Dustown
Autumn 72
Bax
It was late in the evening when Bax snuck to the message board in Dustown. He waited in the shadows of an alley for twenty minutes before he determined it was safe to approach. With no civilians in eyesight, he jogs over and posts a sheet of paper toward the bottom of the board, assuming most people ignored the messages lower down.
He had found a basement that had been bricked up in a building under construction. The only way to get to it was from a neighboring basement. He had hoped Vanja would be able to find the place with relative ease.
With the paper posted, Bax took off into town. He had to work quickly to get all the materials together from various construction sites to evade suspicion before sunrise.
Vanja
Arriving at the safehouse, Vanja is on edge. Wary. Bax’s message had indicated a fight, and so she was ready for one. Hood up. Traveling light, axes strapped across her back and hips, pack switched out, healer’s kit stripped to triage essentials and condensed into a small series of pouches. She wishes she’d had the chance to get better armor, but she’s repaired the damage from the fight in the sewer, and she’s hopeful the leathers will be enough this time.
Vanja follows torchlight down a short underground corridor, and where it opens to a larger space, Bax is waiting, alone.
Vanja grins, throws her hood back, and leaps at Bax, throwing her arms around his neck, knocking him off balance.
“It’s been weeks! Weeks, Bax! I’m so glad to see you!”
Bax
A series of small torches light up the basement. Enough light to provide visibility in the immediate vicinity, but not nearly enough to be draw attention of construction workers in the day time.
Vanja’s footsteps are muffled by the sounds of construction above. He doesn’t notice her approaching until after she is more discernable in the flickering torchlight. Bax doesn’t have an opportunity to stand and greet her before she’s already run up and wrapped her arms around his neck.
He still wasn’t entirely used to Vanja’s affection. It was odd to meet someone else who proved to be as much of a hugger as Lumotu. Odd, but not unwelcome.
Bax pats her shoulder awkwardly as she begins to pull away. “It’s good to see ya too. Glad you got my message.”
As she pulled away, Bax could see new scuffs and marks across Vanja’s armor. She’d been in a fight recently. Though she seemed in good health, Bax knew that battles could have longer lasting affects on the mind.
“You alright?”
Vanja
Vanja looks her friend in the eye, and she takes a breath. She holds it for a moment, releasing it with a soft ‘pah’ sound, before speaking.
“No,” she says, honest, “Some of us tried to take back Sav’s place in the sewer the other night, and it went just… so badly. I’d never been in that kind of fight before,” She presses her fingers absently to the center of her breastplate, where she’d had to reinforce the leather with cloth padding underneath, “I ended up taking the most of it. The attacks. I thought I could manage, you know? But it was too much. It was…” she hesitates, “it was a close thing, there. For a moment. Before I could take cover and heal myself.”
She rolls her shoulders back, shrugging off her cloak, and starts to unstrap her axes. It seemed like this was sparring — the sort of sportfighting she did at home, with her brothers - and she wasn’t about to cleave her friend with an axe.
“We all ended up using magic, too. And I —” She swallows hard, “I killed a man. A Swan. I used the River and I flooded him with it and then I just,” she flicks her wrist, as Bax has seen before, when she had pulled sickness from the old woman, “— pulled the light out of him. Took his life from him.”
She sets her axes down, carefully, on the floor, and brushes her hands on her leggings. “It was so much worse than I thought it would be,” she says, simply.
Bax
“Vanja I…”
Bax was stunned. He hadn’t expected the group to fight the Swans yet. They weren’t ready for something like that. None of them had trained together, not everyone’s abilities were known to the group, and others, like Vanja, had never taken a life before.
We’re falling apart before we even get started. My gods this is a mess…
“Vanja I’m sorry. This is my fault. All that time we spent in the woods, I should’ve trained with you. Shown how to fight and take a life when necessary. It’s so different from hunting for food…”
He sighed heavily, putting his hands on his sides. “But I suppose that’s why I asked you here. For Ethan’s plan to work, we need an idea for how everyone fights. I wanted you to come here and spar with me today. And to show me your abilities if you can. I’ve seen you heal, but I also need to see what kinda damage your magic can do, if any.
We don’t have time to talk today. I don’t wanna to stay down here too long and risk being found. So for now, do you want to try to work out your frustrations by fighting? And maybe another time we can try to actually talk.”
Bax walks over and picks up two makeshift hand axes. They appeared poorly carved and quickly tied together with ripped cloth. He holds them out to Vanja, gesturing her to take them. “Are you up for that?”
Vanja
Vanja takes the axes from Bax, and hefts one in her hand, testing the weight, flipping it and catching it by the haft.
She nods.
This is fine. Better to train than talk, really. More useful, in any case.
Talking about it might help her cope, yes, but it wouldn’t change what she had done. Vanja tries to push the thoughts of the sewer from her mind, and shakes her head. Trying to clear it.
“Yeah,” she says, smiling a little, “Sure. Always up for a fight.”
She takes a few steps back, left arm low over her leg, ready to sweep up and block, the axe in her right cocked behind her head. She stands on her toes, bouncing slightly, and tosses her braid back over her shoulder. She nods to Bax again, indicating she’s ready.
Bax
Bax steps away and goes to pick up his own weapon. A simple staff made by breaking a mop he’d stolen from a local inn. The broken side was tied over with a cloth to avoid any accidental piercings with the broken shaft.
In the distance he hears construction workers yelling and hammers striking metal, the sounds of day work echoing down into the basement. Their sparring should go unnoticed down here, their own sounds lost among the noise above.
He begins circling around Vanja, watching her eyes and her feet. She stays on her toes, turning to keep him front of her. Her eyes darting between his weapon and his own feet.
“Good. You know to not just watch your enemy’s weapons -”
He strikes forward, but Vanja catches his staff with the axe in her left hand, throwing his attack to the side and countering with the axe in her right hand. He rolls to the side, avoiding the attack and continues, “But to look at their feet too. I figured you would from the sparring you told me you did with your family. Pay attention to the eyes as well. Most enemies will alter their weight or look somewhere if they plan to move or strike.”
He attacks Vanja a few more times. Watching as she counters each of his strikes. Bax becomes so focused on studying her moves that he’s caught off guard when she counters another staff stroke and she retaliates, kicking him in the chest. He’s forced back a few feet to steady himself.
“Nice. First point to Vanja”, he chuckles aloud, rubbing where her boot had struck his chest.
“But you know this isn’t how a Swan fights. The Swans don’t take turns testing their opponents. They strike quick and hard. They want you dead so they can live. So show me…”
He pulls the cloth from his face to his neck revealing his star filled eye, shifting the staff from his left to his right hand. His demeanor changing as he crouches down.
“Show me how you fight with your life on the line.”
Vanja
Vanja sees the shift in Bax. Sees his grip change, the staff in his strong hand, now, his smile gone from his face. She looks down slightly, into the black void where his eye had been, where there was only magic now.
“What…” she starts to ask what he means, even as she feels adrenaline and riverlight flooding her system. She’s already fought Swans. Fought for her life and lost, only alive because of luck and magic. She’d said that already. She doesn’t want to fight like this. Not now. Not with Bax.
She doesn’t say anything more though. Instead, Vanja strafes to the side, quickly. Bax’s staff has longer range so she waits for him to make the first move. When it doesn’t come, she looks away for a split second, knowing he’ll be watching her eyes. A feint. Meant to draw him out. It works - the staff comes down with crushing force. Vanja catches it with her high axe and twists, pulling herself in with the motion, and bringing her low axe in to slam into Bax’s stomach. If it had been sharp, and him unarmored, she’d have gutted him.
Vanja twists her wrist, trying to free her high axe, while forcing Bax’s spear down into the dirt, but Bax is ready for the move.
Bax
Bax lets his weapon get pulled to the ground. Once down, he shifts his grip behind the staff, and cracks the opposite end against Vanja’s face. The shock of the attack forces her to release the staff from under her axe as she steps back, blinking away the pain.
As she steps away, Bax takes the opportunity to strike at her ribs hard. Nothing cracks, but he hears Vanja hiss from the pain. He then shifts to the side opposite of where he’d just struck, and stabs twice more at her ribs. Nothing cracks again, but he can see Vanja is hurting.
He jumps back ten feet and attempts to provoke her. “C’mon witch! Is that the best you can do!? I’ll kill ya and all your other disgusting friends!”
A nerve is struck as Vanja retaliates, throwing a hand axe with force. He attempts to dodge out of the way, but misjudges the speed. The axe bounces off his chest where Vanja had kicked him earlier, the pain nearly fully pulling his attention away entirely from the fight. He then runs up, using the haft of his staff to pull a foot from under Vanja, tripping her.
As she lies prone Bax continues his provocation. “Filthy witch! You’re nothin! Strike me if you’re so powerful!”
He holds his staff over his head, preparing to strike at her throat. “Show me how you fight for your life!”
Vanja
Flat on her back, Vanja sees the staff above her, and Bax’s full force behind it. This isn’t training anymore, isn’t for sport. It suddenly seems too serious. The staff ready for a killing blow. Deadly as the inquisitor’s warhammer. She ignores the tight feeling growing in her chest, and moves before the staff comes down, hard, on the place where her throat had been.
Vanja rolls to the side, scrambling to her knees, then to a crouch, and pulls an axe from where there is no axe. She pulls the weapon from the River itself, the energy flowing down her arm and into an axe forming in her hand, made entirely of riverlight, glowing green and gold and deep red. She throws it, quick, the axe spinning sideways, growing larger in the short distance between her and the man she thought was her friend.
The Axe of the River catches Bax in the chest, passing through his staff altogether. The blow sends him back, staggering, just a few feet.
It’s enough. He’s off balance. Vanja dives for Bax’s legs, slamming her shoulder into them, knocking him down.
In an instant, Vanja’s on top of him, weapons forgotten, the Axe of the River floating in the air behind her, bathing the room in its shifting green light. Bax gets his staff under her arm, but she grabs the cloth of his shirt, pulling herself in, fueled by adrenaline. Panic. By fearsick rage. Vanja slams her fist into Bax’s face, once, and then again, into his nose, then, when he turns away, his cheek, his jaw, his good eye.
Vanja
“What the fuck was that?” she screams, shaking him, “What the fuck, Bax?!”
Bax pushes against the staff, and throws Vanja off of him. He stands, rubbing his jaw with his free hand.
Vanja climbs to her feet, too, and spits on the ground, blood in her mouth from where he’d checked her with the butt of the staff. She holds her hand up, and the Axe of the River, follows her motion, hovering in the air above Bax.
With her other hand, she starts to call on the River again, the ribbons of light criss crossing over her wrist, intertwining her fingers.
“What are you trying to make me do, here?” she asks, voice too loud for the space, catching in her throat, “in the sewers I killed a man with magic like this. You want me to do that? Fight for my life and kill you doing it?”
Bax
He stumbles to his feet as he sees Vanja motion her hand and control the movement of the green glowing axe in the air. He also sees magic coalescing across her other hand. She can do more.
Bax throws his staff to the side, pulling a dagger out from his belt. He crouches answering Vanja’s question before charging.
“Yes.”
He dashes forward, dagger pointed at Vanja. He rears his arm back and jumps, preparing to thrust the blade at the frightened warrior.
Vanja’s eyes go wide as Bax comes down on her. The magic in her hand growing ever brighter. He swings the dagger at her, and dropping the weapon mid strike as he falls toward his friend.
Vanja
Vanja is backed against the wall and suddenly, Bax is running at her, blade in hand. As he swings the dagger, she catches his arm, and the blade clatters to the ground - dropped or knocked away, she can’t be sure.
It’s too late, though. The River is already flowing through her hand and into his wrist, filling Bax with riverlight. The green of it seeps through the cracks in his skin - where Vanja’s fists left broken skin at his jaw and his brow.
Bax’s mouth falls open, and light pours from it, dripping down his chin like drink. His eyes shine with it - the blackness of his right eye now bright, glowing green and gold, illuminated from within like a candle under glass.
Vanja drops Bax’s wrist, pulling the light from him and back into herself.
“No…” she says.
Bax
As Bax crashes into Vanja, she reaches out and grips his wrist. At that moment he can feel his body halt in place. Time seems to drag on for him as he feels his veins pump in the opposite direction. His muscles tense and don’t let go. His mind can only focus on the pain and he wishes in this moment he did not exist.
Vanja drops his wrist, and with it, he falls to his knees and he takes a deep, awful breath. He falls to his side and coughs severely. His mind entirely focused on breathing and not vomiting.
He shivers uncontrollably as the world around him comes back into focus. Vanja is standing over him, her mouth covered by her hands and eyes horrified.
Between coughs and gasps of breath, Bax is barely able to speak up. “Hey cough cough good fight. Let’s gasp say you win this one…
“You cough you okay Van?”
Vanja
Vanja falls to her knees next to Bax, training taking over. She rolls him onto his back, and presses her palm flat on his chest, channeling the River again, feeling it respond more readily to her call. The light flows over Bax’s chest, seeping into the flesh below his armor.
“Fane,” she curses, “Bax, I didn’t…”
She brushes the hair off of his face with her free hand, checking his eyes - brown and starry black again. She studies his face, watching the threads of riverlight stitch together even the superficial wounds she’d given him earlier.
Satisfied that she’s undone what damage she can, Vanja sits back on her heels, folding her legs beneath her.
“I’m fine,” she says, answering his question, “But what the fuck were you thinking? This wasn’t training. This was fucking traumatic. How do you think this is possibly helpful?”
She looks him up and down again, “And how are you…alive?”
Bax
Bax places a hand on his chest where Vanja had just had hers. He could feel the warmth of of her light seeping through his body, forcing out the pain of the earlier attack. He smiled at the comfort of the healing but could sense Vanja’s agitation and confusion in her questioning.
He chose to remain flat on his back as he addressed her. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean for that get as intense as it did. But it was important…”
He paused to take a breath. The cool floor of the tunnel felt nice against the back of his head.
“I wanted to spar with you like this because I needed to know what you’re capable of. Especially under pressure. The people we fight don’t care if you’re old, a woman. A child. They will kill you. And you need to be prepared to take their lives to protect your own and others.
Second, I needed to know what powers you have. I’ve seen you heal, and you may have shown me your floating axe, super cool by the way, but you never would’ve shown me that last attack. We had to know how effective it is.
Finally, you can never be fully sure that your magic will kill. It can do a lot of harm but as we can see with me, it’s no guarantee of ending a fight. You must always assume that our enemies can not only survive your magic attacks, but counter them.”
Bax sits himself up to look Vanja in the eye as he continues to address her.” Van, you’re incredible. Not only are you an amazing healer, but your powers can also cause unbelievable damage. But you lack experience with life or death fights, and the pressure of those battles can get to your head.
And that’s why we fight together. As a team, we can make up where another is lacking. In your case, me or someone else can fight by your side to draw away enemy attention. Give you time to think and breathe…”
Vanja
Vanja looks over at Bax, at his earnest expression, and laughs, a genuine, honest laugh that echoes back in the room, “Well, your timing could be better… you decide the time to test me like this is the day after I almost bled to death in the sewers? Acting like it’s just a good fun fight, then twisting it? Pretending like you were going to bash my head in for real with your staff?” She shakes her head. Her hair has come loose from its braid so she pushes it to one side. Her fingers are wet when she pulls them back. She’d cracked her head on the stone at some point, and she’s surprised to see her own blood.
“Although you wouldn’t have seen any of that…” she searches for a word, “battle magic if we’d done this earlier, I suppose. I didn’t know I could do that before yesterday.”
She sighs, no longer looking at Bax. Studying her own hand instead. The blood from her scalp is already tacky. Her body healing itself without the River.
“Look, I understand the need to train. The need to test our abilities and push them. I know we have to be ready to fight the Swans or the Inquisition or the fucking Baroness if she shows up…but this,” she gestures to the room around them, “pushing me to do that kind of magic. When I’d already polluted the River with it. Used healing light to kill already… and forcing me to use it against you…” She purses her lips. “It was unkind.”
“And there has to be more to it. To all of us learning to work as a team. We can’t just train to fight together. We have to bond as a group, so that we have community. So that we care if anything happens to one another. If we feel like none of the others care if we live or die, if there’s never anything other than running, hiding, fighting for our lives, planning our next move…if this is all it is, then we’re going to burn out.”
“You bend a thing too far, it tends to break.”
Bax
Bax listens to Vanja and it clicks for him. He felt bad for attacking his friend, but she was upset beyond the fight. He had attacked her, acted as though he meant to kill her. She then thought she had killed him. This fight only proved to anger and frighten her. Nothing he did here today would help Vanja fight better against the Swans.
His shoulders drop slightly at this realization. He feels frustrated and embarrassed at what he’s done. Vanja pulls a hand from fixing her hair and Bax notices blood in her palm.
He moves to help her but pauses with his hand held up. “Can I…?” he asks, gesturing his hand toward her head. He suddenly feels apprehensive at approaching too quickly and causing more damage. She nods however, and watches as a thin white mist begins to gather around Bax’s hand.
As his magic coalesces in his hand, his right eye glows slightly as well. A steam or mist begins to rise from the eye. The mist a faint series of blacks, purples, and blues, the color of the night sky, dissipating into the air, barely visible if not for the backlight of the surrounding torches. His hand hovers over Vanja’s head and he feels the mist on his hand travel and absorb into the young woman’s head.
Bax pulls his hand away slowly, the remaining energy evaporating from his fingertips, and the steam made up of celestial colors no longer pouring from his eye. He leans back and stares at the ground, contemplating his next thoughts.
“I agree with you. We aren’t bonded like my original group was. We’re not a family. Even now, all of us from Aelorean’s Crossing, are so different after being separated for a year. It feels like I don’t know anyway as well as I did.
Which is why I asked you down here. It’s difficult to get everyone together to train, but I want to meet with everyone to discuss their abilities and fighting styles. Once I know what we’re working with, we can pair folks together who would work best. And slowly we can expand those pairs and maybe connect with one another more. If we can start somewhere, anywhere, to bring this group together, even if it’s through combat tactics, then we should do it.”
He sighs heavily, pulling the cloth up from his neck over his eye, using the motion to avoid eye contact. “But that doesn’t make our fight any less awful. I’m sorry I did that. I just…I dunno. I guess part of me thought that’s how you train. Under the stress of life or death.”
He picks at the ground some. Pausing. Unsure if he wants to continue. “It’s similar to how I learned my own abilities. But that doesn’t mean you should learn that way too.”
He pauses again, thinking back on his conversation with Ethan. About telling the group of his torture when he was younger. It would preferable to tell everyone together and get it done with. But after today, he decides that Vanja deserves to know the details.
“Do you…want to meet again tomorrow? At the brothel this time. I’ll come in as a patient. I need to tell you a story…”
Vanja
Vanja had seen Bax’s magic before - the white mist flowing over his hand like fog that first day they had met. Months ago now. Since then, she had seen him heal himself of minor injuries during their time in the woods, even been healed herself by it, but she’d never seen Bax do magic like this, with his eyepatch still around his neck. Vanja sees Bax’s magic rising from his eye - black, and purple and deep blue, pin pricked by the stars. Like the night sky itself, when the aurora isn’t visible to flow through the black with its swaths of green and gold.
It must be how the sky looks in the south, where you can’t see the River, Vanja thinks, absently, as she feels the magic flow into her from Bax’s hand - his fingers brushing against her hair, but only the magic making contact with her scalp.
As Bax’s magic flows, there is a cooling, anesthetic effect. She feels like someone has broken Nusnow flowers over her head, and as the feeling spreads down, the magic seeks out other injuries.The bruise spreading over her cheek and jaw, her bruised ribs, the crack to her ankle where Bax had tripped her up, sent her sprawling. Each cooling, then repairing, the feeling of cold sending goosebumps down her arms.
Bax pulls his hand away, and sits back. Vanja listens to his explanation, and then his apology. His offer to share his story with her.
Vanja leans back against the wall herself, and looks over at her friend. He’s not looking at her, though. His eye patch is back up, his gaze focused on the ground.
“Yeah,” Vanja says, “That would be good. I’d really like to hear whatever you want to share.”
She laughs a little, breaking the tension and shoves Bax, playfully, before standing up. “Don’t pull this sort of shit again, though, not with me.”
Vanja reaches a hand down to Bax, and helps him up too. With her free hand, she brushes some of the dust off of his furs and looks him over, checking her work. She grins, “Don’t worry though. We’re still as good as we were in the woods.”
Bax
Bax reaches out, accepting Vanja’s hand as she helps him to his feet. Vanja seems better after he explained himself, but Bax feels his guilt weighing like a stone in his stomach.
“Never again.” He holds Vanja’s hand and grips tighter shaking her hand up and down. “I promise to not allow myself to do somethin like this again.”
Releasing his grip, he steps away and begins picking up the torches and makeshift weapons.
“You should head out first. I need to get this place cleaned up and moved somewhere else. I’m gonna see about contacting Sav and getting her opinion about another training location. She lived in the sewers for a while, maybe she knows some decent locations that won’t attract much attention. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
Bax watches as Vanja turns and walks away. He grips his stomach, feeling the pit of guilt churn and he has to stop himself from vomiting.
Well that could’ve gone better. You fucking moron. That got way too outta hand!
I can’t stop though. We need to be a team. I have to contact Sav soon…
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