Reela stumbles through the dark, shivering, exhausted, and feeling pain beyond words. It's so dark that she isn't sure if this cave even leads anywhere. For all she knows she's just been going in circles but is just too dazed to tell. She feels like she's getting nowhere, but she hasn't stopped moving for more than mere moments to catch her breath.
But she guesses it's better for her to be down here than up on the surface. She can't quite remember exactly, but she thinks she recalls seeing storm clouds in the distance. She'd much rather not get caught in a fucking snowstorm amidst all the other bullshit she's had to deal with in the past Mazenya-knows how many hours.
She feels like all her shivering and walking has worked off at least four pounds of potato chips. Cree's always on her case about training and exercise, so happy-fucking-birthday to him.
She hopes he's having better luck on his search than she is. She's heard stories of the hell he and Regan had gone through for just the first few days they spent in Aramora before they even found her at that Latyr camp. They literally met her after Regan had been kidnapped. And here she thought she was the one with bad luck.
Maybe they passed it down to her.
As she walks with a wandering mind, she trips. As she hits the ground, her mind snaps back to the present with a weak gasp, but she can't bring herself to emit much more than that small sound.
She tries taking a breath. The stone floor tears her leggings and her knees, but at this point she can't say she notices the added pain on top of everything else.
The thought of wishing she could just go home has threatened to enter her mind a few times, but she's so far been successful at shoving it to the back of her mind with the rest of her accumulating problems. Whatever suffering she feels, she has to remember that this is nothing compared to what Regan and Cree had gone through for her all those years ago.
Like them – for them – she can endure.
Reela braces her hand back on the wall and tries to get a firm handhold before attempting to pull herself back onto her feet. Her legs tremble and her knees buckle, but she catches herself on a stalagmite before she could give herself the chance to fall again.
She takes another moment to catch her breath and tries to distract herself from the pain and cold by looking around the dark cave some more. As before, still nothing. Just a cave. It's just dark.
She looks down and takes one more deep breath in to steel herself before continuing, when she hears down the tunnel, a faint crackling. As her eyes adjust a bit, she sees that further down the cave is a flickering, lambent light of a fire. The dim glow bounces faint, but inviting shadows across the wall.
Her heart leaps at the sight and she tries to run towards it, forgetting in the moment that she's still one faceplant away from being borderline crippled.
She takes it slow, but hurriedly staggers towards the light. The thought of feeling the warmth of a fire overcomes her desire to save her strength. If she finds a fire, she might be able to rest for a bit without fear of freezing to death.
Her senses are too dulled to question what might be the source of the fire, even as her hands and shoulder still throb from the blisters left by Avinalyn. At this point, she doesn't care if it's them again. She just wants to rest and defrost.
She makes it to the corner and her eyes light up to see a small campfire at the back of the cave. Throwing caution to the wind, she lets go of the wall to tremblingly bound towards the light. She didn't exactly run as much as she threw herself across the floor in an ungraceful flop, but what the fuck does she care about elegance at a time like this?
As far as she can tell, no one is around. Maybe someone was here but left recently. With luck, that means there's potentially a way out nearby.
But that's for her to find out later. Right now, she huddles around the fire and holds out her hands to warm them, when she remembers her burns. Her palms pulse with a stinging pain of protest to the heat and she quickly pulls her hands back against her body to protect them.
With a sigh, she shifts to angle her non-burnt shoulder closer to the fire, keeping the blister away from the light but letting her body warm regardless.
As she feels her body relax, her eyes begin to droop. Her limbs feel heavier and her aching feet suddenly become very apparent to her. She gives herself this moment to breathe. She'll keep going in a bit. But right now, she sits tight and revels in the heat.
Reela can't remember when she fell asleep, much less when she laid down on the stone floor of the cave and shut her eyes.
But when she wakes up, it's to the sound of shuffling boots around her.
Her body tenses but she keeps her eyes shut and pretends to still be out cold. She listens closer to the footsteps. Leather boots. Only one set as far as she can tell, so at least her chances of taking down a single person are better than if there were a whole group.
She hears the footsteps getting closer and prepares to have to draw a blade, but she doesn't feel the weight of the katana on her back. That's when the fear sets in, worried she may have dropped it in the snow, but she remembers feeling it on her back when she sat down at the fire.
She can still feel the knife in her boot at least, and the knife on her thigh. She thinks she can feel one of her pocket knives tucked into the waistband of her leggings, so it's not like she's being caught unarmed.
But she is, however, caught off-guard by feeling a some kind of wooden grip slowly poke her cheek.
Reela snaps her eyes open and tries to reach for the knife in her boot, but her arms and legs all scream from unrelenting soreness all over her body. She groans and her eyes close again against a headache once she remembers everything that happened prior to finding the campfire.
Just as she starts learning how to breathe again, she hears a sigh of relief. "Oh good. Not dead. That's a good first step in staying alive," says a sort of brutish woman's voice, but something about the lightness of her tone feels weirdly misplaced for the voice. Like an audio representation of a bear with a pretty flower on its head.
Reela squints her eyes open again to see a face filling her view. Her mind is still waking up along with her body, so it takes her a moment to process all of this woman's features. She has darker toned tan skin and longer dark brown hair pulled back in some weird amalgamation of a couple different hairstyles, and along her jawline and chin is a thin layer of stubble. Her bright green eyes are searching Reela's with a curious smile.
Her smile.
Reela registers the woman's large underbite teeth and all of her soreness is dulled with a rush of adrenaline that gets her to fly off the ground and draw her boot knife, holding it ready as she acquires a defensive stance a few feet away from the orc woman.
"Get away from me," Reela warns in a weak, but threatening voice.
The orc holds up her hands, and in one is a large one-handed axe that Reela realizes must be what the woman poked her with. "Woah woah woah, calm down!" she nervously chuckles. "Don't worry, I was just checking to make sure if you were actually dead before eating you. You're not dead, so you're not food," she states with a winning smile that curls around her large underbite.
"You were—what?!" Reela exclaims.
The woman sighs. "Sorry. Orc joke. I always forget to filter myself around you weaklings. No, I wasn't actually going to eat you. Just trying to break the ice," she snorts. "Get it? Because... it's cold," she shivers. "Huh, I'm really cold."
Reela takes another step back. "What do you want from me?"
The woman stops and tilts her head as she stares off at nothing with a dumb look. "Uh..." she turns her slack-jawed confusion back to Reela. "Could you repeat the question? Sorry, I was thinking about frogs," she dumbly giggles. "Wibbit."
"Were you sent by Varagores?" Reela tightens her grip on her knife and watches the orc with an unblinking glare.
The woman snorts again. "Oh, hell no! Those guys are fucking freaks!" she clears her throat and straightens her posture, which makes Reela astutely aware of how tall she is.
The orc smiles calmly and rests the head of her axe lazily on her shoulder. "Okay look. I'm Mog. I'm from Conarita. I'm new in the area and stumbled on this cave, like, a few days ago. And when I got back to my cozy little camp, I found you snoozing like a kitten so I decided to leave you be! No harm, no foul!" she runs it all down with a confident smile.
Reela watches her every move, but slowly her caution shifts to confusion. She knew orcs were dumb, but what the fuck is happening? She's never heard of an orc that isn't interested in either killing everything that moves or enslaving everything in sight.
Much less an orc from Conarita.
"So you're..." she slightly shifts to relax her stance. "...not trying to enslave me?"
Mog cocks a brow. "What, in like a sexy way?" she asks, but Reela's face just deadpans. After a moment, Mog gasps. "Oh. Ohhh!" she holds up her hand and laughs as she looks at her axe and then back to Reela. "Right. The whole 'Varagores enslaving the lesser races and trying to take over the world' thing! Right. My bad. I'm now realizing that makes this whole interaction look really shady," she chuckles nervously. "Well it's... kinda awkward now."
Reela lets herself relax a bit more. If Mog is trying to enslave her, then she'll take her chances.
"Then what do you want?" she asks.
Mog's shoulders droop and the head of her axe clinks the ground. "Uh... I don't know," she shrugs. "Oh, right! Your sword!" she reaches into a crack in the wall and starts digging around. "Gah, come on. I know it's in here somewhere..." she rumbles as she sifts around in the wall. She retracts her hand and pulls out a rat by its tail, eyes it curiously and drops it before sticking her hand back in the narrow crevice.
Reela watches her with her arms crossed, and she accidentally rubs her palm over her side and tries to stifle a wince. That was all it took to remind her body of the immense pains in her hands and shoulder, but she does her best to suppress how much it actually hurts. For all she knows, Mog is just waiting for her to show weakness before she attacks.
"Ah! There it is!" the orc says as she pulls the katana out of the wall. "Sorry, I didn't know if you would try stabbing on sight like a lot of people here do when they see me. Guess I just have one of those faces," she shrugs and holds the sword out for Reela to take.
She eyes the katana and the woman cautiously before she slowly approaches. Once she's close enough, she snatches the sword out of her hand, but since she has yet to put her knife away, she had to use her arm with the burnt shoulder to perform the quick action. The stinging pain throbs and Reela sucks in a sharp breath, but she backs away from Mog before the orc can try anything.
"You okay? You look like you got a nasty shoulder high-five from a flame thrall," Mog questions with a curious glance to her burned shoulder.
Reela slings her katana over her back and grabs her shoulder with her free hand. "Yeah... Something like that happened..." she clears her throat and scowls at the blistering wound. She had to sacrifice her favorite ribbon for this. She wishes Nisha were here. Life Magic is fucking fantastic to have around at times like these.
Mog snaps her fingers and reaches into her bag, pulling out a small vial of green liquid and holding it out towards Reela. "Got a healing elixir if you want it," she offers with a smile. It's really hard to trust a smile coming from an orc. The teeth kind of ruin it.
Reela eyes the vial suspiciously and her face hardens. She wordlessly shakes her head and steps back once more. Seeing her skepticism, Mog sighs. "Look, I promise it's not poison—" she glances down at the vial as well and her eyes widen. "Oh shit, wait. Wrong one. This—Okay, this one actually is poison, hold on," she quickly returns the vial to her bag and starts rummaging through it.
She takes out another vial, this one with a dark red liquid in it. "Okay, this is the healing one, promise!" she flashes Reela a very toothy smile.
"Why do you have poison to begin with?" Reela asks accusingly.
Mog tilts her head. "Look, I like frogs and shit. Game respects game," she shrugs. "But I promise, this'll help with your unfriendly high-five residue," she lifts the vial out towards Reela.
Normally, she would say no. Cree taught her to never take drinks or narcotics from strangers. But something tells her that if Mog was really trying to kill her, she would have done it while she was asleep. If it was just her shoulder, she probably wouldn't bother. But with the burns on her hands, she doubts her capability to wield a blade for long before the pain of just holding it gets to be too much. For the sake of being able to defend herself, she has to make an exception.
"Fine..." she steps back over towards Mog and takes the vial from her. "But if this kills me, I'll be pissed," she huffs before popping the cork and sniffing the liquid, but she doesn't know what she was expecting. It's a magical fucking potion. Of course it's going to taste and smell like shit.
Mog chuckles. "Trust me, I will be too," she says as Reela plugs her nose and starts downing the contents of the vial. "Good poison's hard to come by, so if it does kill you then that means I just wasted part of my supply."
Reela just empties the vial when Mog says that and her eyes widen and she snaps her panicked gaze back up at the orc woman, who laughs awkwardly.
"Oh don't worry, that was... probably the right one," she goes to pat Reela's shoulder but awkwardly stops herself with an uncool side-lean on the wall next to her. "Anyway... Where're you headed? Or is spelunking your day-to-day life and turns out I'm just interrupting your routine?"
Reela sighs and hesitantly puts the empty vial away as she crosses her arms, looking down at her hands as if she's going to watch them miraculously heal before her eyes. Unfortunately, she doubts elixirs work the same level of magic as actual Life Magic does.
"Do you know of a way out of this cave?" she asks as she starts running through her head on exactly what all she needs to do now that she's gotten her rest. She still feels stiff and sore, and they are still technically in the mountains so the cold isn't ideal, but it's better now that she isn't frozen solid. She's guessing it's daytime now, but she could be wrong. She needs to find an exit so she can start making progress towards returning to civilization.
Mog scratches the back of her neck. "Um... Maybe? Yes. No? No wait, yes. I do... I think," she states.
Reela has to physically shake her head to try processing whatever the fuck that answer was. "...What?"
"Sorry, got a lot on the old mind, ya know?" Mog smiles again. "But yeah, there's an exit not too far from here. Honestly, you probably would have found it if you just kept going a little further last night, but hey! New friends are always a plus!" she says cheerily.
Is that what she's calling this?
Reela slowly nods. "Right... Well, do you think you could show me the way? I need to get back to civilization as soon as possible."
Mog happily nods and steps away from the wall. "Of course I can! And for a small fee, I could even help you get to the nearest town. But don't worry, I give friend discounts," she winks. Again, any facial expression like that coming from an orc just ruins it.
"Are you a mercenary or something?" Reela asks as she starts looking around, checking to make sure she has everything. Not like she had much on her to begin with, at least. She should be ready to go.
Mog nods enthusiastically. "Something like that. Though, it's hard finding good business in Letroseli. All the wealthy people are too busy running and screaming in terror to hear about my premium discount on my fishing services," she shrugs. "Gotta take jobs where I can find them."
Reela just nods again. If this elixir takes too much longer to heal her hands, she might just have to take up Mog on the offer of escorting her to a town. Dumb as she may be, orcs are smart in one thing only, and that's combat. If she's attacked on the way to a town, she needs to have some means of defense. If she can't defend herself, a mercenary wouldn't hurt.
And considering the fact that her dad is a part-time mercenary, she knows the merc struggle to find good jobs. Maybe one of these days Cree will realize that he's been in bed with a rich boy for ten years and doesn't need to scrape together money anymore. And he only ever seems to do jobs for County Mortal. He is aware that Sage pays better, right?
Reela follows Mog through the cave tunnels for about thirty minutes, when at last they reach the exit. Reela is thrown for a loop, not only because she's seeing sunlight again, but trees and grass. Wasn't she in the mountains surrounding Lithonilynn? Where the hell did these caves bring her?
There is still some remnants of snow on some of the trees and around the stones of the cave entrance, but it's not the frozen valley she had been aimlessly wandering for probably three or four hours before the ground decided to suck her down.
Mog stretches her arms back with a big smile as she takes in a deep breath of the crisp forest air. "And here we are! I told you I knew where I was going," she states and looks down at Reela as she steps out of the cave and into the forest, still looking around quizzically.
"Where the hell are we? How far away is Lithonilynn?"
Mog snorts. "Lithonilynn? Fuck dude, that's miles away. The closest town from here I think is Ceel... something. I can never remember your fancy elfy names."
Reela glances back at her. "Ceelyaer? How far is it to get there?" she asks. As much as she'd prefer to get back to Lithonilynn to find Corb and Todo, there's no way in hell she's going to walk all the way back if it's apparently miles from here. Not without getting some rest in a real bed first.
If she can get to Ceelyaer, she can not only get food and sleep at a tavern, but she can finally message Todo back to let him know where she is and that she's alive. The poor guy must be going apeshit worrying about her right now.
Mog shrugs. "Not sure how far exactly, but I've been there and back a few times and my tootsies never hurt too bad when I'm done walking so it can't be too far," she says and Reela slowly nods. Unfortunately, Ceelyaer is sounding like her best bet.
She looks down at her hands to see that the burns are still not fully healed. The elixir is working a little bit from what she can tell, but she can tell it's going to be a while before she's able to properly wield a blade again. Cree had told her before that if she's ever unable to use a weapon, hand-to-hand is still a good option, but she calls bullshit on hearing that coming from a man whose arm is more weaponized than most actual weapons.
With a sigh, she reaches back for her bag, but she remembers that she doesn't have it. She really hopes Corb or Todo found it down in the dungeon. Now that she thinks about it, throwing the whole bag might have been overdoing it to just get Toya out of the cell. She realizes that she had a lot of illegal substances in there. And money. Like Cree, she too sometimes forgets that she's technically rich.
"Shit..." Reela curses under her breath and Mog cocks her head at her.
"What's wrong?" the orc asks.
Reela pinches the bridge of her nose. "I was going to take you up on your offer of helping me get to the city, but I left all my money in Lithonilynn..." she sighs. Mog's smile slightly falters but Reela is too exhausted and just generally done to notice. "Anyway, thanks for the help regardless. I need to start heading back now..." she takes a deep breath and turns to start walking into the forest.
She knows it's probably dumb, but she supposes if she just wanders the area enough, she's bound to find a road eventually. Roads generally tend to lead to towns. With luck, that town will end up being Ceelyaer. If not, she'll probably end up back in Lithonilynn anyway, so what could go wrong?
Aside from everything, of course.
"Wait!" Mog calls out as she rushes to catch up with her. Reela stops when the orc grabs her shoulders and spins her around to face her. "Look at yourself! You look dead on your feet enough as it is. Wandering alone will just get you killed, and who wants that? Not me. So why not let me lead you to Ceelyaer and you can just pay me later? It's a win-win!" she offers.
Reela shrugs her hands off her shoulders with a wince since her shoulder is in fact still burnt. "Seriously? What makes you so sure I won't just run off without paying you?"
"Uh..." Mog tilts her head. "Friend intuition? Friend...tuition? Fr..."
"I've known you for about an hour," Reela deadpans.
Mog enthusiastically nods. "Exactly! It's a trust exercise! You trust me to not get you killed and I trust you to pay me for it! Sound like a deal?" she holds out her hand with a wide smile.
Reela just glances between her face and her hand, considering her options. She honestly doesn't know if she trusts Mog or not. Probably not, but in terms of keeping her alive, it's either Mog or herself, who is basically walking around with an open bullet wound. She doesn't know what's out here, but Mog apparently does quite well. That has to be good enough for now.
With a sigh, Reela shakes her hand. "Fine. I'm trusting you to not get me killed," she states.
Mog nods without losing her smile or letting go of her hand. "And I'm trusting you to not run away without paying!"
Reela also slowly nods, unsure if Mog is waiting for something or not because she still has yet to stop shaking her hand. It's starting to hurt with her burnt palm.
"Um... What's happening?" Reela asks with a hint of worry.
Mog just shrugs. "This... is a really long high-five."
Reela sighs and pulls her hand back so she can cross her arms and take a small step back. The longer she's around this woman, the more she's slowly starting to realize that she's a lot like Corb. And like Corb, Reela has no clue how to deal with her.
"Well, then... I guess lead the way?" Reela says.
Mog nods once more. "Rightio! Follow me!" she says and turns on her heel to start marching through the woods. With a cautious glance around, Reela follows.
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Notes:
You know, when a character shows up and is named 'Mog' and gives not only Reela a brain aneurism, but also Med, I feel like you already know the person to blame.
It's Aloe. The culprit is Aloe.
Fucking enigma.