Chapter Six

Shuka woke up well past noon with a body that still ached from the events of the night before. She was no stranger to exercise but running for several hours straight in the middle of the night would make anyone tired. Looking around she saw Xorvos sitting at the edge of the camp looking over the hill they were hiding behind and into the direction of the village they ran from. She got up and walked over to him hoping that a little conversation would distract her from how crappy she felt.

“Hey, where’s Ralisdor?”

“He was up all night, or day I suppose, keeping watch for us while we slept. He went to bed himself around half an hour ago after I woke up and told me to wake him if anything goes wrong.”

“Wait, was he up all night keeping watch for us? That must have sucked, I’ll make sure to thank him when he wakes up.”

“yeah, he wasn’t exactly chipper when I was talking to him. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone that tired before in my life.”

I am a little worried about how much time we will be losing with all of us sleeping at different times but at least we are alive. Ralisdor saved my life yesterday so the least I can do is let him get all the rest he needs. And besides, I’ve got Xorvos to keep me company so waiting around for him to wake up won’t be that bad.

Xorvos seemed to be having much less serene thoughts and was fidgeting anxiously with a concerned look on his face. Shuka didn’t have to wonder what he was thinking about for long though because he started speaking right after she noticed.

“Do you think we did the right thing yesterday? I can’t help but think that we just left things worse than when we started.”

“What do you mean? I mean sure, things could have gone a bit better, but we got him out and he probably got away thanks to Ralisdor.”

“But we never found out why he was arrested. For all we know we just let a mass murderer on the lose. And how do we even know he’s going to survive more than a few days now that he’s freed. All he had was his cloths and he was already half starved to death when he ran of into the wilderness on his own.”

“Well… yeah that’s pretty bad. But it’s not your fault things ended up this way. Neither of us could have known he would have reacted so badly to his rescue. And besides, he’s an elf so even half starved to death he’s still probably better in the wild than both of us combined.”

To Shuka’s surprise, her words only seemed to anger her friend instead of comfort him like they were supposed to.

“So what am I just supposed to say ‘it’s probably fine’ and move on? It may not be our fault, but we could still have done better.”

“I was just trying to cheer you up, its not like I’m not worried either I just don’t want you to blame yourself for this.”

“You’re right, I shouldn’t blame myself for this. After all, it was you’re fault he ran in the first place.”

He blames ME for this? There is no way this is my fault.

“You were the one carrying him, he didn’t even know I was there when he freaked out. How do you know he didn’t freak out because he was being manhandled by some invisible giant?”

“Yes, well I am sure he would have reacted a lot more rationally if your curse wasn’t making things worse.

“Oh, I’m so sorry my curse is so inconvenient for you, I’ll just turn it of if you don’t like it so much.”

Xorvos wasn’t appreciating the sarcasm in her tone but before he could reply he felt a sharp pain in the back of the head. Ralisdor had shot a weak arcane bolt at his two load companions and was looking at them with an irate glare.

“Would you both just SHUT UP! I’m trying to sleep here but all I can hear is you to idiots arguing. If you want to argue do it after I wake up.”

And with that he laid back down in his bedroll and hoped to whatever gods he believed in they would stay quite just long enough for him to not have to listen to them anymore. Thankfully, for him at least, they took the hint and begrudgingly moved to opposite ends of the camp and stayed silent for the rest of the day.

*

The sun had already fallen by the time Ralisdor woke up. He was still very tired but decided he had already wasted enough time and got up.

“Alright we’ve stayed here far too long already, help me pack up we’re leaving.”

Both Shuka and Xorvos turned around in surprise, not having heard him wake up, but quickly started packing up their makeshift camp. You could only spend so long sitting in one spot without getting sick of it so they were both eager to have something to do. Shuka’s anger had faded over the hours but she had not forgotten the argument she had with Xorvos. With no one to talk to, the anger was quickly replaced with boredom.

I live alone so I’m used to not talking to people for a while but at least I have things to do at home. Out here the only pass time is keeping a eye out for people trying to kill me.

She saw one or two people during the first hour or so, but they didn’t seem to notice her and just moved on. She couldn’t tell from the inside but Shuka was fairly sure Ralisdor had set up an illusion before he fell asleep. There weren’t many illusions that could persist through sleep, but Ralisdor had plenty of time to prepare during the night when he was still awake. Shuka was still pretty bored and she was rather curious, so she decided to ask Ralisdor himself while she helped him pack things up.

“Hey, you put an illusion around the camp before you fell asleep right? How did you get it to stay while you weren’t awake?”

“Oh that? I used this.”

As he was talking, Ralisdor picked up a smooth stone with a glowing blue arcane rune on it. Arcane runes were mostly used in enchanting and Shuka wasn’t much of an enchanter, so she had no idea what the rune meant, but it did look pretty cool at least.

“This is an illusion stone. It allows you to bind an illusion to it and it will sustain that illusion on its own without the need for me to concentrate on it. Sadly, it also has a few problems to go with its utility. First of all, you can’t change the illusion after its been set, the best you could do is stop the illusion completely and start over from scratch so its not very good in dynamic environments.”

That sounds pretty bad, but considering one of the main benefits of the stone was that you don’t have to be aware of what’s happening around your illusion while its up, it seems like a problem that wouldn’t actually come up that often.

“The second problem is it takes significantly longer to bind an illusion to the stone than it does to cast the illusion normally so if you’re in a rush it won’t do you any good. And lastly you have to supply it with enough mana to last the entire duration of the illusion all at once. Normally when sustaining a long term illusion you can use the mana you naturally generate over time to at least partially offset the cost of keeping it up, but with the stone you have to have all of that mana all at once when you cast the spell. This is especially limiting when you consider the fact that the stone itself can only store so much mana so there is a hard limit with how ambitious you can get with it.”

Even with all it’s problems that still sounds pretty useful. Maybe a bit situational but I can see myself using it. I guess that why Ralisdor has it.

“Does it allow you to put an illusion over yourself and have it concentrate on that while you focus on other stuff?”

“Sadly no. Since you can not change the shape of the illusion it has to be either static or a repeating animation like a fire. An illusion placed over your body needs to be able to move with your body which the stone is not capable of doing.”

“That’s a shame. I still haven’t been able to disguise myself without putting all of my effort into maintaining it so I thought this might help with that.”

I have been working on that spell for the last few weeks with barely any progress. I can pretty consistently cast the spell by now but if I lose my focus for even a split second it disappears.

“If you are having trouble maintaining it you should practice while we are resting on the journey to Rockmarsh. It might be good to practice simpler illusions while we are riding too just to get you used to concentrating on two things at once.”

“Still giving me homework after I’ve been horribly cursed? You’re worse than the witch.”

Ralisdor gave a light chuckle at her lighthearted comment and replied in a similar tone.

“Woe be she who must partake in the horrid activity of ‘practicing.’ Truly I must be the worst sort of villain imaginable.”

As the two of them were laughing Xorvos walked by with a scowl on his face and spoke bitterly

“You two seem to be enjoying yourselves. Have you already forgotten what happened yesterday? A person could be dead because of us and you’re doing nothing but telling jokes.”

That put a bit of a damper on the mood. Both Shuka and Ralisdor stopped laughing and looked towards Xorvos a bit more serious than before. The comments made Shuka remember the night before and the argument they had after and found herself in an unpleasant mood.

I was trying not to think about the elf but I guess that’s been ruined now. It’s almost as if he wants me to be unhappy.

Ralisdor must have noticed her glaring at Xorvos because he quickly entered the conversation before any insults could be thrown.

“What exactly happened last night? I know something went wrong but I have not gotten the details yet.”

No one wanted to answer that question, but it had to be answered eventually so it was Shuka who spoke up. She owed him that much at least.

“Everything was going as planned but when we were taking him to the meeting point, he woke up and thought we were kidnapping him.”

“Woke up? Was he asleep?”

“Yeah, he was sleeping when we found him. We didn’t really have the time to explain the situation to him in the cell, so we just decided to just wake him up after we get somewhere safe.”

Xorvos was listening from the side and decided to add to the story. Apparently, he saw it differently.

“I had considered he would wake up while I was carrying him, but I was prepared to keep him quiet while in the town. I may have relaxed a bit after we left but I didn’t think he would be quite so loud.”

He looked ashamed as he was giving his explanation.

Hopefully Ralisdor won’t blame him too much, after all how was he supposed to know he would react that way..

“It’s not really his fault. If it wasn’t for my curse, then he would never have reacted that way.”

“You’re right. Things would have gone so much better if you weren’t there, but I guess you never really cared about him in the first place.”

Shuka was taken aback by the bitterness in his voice.

Is he seriously still angry about that? Blame the curse not me.

“Well, what am I supposed to do? Chase him down and rescue him by force? if he doesn’t want our help then he can just see how well he does on his own.”

“It was a misunderstanding. If we just explained the situation then I’m sure he would have been cooperative.”

“but instead he almost got all of us killed. I got him out of that cell but if that’s how he is going to treat us then that’s all he’s going to get!”

Xorvos was seething with anger now and Shuka wasn’t that much calmer than him now. Ralisdor could see the argument getting out of control so he stepped in between them before things got any worse.

“STOP! You are both acting like children and I have had enough. Neither of you are at fault for what happened it was simply bad luck.”

“But what about the elf?” Xorvos asked. “Aren’t you worried about him? He is stranded in the wilderness alone and without any food, he could starve to death.”

“The only elves around these parts are either wood elves or swamp elves and both of them are perfectly capable of surviving in the wild. Even if he is not a swamp or wood elf then he is a traveler who decided to come all the way here in the middle of nowhere alone which means he probably knows at least the basics of survival. Either way I am not worried about him.”

Xorvos was still angry but he didn’t give a response back to Ralisdor’s argument. It seems he didn’t want to admit he was wrong but couldn’t prove he was right either. Eventually he just turned away in defeat. Shuka smiled a bit at the sight of Xorvos in defeat, but the smile didn’t last long. Xorvos was still her friend after all. Ralisdor turned to her now and judging by his expression he wasn’t going to congratulate her for winning the argument. Not that she was the one that won it anyway.

“What were you thinking? I will give you some slack because he started the argument but why did you have to continue it?”

Shuka looked away in shame.

“Sorry. It just took me by surprise. I’ve never seen him get that worked up before, although I guess there isn’t much to get worked up over in boring old Rainsburg. I’ll try to keep my emotions under control next time.”

Ralisdor seemed satisfied with that answer and continued packing up the camp. Soon after they were all once again travelling towards the city of Rockmarsh.