Later that morning, the party prepared for the final leg of the journey to reach Nadaran. As the smoke from the small campfire thinned into the dense pine canopy, the clearing became a makeshift training ground. Reis had moved to the edge of the tree line, methodically checking the hooves and shoes of the horses after the grueling river crossing, while Morohtar dissolved into the deeper shadows to keep watch.
Near a moss-covered boulder,
Dashiel wiped a fresh layer of grey creek clay from his palms onto his canvas
apron. Beside him sat a small stack of rough, hand-moulded clay discs.
"Ready, Shierra?" the
gnome called out, picking up a disc. With a swift, practiced underhand flick,
he launched it spinning through the air across the clearing.
CRACK.
A sharp, brilliant spark of azure
energy flashed from the tip of Shierra’s wooden staff, striking the disc
mid-air and exploding it into a fine grey powder.
Dashiel immediately launched a
second one, throwing it higher and faster. Shierra tracked it, her half-elven
eyes widening as she reached for the emerald threads of the Weave. But the
strain of the pull showed instantly - a sharp wince crossed her face, her jaw
tightening as the latent burnout from the gully flared in her mind. She loosed
the bolt, but her hand trembled.
The azure spark zipped wide of
the mark, slamming uselessly into a distant tree bark while the clay disc
sailed onward, shattering cleanly against a granite stone.
Shierra dropped her staff
slightly, her shoulders slumping as she let out a frustrated breath. The cold
mountain air bit at the sweat on her forehead.
“You’re rushing the release,”
Dashiel said softly, stepping toward her. He didn't pick up another target.
Instead, he pulled a clean rag from his pack and handed it over. “Your
cognitive pathways are still re-stitching themselves, my girl. You cannot expect
the marrow to process the current perfectly so soon after what happened.”
“It’s not enough, Dash,” Shierra
murmured, her voice tight as she rubbed her aching palms. “The bolts are
erratic. If the dragonhide company catches our trail before we find a way into
Nadaran, I cannot hold a line with missed shots. I'm a liability like this.”
Dashiel stopped, his gnomish
features settling into an expression of firm, academic gravity.
“Listen to me,” the gnome
consoled her, his voice carrying an absolute, unyielding certainty. “You are
measuring yourself against a ridiculous standard. Look at what you achieved in
the northern pass. You didn't just cast a common spell; you used the Weave to
solidify the air itself, creating a completely impenetrable kinetic barrier.
You took that massive barrier and rammed armoured attackers flying backward off
the ridge. Most importantly, Shierra - you did all of that despite not being a
pure-blooded elf. Your human heritage means your mind operates on a completely
different frequency, yet you forced the physics of the world to bend to your
absolute will.”
Shierra looked down at the pine
needles beneath her boots, a dark, heavy memory clouding her expression as the
clearing around them seemed to fade.
“Did you know..I once shot an
arcane bolt right into the back of his head?” she said quietly, her voice
dropping into a shadowed register.
Dashiel blinked, his ink-stained
fingers pausing. “The knight?”
“In the stables at Fieri,”
Shierra muttered, her eyes tracking a phantom shape in the trees as the grief
of that day crept back into her voice. “The town was burning, and I was hiding
in the dark of the stalls, terrified. I saw a giant man standing over her body...
over Rianna. I thought he was one of those awful brutes who had defiled her. I
didn't think. I just loosed a bolt at him. It hit him with enough force to send
him stumbling forward.”
She paused, her breath catching
slightly as she remembered the terrifying shift in the air that followed. Dashiel
too felt a pang of sadness upon the mention of Rianna’s name.
“But I completely underestimated
him. As I gathered the energy to cast a second bolt, Reis spun around in a
rising fury. He drew that menacing steel, and in a split second, he willed the
Holy Light to imbue his sword. He parried my second bolt cleanly away, in fact,
batting the energy right back at me. I wasn't anticipating the deflection. The
spell struck me square in the chest, and I still remember the absolute,
blinding pain of it as I toppled backward.”
She looked up at Dashiel, her
dark eyes flashing with a fierce, stubborn resolve.
“I thought he was going to
deliver the killing blow. With just a couple of strides, he towered over me, but
when he saw I was just a frightened elf girl, he slid his sword home. He knelt
right next to me in the dirt, took my hand, and willed his internal warmth to
pass into me, using the Light to heal the very burns his reflection had caused.
He actually apologized to me. He said, 'I apologize for striking you. I hadn't
known.' All while his own heart was breaking over Rianna.”
She tightened her grip on her
wooden staff, her knuckles turning white.
Dashiel stepped closer, reaching
up to gently pat her trembling forearm. His large, expressive eyes softened
with a warm, grounding sympathy.
"You survived the ash of
Fieri, and you pulled us from the pass," the gnome murmured, his voice low
and comforting. "You are not a liability, Shierra. You are the only reason
any of us are drawing breath to complain about cold, sticky porridge today.
Give your mind the grace to mend. The Weave hasn't abandoned you, and neither
has this party."
“I must get better, Dash. I have
to be able to focus the lattice properly. I have to be able to function as a
true party member, or we won't survive the wilderness.”
“Then stop trying to throw a
siege engine when a needle will do,” a flat, deadpan rasp cut through the quiet
clearing.
Morohtar dropped silently from
the low branches of a massive pine, his charcoal cloak rippling like liquid
smoke as his boots touched the moss without a sound. His silver hair caught the
dull light of the foothills, and his luminous silver eyes fixed instantly on
Shierra’s hands.
He walked toward her with an
entirely fluid, predatory grace, his long, twilight-skinned fingers lightly
resting on the pommel of the quiet Crimson Sabre at his hip.
“Your human blood makes you
greedy for mass, half-elf,” Morohtar stated coldly, though there was no malice
in his delivery - only the analysis of a master killer.
“You look at a threat and you try
to rewrite the entire sky to crush it. That is why your synapses blow out. You
must learn to control and focus small. Do not gather the Weave into a mountain.
Shape it into a single, flawless point.”
Morohtar stepped up directly
behind her, his close proximity instantly cutting off the mountain breeze.
Shierra froze. Every muscle in
her back locked tight as the cold, lethal presence of the dark elf enveloped
her shadow. She held her breath, not moving an inch as his long,
twilight-skinned fingers slipped over the top of her right hand, his touch
unexpectedly ice-cool, yet warm against her skin. Without a word, he physically
shifted her stance, his chest brushing her shoulder blade as he guided her
hand, lightly tilting her wrist upward by a fraction of an inch. He aligned the
tip of her staff directly with a tiny, solitary knot in a distant pine tree
across the clearing. Shierra was surprised at how remarkably comfortable, and
natural the new stance was.
“Aim small, miss small, Shierra,”
the dark elf murmured near her ear, his silver eyes narrowing as he stepped
back into her periphery, releasing his grip. “Narrow the aperture of your mind.
Save your brain the processing load. A single ounce of force delivered directly
through a man's eye will stop his charge faster than a wall of structured air.
Command the point, and let the rest of the world blur out.”
Shierra stared at the tiny knot
in the distant wood. She took a slow, deep breath, letting Morohtar's words
filter through her remaining mental blocks. She tested her new stance, closed
her brilliant emerald eyes for a single heartbeat to sweep the clutter away and
commit everything to memory, and felt the emerald threads narrow into a single,
razor-thin line.
