The Merc and the Mendicant

Fatigue

For the second time within five minutes, Ariel found herself lying on her back in the underbrush, not quite sure of what had just happened. She was trembling from head to toe and struggling to take short, shallow breaths just to keep herself conscious. Merely the act opening her eyes to meet the waning sunlight filtering down from above seemed to take more out of her than she had left in her. In the past she had been run ragged with training, exhausted by combat, wracked by fever, and even tortured for a night, but this was the first time in her entire life that she felt so completely and thoroughly weak.

"Magic is terrifying, no wonder everyone hates it," was the topmost thought floating in her tired mind, as she slowly went through every part of her body, as if cataloguing that everything was present and accounted for. Her toes and fingers seemed to be responsive, and her brain felt like a warzone, so her head was probably also still on. "No lasting harm done then I guess... physically anyway."

It took a long while for Ariel to even think about getting up. If not for the discomfort of the rocks and tree roots pressing at her armor under her back, she might've considered just lying there until someone came to investigate the dragon's path of destruction and found her. This train of thought reminded her that the main road was not traversed only by the reputable sort of people, and a woman lying helplessly on the ground would be a welcome gift for more than one type of scum. That repulsive thought alone gave her the strength to heave herself over with great effort, and lift herself up onto shaky feet.

Vertigo threatened to make her keel over again, but Ariel stiffened her aching muscles and managed to stand her ground against it. The white haze slowly dissipated to reveal a very gruesome, very peaceful scene. The dragon was dead; as to be expected from a creature separated from its head. There was no trace left of the blood that had been gushing out of its neck, save for patches of wilted undergrowth around the beast's corpse. Ariel's sword was still sticking out of the ground a few steps away, and next to the sword lay the girl. A mysterious oxymoron of a girl.

"She was all but dragon food, yet she cast out such ridiculous magic... What the hell even is she? What the hell even happened?"

Ariel's head throbbed way too much to start puzzling over the girl or the magic she had shown, for the knight herself was completely and utterly not magical. Most knights at her rank knew at the very least some cursory spellcraft for fixing broken gear or healing cuts and bruises, but Ariel had always had – as her instructor had put it – 'the magical talent of a trout.' She took a few tentative steps towards the girl, expecting to be assaulted by another wave of vertigo, but one didn't come. Her body seemed to be slowly regaining its strength again as her breathing calmed down, not unlike after a strenuous bout of exercise.

For the first time Ariel had a good chance to look at her rescuee... "or rescuer? Both the one and the other, I suppose."

The girl was haggard and dirty, with the general look of a vagrant. She was wearing a tattered grayish blue tunic vest, tucked into the band of gray half-pants that were held up by a faded leather belt, on which two small leather pouches were tied with string. One of her knee-high traveling boots had fallen off, and the other one was hanging limply from her ankle, revealing thin legs covered by gray stockings with rips and cuts here and there. Her right arm was covered by a sleeve that was wrapped in a long silvery string fitted with prayer beads and various kinds of colorful ribbons, bangles and feathers. The ragged traveling cloak she likely normally wore on her shoulders lay in shreds under one of the dragon's front paws.

Ariel bent down over the girl and swept her black bangs out of her face. She had a kind, oval-shaped face, slightly sharpened by malnutrition, pale as marble and covered with freckles. Her brow twitched slightly as Ariel's finger brushed her face.

"She's still alive!"

Ariel brought her ear to the girl's chest. Her heartbeat was strong if slow, and her chest was rising and falling calmly as if she were... "SLEEPING?" Ariel barked out loud, making her own head twinge in pain. "After all that? Is this kid immortal or what?" she thought to herself, rubbing her aching forehead.

"Then again," Ariel said to herself quietly, "Not like I know what using magic takes out of you... I only know what it does when used on you. Haaaah." She shot an annoyed look at the girl and regretted it immediately. "You probably saved my life some way or another, I shouldn't be angry at you for making my body ache a bit. Shameful."

Ariel turned away from the girl and grunted as she hoisted her sword out of the ground with tremendous effort. "Yup, still hurting. Ugh..." She fastened her sword onto the clasp on her back and turned back to the girl. She looked pitiful in her crumpled, tattered, defeated state. Ariel felt a bizarre pang of pity, affection and worry. She bent down to pick up the girl's boots and cloak and stuffed them into the belt of her traveling pack. Then she crouched to pick the girl up onto her shoulder.

"Sorry, it's not very dignified, but this is the only way I can carry you right now," she said to the unconscious girl, and turned to the path ravaged by the dragon. "I guess making it to Brunn or even Talen in this condition is out of the question right now," she thought, as she turned back west towards the forest crossing and the suddenly very inviting resting spot.

The crossing couldn't have been more than a half a mile away, yet Ariel felt like she was trudging across the entire continent to get there. The girl on her shoulder was hardly heavy, but any extra weight meant slower going, especially with muscles as sore as hers. Luckily she had had plenty of training in full-plate, wielding massive shields and greatlances. As she reached the clearance, the sun was already starting to throw its first pink and orange ribbons over the forest. They would have to spend the night here, but all in all it was not the worst possible spot for that. As long as they had a fire.

Ariel grunted as she tried to set the unconscious girl off her shoulder as gently as possible, onto one of the long wooden benches around the fire pit. The girl was still fast asleep, even when her head bonked lightly onto the bench.

"Sleeping like the dead huh... just please don't actually join 'em," Ariel muttered as she rummaged around in the small tool pouch on her hip, and pulled out an odd-looking brass hinge with two dark stones attached to it. She had always had trouble using ordinary flint for kindling fires, so she had wracked her brain and tinkered her own little mechanism of 'quick-spark' flint for her travels. The problem now was finding dry wood and kindling.

Ariel sat down for a moment to rest her aching legs, and looked around. On the edge of the forest next to the fire pit was a small cover for firewood, which seemed to be empty. Ariel lifted herself back up with a pained groan, and walked closer to investigate. "Kindly restock firewood after use!" said a plaque nailed onto the side of the cover. Ariel glanced back into it. Still empty.

"Godsdamned jerks!" she thought as she started walking around, looking for large fallen branches and other suitable material. After about half an hour, she had collected some errant twigs and leaves, probably enough to make a small fire for now. Except most of them were damp. Ariel cussed in frustration, set herself back down on the bench, and stabbed down her greatsword for support. She had never been this tired in her life, but the fire was important. The fire was important... The fire was... it was...

As soon as she let down her guard for a second, sleep overtook her.

Second Awakening

Irika was at sea in a small boat, alone, in the middle of a violent storm. The boat rocked and rolled as she hung on for dear life. Lightning struck the billowing peaks of the surrounding ocean almost non-stop, but Irika could not free her hands to protect her ears from the deafening roaring. She tried to scream for help, but her own voice was drowned amidst the noise. She felt that if she didn't drown in the sea, she surely would drown in the sky.

Lightning backlit a giant shade swooping down from the sky, straight at Irika's boat – a dragon! The dragon dived and crashed straight into the dinghy, crushing it into a million pieces and flinging Irika into the depths. As she was sinking, she could still hear the thunder crashing into the waves from below. Crashing again, and again. Crashing... Crashing...

CRASH

Irika jerked awake. Her head and shoulders were lying on the ground, while her legs were propped up on a long, solid platform. She shifted her legs down, sat up and rubbed the back of her poor head.

"Huh. Guess that means I'm still alive," she thought as her head throbbed slightly.

Other than the bump in her head, she felt perplexingly good. Especially seeing as the last thing she remembered was being in abject pain. She had been physically exhausted, and then battered by way too much magical power, but now... She felt normal. Maybe a bit more nervous than usual, seeing as everywhere around her was pitch dark; night had fallen. She was obviously still in the forest, for most of the sky was covered by thick canopies above. Some errant stars were visible through the gently swaying branches, and the gibbous moon overhead shed some light into the darkness of the woods.

The forest was alive with the chirping of crickets and the occasional hoot of an owl, but otherwise disturbingly peaceful after all the excitement before. Irika stumbled up onto the platform she know realized was a wooden bench, and sat down. Her eyes were not used enough to the darkness yet to fully take in her surroundings, so instead she took a deep, calming breath, and started going through recent events in her mind.

"The dragon was not a youngling and not a frostwyrm. The clerk bastard cheated me and probably wanted me dead, just like the other thugs."

The first thought already brought Irika's blood close to a boil.

"I should've died."

The second thought turned her blood into pudding.

"Someone saved me."

Visions of a vague red-haired figure down on the ground on one knee flashed through Irika's mind.

"That person wasn't magical... At least not enough to fight the dragon's blood. Can wizards even fight something like that? I suppose they can since I could, and I'm nothing like a wizard."

She shuddered as she envisioned the stranger's hand almost breaking under its own strength as it gripped the sword's hilt as hard as the human body could muster.

"I touched the stranger's hand, I think. Then I... I..." "What the hell even happened?" she finished her thought out loud. She brushed her hand through her hair and absent-mindedly touched her lips, staring at the vague shapes of the surrounding forest in the night but taking in none of them. She remembered just wanting to help the stranger. And then, trying to do something to prevent the dragon's blood from pointlessly wilting more of the flora than it already had. The feeling of the stranger's hand, the pooling of the blood in the forest...

"I felt... I felt the magic inside the stranger's body, I felt it in the soil of the forest, and then I... then I sort of just... Tugged it out...?" Irika extended her hand and pulled it back in a tugging motion, as if that would help her figure out what had happened. She was perplexed at the mere thought. How would she even know how to do that? She hadn't gone to any school, nobody had ever trained her in magic; she didn't even know such a thing was possible. From the get-go she had been operating purely on instinct, everything had been nothing but a fluke. Or had it? When she had felt the magic assaulting the stranger, assaulting the forest, it was almost like... almost as if something had guided her. Then, she had started draining the magic left in the dragon's body... Or was the dragon's magic forcing itself into her body?

"No..."

Irika was all but certain that she herself had turned to the dragon and deliberately started siphoning magic from its lifeless corpse, as if directed by some urge inside her head. The sheer amount of pure, chaotic, primal magic in the great beast's blood was exhilarating, suffocating, she felt like she was being inflated like a balloon and there was no way she wouldn't pop before it was over.

"But here I still am. Guess I didn't pop. Well, unless this is hell, but it seems a bit too cool to be," she thought, smiling to herself grimly.

She lifted her cheeks up from her hands and finally started surveying her surroundings. Her eyes had gotten somewhat used to the darkness, and the light from the cloudless sky was helpful. She was sitting on a long, wooden bench. In front of her on the ground was a small divot with a pile of something in the middle. A place for a bonfire perhaps? Irika knelt down next to the pile. Twigs and leaves, it seemed.

"A bonfire it is, but why isn't it lit?" she pondered. She glanced around, and had to physically stop herself from shrieking. The moonlight found a path through the branches to shed light on the other bench to the side of the bonfire, and the slumped form sitting on it. Irika's heart hammered in her throat as she strained her eyes to see the form clearer. It was a human shape, she supposed... it seemed to have long hair, and it was leaning on the hilt of a sword. A familiar-looking sword of dull ivory sheen, with glittering gem-like streaks across the blade.

"The stranger!" Irika felt dumb to have been shocked so badly by something that had been silently sitting so close for so long. The stranger was obviously sleeping, for they undoubtedly would have noticed her shuffling around the bonfire. But why hadn't the stranger lit the bonfire?

"Maybe they don't have flint stones? What kind of sorry novice of a traveler doesn't carry flint and tinder?" Irika thought smugly as she dug around in one of the leather pouches on her belt. She realized that she had left her equipment behind onto her previous resting spot at the riverbank, on account of the sudden dragon attack. "Serves me right I suppose," she chided herself.

Not like she absolutely needed flint to start fires. She might be untrained in magic, but she could still use hers somewhat. Experienced magic users would probably have compared her style of spellcasting to trying to hammer in a nail with a battering ram, for she was usually too hesitant to use magic and almost always overdid it out of nerves.

"At least I've finally learned how to make small sparks, instead of burning down the entire house just trying to light a candle." She frowned slightly at past memories of accidental furniture fires. "The light of the fire ought to gently wake the stranger up, too. I really don't want to shock her awake and end up getting stabbed."

She scrunched her eyebrows in concentration with her tongue on her cheek, and aimed the fingers of her right hand at the bonfire.

Snap

KABOOM

The entire forest shook as a gigantic thunderbolt issued from Irika's hand. The bolt struck the fire pit and blew it apart with the force of a cannon blast, leaving a small smoldering crater in its place. Irika was blasted backwards from the bench and onto the road. Apparently so was the stranger, for from the other side of the benches Irika could hear copious amounts of shouted profanities.

"Why the fuck am I on my back AGAIN, this is starting to get so. Fucking. OLD!" the muffled but unmistakably female voice shouted into the now otherwise completely silent forest.

Irika's ears were ringing slightly, but she reckoned the otherwise sudden silence was due to every animal within a mile's radius fleeing for their lives. The cursing on the other side of the benches was still continuing, but Irika started to laugh. She must've sounded like a complete lunatic to the other woman; first waking her up with an explosion and then laughing at her misfortune, but Irika couldn't find herself to care at that moment. Everything, everything about the last few hours that she remembered had just been so completely insane. Dragon attacks, ridiculous mysterious magics, sudden explosions. Her heart was stiff from uncertainty and fear, yet there was nothing she could do but laugh.