“Paw,” Guin went quickly, moving to the bronze garule’s side. Placing a hand on her arm, she tried to pull her back over to the group. “I’m sorry. I should have asked you about my forcing Ibraxis into joining the group...”
BronzePaw brushed Guin’s hand away with a complicated expression before saying, “I’m going for a walk. I’ll be back in a bit,” and stalked toward the tree on all fours.
Guin glanced at Ibraxis for help, but he just shrugged. “Let her be,” he said. The rest of the group were trying to look like they were minding their own business. “This may actually be good for her.”
“I didn’t even think about how she’d feel,” Guin mumbled to herself, looking down. “Tea and I just decided on our own...”
“So you did have something to do with this,” Ibraxis went, taking Tea’s head in one hand and rubbing his feathers quite hard.
“Wait!” Tea went, breaking free and going toward Guin. He took her hands in his. “I-It’s really my fault! I can explain it to BronzePaw! I don’t know why she seemed so mad, but I was the one who gave the condition! I just thought it’d be best if you and Ibraxis were friends again!”
Guin smiled at him. “But you don’t know like I know, Tea,” she said. “I should have known better. Sometimes, in-game Guin forgets that real-life Guin exists!” she laughed, but it had hurt when BronzePaw pushed her away—even if she had deserved it.
“And me?” Drakov went. “Did you think about me?”
Looking at him with wide eyes, Guin said, “I-I didn’t think you’d care so long as I chose on purpose.”
The young Asian man sighed. “I guess that’s true enough. But still! He’s an enemy!”
“He’s a commodity that we can use,” Guin pointed at Ibraxis, who snorted. “You said we needed a healer. He’s one of the best.”
“Is he now...” Drakov looked him over. “Well, I’ll be the judge of that.”
“Hey,” Starshine pointed ahead of them. “Not to interrupt—Whatever this is—but it looks as if that group is already finished. We’re up.”
Though she spared one final glance at the direction Paw had gone, Guin nodded and moved ahead of them.
Roger Othren was actually quite a bit older than the image that Guin had of him in her mind. Since she felt that the Prince should be relatively young, she thought his right-hand man would also be young. This did not appear to be the case.
He was a silver fox kind of handsome, with a strong chin and swept-back hair of mostly white, peppered with a little bit of gray. Bright brown eyes and tanned, almost browned, skin, he regarded the group with an amount of annoyance that gave Ibraxis a run for his money.
“Another group to pester me?” the man asked, his stately manner of speaking matching the rest of his image. “Get on with it, then. What is it that is ever so important for you all to pester a man in my position? Make it quick. I have an army to run.”
Guin bowed her head as she stepped forward. “Apologies for me and mine bothering you, sir,” she said, looking up. “However, my group and I have a few questions regarding the dungeon and Prince Octarius.”
At the mention of the crown prince, Othren’s brow twitched. “Many have come to me about this blasted tree,” he said. “But what business do you have with the Prince?”
“My lord,” she started. “I am a Hunter of Miala De Ri, under the guidance of Master Hunter Lithe.”
The old knight scoffed. “I am familiar with Lady Lithe,” he nodded, then looked Guin over. “Do you think you’re the first of her useless hunters she’s sent to deliver one message or another, demanding the Crown Prince to stop his crusade against the Veil. She’s an ally of the darkness to be sure—a puppet of Prince Adrian, or I’m a jikak.”
Prince Adrian? Guin tilted her head but filed the name away for the time being. “I do not come with a letter,” Guin told him, trying to think of a way for her to get him to tell her the location of the Prince. If he were as much against the allies of the Veil as he made himself sound—if he were as much against the hunters and Lithe as much as he let on—then she needed a way to justify searching for him that his guardian character would accept. Licking her lips, she said, “And as a humble hunter, I do not concern myself with the politics of the upper echelons of the land. Rather, the Master Hunter has sent me with growing concerns of corruption and wishes me to request the Crown Prince’s aid in its defeat. She would offer him our aid in defeating the darkness.” It was a half lie. A gamble.
“And why,” he said, “with Lithe’s reputation, should I believe any of that?”
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“The hunters, the druids, the shamans—we care for and tend to this forest and its inhabitants,” Guin explained. “The Corruption has spread further now. Stronger. We must stop it, or it will consume the land, Prince Adrian or not.”
“Is that not what you people seek? The darkness?” Othren spat.
“This is stupid,” Ibraxis sneered behind her. “We are wasting time. This land is dying, and men like this will have only themselves to blame when it does. It’s sad—but typical.” Othren stood quickly at the accusatory words before Ibraxis could continue and stabbed his greatsword into the ground, glaring at the white garule with contempt.
Guin whipped around and stared at Ibraxis with wide eyes. “What are you doing?” she hissed.
The white garule gave her a flat look. “This man is never going to tell you what you want to know,” he said. “He’s just the guardian at the gate. He can’t even see it; he can’t see that the ground on which he stands is decayed; he can’t smell that scent of rot in the air or how even the spirits within the Veil have all fled this area. To him, all the corrupted monsters are those spirits. He can’t feel the anger, the sorrow, the desperation that makes the air around us vibrate with such... hostility. He’s just like everyone else.”
“That doesn’t matter!” she said, then turned back to the Captain, who was watching Ibraxis with hostile intent.
“It does to me, and you brought me here,” he said. “You brought me here not understanding anything.”
“Are we really having a conversation like this, here?” she hissed in disbelief.
“You can’t feel it either,” he murmured in a low, bitter tone.
“You there,” Othren interrupted. “Are you, then, one who serves Prince Adrian and the darkness?” he asked, nodding to Ibraxis. “Speak your words carefully, for I shall not hesitate to cut you down.”
“I-Ibraxis,” Tea tried to cut in. “Maybe... maybe you should let Guin do the talking?” But Ibraxis fwipped his tail at him in annoyance, causing him to back down.
Drakov moved beside Guin and muttered, “I don’t like this...”
“Captain—” Guin tried to intervene, but Ibraxis stepped forward.
“If I serve anyone, anything, I serve the land,” Ibraxis told him and held open his arms. “Cut me down if you want. Prove whatever it is that you need to prove so that we can get on with this.”
“Ibraxis!” Guin half-shouted in shock. Even Tea was gaping at him. “Look, Captain, we just —”
“If the dinosaur wishes death, then I shall deliver it,” Othren said, lifting his blade. “May the Light of the Lady save us!”
“Yeah,” Ibraxis scoffed with a daring smirk. “Let’s see how that works for you.”
“What—!” Guin went, but Ibraxis didn’t even move to defend himself as the Captain ran him through with his blade. It was an instant KO.
Tea screeched, in shock or challenge, Guin wasn’t sure, but Drakov tugged him back when he tried to get to Ibraxis’s body. BronzePaw came running over, pausing as she gaped at her brother, then she looked at Guin for answers.
“I-It wasn’t me,” Guin said, staggering back. What had just happened? How had she so completely miscalculated? This wasn’t the Ibraxis she had known, so hot-tempered and indignant. “I-I don’t understand...”
Captain Roger Othren grunted in satisfaction as he sat back down and wiped off his blade. The crowd of players around backed off, giving them a wide berth in case anything else happened.
“Is there anyone else here who would like to make themselves known as agents of the darkness?” Othren didn’t yell, but his voice carried over the crowd with ease. “Anyone else who serves Prince Adrian?”
No one answered. The crowd backed off, and many seemed to be rethinking, hanging around the tree to wait for the dungeon.
“I-I guess we won’t have a healer after all,” Star said with a nervous gulp. “Why the heck did he go off like that?”
BronzePaw said nothing for a moment, then asked, “What were you asking about?”
“I was trying to find out where the Crown Prince was,” Guin told her, holding a hand to her belly as if she had been the one who was stabbed. “We’re just trying to stop the Corruption,” Guin murmured, tears burning in her eyes as she turned back to the Captain. “We are on the same side, aren’t we? Why did you kill him?”
“The corruption,” BronzePaw said, kneeling next to Ibraxis’s body with an irritated sigh. “Not that you would know. He would stay away from the Corruption because, as an Undying, he feels it. All of nature. It’s all very personal to him. I shouldn’t have left his side.”
Guin gritted her teeth. “Just tell us where the Prince is,” she demanded of Othren. “We need to stop the Corruption!”
“So you can assassinate him?” The Captain asked, tilting his head. “Oh, I think not, girl. Be on your way. May the Lady bless you—she is a more forgiving soul than I am.”
“You—!” Guin readied her claws, but Star jumped on her, pulling her back.
“Calm down!” the witch said, her voice unusually tense. “Guin, we can’t take him!”
“You don’t know that,” Guin snapped. “If we fight him as a team, we have every chance of winning!”
Just then, the air snapped into a cold, winter-like chill. Frost formed on the ground, ice crystals spreading from the ground where Ibraxis lay, solidifying the land below.
It began to snow.
A deep, coarse chuckle came from the ground. Guin watched in shock as Ibraxis’s health bar started shooting up.
“Well, what do you know?” Ibraxis said, lifting himself to stand on all fours. He shook his feathers out, and his tail waved powerfully behind him. Raising his head, he looked back up at Guin with a clever little smirk. “We can agree on something after all.”
