In the Mountains

Once they had gathered all her things - there were not many, but more than she had remembered; a lute, shirts and scarves from old Horma, herbs and bandages the Witch had taught her how to use, a collection of charts and maps she had charmed from merchants over the years - they left. The town was silent, still gathered in the Hall or perhaps forbidden from walking the roads until after Valla was gone. Valla knew they really ought to stay and rest. She was, frankly, a liability like this. But neither she nor Doren voiced the obvious. The Witch had said to leave, so they would leave. Lingering was out of the question.

It was fortunate, Valla mused, that she had spent so long studying, struggling to stitch together some awareness of the world around her despite her shattered memories. She was certain of their way forward, although the journey would be grueling, and she could only hope Doren would not decide it was either too difficult or too suspicious before they found the key. She didn't speak as they walked, as much as she longed for the distraction that even unpleasant conversation might bring, for fear that he would ask where they were going. She knew he would ask before the day was over, but the only thing she wanted less right now than to travel in silence while she was beaten and tired was to travel alone, in silence, with no plan, still beaten and tired.

The afternoon sun began to beat down through the branches overhead, a last gasp of a dying summer that brought sweat to Valla's brow. As the day wore on, the road they had traveled out of the town split, then split again. Each time their chosen path shrunk, finally into a trail that was still well-beaten but too narrow for a cart. The path was washed out by mountain streams in places, and tree falls in varying stages of decay blocked it more and more frequently as they kept walking. Eventually, as the punishing heat eased and the sunlight turned golden, it was too much for Valla. As she clambered gracelessly over a log, the branch she gripped to steady herself gave way, the old wood too brittle as she leaned on it. Tumbling forward, she landed hard on the rocky ground. As she lay there, with the initial sting of embarrassment still covering the pain of the fall, she heard a heavy sigh behind her. What a fantastic traveling companion she was turning out to be. With a distant sense of horror, she felt hysterical sobs rise, which she managed to turn into a sort of strangled laughter before going silent, unable to speak normally.

"We should stop here." Doren hadn't moved to help her, instead stepping away to look around the path. "We shouldn't have been moving in the first place," he muttered, barely loud enough for her to hear. Valla let her head fall to the ground, breathing around the pain she had ignored so long, overwhelmed by it. Eventually, she found herself again and gathered enough strength to turn and sit up. As she regained awareness of her surroundings, she sensed Doren to her left, too far through the woods to see. He was moving around in a small circle - making camp? - but stopped and began to walk back over as she focused on him. Still trembling as her body struggled to process the trauma it had undergone through the day, Valla kept breathing slowly as he approached.

"I've set camp. Come on." She looked at him warily but saw only a patient calm in his ochre gaze. He did not offer her help, only stood there, watching her carefully. She took a breath.

"It's still light. We should keep going." Doren quirked an eyebrow but said nothing.

"The payment. It's this way, West through the valley, but we need to keep going. The trip is more than six hundred miles, West and through the pass and then North through the Lorr Desert and then -"

"We shouldn't have traveled at all today. We are resting now. Tell me about the plan tomorrow." His voice hadn't changed, but the steadiness of it, the persistent calm, was somehow implacable.

Valla had nothing to say. She probably could have thought of something, but a wave of nausea rose from what had previously been a low simmer, and she staggered up and vomited into a patch of nettles. That effectively put an end to any arguments she might have started. As she straightened, she saw Doren still standing where he had before, looking at her silently. A last, stupid remnant of her pride stopped her from acknowledging him, and she made her way slowly but steadily to their partially set-up campsite. Once there, she realized that she couldn't offer even token help, so she simply sat and waited for Doren to finish setting up the camp. As Valla watched him, she focused on breathing steadily and directing her power to her injuries to speed up their healing. A rising panic threatened to distract her, and she stopped pushing it back, instead letting it occupy her mind so she could examine it fully.

It was more than just anxiety about the success of her overall plan - if it could really be called that - and the importance of the role Doren played in it, or fear of the mundane boredom that faced her final days if she were to set out alone. In all her time in the Witch's Valley, she had been surrounded by people and had spent evening after evening building friendships and charming strangers as she tried to reconstruct herself and gather knowledge. As remote as the town was, the travelers were varied, and some were even formidable individuals. Over the course of two years, a few mages had passed through, as well as some caravan guards of significant martial skill, and some merchants with cutting wit. The townsfolk, apart from their unique situation with the Witch, were quite ordinary as far as things went. Among them, a few had the Sight, but none had any great power. In this company, Valla had been strange not only in her origins or her amnesia but in her very make. She was not simply a human with great power, but something other. From conversations with the mages – where she had pretended to be a curious and somewhat simple bard – she had learned her ability to move aether in its pure form was a sign she was not human. Human wielders of ‘magic’ used their aura’s aether to Influence the aether of objects and beings around you to alter their qualities. Warriors could Influence the muscles in their arms to be stronger, or their weapons to be sharper, for example. While almost no humans could take pure aether as kinetic power to blast open a door, a clever user could Influence a door to become brittle and weak to shatter it with only a tap. Only the most powerful users of aether could manipulate it in its raw form, and only at great risk to themselves. Depleting aether could damage a person's aura, leading to madness and death, and overfilling one’s aura could lead to enormous physical damage.

From these conversations, she still did not know what she was, only that she was far from mundane. For her, moving pure aether was simple, even with her aura mostly bound. The Witch had been the only being remotely similar to Valla if only in her dissimilarity to the others. Nevertheless, power aside, as kindly as she had treated Valla, they could never truly understand each other. Where Valla was a creature of fire and motion - bound now, yes, but yearning for the spark of flight and even combat - the Witch was a creature of place. The Witch was her valley, and the valley was the Witch. She thought deeply but felt little, as ancient as she was, where Valla sought hilarity and action. The Witch was anchored, and Valla did not even have her own life to remember and to ground her. They had become something close to friends, but it was a friendship that could only end in rejection.

And then there was Doren. He was dangerously skilled and familiar with the arcane, the demonic, and the elemental. His creed was something she hated, but he sought out music and was unmoored from his Order and unable to hide his resentment toward the Empire that Valla knew held her enemy. He was the first being Valla could remember who was at all her kin in his make and his mind. To find herself alone again, even after so short a time, would be like a new death. She had leapt because she thought she had found someone who could bear witness to her life, however small a piece.

Realizing this was an exercise in shame. But self-reflection was the best way to avoid repeating foolish mistakes. Mistakes like propositioning an exiled warrior to be her assassin and getting herself physically expelled from her only sanctuary by a mob of angry villagers, for example.