Into The Rift

Communications Withdrawal (20)

===0926 Military Hours===

~Drossal, Royal Palace.

'Well, it's time to get this over with.' I thought, digging into the lessons drilled into my head.

Mustering a neutral voice, I beckon her to take the couch a respectable distance away. "Take...the seat on front."

I follow that up with an uneasy frown on my lips, wondering if she could decipher my words. I'm sure as hell not fluent with their language.

Pushing that aside, I swivel my head around the rather decorated room, giving the head-mounted camera a clear scan of my surroundings.

These standard issue devices were made to record combat engagements with great detail, such a function would also prove to be beneficial to my secondary objective.

Her armored figure, now positioned in front of my vision pushes me back from the crevices of my wondering thoughts.

Truth to be told, I never fully knew what I wanted to say to her. Throughout the silence, she maintains this look of hidden apprehension.

Her eyes which occasionally dart around, in addition to her tense fingers made it terribly easy to discern her current train of thought.

The awkward tension is palpable, but it didn't faze me in the slightest.

I'll just have to wing it....

Coming out my lips, is a question I know needed to be answered. I can't just keep calling her that lady, even inside my head.

"What is...your name?" The language is still a pain on the lips, even with the lessons back at base.

Behind the one way visor, a flicker of surprise runs across my hidden eyes. Instead of a verbal reply, all I got in return is her hands reaching up to her helmet, intentions clear as day.

No longer covered by anything, her white hair fans out over her red trimmed pauldrons in a subtle fashion. The sight before me was just like when we first met, based on the aftermath of that first contact skirmish.

The only difference between that memory and now being she wasn't on her knees with a fearful look, my former weapon trained on her frozen expression.

The colour of her violet eyes are just as lively as I remembered them to be, those vibrant swirls were further highlighted by the morning glow of the sun seeping in from the nearby cerulean windows.

She no doubt heard my question, which begs me to think she outright ignored it. I could sense my fellow soldiers tightening their fingers on their respective weapons, not liking the attention they are receiving from the Tacticians to the far left of the room.

The seconds drag by in tandem with the already established silence adding to the frozen tension. Her eyes are still sending me that expectant look, shifting my own closer to the spectrum of confusion.

A few seconds pass before a voice breaks the stalemate, forcing me off her questioning gaze. "It is considered ill-mannered for fellow warriors to talk without showing their faces," the General announces.

I turn around as a brush of concern sweeps through me. That would explain the sudden pause on her end, though it barely fixed the unease resting between us.

"Is that so?" Douglas answers back, visored gaze never once leaving the woman.

Thellius merely nods as he orders his subordinates to exit the room. "Indeed, I believe this to be a reasonable courtesy. A face is easier to trust than a mask, especially ones that are as... unyielding as yours."