The Ghost's Crusade

XIII: Akkali

Akkali spent hours only vaguely aware of the fact she was on a horse but snapped out of her daze abruptly when the sky opened up and began to soak them from head to hoof. At that point it was very hard to ignore the fact she was sitting in front of an Inquisitor who insisted on attempting to keep her dry by hovering his hand and half of his coattails above her head. Not only was it very awkward, but it was doing absolutely nothing to fend off the deluge. She would have pointed out the utter waste of his time it was but the Inquisitor seemed too stubborn to listen, so she decided she wasn't going to waste her time restating the fact he was being an idiot.

She guessed it was not too long after midnight the day after they had set themselves on the path through the Shalewarrens. Luckily Arathron remembered the way out of the tunnels; there had been so many images of the stone walls blurring together in her vision she wouldn't have been able to find the path they had taken if she had marked it out in magically glowing chalk. She couldn't remember the last time she had taken a blow to the head that had left her feeling so sick and dazed that she actually had to rely on someone else to tell her which direction was left and right. It was infuriating, and the angrier she became the worse her head hurt. Eventually she forced herself not to care as best she could, and thankfully Drystan's mocking her had been put to an end, likely by Arathron, whose worried face she could swear she saw half the time when she closed her eyes.

They had come up during sunset, having taken longer than they should have due to Tiernan's fussing over the gash in her head and insisting they stop and rest every hour or two so he could check on her. He hadn't taken his own advice, however, as before she had unwillingly fallen asleep several times he was still busy writing whatever it was that he wrote about in his leather-bound notebook with scholarly zeal. She would have found it admirable if she wasn't well aware of the fact he was taking notes that would likely end up in some compendium distributed throughout the Inquisition on how to disable and dispatch people like her.

Drystan had shifted between keeping her awake by reciting his exhaustive list of ridiculous tavern jokes and becoming an oddly somber version of himself where he looked almost... guilty. He obviously didn't like lying to his friend and after their run-in with death in the Shalewarrens the truth and his obligation to keep it from the Inquisition was draped over his shoulders like a hangman's noose. None of them were certain of how Tiernan would react when Drystan kept his promise and told his old friend what he had become after abandoning the church.

Arathron seemed to be of the opinion that Tiernan, while not completely unbiased, was completely trustworthy and wouldn't betray them. Akkali was already planning on where she was going to stash his body once she killed him for trying to run back to father church with news the man had a stripped soul bound to him. She held no illusions that Tiernan would agree with anything they had to say about their partnership being strictly of their own choosing. There were no gray areas in the religious doctrines of Junan, none that she had ever seen.

At least not for those who couldn't afford to buy themselves an indulgence or two. She had always found that if one had enough coin their morality could be as convoluted as a basket of knitting yarn that had been attacked by a dozen drunken cats.

It was hard to see Baedorn until they were nearly at the Grand Gate for the sheets of rain that were lashing the highlands. She made ready to leap off the horse the moment they turned down the road leading to the Inquisition’s barracks and was stunned when they continued on towards the Fiddler's Pipe under Tiernan's lead. They stabled their horses and after some bargaining with the innkeeper, as well as Tiernan's showing the man his saddle which bore the Circle of Junan stitched into the leather to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that they were not in fact corpse-collecting demons come for his firstborn, he finally opened up the alley-side door and allowed them all inside. The sheet-white pallor to the man's face when he saw her passing almost made her laugh. Evidently she looked bad enough that she ought to be dead.