*
22nd of Summer, 513
The landscape lay enshrouded in a torrent of rainfall. So thick was the veil of grey that the forest seemed nothing but muddled darkness, and the highway below an ever undulating series of leaping raindrops, quickly building to what, from atop Torav, appeared to be a river in birth.
Trente struggled with the frightened horse ferrying him along the highway. It was tired, fearful, and exhausted, but Trente would not allow the party he trailed to pull farther ahead. They were almost there.
He shivered something fierce, and gave another impolite jab to the horse's side to encourage it forward, it sped for a moment then slowed, but continued on course. A dance of crude encouragement the two had been playing for days.
The others were less than a few hundred meters ahead, which seemed miles in the weather, weather Trente had no way of knowing would be so detrimental to his health. He had always had shelter on the water, even in worse torrents, always had a haul to hide within. He could not fathom how people could survive in the wilderness, as unforgiving as it had proven again and again.
Just as Trente felt the cold beginning to numb his mind, and all understanding of his surroundings faded (the painstaking effort he had exhausted attempting to recall the twists and turns of the highway) came the rumbling, deep and less threatening than foreboding. At first Trente guessed thunder, but it was not mated with lightning, instead came the cascading reports of snapping limbs and shattering trunks. It was distant, but it approached quickly enough.
The horse knew more than him, it halted with great deliberance, then attempted a step back, beginning to turn tail. This was met with another sharp jab from Trente's heel, and a harsh wrench of Torav's reins.
This was the last straw. Torav's front feet flew from the ground, and Trente grappled to the beast instinctually. His hold did not last, a blessing though Trente could not know it at the time.
Trente met the ground as a shrill cry from the horse accompanied another snapping sound. At first Trente feared it were him, but no, the broken limb must belong to a tree or the horse. He very much hoped it was a tree, for his chances of escaping those wildlands without Torav were slim at best. Then the weight hit him, he slide along the ground as something chilling and hard hit him, it was not water, but it enveloped him like such.
Then, he stopped being pushed along the ground. His cloak caught on something sharp at he passed it, and the ground slid promptly over him instead. Trente struggled and pulled free his cloak with panicked hands.
Unable to breath, direction became irrelevant, gravity seemed to mean nothing, and he tumbled trapped, unable to breath, for an indeterminable amount of time. Longer than Trente wanted, limbs tumbled into what must be air till finally the substance that carried him along stopped, seemed to pool around him, and he flailed for the surface.
He struggled and struggled till finally the consistency at his fingertips changed, but not for the better. Hard, and unforgiving proof of a boulder abraded his nails.
Trente's lungs burned and cried, and ironically it was this sensation that inspired him to the correct course of action. The darkness around him was thicker than water, and heavier, but not so much that Trente couldn't use the boulder to turn on himself. Just like swimming he drew close to the boulder, and with a last desperate exertion he pushed from the boulder, in the opposite direction, and hoped dearly for air.
Nothing.
He could not glide as if it were water, no, he ceased movement almost immediately after his kick off, likely little further than he had begun, before his decent, and it seemed that all was hopeless.
He then threw his arm out in a last desperate attempt to feel the surface, and filling his hand was nothing but the cold earth of his new grave.
He bit down on his lip, begging his body not to take a breath, it undulated and fought itself, and tears of pain seeped from his burning eyes.
Then something gave. He was in motion again, and his hand, outstretched toward the surface caught on something sharp. His first instinct was to pull his hand from the pain, but on the back of his hand was air, precious air.
Earth spilled around him, attempting to drag him down again, but Trente clung, he forced his other arm out and held on for dear life, till the mud finally cleared and he lay there, against uprooted and drenched ground, clinging to the decimated tree which had created a dam for a pool of mud the moment before it snapped in half, freeing Trente from his doom.
He gasped for air and coughed as dirt threatened to enter his lungs. Laying there exhausted, the rain showering away proof of his scrape with death, and he nearly lost consciousness in the harsh environment, saved only by a quiet sound near by.
He wiped the mud from his face and arose, with great struggle to survey the apparent wasteland that had cleared way for itself around him. Many of the stronger trees still stood, but the younger, less fit had toppled and slid, completely uprooted in some cases, quite a ways downhill. Trente had never, in his life, heard of such a thing, and the idea of it frightened him more than anything. The idea that the ground itself could shift and leave you, at any moment.
He missed the ocean, where he knew what to expect, he missed his sea.
The sounds came again, through the rain, which gave no sign of letting up. He followed it and came to where the next pool had settled. At first he still could not distinguish it, but after it moved the horse's silhouette became apparent, it's white eye blinking upward in desperation at Trente.
"Torav!" Trente exclaimed, and he scrambled down the shallow slope, ignoring his wounded hand, and landing knee deep in mud which quickly grew deeper ahead.
The horse was stranded in the pool, it's side and head barely wrenched above water. Trente reached out, holding onto a thick near by root, which had likely been buried beneath the earth not long before. After several swipes he managed to grab hold of Torav's reins. The horse gave a tug of his own in response, and nearly pulled the rope from Trente's palm.
"Damn it you beast, calm down!" He commanded, then tempered himself, putting out his palm in a sign of peace and apology. His voice lowered and he said in a softer tone, barely audible over the torrent. "I am here to help, so let us just get along this once. Ok, speedy?" He looked the horse in the eye and could not decipher what exactly he saw, but nodded understanding he wouldn't get a better response. "Ok..."
He pulled more gently the second time, and the horse responded. He spent several minutes trying to help the horse pull free, and made little progress, which was all undone when he finally managed to grab hold of a strap of the saddle. Something tugged on the horse's leg and it lashed out with gnashing teeth, nearly taking off Trente's face. He stumbled back and nearly skewered the horse in retaliation before he identified the issue. The horses leg was curled up above the mud, and it did not look responsive. The stallion sniffed and licked at it, and Trente knew this horse was not going anywhere. This horse was never going to walk again.
Trente spit out more of the never ending mud from his mouth, and shook his head in defeat. "Sorry, hot shot, today is not your lucky day."
Trente pulled his long blade from his pocket, ready to wade in and end the creature's misery before he heard a high pitched scream from further into the devastation. It was a women, and she sounded like she was in pain.
Trente sheathed his blade, and left the horse to it's own fate. The women screamed two more times, long and loud, before eclipsing into silence beneath the downpour.
It was enough for Trente to reach her. He, of course, already knew who it was, and for not entirely selfless reasons was not about to let her die.
Trente had not realized how lucky he was till he witnessed the devastation which had been visited upon the woman's escort. The knight was pinned under one of the larger trees, and lived only because the woman continued to struggle to part mud from pooling around the knight's face.
"Please, Rak'keli!" She pleaded in a hoarse voice, tears pouring from her swollen face, streamed with mud and blood. "I-I can't." She choked and continued scooping. "I can't get her out, please lift-" She couldn't stop crying, she begged even though she knew full well that the gods would not answer, would not help the dying knight.
Trente would. He slid down into the new pocket in the earth where the knight was pinned. "Save your breathe." He said, rather insensitively.
"Trente!" She shrieked, fear in her eyes. She reached for the knight's weapon.
"You best keep digging, Priestess, or your patient is going to drown." Trente ignored the women, knowing full well she wasn't going to bludgeon him to death. He braced himself against the tree and hefted it up. An expanded breath came from the knight before Trente slipped and it pressed downward again. Trente glared and hefted again, with a surer footing, and the tree spilled to the side, with an assisting push from the priestess.
She immediately hit her knees and cried out Rak'keli's name, pressing her palms to the bleeding women in armor.
Trente sneered, "Hate to break it to you, Priestess, but I helped your friend here, not Rak'keli." The light came and the bleeding stopped, and the priestess smiled with overwhelming relief.
"Right. Well, m'lady, if you are done down there in the mud can we get on with our mission, then?" He offered a hand to help her right herself, and gestured off down what would have been the highway if a pile of brush and mud weren't layering it.
She glared at his insensitivity. She loathed him, and Trente was more than ok with that fact. "We can't leave her here in this weather. She will freeze to death." Trente had to admit that sounded bad, he actually hadn't thought of that.
"Well, I am not going to carry her." He explained with definite indignation. At the core, however, it was less that he was unwilling and more that as numbed and exhausted as he was, he was incapable.
"I will." The Priestess began stripping the knight of her encumbersome armor. Trente frown, and shook his head.
"Wait. Just. Just come with me, I have an idea." He noted the unconvinced expression on her face as she ignored him and went back to her task. "There is a horse, just passed those trees there, and if you can heal it then we can move your friend."
The woman stopped, and looked to Trente. Her eyes narrowed and she stood up, to reach near eye level with him.
"Tell me one thing, and be honest. It doesn't much matter now anyway." She offered and accusing expression.
"Why ask a question that does not matter?" He retorted with little patience.
"Because, Trente, I want to know." She said, refusing to entertain his childish inquiry.
"Ok, Priestess, you ask me one question, I swear I will answer honestly if you promise to complete what I sent you out here to do."
She stared him directly in the eyes, with a certain level of anger, as if she would know if he were lying this time, and asked, "Is your son really out here? Or was he right. Is this all a trick?"
Trente smiled and nodded sardonically, understanding full well why she would assume him to only be a rogue, even after all of this, luring her out to be captured for her talents. "I swear, Priestess, I am not deceiving you. My son is in a shop right down the road, and he needs you or he is going to die."
True or not her face relinquished to exhaustion and she walked toward the convict, who had held her and her husband at blade's edge, and grabbed his wounded hand. She placed one of her hands over it, then stopped, looking up into his eyes.
"Is he still alive? Did you kill my husband to escape?" She did not seem angry, only worried.
Trente, with a straight face, shook his head. "No, love, he is fine. Probably still has a bit of a headache though."
She closed her eyes, relief filling her and from her gentle touch poured something pure, something warm. Trente felt renewed, warmer, and sensation returned to him. His hand healed and he caught the priestess as she nearly fell to her knees.
"Let's hurry." She said faintly, and Trente held her cold form for a long moment before nodding, righting her and leading her onward to Torav.
It wasn't easy pulled the horse from the mud, but it never once lashed out at the women who spoke softly to him, and touched him with Rak'keli's light. Trente's muscles burned and mud covered his drenched body head to toe, only to be washed away again and again before the horse stood shivering beside the pool of mud.
They loaded the knight onto the horse and continued on through the torrent of rain toward Eridanus' establishment. The storm was not over yet, and neither was Trente's challenges. He had hoped to sneak away with Matilis without anyone knowing of his presence, but now he had to hatch a new plan.
A plan to get his son cured, and far away from the priestess and the knight before the knight could dawn her armor again.
*
22nd of Summer, 513
The landscape lay enshrouded in a torrent of rainfall. So thick was the veil of grey that the forest seemed nothing but muddled darkness, and the highway below an ever undulating series of leaping raindrops, quickly building to what, from atop Torav, appeared to be a river in birth.
Trente struggled with the frightened horse ferrying him along the highway. It was tired, fearful, and exhausted, but Trente would not allow the party he trailed to pull farther ahead. They were almost there.
He shivered something fierce, and gave another impolite jab to the horse's side to encourage it forward, it sped for a moment then slowed, but continued on course. A dance of crude encouragement the two had been playing for days.
The others were less than a few hundred meters ahead, which seemed miles in the weather, weather Trente had no way of knowing would be so detrimental to his health. He had always had shelter on the water, even in worse torrents, always had a haul to hide within. He could not fathom how people could survive in the wilderness, as unforgiving as it had proven again and again.
Just as Trente felt the cold beginning to numb his mind, and all understanding of his surroundings faded (the painstaking effort he had exhausted attempting to recall the twists and turns of the highway) came the rumbling, deep and less threatening than foreboding. At first Trente guessed thunder, but it was not mated with lightning, instead came the cascading reports of snapping limbs and shattering trunks. It was distant, but it approached quickly enough.
The horse knew more than him, it halted with great deliberance, then attempted a step back, beginning to turn tail. This was met with another sharp jab from Trente's heel, and a harsh wrench of Torav's reins.
This was the last straw. Torav's front feet flew from the ground, and Trente grappled to the beast instinctually. His hold did not last, a blessing though Trente could not know it at the time.
Trente met the ground as a shrill cry from the horse accompanied another snapping sound. At first Trente feared it were him, but no, the broken limb must belong to a tree or the horse. He very much hoped it was a tree, for his chances of escaping those wildlands without Torav were slim at best. Then the weight hit him, he slide along the ground as something chilling and hard hit him, it was not water, but it enveloped him like such.
Then, he stopped being pushed along the ground. His cloak caught on something sharp at he passed it, and the ground slid promptly over him instead. Trente struggled and pulled free his cloak with panicked hands.
Unable to breath, direction became irrelevant, gravity seemed to mean nothing, and he tumbled trapped, unable to breath, for an indeterminable amount of time. Longer than Trente wanted, limbs tumbled into what must be air till finally the substance that carried him along stopped, seemed to pool around him, and he flailed for the surface.
He struggled and struggled till finally the consistency at his fingertips changed, but not for the better. Hard, and unforgiving proof of a boulder abraded his nails.
Trente's lungs burned and cried, and ironically it was this sensation that inspired him to the correct course of action. The darkness around him was thicker than water, and heavier, but not so much that Trente couldn't use the boulder to turn on himself. Just like swimming he drew close to the boulder, and with a last desperate exertion he pushed from the boulder, in the opposite direction, and hoped dearly for air.
Nothing.
He could not glide as if it were water, no, he ceased movement almost immediately after his kick off, likely little further than he had begun, before his decent, and it seemed that all was hopeless.
He then threw his arm out in a last desperate attempt to feel the surface, and filling his hand was nothing but the cold earth of his new grave.
He bit down on his lip, begging his body not to take a breath, it undulated and fought itself, and tears of pain seeped from his burning eyes.
Then something gave. He was in motion again, and his hand, outstretched toward the surface caught on something sharp. His first instinct was to pull his hand from the pain, but on the back of his hand was air, precious air.
Earth spilled around him, attempting to drag him down again, but Trente clung, he forced his other arm out and held on for dear life, till the mud finally cleared and he lay there, against uprooted and drenched ground, clinging to the decimated tree which had created a dam for a pool of mud the moment before it snapped in half, freeing Trente from his doom.
He gasped for air and coughed as dirt threatened to enter his lungs. Laying there exhausted, the rain showering away proof of his scrape with death, and he nearly lost consciousness in the harsh environment, saved only by a quiet sound near by.
He wiped the mud from his face and arose, with great struggle to survey the apparent wasteland that had cleared way for itself around him. Many of the stronger trees still stood, but the younger, less fit had toppled and slid, completely uprooted in some cases, quite a ways downhill. Trente had never, in his life, heard of such a thing, and the idea of it frightened him more than anything. The idea that the ground itself could shift and leave you, at any moment.
He missed the ocean, where he knew what to expect, he missed his sea.
The sounds came again, through the rain, which gave no sign of letting up. He followed it and came to where the next pool had settled. At first he still could not distinguish it, but after it moved the horse's silhouette became apparent, it's white eye blinking upward in desperation at Trente.
"Torav!" Trente exclaimed, and he scrambled down the shallow slope, ignoring his wounded hand, and landing knee deep in mud which quickly grew deeper ahead.
The horse was stranded in the pool, it's side and head barely wrenched above water. Trente reached out, holding onto a thick near by root, which had likely been buried beneath the earth not long before. After several swipes he managed to grab hold of Torav's reins. The horse gave a tug of his own in response, and nearly pulled the rope from Trente's palm.
"Damn it you beast, calm down!" He commanded, then tempered himself, putting out his palm in a sign of peace and apology. His voice lowered and he said in a softer tone, barely audible over the torrent. "I am here to help, so let us just get along this once. Ok, speedy?" He looked the horse in the eye and could not decipher what exactly he saw, but nodded understanding he wouldn't get a better response. "Ok..."
He pulled more gently the second time, and the horse responded. He spent several minutes trying to help the horse pull free, and made little progress, which was all undone when he finally managed to grab hold of a strap of the saddle. Something tugged on the horse's leg and it lashed out with gnashing teeth, nearly taking off Trente's face. He stumbled back and nearly skewered the horse in retaliation before he identified the issue. The horses leg was curled up above the mud, and it did not look responsive. The stallion sniffed and licked at it, and Trente knew this horse was not going anywhere. This horse was never going to walk again.
Trente spit out more of the never ending mud from his mouth, and shook his head in defeat. "Sorry, hot shot, today is not your lucky day."
Trente pulled his long blade from his pocket, ready to wade in and end the creature's misery before he heard a high pitched scream from further into the devastation. It was a women, and she sounded like she was in pain.
Trente sheathed his blade, and left the horse to it's own fate. The women screamed two more times, long and loud, before eclipsing into silence beneath the downpour.
It was enough for Trente to reach her. He, of course, already knew who it was, and for not entirely selfless reasons was not about to let her die.
Trente had not realized how lucky he was till he witnessed the devastation which had been visited upon the woman's escort. The knight was pinned under one of the larger trees, and lived only because the woman continued to struggle to part mud from pooling around the knight's face.
"Please, Rak'keli!" She pleaded in a hoarse voice, tears pouring from her swollen face, streamed with mud and blood. "I-I can't." She choked and continued scooping. "I can't get her out, please lift-" She couldn't stop crying, she begged even though she knew full well that the gods would not answer, would not help the dying knight.
Trente would. He slid down into the new pocket in the earth where the knight was pinned. "Save your breathe." He said, rather insensitively.
"Trente!" She shrieked, fear in her eyes. She reached for the knight's weapon.
"You best keep digging, Priestess, or your patient is going to drown." Trente ignored the women, knowing full well she wasn't going to bludgeon him to death. He braced himself against the tree and hefted it up. An expanded breath came from the knight before Trente slipped and it pressed downward again. Trente glared and hefted again, with a surer footing, and the tree spilled to the side, with an assisting push from the priestess.
She immediately hit her knees and cried out Rak'keli's name, pressing her palms to the bleeding women in armor.
Trente sneered, "Hate to break it to you, Priestess, but I helped your friend here, not Rak'keli." The light came and the bleeding stopped, and the priestess smiled with overwhelming relief.
"Right. Well, m'lady, if you are done down there in the mud can we get on with our mission, then?" He offered a hand to help her right herself, and gestured off down what would have been the highway if a pile of brush and mud weren't layering it.
She glared at his insensitivity. She loathed him, and Trente was more than ok with that fact. "We can't leave her here in this weather. She will freeze to death." Trente had to admit that sounded bad, he actually hadn't thought of that.
"Well, I am not going to carry her." He explained with definite indignation. At the core, however, it was less that he was unwilling and more that as numbed and exhausted as he was, he was incapable.
"I will." The Priestess began stripping the knight of her encumbersome armor. Trente frown, and shook his head.
"Wait. Just. Just come with me, I have an idea." He noted the unconvinced expression on her face as she ignored him and went back to her task. "There is a horse, just passed those trees there, and if you can heal it then we can move your friend."
The woman stopped, and looked to Trente. Her eyes narrowed and she stood up, to reach near eye level with him.
"Tell me one thing, and be honest. It doesn't much matter now anyway." She offered and accusing expression.
"Why ask a question that does not matter?" He retorted with little patience.
"Because, Trente, I want to know." She said, refusing to entertain his childish inquiry.
"Ok, Priestess, you ask me one question, I swear I will answer honestly if you promise to complete what I sent you out here to do."
She stared him directly in the eyes, with a certain level of anger, as if she would know if he were lying this time, and asked, "Is your son really out here? Or was he right. Is this all a trick?"
Trente smiled and nodded sardonically, understanding full well why she would assume him to only be a rogue, even after all of this, luring her out to be captured for her talents. "I swear, Priestess, I am not deceiving you. My son is in a shop right down the road, and he needs you or he is going to die."
True or not her face relinquished to exhaustion and she walked toward the convict, who had held her and her husband at blade's edge, and grabbed his wounded hand. She placed one of her hands over it, then stopped, looking up into his eyes.
"Is he still alive? Did you kill my husband to escape?" She did not seem angry, only worried.
Trente, with a straight face, shook his head. "No, love, he is fine. Probably still has a bit of a headache though."
She closed her eyes, relief filling her and from her gentle touch poured something pure, something warm. Trente felt renewed, warmer, and sensation returned to him. His hand healed and he caught the priestess as she nearly fell to her knees.
"Let's hurry." She said faintly, and Trente held her cold form for a long moment before nodding, righting her and leading her onward to Torav.
It wasn't easy pulled the horse from the mud, but it never once lashed out at the women who spoke softly to him, and touched him with Rak'keli's light. Trente's muscles burned and mud covered his drenched body head to toe, only to be washed away again and again before the horse stood shivering beside the pool of mud.
They loaded the knight onto the horse and continued on through the torrent of rain toward Eridanus' establishment. The storm was not over yet, and neither was Trente's challenges. He had hoped to sneak away with Matilis without anyone knowing of his presence, but now he had to hatch a new plan.
A plan to get his son cured, and far away from the priestess and the knight before the knight could dawn her armor again.
*
