Broken Glass - Taekook

62

Just as Taehyung looks like he's about to respond, Jimin steps between the witch and the water elemental. "Um, guys, I don't know if now is the best time to have this kind of conversation. We need to make sure that the forest is safe, check if anyone's hurt."

He pauses, and his wings flicker a little behind his back, like navy velvet shifting over itself. "I don't know why, but something doesn't feel right. That was too easy. I know we've had a whole thing about being closer to the golden river, and I'm all for it. But these are Karulian Knights, not random people. How come we managed to come out of that, almost totally unscathed?"

"I mean I got whacked pretty bad with a flail, so I don't know about unscathed," Taehyung mutters to himself, and Jimin rolls his eyes. 
"I said almost." Taehyung nods at that. "But anyway, I know we had the kelpies with us to help, but even with them, this was too lucky. Especially given how difficult we've found this in the past. This was an ambush. How did it end up so positively for us?" He sends an apologetic look to Tae. "For most of us, sorry Tae." 

"No, you're right," Taehyung returns, offering an awkward smile and placing a hand on his stomach. A dark patch of blood is beginning to grow around his abdomen, but the marks on his hands begin to glow, and the spread slows a little. "In Rushgrove, we were too scared to reach for the golden river, and so for the most part we didn't. On the edge of the Rymateri Forest, we had it easier, but there was only one Knight, and seven of us. Joon was relatively better by then, too, as far as I recall." 

"Remember the fight we had, before Rushgrove? Kook's arm ended up getting fucked up," Namjoon points out. "The storm, the rush through the forest. It was a mess. We only got out of that alive because of the dryads. They saved our lives."
"That's true," I murmur, raising my arm on a sudden impulse, trying to see if there's any mark where I was slashed. But no scar remains, thanks to Taehyung's healing efforts. "It was a close one. You almost got struck by lightning, Joon. How come the Knights we've fought since then didn't call that down upon us?" 

Yoongi turns, to look at where the kelpies disappeared. He steps towards the river, saying something in a language that I don't recognise, that doesn't sound like Eithyrian. One horse head, made of water, lifts above the surface. It tilts at him a little, and he says something in a crystalline language that isn't quite Eithyrian, but sounds vaguely similar. 

They converse for a few seconds, too quick and too confusing for me to follow, and then the kelpie sinks back underneath the water, disappearing in seconds. "What was that about?" I question, and he shrugs. 
"I figured it would be worth asking for their opinion on this whole thing. The way the Knights have been relatively weak, compared to what we're used to seeing. I wanted to know if they had any ideas as to why that might be the case," he explains, moving away from the bank again. 

"Well?" Seokjin prompts, and the water elemental sighs. 
"They're not certain either, but they know that the Knights we fought today weren't very high up on the hierarchy. They were probably scouts, more than anything. Powerful against normal people, not so much against those prepared for a fight." 

"Scouts?" I repeat, incredulously. "What scouts can shoot bright red energy out of their hands?" 
"Apparently these guys," Hoseok points out. He looks over to Namjoon. "You researched them, we all learned a little more about them. Maybe having some idea of what they're like, how they work, maybe that helped us to defeat them today." 

Namjoon just sighs. "That's certainly a possibility. I think our time in Mavathyr gave us more confidence to do what had to be done. And if you add onto that the fact that we knew that we had the kelpies, allies of sorts, it made it easier to be confident and pretend like we knew what we were doing the whole time. As for their rank...I would agree that they were lower ranking Knights. Probably lower than apprentices, to be honest. They have the logo, and everything. But they only knew how to do the red energy you saw. And they didn't have many useful threats."