Chapter 53: Chapter 51: Of Rainy Nights

Rain poured right down on both girls as Lucrece finally stopped walking. Going around blindly as a bat turned out to be quite the hard task, especially when carrying the witch on her shoulders. The lancer mentally thanked the gods that the girl had taken off the heavy, broken pieces of armour, because it had certainly made her work easier, but not easy enough to prevent Lucrece from asking herself how did she end up in this situation.

 

A couple of trees had grown close enough to each other to form some natural refuge from the elements, their branches weaving a thin but oh-so-appreciated roof to hide under; it was far from perfect, but it was good enough for both tired warriors to finally sit down and just watch the rain pass over them. Lucrece left Gabrielle on the floor first, before shaking some of the water off her own brigandine. 

 

That blazed cart had taken her cape with them in their escape. The cold would soon set in and after that, sickness. And no one contracted a sickly guard.

 

“Bleeding saints…” Lucrece sighed. “I should have just stayed in the cart, why didn’t I stay in the cart?” The girl grabbed her cheeks and shook her head once again, feeling despair starting to grasp her mood. “Now I’ll have to invest in medicine and extra food if I want to recover fast enough! There go all my hard-earned empires! Ugh, perhaps if I find some good enough leeches I can pretend to be healthy for long enough to score an easy job…”

 

While the blonde girl whined to herself, Gabrielle had started to move once again, gathering as many branches as she could find on the floor and piling them up. Her hands went to her pockets…

 

“Maybe I could grab the money and run? No no, the last thing I need is a bad reputation! Bastards recognize me way too easily these days.” Lucrece continued her suffering. “Maybe with a disguise? A different hat, a damn eyepatch…”

 

Flick. Snap.

 

Lucrece’s eye had to close for a second from the sudden light, as the smallest bonfire rose to life right in front of the staring Witch. Gabrielle nodded to herself, looking back up to the dumbfounded lancer and showing off her trick: a white piece of quartz with several lines carved into the form of a diamond in its center.

 

“Heatstone.”

 

The blonde girl stared for a bit. Magic. That was beyond impossible and, well, illegal. But after all, this woman was a witch! So why would she be surprised of her having tricks like that under her sleeve? Lucrece was just happy no one could see it though, as convenient as it was: she didn’t want to end up tortured and burnt by the Genesis…

 

Gabrielle noticed the stare. She couldn’t really understand the feelings behind it, but she could feel that single eye staring at her, so she could only assume she had done “a bad”. With a little sigh sigh she prepared to put off the fire, only for Lucrece to quickly reach and stop her.

 

“No no no! It’s good, It’s good I swear.” The blonde was not exactly sure if it was good, but it was certainly useful. “Let me, uh, let me get you some more branches… does it matter if they are wet?”

 

“No.”

 

“Alright, good.”

 

With an even deeper sigh, the lancer ran back out into the rain to collect branches off the side of the road. Big ones, thick ones, heavy ones, anything that could make a good fire. After getting an armful, she simply came back to their little shelter and stared back at Gabrielle, who instructed her to simply put the branches one by one on top of the flimsy, weak flames.

 

Doing so almost drowned the fire for a moment, before heavy vapor spires rose straight from the wood. After that, the flames seemed to come back to life even stronger than before. Lucrece narrowed her eyes, trying to distinguish what was going on… she saw another of those quartz rocks nestled under the wooden sticks.

 

Sighing, the woman simply sat down and kept herself close to the flames, feeling the warmth slowly return to her body. Relief washed over her, before being replaced by curiosity.

 

“Do you have a lot of tricks like this?” Lucrece tilted her head, daring to look at the Witch in the eye. “It’s handy.”

 

Gabrielle simply stared at her again, unblinking and unfeeling… no, not unfeeling. Lucrece knew better than that, she could see the light in the girl’s eyes, debating if give more details in her answer. It was interesting to see this kind of look in someone else’s eyes, nostalgic even! It reminded her of an old friend…

 

Back from before everything broke down into pieces and fell straight to Hell.

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“Not many.” Finally the Witch answered. “The elves couldn’t teach me much.”

 

Elves. Demihumans. No one had seen them around Jericho in years and now this witch casually claims to have learned from them. Again, Lucrece wasn’t sure why she was surprised by it! After all, knowledge needs to come from somewhere and magic was something completely not-human, right?

 

“So you learned from demis, huh?” Lucrece tried to keep the conversation going. “That’s interesting… do you know where they are now?”

 

“A better place.” Gabrielle answered simply and matter-of-factly. “Back home.”

 

“Do you know where?”

 

The witch slowly shook her head. Suddenly, the light in her eyes felt colder and more distant, distressed. Wherever they had gone, it was obvious that the witch could not follow, and it wasn’t exactly a nice memory. So, Lucrece quickly backed off the subject.

 

“Hey, hey. It’s fine not knowing, I don’t know lots of things.” The blonde offered some relief there, smiling invitingly. “... so, uh…” She stopped. Damn it, out of topics to talk about! Lucrece wasn’t exactly a social genius! How to keep that witch talking? “... What is your name?”

 

“Gabrielle.”

 

“No last name?”

 

“No”

 

“Good. It only gets in the way.” Lucrece covered her mouth, that little ember of resentment had escaped her, but Gabrielle’s eyes looked at her with more interest. She decided to roll with it. “I don’t have one either, not anymore… Call me Lucrece.”

 

“Luci.”

 

“What?”

 

“It’s shorter and easier.”

 

Lucrece tried to reply but, how could you really go against the woman keeping you warm? The same woman you saw literally returning from the dead and rushing headfirst into a horde of bog walkers? She was not going to get into a fight over names with this witch.

 

So, she was Luci now.

 

“Well, then I guess I can call you Gabi, no? It is only fair.”

 

Again she caught the witch wrestling with her emotions, quietly meditating on her answer before reluctantly acquiescing. 

 

“Fine.”

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