Chapter Text
The latest attack on Mana’Din is… more complicated than most.
It is probably the best effort so far. Elalas will grant it that, for whatever it may be worth. The old spirit vault site is unstable enough to begin with, but the remains uncovered in a cairn which Falon’Din had seemingly built is trap over top of demand the leader’s attention. Most of the place is caved-in and long ago ransacked, but in the course of excavating everything, new spirit remains were uncovered. Most of the long dormant, but a few still had a spark of energy or two in them.
And then beneath that, there had been a sleeping chamber, housing a half dozen still-living elves in uthenera. The odd spiritual energies of the place had been impeding their dreams for centuries, it had seemed, but Felenaste, Mana’Din’s most capable healer, had been convinced that they could all be recovered.
It had been tense going, carefully removing the spirit remains and the slumbering elders from the unstable earth. A lower-still chamber of the whole mess seemed to have emptied into some kind of abandoned dwarven hive. Mana’Din had ordered that sealed up as soon as it could be safely done.
“Dwarves sometimes hoard riches, it is said. Might be worth investigating,” Sulhamin, one of the more imaginative attendants, had suggested.
“Dwarves are more than capable of defending what bounty they take from the earth, Sulhamin, and plenty of right to do so. It is better to leave them be. Besides, these tunnels look long abandoned. With what was built over them, I would hardly be surprised if the dwarves themselves have sealed them off further along,” Mana’Din reasoned in return, in that frustrating way of hers that sounded sensible andmoderate.
Elalas had spent years looking for signs that the woman said one thing and did another.
No such luck.
The discussion had been ongoing until Mana’Din broke it off to shepherd the spirit remains that had been gathered back into the Dreaming. She had clutched them carefully in her arms, calling up a spirit of Renewal that had taken to following her of late. The Dreaming had rippled around her, in an ordinary display of anticipation.
“Elalas, if you could-”
Whatever she had been about to say was cut off, abruptly, as the assassin attacked then.
A beam of light, a fractured arrow made with old enchantments, blessed with ancient words, had struck through the air. Mana’Din had noted it a half second before Elalas did, raising a hand, and Elalas found herself moving but she knew it would do no good. The lights had flared, a painful and disorienting display of magic. Shouts of alarm had gone up. The barrier Mana’Din tried to cast could not snap up quickly enough, and for one horrible moment, Elalas was certain she would be struck down.
And then Renewal moved.
In that split instant, everything had happened at once. The arrow struck the spirit. The barrier shattered. The shards of the slain spirits gleamed, as if with one unified scream. Mana’Din cried out and reached, with her free hand, for the injured spirit, even as it burst into its own broken remains. The energy released seemed to tangle with the magic from the arrow.
Elalas is not sure how it all worked. She had not been able to stare at it all, too lost to the ringing in her ears, the sparks in her eyes, the nauseating rush of overwhelming noise and light and sound. She had shaken, horrified, clamping her hands over her ears as tremors shook through the air and through her skin, rattling her teeth and rolling in her stomach. A hive of angry wasps in her blood, until she had finally been able to look up.
Felenaste had been the first to move, to rush to Mana’Din. Then Sulhamin had barked, and he and three of the guards had taken off after the assailant.
“I need to know what weapon they used!” Felenaste had barked after them.
In the middle of the disaster, Mana’Din lay upon the ground. Clothes singed, mask scorched, blood pooling beneath her. The shards of Renewal lying amidst the dull remains of the long-dead spirits, gleaming with a soft, pale green light.
Elalas had felt ice cold.
What if she was dead?
Renewal was dead. That beautiful, beautiful spirit. Renewal was dead and if Mana’Din… if…
She is dead, the dark, bleak part of her mind had insisted, as Felenaste rolled her over, pulling aside some of the singed scraps of her clothes. She was not moving. She had been struck, despite Renewal’s sacrifice. She would be so upset, Elalas cannot help but think. A sacrifice for her, in the end. And not even worth anything.
Then Felenaste had started casting spells, and her sense had caught up with her. Healers did not cast spells for dead elves. Not this kind, anyway. She had stood – perhaps too quickly; she had vomited – but then she had made her way over, looking with better eyes at the trauma that he been inflicted. There was a wound on Mana’Din’s chest. Red blood soaking through white fabric. But apart from a few burns, the most worrying thing was her unconsciousness.
“Take off her mask for me,” Felenaste had instructed.
Elalas hesitated only a moment before doing as asked. She knew too well how badly it could go for injured people if something blocked their face. Blocked their air. She untied the bindings for it and lifted it away, and stared a moment at Mana’Din’s lax face. Eyes closed, breath barely passing from her lips.
“Good. Help me with her armour,” Felenaste asked, then, and she had tried not to look at all after that, untying ties and helping to carefully turn their injured leader. Holding her in place while the healer’s magic sealed her wound, and smoothed out her burn marks, and then assessed her. A broken shard of renewal had lodged itself just behind one of her ears, somehow, glimmering faintly as Felenaste removed it, and sealed the wound. The healer’s magic cracked a bit over her patient’s skin.
“This is not good,” she had concluded. “There is too much energy. But we cannot move her yet. She had one foot in the Dreaming, and if most of her is still there, moving her body will just make things worse. But I cannot tell for certain where she is with all this –“ she gestured, irritably, at the air and the spirit shards and the whole of the ambient energy, that was still buzzing over Elalas’ own senses.
Which is how it has come to this, Elalas supposes – her, plucking up Renewal’s remains. Trying not to look too closely at them as she ferries them to the Dreaming herself. Away from the damage zone, where Mana’Din still lies, breathing but unconscious. Still and all-too looking all too flesh-and-blood, with her mask set aside and blood staining the earth beneath her.
Bad earth, too. Parched and dry and dead from the centuries it has spent on the fringes of the vault, and its life-sucking barriers.
The wind catches the torn edges of Mana’Din’s clothes. It makes her look a bird that has been knocked out of the sky. Wings broken, feathers scattered. Elalas stares until her stomach turns again, and then she makes herself carry on with her task.
When Mana’Din sucks in a shocked gasp of air, though, Elalas feels like she hears it from all the way across the dead space. She is moving before she is thinking, dashing back over to the scorched disaster zone, her heart hammering in her chest as Felenaste says something in her neutral, calm tone of voice, and Mana’Din moves and…
Panic floods the air.
Panic, alarm, confusion. Unbridled and potent enough to give Elalas pause, to make her look sharply around for some sign of danger or trouble that the rest of them may have missed in the rush to secure their unconscious leader. Her skin prickles again and her temples throb, and she feels intensely aware of everything as she looks around. Of the vault’s massive, excavated crater. Of the twist of magic still heavy in the air. Of the distant outcroppings of rocks and trees, and every shadow on the ground, every curve in the terrain that might hide another would-be assassin.
And then a tide of gibberish floods out of Mana’Din’s mouth.
Felenaste blinks and Elalas stares, disquieted. The healer recovers first, catching their leader as she begins moving steadily away; inching backwards on the ground and still radiating that awful cocktail of fear and confusion.
Her senses must have been addled. Elalas has seen that happen to people before, although not quite… like this. But she has seen slaves lose their minds. Break and babble, turn incomprehensible, lose all hold on their emotions. Felenaste has seen it, too, but she seems more confused by it. Maybe she can pick up some nuance that Elalas is missing in that emotional mess.
The body language is clear enough, though. Abundantly.
Whatever has happened to her, Mana’Din has woken up terrified.
“It is alright,” Elalas says, holding out her hands as she moves carefully forward. “The assassin has run off. Sulhamin and the others went after them. You are safe, my lady. Whoever it was will not get a chance to attack again.”
Mana’Din turns to look at her, though, and Elalas comes up short. Caught entirely wrong-footed by this woman again; but this time seems an exceptional case. Mana’Din’s eyes are wide, and her brows are furrowed, and there is just something… she cannot place what it is, precisely, but she can tell. Felenaste’s alarm makes much more sense, now.
There is something missing.
“You… you speak elf?” Mana’Din asks, in a cracked and uncertain voice, with stilted words that are as baffling as anything. “Keeper where? My clan?”
Clan?
And what Keeper? There is no Keeper. Not here, certainly, and not anywhere that anyone should know about, either. Elalas looks at Felenaste, who looks back at her, as if she is not the only person who might be able to explain this particular twist of fate.
“How hard did you hit your head, tyrant?” she blurts at Mana’Din, trying to quash down her growing panic as their illustrious leader looks around like she’s trying to find an escape route. Or like she does not even recognize where she is.
“I… apologies… I not know words. Speak common?” she asks.
“What is common?” Elalas demands.
Felenaste opens her mouth, and then closes it, and shakes her head. But once again, she seems to be the first to rally her better senses, out of the three of them. After a moment she sucks in a breath, and then reaches over and places a hand on Mana’Din’s shoulder.
“My lady. You were hurt,” she says, slowly and carefully. “Injured? Let me cast more spells, please.”
Mana’Din stares at her, not quite flinching away but clearly uncertain. She looks the healer up and down, and then glances back at Elalas; and then at their surroundings, again, before she sucks in a fortifying breath.
“You… magic?” she asks. “What clan?”
Why does she keep asking about clans?
Elalas wonders, shifting uncomfortably. But Felenaste seems to have given up on wondering, as she only nods and asks Mana’Din to hold still, and then sets about trying to figure out what, precisely, of all the possible things that could have gone awry in the fucking mess, actually did.
But at the first wash of magic, Mana’Din gasps and stiffens and goes rigid with shock again. And it floods the air, again, unbridled and potent enough that it is hard to witness.
“It is alright. It is just a few spells,” Felenaste says, in low, soothing tones.
“I… I not… you very magic,” Mana’Din replies, inching back a bit. Then she looks down at herself, and seems shocked, again, by her own clothes.
That reaction somehow manages to be even more disconcerting. The woman suddenly losing her capacity for linguistics, forgetting where she is, and becoming uneasy with simple diagnostic spells is strange enough. But Mana’Din’s wardrobe varies so little, on average, that Elalas can scarcely comprehend how out-of-sorts she must be to be surprised by it. ‘Flowy, white, with armour bits and a mask’ is basically all Mana’Din has worn for as long as she has known her.
More gibberish words escape her, as she lifts a few pieces of singed fabric. Elalas wishes she could attribute the shock to the damage to the clothes, but really, that is nearly as common.
Sulhamin and the guard return then, and Elalas finds herself moving to intercept them before they reach Mana’Din without even really thinking about it. Sulhamin is… decent enough, as former servants of Falon’Din go. The man was once the resource manager for a remote outpost. He has a habit towards ruthlessness and opportunism that sometimes grates at her, but he is not an idiot or a sadist, and he does not flaunt his station.
The guards she does not know much at all; though she knows of Mana’Din’s guards well enough to know she does not actually trust most of them with their lady’s safety.
But they are, at least, dragging the unconscious form of at least one – and hopefully the only – attacker.
The elf is slight. Pale, and marked with Mana’Din’s vallaslin; but on the further contours of their face, they have added in the marks that would align with Falon’Din’s symbols instead. Cut with some sharp blade, and left to scar, either by will, or by a lack of applied healing magic.
Elalas feels a surge of pity for them, in amidst her disgust. A lurch, that comes now whenever she thinks of leaders and devotion, and how insidiously masters can thread their fingers through the minds of those at their mercy.
That will not be her.
Ever.
“Mana’Din was injured. We will need to get her somewhere safe and secure,” she says, and when Sulhamin looks over towards her, she inexplicably wants to move to physically to block his view. She glances back, instead, rigidly staying where she is, and sees the leader is still sitting with Felenaste, looking conspicuously vulnerable and unlike herself. Her mask is still off.
“What kind of injury?” Sulhamin asks, moving to stride over.
Elalas catches his arm.
“She is addled,” she says. “It would not do to crowd her. Felenaste is trying to discover the extent of the damage, but we cannot stay here. It is too conspicuous.”
There are workers in the area, and spies, and possibly affiliates of their would-be assassin. She alone can name at least a half dozen splintered groups that would be jumping up to try and seize the opportunity of a confused and out-of-sorts Mana’Din, and it feels like all of them must be watching from between the trees right this very moment.
Mana’Din is not the problem, she had found herself saying, at the last meeting she had attended. Months ago. Off in the unmarked village, where it was Mana’Din’s own forces – Mana’Din’s own laws – that gave them a safe haven from scrutiny, that kept the more malevolent among her followers from using its residents as target practice and punching bags.
The dictator who brands her property with bastardized clan markings is not a problem? Bellan had scoffed. And they call me blind.
Let me rephrase. The problem of removing Mana’Din from power is not a priority. Right now, it is not a choice between her and the hold-outs off the coast. Do you see our ‘friends’ across the water launching any ships, sending any armies to come and help us reclaim territory? No. They do not want to fight a war they cannot win, and neither do I. I would vastly prefer not to fight any wars at all. If we are going to change things, Bellan, we are going to have to find some people in power we can stomach.
And you can stomach Mana’Din? Bellan had asked, skeptical and derisive and Elalas knows why. She knows, full well, why. She knows how many of her former allies and acquaintances and even friends turned from her, in the aftermath of her taking on a position at Mana’Din’s side, and then not immediately using it to try and kill the woman. How many of her contacts dried up. Vanished. Left without a word.
The only reason we are here to plot against her family is because she lets us be here, to plot against her family, Elalas had said. So yes. I can stomach her.
Gratitude for the kindly overseer?
How many of us are still alive because of pity? Hate it all you want, Bellan. I hate it, too. But do not pretend we do not still need it, sometimes.
And even so saying, she does hate it.
Maybe it is only fitting, then, to offer it to Mana’Din, in turn. Even though she knows, on some level, that the woman does not pity her. Even though she knows, too, that it would be laughable for her to claim that as her chief sentiment towards the woman.
“You expect me to take your word on this?” Sulhamin asks. “Mana’Din might trust you when she is capable enough, Elalas, and I do not take you for a fool. But I am not about to name you chief authority on our leader’s well-being in times of crisis, either.”
She bristles.
But there is not much she can do, as the man moves over towards the site of the attack, and the healer and leader still trying to work things out in the midst of it. Not much besides follow him, closely, her hackles raised, tense as if someone has just collapsed in the middle of a work camp, and caught the attention of an overseer who could run either cruel or kind, depending on the way the wind was blowing.
“My lady?” Sulhamin asks, stopping at a respectful distance.
Mana’Din blinks up at him.
“What is word? ‘Lady’?” she asks.
There is a moment of stunned silence.
Mana’Din glances towards Elalas, when it becomes apparent that Sulhamin is not going to answer her question quickly. Then she looks at Felenaste, who is also looking at Elalas, at first.
“What is word? Please?” Mana’Din asks.
“…It is Lady. It is, ah, a woman who is in command?” Felenaste ventures.
This seems to stymie their leader, who blinks at her, and then treats Sulhamin to a baffled look, and just in general seems very much as if she is trying to figure out what is going on, and is coming up painfully blank. The confusion is potent, and apprehension, too, growing by the moment.
Sulhamin finally recovers enough to shoot Felenaste a sharp look.
“What is wrong with her?” he demands.
“I am still trying to figure that out!” Felenaste snaps back. “A spirit of Renewal exploded into her, that does not commonly happen to people! Not to mention all those shards she was carrying, and whatever her attacker was using. Did you get the weapon they had?”
“No weapon. It must have been a spell,” Sulhamin says.
“More pressingly, can we move her?” Elalas asks, cutting in and shifting on her feet. “We are out in the open here.”
Felenaste nods.
“Her consciousness is present and accounted for, if addled,” she confirms.
Mana’Din frowns, as if trying to parse out the words again. If she had to relearn how to speak, Elalas thinks, that is going to be… complicated. Though at least it does not seem as if she is starting fromscratch.
“Fine. Then we will move her,” Sulhamin concedes.
That heralds an argument between the three of them on where to move her. Felenaste wants her back at the summer palace, where her best medical supplies and apprentices are. But supplies can be moved; often, even, apprentices can carry them from one place to another. And the summer palace is a crowded mess of followers and visitors and the peacekeepers Elgar’nan sent last month to ‘evaluate’ things, corralled there when Mana’Din could not entirely remove them from the territory. Sulhamin wants to get her to the nearest outpost, instead; he seems to be operating under the optimistic hope that if they get her a quiet room and some time to ‘collect herself’, she will abruptly return to normal.
Elalas has her own idea.
“There is a fishing village, not far from here through the crossroads. Quiet, secluded, and no one can approach it without announcing themselves. One of the more well-guarded places in the territory, in fact. We should take her there.”
Sulhamin and Felenaste both look at her like she has lost her mind.
“Do not play coy. That is the Unmarked Village,” Sulhamin says, furious.
“And she is an unmarked elf!” Elalas retorts, gesturing towards Mana’Din. “Hardly anyone in the territory would recognize her by her face. Anywhere else, and they will know her immediately as either Mana’Din, vulnerable, or a slave out-of-bounds. Do you care for their possible reactions? Because I do not.”
“I care even less for the prospect of delivering her into the hands of anti-Imperial rebels and assassins!” Sulhamin argues.
“When has there ever been a single unmarked assassin to attack her? When?” she demands, in return.
“I…”
They pause in their argument, looking over to Mana’Din; who is at last managing to rise to her feet.
“I… thank you. I go… go search my clan, now,” the leader says, unsteadily.
Felenaste rises up and manages to convince her that ‘barely able to stand’ is not a good place to be embarking upon any random and bizarre quests for long-gone societies from. Elalas turns back towards Sulhamin, and lowers her voice.
“She keeps mentioning clans. Keepers. Asking about things long gone. It will conspicuous anywherebut that village,” she says.
Sulhamin wavers, a bit.
He shares a look with Felenaste, who glances at Mana’Din.
“Medical supplies are sent there often enough. I could get what I need, fairly easily,” she concedes. “And it is quiet.”
After a breath, the man relents.
“I know you are not stupid enough to get her killed,” he says, to Elalas. “I just hope you are not clever of enough to have figured out some scheme which I cannot perceive.”
“I am,” Elalas tells him. “But that is not what is happening now.”
“Please. My clan?” Mana’Din asks again.
“We do not know where your clan is,” Felenaste says, at last. “But there is a village. It is safe. You come with us now, and we will try to find this clan for you. Alright? Or anyone from it.”
Their leader hesitates, clearly unconvinced of their sincerity. Her expression shifts, painfully open and yet, at once, somehow difficult to read. The air around her is suffused with her conflicting emotions, and they seem to be distracting her. Not even simply in terms of the emotions themselves; but the sight of them, the perception of them, is…
It is like…
Like Elalas herself, in fact.
But the situation must be clear, even to her disoriented mind. She looks at Elalas for a long moment, and then nods.
“Yes to village, then,” she agrees, following it with some odd strain of gibberish.
“I will go tell the guards to stay behind,” Sulhamin decides. “They will only make things harder, where we are headed. They can take their prisoner to the outpost, at least. Try not to let her lose any more of her mind before I walk back.”
Felenaste makes a rude gesture at his retreating form.
Mana’Din snickers at her. A nervous, tiny little sound, that seems young and strange and surreal. Not least because of how it makes her lift a hand to her mouth, lips twitching and eyes crinkling, until she winces at some lingering ache that the healing spells have yet to clear.
Elalas frowns, as something in her chest twists inconveniently.
Oh, there is so much wrong with this.
And why does she have the nagging feeling that getting Mana’Din through the crossroads is going to be… interesting?