Tempered by the Will

30 - Desperate

Constantine was an ass, but he was smarter than she was. He would understand what she was doing, right? Or at the very least, he should be able to tell something was wrong since she had moved well away from the others. Vica hitched her robe tighter around herself against another stiff wind that came blowing in with the rain that she could smell in the air. Winter came strong and sudden here, it seemed. Just two weeks ago, the breeze had only carried the moderate taste of autumn, but with the cold descending like a frost upon her, she could imagine snowfall in the Capital's near future.

Wintertime should be spent indoors, cozy and warm. She hadn't been home in almost three years, but she had never felt so out of place and homesick until now.  Here she waited for Constantine, standing and shivering, and her mind chose this moment to impress upon her the full implications of her circumstances.

She had come to make changes. From the outside, it had been so easy to point her finger at what she found unsatisfactory and promise she would change everything. The way elves - and all those not human - were treated, the way mages were given free rein to abuse their power, the way the Capital thrived but left the rest of the nation to crawl day by day on their own. Fix this, fix that, fix everything. It had seemed so straightforward, even if she had known it wouldn't be easy.

But she had been here for nearly three weeks now, and all she had learned was how to look for magical signatures if they were very, very obvious and also the hundreds of different ways to accidentally offend nobles, thanks to the lessons in basic etiquette and society ways from Felix before he had left. For a place with precious few concrete laws to govern it, they sure had a lot of feelings about manners and custom.

Constantine didn't care about manners and custom, thought Vica. He was just himself. Maybe that was why he never seemed bothered by anything, since he only ever did as he felt like. She would envy that if she didn't fear becoming like him, uncaring to the point of numbness, valuing only the things that gave him pleasure.

But she couldn't say much about that anymore. She had left him not an hour ago, knowingly leaving him to dispose of two inconvenient men that she had no idea what to do with. So her hands weren't so clean either, and leaving Constantine to his own devices and pretending she wasn't accountable for him was the coward's way out.

He'd come here for her, after all, followed her to where it was dangerous because she would need him. He'd said that. So she had to face it head-on and accept that as angry and resentful as she was, they were still in this together. She had already accepted his help. She couldn't pretend she hadn't. Their personal issues were something else entirely; she didn't want to let them bleed into this side of her life anymore. It was too tiring. Too frustrating. She could be angry and mistrustful of him on her own time - but right now, this wasn't about her. This was about the bigger picture. The tapestry, not the thread.

And there he was, finally, murky shape emerging out of the darkness. She had lain down on top of a gentle hill, not so high that it would make her an easy target but elevated enough that she could see farther into the distance than she would otherwise. This was how she'd been taught to stalk deer and rabbits back home, even if she was neither hunting for prey nor was she stalking anything smaller and weaker than her right now. Felt a bit like trying to trap a bear, honestly.

And gods, her leg. It hurt more now than it had earlier, and she was beginning to think that taking the arrow out had been a mistake. Her hamstring was cramping with strong pulses every few seconds, and she reached back to clutch at it with with a dig of her fingers.

The shape stopped moving suddenly, and she squinted at it with straining eyes. That was him, right? A thrill of fear ran through her at the thought that perhaps it was someone else entirely. In the time that she had trotted at least a half-mile away, perhaps something had happened to Constantine - maybe he'd been overtaken, and that figure in the distance was one of his tails instead.

And now the rain began, with a soft pitter-patter at first but strengthening quickly. Within seconds, she could feel her hair beginning to paste to her forehead, and she rubbed away the water droplets on her eyelashes with her knuckles. That had to be him. Bren would have warned her if his pursuers were so close, and it hadn't been that long since she'd taken her leave of him.

She brought her fingernails to her teeth and gnawed on them. The fuzzy silhouette was still motionless, and she was tempted to leap up and wave her arms to see if it would respond. Surely that was safer than simply going up to it, right? Just in case it was someone dangerous.

For the first time, she wished she could sense Constantine even from a distance. That would have solved her current problem neatly.

Wait.

Was that -?

It was. Several other shapes emerged out of the night and approached the first, which she was now certain was Constantine indeed. Then did that mean he was going to simply face his pursuers by himself and out in the open like this? She had never seen him in the middle of an all out bloodletting before, or at least, she had never seen it happen all the way through to its conclusion. she had interrupted the incident this morning which had been a chaotic mess more than anything, and before that, it had been when he was fighting Yezia and Yowan and that enormous golem lady while Vica got carried off by that Resistant squirt.

They had let him live, too, and he had come back looking like they had beaten the tar out of him. She didn't know what would happen to him if he stuck around this time. Who were they, then? More of Duke Murena's people, or sent by someone else? And how many was that - one, two, three shapes?

But none of this terrified her, not until she saw maybe-Constantine begin backing away from them.

Constantine? Retreating? She leaped to her feet, heart plummeting, and hurried down the hill with a pathetic limp. Staying here was useless at best and damning at worst. Whatever was happening, she wasn't going to let them have their way. She wouldn't go close enough to endanger herself, but if she stayed at a distance, surely she could do something. If nothing else, she could - she didn't know yet, but she wasn't half-bad at earth magic. She could try to frighten them off with something dramatic like she had done back at Winding Oaks, since getting close enough to threaten to use her rot-fire wasn't an option. Something. Anything!

She staggered twice, going down on her knee the second time. Her leg was throbbing, and it felt like the tender muscle was about to tear right out of it. But she couldn't stop. She had to keep going...

* * * * *

"You know what this is," said the man on the left as he twirled the glowing vial in his hands. "So I won't waste much time in letting you  know what we want."

Constantine backed away another step, but froze when the man mimed throwing it at him. It wasn't being struck by the damn thing that he feared, but rather that he knew he would never get out of range in time. Even if he avoided the brunt of it, he would be so damaged that he would be easy pickings for -

"That's right. There are others coming. Because you know if this hits the ground, we're all going to eat s**t, don't you?"

Constantine smirked even though he didn't much feel like smirking, to be honest. "You'll kill yourselves for this?" he asked as he glanced between all three of them. Two men and a woman, none of them mages, which explained why they had managed to get as close as they had before he noticed their presence. Well-trained, though, and judging by their effectiveness in stalking him, he wondered if they were trappers rather than assassins. Their mixed scaled and leather armor suggested the former, except trappers had no reason to be skulking about in the middle of free territory in the Capital...

But trapper or assassin or whatever else they were, they were truly desperate to resort to using a sealed spell so dangerous. The sheer volume of it would carve a swathe of destruction wide enough to be seen for miles if they threw that at him. He couldn't catch it, either. No doubt it was charmed to explode either way.

"Just to be clear," the man said, "the mage we got this from dropped blood from all three of us in here, which is the only reason someone didn't come alone to talk to you about this. We don't mean to escalate anything, we just want you to know that we're very serious. Yes, we've put our lives on the line for it."

Blood triggered spells were the worst, and channeling the energy from all three of their sacrifices? Constantine grimaced. "Tell that to whoever else you have waiting in the wings. What is that, a dozen more running up now? This is going to get violent for me no matter what."

"Only in the event that you do something rash. If you agree to our terms, this goes back in my pocket, and none of us have to die, and you walk away with your limbs intact. If you make me use this, you might survive since you are who you are, but you won't outrun the rest who are waiting to finish you off."

"Resorting to suicidal tactics to get to me, huh? I'm that important now?"

"Not to get to you," the man said, and he smiled while waving the vial again. Constantine tensed. "We want the half-breed. And you're going to give him to us."