>>6045921>>6045923>>6045930>>6045944>>6045962>>6045974>>6046015>>6046063Unable to return to your rest, but with Izirina still sleeping, you hop out of bed to do something about the uneasy energy which has animated you, in the wake of that unpleasant dream.
Princess Miannie’s words should mean nothing to you. They SHOULD. They certainly don’t change your plans: the Unseelie and their dreadful ‘Empress’ MUST be stopped, by ANY means necessary. And yet, as you walk the grounds of their small island—which seems to be floating, unattached, amidst the amorphous mists which your Unseelie Star has driven back from the edge of boundary cliffs—you are conflicted. You continually return to the notion that you could somehow ‘cure’ their inner evil in some way, as your ancestral patron deity has suggested; if not that, perhaps simply by transporting they or Queen Banelight to Holy Luna, you could buy your way back into the Bonum Chaoticum’s good graces?
But their aura is untained by demonic influence. The blood which stains their souls was drawn of their own volition, not as the result of some curse of ‘moon-madness’, such as Oncyth once suffered. What went wrong to make them this way? It’s tough for you to say, but it’s beyond your ability to cure…
And turning in the Unseelie won’t bring the Woodland Rangers back to life.
It is the last thought that turns your mind to your sword. When you purchased padded armour for Izirina and yourself, you also bought side-swords for the two of you. The burgeoning paranoia that Princess Miannie might have glimpsed your guilt in your dreams and know what you and Izirina did, drives you to draw the length of solid, shining steel—with a teal hilt as Izirina’s is deep purple, to better match your attire. You find a spot that seems somewhat private, open amongst a thicket of tangled berry-brambles, and there you begin to practice.
A stroke here, a swish there. Turn. Pivot. Guard. Duck. Stab. Slash. Hop back, lunge forwards. Sidetsp, twirl—
“Hyyaaah!” you cry.
“What doing?” ask Baajaban.
You fumble about with your sword in your startlement, dropping it amongst the barely-grown grass of the newly-invigorated island-world. The massive minotaur somehow snuck up on you in spite of his size, so distracted were you. Now, he looks at you curiously, and bends down to pick up the sword and offer it back to you.
“Thanks,” you say.
“You not very good,” he notes, without apparent mockery in his tone; in fact, you think you sense concern.
“Thanks,” you say, sarcastically, and sheathe the blade.
