The Great Pandemonium: Animus

V. It Wasn't A Suggestion

Even as light-headed as he was carrying Jansa, Drystan made it back to the general area where the entrance to the Shalewarrens lay long before Akkali caught up with them. The silver-blue moon was high in its east-to-west arc and casting everything in a disturbingly pale light when he spotted her headed for them at a dead run across the clearing, hopping from rock to rock like it was something of a game. She came to a stop a few feet away and offered a warm smile to Syrill, then nodded towards the slope behind them. It was not the steepest rise in the mountain range, but it was still more than he knew he could climb carrying someone else given his weakened state.

“How are you faring?” she asked Drystan.

“Honestly, I may collapse if we have to hike up this hill,” he replied with a shrug. “If you can carry Jansa I'll stay here so as not to slow you down.”

Akkali considered his offer for a minute before shaking her head. “You can carry her far longer than I could with help from your friend. I'll move the collapse when we get there.”

She turned him around and began to rummage through his bag, then withdrew the length of climbing rope he always kept out of habit and tied it around her middle. She looped the other end around Syrill's waist, then handed the middle to him and he wrapped it around his forearm.

“How did you open my bag?”

“I undid the buckle,” replied Akkali flatly, looking at him as though he had just posed the most asinine question she had yet heard. “I didn't paw through your secret Inferi things if that's what you're worried about.”

“No, but no one aside from an Inferi is supposed to be able to open it.”

At his response she laughed unabashedly in his face. “If it's the hex I'm thinking of I can open it because you're wearing it. Your friend is right here.”

Drystan stared at her for a moment, then laughed at his own stupidity and shook his head. At the back of his mind he could hear Arathron giggling almost hysterically at his novice-grade slip-up. “It's been a long day. I apologize.”

She smiled at him with surprisingly little animosity. “All right, Inferi. Let's head in.” Turning her attention to Syrill and Jansa she said, “We'll not be lighting anything, but the ground is level. If you get tired tug on the rope and we'll stop.”

The two women nodded and Akkali lead them to the entrance they had come out of a few hours ago. It took a bit of maneuvering to help Jansa through the opening without jostling her broken leg too badly but they managed it without causing her any more injury. Once again Akkali plunged headlong into the darkness, her hand trailing along the divots in the wall above her head as she followed the dark salamandrine pathway through the Shalewarren tunnels.

The return trip seemed a great deal longer than he remembered it being on the way in and out. Still, he had faith that Akkali knew exactly where she was going, and Syrill seemed content to not stop for anything. Jansa, the pain of her broken leg most likely excruciating, had passed out in his arms shortly after they had managed to get her through the narrow opening and into the tunnel itself, her face tear-stained making Drystan feel incredibly guilty.

It was his fault she had gotten hurt. He never stopped to think that someone would come after them. He had just assumed that with the state of the wagon train their slavemasters would count them among the dead and write them off as a loss. It was hard for him to fathom how anyone could be so highly valued as to send well-paid mercenaries after them, yet be thought of and treated as less than human and stuffed in a hidden box beneath a wagon floor. The entire thing made no sense to him at all and yet he had two women and four corpses as proof that to someone somewhere the entire thing was a perfectly sound decision.