Rose had to be honest with herself: she had not been as prepared for this as she’d hoped. Sure, if she’d been alone she’d have been making progress, but it would have been slower going. Training with her teacher in the mountains had given her the ability to push herself up some impressively steep angles, balance well, even on one wheel, and get places that many others would not have been able to in her place. Living in the mountains did that to you. But this long distance travel was complete shit. It was exhausting. Before she’d done short bursts of travel or hitched herself in with caravans or riverboats or whatever. She hadn’t traveled overland this far since she’d needed the chair and it was, again, shit.
Emrys was helpful for the camping last night when it had rained on the road he’d convinced some air spirit to keep the water away, which made it cold, but not miserable. Thankfully Ellen had the foresight to provide them with warm blankets and very thick socks for sleeping.
Emrys, it turned out, was the sort of fellow who sometimes sang while he traveled. As expected, his voice was bad and weak, but at least it was also persistent and enthusiastic. It did help pass the time, though. She wasn’t sure if boredom would have been worse.
They hadn’t talked much more about her abilities since the first day, though on the second day on the road she’d had to find a steep rocky hill to prove to him that she hadn’t used them to get up the stairs. He’d declared it one of the most impressive things he’d seen all year. Rose would have assumed that summoning an elemental spirit would have made that list, but she guessed that the ability to do magic changed the perspective a bit.
For the last hour they’d been debating what the building in the distance was, but as they got closer it became clear that it was sort of a hostel, much like the one they’d seen three days back at the river. Only this one wasn’t entirely abandoned.
Ahead the path hit a crest on a hill that Rose had barely noticed they were on. Someone was crouched or sitting behind a pile of rocks that used to be a stair and wall. Loose gravel was all about and a few haphazard trees past that before the other part of this crumbling building, which was clearly once the main structure. The woman sitting (it was sitting) at the wall looked harried. She was dirty and bleeding from at least one wound on her head. It was almost impossible to make out any real details about her such as her nationality, but she looked human enough: that was always an easy distinction to make. As Rose approached – she was rushing, when had that happened? – the woman’s eyes went wide and something hit the rocks beside her head with a sharp crack, spitting dust and debris. Was that a projectile? There was no indication that it was coming, was there? As Rose approached, keeping herself to the left to take advantage of more cover, the woman spoke in a hoarse voice.
“Help! She’s got my daughter and she’s trying to kill me!”
Rose’s mother had been simply the worst parent Rose had ever heard of. Beatings, shoutings, punishment as a reward for doing as she was told … she hated the woman and to be honest, she didn’t like the whole idea of parents. But kids were not parents. Kids were kids. She’d been a kid. Her sister was a kid. Rose wasn’t sure who was firing at this woman, but they were going to stop.
She didn’t even stop to acknowledge the woman. She pushed herself around the far side of the building to see if she could get a look at the attacker. The building – if the few remaining stone block walls and half a first floor ceiling could be called that – was dark. They chose a good spot, outside of sunlight. Rose wasn’t about to illuminate the area and draw attention to herself. Maybe if she could catch a look at the child she could give them an out. But the first thing she wound up seeing was the attacker. Only a bit. The weapon: a sleek crossbow. An arm, a shoulder, and the barest hint of a head, but it was enough. Rose drew her focus hard to the arm and released a blast. The violet light shot out at the attacker, who was caught unawares, and impacted with a satisfying sound. The crossbow fell and the attacker let out a startled cry and withdrew. First blood to the Talent!
Then it got quiet. Far too quiet for comfort. The only reason Rose didn’t take a ball mace to the head was a small shift of stone. Looking up, Rose saw a figure rushing toward her from the top of the wall, the woman holding it now a warm brown against the stark grey and bright blue. How the hell had she gotten up there so fast?
Rose shifted forward a bit, bumping her feet into the remains of the wall, but it was enough that the woman landed a bit behind her. From the confused look on the woman’s face, she hadn’t been expecting the chair and one of the legs caught on it as she tried to land. There was a crack that was the opposite of satisfying. Sort of a queasy sound. She tried to wheel around but found herself wedged between the fallen woman and the stone of the wall. Her ears were still working quite well, though, so she heard the voice of the desperate mother very clearly. Only it wasn’t so desperate now. In fact, it had gone hard. Cruel. It sounded like the voice of a completely different person.
“Bad luck, warden This is where I end you.” Rose heard the blade drawn, but couldn’t turn in time to see it.
But that wasn’t the only noise. There was another voice. Farther away. Watery. Desperate.
<qaf huna!>
A rumble and then a burst of noise as a section of the wall fell. Only it didn’t fall. Not really. It shot across the space. At the edges of her vision she saw one of the stones and it wasn’t the first one she heard – launched hard. The first stone impacted with a soft noise. The second was less soft. The third clearly hit another of the stones. But the last sound was the obvious collapse of a body hitting the ground.
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