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DKP 5-7 A terrible choice
🕑 Added 2020-03-27 18:33:02 +0000 UTC
The weather was warm and damp, making the heavy armor he wore nearly suffocating. Thankfully they were on an upper terrace of the King's Palace, where a slight breeze stirred.
The Father Abbot sat on a large plush chair to the side of the terrace, a goblet of dark wine on the table beside him. He studied Dellain with probing eyes as he gave his account of what the dragon showed him.
“They can change shape into humans?” the Father Abbot asked.
“I watched him do it,” Dellain replied. “If not for the glowing eyes, you would never know he was a dragon.”
A single finger stirred, tapping at the arm of the chair in obvious irritation. Dellain half expected the Father Abbot to know this already; clearly, he did not.
“And the glow fades?” the Father Abbot asked.
“He said it fades in a little less than a day. He boasted that they could walk among us, and we would never know it.” The Father Abbot's gaze was fixed as was the frown on his face. Dellain rather enjoyed souring the old man's mood even if he hardly expressed it.
“It would appear our allies are not being entirely forthcoming,” he said at last. “I have to wonder if some of the emissaries are hiding a similar secret.”
Dellain wondered that the moment he left the dragon. Several people had come as servants of their distant ally. All of them had strange mannerisms and eclectic tastes. The lady Carigara was one of the strangest, flaunting her beauty but showing no interest in anything more.
The Father Abbot continued to tap his finger in annoyance as a silence settled on the room.
“This raises another issue, of course,” he said after a long pause.
“What is that?” Dellain pressed.
“Why it took you boldly going before the dragon to learn this. Surely the woman with blue hair traveling with Gersius is the dragon. With the number of people he has around him now, he couldn’t possibly keep this a secret. Why has our informant not thought to share this information?”
Dellain nodded in agreement. It was obvious the informant could not be trusted. What other important information had failed to be reported?
“Did he share anything else with you?” the Father Abbot pressed, his calculating eyes fixed on Dellain.
“He said a dragon could bestow a blessing on a human. This allows them to share in a portion of the dragons' power,” Dellain answered.
“Undoubtedly, Gersius has this blessing from his dragon,” the Father Abbot scoffed.
“It doesn’t change anything,” Dellain said. “We know where he is and where he is going.”
The Father Abbot stood from his chair and stepped forward a slight smile on his face now.
“It explains how he was able to move while keeping the dragon hidden,” he said as he approached Dellain. “But now I have to wonder what to do about our little problem.”
“What problem?”
“Our informant has proven to be untrustworthy. I think it’s time he was replaced.”
Dellain understood what that meant, but how would they replace a man so deeply entrenched in Gersius’s camp.
The Father Abbot pulled on a silken rope and waited impatiently for the oak door to open.
When it did, a priest in red robes hurried into the room and bowed.“You rang my lord?”
“Send word to Lady Yarvine. Tell her I want to meet with her immediately.”
The priest bowed and backed out of the room, leaving the two men to their thoughts.
“What good will she be to us?” Dellain asked.
“She will find a way to deal with our problem,” the Father Abbot replied. “She was responsible for the spy in the first place.”
Dellain scratched at his chin and shrugged.
“While you're here, why don't we talk about the problem you're causing me,” the Father Abbot went on.
Dellain ceased his scratch and locked eyes with the frowning man.
“I know you have been sending men out despite my orders to keep them here. I also know you sent Mathius out on some mission you haven’t chosen to share with me.”
Dellain felt his blood burn. The Father Abbot had better spies inside the raven guard than he had in Gersius's camp. Now Dellain wondered who he could trust inside his order.
“Well?” the Father Abbot pressed.
“I sent him to gather information,” Dellain said. “On the strange woman who came to the palace.” There was no point in lying; for all he knew the Father Abbot already had the answer and was testing him.
“And did you find anything?”
“Nothing. There was a rumor she might have been accidentally rounded up with the women of Ulustrah to the north.”
The Father Abbot looked away and started to pace the room.
“She had blue hair if I recall. How odd that two women of such a rare hair color should show up, here and now.”
It was clear to them both the woman had to be a dragon, but who, and was she connected to Gersius somehow?
“I was hoping to question her,” Dellain said. “But she seems to have vanished into the night.”
“Flown off is probably more like it,” the Father Abbot corrected. “It seems the dragons are not as rare as we were led to believe.”
A silence fell on the room again as the man continued to pace.
“How many of the new recruits are ready?” he asked as he folded his arms behind his back.
“There are about fifty priests of the new order ready,” Dellain replied. “I have another thirty men for you to forgive so I can induct them into the raven guard.”
A nod of a head lost in thought was all he was given for a reply. The Father Abbot stood at the stone railing, impassively looking out over the city.
“We should move to reinforce the armies in the north,” Dellain suggested when the silence went on too long.
“We will do no such thing,” the Father Abbot replied. He turned his head just enough that the gaze of one firm eye could reach him. “I have committed all the men I intend to send north. To pull any more off the frontier keeps will raise the suspicions of the lesser kings. They are already grumbling about the conflict with Ulustrah and now Vellis. I have a pile of letters on my desk complaining that they won't be able to make the requested food quotas without the priestesses. Many more are angry that the priests of Vellis have vacated the entire region in a time of war. Casualties will be much higher without their healing assistance.”
Dellain heard the rumors already. The small kingdoms of the old empire relied heavily on the blessings of the priesthoods. Many a noble lord had a priest of Vellis as a personal doctor and went to great lengths to establish temples for the order in their lands. Now they grumbled that the Father Abbot was at war with all the orders, and would bring ruin on them. Many pointed to Dellains ascension to the dragon knight as the first sign that the war was lost.
“Then let me send my men to reinforce them,” Dellain pressed. “With so many priests, we could outmatch them.”
“No, brother Dellain. Your men will be needed here. The best we can hope for now is that the armies we scraped together will slow him down. I assume you sent the orders to your men to find ways to delay him?”
“I did, they will do whatever they can think of to slow him.”
“Good,” the Father Abbot said. “With some luck, we will finish our preparations before he knocks on the golden gate itself.”
“You don’t sound very optimistic,” Dellain observed.
The Father Abbot went back to looking out over the city and took a deep breath.
“These are very troubling times, brother Dellain. Too much hangs in the balance to make an error now. We must gather our strength and meet him where we hold every possible advantage.”
“You should have let me go after him and kill him,” Dellain insisted. “This would have been over and done with.”
“Would it?” the Father Abbot asked. “Are you so sure you can defeat Gersius?”
Dellain set his jaw even as his hands clenched into fists. He believed he could, but Gersius was a legend in the order. His accomplishments were the stuff of songs, and five times been celebrated with parades and awards for his achievements. He even managed to find and bind a dragon despite the loss of all his men.
“Not so sure are you?” the old man teased as he glanced back.
Dellain locked eyes with him and made his answer clear.
“Gersius may be great, but when I kill him, I will be greater.”
The Father Abbot smiled with a nod and turned to look over the city again.
“It's time to change our plans,” he said. “As always, we must adapt.”
“Adapt how?”
The Father Abbot turned and smiled the broadest smile Dellain had ever seen the man muster.
“The dragons aren’t the only ones keeping secrets.”
Gersius finished his morning training just in time for the camp to break down. Thayle was working with her women, trying to organize additional tasks for them. She wanted to give them normal things to do to help keep their minds occupied, and off the road ahead. Considering where that road would lead them today, it seemed a weak gesture.
The whole of the army knew they were going to liberate the camp today. It was a mixture of fear and joy for most of the people as the scouts had reported significant numbers of guards. They even reported that there were a large number of weavers present. Fortunately, the number of priests of Astikar was tiny. They had seen only three men after watching the camp for five hours.
That number bothered him. He supposed they might have stripped the priests from the camp to reinforce the army that attacked him. Once it was broken, they may have fallen back a significant distance to regroup. Gersius knew they couldn't keep stripping the towns and villages of men, and they couldn't move them from the line against the Doan. Sooner or later, they would be forced to retreat to Calathen and put their trust in its high walls. Walls, he would have to find a way to overcome.
“Are the rumors I am hearing true? The priests of Astikar are running prison camps?” Sarah asked from behind him. He realized she'd left before they learned of the camp and its terrible contents. No doubt she heard of it this very morning and was none too pleased.
“I regret that it is,” he said. “We plan to attack one this very day.” He turned to face her and saw a woman with a tall, regal nobility. Her eyes were narrowed and her face the very picture of composure. Yet he could see the anger in those narrow eyes, and the slight tilt of her brow. It also helped that he could see the red in her aura, the rays streaking wide in great flares.
“How did my order fall so far?” she said, wavering in and out of the dual voice.
“The one person we should have been able to trust betrayed us,” Gersius said. “We don't know know why or how, but we suspect he is working with the Doan, not against them. Somehow this is all tied up in a larger plot, and only he can explain it to us.”
“I will drag it out of his dying lips,” she said. “We are peacekeepers, who embody mercy and justice, not slavers. What he has done to his order is an abomination. If this were the time before the war, Astikar would have struck him down.”
Gersius studied her face a moment and then posed the next question.
“I understand that Astikar cannot act directly, but why does he allow them to call on his power?”
Sarah huffed and began to pace, her aura twisting in reds and oranges.
“I don’t know. I have prayed about that several times. Each time all I see are chains.”
“Chains?”
Sarah looked up and folded her arms as if annoyed.
“I have no concept of what it means. Even as I struggle with this mystery, I arrive to discover you have boys who can call on blessings with no connection to Astikar. Why didn't you tell me about that last night?”
“We were going to ask you to help us with that after we settled the issue with the camp,” Gersius said.
Sarah nodded and continued to pace.
“Something is terribly wrong with all of this,” she said. “There is something amiss even the divines can’t challenge. They are calling out to us for help in their time of need.”
“Lilly told me what you said,” Gersius replied. “I do not think it is another divine that struggles against us.”
“Oh, you’re certain of that?” she asked.
Gersius sighed. “Not certain, but if a divine stood against us and was willing to break the rules, how could we have gotten this far?”
Sarah glared at him, her eyes dangerously narrow, and her lips pressed tight.
“How do you know this isn't what it wants?” she asked. “So far, it seems to be pulling all the strings.”
“Because I am still alive despite all its efforts to kill me,” Gersius said.
“Maybe it doesn’t want you dead,” she replied.
“Then what does it want?”
She looked at him with a firm jaw. “Maybe, it wants you.”
“Then why try to kill me?”
“Tests perhaps, to see if you are worthy, or maybe distractions to keep you from seeing the true purpose.”
Gersius frowned to think of being manipulated by the enemy. Surely they couldn't have foreseen his raising an army in the north to challenge them. More so, he had nearly died several times as a result of their efforts. The bandersook attack in the forest, and his near execution in Whiteford. The assassins on the road captured him, but that wouldn't have ended well. Then, of course, there was the attempt to kill him on the road by men posing as recruits. Were these tests, as Sarah suggested? He struggled to puzzle it out before remembering what Astikar said.
“Astikar told me he set the path I was walking,” Gersius replied. “Not the enemy.”
“And who is to say the enemy doesn't want you to walk this path as well,” she replied. “If we are dealing with a divine, they will surely have planned for you.”
Gersius shook his head, turning away from her.
“I can not worry about what I don’t know. All I can do is go forward and deal with what I do know.”
“It is often the things we don’t know that lead to our undoing,” Sarah replied.
“He who waits for answers before acting often waits forever,” Gersius replied. “Answers come to those who act.”
She smiled and nodded her head in slight approval.
“You know Astikars teachings well,” she said.
“I can recite his book from memory,” Gersius replied.
She nodded again and looked him up and down as if seeing him for the first time.
“How did you come to be a priest of Balisha?”
Gersius let out a sigh and ran his fingers through his hair. He told her the whole story of his anger and how he blamed Astikar. With careful detail, he explained how it was Lilly's suffering that soured him. That she was paying for his decisions was more than he could bear. However, he was also quick to point out that Ulustrah and Balisha both suggested that Gersius was meant to change divines. Balisha needed a man of his strength to rebuild her faith and restore the flow of power.
“Astikar must have meant to reward you and then ask you to join her,” Sarah said. “But you lost the reward and were cast out instead.”
“I failed at the very last step,” Gersius replied. “Still, I am greatly blessed with Lilly and Thayle.”
Sarah seemed to twitch at that comment, and she walked a few steps looking ahead as if annoyed.
“Tell me, how does a man come to love a dragon?”
The sudden change in topic took him off guard, and the new topic was troubling. Gersius wasn’t sure how to answer that question. He watched her pace a little more before she stopped to look directly at him.
“She has a very beautiful human form,” he said. “Her spirit and nature are even more so.”
“So, her dragon appearance doesn't upset you?”
“Why would it upset me?”
“Just a question,” Sarah replied.
“If you want serious answers to such questions, you should ask Thayle,” he suggested. “She is well versed in explaining love.”
Sarah shook her head and looked up at the ceiling of the tent.
“I have no concept of this term. I see the behavior of this love you humans share, but I don’t understand it.”
“Lilly didn’t either. She had to experience it to come to understand it.”
“And how does one experience it?” Sarah asked. “Do I need to be crippled and bound like her?”
Gersius wasn’t sure what Sarah wanted him to say. Numidel had managed to build a relationship with a human woman without trauma. He did it before the curse on their kind, but Sarah was sheltered from the curse now, surely this wasn’t so hard a concept.
As he struggled to find an answer, people arrived to begin tearing down the tent. He was rather grateful for the break in their conversation and wanted to speak to Thayle before continuing it.
“I am afraid we will have to speak later,” he said.
Sarah looked to the people as they went to the poles to start taking them down. It was clear she was annoyed by the light in her aura, and he waited for her reply.
“Very well, we shall continue this another time.”
Gersius nodded and watched her leave the tent. He much preferred Shadros’s anger to Sarah’s sterile emptiness. She was logical but cold, devoid of common emotions that would make her feel human.
Gersius walked with Lilly and Thayle near the front of the column. It was led by thirty cavalry of Astikar and flanked by ranks of men and women in full armor. It looked like an invading army and stretched down the road beyond his vision.
Lilly didn't look right, her usually bright aura was dimmed, and she was not her talkative self. She wasn't even holding Thayle's hand, something she frequently did for comfort. He could feel her apprehension over the binding link as she struggled with something.
He thought about getting closer so he could read her thoughts and see what was troubling her. Thankfully Thayle reached out and took Lilly's hand, causing an immediate change in her light. Lilly sighed as Thayle leaned over to whisper in her ear.
It was a strange change of order that Lilly was the tense one. He expected the challenge ahead to be pressing on Thayle and still worried for her. But as the hours wore on, both women settled into a sort of calm. They walked hand in hand as if inseparable, the dragon, and the dragon knight.
As the distance closed, they began to catch up to their scouts. Reports came in that the camp was in disarray. They knew Gersius was bearing down on them, and men were missing. Reports said that the priests of Astikar and weavers were nowhere to be found. There were even reports of wagons being brought up. Over a dozen were now inside the compound, but there were no horses to pull them.
“They were going to attempt to move the women,” Gersius said when Lengwin asked him what it meant. “They waited too long to act and are scrambling to get out of our path.”
“Let them scramble,” Sarah said from where she walked by their side. “We should fly into the camp with all four dragons and scatter them like ants.”
Gersius conferred with two more scouts and learned the camp was now just two miles ahead. The sun was low, and they would need to make camp soon. It had taken longer than expected to get here, but to delay and wait till morning might give the enemy the time he needed.
“You are sure they are reduced to so few?” Gersius asked the scout again.
“Aye sir, there are less than fifty men. All of them conscripts of some kind.”
“Thank Astikar,” Lengwin said. “The camp can be taken with almost no battle.”
“Why would they run?” Lilly asked.
“Because they know they can’t win, and they don’t want to be held responsible for what we will find there,” Gersius said.
“Why didn’t they reinforce the camp, or move it?” Thayle asked. “They knew we were coming.”
Gersius could only guess at the answer. Even if they couldn't find horses, why not simply walk them out? Why hadn't the cavalry and militia that ran from the battle not reinforced the guards here, or at the very least helped them move the women? Surely those forces passed through here as they retreated? It didn't make any sense, and the more he thought about it, the more his worry grew.
He tried to piece numbers together and build a broader picture. If the original estimates of the camp guard was right, there were five hundred men here. Add those that retreated from the earlier battle and presumably reinforcements drawn from other areas they should have been able to field fifteen hundred men. Such a force would have been a threat to his army, especially considering the weavers.
“Something has you worried,” Thayle said.
“Something is very wrong with this,” he replied. “I need you to prepare yourself.”
He felt her chill across the bid at his words. He hated to upset her, but the camp brought disturbing ideas to his mind. As they crested a hill and looked down into a farming plain, they could see their destination.
It was a large farming complex with five barns and a grand house. One of the barns had a palisade wall built around it, but the yard outside the barn was empty. They could see the wagons scattered about a field beside the wall, seventeen by quick count, but there wasn’t a horse to be seen.
“I don’t see any guards,” Lengwin said.
“I don’t see any prisoners,” Thayle added.
Gersius nodded and quickly began issuing orders. The cavalry was going to wait here while the infantry advanced in two groups to surround the camp. Thayle would lead the women of Ulustrah directly into the farm once they were in place. The soldiers of Vellis would go with them as heavy support. Sarah, Numidel, and Shadros would fly overhead to drop down if needed, while Lilly advanced with them on the ground. He ordered his militia to take up the job of guarding the wagons and sent men to scout the land around them. The cavalry was kept in reserve to reinforce any area that needed it quickly.
“Why are you concerned about the wagons?” Lilly asked.
“This feels like an ambush. We send the full weight of our forces in then a hidden enemy attacks from behind destroying our supplies, and crippling our advance.”
She nodded and twitched nervously before running off to change in the trees.
The whole of the army moved, the two arms of infantry swinging wide around the camp, surrounding it. When the signal was given, the center advanced on the farm. Thayle took the lead, rushing her women ahead at a quick step. He ran beside Lilly, with the center crossing the large open fields of grass. Halfway to the wall, they nearly tripped over three men in armor lying dead in the grass.
“What is this?” Thayle asked as Gersius knelt over one, and Lilly sniffed at them.
“These look like guards,” Gersius replied and looked about. He noted the ground was churned up by horse hooves, and blood was on the grass.
“There was a battle here,” he said. “Not more than a day ago.”
“Could somebody else have attacked the camp?” Lilly asked.
Gersius wasn't sure; three men was hardly a battle. He motioned for them to move and reached the walls unmolested.
“They must have moved the women already,” Thayle said bitterly as Lilly leaned over the wall and looked inside the yard.
“It smells of people,” she said. “But it also smells of blood.”
“Blood?” Gersius asked.
Lilly stared down on him. “It smells like a battle does.”
Gersius felt a terrible pain in his heart as his eyes fell on the barn in the center of the yard.
“Bring up your best group, and the priests of Vellis,” Gersius said as he stared at the lonely building.
Thayle nodded as the tension ran across the bind between all three of them.
Quickly thirty women were assembled with the priests of Vellis as Lilly tore a hole in the wall. They advanced on the barn a sense of dread falling over the entire force. As they grew close, the sound of weeping could be heard, and Gersius struggled to remain calm.
Lilly looked down through a hole in the roof and silently communicated what she saw.
“It's full of women, they look to be alive, but something is wrong with them.”
“Open the doors,” Gersius commanded, and Lilly simply tore the large doors from the side and threw them into the yard.
As the light flashed in a cry of alarm came up from inside. Gersius saw a scene that changed him forever. Women were piled in lines so tightly they were nearly on top of one another. Every face was full of tears, but most were silent from hours of crying. They looked in shambles with dirty, often torn clothing and equally filthy faces. Two dozen men were trying in vain to comfort them and give them water. There was scarcely a space to step, however, and the men were struggling. The worst of it was their legs. Every woman had deep bruises and bleeding lines across their legs. Some were bent at odd angles, and a few had bones protruding.
“They broke their legs!” Thayle cried in rage when she saw the scene.
“Endril!” Gersius shouted. “I need your priests inside the walls now!”
One of the soldiers of Vellis nodded his masked face and sent a runner back to the wagons to fetch the priests.
“The rest of you pair up and carry them into the yard. There isn't enough room to tend them in the barn. Put the ones with exposed bones near the wall. Endril, I need you to focus on them first.” The man nodded, and his gray legion warriors quickly went about their task.
“Lilly, give the infantry the signal and bring them in, I want the other barns searched.”
She nodded and ran off as he turned back to the carnage.
A man from inside the barn tried to slip by, but Gersius grabbed him with both hands and hoisted him from his feet.
“Who did this?” he shouted into the man's face.
The man looked young in years and trembled with wide eyes as Gersius glared at him with murder in his own.
“I… It…”
“Answer me!”
“Stop shouting at the boy,” a woman near the doorway answered. “It wasn’t his fault.”
Gersius dropped the man and turned to kneel before the woman as the others worked.
“What happened here?” he asked her.
“It wasn't the camp guards,” the woman said with a tear-streaked face. “It was those priests with the bird heads. They came down the road after losing some battle with you. They were furious and realized you would likely find the camp. There was no time to move us, so they wanted to kill us all.”
Gersius noted the heads that turned from the women in Thayle's army. Her camp would be screaming for blood tonight, and he had none to give them. He could feel Thayle's anger burning from right behind him. She was listening to every word this woman had to say.
“What happened next?” Gersius asked.
The woman smiled and pointed to the men who stood silent in the barn as women were carried out.
“They refused,” she said. “They offered to move us someplace else, but the commander of the bird soldiers laughed. He said we weren't worth the effort.”
“They are called the raven guard,” Gersius said. “They are not brothers of Astikar.”
The woman nodded and let out a cough.
“One of those raven guards said he had a better idea. He said dead bodies would only make you madder; it would be better to slow you down. He said it was only following orders.”
Gersius felt a pain in his heart as he realized where this was going. Before he could say anything, Thayle spoke.
“They broke your legs to slow us down?”
The woman nodded. “You won't be able to heal a one of us. The wounds are two days old.”
“Why didn’t you heal yourselves?” Thayle begged.
“We couldn’t,” the woman replied. “They placed a magic ward around the walls that severed our connection to Ulustrah. None of us could call on her power.”
“Gersius, I was wrong,” Thayle said as tears began to fill her eyes. “I can’t keep this from affecting me.”
Gersius squeezed the injured woman's hand as two of Thayle's women arrived to carry her out. He turned on the man he had put down and dragged him aside. Thayle followed, trembling in anger.
“Why didn't you stop this?” Gersius asked the terrified man.
“Because we couldn’t,” he said in a stuttering voice.
“What do you mean you could not?” Gersius demanded. “Did they outnumber you?”
“Nearly three to one,” a second man said as he bravely but timidly joined the conversation. “They had heavy cavalry too. The weavers that were with us sided with them and offered to burn the camp to the ground.”
Gersius looked between the two men with confusion. Their aura’s said they were telling the truth, but his scouts said this camp had over five hundred guards a few days ago.
“Where are the rest of the guards?” he demanded.
The men looked at him with haunted expressions.
“Gersius!” Lilly cried over the bind, causing him to jerk his head to the left.
“What is it?” he asked.
“These other barns are full of dead men!” she shouted back.
He turned to the two men who held their heads down in shame.
“They killed the others?”
“We tried to stop them, but they were too many,” the man replied. “They slaughtered us until there were but fifty of us. The few of us that was left they forced to pile the bodies in the barns. Then they started harming the women. When they were done, they just rode off and abandoned us here. We took them inside to get them out of the sun and did the best we could for them.”
“Why did you waste time on wagons?” Gersius asked. “You should have walked them out! If you had moved them sooner, this would not have happened.”
“We got the wagons after the women were hurt,” the man said. “We were going to try and rush them to you, but when we brought out horses, a group of them showed up, killed a few more of us, and took them.”
“You could have sent runners to me,” Gersius insisted. “I would have rushed here.
“We did. They never made it out. Those priests are out there watching us from somewhere.”
Gersius suddenly looked around and then fell into the binding link.
“Lilly, fly up to Sarah and the others. Tell them the camp might be being watched by the raven guard. Have them spread out and search for them, bring them to me, alive is possible.”
“We just surrounded it with our army,” Lilly said. “We would have seen them.”
“They may have fled south just before we arrived,” he said. “Tell them to search for riders.”
He saw Lilly take to the sky and soar upward as he turned back to the men.
“Why did you agree to imprison these women?” he asked.
Both men did something he hadn't expected; they started to cry. Through tears, they explained that they had wives, sisters, or daughters who were taken and being held in another camp someplace. Their safety was only guaranteed by the men's compliance here.
“Extortion,” Thayle said bitterly. “Even the innocent are being turned into weapons against us.”
“This is an abomination,” Gersius said. “The Father Abbot can not possibly pay enough for what he has done.”
“I will find a way to make him suffer for it,” Thayle said.
Gersius turned to her and grabbed her shoulders.
“Thayle, listen to me. This was the raven guard, not the priests of Astikar. You are right to be angry and want justice, but do not become a monster like him to see it done. You will never forgive yourself if you slip even once. You are Ulustrah's champion; you must rise above this.”
Thayle started to tear up, and he pulled her into his arms. As he tried to muffle her cries, Endril arrived with his mask off.
“I am sorry to say that these wounds are far too old for even us to heal. We will have to resort to traditional means to heal them. I am going to have to order my men to straighten and set their legs. The pain will be terrible.”
Thayle cried even louder as Gersius held her.
“Do what you have to do,” Gersius said. “Get the priests of Astikar; they can give them a blessing of respite to dull the pain as you straighten them.”
Endril nodded and quickly set about the grisly task.
Gersius struggled not to cry himself as Thayle's sorrow flooded him. He looked up and saw the dragons flying in the distance, searching the ground with their sharp sight. Behind him was a commotion as the priests of Astikar arrived to help. A priestess of Ulustrah accused them of being to blame. Gersius sympathized with the pain of the women of Ulustrah, but couldn't afford a breakdown in his camp.
“Mingfe!” Gersius barked and pointed to the out of control women.
Mingfe nodded and rushed to deal with the problem as Thayle fell apart in his arms.
“How could they be so cruel?” Thayle cried as Gersius looked up again. He saw Sarah suddenly fold her wings and dive, disappearing behind distant trees. There was only one reason she would need to dive like that, and he sorely hoped he right.
“Maybe we will get to ask them.”
Comments
WhiteRabbit
know Astikars teachings -> Astikar's hoped he right-> he was right
