Pixie's Pad

“What’s your name, elfling?” They had been walking at a snail’s pace for a while – longer than the journey would have taken her alone. Darok was still weakened. She had found him a dislodged drapery pole, the same one that had held the drapes she’d fashioned his bandages from, and he used it as a stave that helped him walk. “Marigold.” “Like the flower?” He glanced over at her. It wasn’t her real name. She turned her face towards the setting sun and pulled one lower eyelid down. Darok leaned forwards, squinted at her, and then nodded. Her irises were yellow ringed in deep orange. Not an uncommon colouring for a Ven, and she’d chosen their similarity to the flower to give herself a nickname, as Ven often did. Real names were close, private things. The Teon’kith didn’t hold that sentiment and passed their names around freely; she wasn’t sure whether Darok knew of this particular Ven custom but didn’t ask. “What were you doing at the boat?” He’d been gently questioning her for the length of their journey. Unobtrusive things, things she saw no harm in him knowing. She kept her answers guarded all the same, carefully choosing her words and phrasing. “Just scavenging. We’ve had runners scouting the coast since the Chorm activity increased in the area. They reported the wreck, I was sent to finish off survivors.” “Just you?” A question posed innocently enough by the lilt of his voice, the gentle upward arching of his brows, but she knew what he was asking. She’d seen him eyeing her bow, her sword. “A bedraggled group of Chorm are little threat for a trained Vennari marksman and blademaster.” “I see,” Darok nodded. His makeshift staff thumped into the ground with every other agonisingly slow step they took; it would be close to dark by the time they reached the camp. She watched his silhouette from the corner of her eye, saw him chewing his lip, mulling over her answers. “Have you seen us fight?” She asked him, defensiveness prickling across her skin. Darok laughed. “I don’t doubt your prowess in battle, elfling. That is not what concerns me – though it’s perceptive of you to notice.” “Then what?” “The cage that held me. The enchantment. Chorm haven’t used such things in a long, long time.” “I know. I’ve been thinking about that.” “You weren’t to know before arriving, but you could have been walking into a situation more dangerous than you had anticipated. There might have been magic-wielders there. “The Chorm haven’t used magic in centuries,” Marigold frowned. “There was no reason to suspect there’d be a sorcerer on the ship.” “Perhaps.” Her frown deepened. Was he questioning her? The scouts, maybe? Picking holes in their tactics? Maybe he hadn’t changed all that much – maybe Darok was still part Vrikdarok, still had a little Bloodfist in him. “The runners would have noticed something out of the ordinary; they would have noticed a Chorm sorcerer.” “Perhaps,” He said again, and she clenched her jaw. “Things change, elfling. New ways replace the old, old ways replace the new. Just because something has been one way for a while -” “Doesn’t mean it will always be that way. I know. Thank you for the lesson, old man. If there was a Chorm sorcerer there, I would have assessed the situation. I wasn’t expecting to find a Teon’kith in a cage, either, and that played out well enough.” “Old man?” He chuckled; a deep, reverberating sound that she could feel humming through the air. “True you found a Teon’kith; I wasn’t much threat to you in a cage, though. You released me because you trusted that I mean you no harm. A Chorm sorcerer might have flayed the skin from your bones before you even noticed they were there.” Marigold shuddered at the thought, but said nothing. Darok might have been right, but there was no good reason to suspect that the Chorm would have a sorcerer when no Chorm magic had been witnessed for so long. She – the runners – had done nothing wrong. But maybe erring on the side of caution wasn’t a bad suggestion. She cast Darok a sidelong glance, but said nothing.

******

He watched her jaw clench and unclench. It had been a risk, bringing it up, but maybe she would ponder his words and learn from them. She wasn’t as headstrong as most Ven he’d encountered; this much was promising. Darok focussed on the feel of the staff against his palm. With each impacting thump into the ground, he sent through gathering tendrils, soaking up the earth’s energy into the wooden vessel. The Chorm wood resisted having such natural energy inside it – Chorm magic was of a different, darker kind entirely. Not unlike Mazorn blood mages, but with a more demonic bent. No, this staff did not like having nature’s boon within its grain, but it would do. Truthfully, he had recovered enough strength to walk at a pace the little Ven would be happier with, but he needed time to gather his spiritual strength as well as physical. Darok was careful to walk just slow enough to pull a decent amount of magic from the earth with every step, but not too slowly that they wouldn’t reach this camp of hers before sundown. A happy medium, and – though he felt a twinge of guilt for deceiving her – hopefully she wouldn’t notice. He’d talk with her people, tell them what they wanted to know, and then be on his way. If they chose hostility, he’d be prepared, at least. He hoped it wouldn’t come to that. There had been enough blood. Two civilised peoples, perfectly capable of rational, calm discourse, of intellectual bent and spiritual growth, both fighting like children. It tired him. The time for war was long gone, if there was ever such a time. “What did you hope to find, on the vessel?” He probed gently. He had sensed something, lying on his back in the sun after she had bandaged him. Something niggling at the edge of his senses, tugging at his awareness. He hadn’t the strength at the time to investigate, and planned to return when he was done with the Ven. He hadn’t told her about it – if she didn’t know it was there, she didn’t need to know. “Information,” she answered carefully. She was staring at the ground some twenty feet ahead, her eyes tracing the terrain in front of them, but he knew that wasn’t what she was concentrating on. A Ven could traverse grassland like this with her eyes closed and walking backwards. “Anything on the movement of the Chorm. Where they were going, what they were doing. Why the raids have increased.” “Your people have suffered many losses from the Chorm?” “Not for a long while, until recently. Their ships started appearing on our horizons again a few years back. They come through with huge flotillas. A few ships break off and swarm any little coastal settlements they find. They never come inland; I think they’re afraid to face us in our element. But with the ocean and their armadas at their backs, they behave more brazenly.” She stopped talking and he felt her mood tense. She felt she’d said too much, he gathered – in talking about the Chorm’s activities she’d highlighted potential Ven weaknesses that the Teon’kith could exploit. “They haven’t reached us yet,” He watched her as he spoke. “But they will. If they attack here frequently enough, you will move your people inland – perhaps you already have. When the Chorm find they’ve run out of easy pickings on your shores they’ll head in our direction.” She glanced across at him. “Are you saying we should keep our people in their coastal settlements so that the Chorm never want for ‘easy pickings’, and never make it to Teon’kith territory?” He sighed. Marigold struck him as one of the more open-minded Ven he’d met – the fact that she’d freed him, bandaged him, that she walked by his side now with her weapons sheathed – was evidence of that. But things were still difficult, evidently. She didn’t trust him – not that he could fault her for that – but she had only known him for a scant few hours. It was too early to lose hope that she would ever trust him. Darok drew a resigned breath. “I’m saying that we have a common enemy, your people and my people. This might be an opportunity for alliance.” She laughed – not an easy laugh, but the shrill, nervous tinkling of disbelief. “The Teon’kith wish to form an alliance with the Ven?” “No,” his smile was pained. “No, not the Teon’kith. Just me.”

******

“I don’t understand,” Marigold had stopped walking, stared at his silhouette framed against the blue sky and gold-flecked clouds that obscured the beginnings of sunset. “The notion of alliance with the Teon’kith is laughable, even if it came directly from your government, from your people. What can one lone Teon’kith hope to achieve when his goals aren’t even aligned with his nations’?” Darok’s fingers curled and uncurled around the staff as he stared down at her. She counted his long, heavy breaths; one, two, three. “Hope,” he finally muttered and turned off to walk along the path again. Marigold watched him make his slow, determined way through the long grass. It was not so long for him – for her the fluffy seed heads tickled at her thighs when she walked through; for him, the tips of the grass barely scraped his knees. One lone Teon’kith on some kind of peace mission? Even if it was the legendary Darok Earthweaver, the notion was laughable. “You can’t be serious,” She jogged up next to him. “You want peace?” “Peace is too much to ask for. An alliance need not have all of the connotations of complete peace, but will benefit both parties. It might be a doorway to greater things.” “The Teon’kith government is still hell-bent on war with us; they just haven’t chosen their time. They will attack again, eventually. But even if they didn’t, how can you even think that any Ven will consider the possibility of trusting you? It’s absurd. Maybe you don’t realise how we view you.” “You are terrified of us.” Darok spoke the words slowly and quietly; almost as if he were ashamed. She made sure that thought were a fleeting one; no Teon’kith was ever ashamed of being hated by the Ven. “A fact that doesn’t usually bother you.” “Again you lump me with my race,” He sighed. “I am not my people. I once was – as bad as the worst of them, perhaps – but things change. They have to.” An alliance with the Teon’kith was unthinkable. Peace was too absurd to even consider. There would be no peace with the Teon’kith in her lifetime; of that she was certain. Perhaps she could walk side by side with one of them, not trusting him quite but civil enough to not leap at his throat, but he was not like his people. For his views, his aspirations, he might as well not be Teon’kith at all. “We’ve tried bringing our coastal settlements inland. There has been a steady stream of evacuees making their way to our inland cities for months now. But not everyone wishes to leave. Some would rather take their chances. I can’t blame them – they’re being asked to give up their livelihoods. But it’s painful to watch.” “Mmm,” Darok growled his acquiescence. “Ven fortify inland. It’s why the Mazorn didn’t continue their attacks after taking your coast. I was able to convince them of that, at least. The Mazorn, on the other hand, fortify at our territory’s perimeters. If you empty your coastal settlements, the Chorm will come knocking on our doors – and they’ll find more than they bargained for. It will be a good thing, we can engineer that.” “You’d willingly have the Chorm bypass Ven lands to attack your own instead?” She asked, and then realised there was a monumental question she should have addressed in its stead. “Wait – what do you mean, ‘you were able to convince them of that, at least’?” “Before I finally turned my back on the Mazorn war efforts, I convinced them not to push into Ven territory. Convinced them they would suffer terrible loss; that the battle up to that point had only been so rewarding because of how little you fortify your coasts.” “But that’s not true,” She said, and then stopped herself before she gave anything else away. Darok offered her a sidelong glance. “Truthfully, I did not know how much damage we would have done to your people if we had followed you inland. I didn’t want to find out, so I convinced my generals that they would be idiots to press on.” “You? You were the reason that the Teon’kith stopped attacking?” He shrugged. Was he telling the truth? It made sense – if not him, then someone else maybe, and he was just taking credit to convince her to trust him. But this was Darok, for certain – and during the war, it was Vrikdarok Bloodfist who held most sway with the leading officers of the war effort. If they’d have listened to anyone, it would have been him. He was being awfully modest about it; either he was lying and incredibly skilled in the art of manipulation, or it really was him. “To answer your original question, yes, I would willingly have the Chorm come to Mazorn shores. The Mazorn armies would devastate them. If there’s anything they love, it’s a good fight. They’ll face less losses, and it will distract them from their vendetta with the Ven. “You are an enigma,” Marigold scowled at him. She wanted to understand, but this was all a little too far-fetched. If something seemed too good to be true, it likely was. She was eager to get to the camp; let Warden sort through his words and decide the truth from the lies. “Yes,” Darok chuckled heartily. “That I am.”