Avishraa Reloaded

As they traveled, Ilirith found herself with some thinking to do.

Now, at least, she understood why she'd kept catching Demarath stealing glances at her. In hindsight, it seemed a bit obvious, but she'd never really expected anyone to find her beautiful - she knew well enough that, in many respects, she wasn't conventionally beautiful. While she'd had some thoughts about getting closer to Demarath, she'd fully expected that it would involve, well, more effort to see her in that light.

And her? Well, certainly she liked him. He wasn't spectacularly handsome; royal palaces tended to attract all sorts of good-looking males looking for careers in decorating some rich female's harem, so she'd seen plenty of them around, and he wasn't quite in their class. But being a telepath tended to make personality important, and an awful lot of them had made themselves repellent by being, not to put too fine a point on it, arrogant pricks. She was quite happy to accept average looks if they came with a personality she found pleasing.

It had therefore dawned on her that, although the Matriarch had commanded her to look but not touch, said Matriarch was now gone and her successor was a traitor and had no rightful hold over her, and that she could therefore touch as she liked; and that, in addition, she was now in the company of someone who seemed like he might, at some point, be amenable to some friendly touching with her.

And in fact (and she was very proud of this logic), knowing and suspecting what she did of the Matriarch's last commands to her, it could even be construed as an act of loyalty to put herself in an unparalleled position to watch Demarath and ensure his wellbeing, all from up close.

It was a very conveniently self-affirming thing, she thought cheerfully, when you could get personal desire and duty to run in perfect parallel.

They had by this point entirely left the lands that Ilirith was familiar with, and so now Zadireth led them. They had come down out of the hills into a wide, flat swamp, studded with crooked trees and devoid of clear trails. Zadireth, at least, seemed to have been here before, and knew how to move through in a way that didn't involve swimming (much).

“This particular swamp is a bit too unfriendly to civilized use for many people to come in here,” he explained, as they slowly picked their way through. “It'll make it a bit unpleasant for us as well, but also less likely that we get seen. There are certain steps I can take if we are, but that's something to avoid if possible.”

Moving through this environment involved some cautious manoeuvring. It wasn't nearly as problematic as it could be if they were alone, but occasionally, paws sank a little deeper than the owner of those limbs wanted them to sink, even with due diligence. Even those sinks were not usually deep, however, and they were not at any risk of drowning in the muck - but it made speedy progress impossible.

Running, for example, would just make someone painfully faceplant once a foot was caught in the mire, and likely break some ribs.

In any case, it was painfully obvious that Zadireth was right about his observation of how well-travelled this stretch of the landscape was likely to be - both a blessing and a curse.

Despite all this, Demarath had become a little less tense. Now that he could fish and make himself tangibly useful, he no longer felt like an automatic burden - although he was certainly still largely questioning whether there was any use other than novelty for his powers, and if so, if he had much of a chance of learning how to make them useful.

“What steps?” Demarath asked, tone one of curiosity. He knew that Zadireth could alter his appearance, of course - it was hard to forget his entrance - but he struggled for the moment to picture how this might translate into a useful countermeasure once they had already been spotted as they were, so he presumed there was more to it.

“I'm capable of shifting the appearance of others besides myself,” Zadireth replied, pausing and peering carefully ahead. There were mists starting to rise from the muck, which made it hard to see very far ahead. “If they're close enough. Ilirith should be able to pick up the approach of other takmar before they see us, which gives us a bit of time to act.”

He glanced at Ilirith, who still looked a bit abstracted. “You are keeping a watch, aren't you?”

“Yes, yes,” Ilirith muttered.

Zadireth appeared to decide not to press the issue. “Anyway, if you're both close enough to me, I can make us all bigger - for a while. Hopefully long enough to pass as normal. If not, then we may have to fight our way out and run - or fly - for it. Ordinary travelers will probably be too scared of us to follow.”

Demarath was quite unsure how to feel about the prospect of Zadireth making him bigger - the revelation that Zadireth could do that rather alarmed him, especially for its suddenness. It took some willpower not to stop in his stride. And indeed, as soon as he came to terms with the idea that he might be made bigger to appear as a normal takma, he began to wonder what else Zadireth could do with his body…

At least common sense returned quickly enough. If he wanted to, he might be able to make their blood boil - or something like that, the mechanics of anything useful were still a bit beyond him, after all - and he knew it was a ludicrous thought to assume he would. No, Zadireth had only helped them so far; there was no particular reason to assume he wanted to mangle their bodies.

If the effect was physical at all; it seemed so from the narrative so far, but he'd have to ask to be sure, and he wasn't sure he wanted that confirmation at the present time.

“Okay,” he said, his acknowledgement rather revealing his apprehension about it, but no less sincere for it. “Let's… hope it doesn't come to that.” For many reasons, naturally, totally unrelated to Demarath's very specific discomfort at being shifted. Not that comfort in general had been high on their list of options lately.

“Mind you,” Zadireth went on, “it's come in handy a few times. Free Chosen can't afford to pass up an escape option when they have it-”

“Shh!” Ilirith hissed abruptly, motioning for the others to stand still. Zadireth immediately stopped and went silent.

At the very edge of the assassin's senses, there was a mind. A very odd mind. ~Someone's out there,~ she told them silently. ~Only one, I think. Not moving.~

Zadireth sighed, very quietly. ~Of course there's someone else here. Can you pick up anything else?~

~They're angry.~ Zadireth shrugged. He could certainly imagine that someone sitting in a swamp would be angry about it. Ilirith continued, ~I think they're looking for something.~

The bronze considered this. ~Well,~ he concluded, ~best to try to avoid them, then.~

Demarath took no further urging to pause, either, though his silent cringe was perhaps a little elevated for the anticipation of Zadireth messing with his body. Now it was certainly too late for him to say something like 'can you just… not'.

But as far as encounters went, one takma was as good a news as they could get. A single takma was unlikely to be a threat to the three of them. A single takma they could handle

Pretty sure.

They continued onward, angling away from the presence at Ilirith's direction. After a while, however, Demarath's chances of coming out of the situation unaltered appeared to be damaged when Ilirith spoke up again. ~I think they must have noticed we're here - somehow,~ she said, tension in her mental voice. ~They're moving this way.~

She peered into the thickening mist, and then nodded at an area where the muck looked far more liquid than that on which they stood. ~Swimming, I think. If they're below the surface, we won't have much visual sign that they're coming.~

At that point, however, Demarath began to feel a tingling sensation in the back of his head. It was very much like that he'd started to feel when he'd first met Ilirith and Zadireth - though, in their cases, he'd gotten so used to it that he barely notices anymore.

From the look of surprise and, in all honesty, glee that passed across Zadireth's face, he'd felt it too.

Oh. Oh. It wasn't a regular takma at all. Somehow, despite the odds slanted against it, they were about to, in the middle of nowhere, come across another Chosen. Demarath's relief at that he likely wouldn't be adjusted to appear differently mingled with the spiking anxiety that he had no idea what to expect.

At some point during his attempts to sort his thoughts, it occurred to him that a fellow Chosen was perhaps not necessarily by definition going to be friendly, and he took a misguided, instinctive step back - thankfully onto solid ground.

Zadireth stared out into the muck, trying to spot any sign of the hidden presence. “Ilirith,” he said quietly, “could you call out to them with your mind? Let them know that there are other witches here and we mean them no harm.”

Ilirith looked dubious, but aimed a half-lidded gaze toward their observer.

There were a few moments of silence, in which a shape of a head, barely protruding above the surface, became visible, moving slowly and cautiously. As it came within empathic range, Demarath and Zadireth could feel the anger Ilirith had spoken of - not ordinary anger, but rage, hot and overpowering, poorly contained by an empathic shield that seemed to flicker. There was a sudden spike of surprise, and then panic-

Ilirith abruptly pulled out her daggers. “I think we-”

A small, tight ball of light flew from the region of the swimming figure. It shot straight toward a nearby tree, gnarled and struggling to grow up from the swampy ground, and caused its boughs to burst into flame.

But this was not the end of it. There was a feeling of effort on the part of the stranger, and the flames began to bend and twist, as if being shaped by invisible paws, and formed themselves into the shape of a takma's head - rough, yes, lacking great detail, but its stiffly erect antennae and snarling mouth set in an unmistakable display of warning.

The pyrotechnics caught Demarath's attention. He stared blankly at the display. Anyone looking at him without the aid of mentalist powers might assume him frozen in terror, but this would be a grave, grave misunderstanding of the emotions running through him right now:

Demarath had transitioned from a brief alarm, over confusion, to exuberance. There was a familiarity to what he was seeing, a part of him convinced that, with due effort, he could perhaps learn to do the same thing, much more easily than he'd tried to learn telekinesis.

Not quite having the good sense to cower from the display, Demarath instead cautiously reached toward it, careful only not to let himself get drawn in deeply enough to forget everything else, and like someone respectfully unwrapping a present that they had been given began to do what he was still best at: Drawing the heat out of the angry flames.

Ilirith, daggers at the ready, had frozen in utter astonishment as the tree burst into flame. Any opportunity for mental rebalancing was interrupted by the sight of Demarath reaching toward the fire.

Zadireth, to her horror, was not much more help. He looked… pleasantly surprised. Did males have no concept of 'threat analysis'?

As Demarath drew the heat from the flames, they changed color from yellow to a cool red. The empathic presence in the muck radiated momentary astonishment, then a welter of confused emotions ending in a sort of sullen resentment, and then, abruptly, the flames snapped out, as if snuffed, the reservoir of heat jerked away from Demarath's magical grip. The barely-visible head sank beneath the surface - at least, far enough that it could no longer be easily seen.

Ilirith kept a dagger aimed at the spot where it had been, watching for any further sign of activity, but finally found her voice sufficiently to shout at her companions, “What is wrong with you? Both of you?”

Ilirith's outburst prompted Demarath to snap out of his contemplation of the gesture just exchanged and into a confusion centred on her.

…wrong? It took some effort for him to truly remember that fire was a hazard for most people (really even for Demarath, he just had a different relationship with it, so to speak) and Ilirith was probably reacting to him not having viewed it as such.

On the other hand, Demarath could only guess what Zadireth might have done to attract her astonishment, not having witnessed it at all, having been a little… distracted.

“It wasn't much of a threat,” he tried to soothe, his tone friendly. “It gave us an excellent opportunity to show that we're witches– Chosen, too. And in drawing the heat from it rather than…” – he paused, glancing at Ilirith's daggers and stopped himself. It wasn't like he thought she'd done anything wrong, so contrasting it with her approach wasn't going to help any of them. “It's a peaceful gesture.”

Ilirith jabbed a dagger emphatically in the direction of the empathic signal. “That wasn't! The correct response to a threat is not to stand still and, and play with it to show peaceful intention!” She started to calm down. “I've spent the last cycle or so as a bodyguard, remember? That was a classic case of how a bodyguard does not want to see her charge behave in a potentially dangerous situation. I don't know whether you could have been hurt by fire if something had gone wrong, but that was the wrong damn way to find out. Not to mention what could've happened to either of the rest of us.

“And you-” she added, rounding on Zadireth. ”-you haven't mentioned anything about being able to control fire-“

“No, not really,” Zadireth murmured, evidently fascinated by the tirade.

”-and yet you just stood there grinning at it! You could've been fried to a crisp!“

Zadireth looked at her blankly for a moment. Finally, he said, as if unsure what the problem was, ”…yes?“

Ilirith's antennae flushed; she squeezed her eyes and mouth shut as if trying to physically hold in her frustration, then whirled around and hurled her dagger at a tree further back along the path, embedding it in the wood with a loud thunk. Casting a withering look at the two males, she marched off to retrieve it.

Demarath's gaze followed Ilirith, his expression uncomprehending. Nothing bad had happened. As far as he could guess, his reaction had contributed to de-escalating a potentially tense situation - had it not? He let his attention sift through the landscape, his antennae tentatively curving to express doubt, both at his own assessment and the situation at large.

The source of the magic had disappeared into the muck, by the looks of things. With that thought came a mild pang of yearning - someone out there knew how to handle fire. It felt like potential of kinship had simply been withdrawn by fate, just tantalisingly out of reach.

With a sigh, he sat down. In a way, it was the strangest way he'd behaved so far - previously, he'd been eager to internalise any reprimand. But this was so foreign to him that he couldn't convert it into self-loathing - at least not yet. Once the wonder and vague daydreams of kinship wore off, unless Ilirith's mood improved, he would no doubt start acting like a scolded puppy.

Zadireth likewise gazed after Ilirith, then twisted his head in a helpless shrug. “I wouldn't take it personally, if I were you,” he murmured, quietly enough to avoid Ilirith hearing. “She's Srian and she's trained to guard against potential threats: put those traits together and you get a personality that will have very definite feelings about how cautious one should be situations like this.

“I imagine that once she reminds herself that nothing bad happened, she'll calm down a bit.” He grinned, and added dryly, “She'll need some calmness, because I intend to try to find whoever that was and convince them to come along, and I'll probably need Ilirith's help. I don't imagine she'll be enthusiastic about the idea.”

Demarath's expression, on the other hand, while betraying mild surprise, made it quite clear that he was not at all opposed. Another addition to their team, if they could indeed be convinced to join forces, would increase the safety of all of them while they travelled - and add new potential topics for conversation.

He opened his mouth to say something, but noticed a bit belatedly that he wasn't really sure what. Instead, with only a slightly awkward delay, he asked: “When do you think she'll calm down?” It was an odd question to ask Zadireth, really - out of the two of them, Demarath knew Ilirith better, but was of course far less confident in his assessment.

Zadireth evidently felt the question to be odd as well, since he looked particularly amused by it. “I think you're asking the wrong person,” he replied, as Ilirith wrenched her dagger out of the tree and start back toward them. “She's the only mind-reader in this bunch.”

To both their surprises, Ilirith stopped in her tracks, the affronted expression sliding off her face. The she scurried over to them. “Someone else is nearby - a lot of someones,” she murmured urgently and pointing in the direction they'd been heading. “They're coming this way from over there.”

“Hm,” Zadireth mused, glancing in that direction. “Inconvenient. What do they have on their minds?”

“They're looking for something - or someone. They don't seem happy.”

Demarath's instinct was to take a look - although without sacrificing safety in the process. “How many?” he asked, softly.

'Looking for someone' suggested that perhaps they were after the Chosen who had introduced themselves with the flames - there wasn't enough kinship as that Demarath wanted to risk anything to rescue them, hiding or fleeing seemed like the better option, but if 'a lot' was a manageable collection of non-Chosen, they might have a good chance of doing something.

He was at least curious - while maintaining that the best battle plan was always not to battle at all. Which prompted his second question: “Would it work to fall back?” Ilirith was no Oracle, of course, but if she sensed anyone in the other direction as well, they might have to figure out how to hide more quickly than strictly comfortable.

Ilirith closed her eyes. “There's no one behind us - yet - but I think they've got someone in the sky. Not close enough to see us yet, but it wouldn't take much for them to catch up to us if they did. We might be better off if we do what that other witch is doing and hide in the muck.”

She paused again. “There's a lot of them, though,” she added. “At least… ten? Fifteen? Maybe more still coming.”

“We'll hide, then,” Zadireth decided. “Trying to run away while slogging through all this is going to be too difficult anyway; trying to fly away will likely mean we get spotted faster; and, besides, I don't want to leave without trying to get that Chosen to come with us.” He started wading into the silt-choked water.

“Is that really a priority right now?” Ilirith asked, removing her cloak and unbuckling her harness.

“Yes,” he replied firmly. “That's the whole reason I'm out here in the first place. I wandered into the middle of a prison to find Demarath, remember?”

For once, Demarath did not instantly become distracted by Ilirith - the situation was rather alarming, after all. He followed Zadireth's example, while keeping his attention largely on the directions Ilirith had indicated, suspiciously trying to spot motions between the foliage and in the skies. He tucked his wings against his body as to offer the muck less resistance.

The tense situation unfortunately did not make the muck any more pleasant to descend into. It felt more dangerous than a river - as though some creature with an appetite for takmar was perhaps resting within it, out of sight. It was a strange feeling, contrasting sharply to how at home he had felt in clearer waters.

The detritus whispered against his skin, strands of plant material wrapping about his arms, not quite impeding him, but promising that he'd be accumulating more until it did.

Zadireth, after checking that the bag hung around his neck was as cinched as tightly as it could be, slipped easily into the muck without evident discomfort. Some instinct, much like Demarath's, shrieked at the thought of being surrounded by such impenetrable murk; but what little there was of him that was able to acknowledge it found it soothing.

Ilirith chose a dagger from one of its sheaths, then another, and then wrapped the harness up in her cloak and held it awkwardly over her head as she joined the two males in moving out into the swamp. Once they had gotten an appreciable distance from the path, she glanced around and stuffed the dark bundle into a hollow in a tree trunk.

The mists over the swamp began to thicken, but less reassuringly, the sound of voices - male, from the sound of it - called to each other, echoing over the murk. As they became audible, there was a flare of empathically-transmitted rage; the witch hiding in the muck had evidently heard the newcomers as well.

There was triumphant, vengeful shouting in the distance, and splashing noises as the newcomers approached; they had apparently felt the witch's outburst, as well.

Ilirith's voice sounded in Demarath's head. ~It's the other witch they're looking for, sure enough. They're going to kill them if they find them. And maybe vice versa.~

'Vice versa' Demarath only had mild reservations about - it sounded like self-defence to him, so the Unchosen takmar were getting what they bargained for. He narrowed his eyes, as though it made any appreciable difference what he thought - but there was still an instinct of kinship with the anonymous witch and so he found himself wondering if something could be done after all that was nonetheless reasonably safe.

In any case, they were likely to be busy with each other more than the three of them, so they ought to be reasonably safe if they kept out of the line of proverbial or literal fire. And from this relative subjective safety came Demarath's query: ~Is there anything we can… do?~

There were more shouts, and the sounds of the nearer pursuers splashing and slogging their way toward the burst of anger… and then, in the distance, a WHOOMPH and a sudden lighting of the fog accompanied by what seemed to be the sound of someone burning to death, screaming all the while. That someone, evidently, had encountered the other witch, though apparently alone; there was much more shouting and splashing, but no other similar noises.

Ilirith finally replied, and her tone was businesslike. ~We would be exposing ourselves to unnecessary risk. There's a lot of them, we don't know how they're armed, and although we have powers we can use against them, you don't have any experience fighting and I'm not sure- wait, what?~ From the way her gaze had suddenly snapped toward Zadireth, it was clear that he'd said something to her. ~Zadireth!~ Then, aloud, in a hissing whisper, “What in the Abyss do you think you're doing?”

Zadireth, who had turned toward the distant sounds, glanced over his shoulder with a grin, exposing his teeth in the manner of someone planning something very nasty, and murmured, “I won't be a moment.” He lowered himself further into the water and paddled quietly off.

~That idiot!~ she fumed silently. ~He's just going to go in and try to take them by surprise! He's going to get himself killed!~

Demarath made a soft, barely audible noise that nonetheless conveyed his alarm, especially given that his eyes had gone wide. ~Should we help him?!~ he asked, pushing his shoulders out of the muck a little, only to sink back down, his restless body radiating unease.