Chapitre 262: Chapter 262
Zesshi was less than happy with Raymond's half answers to her questions. 'That human wasn't 'joking'. I've had enough idiots try to joke with me in the last hundred years to know that. He was very naturally speaking his mind. He truly believed my father was a human…' In all the years she'd known Raymond he'd never once told a lie to her, not as far as she knew.
As the carriage rolled on, Zesshi's doubts intensified, he had trouble meeting her face when she looked at him for too long. His eyes would dart toward the carriage window, or out into the woods or open fields.
Night and day retreated in their turns, and the quiet that settled over the travelers held while Zesshi privately asked questions she did not like. 'I accepted his answer at first, camping between villages so I don't have to deal with idiots, and having things brought to me that I wanted or needed. But the more I think about it, the less sense it makes. It'd be a whole lot easier if they just brought stuff while I was closer to where the stuff was…'
And it was this line of thought that had Zesshi do something she hadn't done before.
Raymond fell asleep eventually, as was inevitable, after a brief meal that was as quiet as all their meals lately.
And when he was deep into his slumber, Zesshi looked down the distant road that wound over the landscape. The great endless river cut all the way through the known world, its many lakes, ponds and streams were found throughout the Theocracy, not to mention the other border nations. Not for nothing did the most important road in the Slane Theocracy run close to it, so that any traveler could always have a place stocked with fish to catch, water to drink and a place to bathe.
The river's noise was a quiet and steady babbling, rolling over rocks and occasionally added to by the noise of a jumping fish. Shallow in some places, very deep in others, it was a popular spot with good reason. 'That stranger… Brain, I can just ask him directly, but we haven't seen him in days. I don't believe he's that far ahead, not a chance. We've been slowing down to avoid him, I know it.'
She smirked, 'But there's no way he'll be so far ahead that I can't catch up to him. Then he will answer me, one way or the other.'
She took a long, slow breath, lowered herself into a sprinting start position with one leg back and one knee up to her chest and began to activate her martial arts. [Greater Sprint], [Greater Agility Boost], [Quickstep], [Flashstep].
Zesshi's muscles tensed, and then she sprang into motion like an arrow loosed from a bow, down the seemingly endless empty road which ended… somewhere Zesshi had never been.
Brain sat by the waters of the river just past a village. Supplies were easy to come by there, though he knew he could have had a room, but the journey to Baharuth was a long one, and camping was both free and comfortable.
He glanced back the way he'd come, the carriage he'd been leapfrogging on their respective journeys still hadn't passed him, not again, not in days. Not since his dinner with the human of the group. 'I wonder if they're alright?' He snorted at the absurd question. Even a casual meeting told him that the pair were powerful, 'Maybe even stronger than me?' He wondered about that with a casual little smirk on his face while he carried the small pot down to the river. He waded into the cool water so that it was roughly three-fourths of the way up his boots and then took his sword away from his back.
He stood stock still and stared down into the babbling clear water, he dipped the pot just below the surface, filled it, then set it on a nearby rock against which the waters of the great river broke.
In the place where he stood there was a small bounty of reeds amidst which insects buzzed and darted about in the endless search for food or mates or both. They served as prey, Brain knew, for not only spiders, one of which was busy wrapping a captive dragonfly in its web, but also for the fish.
The wiggly scaly things might not have been all that smart, but they knew where to find food.
So all he had to do was wait until they accepted his leather boots as part of the landscape and pick the perfect one for his pot. His sword came up, ready to vanquish the slippery foe to feast on his corpse.
Or that was the plan. His sharp eyes caught something else, something familiar. 'Is that… is that a corpse? A child's corpse?' He wondered and a brief moment of pity moved his heart.
Being a bandit at one point, he'd slain travelers and their guards, his search for the perfect technique to best Gazef Stronoff had carried him everywhere that fighting could be found without binding himself to anyone. But killing children was just… pathetic, or perhaps sad. He wasn't sure what word to use, but murdering them was something he avoided.
The body was naked and badly bruised. His sense of pity redoubled, but Brain did nothing. 'What's the point of burying it? Eaten by worms? Eaten by fish that eat worms? Then it's just fish food with extra steps.' He tried to look away.
Then he looked back. 'You can at least watch it go.' He told himself. 'It's as close to a funeral procession as it's going to get.' So he turned again to watch the body pass.
His head turned as it drifted along on the current… it carried her close to him, he lowered his eyes to look down at it. He had no aversion to bodies, even when it came to those of people he didn't think should be killed in the first place. He kept his sword up, waiting for the body to drift by so he could stab the fish. 'Mutilated ears… elf or half elf.' He realized. 'That explains the nakedness, girl or boy, there's some foulness out there… disgusting.'
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Layali felt it immediately. She snapped her head up and gasped for air as once again her attempt at drowning herself failed. 'Why can't it just kill me?!' She screamed that in her head a thousand times it felt like, every time her body expelled the water and her head involuntarily went up to gasp for air.
Only this time she didn't think that.
She didn't think that because she found herself staring up at a blue haired human holding a sword up over her body.
The half elf screamed, her only eye flew wide as she struggled to get her feet on the bottom of the river so she could get away, but all she did was splash water about in a useless effort, drenching the human thoroughly.
For his part, as soon as she snapped her head up and screamed, he fell backward, his heart racing as he staggered closer to land. "Undead!" He shouted with the natural human revulsion for corpses, and when he found solid ground he leveled his sword toward her.
It was his cry of "undead" that gave the girl pause as she struggled to get out of reach.
Layali began panting, she looked at the sword in his hand, 'If drowning failed… that will do.'
She caught her breath and when she moved a little further away and found some small purchase for her feet under water, she whimpered and said, "I'm not… not undead. I'm just… please… lord human… kill me. I… no… I don't care if you have to do something to me, or if I have to do something to earn it but please… just kill me…" She whimpered and clasped her fingers together beneath her chin in the fashion she'd seen humans use when praying.
"Kill me." She begged again. "I don't wanna live… I can't take it… and I can't drown… I don't know why… but I just… I can't drown. Please… in the name of your evil gods… kill me…" She began to quietly sob, "I can't go back to-" She bit her lip, "to the tear drinker…"
Brain slowly understood what the girl was saying. 'One of those… a pervert bought her, tormented her, used her… she tried and failed to kill herself…'
Covered in welts, scratches, marks, Brain held up a hand to stop her from saying anything, she fell silent. He cocked his head, listening. Layali pursed her lips and did the same, pain throbbed all up and down her body. 'Does he hear something…?' She knew some humans had extraordinary abilities… Perhaps he was one?
She waited, and he seemed satisfied. He sheathed his sword. Most of her face was a mess, one eye was missing, only an open socket remained, 'Even if she doesn't drown, if nobody does anything then she'll get sick and die soon, elves may be a bit more resistant to disease than we are, but with enough time she'll just die of exposure, infection, starvation, some wild beast will get her, or more humans. She's already dead a thousand ways…'
'It would be a mercy to kill her.' He told himself.
"Your master isn't here." He said at last.
"Doesn't matter… if not him, someone else… just…" She blinked her eye.
She put a hand over the socket. "I just don't want to be hurt anymore… please if you have any kindness for even a beaten dog… kill me and let it be over!"
"You're asking me a favor, and you want me to come all the way over there to do it?" Brain asked and pointed at the river between them. "And you've soaked me." He pointed to his soaking wet shirt and pants. "A fine time to ask for favors…"
Layali's mind raced, his indignant voice seemed to lack any evident malice, a first in her experience.
He pointed toward his campsite. "I don't have any potions, but I have some herbs and oils that will deaden all the pain while you heal. If you insist on dying, I'll lend you my sword later… but the least you could do is make up for the trouble you've caused me." He pointed down into the river.
The fish were all long gone, and water was still dripping from his arms, face, and hair.
"If I do it tomorrow, or today, you're just as dead… and…" He waved his hand up and down her, "you're not my type."
She looked down at the water to see her reflection, with shattered nose, broken teeth, mutilated ears, a missing eye, and abundant bruises, that much she could believe.
'It's not like I have anything to lose… and I might find a quick end… even if it's by borrowing his sword while he's asleep… What's a few more hours?' She asked herself, and when she reached her answer, she took one step closer to the drenched, blue haired human.
"What's your name?" he asked.
"Layali, master…" She answered and prompted him.
"Brain. Brain Unglaus." He answered, and waited while she approached.
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