Ivy knew something was wrong almost straight away. Gaelyn didn't look quite... right. Pale, his skin shining, sleep and fear encircling his eyes in shadows. Her chest constricted at the sight, but before she could do anything, say anything, Tessa was upon him.
The rider left in the doorway started slightly in surprise, and any tightening of her heart loosened only to let it drop down to her toes at the sight of his childhood love, wrapped into his lap in a position not wholly dissimilar to how they had spent their time the evening before. In the end, she had to look away however briefly, to allow herself to force an element of happiness onto her features. There was one within her, somewhere; happiness for him and for Tessa that they should find each other again. It was just buried right now, beneath so many other complicated feelings.
Eventually, once the scene had calmed, she moved further into the room and sat down on the other bed, realising she should probably crumple it up a little, make it look like it had actually been used.
"Because of Gaelyn mostly. And Kisa." Her voice was soft when she answered Tessa's questions, but she didn't look in Gaelyn's direction. "He got us up to the rampart, but then we got separated." Flashes of that moment buzzed behind her eyes but she pushed through, despite the nausea coiling in her stomach.
"We joined up again on the other side of the forest. Whatever rune Kisa has meant she could fly us, which is how we ended up here." In a bedroom together, having mind-blowing, intimate sex in the tub on the other side of the room.
Ivy dropped her gaze to her hands in her lap and as if sensing her discomfort, Kisa lifted her head, then her body, stretched a little like a cat might and scurried across to the opposite bed and up onto her rider's shoulder.
"What about you, Tessa?" Ivy interjected quickly, before anything else could be said.
Tessa's hand flexed open and closed on the table as she thought back on the previous night. She still hadn't slept, and it all still felt very fresh. "Fought my way out, same as you, I reckon. One of the initiates was thrown from the rampart, I saw him go. Landed three feet from me." She swallowed hard. "I called out to his dragon, grabbed his cloak—" she picked at the cowl of the too-big cloak on her shoulders "—and ran for it. I saw others doing the same, I got here around the same time."
Gaelyn perked at that. "So there's more then?"
Tessa nodded, somewhere between solemn and grim and relieved. "About ten, give or take. Here, at least. We all went different directions. I'm guessing that Cairnvale, Magister's Peak, maybe Allalhar, are all looking the same right now. Like refugee camps."
"Did you…" Ivy tried, but stopped when her voice cracked slightly. When she was sure it wouldn't betray her again, she continued. "Did you see anyone else?"
She knew she wouldn't have to specify anyone else they knew, especially when her face said it all.
Tessa nodded. "A few. Your cohort," she said, glancing to Gaelyn, "was already outside when the attack came. They were alive last I saw them. Tadala, Magni, and I think all of their squad. The first minutes of the attack, evacuation protocols were still being followed, the chaos hadn't broken out quite yet. As many got out as died, I think... Maybe less." She paused, her jaw clenching. "Probably less.
Another shared silence of understanding passed between them and Ivy's thoughts flicked to Dale. She hadn't had enough time to process what he'd done, their years of friendship that were now in the dirt. It hurt. It really fucking hurt.
She didn't speak on it though. Couldn't. Instead she simply nodded. "Do you know any more about what caused all of this?" Ivy asked quietly. "Who was responsible?" And then finally she glanced at Gaelyn, albeit briefly, because they had both seen who could be.
Tessa shook her head. "That woman in the armor seems to be their leader. But we know nothing about her. Did you see her? Did you see her fight?"
Gaelyn had started to not, but faltered. "We saw her, but she didn't fight. She just watched us. She even beheaded one of her people when they tossed me off the wall."
Tessa looked, first and foremost, insulted, then bewildered. It all manifested in a short, bitter, bark of a laugh. "Well fuckin' lovely to be you, then. She certainly didn't give anyone else that luxury. She breaks runes, Gael."
His eyebrows threatened to disappear into his hairline. "Is she insane?"
"She doesn't die, somehow. Just she gets right in your face as you're trying to cast and attacks your hands, your patterns. She doesn't care about the backlash."
Gaelyn stared, dumbfounded. One of the core tenets of the world was that once a rune was started, it must be finished. When their patterns were disrupted in the middle of drawing, a charged rune would emit terrible backlash to the area, and with some more powerful runes, the fallout could be catastrophic. It was always safer to let an enemy finish casting, and draw your own counter spell, because at last then the outcome would be predictable and measured. Broken tubes meant chaos. They meant destruction, raw and unfiltered. Which meant...
"It must be her personal rune," Gaelyn concluded grimly. "She must have something that protects her."
"Her mirrored armour," Ivy interrupted quietly. "Maybe she can reflect…" She spoke mostly to herself as she considered Tessa's new information, trying to sift through theories and conclusions.
"She had two dragons as well. Or at least, I assume they were both hers."
The moment that followed was dominated by a thick silence as the three Riders tried to contemplate a dozen different angles between them. Finally, it was Gaelyn that broke the silence. "So what's next...?"
"We should gather supplies," Ivy answered quickly, too quickly. "Medicine, food. Maybe speak to some of the others? See if they know anything?" Beyond that though… she was kind of at a loss.
Gaelyn's lips twisted uncomfortably. "So... that's it? Lohia Kaarm is gone? We just move on with our lives, become merchants or bakers or—"
"As if you could bake," Tessa shot in, earning a bashful smirk from Gaelyn that suggested some past blunder. "Speaking with the others is the most important, if we're going to take back the school."
Gaelyn opened his mouth to say something, closed it with a click, then tilted his chin sharply. "Pardon?"
Tessa folded her arms tight under her bosom. "I don't reckon we're going to just take it lying down, ne?" she said back almost accusingly. "We gather what faculty and Riders we can, we enlist any military forces from Ra'Aleei that would have Lohia Kaarm's interests at heart, and we siege the school right back from them. That knight had a large force, but it was not a proper army."
Gaelyn shifted uncomfortably under the sheets. "No but half of them had two dragons at their call... How could we...?" He trailed off.
Tessa, though, picked right back up. "You two know better than any," she offered with a meaningful and smart glance at Ivy, "that dragon bonds are less definite than we had ever thought. We have to learn what happened with you three." At being included in mention, Kisa's head tilted up from where she had been listening to the conversation. Some part of the tilt of her head seemed to agree with the sentiment.
"I've never really been the strategist," Gaelyn admitted, rubbing a hand along the back of his neck, "that wasn't really... waht I was trained to do."
"You handle the swordy bits," Tessa answered smoothly, a sidelong wink at Ivy mixing with a cheeky grin. "We'll handle the brainy bits."
Ivy tried to smile back, she really did, but the expression never quite reached her eyes.
This was good, this is what she'd wanted. They had a plan and Tessa and Gaelyn were reunited and…
"Alright, it's settled then," she stood up abruptly. "Let's go and get some breakfast and talk to the others. See who wants to join our merry band."
And then she turned and started towards the door, a little like she couldn't get out of there quick enough.
Tessa quietly noticed the urgency with which Ivy jumped up, and gracefully rose to follow her. "I left Mercury on the outskirts of town, I hadn't known how things would pan out here. I'll fetch him while you two sort out some breakfast for us." She gave a cursory bow of her head to each of them then slipped out ahead of Ivy, boots clicking down the stairs.
Tessa's exit stalled Ivy, who watched the other girl leave and close the door behind her. For a few moments she stood looking at it, trying very much not to look at the very naked Gaelyn who still sat behind her.
Eventually though, she relinquished to self inflicted pressure and turned, not quite meeting his gaze.
"Um. Do you want some privacy to change? I can meet you downstairs…?"
Gaelyn was already up and out from under the covers the moment the door closed behind Tessa. "I, er—ship sort of sailed on that one, ne?" he quipped back, unrolling his emergency pack and pulling out the tightly-compressed roll of shirts and breeches. The clothes that he had worn last night had been given a quick rinse and wash in the tub, now hanging draped over the edge of the copper; he was of half a mind to just leave them, as torn up as they were, but the material would be useful down the line.
He slipped on the dark pants and tossed the shirt over his head—a simple white affair with silver-cast aglets on its ties that looked too clean relative to the state of their lives—and strode to the door. "We'll just head down together," he added, haphazardly tugging on a boot with his one good arm.
Ivy made a very pointed display of looking everywhere but at Gaelyn, including up at the ceiling. Her heart thudded in a way that wasn't fair, perhaps even more so once he was changed and she did look at him, because damn it all why did he look so good?
"Er, no it's okay. I'm ready now, I'll just… go." So that's exactly what she proceeded to do.
"I, er—okay," he chirped, awkwardly pulling his boot laces tight with one hand.
A minute long than expected passed before Gaelyn trotted down the stairs behind Ivy, holding his left shoulder delicately as his eyes scanned the common room for her.
She headed straight for the table of food, mostly in the hope of distraction. As soon as she realised that Gaelyn was hot on her heels though, she started to grab at items and thrust them into his hands before he could say anything; apples, buns, cheese. A whole loaf of bread.
"Here, take this and that and… maybe one of those for later. Oh and this."
Gaelyn snatched up a wooden tray from the table to start balancing the pile, but after the bread, he held up a hand. "There's who knows how many survivors coming in here," he said, pushing back on a whole brick of cheese as Ivy tried to hoist it onto the board. "We'll buy supplies from a grocer for the road; let's just take what the three of us are going to eat, for now."
Ivy paused with the brick of cheese in her hand, looking up at Gaelyn as though she might bonk it on his head for interrupting her. But then her expression began to soften, just a fraction and her lips twitched at the corners. Because this was ridiculous. She was ridiculous and she needed to get a grip.
So, she took a breath and forced a bit of what she was good at back into her lungs.
"… this is what I was going to eat." She clarified and then without warning, she slid the cheese onto the tray and proceeded to pull it from Gaelyn's hands, "You can get your own tray for anything you want," before she turned on her heel and stalked off towards a spare table.
Gaelyn watched her walk away, rooted to the spot and searching for words that would not come. With a huff, he snatched up a slice of salted pork and a ramekin of fig jam, following after her. The outskirts of the village were not far, but far enough that they would have some time before Tessa returned. When he sat with her, he studied her for a moment before, asking, carefully, "How are you holding up?"
Ivy was already tucking in before Gaelyn sat down with her and for the most part, she ignored the way she could feel his eyes on her. His question, when it came, was met only with a shrug and words that were a little sharper than intended.
"I'm fine." It was an effort not to grimace at herself so she added instead, a little more softly. "You?"
"I'm scared as hell," he replied back to her, snatching up one of the buns on her blade and punching his thumbs into it to pry it in half. "Who knows what comes next for us? Are they going to keep looking for us? You and I got singled out during that attack," he reminded, "so something isn't right about this. Something feels off."
She hadn't been expecting the vulnerability and she paused with a slice of apple hovering by her mouth before resuming. Gaelyn was right, of course. It was terrifying and they were still none the wiser as to why. That was much more important right now than what had happened last night; it was perhaps the reminder that Ivy had needed to refocus herself. To stop displacing her anxiety.
"I know," she eventually let out an exhale. "I guess we just have to take one day at a time until we know more." Then she added, and she meant it, for the most part. "At least we're a four now, instead of a three. That's one better than an hour ago."
Gaelyn appreciated the real response from her, but her last words echoed in a way that gave him pause. "I don't think she's going to travel with us," he said finally, flatly. "I think she's going to try and go off and do her own thing."
"What?!" Ivy blurted before she could stop herself. "Why?! That's… that's crazy, we have to stick together! She could get killed out there on her own." She'd stopped eating altogether now, her words earnest and perhaps a little panicked. "You can't let her, Gaelyn. You can't."
"I agree, but you also can't stop her. Once she has her mind set, she's locked. We'll see what she says when she gets back." He lined the roll with jam, set one of the pork slices inside, then set it aside on a small wooden plate opposite him. Reaching for a second roll, he continued. "Either way, we need to find out what is to be our fates. No one knows about our situation and I think it's best we keep it that way."
She sat back, exasperated. "Well we have to try at least." Her eyes followed Gaelyn's hands for a moment but when he spoke again she looked up at him, properly this time. Our fates rattled through her mind.
"Tessa knows," Ivy countered, "which is why she needs to stay with us. She could help us get to the bottom of… everything."