworn Paladins nearby, helping him hunt a devil. Perhaps, if we were to help them, they could help us? It shouldn’t take more than a couple of hours, he said.” Gale offered quickly, before Ciri could start moving, and she paused to glance back at him.
“A detachment of Paladins does sound good, Ciri. And Tyr is the god of Law and Justice, so we can probably count on them to want to help stop the goblins, save the archdruid, and escort the tieflings to safety. Once their mission is complete, anyway.” ‘Heart chimed in, which was enough to convince her despite (or perhaps because of) her overall ignorance.
Besides, hunting a demon sounded kind of fun. Especially if it was one that already had a group of holy knights hunting it down. Maybe it was allied with the demon that had been involved with the man whose noble-blood Gaunter had taken during a deal for her? He had said that the man had sold himself into demonic servitude to save his people, before the deal he had made with the man freed him.
Though she hoped the fellow didn’t end up regretting it. Her father had told her all about Gaunter’s hidden clauses and double-meanings. Well, whatever had happened there, it wasn’t likely to matter any time soon. It wasn’t like too many people could have survived the crash, after all, especially not anyone that hadn’t been up on the bridge of the nautiloid like she, Shadowheart, and Lae’zel had been.
“Let’s see about that first, then, and we’ll go from there. I certainly like the idea of having extra help.” She agreed, shrugging her shoulders, glancing over at Lae’zel at the discontented growling-hiss that the githyanki let loose at the idea of a delay. “I know you want to move quickly, Lae’zel, but getting ourselves killed by attacking an entire enemy camp with just the four of us seems like it would pose a problem for surviving.”
“Kaincha! Very well, a few hours, nothing more!” she conceded without further argument, folding her arms and looking away with what would, on someone less alien in appearance, be called a pout. It she looked less lizard-like, Ciri would be tempted to call it cute.
All three women turned their attention to Gale, who sighed and nodded at the realization that, because it was his idea and his information, he would have to ‘take point’. Not exactly someplace a wizard preffered to be, but he had brought it on himself.
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Karlach Cliffgate was, despite her injuries and the fact that she was being hunted by a half-dozen men and women that quite literally wanted to deliver her head to Zariel on a platter, the happiest she had been in years. About ten of them, as a matter of fact, though it felt a whole Hells (heh) of a lot longer than that. Side benefit of different Planes moving at different speeds, that.
Part of that was down to the fact that she was used to being hunted. First by the law, then by Zariel’s enemies, and now by Zariel’s servants. So it wasn’t really much of a mood-damper anymore, and that wasn’t even counting the ten years of The Blood War that she had been forced to fight in. Kind of hard to find a lot of fake Paladins scary when you’re a decade-long veteran of demonic war.
Most of it, though, was because of how damn happy she was to be free of Zariel, free of Avernus. Amongst the bird and the animals and the trees, feeling the sun and the breeze on her face, smelling life instead of death. Of course, she had no idea where in Faerun she was, but what did that matter when she was in Faerun again? Once she got rid of this lot, she was going to find herself a nice tavern and have some gods-damned ale and a good meal.
Of course, getting rid of this lot wouldn’t be easy. She could kill any one of them easily, perhaps even two or three, but there were six of them, and she was already injured. They also weren’t stupid enough to split up, which meant that she couldn’t pick them off one at a time.
…maybe she could barricade the building they were hiding out in and burn it down with them inside? Kill anyone who tried to escape? Not a particularly pleasant way to go, and she wouldn’t normally consider it, but under the circumstances…?
She cursed and tried to hide herself a bit more thoroughly behind the massive old-growth tree as a group of four came trekking up the path, headed directly for the blood-stained, corpse-surrounded building that she had been carefully watching for the past hour. Great, these bastards were probably going to end up with a few more friends lending them a hand. Or, worse than that, they would send this group of oblivious fools after her (with stories about her unimaginable evil, no doubt) in order to have them to all the dirty work…or force her to kill innocent would-be heroes to save her own life.
She certainly couldn’t launch an attack at this point, unless she wanted to prove all of the nonsense that Anders and his little pack of bastards said about her was true.
Damnit!
Getting a bit more comfortable, she settled down to wait and see what happened. Better to keep an eye on the situation then try to run and lack anything resembling information. It wasn’t much of an advantage, but it was an advantage, and she wasn’t inclined to sacrifice it without due cause.
The next ten minutes were painfully dull, and Karlach had to wonder how long it took for a bunch of Zariel-worshipping pricks to chat up four people and convince them to try and murder her.
Then there was an eruption of shouting, a gout of flame blew out one of the shuttered windows, and she shot to her feet with the abrupt, instinctual realization that the two groups were fighting. Which meant that she had potential allies, which meant she needed to get in there right the fuck now.
She charged towards the building, as the shouting turned to screams of pain, the sound of blades biting into flesh, of spells scorching and searing, as the stench of blood and burn filled the air, and she swung her axe off her back even as she smashed the door off of it’s hinges with one booted foot.
The man on the other side, a dwarf wielding a war-hammer nearly as large as he was and battling a dark-haired elf girl (cleric, probably, judging by her equipment), had all of a half-second to realize that she was there before her somewhat-wild swing bit into his shoulder. He fell with a strangled scream, war-hammer clattering away as it dropped from nerveless fingers, before a loud crunching sound heralded his death as the elf girl turned his head into a splatter with a ruthless over head slam with her mace.
That gave Karlach half a moment to see what was going on, and what she saw was beautiful. In addition to the dwarf, another of Ander’s little band was already dead (and had died pretty quickly, given by how much more they resembled a lump of charcoal rather than a living being) at the wizard’s hands, the pretty boy now busy exchanging blasts of magic with a halfling on the second floor. The other two members of the group had enemies of their own to deal with, and Karlach smiled a grimly excited smile at the deadly dance of swirling steel that was Ander’s opponent.
Whatever he had once been, Anders clearly didn’t have the ability or the talent to keep up with the silver-haired beauty that he was fighting, and even as Karlach watched, he was desperately back-peddling towards a side-door. It didn’t take a genius or a battlemaster to recognize he wasn’t going to make it, though, and her eyes fell to an overturned chair that was barely in his path an instant before his heel brushed against it. It hardly even touched him, and certainly wasn’t enough to trip him, but it was enough to distract him, and the heartbeat of time he spent glancing down at his feet was all his opponent needed to deal with him. A choked grunt was the final sound he made in the mortal world as her sword punched straight through his ribs, and Karlach allowed herself a moment of exhilarated happiness before turning her attention to the other fights.
She flinched and swore as the pretty boy, apparently tired of dueling with his opponent and thoroughly unconcerned with property damage, opted to simply obliterate the entire section of the second floor that the halfling was standing in, blowing a hole in the wall and turning the walkway into kindling.
The gith, on the other hand, (and wasn’t that strange, a githyanki being a member of some adventuring party?) was busy disassembling the final surviving enemy, a female rogue who was only alive because she could dodge just a little bit faster than the githyanki’s fatal blows could land. Unfortunately, doing so required the entirety of her focus, which is why the girl didn’t notice a blast of radiant light (looked like Karlach was right about the ‘cleric’ thing) that the dark-haired elf hurled at her.
The death that followed was quick and perfunctory, and the gith spared the fresh corpse barely a glance before stalking over to the cleric, glaring and jabbing at her with a finger as she started to rant about how she ‘had needed no assistance, least of which from some illusion-casting chit of a girl who couldn’t even escape a nautiloid without Ciri holding her hand’. Bewildered, Karlach looked over at the pretty boy, only to see that he was busy inspecting his robes for damage and complaining about the soot and frayed threads that had resulted from the fighting.
Desperate for some manner of sanity, she turned her attention to the silver-haired girl as they approached. The moment their eyes met, a spark of recognition flashed between them, their minds bleeding together and apart as the parasites in their minds reacted to their proximity, and the girl smiled.
“You must be Karlach. My name is Ciri. It’s wonderful to meet you.”
Oh no, she’s not beautiful. Karlach whimpered in her mind as she saw the brightness in the other girl’s eyes, the way her eyes crinkled slightly at the corners, the way her amusement seemed equal parts warm and wicked.
She’s gorgeous.
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· Best as I can tell, the words I used here would mean (essentially) “Stop, asshole!”, as in ‘Stop laughing and shut up, you asshole!’.
It will be interesting to get Wyll involved, given that he is no longer bound to Mizora thanks to Gaunter. Then again, the whole point of this story is to change things up a bit.
