Drink Their Fill
17
DEC/21
“You must have me confused with someone who gives a fuck.” The words tumbled around in Vashir’s mouth, moving like a giant boulder rolling downhill crushing everything in its path. They were words birthed of pure helplessness and despair; a desperate plea born of misplaced bravado; and an act of contrived ambivalence created in the hopes that the guardsman might stay his hand and spare Ixen’s life.
He did not.
The golden scales of his friend’s neck parted as the steel blade passed across his throat, and Ixen’s crimson lifeblood spilled out upon the pale sand beneath his feet. The druid of the sewers, a being whose very existence was proof that Tiamat’s sway over this world was not as complete as She would have one believe, died there upon the desert sands; his still, golden form serving as a grisly trophy to Vashir’s abject failure.
Vashir cried out in rage and lashed out with a psionic attack, reaching deep inside himself hoping to find a buried reservoir of power within the recesses of his mind. But instead of a font of power, he found only the embers and ashes of a spent flame within, and the guardsman shrugged off his pitiful mental assault with ease. Vashir was exhausted. And broken. And he was the only member of his group still standing – well, flying actually, as his wings had kept him safely above the fray for most of the fight. This sole remaining guardsman could not reach him while he hovered above the battlefield and it was only a matter of time before the man finally succumbed to the one of Vashir’s feeble mental attacks. The guard was doomed, and he knew it, and his only remaining trick was to try to force Vashir into landing upon the ground and facing him in a “fair” fight. Barring that, at least he could try to hurt him deeply in his final moments.
Vashir knew that he would not survive long in melee with this guard, even as harried and injured as the man appeared to be. David, Oni, and Arnia were many orders of magnitude better fighters than he was, and their blood was currently watering the dry desert sands. Killing Ixen hadn’t forced Vashir’s hand – as valuable an ally the golden dragonborn had proven himself to be, Vashir hadn’t known the creature more than a few months. But when the guard moved to Oni’s side and placed his blood-stained blade against his throat, Vashir knew that he had no choice in the matter and he glided to the ground, willing his steel sword to erupt into flames in his hands as he descended. If he was to die, and least he would try to look impressive doing it.
The guard flashed a thin triumphant smile as he dropped Oni’s still form to the ground and rose to face his new foe. Vashir felt a faint tremor of fear as he watched the guard twirl his curved steel blade in lazy arcs in front of him as the two moved in to engage with each other. Vashir knew that once he got in range of this blade, it was over. The guard was too fast and too strong. And, once he had fallen to this sword, all of their lives were forfeit and their mission would fail. The very fate of the world hung in the balance of these next few seconds, and Vashir knew deep down that he was not the man for the job.
He reached deep into the recesses of his mind hoping to find something – anything – there. A tiny spark of power to hurl at this enemy before it was too late. He tried to keep his inner struggle off of his face as he strode with feigned nonchalance towards his doom. The battle had drained him of nearly everything he had, but he tried to harden his mind for one last attack; he just needed to grasp onto the barest kernel of power. One tiny, stubborn spark of energy. As the two men closed in on one another his search grew more frantic, though he tried not to let his desperation show. And then, in that last moment, there in the darkest recesses of his black heart, he found it…
Vashir had been overjoyed to find that Arnia and Oni still breathed, and he patched their wounds as best he could and dragged their still forms into one of the nearby huts. But when he returned for David, his heart dropped. The young psion was pale and still, though his skin still burned with the fading memory of life. The weight of the loss grabbed Vashir with the iron grip of grief and pulled him to his knees in the sand beside his friend. How could they go on without him? They had lost so many of their number in the past few months: Mama, Selise, Kobra, Rain, Ayassa, Nessy, and so many others. And now Ixen and David too. How many more sacrifices did this mission require? How much more blood needed to be spilled? The price was just too high to bear…
Vashir tried to find the energy to drag David’s corpse into the tent with Oni and Arnia, but the cruel sand held his body firmly in place with greedy hands, unwilling to let go of their prize. With tears of grief, and rage, and frustration he tugged at David’s still form, flapping his vulture wings as he strained with all of his might, before finally managing to break the lover’s grip that the desert had upon his friend.
He could only go a few feet at time without stopping to rest and the enormity of the burden before him seemed to weigh impossibly heavy. As he dragged the lifeless shell of his friend through the sand, he couldn’t help but reflect upon the feelings he had towards David. He had underestimated the man at every step along the way, initially thinking him a mere spy for the Gardiward household. Then, as the strength of David’s psionic abilities began to become more apparent, Vashir had chalked him up to being a lowly scryer or seer, one whose abilities were clearly beneath his own. And then he saw David in combat, surrounded by a whirling maelstrom of psionic energy and flashing blades of power, wading into battle with seeming reckless abandon and leaving a swath of destruction in his wake. After a few such battles, Vashir began to doubt that even he could stand up against the psionic might of this man, and often found himself grateful that the two were on the same side in a fight, rather than meeting one another across the field of battle.
And now he is gone; a lump of wasted promise and potential is all that remains of one of the most powerful psions I have ever known, he thought to himself as he finally got David’s body inside the small tent. He was another victim of the Dragon Queen, ground into the dust of obscurity that covered this lifeless world. And when he and Oni and Arnia passed from the land into Her cruel, clawed hands, there would be none to left mourn his passing and sing songs of his deeds and of his bravery. And so we must succeed, he thought with a sense of renewed vigor, the realization coming at him like a lightning bolt. Not just for the world, but for the legacy of his friend, they must persevere.
Vashir wiped the sweat from his brow drew the steel blade from its sheath and walked back out into the bright desert. It would take some time before Oni and Arnia were able to fight again, if they even survived their wounds, but there were some that needed to pay dearly for the costing the lives of his friends. The foolish blacksmith would be the first to suffer for his betrayal – he could not have traveled far in this short amount of time and he was the first who needed to pay the blood price. And Kassim Arslan, the Sheik of Gulg, had made a grievous miscalculation when he sent the entirety of his Honor Guard to arrest them, and now he too needed to know the consequences of his folly. Perhaps the heads of his guards raining from the sky above his pavilion would send a suitable message? One thing was certain, the thirsty sands would drink their fill of blood before this was over…