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It was six hours after the dragon fell when fresh air and blinding sunlight heralded a return to the surface. Less of a triumphant exit than the occasion merited, maybe, but after that kind of fight and that kind of climb, Kit figured they deserved a less than graceful reappearance. Grimy and exhausted, bloody and bruised, they stumbled up the final steps of the master staircase, blundering out from the hatch and coming to a wobbly halt beside the chapel.
For a moment, Kit couldn't see a damn thing. At her side, Edér groaned and sank a little further into her grip, his eyes sliding shut, as if he was reconsidering his relationship with the ground. On his other side, Pallegina blinked rapidly and muttered something that may have been "fuck the sun" in Vailian.
"Gods," Hiravias said behind them, in abject disgust. "Who put that hideous yellow orb in the sky, and can we kill it next?"
"I wouldn't mind going back downstairs for a while. Perhaps we could take up residence," Kana added.
Aloth offered a noncommittal grunt.
As Kit's eyes adjusted to the light, it left behind a shine, a gleam that Caed Nua hadn't had before. She'd felt it even before reaching the surface: a calming in the adra veins below, a new peace and quiet spreading through every level of the paths, all the way up to the keep itself. The Steward's gladness shone, too, brighter and brighter the closer they got.
Now, however, there was something contrite at the edges of her voice.
My lady, the Steward said, her voice warm in Kit's head and her pride gleaming, I will have to congratulate you later. I'm afraid you have a visitor, and he has been most insistent. I would delay him, but the rest of the keep is already aware of your return.
A flurry of movement blossomed around the eastern barbican and the training grounds, guards alerted to their return, mostly, and a figure emerging from the main keep in a rush. Kit could see his finery from here. "Fuck," she said.
Sagani dumped the extra sacks of supplies and came to stand beside her, critically eyeing the approaching figure. Itumaak circled at her feet, alert, his white coat caked with xaurip blood. "Want me to handle it?" Sagani offered, tapping a finger against a hunting knife in her belt. She'd emerged the most physically unscathed out of everyone, but like Itumaak, she was coated in the blood of the dragon's minions.
A somewhat hysterical urge to giggle seized Kit at the thought of the lord's face, if she sent a blood-soaked boreal dwarf and her fox to counsel in her stead.
Kit was sorely tempted anyway, not least because everyone was in a sorry state. Edér was only on his feet because Kit and Pallegina had half-carried him for the last half hour, and Kit wasn't sure how she and Pallegina were still upright. Durance was out cold and being carried by Kana, who sported a long bandage wrapped around the left side of his face. When Kit glanced back, she saw Aloth swaying where he stood, and Hiravias flopping to the ground with a grateful sigh, scratching at some of the crusty blood staining his upper lip. Even Grieving Mother, master of the art of not being seen by friend and foe alike, was paler than normal and littered with small injuries.
Kit wanted to see to it that they got what they needed, and she wanted her own bed and to sleep for a few solid days, but they didn't need her to hover over them, and she was the master of Caed Nua now, well and truly. "I've got it," she said, with long, deep sigh.
I'm sorry, my lady, the Steward said, gentle amusement in her voice. That is Lord Sidroc. He is requesting assistance in reclaiming his keep.
Kit sighed again. "Go ahead," she said to the others, with an absent wave towards Brighthollow. "I'll deal with this."
None of them moved. Edér, who looked fit to keel over at any moment, shook his head. "We'll wait up," he said, trying to pat Kit's shoulder and missing.
Kit was more than capable of handling ornery supplicants on her own, and this one could very well be pleasant, for all she knew. But a smile tugged quick and furtive at the side of her mouth. Grieving Mother appeared at her side next, a soft hand coming to rest on her arm. "I will take him."
Kit nodded her gratitude, and Edér jumped like the adra dragon had come back from the dead, when Grieving Mother took Kit's place at his side. "Uh," he said, as the membranes of Pallegina's eyes flashed in surprise. "Thanks?"
Kit stepped forward, drawing Whispers of Yenwood from her back. She hadn't really used it during the battle, but it had seemed important to carry it with her into the depths of the Endless Paths -– as if freeing Caed Nua from the horrors below could somehow cleanse the sword of its restlessness, too. She couldn't sense anything from it now, so maybe that was something.
It didn't really matter. She just needed something to lean on before she keeled over herself.
Kit slammed Whispers into the ground, its fine tip sinking into the dirt, and it only occurred to her after the fact that the move might look aggressive to the approaching lord, who stopped abruptly.
Oh, well. Kit gripped the pommel of the sword and leaned just enough weight into it to stay upright for a while yet. Hopefully she didn't look as though the wind could blow her over. Lord Sidroc, meanwhile, gathered himself again and approached at a much slower pace. Kit could imagine the sight they all made: dirty and bloody and barely holding themselves together, gathered around Kit at their head, who leaned on her old cursed sword and watched the lord approach.
Lord Sidroc's eyes bulged. He came to a stop before Kit and, after a moment of wobbling uncertainly, bowed his head. "Lady Kit!" he said, and his mouth stayed open, his eyes raking over each person, lingering on the drooping Edér now draped between Pallegina and Grieving Mother, the filth-covered Sagani, the unconscious priest in Kana's arms. "Your steward was evasive about your whereabouts. I wasn't aware that you were engaged in defense of the keep."
"Sort of?" Kit said, and she shook her head when Captain Emery sprinted up behind him. "Everything's fine. The dragon is dead. If you could tell the healer and cook that we're back? That's all we'll need."
The lord's eyes might have fallen out of his head, had they grown any wider. "Dragon?" he demanded, as Emery gave him a critical once-over and departed. "I-- you killed a dragon?"
"Well," Kit said. "It was..." She stopped. Frowned. Her memories of the battle were a hazy swirl of fear and aggression and strategy, and exhaustion blurred recollection even more. She tried to pinpoint the moment the dragon fell, the heady flood of relief when she'd realized they'd won, but she couldn't parse out the final blow.
Without letting go of Whispers, Kit turned back to her companions. "I don't know who killed it."
They stared back at her for a moment, tired minds slow to catch up, and then comprehension dawned. No one had really thought to consider it, down there in the dark, too stunned at the fact that they'd won to think of much else except making sure that Edér and, regrettably, Durance didn't die on them.
"Oh, no," Hiravias said, hopping back up to his feet with renewed vigor. "We're settling this now. Dragon slayer gets accolades. Compliments. Drinks. Money. A song from Kana. Maybe even a gift from the lips of the ladies."
"You sound confident," Pallegina said, equal parts cool and amused.
"Perhaps it escaped your notice, but I was doing a shit ton of damage," Hiravias said, stretching nonchalantly and then wincing as it tugged at an injury. "First thing's first: those unconscious and near-unconscious at time of death are out of the running."
"Wasn't me," Edér said sadly.
"Or the angry one," Aloth said in solidarity, and Edér tossed a punch-drunk smile at a patch of sunlight near him.
"I doubt it was me," Kana said, and he set Durance haphazardly down on the ground with a pained grunt. He sighed as he straightened and stretched. "It was close, but my summons were all dead by the time the dragon was."
"Thank you for your honesty, Kana," Kit told him, and he beamed around his bandage at her.
"Maybe it was Itumaak," Sagani said, with a mischievous curve of her mouth.
As Hiravias incredulously questioned the validity of such a possibility, in the same way one might question an assertion that the sun rose at night, Kit looked to Grieving Mother. Did you see who it was?
I did not, Watcher, the woman said, a whisper in Kit's mind, and even she was amused, a faint and rare smile on her face. But it was not I who struck the final blow.
"I do not see why you are so certain," Pallegina's voice cut into Hiravias's. "My blows were just as good as your spells."
"Did you paralyze that thing so many times that you started bleeding from your facial orifices?" Hiravias countered, and he rubbed at his upper lip forcefully and chipped away at some of the red there, offering his fingers to her with a flourish. "No! That was me."
Pallegina gave him a dirty look and pulled Edér away from the proffered hand. Edér tried to look at it, but his eyes couldn't focus long enough to land.
Aloth caught Kit's gaze and rolled his eyes to the heavens, and Kit pressed her lips together to contain a laugh. Reaching into one of the pouches attached to her belt with the hand that wasn't wrapped around the sword's pommel, she fished around for a moment and withdrew something she'd pulled off the dragon's hide. The scale gleamed in her palm, and the others fell silent one by one as they noticed the way that Kit held it and gazed upon it.
The dragon's spirit was gone, but an imprint remained within the scale, a spiritual history written into the fusion of adra and flesh, that unraveled with a bit of pulling and nudging as only a cipher and a Watcher could do. Recency gave the impressions strength, and as the ghostly violet of memory washed over Kit's mind, she followed the path of what she wanted to know, her thoughts taking on an alien quality that were not her own.
The last thing she remembered was an attack that might not have meant much otherwise, against an unharmed dragon with all of its defenses in place. But against an injured dragon battered by a hundred other attacks, it was just enough. A slashing barrage became a death sentence, ripping into her face, and she tasted shock and fury and blood and pain. But Kit's mind detached itself from the imprint of the dragon's and moved backwards, past that, searching for a soul trace of the hands from which the barrage had come, and...
"It was Aloth," Kit said with a grin, as the violet faded and the sunlit grounds of Caed Nua returned. The air swam as her vision wavered in the transition, and she swayed and nearly tipped over, but Sagani steadied her.
"Thank you, Kit," Aloth said, only a little smug.
It was almost drowned out by Hiravias's outraged "Oh, come on!" and Pallegina's laughter and Kana's hearty congratulations. The latter's friendly shoulder clasp nearly sent the still-wobbly Aloth tumbling to the ground, and Sagani steadied him next.
"Good hunting," she said, reaching up to pat his arm.
But Kit stood there and regarded Aloth disbelievingly. "Missile barrage? Seriously? You bet our lives on that?"
A bit of color crept into Aloth's too-pale face and then into the tips of his ears. “What if I said it was Iselmyr's doing?"
And then, in the next second: "Fye! Tell 'im tae shut 'is mouth, Kit. 'Twas all 'im."
Kit arched a silent eyebrow at Aloth.
"I... may have started panicking when I saw Edér and the angry one go down," Aloth said, grimacing, shifting on his feet. "I don't believe I was thinking about what I was casting." He frowned. “I have no idea why that scroll was in my possession at all.”
An attack like that would hardly have made a dent in the dragon's adra scales, if she hadn't been close to death already, but killing blow was killing blow. Kit conceded with a bow of her head, of the kind that supplicants usually offered to her. Aloth went a deeper shade of pink.
Hiravias blew a raspberry, and Pallegina chuckled again, while Kana and Sagani rounded on Hiravias, chiding him about being a good sport. But Hiravias only snorted and ducked around their advance, rapping his knuckles against Aloth's arm as he did. Kit was pretty sure that Edér wasn't even aware of the conversation anymore, but Grieving Mother was keeping an eye on him, and a quick check told Kit that Durance hadn't gotten any worse.
Satisfied, Kit returned her attention to Lord Sidroc, who stood precisely where she'd left him, nonplussed and staring. The movement left her dizzy, but Kit clutched at Whispers tightly and kept her back straight. "It was my wizard who delivered the killing blow," she told Sidroc, gesturing to Aloth, and she had to fight back the urge to giggle again. Maybe she was a little drunk on exhaustion too. "But it was a group effort. Now, my steward told me you want my help?"
Sidroc kept staring with his mouth hanging open, his eyes shifting between Kit and the kith behind her, before he remembered where he was and what he was doing there. He drew himself up with a start, his mouth snapping shut. "Ah... yes, yes, my lady... um..." His eyes darted back to the main keep. "If we could..."
"We could," Kit said sweetly, unmoving.
Sidroc swallowed and fiddled nervously with his tunic. "Very well," he squeaked.
And so Kit held a brief court outside that day, while Edér all but napped in between Pallegina and Grieving Mother, and Durance remained out cold. Sagani, meanwhile, did nothing to stop Itumaak from sniffing at the nervous lord's heels, and Hiravias pretended to nap on the ground, snoring very loudly as Kana questioned Aloth about the finer points of his killing blow.