Days pass -- fifteen? Twenty? Maybe it'd be a new holiday on Rephidim, but the people here do not keep the same calendar as the world Lauryn knows.
The language barrier remains frustrating, but slowly she learns more of it, and about the people around her. They call their country "Laos Enosi" and the -- state? province? -- they are in is "Notios". The fox-soldier has a title: Archon. His men call him "Archon Skotonys", which is the correct address for her to use, too. When they introduce themselves, they place their family names first. He calls her "Ria Lauryn", and by the time she figures out that means "Miss Lauryn" and it should be "Miss Eglantine", he's been doing it so long she'd feel foolish correcting him now.
The Laos Enosi have only a few species, from what she can see. Almsot everyone is either human or vulpine. Every now and then she sees a Khatta, but the felines are all low-status, servants or maybe slaves.
The complex Archon Skotonys is at seems to be some kind of military outpost. The soldiers there call it "Myr Riona." They send regular patrols to the hills to the west. Archon Skotonys sometimes goes on those patrols, but mostly he stays at the outpost, drilling soldiers, engaging in military exercises, reviewing paperwork.
Which is just as well, from Lauryn's perspective, because the Archon is the only one who doesn't seem to dislike and fear her. The people here avoid her gaze and mutter when she walks past. The nightmares eased after the first day, but they haven't stopped. Archon Skotonys sleeps in a room next to her, and when she rouses to a waking nightmare, she finds he is there, calmly doing battle with the demons and ghosts that haunt her. Once, when he's gone on patrol for two days without her, the dreams come and he ... isn't there.
That doesn't go well.
After that, Skotonys is not gone for more than a day at a time.
Everyone gets a day off once every ten days; for most people it's the same day, but some have different breaks. Skotonys takes her with him on his first day off. He has paper-and-wood constructs at the end of very long sturdy strings, and he shows her how to hold them and run with them behind her, to make them fly into the air. It's strange to watch the brightly-colored creations hover on the wind, tethered and yet ... free. Some of them are abstract, but one looks like a creen with a long wriggling tail, and another like a fiery-winged bird.
Lauryn doesn't understand why she's there, or what the soldiers expect of her. They don't lock her up like the Asylum had. She's free to go -- but where would she go? She's not a warrior, but no one asks her to learn to fight, even though about a quarter of the soldiers are females (all foxes). When she asks Skotonys, she can't follow most of his explanation. All she can piece together is that he's waiting on orders about her. Orders for what?
All in all, life has become even harder to understand, a feat Lauryn thought impossible a month ago. Following Archon Skotonys around is like a strange waking dream. And like a dream, it often defies explaination. She isn't sure it isn't all a dream, or something equally as unreal, but one thing she is sure of is that she likes the Archon. Certainly, she doubts she understands him, but just the fact that he's there for her is far and away enough for her to like him. Following him, she feels safer, and safe is a commodity as rare as gold in her world.
She is sitting in his office this morning, eating one of their normal breakfasts: a thick chunky paste of spiced starchy vegetables mixed with shreads of meet, scooped up and eaten with long sticks of cracker-ish bread. He has the same food, but he's not eating; instead, Skotonys is reading the messages that arrived this morning.
As she eats, Lauryn finds herself feeling mistaken; there is another thing she likes about this place: the food. She enjoys this pasty meal, with its bits of meat and its funny bread. She can't imagine what he step-mother would think of eating with her hands on the food, but that just makes eating it all the more pleasurable. Every so often, she glances at Archon as she reads, assuming whatever orders he has recieved must be more important than usual.
She finds him looking back at her, his whiskers tilted back and closer to his face as they often are when he's considering something carefully. He curls up the paper he'd been reading and puts it back into the message tube. "Ria Lauryn," he begins. He speaks slowly and carefully, but she still misses several words in the next sentance. What she catches are "where" and isityros -- the word he uses when describing the nightmare things tht take physical walking form around her -- and her name again.
He wants to know where the nightmares are? Lauryn is surprised she never considered where they are when they're not with her. The mage that brought her from Rephidim said that they are 'manifestations of the arcane,' or some-such, but she found him to be very vague. Still, he did show her a few things, things he forbade her from ever using when he was not in her presence -- something about how she did it being 'unacceptable within the Collegia' and outright dangerous.
On the other hand, he's dead now. /And it's /still/ not my fault,/ Lauryn assures herself. Turning back to the matter at hand, she thinks a moment, and then decides to break taboo. If the Archon wasn't here, she'd have much greater reservations about attempting such an act, but she feels relatively safe with him here. /But how to do it? And what to call?/ It always seemed easiest to conjure something that made her wince, as if her own pain at an idea were reagent to her magic working./
After a moment of thought, Lauryb raises a finger, indicating tge man should wait. She makes herself comfortable, then begins digging her nails in to her palms, brow narrowing. Pain always helped. Something terrible, something terrible. Her hands ache, and then it strikes her -- blood. Blood, blood ... let there be blood. She feels the swirl of the unknowable wind of magic stir ...
The archon watches her with his usual aura of calm. When the tang of blood hits the air, though, his lips curls back in a vulpine frown. He shakes his head at her, as blood runs to the corners of her clenched hands. A fat droplet forms at the edge of her fist, and instead of falling, it swells, then distorts. In a moment, it's a huge blobby leech, clinging to each hand. A round sucker mouth ringed with teeth pulls back from her left hand and squirms up her arm.
Lauryn tries not to pay attention to the leech, assuring herself -- as the mage had before -- these are her doing. I made it, didn't I? It's horrible and -- she glances at it, ears shooting up as she recoils -- ugh! Ugh, it's still mine. It's still mine. Like a book or doll I own. Like ... like ... The absurdity of it all suddenly makes her laugh, her fear at her own creation, how bizarre that is, and how impossible the situation. Horrors from nothing, made from me -- I scare myself! The laughter is long unhinged, she even reaches over and pats the leech, before lowering her arm to let it crawl about on its own.
The archon stares at her, appalled and revulsed. His left hand rests on the hilt of the shorter of his two swords. The leech squirms about, then latches on to a suddenly bare spot of flesh on the inside of her wrist.
"That's it, let the blood flow. All the badness will come out with it." The tone is intended to be soothing, but it comes out more of a cackle, malignant and predatory. "Let the blood flow."
The doctor is standing at her elbow, with a bucket full of leeches hung over one arm and a leech held in each hand. He's a Korv, and he watches her with one eye, head tilted.
When she finally stops laughing, Lauryn finds herself staring at her arm where the leech has attached itself. Then teh doctor comes, and her eyes widen. This isn't what I wanted, she decides, remembering this was her doing, but that this certainly wasn't her intent. Her gaze flicks to try and find the Archon, and she cries out, "Archon Skotonys, help me!"
The doctor lowers one of the leeches to attach it to her other arm. Then he turns to the archon. "Oh, does he need treatment, too?"
The archon doesn't reply: he half-jumps up into a crouch, drawing both swords. He hits the doctor's hand with one of them, sending the bucket flying and scattering leeches across the room. They squirm and wriggle, trying to get to the people, while the doctor evades the archon's next swing and tries to attach the other leech to him. "Now, now, now. You won't get any better if you keep fighting the treatment like that."
Breathing rapidly, Lauryn tries to remember what the mage said about these creations. Didn't he say I could stop them, or try to? Didn't he say I made them, that they're somehow from me and of me? That I should have control?// Control. She watches the Archon, with his seemingly unlimited courage and tight control of his weapons. His weapons, he knows how to use them ... The thought sparks another memory, something Mage de Lis said about control and usage. He said I'd come to know how to control myself, then are these my weapons? She eyes the leeches, finding them much unlike any sword -- swords don't try and get you if you don't know how to use them. Ugh! I must try, focus like he taught me. Stupid doctor ... you should ... your should ... Treat yourself!
The leeches turn a little. They stop squirming towards the archon and Lauryn, and head for the doctor instead. "You'll feel much better after this," the doctor is saying to Skotonys. The archon tries to stab him, but he somehow misses. The doctor tries to plant the leech on the fox's neck, but he jerks out of reach as well.
Then leeches starts squirming up the doctor's legs. He looks down in confusion. "What? What? I'm not sick!"
When the leeches respond to her direction, Lauryn feels a rush of inspiration, of inner strength. /Of /course,// she remarks to herself, /I didn't give them anything to /do./ I don't know /why/ they came after us, but they were /waiting./ "You /are/ sick," Lauryn suddenly says, quietly, then louder again. "A /sick/ man! Your blood is the sickest of all, why shouldn't you feed them? Feed them! FEED THEM!" She waves a hand at the apparition, goading them on. The twinge in her heart of directing them at another creature -- real or no -- tells her it must be working. /There is no horror without pain, I see, I see!/
The leeches swarm over the doctor in a frenzy. They seem to be multiplying, more and more of them, until he's completely engulfed by them. Wings flutter and beat uselessly, trying to dislodge them but only becoming weighted down by leeches themselves. The doctor opens his beak to protest, and leeches fill his mouth. He topples over, covered in squirming predators, and is still. Blood scents the air, with the quiet sucking sounds of the feeding leeches. The archon's face wears a silent snarl of revulsion.
And it's done ... Lauryn stares at her work, unsure what to think about it. There's revulsion, oh yes. The revulsion at the display is simple enough, but more complex is the part of her that recoils from the fact that it is her doing. Guilt strikes her, but also accomplishment. It's a strange thing, she thinks, to feel both joy and horror at one has done. Finally, there is the strange sense of apathy, the emotion that lest her stare on, even as she squirms inside. The motion that shows her the keys to her control: cruelty, direction, pain, terror, and revulsion. The keys are there before her, in her mind, beckoning her to use them even as they cut her for grasping them. She studies the scene a moment more, then decides there is nothing else to do. Go away now. "Go awaw. Shoo, shoo." Her voice is crooing, almost maternal.
Some of the leeches raise their heads, as if considering her, debating whether or not to obey. But they fade, along with the rest, until nothing remains. Archon Skotonys's eyes are narrowed as he watches them vanish. Then his gaze goes back to her, and his expression is closed in and hard to read. There's something awful in that expression; in the way he's looking at her as if she might be one of the nightmares, too.
When Lauryn turns to meet the man's gaze, she's smiling. But the smile dies when she looks in his eyes. To see that look, that same look that so many others have given her! That hateful look that makes her feel less than a person, less than anything. Her one friend, who almost smiled when she bowed and took her to fly the kites. Her one friend! All she can do is stare at him, even as her mind screams betrayal and her heart weeps. Isn't this what he wanted?
Archon Skotonys straightens and cleans his still-clean swords, automatically. He sheathes them. When he speaks, it's in the same calm tone he always uses. Again, she only understands about half of what he says: "isityros Lauren" "not accident?" "not thirys Lauren?" and something else, and her name again. She's not sure what 'thirys' means, but she can pick it out easily -- she's heard people say it a bunch of times around her but the archon hasn't been able to explain it to her.
Lauryn's heart quavers, her mind threatening to slam the door between her and this man who was so nice to her. But now, she no longer knows if he's nice -- or if he has becomes like the others. How she hates the others for hating her. "Isityros," she replies. She points at him, then at herself, and repeats what she took as a request for the horrors earlier. Then, she cocks her head to the side, and after search for words, adding, "food" is Laos, followed by a point at her head, and then the word for requesting. "Isityros," she then repeats.
Skotonys listens carefully, then shakes his head. He speaks with slow deliberation, and this time she recognizes all of the words: "Ria Lauren request isityros?" She's not sure what tense 'request' is in, though; she doesn't understand Laosian tenses at all.
The continued conversation helsp to ease Lauryn's mind, and she finds herself relaxing somewhat. The slight of earlier is till fresh, but she holds out hope maybe all is not lost. Attempting to answer, she tries another direction. This time she uses another familiar word, "come," which the Archon has said innumerable times when he wants her to follow her. "Come isityros, come Lauryn, accident." She ten flips the words around some, to offer a double meaning to explain her strange relationship with the nightmares. "Come Lauryn, come isityros, not accident."
The archon relaxes to a degree as well, although he still looks wary. He nods, and gestures for her to sit again as he does the same. Instead of asking another question, he starts into a language lesson.
That's probably safer anyway.
Wary herself, Lauryn sits down and begins the lesson without resistance. Is it too much to hope anyone will accept me? The young woman certainly doesn't know, but she'll cling to the chance this man might at least continue to keep her company. As the lesson continues on, she secretly mulls over what happened, and the nature of what she had done. If she learned anything, is that her abilities may be harnessed with effort, but also that even with some control, there are many ways they can still do harm. A dark and wicked sword at her belt, feeding off of fear and pain, refusing to leave her, wielding itself if she refuses to do so. I must find his control, she decides, even as she wonders at what else it may cost her.