Behind Every Scar (Part 2)

[yutzen]

Somewhere beneath a green plateau, in a dark and sodden crack far from prying eyes, far from a train whose alarms were yet to die down, a mole and a badger took the time to rest and hide, with nothing but the dripping water outside to break the silence. There was no light, with neither fire nor lamps to break through the murk as they made themselves as comfortable as they could within this half-natural, half-carved tunnel one of them had found and grown.

Then, a sigh from the mole, as he got up, reached out and nudged a rock towards the exit, just to make wholly sure they wouldn’t be seen. “Suppose I’ve stalled on this long enough, haven’t I?”, he asked, finding a stone to sit on at last. But he knew he was the only one that could answer. “Where to begin, then, you might need some context for it all, Askal, though if you’ve ever been to the Kingdom, perhaps that’ll… help”. Askalim himself could tell he hardly believed anything would help, from his tone.

But the badger just said, in the most reassuring tone he could muster: “Just take your time with it. Start earlier, even, might help to work up to it. I’ll just make myself comfortable. Much as it gets in here at least…” Finding a spot to actually sit or lay down was a challenge, especially for a Toskar of his size; ceding his armor to the Ferigozi hardly helped, either, as he found pebbles digging into his skin no matter where he tried to lie. But there’d be time to brush them off. Right now, there was one question in his mind, besides the obvious. A question to actually begin with, that he’d had in the back of his mind for some time. “Vi, I know you served, but as what? I know you were prospecting, part of a team, but you never did bring up your rank…”

A bitter chuckle in the dark, and Askalim could almost see that bitter smile in spite of it. “Heh. I never did tell anyone at all, did I? Suppose it didn’t feel right to say it, as if even saying it would’ve been an improper boast. A rank pull, rather than anything worth speaking, if it makes sense. Ah, but it’s as good a point as any… I was a knight, a proper Prospector Knight, by the time it all happened, and closing in on a promotion, for that matter. Though perhaps I was technically a Knight-Captain already by the time it all happened, I never… asked, at that stage.” He sighed, and as the badger’s eyes adjusted he could vaguely see him shake his head. “We’ll get to why in a moment, there’s some context right before it all that I should finally address.”

One last shift in the darkness, as pebbles plinked against metal and cracked under its weight, and he continued, his voice lower both physically and in volume. “This little talent of mine… It showed fairly early on, though not early enough to steer my tuition much. Then again, at that stage, being the fifth son of eight, I doubt anything much would’ve done so. I was treading tracks that had been carved long before me… Hardly the most fitting tracks, all in all.” A clink of one of his claws against the iron of his breastplate, before he continued. “The crafts weren’t my forte, and in all honesty, they still aren’t. Not when compared in any way with my siblings… before me or after. Weaponry, armor, art, even bloody furniture! I could hardly compete, never going beyond middling…”

There was a shift in the dark, and Askalim could barely see two glints in the dark, utterly tiny. “As it turns out, said, ah, talent was playing a part. I hardly know the specifics, but it seems whatever it is that seeps from my claws into anything I work is a little… different, from the usual. No strengthening, no infusions of the usual ambient energies, but rather…” The mole trailed off, spreading his claws in the shadows, before he sighed and finished in a bitterly amused tone. “It seems I just make iron and such malleable. As if I were filling it with all the same… properties, that make clay ever so reshapeable. It fades quickly, of course, but it leaves a mark, a… spoiling mark. Something only a crucible can get rid of, I believe… A perfectly ruinous little gift for one in a family like mine, heh. Heh…”

 

“Which is when you instead went into the Knights Excavant.” Askal thought it better to cut in early with that one, since the mole was already in a mood thinking back before whatever incident sent him down this path, and right into this crevice. And besides, may as well probe, and learn more; he always did find it a little odd that they had a straight-up knightly order just to prospect. It sounded… lofty, even by Ferigozi standards. “That’s what they were called, right? The formal ones, rather than the usual pebble-kickers just digging into cliffs and hoping to find things. We, ah, used to chase those off the borders sometimes, on slower days. But they didn’t have your… airs, I guess?” Damn it, he really needed a better word for that.

By the chuckle that followed, far less bitter, it seemed close enough. “Ah, I made the push, yes. If I couldn’t be a dignified ironworker, I thought, I’d instead be a dignified iron procurer, I’d be the part of the chain the others never looked at. At least that’s what I was telling myself at the time… often avoiding the thought that I’d need to be a proper soldier, with the bloodstained claws that implied.” Then, Velardi was back to the earlier tone, after a sigh. “Not quite what they would’ve wanted of me, but at that stage, I could hardly give them what they asked. I’d tried, but it was very clear by then that I’d only be treading old ground and leaving nothing worthy in it…”

Askal cleared his throat. Time to dig him out of it again. “You wanted to be you, yes. So you pushed to get in, and I’m guessing it worked. Did they have their tests, did they let you take tries at it, or just a one-or-forget it deal? And were you already bending iron like putty by then, or did you pick that one up on the job?” The Toskar shifted his body as he spoke, restlessly brushing off the pebbles that stuck to his thick quills, and the occasional one digging in his underbelly. He might need to ask for Vi to clear a bigger spot later, at this stage, but that could wait. This took priority.

The mole perked up at that. “During, actually! I had a greater interest in usage than making, when it comes to weapons and armor, so I felt perhaps if I dedicated myself to that instead, I’d stand out, I’d be someone worth the look. And so the tests began, battle and digging alike.” He idly sank one of his claws into a nearby boulder, dragging it down inch by inch, punctuating his words with the cracking of stone. “I proved myself fairly deft at the latter, sorting ores and carving earth was something I’d helped some old family friends with before. Quite often, in fact, it was almost restful, compared to being in there…”

Then, a pause. He stopped speaking and carving alike, and let the seconds tick by until he finally sighed, and let himself continue. “Fighting, however, was… rougher. I hardly scraped by, at the time, barely passing the evaluations, coasting at first on the excavation results. I needed to push myself, strain myself even, to pass each test, each spar, each evaluation they threw my way. And it still wasn’t looking especially good, much as in retrospect I could never be sure if I’d pass anyhow, or not… There is a need even for the lowest of squires, yet I wondered if I’d even make it so far, at one point.”

Another pause. A clink of armor… and the tell-tale groaning of iron sheathing itself around his claw, forced into shape by energies neither of them fully understood. “And then, during a spar I was losing, I grabbed my instructor’s hand through his shield, and almost cost him fingers that way.”

The newly-“forged” clawsheath was flicked away, clinking in the dark, as the mole’s tone got back its previous energy. “That certainly interested them. They wanted a closer look, of course, so after I found I had a hard time redoing the feat, the tests were extended, redoubled… they hardly told me I’d passed until I failed a test some time afterwards, and they let me know I was already in. That I’d been in for some time, in fact, the moment I showed I could actually control this little talent of mine, but that things like these need a little ‘tension’.” He put heavy emphasis on that last word, clenching one claw. “...now, troubled as I was by this deception, I suppose they had a point. It was only through the additional pressure that I could push myself into making it work consistently. Still, victory felt a little marred, by the idea I had won the moment I molded a crude blade together with my bare claws, when I’d kept going so much further than that.”

Askal couldn’t help but sigh, breaking the silence Velardi had seemingly expected. “Real typical of ‘em. The more any army unit prides itself on what it does, the prouder it is, the more you see them pull stunts like that. And I bet they didn’t even stop after it, either. All the Cobalt Guards I met, and all the Palace Keepers I ever heard about, got it just like that, and as soon as you got past the pride and the glory it showed.” Then, a moment after realizing this came less like a comment and more like an outburst, he tacked on, in a softer voice: “Though, honestly, you handled it much better than any I knew of…”

The little chuckle he heard from the mole was of genuine amusement, to his surprise. “Ahah! Aah, it does get like that, doesn’t it? On my part I heard some strange business about the King’s Claws, hardened as they were. I never did meet one, but Torrialde had his share of anecdotes…”

A pause. A whole half-minute’s worth of pause, in fact, where they both laid in silence, their breath so quiet only the gentle flow of water through stone could be heard. Askal almost forgot there was a search outside, he heard nothing of the sort. But eventually, the mole found his words. “...Torrialde. I tried not to get here this soon, yet this whole story led me there anyhow… But it’s about time. I’ve… stalled long enough, I’m afraid.” Already Askal felt a tinge of dread settling in – if that scar on his back had an actual name behind it, then the wound went deeper than it seemed.

After a deep breath, the Ferigozi continued, in a sullen tone. “They found a spot for me in one of the newer squads, replacing one that cracked under pressure. Would be a recurring theme, as I later found out, Torrialde and I were the only ones that lasted more than two years in there. But he’d been there from the beginning, he was already a little seasoned by then, with some missions under his belt… he showed me the ropes, let me hit the ground running. And from there, we excelled… even in our failures, even when there was nothing left to do but flee, we were outstanding…”

He was sounding a little too wistful now, time to poke him with a question. A genuine question, ideally, which took a second for Askalim to come up with. “What was this ‘Torrialde’ like? You’ve never brought him up before, and I’m guessing I’ll find out why, but just to know from the get go, and with… hindsight in mind, what kind of Ferigozi was he? I mean, if he was one, though I’m assuming he was.” That’d work… Torrialde, then. He wouldn’t have guessed Velardi had his own Captain Valkut, he seemed… too weathered, too stable for it. But there you have it.

Another sigh, just a little dramatic. Vi began again, with a voice that was hard to get a read on, as he reached for a pebble on the ground. “Definitely more of a… people-watcher, I’d say. Someone who never said he prided himself in how he could read others, but it was fairly clear he did. He always tried to… play along with others’ quirks, to read them and their traits, sometimes even… tried to teach me by example, on it. Even pushed to say things in his stead, knowing the reaction would be different, when it would be more welcomed.” Then, a huff, and the pebble cracked in his grasp. “Oh, I should’ve seen it coming. I should’ve seen it, that someone that was so immersed in the whole… in webwork, and so openly at that… ah, I should’ve seen it for what it was, called it for what it is. But NO. I took him at his word. The right word for every occasion, he said! And when I had doubts, I remembered his guidance, and how he… stood his ground, how defiant I thought he was, and… a-and the way he looked at me…” Askal heard a flick, as the dusted remains of the pebble were cast away. “Suppose I just got lost in it all. Carried away into the little tale for himself he was weaving...”

The badger could feel those beady eyes in the dark now. “He… always looked at me like I was a bit of a puzzle, you know? Like he couldn’t figure me out. And that… intrigued him, I believe? I used to think I… fascinated him. And it… it was a pleasant thought back then, as you can imagine. To have someone so deeply… interested in you…” Again, the mole sighed deep… before stopping suddenly. Those eyes went wide enough to see even in the gloom, almost like they had the tiniest spark of their own. Then, the stammering, as his words began to fail him and his voice turned to a hissed, startled whisper. “O-of course, nothing of the sort that’s- it was by no means a- I mean, pleasant in a wholly-”

Pressing down on his snout like a silence button came almost natural to Askalim, he found himself doing it before he was even aware, before he’d even thought of any words. He’d have to ask himself why later, but right now… damn it, might as well. If he couldn’t in this company, then who? So he took a moment to gather his thoughts, and began. “Vi, you don’t have to hide that kind of thing from us. Not from me at least. I promise you, on my honor, not from me. If you’re drawn to males, you’re drawn to males, that’s that. Hell, I’ve been drawn to more than one, that hasn’t gone away with time… unlike what some idiots think.” That… was apropos of nothing, now that he thought of it, but whenever this little topic came up he couldn’t help but think of his ex-sergeant back when he was but a recruit. That was the least of his idiocies though.

Still, it worked. Velardi let out a held breath, and gently laid his hand on the one that’d shut his snout. His voice wavered a little more with every word. “That… saves me time. And so many worries. So many worries, Askal! Here I was, thinking I’d trapped myself into a corner with something I should’ve never said, after telling myself I’d have to dance around it, twist the details to bury it all and still offer something close enough to the truth, and…! And here I am, the fool, having tried, and failed, when I never had to… Ah, I never get this right, do I…”

The badger offered a smile. “It’s complicated, ain’t that easy to be rational about this. Lords know our nations have a hard time with it… still, much as I suspect Zee’s fine with it too, same with the others, still safe with me, won’t tell unless you do. Hardly changes much, honestly.” After a moment, he had to wonder if that last bit was the right thing to say. It didn’t change his opinion much, sure, but this was still a promise, trust on each other, even if a little one-sided since Askal’d confessed rather casually to the point he didn’t even know if Velardi noticed. Though with that in mind, if he knew the mole had his preferences, part of Askalim did wonder if he was in any way eye-catching to him…

But he brushed that off as best he could. He couldn’t think of that now, this was a terrible time to start looking at Vi like that, and an especially awful time for any realizations that might come from it. No, this wasn’t the time! Back on track, where were they, what to ask? Something came quickly, something useful, if a little tragic: “Though with that in mind, I’m going to guess this Torrialde wasn’t just a brother in arms…”

No, very tragic. None of those who turned their backs on Askalim were this close. Valkut himself – Worm take his ass – had always been a bit of a bastard at best, he’d never opened his heart wide to any of the involved, especially not him. That might’ve been too heavy a swerve back into the topic. But then again, he needed to hear it, and Vi needed to say it, so…

And so the mole resumed – not with a sigh, but with a different, uncomfortable little sound. “I’ll… get to that, it plays a part in this matter. The answer to that is, in fact, the crux of the matter. But if you’ll let me get there, cover a little context on the way, first…” After a motion in the dark from the Toskar, he took a deep breath, and continued. “It was complicated. We locked our steps fairly quickly, working with each other in battle quite well, in fact, though outside it things were murkier. Still, when you have to face battle with another by your side, there needs to be some trust, and that little seed always grows a little beyond once steel stops singing. But… I suppose neither of us knew exactly what was growing.”

A sweeping motion of his claws that briefly touched the ceiling above preceded his next words, as his tone turned wistful again. “But grow it did. And oh, how it grew… On his end, I can only imagine what he thought, piece it together from what I saw then, and know now. But clearly he trusted me to have his back, to aid him as he’d aided me before and since… but beyond that, in retrospect, I cannot say. I can hardly guess. Because one thing I do know, is he seemingly trusted me enough to get in my personal space. He was a… touchy one, you could say. Not a hugging sort, of course, but… at first, he just had no real qualms nudging me, even for the mildest things, a hand on my back or my side, unexpected, just to turn me towards what he needed me to. Not just on the field, either, even for something like a sign on the wall, his hands would be on me.”

Then, Velardi’s tone got… stranger. Distant. “…that deepened, just a little bit. He had this… habit, of getting his arm all over my shoulders, and pulling me in to tell me something with my snout inches from his. He did that… often. And the… names, too, the sort you’d expect from… from…” It took him a second to continue, to actually gather his thoughts and skip ahead to what he could say. “Not at first, obviously, but soon enough, months in, after it became clear we were the closest thing to the unit’s veterans, and maybe earlier, when I hardly noticed… with this… tone he had, too, even slurred the Rs a little bit just to… sometimes he called the whole unit that, when addressing us all, but only if I was there, and the slurring was only with-”

“Slurred the Rs on what, Vi?” Askalim blurted out before he could catch himself. He’d been drawing it out long enough, he thought, right before he realized there was probably a reason for that.

The mole’s next word came with actual difficulty, like pronouncing them was an ordeal. Through teeth so gritted each sound was practically extruded through them by his tongue. “Ulramai”, he finally said, letting out a held breath after that. Askal tilted his head, and Velardi sensed that enough to elaborate, now that the worst for him was out. “It’s an… archaic one. Back in old times it was something you said to the King alone. But it means ‘my king’ if you just translate it directly, and it’s… it’s…” The badger could feel those beady eyes on him again, as his voice rose and cracked. “Askal, I’ve heard couples say that to each other! Partner to partner, wives to husbands! W-why would he, if…!?”

Now he suddenly wondered if interrupting him with a touch to his face had been the right idea. But now he knew exactly what to never say… “If he wasn’t interested? Lords know about that one. Maybe he was just one of those real affectionate sorts, too close with everyone, too… showy. Never got close to any of those, but you saw it in the barracks, sometimes, some were handsier than others. But calling you ‘my king’, that’s… new. That one’d throw me off…” He thought of something else to add, but couldn’t find anything. Knowing this whole business ended in that scar… this was heading down a darker path with every word. Nothing left to do but to tear off this bandage. “Not bringing that word up again. What… happened with this all? Did you tell him about this, did he clear anything up…?”

The silence that followed seemed to stretch forever, with both of them lying in the dark waiting for the other to speak, hardly able to see each other… but Velardi took a deep breath, and broke it. “Sorry, it’s… I needed to gather myself. You’ll understand why, I’m sure, but… mm.” Askalim heard the sound of one of the mole’s claws scraping along the metal, making it creak as the tip sunk right through, yet left it unharmed. “For a while, I was quiet on the matter. For a little over a year, I believe. Utterly quiet, with him and everyone else. Never bringing up the questions this made me ask myself, the… way it made me wonder if I should pick up on it. At the time, I guess I thought I just couldn’t believe someone would… say something like that to me. Or maybe something within me was catching on about what he truly thought…?”

Another creak of metal before he sighed, and continued. “And I should’ve listened. I should’ve been quiet, and believed these hunches. I should’ve realized that in this Kingdom that’d disrespected me like this… In this Kingdom that had buried some of its best and brightest because they chose the wrong associate… In this damnable Kingdom where no man should love another… such thoughts were just wishful thinking.” Now the mole’s voice cracked, just slightly. “But each time, it happened again, and I… looked at him again, got lost in it all, and I started to believe, maybe… maybe I should pick up on it. Maybe I really did hear that right! Maybe he meant it! And little by little, I ended up convinced that there was something there, and I’d been missing the signals the whole time. And that still he hadn’t stopped, so there was… still a chance. That we could be discreet, just enough that our records, our… ever-growing records, would keep suspicions away. Oh, we were good enough that they wouldn’t want to know, I thought. And so, they wouldn’t ask!

Then, the single most bitter little chuckle Askalim ever heard, as Velardi finished that thought, barely audible. “I painted a whole fantasy for myself that way, and dove headfirst into it until it was all I could see, heh. Heh…”

Askal gulped, and steeled himself to ask the inevitable question. The inevitable turning point that turned a promising soldier, an up and coming Knight-Captain, into the scarred bounty hunter hiding with him in this cave, just as disgraced as he and everyone else, if not more so. “I’m… going to guess this is the part where you brought it up. Maybe told him you… liked him, outright.” Catching a nod in the darkness, he went on. “Told him outright, then. How… how badly did that go? How did he react?”

Silence again. Then, a shuffling sound, as Velardi got closer, just close enough to see his face in what little light was there… with those bright, beady, wet eyes looking straight at him.
“...he was disgusted.”

Stammering, the mole tried to… clarify? Elaborate? Continue from there, as if he couldn’t bear to linger on that thought. “O-of course, it was but a passing expression, very quick, just… just a flash! He… very much pretended not to hear that, and never brought it up, but…” A quick and shaky breath, giving away his barely-held composure. “But I saw it. In his eyes, in just the faintest twitch in his expression, and in… everything that followed after that, faintly. But it was clearest when I told him, right as he processed, as he realized, and… a-and… even as he settled his expression, as best he could, I… I-I could see it in his eyes… I could see it in his eyes, and it never left. Not completely… and not ever.”

Yet before Askalim could say something, anything, before he could even raise a hand, Velardi kept going, no matter how much his voice shook. “Like I said, he pretended not to hear it, pretended it… never happened, but it was never the same after that. Not while it lasted. There was a tension now, a cold distance, even when inches apart in the most cramped of tunnels. Greetings he didn’t return… hardly called me by my name, even if his tone seemed the same. And sometimes, I caught him… staring at me from the edge of his sight. And whenever I did… I couldn’t read his face. Not in the least. Far from blank, but… I couldn’t tell what he was thinking, not anymore.”

He slowed down, at least for a moment, but that couldn’t hide the pain in his voice. “I… wonder sometimes, if he was still trying to read me. If I had blindsided him so badly with… something he never expected of me. That he somehow… never saw coming. Except instead of looking at a puzzle, he was looking at… at a malfunction. Like… he thought he knew me well enough, and that just… didn’t mesh in his eyes.” Once again, his little eyes fixed on Askalim’s, asking a question he knew the badger couldn’t answer. “I wonder, sometimes, did he… think I had changed, under the pressures of our work? Or that I’d been… replaced, that day, or entirely, and thus couldn’t be trusted anymore? That I was gone now…? Or did he realize who I was, who I truly was, and… a-and it made him sick…? Did he even try to reconcile it…?”

Askal wracked his brain for something polite to say. He wanted to tell him: ‘It doesn’t matter what he thought’. He didn’t care whether Valkut had a right to be suspicious of him and only later fell to corruption, or was just throwing him into the cold just to deflect any suspicion on something he was doing. The captain did what he did. And just as much, it doesn’t matter if Torrialde thought he was justified on doing what he did because he thought a moth or a flayer-bug was wearing Vi’s face, or because he thought he deserved it for being a… whatever slur the Kingdom used for this. It didn’t even matter if he thought he was justified or not. What mattered was he did what he did.
...whatever it was. Now that took his thoughts, as he tried and failed to find a polite way to ask that instead.

Yet Velardi was one step ahead of him on that, interrupting his train of thought with a long, shuddering sigh. “I’ve… meandered long enough, haven’t I…? Eventually, context just becomes… dodging the point. And I’m long past that point, aren’t I…? Just… one more moment to gather my thoughts, please. To get back to the… point. To the scar. To the start of all… this.” The badger could see his claws motioning towards the gashes in the tunnel that he’d carved, remnants of his earlier panic.

It took a deep, deep breath for him to muster the courage to continue. “First of all… a confession. I’m terribly sorry, Askalim, but… I do know how to swim. I did learn, but…”
But Askal shook his head. “No need, not by now. I figured something was up, but if it’s this deep…”
“No”, the mole answered, “I lied to your face, you deserve an apology for that alone, and over something of this importance, in a mission like this… in any mission! It’s-”
“Apology accepted”, the badger interjected, stopping himself from reaching out and pinching his mouth shut himself. “You’ve got enough on your plate, Vi.”

Velardi let out a breath… a shuddering breath, that almost sounded like a whimper at the end. “I… you’re right, I should… I’m still meandering, aren’t I? No, back to where we were, back to the matter.” Another creak of iron as he sunk his claws into his own breastplate, as if reminding himself it was still there. “It all… came to a head in this one outing, right outside the Kingdom. East of it, close enough to the Hollow-Lands to be waterlogged. Full of wide, muddy rivers, just slow enough to keep their mud, yet quick enough that their currents were still an issue. Sinking in was a very real risk, if we didn’t take things carefully, and so, we brought little more than our light uniforms. Something to cover the skin, but nothing to weigh us down. I… hardly remember what we were meant to find, just that we needed to sift through the mud for its pebbles, and then go upstream to find where we should dig. And I remember so clearly that the earth was so… thick with water, over there, that even scratching it drew water, as if it bled…”

More creaking metal. The Ferigozi was practically hugging himself, as if his armor might escape the moment he let go of it. “It felt… colder than it should, but in retrospect, I’ll never know if it truly was a colder day, or if it was an ill feeling about the outing that I couldn’t cast off. But it was a long trek, and a longer roam to find even a single pebble. Even with our unburdened selves, we were near-exhausted by the time we’d found a good waterflow…” Then, his voice started trembling again. “Oh, we should’ve known how far it was. How far we were from… h-home. We were long past that, right into Consortium lands… well past them, as it turned out, because what we found was not… them. Oh, no, a Vezarym patrol, or even bandits, we- I would’ve seen coming, b-but…”

Velardi swallowed nothing, trying to settle himself, trying to find words that wouldn’t shake his voice as he said them. “Up we went. Up this… so-called creek, this slow and muddy flow. On we marched, as it… narrowed, deepened, as it became its own little canyon. As we found little to no way through but into it, and upwards, wading up it from rock to rock, then from puddle to puddle… Mmh. It was a terrible place to be in, when you know there may be others on the prowl. Surrounded by high rocks, slowed down, hardly able to reach…” No can do, his voice started to crack again. “B-but even then, it was… still us two, and we had our backs, I thought! Even after… t-that, h-he’d warn me if he saw anything, if he felt anything off, so that we may adapt and stay on top of it all! I would’ve done the same for him after all, j-just like so many times before…! I misstepped, misjudged, sure, b-but this wasn’t the barracks, this was the field! And he was still Torri, even after everything! We were still proud knights, we were still… us…!”

He’d backed away towards the walls, towards the darkest, furthest corner of this cave he’d carved for the two of them. But by now, he was talking to himself alone. “But NO! When the ambush finally came, and we can both feel it’s coming? When we find ourselves flanked by stone on both sides, waist deep in water with our boots full of mud? When I look behind him, just in case, and he turns around to face me, giving me those… those EYES he gave me by then?! Not an ounce of concern! Even as he saw something, whatever it was, even as something tipped him off that it was coming, and it’d be right behind me, he said nothing, DID nothing, he just stared! He saw it, I know he saw it, yet he did nothing, nothing!”

“And then it slithered right out of the water behind me! All I hear is a splash, and all I see is him j-just… staring at it all, still as can be! He did NOTHING! As it drove a blade into my back, deep as it could go, he did NOTHING! HE JUST WATCHED! Shoved into the water, bleeding and winded, by this… this river raider, this olm he could’ve dispatched like nothing, and he watched, and he just… he just LEFT! He left me to die, he LEFT ME TO DIE!”

Askalim finally had his answer… it was a battle wound, but only physically. And it hadn’t been this Torrialde himself plunging the blade into Velardi’s back. The knife itself, and the presumable Ifchi colonist that held it, they were just… incidental. And they left an open wound that he could hardly imagine, somewhere under the actual scar…

But more importantly, Askalim now had a Ferigozi, his own colleague and friend, falling apart somewhere in the dark. Shivering and trying desperately not to sob, his stuttered breaths the only sound in the tunnel. He couldn’t just watch that, but what would even help here? Words seemed hollow right now, he’d need to…

Without a word, Askal got up, and keeping his head low he walked over to the ball of misery Vi had curled into, before sitting down and laying one enormous, webbed hand on his armored shoulder, tapping the iron with his fingernail. A familiar noise, but one to let him know he was there. He hadn’t left him behind.

After that, after seeing the mole slowly turn to face him, eyes streamed with tears, he offered a small smile, but no words. No, the silence and the darkness, so far from anything and anyone, but with two rather than one, would… hopefully help. It might be familiar enough…

Minutes passed in the dark. Those quick, stuttered breaths were gone, replaced with deeper ones, quieter ones, as they sat there in an unremarkable crag, in the middle of nowhere, with a satchel full of valuable metal… Just like old times. Just like when life was looking up, because he didn’t know his partner in arms was… who he was. But that part was in the past… Askal didn’t know how to tell him that, but he wasn’t walking away. All he could do right now, while the mole found his words again, was sit with him, and be the proof of it.

Eventally, the mole sighed… a long sigh, as he turned to look at the battered pebbles in front of him. His voice was exhausted, outright spent, as he finally found something to say. “...I should give you back your armor. I… can’t have you walking away like this. It’s your armor, not… mine, I just… need a moment, is all. I’ll be fine! I’ll… be fine…”

Sidetracked again. The badger shook his head, and leaned in closer, using the softest voice he could. “Nah. You keep it until we can hammer something out. It’ll do ya better than it does me. And besides, I know you have my back, if anyone wanted a cut on the way out. That’s all we’ll need.” After a blink, an afterthought, and a glance into Velardi’s eyes, he blurted out, almost in a hurry: “Also we’re not leaving yet, don’t think the search’s called off. Okay, might be, but, better safe than sorry.”

Little late for that. He’d already touched enough of a nerve that the mole was rubbing his eyes again, then full-on covering them under his claws. But this time, at least, he could still answer, even offer an ironic, slightly bitter chuckle. “Ghah. Hah… D-damn it, Askal, you can’t… you can’t just keep making an old mole cry like that.” Right before the badger could open his mouth, he just raised his other claw in the air to shush him. “I know, ‘you’re not that old’, I’m aware, just… ah, damn it if I don’t feel the part sometimes. But… I suppose the little ordeal I just told you about shaved some years off my life. Some of the early ones, it’d seem…”

“If it’s any consolation, at least from where I’m standing”, Askalim replied, leaning back against the wall to stretch his legs, “being in this whole… thing, in Zee’s little enterprise? One of the good things about this all is, something like that ain’t gonna happen again. Not at that level. She’s not gonna throw me out into the cold, I’m sure of that at least… And she ain’t about to strand you in some mudhole and leave you behind.” Then, he considered the unthinkable, just in case, and finished: “I’ll wring her neck myself if she does, ya hear?”

He waved a claw dismissively, just a little too hard. “No. No need for that, thankfully, I believe you. On all three accounts, mind you. Ah, it’s… perhaps fortunate this all happened with you, rather than her, however.”
Yet the badger tilted his head, almost absentmindedly, rather than nod. “What do you mean by that?”
Vi took a few moments to piece together his reply. “I… mm, I’m not dismissing her at all, mind you, but… Zi-Zi’s not a woman of war, not in the least. She’s bled for us, but I feel… you understand the field a little better, and thus… get, this whole incident a little more. And she’s thought me unbreakable, too…”
This time, it was Askal’s turn for a dismissive wave. “Pah, she’d get it. If anything, she might’ve known the right words earlier than I did. Never been good at this whole… thing. Never really had to, at least.”

Velardi had no reply for that, other than a glance, and the first genuine smile he had to offer since he came in… maybe, just maybe, he’d been good enough this time.

…right before a yawn, and a slump. The mole was looking just a little dour again. “...that… took more out of me than I thought. But then again, I never… thought about it. I tried not to, for… all these years. But I suppose that would only work for so long.”
The badger shook his head. “Never mind that, Vi. You needed that, I could tell. Maybe that scar of yours will ache a little less now, I’m hoping as much.”

And once the smile was back, he took a moment to stand up, and move closer to the exit, with his back against a boulder, one hand over the spot where his axe had been. “Though, you know what? If you’re tired, since we’re gonna be here a while, how about you lay down for a bit? I’ll keep guard. They shouldn’t come in here, but I’ll have ya on your feet the moment I hear anything.” With a quick look into their shared bag, he tossed an old, ragged blanket over at the mole, letting him catch it. “How’s that sound?”

Velardi caught it, glancing at it, then at Askalim, almost in disbelief. “B-but… wouldn’t you need one? You wrestled that metal beast in the train, I hardly-”
He was shushed by one great, webbed finger pushed gently against his snout. “Nope”, Askal said, grabbing the blanket and tossing it over him, “that was just business as usual for us. That needs a breather, what you need is some rest.”

Then, a chuckle from beneath the fabric, one far less bitter than the rest. “Alright, very well, if you insist, Sergeant. Just… please do wake me up if anything happens. I’d rather you not go off alone. May as well be of better use than I just was. And besides, I am the one with the armor, since you insist on that too.” With a few movements, he curled up right underneath, with metal scraping against stone until he was presumably comfortable…

“I dunno how how do that, I never could. But then again, suppose it’s more comfortable like that for ya.” Askal shook his head, suppressing a little laugh himself. ‘Maybe one day’, he thought, ‘he might not need a ton of steel around him just to catch a nap’.

And so, he sat back, keeping his ears peeled for any sounds that weren’t the flowing water outside, or the soft snoring and turning of the mole once he finally slept. Thinking about today… it felt successful, in a way. They got what they came for, but, when he thought about it, looking at the mole… They say there’s a story behind every scar, but rarely do they have a still-bleeding wound right underneath. One Velardi had just refused to treat, refused to even acknowledge, as he went from job to job, task to task. He hid it well, like any veteran would, hiding their true wounds just to make sure the new recruits wouldn’t be terrified. Hid it so well he outright forgot about it, also like some veterans he knew… Right up until they tore open once more, reminding them and everyone else that they were still there.

Maybe, just maybe, this bleeding had finally stopped.

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Far away, on the other side of the Subterraneum, deep into the foggy heartland of the Kingdom, a squire of the Knights Excavant curiously peered into the open door of an old office. Knight Lord Torrialde of Torcasia was there, in full ceremonial armor, surrounded by the trophies of his work: Maps of mines he’d prospected for, statues made from the ingots they’d found in there, gems he’d found and handed raw, and received polished, and the occasional skull of those that’d tried to stop him. All par for the course.

What seemed far stranger at a glance was the medal held between his claws, rolled around and inspected from every angle by the Knight Lord’s narrowed eye. A Knight-Captain’s medal. She’d been told Lord Torrialde had a piercing gaze, and an expression as impassive as raw granite, but right now he looked… pensive. Lost in thought, examining it almost as if he saw right past the thing, and into another place entirely. He wasn’t even admiring it, all she saw was intrigue, as if he was looking for answers in it. But the medal looked… old, its ribbons worn and bleached by time. Why was he holding it? Torrialde had long passed that rank, and he still had his own medal with him – for some odd reason – so why was he playing around with this trinket?

The Lord’s eye shifted, and glared at the squire in the hall. Suddenly his gaze went past piercing, and became outright venomous, as if he briefly tried to strike her down on the spot. The medal was set down quickly, just a little too quickly, as he turned to fully stare her down.

“Move. Along.”

The Squire saluted, and left, outright fleeing down to where she should be, as if she thought his gaze would chase her. She had questions, but she was fully aware she might never get her answers. But even now, with that quick glance into this very private, ever-evasive Knight Lord, she had to ask herself if he would find any answers himself.