Scene #9552: BINDING BLADE Ch47: Silver Wolf

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Marigold	SACAE'S EASTERN COAST Approaching a small fishing village... Interrogating a Djute leader for his suspicions on the Kutolah tribe's hiding-places goes well. A week or two of overland travel follows, for those who have the time to stay by Roy's army. If no-one takes it on themselves to bring rations through a warpgate, the local wild onions, flower-bulbs, and roots stretch out your grains and game. Sue leads your little caravans now more than Merlinus does, and her guidance gives the days a different cadence: stop here for the horses to graze, push them now while the morning's cold to take a slower pace later in the hotter evening, tack a little north so you don't ride into the glare of the morning sun. "It'll rain tonight. We start early to camp by then." "What? Now, just who says?" "Me." "Hmph. And Father Sky too, eh." ". . . Yes." But it's nothing strictly supernatural. If you watch the clouds on the days she says it, you can almost feel her hunch in your gut too. . . . Sacae is a beautiful and varied land, with a dozen different kinds of grassland and meadow and rocky-plain and arid flat. But if anything becomes monotonous, it's the perfectly flat line of the horizon; a smooth unwobbling bisection between yellow-green land and indigo-blue sky. Even the ocean can't be so smooth. Water has waves. This could drive you a little crazy, like some unnamed agoraphobic cousin to cabin fever. When the world was first made, and Earth and Sky were first separated, was their cleaving perfect like this? Is it just that Mother Earth's face grew wrinkled and pocked with age, and only here is she still youthful and perfect? When finally the eastward horizon slopes down, three or five degrees, towards the ocean, it looks almost alien. A precipitous drop. Mother had seemed infinite, but she isn't, after all.
Marigold	. . . Sin, the bandana-wearing Kutolah bowman you'd first met in the Western Isles, rides his sturdy little horse ahead to a couple of fishing villages to ask about his folk over the next couple days. He narrows it down with each reporting-back, until "It's this one. I'm certain," and on the northward approach to it a low-urgency call goes out to the army's Multiversal allies. Roy looks confidently relieved as he leans against a wagon's wheel, when you meet up with the caravan through a Warpgate in a half-January-browned perennial meadow, but Sue on horseback at the lead looks- subtly, in that stoic way of hers- guiltily tense, and Rutger too has that uneasy restlessness about her shoulders. Behind the wagons, Fae in her fluffy dragon-form and Sophia are playing some kind of run-in-circles game, which she pauses to crane her neck and tiptoes-wave over the tops of the wagons at you with a whalesongy "--au--uu!". Lucius, perched on a wagon's-edge and packing his bags for town, smiles while Lugh giggles to himself and Raigh tries really hard not to. "It's good to see you again. We're hoping to be able to make allies with Dayan, the leader of the Kutolah," Roy says, stepping forward with a hand out to shake whoever'll take it and the other resting in the vicinity of (not quite on) his sword. "I don't want to intimidate the villagers sheltering him by bringing everyone, but it seemed smart to take people who could... you know, impress the gravity of the situation on him. I don't expect him to dislike us, exactly, but they've given a lot fighting Bern and the Djute already. Er, so I've heard." He glances back, probably at Sue, but she acknowledges him even less than she usually acknowledges anybody. Just inside the horizon's distance- two miles, maybe- you can see the dark thread of the ocean, and if you squint, maybe even the gritty specks of a building or two.
Flamel Parsons	Flamel's tunes along the ride are odd. He levitates along with one of the wagons, strumming his guitar, and softly singing: "I hit the cul-de-sac on the spiritual path," "Retraced my steps back home." "But the house burned down before I got there," "And I found myself alone..." "I tried to keep things in perspective," "As I hunted down the perpetrator." "Loaded up my toolkit with every hateful instrument," "Now here we are thirty years later." "I'm getting into knives!" "I'm getting into knives!" "I've been up and down the buffet several different times..." "I'm adjusting my focus, I'm getting into knives." "I'm getting into knives..." He stops floating and starts leaning when the people get through the gate and arrive. "Don't worry about me being intimidating one bit! I may be vague yet ominous, but I feel like that's way better for impressing gravity than, you know, actually scaring anyone. Folks know my number! I'll do my best to be convincing, so we can make sure that what's already been given is worth something." He points a bouncing index finger at Roy. "That's usually the ticket. People all have their story, but the best way to make sure you can work together is to make sure they inch a little more towards a fulfillment of it instead of a contradiction."
Nobunaga	While she departed to tend to other matters, Nobunaga had left Nagayoshi Mori as her representative with the Lycian army. After the incident at the Djute camp, though, he's been in good spirits the entire time, filling the monotony of the march with Sengoku-era marching songs to motivate the troops. For how elite his battle prowess has already proven, and how often he acts as the bodyguard to an allied general, he's much more content to hang out with the rank and file than with the officers. Even when camping at night, he's with the other soldiers, sharing in stories and laughter. > "It's this one. I'm certain." So this is it, then. The call goes out, Nagayoshi notifies Nobunaga as well in some more direct fashion. Afterward, he reaches out and claps a meaty, well-meaning palm on Rutger's tense shoulder. The silent solidarity offered between warriors. He'd watched her back when they raided the Djute, and he fully means to continue doing so now. -- Oda Nobunaga arrives with little fanfare, raising her hand to wave back at the whalesong dragonspeak Fae offers in greeting. She wastes no time in meeting up with Roy, though. > "It's good to see you again." "And to you. The road hasn't been too harsh, has it? Even Mori's in a good mood," the warlord remarks, glancing towards the mountainous samurai. Her attention shifts back to Roy, "So long as the will of the Kutolah hasn't been broken, I suspect they will more than welcome more to the fight against Bern. Thrashing the Djute as we did might give us some amount of initial fame, too." Resting a hand on her hip, Nobunaga straightens her posture to look towards the ocean far in the distance, "It's a good call to not approach with too many, though. Without knowing our intentions, they are probably already on edge as it is-- Have no doubt, the Kutolah most likely have known you've been in the area for a few days, at least." She glances back towards Roy, that slightly off grin on her face, "Shall we?"
Dysnomia	It's rare that planetside, Dysnomia really gets a chance to see to the limits of the horizon. It's...Not unsettling. Uncanny. She walks alongside the others, only occassionally looking back at Fae playing with Sofia (with the ghost of a small) and instead busies herself with work, spending much of her time staring into the distance, occassionally quietly making asides to Merlinus or Sue about distinct landmarks. But they've given a lot fighting Bern and the Djute already... "We can give them a chance to retaliate. But we've seen Bern's tactics to shock, subdue and terrorize occcupied territories." Dysnomia said. She does not specify, be it for her comfort or everyone else's. "It would be no shame if their will to fight has suffered." "The most difficult step may be convincing them that helping us will leave their people better off." Her eyes dart to Sue, what feels like their biggest instrument into convincing them. But something in the woman's stance convinces Dysnomia to hold her tongue. "Have no doubt, the Kutolah most likely have known you've been in the area for a few days, at least." "If you are correct, Lord Roy's choice to approach with a fraction of our forces is especially wise." Dysnomia assesses the warlord, mouth a thin line. "If they were aware of our parties' broader approach, they will know that an excursion of this size makes no sense either as a scouting party, or as a war party."
Madeleine Cadrasteia	Madeleine stayed with the army for a few days after the raid. She keeps night watch almost every evening, letting the unutterable nostalgia she feels from the silver-moonlit landscape seep into her bones as best she can. It takes a little longer than usual for the world's underlying wrongness to creep back into the everything, when she hides from it out here. But in time it does come for her, and she departs through a warpgate discovered along the route east. When the army nears the coast and calls for support, Madeleine returns to Elibe. Witnessing the tension in Sue's and Rutger's demeanors makes her spiritually itchy. Maddie has no conscious memories of what her own world was originally like; her nostalgia comes from tales passed down of that far and sunless land. From flashes of sensation half-recalled while on the hunt, and forgotten by the time the adrenaline clears her system. She doesn't have a 'before' to compare to the 'after', not like Rutger or Sue will have with Bulgar or the Kutolah. She wants to linger near them, but finds herself floating away instead. "We're hoping to be able to make allies with Dayan, the leader of the Kutolah," "What do we know about him, or his position among the Kutolah?" Madeleine asks, ostensibly to Roy but with one eye on Sue. "Is he a king, or an elder, or first among equals? Will he want to speak with Roy first, or with you, Sue?"
Odette Raskins	"Camping early doesn't sound that bad. Better than trying to sleep when we're soaked, right?" By now, Odette's actually gotten pretty used to the idea of camping. She's since stopped fretting over the bugs and the dirt getting into everything (other than her case), and she's even gotten used to sleeping without her alarm on so as to not wake up everyone else at her usual ungodly hours. Watching Fae and Sophia playing around rarely gets old, too, and the medic fights the urge to bury her face in the former's floof and interrupt their game. Instead, she settles for just watching them with a lighthearted chuckle, hanging around Lucius and the twins. She still hasn't gotten ud to seeing Lugh and Raigh in the same space yet, but it still eases that weight in her gut nonetheless. Eventually shuffling over to join the conversation, Odette adjusts her cape briefly to try and find the right asymmetrical angle for it that doesn't just make her look like a dingus. She gives up after a couple of seconds, though, and settle for just wearing it normally. "Maybe like this...? No, no. Oh. Maybe I should go with, then? If anyone's hurt or sick there, I can treat them, and then that's one less thing for them to worry about while we're talking. Oh, wait, but do you think they'd trust medicine from... Er. Outsiders?"
Desire Stars	It's good to see you again. "You too, Roy!" Neon takes his hand into both of hers and shakes it once, but firmly and enthusiastically. "You know... something looks different about you. It's in the way you're carrying yourself, I think," she decides, with a soft smile. "What do you think changed?" Ace musses Roy's hair. "If it isn't the president of my fan club. It's been a while, hasn't it? Hopefully you kept my adoring audience here in Elibe from doing anything drastic in my absence," he says with his usual sort of insufferably smug aloofness. The tone says one thing, but there is a certain fondness in his eyes. I don't want to intimidate the villagers sheltering him by bringing everyone, but it seemed smart to take people who could... you know, impress the gravity of the situation on him. "I'll see what I can do," Ace says, turning serious and sincere on a dime. "And don't worry," says Neon, nodding along with Flamel, "I don't think anyone here wants to intimidate anyone. At least... not people who are just trying to get by. If it looks like things are getting a little too intense, I'll make sure we dial it back." "I think you should be there, whoever else is coming," Ace says to Roy.
Petra Soroka	College remains unforgiving on the wanderlusted heart. Petra was not here for the travel, so the motony of the horizon is something that registers to her as exotically charming, and that charm further registers as a feeling that, in its ephemerality, separates her from the campaign that the army shares. C'est la vie. There's a cooldown on how long Petra has to wait before wearing her 'slutty pirate' outfit around Lilian again, or else risk Lilian referring to her clothes as exactly that and killing her instantly. Instead, she's back in the red, black, and gold; cape fastened at her throat, dark red top secured by a leather corset, with black pants and a belted scabbard that holds her Silver pooled amorphously. "We're hoping to be able to make allies with Dayan, the leader of the Kutolah," "Figures." Petra gives a little wave of greeting to Roy on her approach. "They were forced into hiding by the alliance of Bern and the Djute, yeah? So probably some part of our tactic for convincing them's gonna involve communicating Bern's overall stability and position of power, like, outside of Sacae, in a way that makes it seem plausible that they aren't just gonna get wiped out by Bern again when we look away." Briefly, Petra's mind catches on thinking about... that guy, whose name was said, but she doesn't remember. The leader of that little band of Djute. Having the force to be able to make successful and nearly costless strikes at Djute camps is a promising demonstration for Dayan, but, like, what happened to that guy? Petra's not exactly going to feel bad if he just got killed after coughing up information, but the idea of not even asking suddenly makes her feel dizzily uncomfortable. Suddenly veering on her tangent, she blurts out, "Hey, what'd we do with that guy? The one we captured?" Then she shakes her head and gets back on track. "Um, in terms of, like, concrete evidence on the gravity of it all, it might be a good idea to haul along all the Divine Weapons we've got to show them. Not only is that proof of the whole continent-wide situation, and sort of implies the end of the world bit of it all, but it's also evidence that we've been winning a little bit too." Fae also gets a double-handed wave overhead, with Petra stretching up on her toes to mirror the Big posture. "Hi Fae! Au-auu to you too!"
Lilian Rook	Lilian 'takes it upon herself' Rook really avoids saying she doesn't have time for anything, but this is a matter of only being able to exist in one place at once rather than an overabundance of tasks for the wibbly wobbly number of hours there are in a day. Before reluctantly departing again, she confers with Merlinus at minimum about the group's route and intended pace so that she can divine Warpgates ahead of time and make the hours to reappear with a couple of days of food each time they pass close; more or less the limit of what she can carry in the first place when it comes to an army unit, despite not making a dent in her pocketbook. At the times she can be around on the long march-- or an average one for an army-- Lilian remarks on how the new vista reminds her of somewhere in 'the north', sometimes saying out loud and sometimes leaving implicit 'but flatter', without preemtively explaining why the steppes of the nomadic rider culture do so much to make her think of Scotland. There isn't long at each stop for her to spend, but she always insists on 'stretching her legs' and 'getting the lay of the land' and subtly patrolling around the camp until she's counted each person, as if everyone wouldn't have already told her if there was a battle. Returning on request, rather than busybody compulsion, Lilian arrives wearing a cloak that's appropriate for a British-grade January, with the last batch of bulk goods she had left over, and visibly armed with a sword rather than a pendant. The first thing that sticks out at her more than the automatic neuron activation she experiences as seeing Fae, Lucius, and Roy, is that Sue is now suddenly the least invested-seeming of all, right before the crossing. 'but it seemed smart to take people who could... you know, impress the gravity of the situation on him.' Lilian frowns with just the corner of her lips. "Of course I intend to do exactly that, but the true gravity of the situation that we're in isn't something with a rational response." she says. "'Fight now and maybe die, or don't fight and definitely die if someone else loses' has a sort of . . ." She freezes up, verbally rather than physically. Her eyes lock on to something on the ocean horizon. Lilian's jaw works gently on the words that she can't seem to shape into a way that someone else would understand. They would have had to have been there. And if they were, would they really have thought the same way as her? ". . . a self-defeating scale to it. Especially for people who've already spent some of their finest stock of will on surviving already. Asking someone already facing the annihilation of their people to care about the annihilation of the world is difficult." 'So probably some part of our tactic for convincing them's gonna involve communicating Bern's overall stability and position of power, like, outside of Sacae' 'Um, in terms of, like, concrete evidence on the gravity of it all, it might be a good idea to haul along all the Divine Weapons we've got to show them.' Lilian makes a Face about it, but says "Petra is more or less correct."
Marigold	"I'm getting into knives..." ". . . You shouldn't." Sue with the hard-hitting advice yet again. It's about eight seconds later when she says: ". . . But I like the song." Roy is already turning slightly red when Neon praises him, but Ace messing up his hair doesn't help at all. After an almost doeish blink-blink his hand flinches away from his scabbard where it had almost rested, and he averts his face with an awkward smile. "I-- don't feel any different," he tells Neon, honestly. "Maybe I've gotten better at pretending." But the self-deprecation can't cancel out the praise completely. "You seem... a little less weighed-down than usual. Is it going well? I mean, with your... duties?" "...kept my adoring audience here in Elibe from doing anything drastic in my absence..." "It's been hard without you, but we've kept our heads," Roy says, smiling a tiny bit wider. "Even Mori's in a good mood" "Oh, he's got quite a diaphragm on him," calls out Merlinus jovially, peeking out from behind a wagon. It looks like he's been trying to teach Mori to play cards, the old devil. What a bad influence. "We've been having a grand old time." "I couldn't blame them if their will was 'broken', though," he confides, with a knowing tilt of his head towards Nobunaga and Dysnomia both. "Y'know, Sacae's the very first country Bern invaded, a year before the Warpgates opened and we Lycians ever got involved. Dayan's been in it longer than anybody." "Is he a king, or an elder, or..." Roy looks back to see if Sue feels like answering the questions about Dayan first, but she placidly doesn't, so he clears his throat and forges on. "The Kutolah and Djute tribes are both coalitions," he says, "made up of many clans, like that one Djute war-camp we attacked. Dayan is the chief of their most influential clan, a respected peace-maker, and their leader in war." Glancing back at Sue, like it's just occurred to him: "He's... a little bit like Lord Hector is to Lycia, I suppose?" Sue shrugs. It's small; maybe slightly uncomfortable. She doesn't disagree at least. "Um. Anyway. The Dame Commander and Petra are right; it's a lot to ask. But if anyone can rally them, it'll be him." "Will he want to speak with Roy first, or with you, Sue?" "He'll probably--" "Me." "Um. Yeah." Roy rubs the back of his head, sheepishly. ". . . He sent me away on a mission," Sue says. "I failed in it. Right before you found me at Castle Thria." Her eyes settle on Madeleine, there, with a silently sincere 'thank you', but not much spare energy to put behind it. "Hey, what'd we do with that guy? The one we captured?" "Traditionally, ransom. We didn't have time," says Sue. Oh... ". . . So I cut off his finger, for archery." Oh. But she looks a little uneasy, saying that, and- somehow more readably- so does her pony. Does she wish she'd done worse? In the background, Fae is waving more like she's trying to catch Dysnomia's attention, but gives up after a moment, trundles (so carefully and responsibly) around the horses, and leans down to gently nose at Petra. "--uu--ou--aa----...!" she says, in just recognizable enough of a tone that one can intuit she's reproaching Petra's pronunciation. "Oh, wait, but do you think they'd trust medicine from... Er. Outsiders?"
Marigold	Lucius warmly wagon-ledge-scoots to make room for Odette, while Raigh gives her a tentative unenthusiastic wave and Lugh smiles. "The sicker someone is, Odette, the less they can afford suspicion. Sometimes that leads people astray... but it won't with you, I know." "it might be a good idea to haul along all the Divine Weapons we've got to show them." Rutger nods, tapping her sheathed Durandal. Sophia, rounding the corner to fret over Fae, glances up at her and frowns slightly. "Um, Fae . . . if you don't mind . . . it might even be useful for you to . . ." "--uu!" "Thanks . . ."
Marigold	. . . The trip to the little fishing village, from there, is hardly ten minutes. The party comes to Roy, Sue and Rutger (with a borrowed Armads carefully cloth-wrapped on her back, lest she be construed as 'wielding' it), Lucius with Odette, and Fae (slightly-reluctantly humanmoding) with Sophia clutching her hand. Past the outlying fields that lie empty for the winter, the village's less-than-a-hundred humble, mostly-single-story homes are made of unpainted but artfully-arranged wood planks, long since weathered gray. A couple of wooden piers jut out into the cold rocky inlet that small boats with nets set out from. Your little crowd, despite being less than the full army, is still quite a sight. The village of course knows to expect some visit, as had been speculated, but not quite this colorful a band. People jolt, wave, whoop, or shrink back indoors cautiously as they spot you in the distance, so by the time you're in amongst the little homes, there's already quite a bit of chatter... "Hey, look!" "Oh, and where are you all from?" "Easy, now... we don't have anything worth taking, you hear?" "Salt shark, salt shark for the buying!" "Oh, she's not Djute, is she?" "No, isn't that...!" Most of the folks here are in plain linens, but a significant fraction wear fine leathers or bead-patterned fabrics more like Sue's. A significant fraction- maybe a majority- of those are maimed, somehow: scarred here, missing a hand there, another one walking on a crudely-made crutch. "Please, we don't want trouble," Roy insists, putting up both his hands just inside the town limits as Rutger does her very best to give a fisherman what she thinks is a reassuring smile. "We're allies of the Kutolah, or we'd like to be. We heard that the 'silver wolf' Dayan was--" Roy doesn't get to finish his sentence before the front door of a slightly-larger house on the left opens, and an older man in fine clothes shoves his way out against the fussy protestations of someone trying to hold him back. "Sue!! So it is you?!" The older man's tone starts as an upwelling of bewildered affection, and then it hits some kind of hitch. Sue doesn't dismount her pony; her shoulders square up in preparation for a blow. ". . . Hello, grandfather." "Why-- why are you back here? I don't understand..." ". . ." "Ajda, and Yesu- did they come back, too? And our elders, the children... don't tell me you left them in Lycia?" For a moment, she seems unable to answer. . . . But when you'd met her in Lycia, she'd been alone, and mentioned a massacre at a mountain crossing once or twice.
Nobunaga	> "Oh, he's got quite a diaphragm on him!" "I already knew that!" Nobunaga teases back at Merlinius. She has no idea Mori's been learning new card games, nor how swiftly he took to it after comparing it to what he called 'Tesha's Hold Up', something he evidently played with Lady Chacha before. "Mori is a soldier's soldier. Infantry is in his blood and bone," She glances towards the mountainous samurai getting along with some of the Lycian spearmen, "He took up the spear to defend his fellows, you know? His style was developed for deflecting arrows." The fact that he's a crazed berserker fighter whose battlefield nickname compares him to a demon is-- probably unrelated. > "Dayan's been in it longer than anybody." Her eyes still on Mori in the distance, Nobunaga tilts her head forward with a thoughtful noise, resting her chin lightly on the end of her thumb. That's exactly as she had deduced; Dayan the Silver Wolf may make or break this campaign entirely on how much fight is left in him after all this time. She can only hope that brutalizing the Djute and opposing Bern successfully will give them enough diplomatic traction. -- > "Oh, and where are you all from?" "I will not speak for my companions, save that we come from many places!" Nobunaga proclaims, "Myself, I am from a land I've been told is very similar to your Sacae; though having been here, this steppe is an altogether different kind of beauty I've never experienced before." > "Oh, she's not Djute, is she?" Presuming who that is aimed at, Nagayoshi Mori steps up beside Rutger. She doesn't need protection, that much is obvious. It's more to silently assure her that she's not alone here surrounded by the Kutolah, no matter what clan she's from. They fought together, that's all he needs. > "Salt shark, salt shark for the buying!" "Ah!" Nobunaga whips around where she's standing amidst the entourage, raising her hand, "I have never had salt shark before! I will take some; do you have a favorite method of preparation?" She breaks off towards the merchants because Nobunaga Oda is a capricious demon king.
Madeleine Cadrasteia	Maddie listens to Roy's summary of Dayan's role among the Kutolah. This places her near enough to Sue to catch the 'thank you' look from Sue, and she replies with subtle downward nod. As the group enters town, Madeleine walks apace with Sue, her awkwardness overcome by receiving an expression of gratitude. She does, however, briefly hustle aside to buy a taste's worth of salt shark. "I uh, hope this will do?" she says, paying with a handful of the mixed Ilian coin from her afternoon as a fruit merchant. When Dayan emerges from his home and Sue greets him as family, Madeleine relaxes a little. Then the outcome of Sue's mission comes up immediately, and the huntress tenses again. There are vanishingly few Excrucian noncombatants, and those who do avoid the war against Heaven keep well away from the rest of their kind. She's really not emotionally prepared to grapple with the knowledge that it's elders and children who were shown no mercy by their pursuers in that mountain crossing. The first thing she does as the information settles in is gently rest a hand against the flank of Sue's pony, hoping the gesture serves to focus both Sue and herself.
Flamel Parsons	"...But I like the song." Flamel flashes a cheerful smile at that, setting the guitar aside. "Remind me to finish it up later!" He says, brightly. "The campers always love it." He sets off with the group, walking, not floating. "Oh, and where are you all from?" "Oh, I'm from the agency! You know, the one in the government." "Easy, now... we don't have anything worth taking, you hear?" "Oh! Those words help increment your personal safety positively, if I weren't already harmless. Good work!" "Oh, she's not Djute, is she?" "Sure hope not, or otherwise I'm really confused!" "And our elders..." Flamel's placid, warm smile hitches. "...The children..." His expression darkens behind the sunglasses, falling immediately. Many people have died in this war. Hundreds of thousands by now. Everyone fit for combat has been conscripted and every conscript has been put to the battlefields. But somehow... He thinks back to those maiming wounds, to the destruction he's seen, and to what he hears here, now. A lot of thoughts surge in his mind. For once, they won't go written here. Suffice to say, telepathy leaks a moment, and a wave of emotional sensation surges out of him that feels like raw, intensive devotion to a pinpoint target that cannot be spoken but has a particular face: A camper at a summer camp, a young boy mage, a son, a daughter, a niece or newphew, something. And, instead of all the things he had planned to say before, something bursts out of his language center before he even gets a chance to think about it: "We're here to pursue and secure the total dissolution of all Bernish war and territorial occupation capacity. It's the only way to protect all of the rest." Snapping out of a bit of a weird, unfocused state, he says, "--Sorry, that's-- I'm getting ahead of myself. My name is Flamel Parsons, and I've been working in Elibe for the past year to stop all this. We need to talk about what can be done, once..." He turns to Sue. He swallows, and telepathically whispers a private moment of support, <I know you're brave enough to say what needs to be said.> He turns to Dayan and clasps one hand across the back of the other, face sober and strained. He does not, in this particular situation, do any quirky personal introductions.
Odette Raskins	"The sicker someone is . . . but it won't with you, I know." "Yeah... Still, I hope we can make our case well enough so nobody has to worry about that when we're there. Stress is pretty bad for recovery, too. Speaking of-" She looks from Lucius to Raigh and Lugh, giggling lightly at their mismatched reactions before waving lightly as well. "How're the lessons going with them? I-I've been practicing plenty, but keeping up with that and the new training at work's been a little... Um. Draining." She asks and explains with another light laugh. At least she's able to get sleep out with the caravan, and the bags under her eyes have even shrank a little! Chatting with Lucius certainly helps to get her spirits back up, too, and she's looking positively eager when the group makes it to the fishing village. She waves lightly to greet the people that are sticking around to see everyone, making sure to keep her hand loosely rested atop her medical case so it's clear she isn't reaching nor even holding onto a weapon when she does. "Hello! Oh, we're from all over. My name's Odette, and I'm a healer from Min-er. Ju-hmm. I'm from overseas." "Don't worry, nobody here's gonna take anything! Uh. Without paying for it, I mean. Now what's this about salt shark...?" Odette doesn't allow herself to get too distracted by the idea of something tasty, though, as she's seeing that there's a LOT of work to be done in the area. Seeing all those wounded villagers hits her right in the heart, and the medic inhales lightly as she tries to look a little taller than she actually does. "Excuse me! Um. If you're hurt or sick, I'll be coming around to treat folks! Er. People!" Wait, which one would sound more reassuring? Should she have tried to sound more refined, or more casual? Trying not to let that throw her off too much, she pops open her case to take out her EMT cap, making it just a little easier for her to be spotted through the crowd. "Is there anyone that's really sick or wounded right now? I-I can try to help!" Seeing Sue's reunion with her grandfather is another bit of healing for her own heart, although that doesn't last quite so long when she starts connecting some of the dots in her head between what he's saying and what Sue's told the group earlier. She bites her lip lightly as she glances over at the pair, visibly uncertain on what to even say there. Hearing Flamel reminds her about why everyone's here, though, along with her own part in all of this. "... Anyone with fevers, or chills, or that lost a lot of blood lately? I'll come to you, if someone can lead me over!"
Dysnomia	Feeling Fae's focus wander away from her--oh, but she wouldn't have been able to STOMACH focusing anything else, if Fae finally brought her full attention on Dysnomia--she looked back at Fae, face tinted in shy-fondness for the little dragon as she sang happily at everyone. As she reluctantly took human shape, Dysnomia finally let herself be drawn in by the little dragon's discomfort. "You're being so helpful," she assured fae, laying her hand on her head. "I think maybe you deserve some more playtime later, when we're done." her eyes swung to Sophia, a silent question. --- "Oh, and where are you all from?" ""We're a small detachment from the Lycian League, under Lord Roy." She nods in his direction. "...And while we're called that, we're really from all over. But Lord Roy unites us in a common cause." ...I see. Sue's guilt-seeming made sense, the more her grandfather spoke. The guilt of failing. The guilt of surviving. It doesn't occur to Dysnomia that she's taking comfort in the sweet little dragon next to her, even as she gives Fae's shoulder a little squeeze. She dares to intervene, adding context, "...Our party originally came from Lycia. Your granddaughter had been imprisoned there by Bernish forces, as a prisoner of war, during their attack." She tried to give Sue a moment free of her granddaughter's focus, to gather her nerve. Not a cooperator. Not a runaway. She opens her mouth to continue, but then purses it shut, biting at her lip. Finally, ...The rest of the story wouldn't be welcome coming from an outsider, I think. It would barely be welcome coming from his own granddaughter.
Petra Soroka	"Petra is more or less correct." "The Dame Commander and Petra are right;" Yay! Yippee! Petra basks in this for a moment, but hastily pipes up again to interject before the detachment leaves. "Oh, uh, specifically-- I think we should bring what's left of Maltet along too. 'We've gathered up the Divine Weapons' from all across the continent gets across, like, that this is a big threat to end the world, but adding in that the weapons are getting busted symbolically communicates that it's a losing-- narrow fight. Like Lilian said, it's hard to actually think about the scale of those things abstractly." Petra looks around at the war band. "Where is it, anyways? Maltet?" It's with Madeleine but she doesn't remember that. ". . . So I cut off his finger, for archery." "Oh. Okay." As is her habit when attempting to understand how she feels about things, Petra imagines herself in that place instead. Evisioning herself simultaneously in the position of cutting off the finger and having hers cut off, Petra finds that she's placidly content with both sides of the circumstance, and shuffles the thought away. It occurs to her, a bit later, that she unconsciously assumed that if she lost a finger, she'd somehow end up with completely unaltered ability, either from the Silver or from getting a new limb through one of her bullshit circumstances, and that makes her frown again. This forces her to contemplate the permanency of consequences in life for a little while longer, and measure that against the sin of allying with Bern for short term material and political gain. A couple minutes after the topic was seemingly dropped, she concludes, "Yeah, okay." "--uu--ou--aa----...!" She's knocked out of these thoughts by being almost bowled over by Fae nudging her. To catch her balance, she wraps her arms around Fae's snout in a hug, woobling her face like a big horse or dog. "Wah-! You almost got me there!" When Fae turns little again, Petra picks her up and spins her around a bit in return for getting bumped, giggling a bit. "If I auuu-auuuo'ed wrong to you, you'll have to teach me how to do it right at some point. It'd be fun if I could understand you even when you're big, right?"
Petra Soroka	"Oh! Those words help increment your personal safety positively, if I weren't already harmless. Good work!" "Don't be such a freak. That makes people more uncomfortable, not less." Once they've crossed into the viewing range of the villagers, Petra crosses her arms, tucking her hands into her armpits like she's physically disarming herself. A little uneasy about how to appear nonthreatening to eyes that have reason to believe otherwise, a repeatedly sore subject recently, Petra snipes at Flamel as a matter of course in order to redirect that discomfort somewhere else. ". . . Hello, grandfather." Petra quietly categorizes Sue as some sort of tribal princess or something in her head. 'Family' could go either way, but there's no chance that Sue was cast out in disgrace or anything, so it should be a guarantee of at least getting their foot in the door, right? So why does it feel like Sue is... "And our elders, the children... don't tell me you left them in Lycia?" Having not been at Castle Thria when Sue was rescued, and not having heard about any massacre from talking to her, this sentencer almost slides right past Petra's frontal lobe to be categorized as a 'statistic'. It's Flamel's telepathy, not blocked from her mind for once, that snaps that image into focus and context, and it crystallizes into the thought about a boy that used to seem impossibly older than her, and is now two years younger. "--Sorry, that's-- I'm getting ahead of myself." Throat dry, Petra picks up where Flamel left off. "I'm Petra. From offworld. We're part of a... we're trying to unify everyone's opposition to Bern to stop the war before it's too late. Uh, could we... talk inside, though?"
Lilian Rook	'I couldn't blame them if their will was 'broken', though,' "Well, I could blame them for that." Lilian says, a little awkwardly. "But I'd struggle to blame them for not wanting to help." 'The Kutolah and Djute tribes are both coalitions made up of many clans' "I'm familiar." Lilian says in the space of a comma pause, waving something through with her fingers but not lingering to interrupt. "My own family was part of something like that, until my sister's generation." '. . . So I cut off his finger, for archery.' Lilian starts to grimace, then a second later, thinks about Bulgar, and her lips twitch towards an irritated growl-posture instead. Contemplating why it went in that order this time halts both before either completes. She looks at Sue with a bit of embarrassment. "I'd have taken two, to be sure of swordsmanship as well." she says, too loaded to be a complaint. "I can think of a handful of people who'd want his tongue, a few who'd want his head, and ten thousand who'd call a fingernail barbaric and try to protect him, so I appreciate your judgement." 'The sicker someone is, Odette, the less they can afford suspicion.' Now Lilian looks uncomfortable. Her eyes studiously avoid Rutger. "That's correct." she says, just so she doesn't go too suspiciously silent. She doesn't like this conversation, so Lilian trudges a ways apart so she can watch Petra and Fae from just parasocial enough of a distance that it doesn't interrupt them. . . . . . . . . It's about the millionth time that Lilian has stuck out this much in someone else's home, and the first in a long time that she's felt this weird about it. It doesn't take her much time scanning the crowd, especially lingering on battle scars, before she looks to Roy, then thinks to spare him and ask Rutger instead, a much shortened "Are we really certain about this?" Dayan bursting into the open just like that is a surprise that is paradoxically reassuring. Someone still having that much strength in these surroundings is a better omen than having to track him down in a tent where a commander is free to be exhausted, away from public view. 'Ajda, and Yesu- did they come back, too? And our elders, the children... don't tell me you left them in Lycia?' And then . . . 'We're here to pursue and secure the total dissolution of all Bernish war and territorial occupation capacity. It's the only way to protect all of the rest.' Lilian's careful exhale-and-count preparation is turned only to the purposes of whipping her head in Flamel's direction, staring at him slightly open-mouthed. 'Uh, could we... talk inside, though?' Lilian turning to stare meaningfully at the entrance is a useful coincidence. "It'd be for the best." she says. "We've come all the way from Etruria. We're serious about this. If you don't like what we have to say, then that'll be your decision, but you're going to have to at least hear it."
Marigold	Fae giggles and kicks her little legs when she's spun around by Petra, wiggly in the aftermath. Her joy's only slightly subdued by saying: "Mmmn-nnn... humans can't learn. Fae's sorry." Sophia, lightly melancholy, touches her own ear: "It's only... partly... high enough to hear... that's why she 'goes quiet', in parts..." "... Fae could teach you some 'words', though! You can hear 'hi'! It sounds like 'aaoouuaa--' mhmph, ack-" Fae's dragon muscle-memory leads her human throat astray, and she coughs a couple of times. Goober. "Fae, not while breathing in... careful...!" "What do you mean, lessons?" Raigh gripes in Odette's direction. "Ahah... what Raigh means is, we're mostly self-taught by now!" "Does Lucius look like the kind of guy who'd know much about dark magic, to you?" "I mean, Raigh, you are still going back to visit Niime whenever--" "Shush you." Lucius bubbles over with a little laugh, and tries to bolster Odette's spirits by patting her head. "No, no, it's alright Odette. If you've been making any progress at all, it warms my heart. You're the closest thing I have to a student." Sue, for her part, absorbs Lilian's judgement on her treatment of the Djute chief with a faraway look and uneasily-pursed lips. But they aren't a frown, at the very least. When she finally speaks, it's to nod while looking through her, and say: ". . . No. I should have taken two. Thank you." - - - - In the village, Odette discovers that none of the maimed people here were maimed recently- their injuries are all at least three months old, and thus, difficult for Lucius to treat. She can still earn the village's trust by curing coughs and cuts, but he shakes his head as he gestures at a former Kutolah warrior with a missing hand. "Is there anything you can do for that, Odette? It's... I'm afraid, beyond me with what I have now." Fae, who of course loves the promise of more playtime, clings awkwardly to Dysnomia's arm in the village. The insinuation of death is still something she can only foggily understand, for better or for worse. A wrinkle-tanned old woman, off to the side, is fondly clucking her tongue at Nobunaga in an oh-aren't-the-young-folks-silly way and trying to put a bite of salted-and-dried fish (shark, apparently!) into her palm with tongs, thick but translucent like wax-paper. "Oh girl, how'd you make salt shark but salting it? Here, try this, and then you tell me how much you'd like to buy!" Savory, with an almost chemical or alcoholic aftertaste, but you could get used to it... "...a land I've been told is very similar to your Sacae..." While there, the old lady scrutinizes Nobunaga's dress, shakes her head: "Oh, you know, they do say some clans brought curved swords like that from overseas... but with the Lorca tribe gone, who knows if that's true."
Marigold	Sue finally, limply dismounts her horse, returning Madeleine's pat with a solemn little nod. Dayan works his face and grips the doorway. It's the struggling, not-quite-completely-anguished look of someone who is relieved of his worst fear but stabbed through the heart with the certainty of the second-worst. "A prisoner of war...?" Dayan manages after a pause, looking beteen Petra and Sue. "So you--" "Grandfather. Please. As she says, not outside," she cuts in with a slight tremble. "Of... of course." He looks back over his shoulder, addressing someone inside the large house: "Nara, I'm sorry, could I ask some drinks for us?" Then he's stepping in to vacate the doorway, and Sue is patting her pony and leaving it in the street like she simply expects it to not go far, and Roy is hesitating near her shoulder like he isn't sure how or whether to comfort her. "... Please don't blame yourself," he murmurs. "I don't," she lies. "Alright." . . . The living room of the gray-wood-plank house, lit by sunlight pouring in through an open roof-hatch, isn't quite big enough for everyone even with Lucius staying outside. Dayan, though, sitting at the head of the low-to-the-floor chairless table with a younger former-warrior attending him, makes a tiny bit of room by shrinking in on himself as if he were ill to his stomach. Sue sits opposite him, at the long table's foot, and tilts her head to signal Roy to close the door after Rutger and Fae slip inside. ". . ." ". . ." The awkward silence breaks before a host can return with drinks. ". . . Ambush. Djute. At the southern mountains. Crossing into Lycia." "Who else--" "No-one. I was struck in the head and my horse carried me away. Came back. Nothing." "Nothing," he repeats, not quite believing it. "I searched, grandfather. Blood and cloth." "Maybe they're for ransom." ". . . Maybe." "No, two years, I would've heard. I would've heard, oh..." He scratches at his collarbone while stretching his neck, as if the emotions were fighting their way up his throat as acid. Sue's face tightens slightly further. ". . . I should go." "What?! No!" "I failed you. I can't comfort you, grandfather." "Sue, please! You...!" She stands up as if she means to leave; he reaches for her from fifteen feet away, hopelessly. "Don't make me re-live this, grandfather," she says, voice even but fist balled tight.
Marigold	"W-wait! She..." Roy starts haplessly from his spot by the door, and more eyes turn to him than he's comfortable with. He shrinks, too. "I mean-- I'm sorry, chief Dayan. Maybe we should leave you to your grief. But we came to beg for your help against Bern, and the Djute. Surely... surely learning this hasn't made you less inclined to fight them?" ". . . Hahhh. You have a terrible sense of timing, boy." "I-- I know. But we are serious, just as Flamel and Lil- er, those two said. We've gathered these allies from other worlds; collected the Divine Weapons; all we need is..." "If you want an old man's bow, you can have it," Dayan says, raising his voice to almost a sorrow-roughened bark. "But if you want my tribe... what am I supposed to tell them? We're scattered, wounded, beaten-down. I've spent all the blood they'll let me spend!" He sighs, lowering his deep-lined face and resting his hands on the table. Sue, looking back with a hard-to-read face, still hasn't quite left. "... They're tired," he says, barely-audible. "We're all tired. What tomorrow, exactly, am I supposed to promise them?"
Nobunaga	> "Oh girl, how'd you make salt shark but salting it?" Eyes closed, Nobunaga lets out a self-assured laugh, "And here I thought it was a name for a local fish, not preserved meats! Oh, but I do appreciate a sample-- Itedakimasu~!" She raises the salted fish overhead with a cheer, then shoves it into her mouth with a pronounced 'aomp'. With her mouth occupied, Nobunaga hears the old woman out as she comments on her sword. Her own posture shifts a bit as she glances down at the saya at her side, hanging from her belt in that normal upward curve. Blade up, blade sharp. Her musing shifts to the snack with a thoughtful hum. It's a bit long perhaps for the bit provided, but she does swallow without forcing it. "Well, that's tasty, there's a lot of flavors in competition there. Here, I'll take some more for my subordinate to try," Though Nagayoshi would likely eat anything. If he truly is a soldier's soldier, it's all just military rations to him anyway. "Has there been much activity with the Djute or Bernish troops, lately?" she asks while searching her pockets for trade-ables; eventually, the warlord produces a small collection of golden Ryo bearing the symbol of the sunburst-- the same as on Nobunaga's hat-- and an engraved chrysanthemum-- the same as in the center of her hat's sigil, "I saw several injured warriors, but those wounds seem to have been healing for a month or more--" She pauses, staring blankly at the koban in her gloved hand, "...Ah, it occurs to me that my coin might not be of value to you... But perhaps the metal is of use?"
Nobunaga	Nagayoshi Mori briefly considers staying outside the hut like a door guard, before it occurs to him that the clan leader already has his own guards and isn't going to betray anyone when his own daughter is here and they seem to be on such good terms. As a result, due to the notable delay in his thought process, Mori is the last person to enter-- turning after a moment and ducking (literally) into the Silver Wolf's abode. Once inside, he seats himself cross-legged, his hands resting on his knees, and Listens. Listening and Understanding requires focus and concentration for someone like Nagayoshi Mori. His face seems frozen in this halfway state between a scowl and a glower, though it's apparent that his body has no tension in it. He's just giving off the psychic presence of someone whose hamster fell off the wheel a few times too many. But he Listens, and he Understands. The loss of those who fled, the Djute ambush-- his grip on his own knees tightens slightly at that--the anguish and grief of recalling such a terrible day. It takes effort for someone like him, but he Listens as Dayan relinquishes the divine weapon under his care. He Understands the plight of the Kutolah people, their exhaustion. This is a people who have resisted, and resisted proudly, and been pushed to the breaking point because of it. "If it were up to me," the colossus of a samurai starts, his voice low and slow, "I would not ask of you your warriors, unless they wished to join us. But I would ask of you something." His seated posture shifts, his shoulders rolling back and his spine straightening, "The Kutolah know these lands. Every valley and river, every stone and blade of grass. This is your home, and you have suffered much to try and keep it. It is that knowledge I would ask for, if it were up to me." Closing his eyes, Nagayoshi Mori takes a moment to articulate his thoughts. The figurative gears turn once inside his brain, "An army lives or dies on how much it knows about the enemy. Where they are, what they're doing, their state of alert, their supplies. I am just a soldier, but if I were in charge--" His eyes open, head turning towards Roy, "That's what I would ask for. Knowledge. Not blood."
Dysnomia	Dysnomia was happy to let Fae cling to her, grateful that so much of what was being spoken of slipped over her understanding. It was all she had to shield herself from the raw self-loathing, grief and exhaustion pouring off of the two was very tired of her war-psychology proving itself right in Elibe, time and time again. The will to fight interupted by shock and awe, loss and life, and a sense of helplessness against an implacable war machine. All while invigorating local supporters, endeared to your cause, made cooperative--and reliant on your aid to prevent reprisal. Her time in Elibe would have made a wonderful reference to copy into the minds of germinating recruits. The thought put her in a dark mood. "...Dayan is correct." Dysnomia says, "His tribe has endured great trouble. Lord Roy. I would like to suggest...Before we ask what they can do for us. Let us ask how we can help them." "Our interests may overlap with theirs. And even if they do not, Sue has worked with us to break Bern's power in ways that do not directly affect her lands." She nods to her. "One good turn calls for another." "Consolate their scattered people as best we can. Have Odette heal their wounded. If we're to ask for their aid. Surely that's the least we can do." "This too is war," she says, seriously. "A war in mind and soul. To revitalize and give hope to those who wish to break Bern's hold on the region."
Flamel Parsons	Flamel does what he always does. He absorbs the grief and the pain around him, tensely inhaling as if the room were dense with oxygen. It would sound like an agonized sucking-air-through-teeth -- and that's what it passes for, for the idle observer. Fingers draw along his face and he grits his teeth. His eyelids are shut, but his eyes flutter under them, eyebrows shifting around like some combination of inputs is going to find a clean way to solve this. He doesn't give Sue words of comfort. He'll have to go see her later, work with Lugh, try to undo some of the pain the way he's been working with the rest of Roy's forces. "I won't tell you that you have to do everything. Or do it right now. Or do it without help." He says. "I'm not a troops-rallier, I don't know how to do that, so, if you want to know what I expect you to do, I can't really tell you. What I'm going to do is go back to the caravan and team up with my junior aide, and try to use some of my mentalism to help Sue feel better and try to help her talk to you about what happened. And, it probably won't work much, if I'm being honest, Mr. Dayan. You want her to feel better right? You want her back, because you don't want to lose one more, and I bet you'd like me to make that happen." "And I don't know how I'm going to do it. I'm the one whose job it is to square that circle and I don't know how I will. But I'm going to try, over the next few hours and days and weeks, and I'll break the problem down into parts, and I'll get my aide to fill in the gaps, and I'll ask around the caravan for help, and I won't do it perfectly but I'll do it until you say 'you've tried enough' and maybe a little more. Just like I want to stop this war and stop all this death, and I can't stop all of it." He's, maybe, venting a bit of his own sympathetic anguish. Aligning a wavelength to Dayan, so that he doesn't feel alone in this. "So, if you don't want to do it, then you don't have to. Sounds like you've given enough. But if you want to do it, and you can't, well... Just because you can't doesn't mean you can't." Maybe the sincere emotions thick in the air are messing with that language center a little, that didn't make a lot of sense. But the message is a bit clearer. "Like how I promise to go and do something I can't do. So... I don't know, really. I'll scout around and see what you could promise? I'll open up a clinic at the caravan for the people with the worst, longest-lasting emotional fatigue? I'll help a little, Roy will help a little, Odette will help a little, everyone will figure something out, if you want to try but you can't." He takes a big, long, deep breath. whole body shuddering for a second, and then-- He just brightly beams, like a switch got flipped in his skull. "Sorry, that was my allocation of sympathetic anguish resonance for the day! I can't do much more without risking too much warping to the mirror neurons, apologies." He clasps hands together brightly, in an upbeat mood. "Would it help if I give you some time to process? I know this is a lot. And my mentalist services -- we call it Psychonautry where I come from -- are open to you and your people too! I'm a deft hand at gentle grief management, and my aide's been trained in most combat-trauma reduction." His bright, friendly posture is snapped back into place.
Desire Stars	You seem... a little less weighed-down than usual. Is it going well? "I... don't know," says Neon, after a surprised moment's thought. "It's weird. It still feels like I'm going uphill. Nothing's really changed at home, either. And I can't really say that I feel like the end is in sight," she says, frowning a little. "There are times when I just feel exhausted. And... when I say all of that, it sounds like the answer should be 'no,' right?" Neon reflects on her feelings with breathy little chuckle after having spoken them aloud. "But, I'm here. Climbing, sometimes by myself, sometimes with all of you." "I'm here, and I've been here longer than I thought I would. This... mercenary work," she continues, her eyes shifting away as she uses the codeword, "I didn't really sign on because I knew I could do it. It's more... something that you do because it might be your only chance to get what you want. Some things are valuable enough to take that plunge, aren't they?" She pauses, then adds, "Like peace." "Anyway... I guess it's reassuring, seeing that I've lasted as long as I have, even when it isn't getting easier." ... --Sorry, that's-- I'm getting ahead of myself. "My name is Neon Kurama." Neon soberly gestures with a sweep of her palm towards Ace, in the wake of Flamel's telepathic wave. "This is Ace Ukiyo. We're offworld mercenaries, hired by someone with an interest in helping Lord Roy." Chewing on her lower lip, she adds, "But, I think, at this point, it'd be a lie to say that we don't each have our own investment in this."
Desire Stars	We're all tired. What tomorrow, exactly, am I supposed to promise them? "So are we, chief Dayan," says Neon. "I can't tell you what to promise your people. What I can tell you... is that when Ace and I were assigned to Lord Roy, his people were scattered, too." "What started as a handful of stragglers has turned into a an army. A small one, but an army. I've watched the people around me get better at what they do, even when sometimes they barely have anything to work with. Every now and then I get to see people who have given up find the bravery to hope again." She smiles sadly. ""Reaching you has been the hardest thing I've ever done in my life, but for as hard as we've had to fight, we've won more than we've lost. And I wish that was enough. I wish it was enough for us to just... find an opening and push through, in some kind of last-ditch assault on a Bernish fortress. That would make for a beautiful story, wouldn't it? But that kind of thing only happens in stories. Reaching you has been... maybe some of the hardest I've worked in my life. And in real life, even an army like Lord Roy's has to play to its strengths. That means that... however many people we help, however much we keep love alive, somewhere else, Zephiel is burning it, shooting it, and stabbing it to death." Ace chimes in. "Surrendering, striking a deal... it doesn't stop the bleeding. He just finds a different place to stick you. Even the people who resist him suffer, or cause their share of it. The choice we've made is to end it, as quickly as we're able. Even just one more pair of hands would make that faster."
Odette Raskins	"That's correct." Odette, being a rather naive person, doesn't notice anything from Lilian that might even remotely raise her suspicions. Instead, she takes that as a moment of shared wisdom between both of her current mentors, nodding quickly while looking back and forth at them rapidly like that might help her somehow absorb their knowledge better. "Mhm, mhm...!" "I mean, Raigh . . ." "Shush you." Giggling along with Lucius' laugh, Odette eventually goes into an impressed whistle as she realizes where Raigh's been continuing his own training, and how far Lugh's come. "Oh, that's great! Not there's anything wrong with learning from someone that knows more, because that's how everyone gets better at stuff. Stuff that was hard for Lucius or Niime could be basic stuff for you, and whatever's hard for you might be easy for your students someday." After that bit of attempted encouragement, Odette finds her face burning up some at Lucius patting her on the head. "R-r-really? Then I'll.. I mean, I would've been keeping at it regardless, but I'll make sure not to slack off! I'm already coming up with ways to use it if I... Um. If I could actually get it working right at a bigger scale, but it's just a matter of time now. Then I might be able to do even more as your... Student!" Holding eye contact, as always, continues to be difficult. IN THE VILLAGE, Odette is, thankfully, able to keep her mind focused on actually getting work done on the sick and those injured more recently. The cuts are treated with a combination of ointments and bandages with minimal invasive stitching, and she offers both medicine and surgical masks to help control the coughs and their spread. The missing hand issue, though, gets a more thoughtful frown from the medic. "If it's been this long, reattaching the old one might not be the safest idea. Grafting a fresher one on might work, but we'd have to find a good match and work out how to prevent the body from rejecting it." She looks over at at the Kutolah warrior, trying to get a read on their expression as she speaks. "It's definitely not going to be easy, and there's going to be a lot of work to maintain it going forward, but it's not impossible. What do you say?" - - - Once her initial assessments and treatments are done, Odette heads INSIDE DAYAN'S HOUSE. She's unable to get too comfortable as she's confronted with that awkward silence, though, not knowing what to say with what's going on. There's even a part of her that's wary of how it might look for such a large group to want to speak behind closed doors the way they are. Hearing the conversation starting doesn't make her any more comfortable, either. She bites her lip lightly as Sue gets up, both unwilling to try and slow Sue down from leaving while also unwilling to just watch her go. "What tomorrow, exactly, am I supposed to promise them?" "... everyone will figure something out, if you want to try but you can't." "The last thing we'd want is for your people to fight when you don't want to and can't anymore. This fight's to bring peace back to Elibe even if it's kind of.. Weird to have fight for that? B-but that's why even in this army, we've all got our part to do even when some of us aren't good at fighting." She taps on her hat for emphasis. "The bow would be great, for sure, and I think.. You shouldn't have to fight, just like Mister Flamel said. I-if your people could keep your eyes and ears open, though, and just... Remember stuff when we come by, though, I think you might be able to help us end all this faster. Does that sound okay?"
Marigold	"Has there been much activity with the Djute or Bernish troops, lately?" "Hmmm... no, we've been left alone out here for months now, sweetheart. Thank the earth and sky for that. Something out west must be keeping them busy," the old woman says with a shake of her head and a rueful smile. She brightens about the coin, then laughs: "It'll be a good souvenir, won't it? That'll get you five strips; take 'em." "You mean... you'd give me a dead man's hand?" The idea of 'transplants' sits poorly with Odette's patient. Lucius is briefly surprised, too, but he gives the former warrior a comforting smile. "She's my pupil, sir. I trust her. But, Odette... do you mean to take a hand from the battlefield? I don't think we'll find many willing to surrender their own, here." "The bow would be great, for sure, and I think.. You shouldn't have to fight," "Hah! What, did you think I had the Gale Bow?" Odette rises Dayan to a moment of surprised mirth, before he settles back into melancholy. "No. That Weapon's in the hands of the Djute. I meant I'd fight and die with you. I'm not so old yet that I'd need to rest while my granddaughter works." Sue's face un-tenses, just slightly. She still lingers by the door. "It is that knowledge I would ask for, if it were up to me." Dayan smiles weakly at Mori, voice still rough. "You don't ask for much. Of course I'll guide you- that's the least a man can give. But the least a chief could give is a hundred, two hundred horsemen. It... shames me, that I can't." "If you're doing your best, I don't think you should feel ashamed," Roy says meagerly. Dayan laughs, just as feebly. "Hah! Now look who I need comforting from..." He nods, slowly, as Neon introduces herself and Ace, and then a sympathetic grimace spreads across Dayan's face. He blinks away the residual moisture in his eyes, shaking his head slowly. "So, we have to fight, hm? Not because it will win us anything but more death, but because 'not fighting' is even worse." A low, low laugh. Their host returns with a plate with small cups of some strong grain liquor; Dayan thanks them quietly, taking one. "Miss Kurama, Mister Ukiyo, you are made of steel," he says, lifting the cup to his lips. "I'd like to think there's a little of that in my heart, as well. But my people..." Sip. "... my people have heard that from me, enough to get sick of it." "That, out there..." He motions with his cup, bitterly. "They're laying down. Waiting to die. I've made sure they know it."
Marigold	"Consolate their scattered people as best we can. Have Odette heal their wounded." "I'll help a little, Roy will help a little, Odette will help a little..." Dayan breathes out, nearly matching Flamel, and then sets a slightly wobbly smile. "Alright," he says. "Alright. I... know of a town not far from here, where more of my warriors have settled. If we can breathe a will to live back into even some of them... hah, I won't have to hang my head so low in shame anymore." "You want her back, because you don't want to lose one more..." Pushing the drinks-plate forward across the table, he sits back, and then makes a softly defeated noise. Those words from a minute ago still rattle in his head. "Of course I'm glad Sue's back. I... some part of me hoped for the best, but... I think it was tearing me up, worrying that I'd lost her too." Sue opens her mouth once, then twice, and finally says ". . . Thanks," sincerely. "Huh? ... Sue?" he says, baffled by the feeling behind it. But she's out the door already.