The horse remained a problem.

He had already tried once, twice to get the death-mare to unburden herself of his body without lasting harm to himself (the first attempt had been a bit of a disaster as Eli had all too easily envisioned himself breaking his neck on the fall) but to no avail. Each time, the blood knight set a hand on his leg and gently tugged Eli’s body back to center over the horse’s back again. After the last attempt, he had left his hand on Eli’s calf, fingers half cradling the top of his boot. Whether out of genuine concern for his charge harming himself on a fall or as a not-so-subtle reminder that the game had shifted in the knight’s favor, Eli didn’t know. 

What he did know was that this position was incredibly uncomfortable. He hadn’t lied about that part. 

But, to the problem at hand. Between the snake using herself as a living pair of handcuffs and the horse steadily plodding onward beneath him, Eli’s connection to the shadows had been significantly diminished. The usual chatter he picked up on from those who dwelled along the shadow’s surface registered as no louder than a muffled whisper. They spoke, but Eli could not make out their words. 

That was the problem with the heräkuom. They blotted out all other shadow-existences as effectively as ice painting patterns over a window pane. Everything beyond it no more than smears of action across the landscape. Words spoken through water, bodies cloaked in mist, intentions dulled. Looking back on it all now, Eli saw the blood knight’s plan in its full scope. All of that death soaking into the shadows around him as he ran. It hadn’t been about guiding Eli into some trap, of frightening his mount, though that had been part of it. But it was bigger than that. More terrifying. The knight had been poisoning the shadows all around him, making it harder and harder for Eli to connect to them. 

The few connections he had maintained had lasted for as long as Eli had outrun the knight. And until the moment the twin snakes had tripped him up, he had still felt the drimgair and the darkness as close to him as his own skin.

Now, though, they sat infuriatingly near but still too far to reach. 

To say that he had lost completely wouldn’t exactly be true either. Unless the shadows themselves chose to forsake him, he would always maintain his connection to them. That was why the empire simply killed any mage dealing with the darkness when they caught them. Nullifying the contract between shadow and human without their consent could be done no more than cutting the heart out of love could be. It was a life-long pledge.

Bounding through the darkness, the wolves dipped in and out of sight as they ran. Eli sensed them like a tickle in his throat, an irritant against his magic. Their purpose: to keep muddling the shadows around him. 

Eli laughed. “Fuck...”

“What is it now?”

More laughter as Eli watched the horse’s hooves lift in and out of view with every step. “You are a very troublesome fellow.”

The blood knight snorted. Eli could hear the amusement in it, though.

“And what is that supposed to mean exactly? Other than the fact that I’ve caught you, and you seem to be finding it rather difficult to locate an escape route,” the knight replied.

“Ah, see, that’s it right there. So, you know that much, do you?”

“I wouldn’t need magic to know a thief would try to escape.”

“Fair enough. Makes you real scary, though, you know that?”

“Scary because I am your captor.”

“Perspective. Yes.” When silence settled over the knight, diminishing the likelihood of a response, Eli pressed on. “But even without this whole prisoner thing, you’re a frightening concept.”

“And you aren’t?”

“Oh! So, I’m scary, too? Well, that makes me feel a bit better.”

The blood knight’s grip on his leg tightened slightly. Then, he laughed. The sound was as low and warm as a late night’s hearth, more embers than flame. “You have quite the command over those that live in the shadows.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t say it’s all about commanding. I’m no general.”

“Then what is it?”

Eli hummed, lingering on his response until the blood knight paused in his step. Only a moment’s worth as he never fell behind his mare’s pace, never let go of Eli’s leg. But enough to be noticed.

“I suppose I simply like them, and they, for some reason, like me in return,” Eli said. 

His hand sliding free from Eli’s calf, the blood knight took a step back, waited for the mare to pass him, then slipped around to her opposite side. He pulled up alongside Eli once more and bent over to meet his gaze. Wry amusement defined the smile on the knight’s lips. “Are you telling me they are helping you out of nothing more than the goodness of their hearts and an adoration for you?”

“Adoration does make it sound good, doesn’t it?” Eli said. He flashed a smile at the blood knight in return. “Unfortunately, I think you know as well as I do that things don’t work like that with that lot. A bit, maybe. Death seems very fond of you, if I had to say.”

“You didn’t,” the knight answered as he straightened himself back up. “If you still have as much value for yourself as I think you do, I’d do something about your hands.”

“My—”

Before Eli could finish that, the horse jumped up and landed on the main road with a soft thud of her hooves. It hadn’t been a large leap, but enough to take the wind out of him, and had the knight not steadied him over the mare’s back, Eli was certain he would have slipped right over her side and onto the packed dirt with painful, if not disastrous, consequences. Unlike his Ähtviarn, the blood knight’s mount stood several hands taller and provided ample room to imagine the worst when falling from her back, especially bound as he was. 

“Your?”

The blood knight didn’t lose a beat on that.

Eli grunted as the breath settled back into his lungs. Already his body was beginning to ache from the night’s exertions and his now unenviable position upon the horse. 

“You do know what you are asking, don’t you?”

“I do.”

“Why?”

“Because it seems my companions either have little faith in me or far too much worry,” the blood knight said. “And unlike myself, they are far less tolerant of things that play well with the dark.”

“Oh.”

Another laugh from the blood knight that made Eli wish they had met in another city, far away from the capital, where neither of them had chains wrapped around them, denying them who they were and could be. Though, his bindings would be far easier to slip than the ones holding the knight fast to the empire’s desires. That much Eli believed, at least. With all his apparent skills, that this man still worked in service to the empire spoke only of the strength in their ability to keep him collared to its will. 

For some reason, that only made the situation worse. Eli sighed.

As for the issue of his hands, he knew the blood knight spoke honestly. That he bore nothing more than the scrapes and bruises from his own escape efforts, exposed now as he was as a Shadowscrawler, was something miraculous in and of itself, considering he was still days away from the empire’s borderlands. The closer to the heart of the empire, the more vicious the response to anything involved with that other world would be. 

“Be done, then, and return once more to that place you call home,” Eli murmured. 

The darkness staining his forearms receded, sliding away like the last tide to ever wash across the shore. Slow in its farewell, marred with reluctance. Eli could feel it leaving him like a memory dissolving in the vast ocean of time. Bit by bit, fading until all that was left was the vague sensation of something having once existed, now gone. 

Beneath him, the horse’s skin twitched. She flicked her tail, nearly swatting Eli in the face, and tossed her head. The knight set his hand to her neck, and under his touch, the mare settled once more with nothing more than a soft nicker. He walked in front of Eli now, not only blocking out his vision of the road before them, or what little of it he could make out in the moonlight, but also keeping him hidden from this group of companions that waited for them.

Small mercies, perhaps. 

“Can see that damn death thing walking from a mile away.”

“You left the city grounds, Fia.” 

A boom of a voice, deep and commanding. Less vitriolic than the first, but unhappy all the same.

“I told you Ithíofan had picked up something,” the blood knight called out. 

“And?”

They continued to plod forward. Though he couldn’t see it, the fact that he could make out the small ruts and stones dotting the road beneath him told him they must be near the north gate and its blazing fires. A line of tension shot down the knight’s back, causing his boot heel to hit the road with a harder thud than the step before it. The mare’s shoulder twitched again. 

“I have your thief.”