Vainglory 3.28 - Rhythms

Thanks for reading! Hope you like a little more of a peak into Haley's methods :)

-Plum

28 – Rhythms

Haley drank from her water flask, watching as Lali bandaged the cuts on her arms. Trent was sitting a short distance away on the edge of a small, empty fountain, running a whetstone over his rapier’s edge. He’d sat with his back to them, and Haley knew why; Lali had cuts on her thighs and butt, and she’d probably have to pull her trousers down to deal with them. They’d run afoul of some large, reptilian monsters, and the poor fighter had taken the brunt of their initial onslaught.

Haley stuffed her flask back into her pack, then nudged Lali’s shoulder. “You need some help?”

“Aye, love. I hate to ask it, but these cuts I’m sitting on are gonna be hard to reach.” She’d taken off her helmet and reached up to run one of her big, calloused hands over the top of her short, blonde hair, wringing some of the sweat out of it. “I won’t lie; that little melee had me questioning my life’s choices.”

“What?” Haley teased. “You don’t like having a pony sized lizard chewing on your ass?”

“Hey now!” Lali chuckled. “He just clawed my ass. T’was my arm he thought would make a good snack.” She held up her arm, still clad in mangled, blood-stained chainmail. The torn cuff slid back to reveal her bloody bandages. “Thank the old gods for healing salve, yeah?”

Haley nodded. “Yeah, and thank you for taking those things’ attention.” She pointed to the two slumped, bloody, green-scaled corpses.

“That’s my job, sweet.” She held out a hand, and Haley took it, bracing herself as the much-larger woman pulled herself to her feet with a grunt. “Let’s have a look at my arse. I’ve had more than one lover say it’s my best feature, so please lie to me if the damage is extensive.” As Haley stifled a chuckle, Lali turned her back to her and unbuckled her belt, letting her torn leather trousers slide down to her ankles.

“Well…” Haley leaned over, one hand on her knee, peering at the bloody mess of Lali’s cheeks. “I’m going to pour some water over these cuts.” She picked up a rag and waterskin Lali had been using and then gently worked on cleaning away the blood. “Looks like you’ve got four good cuts. You might get some interesting new scars, but your cheeks are still there.”

“Oh, thank the fates! Felt like I was sitting on some minced meat, so if that’s all it is, I won’t shed a tear. Can you put some salve on ’em?”

“Sure.” Haley had already picked up the jar, intending to do just that. While she worked, she tried to distract herself and the warrior. “You think we’re getting close?”

“To the big man’s tree?”

“Yes.”

“Oof! That feels good, love. Gods! The stinging was really gnawing at me, but you know how that cream works—nice and numb now. As for the tree, aye, we must be getting close. We’ve walked most of the day and managed to keep going west most of the time.”

“Well, we’ve been slowed down by fights and puzzles, too.”

“Aye, but what? Two or three hours total? Other than that, we’ve been moving steadily. Chin up, love. We’ll find him soon.” Lali and Trent had both said similar things to her several times that day, but the words were starting to ring hollow. Had they ever felt sincere? Haley couldn’t help thinking they were just patronizing her—trying to keep her from flying off the edge again.

“Do you really think so, Lali?” she asked, smearing a goop of healing salve into the last cut on Lali’s well-muscled posterior. “It’s done.”

“Thanks, sweet. Can you spread that rag out on that stone? I’ll sit in just my linens for a minute while I stitch these britches.” While she waited for Haley to carry out her request, she continued, “I’ll admit I’m being a bit optimistic on purpose. It’s not that I don’t think he’s probably alive—I do—but I think it’ll be damn lucky if we find him.” She stepped out of her boots, then out of her bloody pants and undergarments. She held up the thin, bloodstained, torn linen underwear and laughed. “These are done.”

Haley chuckled, nodding. “I wouldn’t put those back on. You have spares?”

“Oh yes! One thing I learned about adventuring early on—always bring extra underpants.” She tossed the ruined ones to the side, leaving them to hang forlornly off a thorny vine.

Haley sat down on another stone block—dozens of big square stones were littered around the little courtyard—and watched as Lali fished a fresh pair of underwear from one of her packs and pulled them on. The big woman gingerly sat on the rag Haley had laid out, then pulled another pack close. “Are you good at stitch-work?”

“Good enough. My gran was a mean one when it came to learning how to be a lady.”

Haley smiled, imagining a younger Lali under the stern, watchful eye of a much older version. Nodding to herself, she meandered over to Trent. “All right?”

He looked up, squinting against the glare of the sun behind her. “I’m well. Only a few cuts from that tail swipe I didn’t dodge. I was worried about my sword, too—when I stabbed the first one and it caught in the bone, I almost let the blade snap when I didn’t let go in time.” He held the polished, sharpened rapier, smiling. “All good, though.”

Haley nodded. “I’ll do my rhythms, and then we can move out. Lali’s just stitching up her pants.”

Trent pointed to a passage in the corner of the little courtyard. “Figure we’ll head that way. It’s a little more south than west, but it’s our best option.”

“Okay.” Haley moved to a clear patch of flagstones between two of the big, tumbledown stone blocks. With a deep, cleansing breath, she stood straight, pressed her palms together, and began her rhythms—practiced, choreographed sequences of Gopah techniques. The first rhythm she’d ever learned was called Flicker in Still Air, and she always began with it.

She glided through gentle footwork and open-hand strikes, focusing on feeling the heat in the air around her and drawing it into her fists. As she finished, she transitioned into Ember Draws Breath, using the rhythm of her movements to punctuate her controlled breathing, and incorporating the first psychokinetic push she’d ever learned—the open-palm smoke fist.

She could feel the heat by then, tickling her knuckles as she snapped her hands through the air, warming her flesh and blood until her vision began to take on that special shimmering quality it always did when the fire touched her. If she weren’t concentrating so hard, so focused on her perfect movements, she might have smiled.

From Ember Draws Breath, she moved to Stride of Cinders. Her footwork increased in tempo as she swept through gliding steps, executing motions for joint locks and redirection. From there, as the heat continued to build, she transitioned to Flame Below the Ash. Her movements slowed, fists gliding with glacial patience as she built tension and heat, ready to explode.

A small, detached part of her mind knew she wasn’t yet halfway to her most powerful rhythms, but the heat was high, and she was aware that Trent and Lali were standing together, ready to move on. So, she pressed her palms together and swept her leg in a wide arc, releasing some of the tension in her muscles as she straightened. Her hands radiated heat, making the air shimmer around them. If she were at a dojo, she’d strike the Gopahj, sending the flames into it out of respect to the master. She wasn’t, though, and she’d need this fire if they met any more hostile creatures—a near certainty.

They started out, Trent in the lead, Lali at the rear, and they made some good progress immediately. The first pathway was long but a branching one, angling more toward the west, led them in the right direction for hundreds of strides before coming to another T-junction. Trent chose the left-hand turn, and they walked for a good five minutes before yet another long passage leading straight to the west opened up. When they started down it, Lali was the first to point and exclaim, “There it is!”

Haley saw that she was right. The vast canopy of the massive tree was ahead, and it didn’t seem all that far—the branches were a little hazy with the distance, but it stood clearly over the garden walls. Buoyed by the sight, the three picked up their pace, hurrying down the long, empty pathway. Trent wouldn’t allow them to hurry too much—his eyes always roving left and right over the flagstones ahead.

Even with his watchful eye, somehow the Garden Gates were aware of the presence, and with a thunderous clang before and behind them, a pair of rusty, wrought-iron fences exploded out of the ground and sealed off the ends of the passage. Haley spun, fists up, waiting for the next shoe to drop, but nothing happened.

“What’s this, then?” Lali asked, slinging her crossbow and reaching for the haft of her heavy ball mace. “I need to smash down one of these gates?”

Trent held up one hand. “Hold.”

They all stood silently for several seconds, and Haley was about to voice her support for Lali’s plan when, with a rumbling scrape of stones, a passage opened in the right-hand wall a few paces ahead of them. “What—” She cut her words off as, with a grinding scrape of ancient armor, a skeletal knight stepped out of the alcove.

It wore rusty plate armor and carried an enormous double-bladed great sword. Inside the rusty face guard of its helmet, pale blue orbs glowed inside its eye sockets. It stepped toward them, whipping its massive sword through the air in great cleaves, dispelling any hopes the three adventurers might have had that it would be clumsy or weak.

“Dead gods!” Trent said, backpedaling. “I don’t think my blade will survive a single parry.”

“Right. Let me—” Lali started to say, but Haley darted past her.

“Just smash it in the back when I get it to turn,” she said, darting forward, diving under the cleaving arc of the greatsword and rolling over the stones to leap up behind the undead warrior. When she sprang to her feet, she was already twisting her hips, driving with her legs, and swinging her right hand into a perfect execution of wolf fist. It was a true psychokinetic attack, using the fire she’d gathered to manifest as burning claws that she raked from the skeleton’s hip to its shoulder blade, ripping fiery gouges in its rusty armor and sparking embers that took root in the thing’s moldering gambeson.

The skeleton whirled, hacking its greatsword at her, but Haley dodged back, making the powerful swing look clumsy. The monster knew she was a threat now, and it came at her, which was what she’d wanted. Lali didn’t waste a second capitalizing on the thing’s undefended back. Roaring, she lifted her heavy mace high and brought it down like a sledgehammer on the back of the creature’s pitted helmet.

The blow was violent enough to blast the helmet off the thing’s head and send the skeleton stumbling forward. When it, swaying unsteadily, lifted its sword and turned toward Lali, Haley darted forward and performed a blister fang right at the base of the skeleton’s cracked skull. The impact sent sparks and embers flaring like a log being dropped in a fire, and knocked the skull off the creature’s spine.

The skeleton collapsed in a heap of bones and a clatter of rusted weapons. Haley didn’t stand around gawking. She hurried to the alcove opening, peering around the corner to ensure there weren’t more coming. All she saw, however, was an empty alcove about three strides across, with two iron levers mounted on the wall. “It’s all clear,” she called.

Trent stopped in his tracks—he’d been running to join her—and Lali looked up from where she’d been searching the skeleton’s corpse. “It’s got some jewelry on it—rings and a necklace.”

Haley and Trent returned to Lali, watching as the woman stripped jewel-encrusted gold rings, bracelets, and necklaces off the skeletal warrior. “Strange for a warrior to be wearing all that, isn’t it?” Haley asked.

“Nah…” Lali chuckled. “I’ve seen plenty of warriors who prefer to wear their wealth. Harder to steal.”

“What about that sword?” Trent nudged the greatsword with his toe.

“It’s a quality blade,” Lali said as she tossed the jewels into her loot bag. “Thing is, the damn weapon’s heavy as hell, and I’m already wearing more packs than I’d feel good about putting on a mule.”

Haley squatted beside the greatsword, giving it a closer look. Despite the worn, rotten nature of the weapon’s hilt, the blade didn’t have a speck of rust on it, and she was pretty sure she could see faint runes lying beneath the surface of the metal above the tarnished crossguard. “I think that blade is an artifact,” she said softly.

“What makes you say so?” Trent asked.

Haley pointed to the runes under the metal. “See the runes?”

He squinted but shook his head, giving her a quizzical look. “No. Do you see them, Lali?”

Lali picked the sword up with a grunt, holding it by the hilt so the blade hung before her. She turned it left and right, frowning. “I don’t see anything but high-quality steel.”

Haley took the sword—nearly as tall as she was—and held it up in the light, watching as more and more runes shimmered beneath the surface of the metal from the hilt to the pointy tip. “It’s full of runes. Maybe it’s my eyes that let me see them, but they’re there.”

Lali shrugged. “Fair enough. Can you carry it? You can drop it if we get in another fight.”

Haley nodded, putting the flat of the blade on her shoulder, so it jutted up into the air behind her. “I can.”

“Now we need to find a way out of this trap,” Trent said with a heavy sigh.

“No,” Haley replied, starting toward the alcove. “I’m pretty sure these two levers will open the gates.”

“Levers?”

She pointed. “In the alcove. I’ll pull the one toward the exit, and you tell me if it opens the gate.”

A few minutes later, they were progressing down the path again, and Haley was feeling hopeful that they’d reach the tree soon. They were already close enough that its enormous canopy blocked the direct sunlight, throwing the garden into shadow. She just hoped Ward was also heading there. She hoped Lali was right and the roc hadn’t killed him. He was too tough for that, wasn’t he? “Just be okay, Ward,” she whispered, gripping the hilt of the big, possibly magical sword tightly. “Just be okay.”

###

Ward peered through the slightly ajar gate. It was covered with flowering vines, so he had to reach a hand through the gap to push them aside, but once he’d done that, he had a clear view of the vast courtyard and the gigantic tree at its center. It was like a scene from an old jungle expedition movie where the explorers found some ancient Mayan ruins. At least that was the connection his mind made as he saw the strange statues and plant life inside the courtyard.

Everything was covered in a dense carpet of palm-sized, red-streaked green leaves and strange, gray vines. The vines were everywhere, connecting the stony landscape of the courtyard to the tremendous canopy of leaves that hung overhead. They stretched to the lowest branches thirty feet above. Those branches! Their girth would have made most tree trunks look puny. It was more than the size that made the tree seem alien and strange. Gray bark, oozing, crimson sap, and those ruby-streaked leaves made the tree unlike anything Ward had ever seen.

He could smell the nature of it, a sugar-sweet haze that hung over something deeper, something like dark, moist soil with an aftertaste of bitter coffee. In his vision, Ward had seen eggplant-shaped white fruit hanging from the tree’s branches, but they were absent in reality. More than that, the leaves had been completely red, not just streaked with crimson. He wondered why that would be. Had he seen a different season of the tree’s life? Had it been a vision of the past or the future? Would the artifact be there, or had it been gone for a hundred years already?

Staring at the vast tree trunk, he thought it would be there. He could feel it. Behind that strange sensation was another—the dread Grace had mentioned. It was there, heavy in the air. Something dark was coming. Thinking of Grace, he looked down to see her peering through the gate, her eyes fixated on one of the nearby statues. “You notice something?” he whispered. He wasn’t sure why—something about the place felt hallowed to him, and he felt the compulsion to do so just as he would in a graveyard.

“That statue. I don’t think it’s meant just to be strange. I think it’s one of them.”

“One of whom?” Ward studied the pale stone statue. It depicted a man in flowing robes, though the details had been worn away by time and the elements. Even so, he could see what Grace meant by “strange.” The figure’s limbs were too long, its neck too slender. It had almond-shaped eyes that were half again as large as a human’s would be on a proportional face. Its marble lips were thin, but parted in a smile that was entirely too wide, exposing carefully detailed, too-sharp teeth.

“The ancients? The old ones…the beings who made the challenges.”

Ward frowned. “What makes you say that?”

“Something about the pose. It’s like…exalted. There are others around too, but also”—she pointed to another nearby statue of a man kneeling—“there are those. The supplicants. They look human.”

Ward nodded. He could see it. There were distinct differences between the statues that were kneeling or standing and those that were elevated on pedestals. The ones on the ground were, indeed, more “human” looking. “How many?” As he asked the question, he counted for himself. There were eleven of the more alien-looking people, and the other statues—hundreds of them—were all clustered together. Some knelt and others stood, but one thing was universal: they wore expressions of wonder, their eyes fixated on one of the statues that Grace thought represented the “old ones” or “ancients.”

“Creepy, isn’t it?” Grace asked.

“Yeah. Anyway, hopefully it doesn’t matter who or what those statues are. I’m gonna try to grab that amulet, and then we can get the hell out of here.” With that, he pushed the gate open a few more feet, snapping off some vines in the process. Gripping his sword tightly, he stepped into the courtyard.