† Kohryn †
She'd cleared away all of the poison while Delta sobbed and hissed into the crook of his arm. She didn't blame him. The wounds were horrendous. And she knew she was going to scream like a banshee when it came time to dig out the arrows broken off inside of her and address her shattered foot.
Those men and their torture techniques were viscous and cruel. She added the sight of her and Delta's waste to her inner catalogue of hatred for the eenoans.
Finally she got to the edge of his trousers. She went to pull them away, dutiful and thorough, and not thinking at all of what else besides cuts was beneath them.
"M-Mistress!" The mimic stuttered as he approached, leather bag in one hand and holding out the other. "Puh-Please do not disrobe the mman. I will finish cleaning his wu-wounds so you d-do not have to see-see anything un—befitting of a lady."
Kohryn barked out laughter and glared at him.
Delta, distressed and teary eyed, found it in him to scoff.
The mimic's hooded blue eyes crested. "..Please, mmistress. You need to focus on your own wounds."
He was just as filthy and beaten as them. No longer shaved bald, his hair had grown out some; a woody brown with flecks of silver and white that winged his ears.
When she didn't move, the mimic tried a new tactic. "The puh-p..priests will send hunters. We need to do this quickly and keep m-moving."
"Your mimic has a point." Delta interrupted.
"But what about the illusionist?" He'd escaped her.
"If he is still alive, I am sure that lunatic will search for you. We have the bag, and the prison is most likely burnt to the ground and swarming with priests. Besides, we need medical treatment, clothes, and food."
Kohryn slowly nodded, shoulders drooping in disappointment. "Mm. I guess so." She didn't think she or either of the men would be removing the arrows without a pair of vice grips. Unless she just blindly dug her fingers into herself, they weren' going to come out easily.
She turned to the mimic. "Fine, you may help. But I want your name."
He gave a soft smile, and knelt on the ground, bowing his head in the way the warriors and knights of the great continent did. "My-my name is Set Ah'guin, and it is yours to wield as you wish, m..mistress."
Kohryn dug her fingers into the mud of the creek as the third name she'd ever sang flowed from the odd place of energy she still couldn't comprehend. "I command you not to harm either of us, Set Ah'guin." A thin flute blowing out one eternal sharp note.
Set's head remained bowed. "I wuh-would never dream of hurting you. Ih-Ih -I…" He paused, taking a few deep breaths. He had not possessed the aggressive stutter or twitching behavior when they first met on the mountain. He'd been so at ease then. Kohryn wondered what the eenoans had done to him for his failure. "It. Would be an honor to serve you and the leee…least I could do to atone for wha—at I have done."
"Good to see you know you're in the wrong." She huffed and Set flinched. She'd never explored how accountable she could hold a man acting under threat. Apparently the answer was not very accountable, because with a jerk of her chin she took the bandages and gave the two men her back.
Kohryn went to work scrubbing them clean.
Splashes accompanied the shifting of rocks and water, then Delta continued to groan and hiss.
After a while he settled into rhythmic pained pants.
Kohryn let the labor of her task absorb her thoughts. The scrubbing was distracting, the water was refreshing, and a sliver of peace momentarily soothed her frayed nerves and broken body.
A tap on her shoulder drew her attention. "Muh…mistress, you should treat your wounds. His b-bandages are clean enough."
Set had finished ridding Delta of the poison.
She looked down at her hands that held the bunches of cloth strips. They looked better; still stained but clean. She passed them behind her, letting Set take them.
"We are probably going to need a healer or at least tools to treat my wounds. There are arrows broken off inside me and I don't think I can dig them out." Two in her abdomen, one in her shoulder, and a final in her left thigh. Fresh blood was already soaking her stained pink linens.
"I-it m-may be unnn-favorable, buh-but we should try to rem-move them."
Kohryn shook her head. "It has kept me alive so far. I do not think it will let me die now."
Nobody said anything. Set had battled her with the silent intention to kill her. She'd been bled dry, day in and day out for a moon. And both men had seen the volatile energy she wielded as a weapon while it burned up her very cells. They all knew she should have probably been dead. But she wasn't.
She washed through her hair one last time and scrubbed fresh blood from her clothes.
While she waited for Set to finish dressing Delta, her younger self lurked from across the creek.
No one saw the battered child except Kohryn. Her haunting yellow eyes churned in the sun. The two glared at each other. The little brat didn't seem to have a horrible remark to add to the shitty situation this time. Just let her nostrils flare in distaste.
Had she always looked so terrifying? Like she'd crawled from the pits of hell? Had she been a wicked child? Had she grown wicked on the mountain and become an evil adult? The horrible thing the villagers always feared she secretly was?
The blood she'd scrubbed from her hands must have been from the priests she killed as well. Their bodies were surely burnt up and ashes now. All that remained of their lifeblood dispersed into the water and washed to the sea.
The end of the men had been abrupt and she hadn't thought about it in her escape.
She'd torn out a man's throat.
She stared at her hands. They did not shake.
His name had been?
"Benjamin." She repeated it to herself.
"He is dead, M-mistress." Set spoke as if to reassure her.
"I know." Kohryn refused to lift her gaze, studying the lines and crevices on her palms. Despite her time in the stone prison, her calluses were softening. The heat of the ovens leaving the memory of her skin. "I slaughtered him."
And they remained steady.
"B-Benjamin was a violent m…an. If the mission would not have …been to capture you, he wuh-would have killed you without another thought."
"What were they even doing in Ipahn?" Her hands may have been steady but her mind was not. The mountain had never felt safe until she was aware of the danger that lurked outside of her boundaries. Now, for some forsaken reason, she missed her home and the comfort of her entrapment.
"A-a silent crusade." The mimic's voice was meek.
"A crusade?" Her and Delta asked at the same time. She maneuvered to face them; ass on the rockbed, her bottom half becoming numb in the cool waters.
Set was still knelt in the water beside the resting Delta, who had a fresh sheen of sweat over his face. Set was taking the moment to clean himself. "Yes-s, a crusade. The eenoans b-believe it is their divine m-mission to rid Enora of evil. And they-they-they've labeled ma-magical practitioners, non b-believers, and non-humans as so."
"Why?" Kohryn asked.
"They've ah-always have had these b-beliefs—perhaps less violent in the past, remaining within their te-mm-mples and households— but over the last fifty years they've bee-begun to radicalize. The Holy Te-mple has wu-won control of the provinces, and has drafted the Eenoan mm-Mandate." He stumbled along his words, face screwed up tight in annoyance.
"I'm assuming this is an expansion mandate?" Delta's brow furrowed and Kohryn could feel his turmoil and confliction whispering down the thread between them.
"Yes. The-they've claimed half of the 'disp-p-puh-puted territories'," Set mockingly spit the words, his anger further chopping his words, "Jinin and Horon. Tellan has b-been holding them-mm off in the northern regions and Evelia in the south."
Kohryn had heard of the wars and battles that took place on the great continent. But they all seemed so far from Ipahn. Out of her grasp of comprehension, confined to the small mountain.
"They use the visible conflict as a ruse to com-mit their silent war unnoticed. The-they've deployed hundreds of squads to cap-ture and eliminate p-powerful individuals so their ground invasions can be committed later without heavy op-pah-pah-opposition."
Kohryn's heart sank for the lands that did not love her. "How many were sent to Ipahn?"
"T-twenty-three groups of us arrived in various intervals to ap-ppear as tourists and evade suspicion." Set dropped his gaze, ashamed.
Us?! Kohryn felt her anger slip again when the mimic grouped himself with the priests.
"I'm assuming the captured are forced to serve?" Delta interjected before she could snap at Set.
"Servitude, Experi-mentation, Eli-mi-mination." Set repeated a twisted mantra. Kohryn wondered if it was something the eenoans told their prisoners or their crusaders. The illusionist had never repeated such a phase. He didn't seem like the type for mantras or meditation. Too neurotic.
Set let out a heavy sigh. Rising from the creek first, he came to Kohryn and held out a hand. "I will carry you M-mistress."
She wanted to hate him, but she just couldn't commit to it. So instead she remained stone faced and shook her head. "I'll find a stick to aid me. Delta is going to need more support than me."
Set looked back to the grey being and frowned. "I will carry the fae if you w-wish."
"A fae?" Her skin prickled, throat swelling uncomfortably.
"It is wuh-what our friend here is."
Delta rolled his eyes. "I'm not your friend, mimic. But yes, Kohryn. I am fae."
Kohryn's face blanched and her stomach did a little roll. The word familiar, rare, but engraved into her memory. "Like the gods of the trees?" She whispered. The rumors and myths of her childhood finding her in foreign lands.
Delta looked at her perplexed. "Yes." His voice was equally quiet.
The beings of the plants did exist. It was confirmation that brought a wave of questions and solidified pieces of her past. And now one of them had her name. She found little solace in the fact that she possessed his as well.
"Oh." That was all she said, donning her mask of monotony, suddenly more wary of Delta.
She asked Set to go find her a stick to support herself with and pulled herself onto a flat rock until he returned. Delta kept glancing at her. She pretended not to notice him or the way she could feel his curiosity.
The little girl across the creek had taken to wearing a cruel smile.