A/N: Hey, guys! Normally, I'd hold off until Saturday morning to post this, but I'm going to be busy the rest of the week and won't be able to do much posting, so here you guys go, a little ahead of schedule! Coming in at 16,673 words, it's not the longest episode ever, but it's still on the longer end!
In this episode, we get more running, a special marching cadence, and a few big reveals. Plus some bitter-sweet and happy squad feels at the end.
There are only two main episodes left in Act III, then we'll be back into the war with Act IV. I've already got a lot of Episode 16 written, though if past experience is any indication, it'll probably still double in word count from where I'm at now by the time I finish fleshing all the scenes out (and I'll always have a few unexpected scenes crop up before I'm done). How soon that'll all be done is still hard to say. Work is still keeping me pretty busy, and every time I think things are going to ease up or settle down and give me more free time, it doesn't.
On another note, I'd like to hear from you guys on what brought you to RH, or how you heard about the story, and what some of your favorite parts of it are so far. I can't promise I'll give you more of everything you love (and I can't please everyone), but knowing what you guys enjoy, and what you think is good helps me know what I'm doing right, and what I can focus on to continue doing good. I really look forward to hearing your feedback!
Here is the
Patreon post for anyone who wants it in one solid block. Now, without further ado, what you're all here for:
Retreat, Hell – Episode 15
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“Give me that old Marine Corps Spirit!”
“GIVE ME THAT OLD MARINE CORPS SPIRIT!”
“’Cause it’s good enough for me!”
“’CAUSE IT’S GOOD ENOUGH FOR ME!”
“It was good for Chesty Puller!”
“IT WAS GOOD FOR CHESTY PULLER!”
These people run too gods damned much! Rinn panted as the battalion thundered around the base on their morning death march.
And oh, look, here we are, running past our barracks again, getting our hopes up just to dash them… He stifled a whine.
At least today they’re cutting the run short for helicopter training. When this is all over and done with, I don’t ever want to run again…
***
“Hahahaha! And the looks on their faces when we went evasive!” Edison kissed his fingertips and flared his hand as he backed through the bunk room door. “Perfection!”
“Nah, the best part was old Shields here,” Kawalksi threw a heavy arm around Rinn’s shoulders, nearly causing him to stagger into the door frame. “He was all stony faced, like, ‘I’ve done this before, this is nothing exciting,’” Kawalski said, putting on a fake deep voice. “Even as the huey went sideways!”
“I was trying not to throw up…” Rinn admitted, flicking an ear at Kawalski as he trudged back to his rack, sore, tired, and trying to pretend that his legs weren’t all wobbly after the day’s aerial adventures.
“Yeah, what’s the straight-horned one with all the “that’s what she said” jokes, Tyaytyay?”
“Tyehtyeh,” Rinn corrected.
Kimber gave him a “whatever” wave. “Yeah, him. He puked his guts out all over the tarmac three feet after he got out when we landed.”
“Ha! He did better than old Stuffy McStuffyface, threw up in mid-air!” Kawalski chuckled. “Projectile vomited when we went evasive! Though, we were horizontal at the time, so it mostly just went straight out the door!”
“Mostly my ass!” Kimber said. “I was sitting at the down door when he spewed! He puked all over the back of my helmet!”
“Hahaha, yeah, it was great!” Kawalski grinned. “You should probably go clean that off, though…”
“Yeah, no shit.”
Rinn sighed as he popped his boots off, wriggling his toes and savoring their freedom. The human boots fit better than any other pair of boots he had ever been issued, and they had mostly broken in by this point, but they were still combat boots, and didn’t quite match his foot shape. He pulled his shower gear out of his pack, looking forward to a hot soak, only to watch a parade of four Marines scramble past, already half undressed and dibsing the showers first.
He sighed, setting his shower kit at the end of his rack before digging out a pen and notebook.
It’s probably best to go last, anyway, now that we get more than five whole minutes of hot water… More time to soak.
“More English lessons?” Bradford asked, leaning over to look at his notebook as he flipped it open.
“Yeh,” he yipped, still amused the Gyani word for ‘yes’ was so close to an informal English word for the same.
“And what’s the word of the day?”
“What is the word for…” he frowned. “It is a place in a home where you build a fire…”
“A fireplace?” she asked.
He flicked an annoyed ear at her.
Of course that would be a word they used… “Yes, but… no, that is not the meaning I’m looking for.”
“Mantle?”
He shook his head. “No, that’s not it, either. The place where the fire is, the foundation, the
hearth.”
“The hearth?” she asked, and he sighed.
I should have just led with the word. The words were different, but the meanings were identical. Not everything translated so well, but many words did. “Yes, that is the word. Hirth…”
“
Hearth,” she said, emphasizing the vowel sound.
“Hyarth.”
“No, no y, stop putting y’s in everything.”
“YI Dyon’t knyow whyat you myean,” he yipped in heavily accented English, flicking an ear at her and sticking out his tongue.
She laughed, then grabbed her pillow and swung it at his head, barely missing as he fell to the side. “Now try it again, you guber.”
“Ha-arth,” he said, drawing the vowel out as he sat up. “Harth.”
“Close enough,” she said, chuckling.
He flicked his ears up with a smile, and jotted down the phonetic spelling in Gyani.
“How did you say your word for it?”
“Sfyisch.”
“Ssfayeesh.”
“No, sfyisch.”
“Sfwitch?”
“No, it’s not a hard tch, it’s a softer sch.” He considered for a moment. “It’s like a hissing tch. And its yi,” he yipped the short vowel sound, “Not uuhhhhwwweeeee. Stop flapping your big, fat lips.”
“Hey, you got lips, too, dumbass!”
“Yeah, but they’re not so fat and poofy, like yours!” He flicked his ears at her. “You look like you got stung by a bee.” He flicked an ear to the side. “Or a dozen.”
This time, the pillow did catch his head, and sent him flopping to his rack. “Oof.”
“Who’s got big lips now, bitch!” she said, puffing her chest out and swaying her head back and forth.
“I don’t know, was that your lips or your pillow you hit me with,” he said, sticking his tongue out at her, promptly earning himself another bonk. “Oof.”
“And just for that, you’re gonna have to wait until I’m done with the shower,” she said, hopping up and snagging her toiletries bag as a gaggle of half-dressed Marines chased each other out of the head.
Rinn chuckled as he tossed her pillow back on her rack and sat back up.
That’s just more time for me to soak…
“Hey, have you guys seen my Switch controllers?” Kimber asked, digging through his pack. “I can’t find them anywhere.”
“Where’d you have them last?” Dubois asked, not even looking up from the boot he was cleaning.
“I could have sworn I put them back in this pocket,” he said, tapping a pouch on his pack. “That’s where I keep them, but they’re not anywhere…”
“You can borrow mine,” Edison said, once again performing surgery on the squad’s GoPro. He gestured absently at his pack. “They’re in the clip-on bag, somewhere…”
“Thanks, man, but… I wanna find
mine.”
“D’you think someone might’ve, like, grabbed ‘em by mistake, brah?” Stevens said, pulling on a clean shirt.
“Or not by mistake?” Miller asked.
“Yeah,” Elder said, looking up from his phone. “We had that platoon thief a while back, remember?”
“Dude, that’s why you need to carve your name into them,” Davies said, lying on his rack playing his own Switch. He lifted his hands to show his name carved into the same kind of controllers Rinn had seen Kimber using. “That’s what I did with mine.”
“I
had my name on them, man, in sharpie.”
“Yeah, but sharpie can come off,” Edison said, still focused on the GoPro. “Alcohol or a dry-erase marker can do the trick.”
Kimber grumbled something, and started expanding his search area.
“Hey, Shields,” Kawalski said, dropping down next to him. He only had his boxers on, and was still a little damp from the shower. “Teach me more keshmin swear words! How do you say fucknugget?”
Rinn raised an ear and an eyebrow at him. “We don’t have that one.”
“Well, come on, then, what else have you got? I’ve got a new one for you! ‘Twat!’” Kawalski grinned. “Means ‘pussy’ in English English.”
Rinn flicked his ear. “Is that how you use your words words, when walking down the street street?”
Kawalski laughed. “No, fuck face, it’s English spoken by the English, as opposed to real English spoken by Americans.”
Rinn paused, pen in mid-air, and stared straight ahead for a moment. “Wot?”
“Kawalski, you dumbass, the English
invented the English language,” Dubois said. Rinn didn’t even need to look at him, he could hear the eye-roll.
“Guys! Guys!” Gomez stuck his head out of their supply fort. “I found some boxes we missed! They’re full of fucking duct tape!”
“No shit?” Kawalski said, immediately distracted by the prospect of creative acquisition. “How much?”
“I dunno how we missed it, hoss, there’s boxes and
boxes of this stuff! Different colors, too!”
“Sweet! Grab us all a roll! Jabs, too!” Kawalski paused, then stood up. “What all colors are there?”
“Dunno yet, I haven’t gone through all the boxes, but there’s a few at least.”
“Lemme see…” Kawalski disappeared into the fort. “How the hell did we miss all this… Oh, I see, it got buried behind the fuck tent.”
Dubois looked up. “Why do you have a fuck tent?!”
“Dude, you
always need a fuck tent!”
“Who the fuck are you fucking!?”
“Your mother! Heheheh!”
***
Rinn pulled the earmuffs off his head as the firing line was declared cold. The new earmuffs they had been given had deeper cups with more room for his ears, but they still didn’t fit well.
We’ll have to talk to somebody about getting some properly designed for us, he thought as he trudged down range to collect his targets. The Marines had scrounged up a few more of their pop-up metal targets for the “new” range, but they were mostly still shooting at paper targets tacked to wooden frames.
Back at the tables behind the firing line, Rinn looked over the keshmin targets with a pleased quirk to his ears. Their scores were not anything the Marines would consider
good, by any means, but even the grizzled Gunnery Sergeant running the range begrudgingly nodded his approval at them being
passable. Barely.
Not bad at all, for what little training we’ve managed to fit in around everything else. Lord Anyo is even showing a particular knack for the weapons, at least on the fixed range. Rinn was pleased to note that his own scores had surpassed Anyo’s on the dynamic range, much to the Knight Captain’s chagrin.
Lunch consisted of MREs at the range, and Rinn once again got to demonstrate his “advanced knowledge” of human equipment to the other keshmin, and warned them away from the less favorable MREs.
Not that I’ve actually tried
many of them, but our pallets seem to match close enough that I’ll take the Marines at their word.
The lunch break was short, barely enough time to heat the food and gulp it down, before they were hurried off to the next event on the range, this one pushing the artificers to their magical limits.
“Cease fire! Cease fiiire!”
Rinn panted, overheated and out of breath, as he lowered his stave. The targets down range were shredded, both by gunfire and spellfire, but this wasn’t a measure of accuracy.
“Most impressive, Ahyat,” Yeshai said as Rinn stepped back from the firing line. “How many armor enhancements were you able to maintain?”
“All twelve of them, Your Grace,” Rinn said, still trying to catch his breath. “But I couldn’t keep up with the machine guns. I could barely keep up with one, nevermind three!” He shook his head, making sure to close his mouth to keep his tongue from lolling, though his ears still flopped a bit. “The best I could do was one enhancement every fifth or sixth shot with two. One in a dozen with three.”
Yeshai snorted. “No worse than anyone else so far, and you did it while maintaining all armor enhancements, a very fine shield, and respectable spellfire of your own.” He flicked an ear. “Any of us might surpass you in single skills, but on the whole, I’d dare say you’re the best of us, and by no small margin.”
“You honor me, your grace,” Rinn said, giving him a bow.
“Your service honors the kingdom,” Yeshai replied, dipping his head in return.
Straightening, Rinn couldn’t miss Anyo glaring at him, but he pointedly ignored the Earl. Sinyan had gone before Rinn, but Anyo had gone before him, and all but confirmed Rinn’s suspicions that the Knight Captain was a sparker.
“And who’s our next contestant?” Gunnery Sergeant Valdez called as Rinn flopped down next to Bradford, happily guzzling the bottle of water she handed him.
“Tyehtyeh, that’s you!” Yenyed called, glaring at the oblivious artificer.
“Oh, right!” Tyehtyeh said, looking up from the spellstructs he had been studying. He barely even put on his false-deep voice.
“Oh, here we go…” Bradford muttered, rolling her eyes.
“Don’t be spiteful,” Rinn said, flicking her ear with his tail. She swiped at the offending appendage and tried to grab it, but he quickly snatched it out of her reach. “He’s made incredlbe progress these last two weeks. He hasn’t admitted it, but I’m fairly certain he’s had no formal education as an artificer, or even at all.”
She raised an eyebrow at him. “So his bluster’s all just a show, deflecting from his … ignorance?”
He dipped his head with an affirmative ear flick. “And the more I give him to study, the less he remembers to put on the act.”
“Huh…” Bradford said, giving Tyehtyeh a newly appraising look.
“Line ready?” Valdez called out. “Shooter’s stand-by! FIIIRE!”
Tyehtyeh immediately popped up a shield and sent a triple burst of tight, powerful firebursts down range, before the Marines could rack their bolts and engage. Brief flashes of light rolled down the line as armor enhancements went up.
He still needs to kill that startup flare, but at least he’s cut out the continual glow, and his efficiency is a hundred fold better. He’s barely leaking any mana!
Tyehtyeh hesitated as the rifles opened up, several rounds zipping down range unseen. He rolled his ears, shifted his feet, and every single shot became a visible bolt, glowing as it snapped down range.
More rifles opened up, then a machine gun, then two, then tree. Rinn’s ears shot up under his earmuffs. Every single round glowed.
Then Tyehtyeh brought his stave to bear and let off a barrage that made Rinn’s spellfire look like a peashooter.
“CEASE FIRE! CEASE FIIRE!” Valdez called as the targets disappeared into several plumes of splinters and smoke.
“Holy shit!” Bradford said. “He hits like an artillery piece!”
Rinn looked at her, then to Tyehtyeh, then to Yeshai and the other keshmin. A small part of his mind was pleased to note that he wasn’t the only one whose jaw was hanging open.
“Did I mess up again?” Tyehtyeh asked, sheepishly scratching at the base of a horn.
Yeshai shook his head, the first to collect himself. “No. No, you didn’t.” He looked at Rinn, forcing the field artificer to collect himself. “Second Artificer, you wouldn’t happen to have a metering artifice in your repertoire, would you?”
He cocked an ear to the side, wondering what the Duke was getting at, before it clicked. “Yes, your grace, I do.…” he stood up, retrieving his stave, and walked over to Tyehtyeh with Yeshai. The Marines and other nobles muttered amongst themselves in their separate groups as Tyehtyeh squirmed under the unexpected attention.
“Second Artificer Tyehtyeh, have you ever been officially metered?” Yeshai asked, stopping in front of him.
“Well, ah, no, Your Grace,” Tyehtyeh said, scratching at the base of a horn. “Militia really only ever cared that I could sling spells, didn’t much care for any of the details.”
“I suspected as much,” Yeshai said, dipping his head in a small nod. He flicked an ear at Rinn, then back to Tyehtyeh. “Second Artificer Ahyat, if you would be so kind.”
Rinn nodded and stepped forward, his stave held low in one hand. He didn’t really need it to run this particular artifice, but he suspected the extra precision and peak range it allowed would be useful.
“What’s this, then?” Valdez asked, stepping up to the line.
“The lad has never been officially metered,” Yeshai said, waving a hand at Tyehtyeh, an exaggerated gesture probably for the human’s benefit. “He has no idea how powerful he actually is. We’re about to find out.”
“Will this hurt?” Tyehtyeh asked, his ears nervously twitching back.
“Of course not,” Rinn said. “You don’t even really need to do anything. Just passively channel a mana stream.” He paused. “Down range, if you please.”
“Right,” Tyehtyeh said, turning to point a hand down range. Rinn brought up the metering artifice, set so the measurements were visible in the air. At first, there was nothing, then Tyehtyeh closed his eyes and everything spiked.
“Above and below…” Yeshai muttered as Rinn scrabbled to shift the ranges the meter was displaying. Tyehtyeh blew past the maximum levels. Twice. “You’re a gods-damned savant!”
“What?!” Tyehtyeh squeaked, spinning around and cutting off the mana stream.
“Not just a savant,” Rinn said, his eyes and ears locked on the measurements his artifice was still displaying. “Your Grace, he’s one of the most powerful savants to ever live.”
“What?!” Tyehtyeh said again, this time with a little less squeak. “That can’t be right…”
Yeshai, turned to Valdez. “Gunnery Sergeant, we are done here for today. We need to do a complete examination and assessment of Second Artificer Tyehtyeh’s abilities, and I need to write to the King.”
****
Scrubbing her face, Bradford trudged around the corner of a building on her way back to the barracks, after dark, and smacked right into someone. “Oh, shit!” she said, stumbling back while fumbling out to catch the other person before they fell.
Bradford kept her balance. The other person he the ground with a yipped, “Oof.”
Looking down, horrified at her clumsy inattentiveness, she found Rinn glaring up at her. “I was hoping to run into you on my way back, but I didn’t mean for you to take it
literally!”
She laughed, reaching down to help him up. “Sorry, I’m just a little brain-dead right now.”
“Oh,” he said, standing and dusting himself off. He flicked an ear at her. “I couldn’t tell the difference.”
“Oh, fuck you,” she said, giving him a shove that sent him staggering and nearly back into the dirt.
“Abuse!” he cried, struggling not to laugh. “Help! Help! I’m being abused!”
Bradford just continued walking, flipping him the bird over her shoulder.
“That rough a day?” he asked, jogging briefly to catch up. “Too much going on on your surprise afternoon off?”
“Pff, I wish.” She sighed, waving at the barracks ahead of them in the distance. “Most of the guys got the rest of the day off, thanks to Tyehtyeh, but not me.” She shook her head. “Nooo, I’m a Sergeant now, with ‘field experience,’” she said, with air quotes. “Since I happened to be free for the afternoon, I got pulled into another planning meeting for the field exercise we’re doing at the end of the week.” She shook her head. “Normally, these things are all planned out weeks in advance, but now we’re trying to cram that all into a few days…. Ugh!” she scrubbed her face again, heaving a sigh. “What about you? How was your afternoon?”
Rinn sighed, his shoulders sagging. “Probably not much better.” His ears twitched, and he shook his head, letting them flop around. “More testing with metering artifices more precise and capable than mine will be required to know his exact power, but between myself, the Duke, and the other nobles, we were able to determine that Tyehtyeh is a savant, and one of the most powerful to ever live. There are two, maybe three other savants alive who are more powerful than him, and those not by much.” He scrunched his snout. “And he has the education of a quillhog farmer!”
Bradford laughed. “Sounds like someone’s a little pissed off that their spot as the top artificer has been stolen by an uneducated bumpkin.”
“I’m not pissed off!” Rinn snapped. “Not about that, anyway,” he sighed, tugging at a horn. “It’s just- I’ve taught Tyehtyeh a hundred times more in the last few weeks than anyone else has ever taught him. Almost everything he knows,
he learned on his own! He’s not just a savant, he’s not just one of the most powerful savants to ever live. I have to admit, he’s one of the smartest people I’ve ever met.”
“Oh, really?” Bradford asked, raising an eyebrow at him.
“Yes!” Rinn rolled his ears. “Now, of course, he doesn’t act like it at all, not in the least,
because he has the education of a quillhog farmer! But instead of a bumbling idiot who can barely figure out which end of his pike to point at the enemy, he taught himself how to do magic from scratch, using a bare handful of spells he was shown as an example, and a few concepts he overheard in conversation.”
“Damn,” Bradford said, shaking her head. “Imagine what he could do if someone taught him.”
Rinn vigorously nodded his head, eyes wide and ears up. “That’s exactly what we just saw today! And if he had a proper education.…” He shook his head. “The Duke has written his father and the King, and the nobles of are two minds about what to do with Tyehtyeh. On the one hand, he should be sent to a university, trained and educated. In time, he might become the most powerful savant to ever live!”
“On the other hand, he’s useful now?”
“Yes.” He sighed. “The education he should get would take years, when he is already a powerful battlefield savant, and we are in desperate need of every advantage in the war.”
“So what are they going to do with him?”
“I don’t know. The Duke has a lot of influence to sway that decision, but it will not be made by him. That is for his father, Lord General Yangri, and the King to decide.” He sighed. “Until that decision is made, I will be continuing my tutelage of Tyehtyeh, and the other artificers will provide selections of well-designed spell structures for him to study and master.”
“Sounds like a bunch of bullshit to worry about tomorrow,” she said as he opened the door to their barracks and waved her in. “It’s late enough as it is.”
“Indeed,” he said, following her through the door. His ears twitched as they approached the bunk room. Bradford could here muffled shouts and laughter coming from inside.
Glancing at Rinn, who gave her a smirking flick of an ear, she opened the door. The room fell to immediate silence as it swung open, the bright light of the hallway casting a sharp outline into the dimmed room.
Inside, every other member of Second Squad was wearing assorted styles and colors of masks made out of duct tape. The diversity of styles included cut-out or molded eye holes, teeth, full cheek guards, bikers goggles, a medieval doctor’s beak, mohawks, and more. Holding a wild medley of cardboard-and-duct-tape melee weapons, they were clad in little else besides a chaotic mix of speedos, diapers, vests, and/or a few get-ups that looked suspiciously like pleasure harnesses, all made from a rainbow of duct tape.
In the dim light and resounding silence, they all turned to stare at the door.
Bradford slowly cast her gaze across them as she looked from one side of the room to the other, the Marines all frozen and staring at her in silence, before she quietly backed out and shut the door.
“We’re going somewhere else for a while,” she said, still staring at the door she firmly held shut.
Rinn’s ears, held straight up, swiveled to point behind him. “That… That sounds like an excellent idea…”
“Yeah…” she said, releasing the door and pulling herself away. She looked at Rinn. “Anyone ever show you how to play Xbox?”
“I can’t say that I have,” he said as she pointedly ignored what sounded like Kawalski’s muted shouting behind the door.
“Sounds like a great time to learn,” she said as muffled chaos exploded behind the door. She turned and headed towards the common room. “C’mon, I’ll teach you how to play Call of Duty, and we can see what other games they managed to snag. I haven’t had time to play anything since they set the system up.”
***
Rinn fidgeted as Echo Company formed up outside their barracks complex. He was nervous. First Sergeant Khatri had found out about his cadence project. He was nervous because he expected to be called on to lead the whole company through his new cadence.
He was also nervous because he was the one who told First Sergeant Khatri about it the night before. That’s why he had run into Bradford on the way back to the barracks. He gave a silent prayer to all the gods above and all the gods below that the squad wouldn’t find out.
“Company! Atten-hut!” Rinn snapped to attention with the other Marines as Khatri marched out in front of them. “Marines! It has come to my attention that one of our augments has been undertaking a little cadence project, translating a Ganlin marching song into a Marine Corps cadence. Is this true, Second Artificer Ahyat?”
Rinn had to struggle to keep his ears from plastering back against his skull. “Yes, First Sergeant!”
“And it is my understanding that it is in a workable state. Is this true, Second Artificer Ahyat?”
Rinn hesitated. He swore he could hear a pin drop. “Yes, First Sergeant!”
“Outstanding! Now, as you all know, I take great pride and joy in a proper marching cadence, and to hear this warms my heart.” He clutched a hand to his chest for emphasis. “The deep, sub-cockle regions of it. Second Artificer Ahyat, you will be leading us in this cadence today!”
“Yes, First Sergeant!”
With the closest Rinn had ever seen Khatri come to a smile, the First Sergeant made a crisp about face and saluted Captain Spader. “The company is formed and ready, sir!”
“Very well. Get them moving, First Sergeant.”
“Aye, aye, sir!”
Khatri pivoted and marched to his place in the column. “Company! Forward! March!”
Feet crunched on gravel and packed dirt as Echo Company stepped off. Khatri called out a basic cadence as he turned their column out of their little assembly area, what the Marines had started calling the grinder, and onto the road.
“Ahyat!” Khatri shouted as the last of the Marines snaked onto the road. “Sound off!”
Rinn cleared his throat. “Yipe! Yipe! Yegh!” he shouted, the corners of his mouth twitching as the Marines echoed back the nonsense sounds.
Here we go, he thought, taking a deep breath.
“I left my heart in San’Riiaaaaa!” he called out in English. His t’s were still a little soft, and he still dragged out his vowels a bit longer than he should, but his accent was still clear.
“I LEFT MY HEART IN SAN’RIIAAAA!” The Marines echoed back, and he could hear the surprise in their voices. He smiled and called the next line.
“I left my heart to heed the caaaall!”
“I LEFT MY HEART TO HEED THE CAAAALL!” The Marines’ voices were stronger, more certain, adapting quickly.
“I left my heart to shield her theerre!”
“I LEFT MY HEART TO SHIELD HER THEERRE!”
“I left my heart to goo to waaaar!”
“I LEFT MY HEART TO GO TO WAAAAR!”
“Chorus!” he shouted, before taking another breath.
“We carry on the looong campaaaign!
We steel our hearts and maaarch aloooong!
To keep the war awaay from hooome!
We raise our pikes and neeever yieeeld!
‘Til we’ve freed the yoke from all Gahlaaa!”
He closed his eyes for a beat. He could already tell his throat was going to be sore when this was all done, but he wasn’t going to bungle it. Another breath, and he shouted again.
“I found my boots in Rotiyiiiin!”
“I FOUND MY BOOTS IN ROTIYIIIN!”
“I learned to march in formatioon!”
“I LEARNED TO MARCH IN FORMATIOON!”
“In line and square and in colummn!”
“IN LINE AND SQUARE AND IN COLUMMN!”
“To bear my heart in San’Riiaa!”
“TO BEAR MY HEART IN SAN’RIIAA!”
This time, a few Marines joined in on the long notes of the chorus.
“We carry on the looong campaaaign!
We steel our hearts and maaarch aloooong!
To keep the war awaay from hooome!
We raise our pikes and neeever yieeeld!
‘Til we’ve freed the yoke from all Gahlaaa!”
A few more had joined before the chorus had finished.
“I donned my armor in Toiyooo!”
“I DONNED MY ARMOR IN TOIYOOO!”
“I wrapped myself in clooth and steeeel!”
“I WRAPPED MYSELF IN CLOOTH AND STEEEEL!”
“Re-enforced with maail and speeell!”
“RE-ENFORCED WITH MAAIL AND SPEEELL!”
“To shield my heart in San’Riiaaa!”
“TO SHIELD MY HEART IN SAN’RIIAAA!”
Marine voices started to overpower his as he drove into the chorus once more.
“We carry on the looong campaaaign!
We steel our hearts and maaarch aloooong!
To keep the war awaay from hooome!
We raise our pikes and neeever yieeeld!
‘Til we’ve freed the yoke from all Gahlaaa!”
“I grabbed my pike in Mol’Raiii!”
“I GRABBED MY PIKE IN MOL’RAIII!”
“Enchanted bright and shaarp of biiite!”
“ENCHANTED BRIGHT AND SHAARP OF BIIITE!”
“I lift it up and hoold it hiiigh!”
“I LIFT IT UP AND HOOLD IT HIIIGH!”
“To guard my heart in San’Riiaaa!”
“TO GUARD MY HEART IN SAN’RIIAAA!”
The Marines had picked up the chorus this time, and he could barely hear his own voice over theirs.
“We carry on the looong campaaaign!
We steel our hearts and maaarch aloooong!
To keep the war awaay from hooome!
We raise our pikes and neeever yieeeld!
‘Til we’ve freed the yoke from all Gahlaaa!”
“I earned my strips in Riiun Paaass!”
“Blood stripes!” someone shouted in the brief gap before the rest of the company echoed back.
“I EARNED MY STRIPS IN RIIUN PAAASS!”
“At Koilay, Bruhl, and Sai’Li’Unnn!”
“AT KOILAY, BRUHL, AND SAI’LI’UNNN!”
“In blood and fire I baattle throuuuugh!”
“IN BLOOD AND FIRE I BAATTLE THROUUUUGH!”
“To win my heart in San’Riiaaa!”
“TO WIN MY HEART IN SAN’RIIAAA!”
This time the Marines beat him to the chorus, and he straightened in pride as voice was drowned out by a company two hundred strong.
“WE CARRY ON THE LOOONG CAMPAAAIGN!
WE STEEL OUR HEARTS AND MAAARCH ALOOOONG!
TO KEEP THE WAR AWAAY FROM HOOOME!
WE RAISE OUR PIKES AND NEEEVER YIEEELD!
‘TIL WE’VE FREED THE YOKE FROM ALL GAHLAAA!”
“I yearn to see my heaarth and hooome!”
“I YEARN TO SEE MY HEAARTH AND HOOOME!”
“Family, friends, and soomeone mooore!”
“FAMILY, FRIENDS, AND SOOMEONE MOOORE!”
“I promise one day too retuuurn!”
“I PROMISE ONE DAY TOO RETUUURN!”
“To see my heart in San’Riiaaa!”
“TO SEE MY HEART IN SAN’RIIAAA!”
“WE CARRY ON THE LOOONG CAMPAAAIGN!
WE STEEL OUR HEARTS AND MAAARCH ALOOOONG!
TO KEEP THE WAR AWAAY FROM HOOOME!
WE RAISE OUR PIKES AND NEEEVER YIEEELD!
‘TIL WE’VE FREED THE YOKE FROM ALL GAHLAAA!”
“I left my heart in San’Riiaaaaa!”
“I LEFT MY HEART IN SAN’RIIAAAA!”
“I left my heart to heeed the caaaall!”
“I LEFT MY HEART TO HEEED THE CAAAALL!”
“I left my heart to shield her theerre!”
“I LEFT MY HEART TO SHIELD HER THEERRE!”
“I left my heart to go to waaaar!”
“I LEFT MY HEART TO GO TO WAAAAR!”
He held the last note to signal the end of the cadence. The Marines copied the long note, and it trailed off as they made the final turn, approaching the rest of the battalion’s formation.
The First Sergeant timed that well… he thought, but felt one last call was needed. “Royal Host, Never Yield! Two-Five!”
“RETREAT, HELL!”
“Company! Halt!”
***
“Guh, my head feels like mush,” Bradford said as they trudged into the gym. “I swear to god, if I have to go to one more strategy seminar or training planning session, my brains will all ooze out of my head and have to be mopped up off the floor…”
“Don’t worry, Jabs,” Edison said, tapping her arm. “We’ve got your favorite activity to make up for it: Picking up heavy things and putting them back down.”
“Damn straight!” she laughed.
“Raaawwwgh!” Edison said, flexing his arms in front of him. “She-Hulk STRONG!”
Laughing, she gave him a shove hard enough to send him staggering off to the side. “Stronger than you, pencil-arms.”
“Why do we keep having to sit through all these seminars, anyway?” Kimber asked. “We’re Marines. You don’t put us in classrooms. You give us a gun, and point us at whatever you need destroyed.”
“It’s to figure out how to train the next guys,” Bradford said, stepping over to a weight bench. “Got my spot?” Rinn and Edison paired up by a couple of benches by the dumbbell rack nearby while the rest of the squad dispersed through the gym.
“Sure,” Kimber said, stepping over to the weight rack. “How much to start?”
“Fifty on the bar to warm up a bit, then up from there.”
“Cool,” he said, grabbing a weight. “And what do you mean, figure out how to train the next guys?”
“The next guys,” she said, locking a weight on her side of the bar, then settling down on the bench. “The next group of Marines and Artificers, or Soldiers and Artificers, or whoever the fuck else gets sent through this program.” She took a grip on the bar as Kimber moved into position at the head of the bench, and with barely a grunt she heaved it off the rack and started doing reps.
“When did we get put into a program?” Kimber asked.
“We’re not in a… program,” Bradford grunted out between reps. “We’re… pathfinding it. The training program… that integrates artificers and the U.S. military.”
After several reps, she shoved the bar back up on the racks and stood up, wiping sweat off with a towel as she switched places with Kimber.
“You think they’re making this a program?” Kimber asked, heaving the bar off the rack and starting his own set of reps.
“Fuck yeah, they are. No putting that cat back in the bag. We’re just kind of the pilot, fumbling our way through, figuring shit out for the people that’ll come next.”
“Hadn’t really thought of that,” Kimber said, putting the bar back up on the rack after his set.
Bradford snorted as she grabbed more weight for the bar. “You’re a Marine. You don’t get paid to think. Good thing, too,” she winked at him.
“Damn straight!” he laughed, locking a matching weight on the other side of the bar and moving back to the spotter position.
Their conversation tapered mostly to insults and encouragement as they added more weight with each set.
They were just locking another set of weights on the bar when Kawalski called over. “Kimber! We need you! Gomer thinks he’s the wrestling champion!”
Kimber glanced back at Bradford, but Edison spoke up. “Go ahead, man, I’ll spot for her.”
“Ha!” Bradford snorted. “Spotter needs to be able to at least help lift the weight that’s being benched, and that ain’t happening with your pencil arms, and I could probably bench Ahyat for reps.” She glanced at him. “No offense.”
He shook his head with a dismissive ear flick. “None taken.”
“Ha, I bet you could!” Edison said.
“Kimber!”
“I can’t, man! Jabs is gonna bench Shields!”
“What?!”
“Jabs is gonna bench Shields!”
Bradford laughed, glancing at a bewildered Rinn.
“Man, I gotta see this,” Elder said, elbowing his way to the front of the crowd that spontaneously formed around the weight bench. It felt like half of Echo Company was there.
“Hey, how many reps you bet she can do with him?” Kawalski asked, hustling the crowd even as it formed.
Bradford looked at Rinn again as a pair of Marines lifted the bar out of the way. He was shoved towards the bench, and his ears drooped in defeat.
“No,” she said, shaking her head. “I’m not benching him.”
“But, Jabs-“ Kimber said, before she interrupted him.
“Dude. He’s, what, one ten?” She raised an eyebrow at Rinn. “One fifteen, soaking wet, with a brick in your pocket?” He shrugged his ears, flicking the end of his tail at her. “I just repped one thirty,” she said, pointing her thumb at the bar, “And upped it to one forty-five. I’ve got nothing to prove by benching Ahyat.”
“Aw, c’mon, Jabs,” Kawalski said. “It’s not about provin’ nothin’, it’s about bein’ funny!”
“I said no, Kawalski.”
[
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Continued in comments...
submitted by This is long. Sorry. I figured it was best to put in everything, in case the context mattered to the solution, especially since I played a part in why things are getting worse so me just talking to her might not work so well. I've sectioned it so it's easy to skip past details that might be irrelevant.
For some background, before we get into the current problem, feel free to skip this, it's just speculation: Ever since we were very young, my sister has been my bully. Not only is it incredibly embarrassing to be bullied by your younger sister, but the adults in your life tend not to believe you could be bullied by a cute little girl a whole head shorter than you.
As a result, when we were kids, she would start fights because she wanted something (for example, we might be sharing some candy, so she would scream that I punched her, and I would be sent to my room. More candy for her, or she might randomly hit me and then bawl when I pushed her away, making sure everyone saw that I pushed her). She'd always gotten away with this and she pushed it further and further, escalating to threatening me with knives as a teenager, and once even kicking the shit out of me. She's a large lady, so even though she has always been shorter than me, she throws that weight around a lot, and I refuse to hit back.
I can say without a doubt, she was the "favorite" child.
The end result of all this? She grew up completely spoiled. My mother [52F] is disabled and spends a lot of time in bed due to chronic pain. Growing up, I looked after her a lot (cooking/cleaning/etc.), but she didn't have much company and I think my sister became that company. To the point where she didn't even need to go to school if she didn't want to, she'd just stay home with mum and be that company. Even after my mum married again, my sister was still being spoiled because he wasn't home much due to work. My sister has never been made to do something she didn't want to in her entire life.
I strongly suspect this is why she's acting this way.
Fast forward to today:
I've been living out of the house since I was 19, but she's still there. She's nothing but a burden on my mother. She doesn't cook, she doesn't clean, she doesn't pay rent or bills, and she barely works. She has a job but she calls in sick and schedules days off near constantly, and basically ends up working about one day a week.
She has a boyfriend [25M] who is the exact same (right down to skipping work), and his mother doesn't like my sister, so he's practically living there, and they're both constantly leeching off my mother, who is only on a disability pension and can barely afford to provide for herself, let alone for them. She called me in tears yesterday because there was no food in the house, and she only had ten dollars in her purse and my sister had taken it to buy dinner from McDonalds for herself and her boyfriend.
My mum will be hobbling around cleaning their mess around them while they just sit there watching her. My mum likes a clean house but with my sister and her boyfriend there, it always looks as though a bomb has hit it. If mum even tries to ask either of them to clean, my sister carries on and throws a tantrum about how she "had to do everything as a child" and "had no childhood thanks to your disability" which is entirely untrue and incredibly hurtful to mum. My sister never did anything to help as a kid.
My elderly grandfather [82M] comes around to help my mother because I live 3 hours away and my sister, though living there, does absolutely nothing to help. He tried asking her one day to help him move some furniture so he could vacuum (his back is really bad) and she just scowled and silently went to her room.
She resents me. I'm currently re-training to be a nurse and I'm holding down a decent accountancy job. Once I heard her screaming (not yelling/arguing, actually screaming) at my mum because "You're spending a lot of time with him lately." (I visited for a week and I'd treated mum to lunch that day). Any attempts to get her to look for a better job or try higher education is met with "Oh I bet you wish I was perfect like S****(me). He was always the favorite!" or "YOU DON'T CARE ABOUT MY MENTAL HEALTH!!!!"
The boyfriend is a frustration too, and at the center of the latest drama that my sister is generating.
Because I stupidly asked that he didn't come to the family Christmas.
The Christmas/Boxing Day Drama:
They'd been causing multiple public blowups because he'd cheated on her, and they always devolved into embarrassing screaming matches, I didn't want that to happen in front of our elderly grandparents on a day that's traditionally supposed to be a quiet lunch to relax after the stress of Christmas.
That was probably a bad-guy move on my part, but we always hold two Christmases, the first "everyone can come" Christmas where we do a big lunch, and all the extended family and boyfriends and girlfriends are there, and a second on the day after Christmas, where it's traditionally always been myself, my sister, my mum, and my grandparents only, we don't dress up, we don't put up decorations, we just relax.
He was absolutely invited to the first Christmas but I'd asked that we keep this family Christmas as a family Christmas. I was the one paying for all the food and organizing it, and I didn't want drama, nor did I want to shell out money to feed a lay-about who has been such a burden on my mother. If I'd been able to ask my sister not to come, believe me, I would have.
My sister agreed, and said "I know. It's a family thing, it's always just us." in a tone that implied I was stupid for even thinking he'd come in the first place, but then come Christmas evening, the boyfriend came over and then... wasn't leaving. At around 1am, I asked her when he was going home and she replied "He's not. He's coming tomorrow."
To which I replied "No he's not. We already agreed to this. I didn't make enough food for an extra person"
Cue screaming, slamming doors, "I'm leaving! YOU ALL HATE ME! I HATE ALL OF YOU!!!", driving off, coming back when they realized they didn't have anywhere else to go.
You know. The usual. The type of thing you'd expect from a 15 year old throwing a tantrum, except coming out of a woman old enough to have a career. Her childlike boyfriend was sitting playing his switch with the sound on loud the whole time, completely unbothered.
She didn't come to the family Christmas. It was just my grandparents, my mother, and me. It was the first time I'd seen mum smile in a long time.
Mum and my sister live in a small town, and in the next few days, my sister proceeded to spread lies about me, my grandparents, and my mother to anyone who would listen. She works in a supermarket and she was gossiping over the counter to old ladies that play lawn bowls with my gran. She even brought our step-dad who passed away a few years ago into it, saying "He probably cheated on mum and she still stayed with him, so she's being a hypocrite about me and my boyfriend". This, by the way, is entirely untrue and not something he would ever do. She told people my mother was kicking her out. She told people we said we hated them (the people she was telling). She told people my grandfather spat at her boyfriend. Literally none of it was true and it's damaged my grandparent's and mother's social lives.
Now she screams in my mother's face every other day, and I'm honestly worried about my mum's safety.
The Current Situation:
Mum says she doesn't know when a day is going to be fine or not, because sometimes my sister will pretend everything is normal and sometimes she'll just snap at everything.
She is even worse about making mess and if anyone says anything, she just starts going on and on about Christmas and how she knows we all hate her. She leaves make-up all over the counter. She flooded the bathroom and left the towels to sop up the water on the floor for days where my mum could trip on it. She leaves grease all over the stove when she does cook (rare) and leaves McDonalds wrappers all around the house when she doesn't (extremely common).
I'm at the end of my tether, I've been having groceries sent to my mum's house because they're draining her of money but I know if I give my mum money, they'll get their hands on it, so I pay to have milk and vegetables and stuff like that delivered to the house.
I'm not particularly wealthy but I don't want to see my mum starve, and I feel responsible for this latest blow up because of what happened to Christmas.
I just want her gone but mum is reticent to kick her out because she thinks she'll feel like a bad mother. I think I might be able to convince her to kick them out though, she keeps talking about how lovely it will be when she has the house to herself (then immediately feels bad about thinking that way).
How do you even deal with a loud, trashy, violent adult who has a major case of failure to launch?
Does anyone have any ideas for how we can safely get her out of the house? Or even just... convince her to clean up after herself? Anything at all that could alleviate the situation? She's a monster.
I'll seriously try anything. Has anyone else had any luck getting through to someone like this? We just need relief. My mum doesn't feel comfortable in her own home and I'm stressing because I live so far away that I can't help my mum out.
I would travel down to fix this though, I have a few days in my PTO. We live in Australia, so if there's any legal aid we can access to safely remove her from the house, or some kind of program we could refer her to that anyone knows about, I'd appreciate that.
Or if we could talk to her? Does anyone know any ways to start a conversation with someone like this in a way that keeps it constructive?
tl;dr: My [30M] sister [25F] is leeching off my disabled mum [52F]. My sister has a history of being violent, though only with me. She and her boyfriend [25M] have been trashing mum's house and spending all her money. She's also been screaming at my mother and ignoring anyone who asks her to help in any way.
How do I get her to shape up or ship out? Is there any way to kick her out cleanly, or does anyone know how to get through to someone like this in a way that changes their behavior for the better?
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Next Laughter echoed out from a campfire. Draevin walked somberly into the camp and stood at the edge, not yet ready to get involved in the conversation. He was thinking about Tenna. She had been scared and planning to drop out before he made that deal to save her life. It got her killed. That made her death
his fault.
Fighting in the tournament was supposed to be the greatest achievement a wizard could aspire to. It was a place for the best of the best.
He wasn’t so sure anymore.
He had always thought that even if he died on the battlefield, at least he would die a legend—remembered for generations. Maybe get a nice monument. Yet Tenna died and the tournament kept going, like nothing was amiss. Perhaps because nothing
was amiss. It felt so… hollow.
This was hardly the first person Draevin had known who died. Probably wouldn’t be the last either. Hell, Gro’shak might kill him tomorrow and all this commiserating would be for nothing. That’s what he needed to focus on right now. He needed a plan to beat Gro’shak. Then he could finish off that hunk of scrap for Tenna. He could still win this tournament and bring her back. Being sad wasn’t productive. Winning was.
He strode into the camp with a new purpose. Technically it was the same purpose he had yesterday, but it at least felt new. The human camp was still an imposing fortress, but the guards recognized Draevin and let him in without issue. As soon as he got inside Peter spotted him and waved him over to a campfire where a bunch of people were gathered.
“So then he said, ‘Mommy, I think
you should get a tail,’” a woman’s voice was saying. Everyone seemed to find this very funny. Draevin figured he must have missed too much of the setup. He looked around at all the guests. Most of them were humans, aside from Sylnya, Grrbraa and the two other dryads sitting next to him. The story that had just finished had come from one of the dryads: presumably one of Grrbraa’s mothers. The speaker had scaly-green strands for hair that fell down her shoulders much like mundane hair and her partner had a wild bush of broad leaves.
“Where’s Alex?” Draevin asked Peter. He was the only other human face he recognized and he was missing. He was hoping the human leader would have some connections that could help him prepare for his next match against Gro’shak.
“Working on a surprise,” Peter said with a conspiratorial wink. “He’ll be out in a minute.”
“So
this is Draevin,” the bushy-headed dryad said from beside Grrbraa. Her green head turned in Draevin’s direction and he recognized her as the same dryad that had challenged Judge Dag after their raid on the Eldesian embassy. On closer inspection it seemed her leafy hair partially obscured her face to hide the black scarf she wore across her eyes. Draevin wondered briefly how she knew where to look for him until he saw the pink dot on her forehead that indicated she was seeing with her third eye. “I’ve seen you fight,” she said, “you’re pretty good.”
Draevin swelled up at the compliment. “And you must be Grrbraa’s mother,” he said. “I remember you. You got us out of that jam at the Eldesian embassy. I don’t think I properly thanked you for that.”
“Think nothing of it,” she said. “I didn’t exactly do it for you and I owed Alex a favor anyway. If I’m being honest it was worth it just to see the look on Dag’s face when he realized his little police force was completely outmatched.”
“Can you make out that much detail with True Sight?” Draevin asked her. The woman was blind, so she used the spell to see. Presumably that meant she was quite a bit better at it than most casual users.
She smiled. “No, I can’t quite make out that much detail. It was just a figure of speech.”
The other dryad poked Grrbraa and he jerked. “Uh,” he stammered, “friend-Draevin, this is mother-Taelshin. Mother-Taelshin, this is friend-Draevin.”
Taelshin smiled up at her son and patted his arm. “Thank you for that warm introduction, Gerby.”
“Nice to officially meet you,” Draevin said, and stuck out his hand for her to shake. She seemed to have no trouble finding it. “Is it impolite to ask…?” Draevin said, just letting the question hang. He assumed anyone who had been asked the same question enough times didn’t need to actually hear the words anymore.
She waved a hand in a flippant gesture over her covered eyes. “Oh please, I’d be worried about you if you
didn’t ask. I was a Tree Warden back in the day: got cursed on the job.”
“Tree Warden,” Draevin repeated. “That’s like a cop for you guys, right?” He wasn’t completely sure. Maybe Sylnya was right about how little attention he paid.
“In a sense. We spend most of our time hunting down poachers and… persuading them to leave our forests alone.”
Sylnya laughed. “Yeah,” she agreed, “we ask
real nice.” She drew a line across her throat and stuck her tongue out.
“I see,” Draevin said.
Taelshin shrugged. “It’s a dangerous job. I count myself lucky. My partner at the time had to get replanted. I still caught the guy, even after the curse. He’s fertilizing the very trees he tried to harvest now.”
“So you must use True Sight a lot,” Draevin said as casually as possible. “Did you happen to catch Gro’shak’s match the other day?”
Everyone around the campfire broke out into whoops and jeers all at once. They were laughing pretty good-naturedly about something. Draevin looked around, a bit confused as to what had set them off. A human Draevin didn’t recognize walked around the fire and dropped a stack of gold coins worth a small fortune into Peter’s open palm. He was grumbling curses under his breath. Peter merely smiled.
“What was that all about?” Draevin asked him.
“We were betting over how long it would take you to ask about Gro’shak,” Peter told him while counting the money. “I
told you he was single-minded, Wesley!”
“If the soup ‘ad finished he’d a asked fer it first,” one of the humans called from across the fire. “He jus’ cudn’t smell it yet.”
“Everyone knows elves always eat for two,” another human chimed in.
“I think I’m supposed to be offended here,” Draevin said loudly, being careful not spoil the good mood. Less loudly he asked Peter, “What’s this about eating for two? They do know only females can get pregnant, don’t they?”
Peter coughed into his hand and muttered in a low voice, “You probably don’t want to know.”
Draevin noticed many of the assembled humans were listening to their exchange so he said loud enough for everyone to hear, “Believe it or not, I spent an entire human lifespan as a child, I think I can handle a little good-natured jeering from the likes of you.”
A few of the assembled humans chuckled, one even shouting out, “He can handle it!”
“It means you eat twice,” another said. “Once for you…”
“And once fer your ego,” another finished. They all broke out into more laughter. Despite the obviously long-standing insult to his people, their laughter was infectious. Draevin couldn’t help but join in.
“Soup’s on!” A woman’s voice called out from another part of camp.
“You couldn’t a’ finished it thirty seconds ago?” the human that had paid Peter complained.
A thick woman in an apron came in expertly carrying half a dozen bowls, several of which were balanced on her arms. She passed them out in short order then stopped in front of Peter. She held out a hand and Peter passed her a small pile of coins. She winked at Draevin while she pocketed the money.
“Hey! You waited on
purpose!” One of the humans called out. “You was in on it with Pete!”
“Oh this?” She asked with a sweet tone and a mischievousness grin. “This was just a tip for serving the soup on time.”
“
Right on time,” Peter added with a roguish smile. The woman chuckled as she tucked away the money before returning to the tent where the cooking was going on.
A serving girl walked up to Draevin with a large bowl of soup just for him—much larger than any of the others. “A gift from Rashad,” she said as she handed it to him. She gestured over her shoulder where the shadowman was sitting at a table nearby, separate from the group. “He said it was a special dish from his homeland that only an elf would appreciate. He wanted me to tell you it’s so you know there’s no bad blood between you.”
Draevin took the bowl and sniffed at it suspiciously—it burned his nose in a pleasant way. Rashad had been rude earlier that afternoon when Draevin had refused to touch him. Perhaps Peter had asked him to apologize. He looked in the bowl and only saw swirling shadows. “What is it?” He asked. He wasn’t sure if he should trust something a shadowman might have touched. He had to admit that it
did smell pretty good though.
“He called it ‘egg drop soup,’” the girl told him. She then leaned in and whispered conspiratorially, “And it was made with a dragon egg.”
Draevin’s eyes lit up. He couldn’t wait to finally devour a dragon egg. He was convinced that his bad luck this tournament so far had to be related to his lack of dragon eggs. He hesitated: dragon eggs had to be cooked at a pretty high temperature. He didn’t want to burn himself.
“I’m sure you’re dying to know, Draevin,” Taelshin said. She had taken a seat next to him and was sipping on a cup of something warm and steaming. Probably not soup considering her biology. “What that spell was Gro’shak used to take out that dragon.”
“Wait,” Draevin stopped her, “I have to know. Phakos was a dragon, right? Do you know how he transformed so quick like that?”
“Oh yes,” she said. “I already had this conversation a few times from curious humans. Phakos was a shapeshifter, but he didn’t transform into a dragon. He used mutamancy to take a humanoid form and simply released his spell at the start of the match.”
“It’s really telling how strange this year has been,” Draevin commented, “that having an intelligent dragon sneak into the tournament for the first time in living memory is only a footnote.”
Taelshin’s voice went sour. “It’s been a long time coming with the way you elves have been farming them. Did you know the dragon farms only keep a few old enough to be breeding stock and the rest are culled before they reach maturity? Truly despicable, and for what?”
Draevin looked guiltily down at his soup. “Well I don’t care for the meat,” he objected weakly. He realized his counterpoint was somewhat undermined by the fact that he was
about to eat dragon egg soup right in front of her. “Just the eggs.” He tried and failed to think of a way to steer the conversation back to Gro’shak.
The leaves that made up Taelshin’s hair vibrated. Draevin wasn’t sure what emotion that signified but her body language indicated it was probably a bad one. He brought his spoon up to his mouth for his first bite and blew on the steam that billowed out. “If you think the eggs are any more humanely-sourced than the meat you’re a fool. Those dragon farms are just—” Taelshin stopped in the middle of her rant. Draevin glanced over at her curiously and found that her whole body was turned in his direction and she looked like she was about to pounce.
“Don’t move a muscle,” Taelshin said very cautiously as though she were afraid of spooking a wild animal. Draevin looked to his side to see if she was maybe talking to someone behind him. With the blindfold it was hard to tell exactly where she was looking. “Stop,” she commanded. “Very carefully put your spoon back down in your bowl.”
“Uh, what’s wrong?” He did as he was instructed though. Once the spoon was back in the bowl she brought her hands out slowly to take the bowl from him. “Is this some sort of prank?” he asked her. “Look, that egg was already cooked when I got it. Taking my soup isn’t going to undo anything.”
She shushed him and lifted the bowl out of his grip as though she were afraid it might bite. She carefully placed the bowl on the ground at their feet and took a step back, “You step back too,” she told him.
“What is going on?” he demanded.
“Greyskin poison,” she hissed at him.
Draevin practically jumped out of his seat to get away from the bowl. A string of curses escaped his mouth that his brain couldn’t even keep up with. “In my
bowl?”
“You’re very lucky I was watching your bowl with True Sight,” Taelshin told him. “Do you know who might want to have you killed?”
“Yes,” Draevin said, “but the fact that you stopped it just now tells me it probably wasn’t her.”
“That seer bitch who harassed my boy?” Taelshin asked. Draevin nodded.
“But I thought she’d figured out her blind spot,” Draevin wondered out loud. “I don’t see why she would have tried something now if she knew it was just going to fail.”
“I know how criminals operate,” Taelshin said. “She might have hired someone less competent than herself—to insulate herself from potential guilt. Reminds me of the Logger Baron.”
“That,” Draevin said with supreme confidence, “sounds exactly like her.” It didn’t take long to realize what that meant. Rashad sent the soup! Draevin wondered if he had been hired by Caelnaste to kill him this whole time. He knew he couldn’t trust a shadowman! He looked over to where Rashad had been sitting but he was nowhere to be seen. For that matter, neither was Peter.
“You better freeze that bowl before someone knocks it over,” Taelshin instructed him. She was clearly used to being obeyed, and Draevin had his wand out of its holster before he even thought to question her order. He shrugged when he noticed and decided to listen to her anyway. It was the right call. They could hunt for Rashad after.
The air suddenly shifted; it tingled against his skin dryly. Draevin looked around for what had changed. He saw Grrbraa sniffing in random directions trying to get a fix on something and his other mother rubbing her arms and looking up at the sky. It was like the air had suddenly gone stale. It just felt
wrong. For a brief moment of panic he wondered if a drop of the poison had touched him and if this was just the first symptom before he died.
“What happened to the magic?” Taelshin asked him.
“Magic?” Draevin repeated. If there was something wrong with the magic in the air that could be what he was feeling. He pointed his wand at the poisoned bowl of soup and cast a small Icy Prison. Nothing happened.
Nothing happened!
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Discord submitted by Best Football Tips For Tomorrow. Our Analyst’s use expected goals (xG) to determine the best value football bets, evaluating matches in the UK, Europe and around the world to provide tips that could make you a profit. We provide a Bet of the Day, the best bet in the Overs/Unders and Both Teams to Score markets, plus a Daily Double. Best Football Tips. Here you can find the best football bets Football tips listed above were created for tomorrow’s matches and are subject to change based on possible new statistics coming into effect until tomorrow. The soccer predictions on this page are created using the SoccerStats247 advanced predictions system, using stats, team form, location of game and more data pushed to our system. Even with all the stats in place, surprises can occur Sure Bets Tomorrow. What are the best sure bets and sure bet predictions? Our sure bets listed below help you find the games and bets that have the lowest odds if you are looking for low odds games and selections to put into your banker accas. Sure bets are NOT guaranteed bets or wins. SURE BETS TODAY ALL PREDICTIONS TOMORROW SURE BETS THIS WEEKEND Football Predictions for Tomorrow (10.02.2021) Are you looking to find the best football predictions for tomorrow? It doesn’t matter whether you fancy placing wagers on the Champions League, Bundesliga, or any other competition in Europe’s big leagues, as we’ve got the tips you need. Our betting tips for tomorrow run through everything you may need to know about a match. On the above table we show the best betting tips for tomorrow. If you like to place your bets on day before the matches start you can select strong betting tips from the table. Betting one day before the games start gives the bettor one great advantage. This is that the odds for the selected matches will be higher than betting on teh next day. If you wait for the upcoming day you may see Tomorrow; Best Predictions for Tomorrow. This page contains the most accurate predictions for tomorrow's football matches. All match times are adjusted for your timezone. Prediction list for tomorrow are curated from user predictions and ranked by probability of profit. Betting markets supported : 1x2, Over/Under, BTTS, and Clean Sheets. Some These btts and win predictions today are offered free of charge where you can choose your best predictions and bet with any bookmaker. Create a Bet slip is now easier than ever. All btts in both halves’ predictions today and both teams to score tomorrow have the best odds one can get! Tomorrow; All; POR. Both teams are without a clean sheet in their last 11 meetings in all competition . Rio Ave vs Tondela OVER 1.5 Score: 2 - 1 Odd: 1.37 Percentage Confidence: 80%. POR. There has been at least a goal in the second half in all 13 matches between both sides. Gil Vicente vs Sporting 2021/02/09 22:00:00. Tip: OVER 0.5 2HT Score: 0 - 2 (2HT) Odd: 1.24 Percentage Confidence We offer not just credible information regarding football matches tomorrow but much more than that. Our website provides football betting tips for the entire weekend because every day of the week counts when it comes to betting on a football event. You no longer have to bet on those leagues that have no likelihood of winning. That’s because the vast majority of our betting tips are truthful Football matches for tomorrow. This fixture list is curated from over 1000+ football (soccer) competitions across the world
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