Private The Less I Know the Better

Hla was never good at running. They never had to - their position was secure, their sacrifices handed to them on silver platters; Hla was the one to direct, to guide, to finalize... never the one to hunt their sacrifices.

And now, he was the one being hunted, running, lungs afire and heart a twisted mess.

His connection with the Shroud made navigating the world much easier, especially in situations like these. Without sight, he relied on his other senses that had sharpened over the years - and that included his awareness of the Shroud. They ran while they could, but when the forest got thicker and harder to traverse, Hla decided on a different approach. They could feel something eating away at the Shroud nearby; it was dark, leeching, familiar in some ways to the darkness Hla knew so well, yet so very different. But they recognized this feeling regardless: the blight.

And in that moment of recognition, Hla changed their course. Their movements slowed as they bordered the blight, more deliberate, careful. The Seer (or, ex-Seer) felt around the healthy trees on one side, tapping roots with their staff, and navigating just at the edge of the blight. Despite their lack of eyes, they moved around the blight with ease. It felt like a cold drain of energy to him, easy to feel the pull and where that energy disappeared. The rest of the world felt lively, colorful, blooming with the trees and shrubs, fluttering by in dainty ripples with a startled bird, even the ground beneath his feet felt alive, breathing. That was how clearly he could tell where to, and where not to step - but he was sure to stay close to the blight.

So far, his strategy seemed to have worked. The distant footsteps of his pursuers slowly disappeared, and he was left with the silence of the forest. Not many were blessed with such a connection to the Shroud and could so easily navigate so close to the blight, and the Sightless' acolytes wouldn't be willing to risk getting that close. Not without direct orders, at least.

The silence of the forest was eventually broken again - something, someone, foreign. A studious voice, the rattling of trinkets. Hla's attention was immediately stolen by this presence. Slowly, carefully, they proceeded.

Hla emerged in this small clearing far too close to the blight. They were breathless, their small frame trembling, head tilted towards Josai as she worked but not looking at her.

The Deva did not look prepared for a walk in the forest and, in fact, had several wounds peppering their body. Some looked simply like a branch or thorns that caught them, but some looked... far more intentional. Blood trickled down from a small gash in their side, and their shoulder bubbled and discolored from a spell they had mostly dodged.

His clothes looked closer to ceremonial garb than anything anyone should wear trekking through the woods. Silks and gold, a veil and blindfold, and... a very clear insignia of an eye worked into their clothes, their jewelry, even the staff-cane they held. Hla's blood red hair tumbled down their back in stark contrast to their muted blue skin. Their head was crowned with a pair of golden horns that almost framed them like a halo.

After a beat of silence, Hla's legs gave out and they collapsed onto their knees, clinging onto their staff to keep themself upright. So, so much of them screamed to keep running, that they couldn't trust anyone...

...but another instinct won. The very first instinct anyone has. Their breath hitched as they felt that horrid, twisting in their chest swell and overflow, tears beginning to form - their eyes may be gone, but their tear ducts were still intact. "Help," they finally said, voice trembling with tears. "Please..."

Twas the chime of the silver bell, its star bright shell come ring gainst obsidian's knell, that caused the Knight Witch to look up from where her fingers dug through the dirt. Vial full of the rich darkness that still clung to the tips of her nails and coated the pads of each digit.

She saw what she knew first. Blood run out from their wounds. That color like sunlight glittering through the sand, run in rivulets from gapes, gushed up and beaded where skin and flesh had been singed.

In the breath that gathered in her lungs, Josai set the stopper to her vial. Set it down easy into the case. Her eyes, never quite leaving the blood haired devahni and their Seer's robes.

Come the fall, she reached for her spear. Fingers wrapped about its haft and lifting it from where it laid. Bone rattled against cold stone, and silver range high its song through the air.

Before she could point the weapon, she heard it. The man's crying. Their plea.


Help, Please...
A sightless seer. Pleading for aid. Every muscle in her being coiled and wound. Breath held in her lungs. Eyes sharp beneath the brim of her old steeple hat.

A beat of woodsong. The chirp of crickets. The caw of the ravens, princelings of the balewoods. Omens borne by dark wings and water songs that echoed against blight moans and the creek of dead branch.

Josai stirred forward. Spear held firm in both hands as her eyes scanned the woods beyond the fallen Seer. "You are being chased?" she asked. Guarded. Still not ready to trust, for how many of her Sworn kin could have fallen to just such a ploy? "Hunted?" chords of her voice strummed like steel. "Who?" she asked, standing over them. "What?!" she grit through her teeth.

Eyes up. Down.

A staff. Robes. Blood.

If this were the noose, and she the rabbit then...

Eyes up. "Answer me, Sightless." she hissed.

Long before the woman even spoke, Hla could sense it - the way the temperature dropped a few degrees between them, the careful and deliberate movements she took, the way the Shroud around her stilled, strained, and began to whip about as if by the winds of a hurricane. Malice. Something Hla was all too familiar with. He felt it at his heels for hours now. Even before, when everything was good and normal, he felt this same hostility from many he encountered. But at least then, he had others on his side. At least then, that hostility was directed at all of them. They handled it together.

Now, it was just Hla.

They curled inwards as they felt a horrid stabbing pain in their chest. It wasn't physical, but it hurt enough that it may as well be. Lips trembled. Breaths shuddered. So long had they spent being in a position of power, being someone who couldn't show weakness, that they tried everything they could to crush that feeling crushing them.

Those tears broke their way through no matter how much they tried to suppress those horrid bubbling feelings. Hla, with trembling effort, managed to hold themself back from breaking down even more as the weight of everything started to catch up with them. Asking for help was already so... so hard.

But they didn't know what else to do.

Hla planted a hand on the mossy earth below, claws sinking into it with their entire weight. His other hand shakily held up his staff - only to throw it on the ground between them, his "weapon" discarded. Both hands found the ground, supporting them as his entire person deflated, head dipping low in defeat.

"My own," they answered, and then, less certainly, "or... they were. I was..."

No matter how much his pride wanted to keep him upright, he sunk further and further down. What use was pride now, after all? The source of his pride was all a lie. It all was.

"I... I'm so confused..." Hla was practically bowed before this stranger, without their staff. Before, they would have never done anything so reckless, exposing themself to danger so blatantly, not even an easy way to defend themself. They still had magic without their staff, of course, but it was coarse and unpolished, raw. A danger to himself as well as those around him.

"I don't know... what to do... or where to go..."

The movement of the staff had Josai twitch to attention. Weighted through her core as toes spread and dug into the earth. Muscle rooted and rounded to flex, as breath emptied and spear point grew still. The air in her lungs chilled.

The staff knocked against the ground. A hollow thunk. The Sightless bent and bowed. Blubbered.


Josai's grip on her spear's haft grew the tighter. If this was an act. Then it was a damned good one. "Don't you move," she warned. Step over stepped and set her billowing blue robes to stir. The silver bell to chime. Rippling patterns hammered into the silvered steel of her spear's point glowed with loch's light.

She let the spear go to the ground. Its charms clinked and rattled, muffled against the dirt. She blew ice chilled breath across the tips of her fingers, and traced a seal of life against the air between them. Enshrouded rime trailed her her digits in a mist. She pressed her fingers to the wound, and slowly, painfully, the ice crept across the red bleeding wounds.

"I am sure you are familiar with magicks," she said, mouth full of bitter and bite. "The frost skin will seal the wounds, but it will break anew like any old scab if you push too hard too fast,"

Why was she doing this? This man was the enemy. Not just some wayward babe. But a fully fledged Seer. Eyes taken by happy dagger's point upon stone altar bed. Before a throng of fanatics. If not amidst the hollowed homes of those folk that used to be.

She had seen it herself. How the went.

Grit her teeth. Went on with her ministrations. Each wound recieving its own touch. All but one red mouth was mended before the clumsy break and thrash of bush branch and leaf crunch sounded in the near distance.

Her eyes dart up to find them. Hand grabbing up her spear as their sounds grew closer.

"Do they have a Seer?" she asked in measured whisper. Frigid mist pouring from her lips, her dark eyes rippled with a pale blue pulse across their surface. The silver bell chimed. The jawbone rattled, whilst the obsidian sphere gleamed on in its abyssal silence.

The chill in the air was sharp, pointed, much like the spear the stranger wielded. Hla felt the cold of hatred, mistrust, bitterness aimed at them. And yet, as the woman approached, the hostility slithered free from the air between them. The air still did not feel good or welcoming. Hla did not expect anything good or welcoming, anyways. But to feel the hostility washed away by their tears was...

...strange.

He did not move, nor even flinch, as the stranger's cold touch pressed into his wounds. Pain was second nature to him - physical pain, at least. At most, there was a sharp, shaky, yet delicate intake of breath as each wound was tended. The bitter cold pain was almost familiar; it was like the dark of their home in many ways. Or... what was their home. That sense of familiarity, almost comfort, in pain slowly melted away into an uneasy tension. That uneasiness only drew forth more tears that spilled silently down Hla's face. Breaths were as steady as they could be under these circumstances. Trained to maintain composure, to never show weakness.

These shuddering breaths, this weakness-manifest as it dripped down their cheeks and off their chin, were foreign and frightening to Hla.

The two sat in silence as his wounds were mended, Hla not saying a word or moving a muscle.

Hla was desperately trying to free themself from the mire of their mind, trying to think of anything to say to this stranger who was helping him despite their crystal clear distrust, hatred, for his kind. But they felt as if they suddenly couldn't swim as they waded deeper and deeper into their thoughts, a new kind of darkness overwhelming them, filling their senses until they were numb and drowning in static.

The sudden sounds of approaching steps, the ripples of disrupted calm amongst the life energy of the world around them, immediately snapped them out of their dissociative state, and instinct kicked in. Locks of red curls whipped about as their head turned sharply, not to look but to listen, hands reaching out for their staff. The shadows cast by their person shuddered and shifted before a tendril of darkness lashed out to snatch the shadow of their staff, pulling it right into their hand. The tip of their staff was aimed at the approaching pursuers - the sharp point of an eye of gold pointed at the very people who worship the symbol.

"No," Hla answered in an equally hushed and even tone; they had quickly swallowed their vulnerability, their tears, their training conditioning them for better or for worse. "Four acolytes, trying to prove their worth without the help of a Seer."

They tilted their head, slowly shifting the aim of their staff to their right. No noise, silent, but Hla could feel the gentle shift of the Shroud as something stalked carefully through the forest's brush. They felt the breath of the forest around them exhaling the shape of something foreign, the ripples in the earth where silent steps were taken, and of course that all too familiar pulse of dark power with every beat of their hearts. Simple acolytes couldn't mask their presence from him if they tried.

"They're flanking. Two to our right while the two ahead get our attention."

A beat of silence. A beat in their heart that felt so foreign, painfully so.

They could feel this stranger's anger towards the Sightless, could sense the weapon she had. She held power within her, and Hla was certain that together they could take down the acolytes, but...

...this stranger helped heal him despite it all. And if they fought, this person would get hurt, possibly killed if things went poorly...

"...I... can hold them off while you run. Thank - you - for your help..." Their words staggered; receiving help was so new to them, as was offering it. It felt almost like the fresh wound in their heart was being reopened with every word they spoke.

It was almost frightening. How easily this... person, fell into the disciplined form of a warrior. Even disfigured as they had been by the very ones that gave chase to them.


"Game for my spear point," Josai said, steeled as her fingers eased the tension from their grip about her weapon. "But I would much rather leave this place, bloodless, Once-Seer," she shares with him. "Blighted enough as it is,"

More killing. Life taking. Not for the hunt of sustenance. But to put an end to enemies. Threats.

She sat in a pool of silence beside the redhaired seer. Perhaps, some part of her shroud weaving coil sensing how the Once-Seer interacted with those same strands of magic Josai had pulled upon moments ago. Thinned from use, but still so very there about them.

How the eyes of their enemy could see so clearly. Lost to the light of day. Seeing only through that dark reflection there in the darkness of ones mind.

Josai's brow wound itself. This all could still be a trap. This all could still be for the sake of-


'What?" Josai hissed quiet. "No!" she cut low.


Josai grabs the Once-Seer by the arm with a firm grip. Pulls him toward her as she couches spear against her shoulder, and begins to cut signs with her fingers. Fingers like hooks that grab and twist and loop the shroud into its proper shape. "We are giving them the slip, and you are staying right next to me," she strikes the last line down to paint the seal of the Loch there in the air.

It glows a pale and shimmering blue, the likes one might see about lake water when mist gathers. It engulfs them. And there they stand. Draped in mirrored shadow, and undulant light. A pair of ghosts that move like ripples on the water's surface.

Josai motions with a tug that the Once-Seer follow, and she leads them away from the clearing where she had been so rapt in her studies. Medicine box, and all that there in it. Stayed behind.

Life, however, always came first. Even the life of a Once-Seer. If their words were true. And by the Mirror, with her spear long in her hand, how she hoped they were.

That immediate hiss of "No!", caught Hla off guard to say the least. Wouldn't she be glad to be rid of him? Especially to save herself?

He could only part his lips as words tried to form, tried to bubble up from that unsettling ache in his chest. Nothing. He closed his mouth.

He tried to instead focus on deciphering the spell this woman wove, though his mind and heart were still muddled. Everything was so confusing. He may have asked for help, but he did not expect to receive it. Nor did he expect this stranger to go out of her way to help him escape. It would be so much simpler to throw him to the dogs and escape unscathed. That's what any of his own - or, rather, formerly his own - would have done to each other. The Sightless have torn each other to shreds for survival, for their god, for whatever they deemed necessary. Hla has witnessed it, has done it themself - felt the hot blood splatter across them as their hands plunged ritual dagger deep into their subordinates. Violence was second nature.

Saving someone was not. Trusting was not.

The spell took hold. Hla snapped back to attention as they felt that comforting coldness drape over the pair like a veil. The lost Seer gripped their cane-staff close to their body and clung onto the woman's arm. His claws dug into her as she guided him away, holding on for dear life as if he were afraid to let go of her, of this kindness.

Kindness... It was foreign. It was frightening.
It was all he wanted.

Voices called out from the clearing they escaped.

"Seer Hla! Come face your fate, heathen!"
"You cannot hide from The Everwatcher, Seer!"
"Repent by spilling your blood one final time!"

Hla began to once again tremble, tucking themself close to Josai as they fled. He clung closely, clumsily, stumbling over the occasional root and rock that he hadn't anticipated. He was not focused on sensing the world around him anymore. Gone was that well-trained warrior, and returned was the mess. He was afeared not of his former brothers; it was something deeper that felt like ice down his spine.

You cannot hide from the Everwatcher.

It was true. Hla had given a part of himself to his god, and in turn, The Everwatcher's power was within him. The Everwatcher had branded his very soul. He knew he couldn't escape His gaze.

"I know He's here... I know... But I'm so lost, and I cannot return... I don't know what to do..." Hla muttered under their breath, their shaken words clearly not meant for the woman at his side. Were they to himself? Were they to his god? Even he didn't know. A quiet, breathy, instinctive prayer began to work its way out of their lips before trailing off. They... couldn't even find comfort in their prayers. They couldn't pray to their god anymore. Their hand clapped over their mouth in an attempt to suppress any more words, to suppress the sob they felt surging up.

The voices faded off into the distance, slowly but surely.

Hla had no idea how long they were fleeing for. It was only the feeling of that chilled veil of obsuring magic fading from them that clued him in. He very suddenly realized how heavy his limbs felt, how horribly his head pounded, how crippling the void in his chest was. His gait slowed, stumbled, and stopped. The Seer fell to their knees, though they still clung with a desperation they didn't fully understand to the woman's arm. His breaths shuddered as he tried to reach back out to the Shroud around him, to try and regain his sense of the environment. "Where are we..?" He breathed, his mired mind struggling to focus. "Are we safe..?"

Josai bore the dig of claws without a sound. Her breath, her connection to the shroud, and the weave of the mirror veil which protected them there amidst that patch of the balewood, those were the things that occupied her waking mind, half dipped into the realm of dreams as it was.

Sounds. Light. Feeling. All came distorted. As if they all bent and traveled through waters that had risen across her senses. She felt them all, more than sensed them properly. The whole of them spread across her like currents. Like flows.

And she could sense the Once-Seer's fear. Growing and growing. She could hear the acolyte's fervor. Feeding on that same fear. Like thirsty roots, drinking up their take.


Their voices rippled. Like a scattering of rocks thrown against the placid surface of a lake. Spray and chaos there spreading where they struck. Trembling across the Once-Seer who but clung the more to what steadiness Josai could provide.

She let spill out her breath. Placed a hand upon his. Ignoring that pain which did bite against her. Her other, still firm on her spear as they moved.


Curses and summonings. "He is not here," Josai pushed out in whisper as they moved through the woodlands. "He is not here, Once-Seer. We are here. You and I," step after bustling step. "Now calm thyself, I pray thee," she urges, and gives his hand a sure squeeze.

They moved, until the veil grew too heavy. Until the spell need be broken about them. Josai whispered.

"Oh eight moons' light
Thy mirrored sun's bright
Need ye not shimmer
o're this draped glimmer,
til comes again the true and dark night,"

So fell the veil that shrouded them. So fell the Once-Seer, who clutched on at Josai's robes. Claws digging more desperate still. She winced. Bit back her want to claw back and bite in turn. Gut him, from navel to sternum. She bent low instead. Rested her spear against the earth, and held him in both her arms.

"In the woods still, Once-Seer," she said gently as she could. "We are not yet truly safe, and my partner Knight still roams these same woods now tread upon by yon acolytes," she braces him, and all the ugliness he still holds. Still firm in her spine. But there. She speaks with a voice like warm earth. Too dry to yet give. But not stone. "Tell me, do thine once kin know of our wyld calls?"

Those mimicries of bird and beast calls which the Knights of Anatheum used across the wyldlands. Few were the Lord's men who had the ear to discern the false calls. Fewer still those who knew what they meant.

Josai held back her dread. For she needed to know. And might be, this Once-Seer could tell them this and more that might save her Sworn Kin from their clutches.

Every bit of kindness that was shown to the former Seer elicited the same response: a freeze, tenseness that was drawn from uncertainty and the unknown, much like a cornered animal. Hla froze each time as if expecting to be chased, hunted, hurt, as if the hand over theirs was just waiting for the perfect moment to snap his fingers backwards, or the way the woman held him was just a ruse to get a dagger in his back.

But that never came.

He trembled in her arms. Partly due to the ever-present fear of the Everwatcher's gaze, but mostly in fear of the unknown. He didn't know how to respond to the comfort of arms around him.

If nothing else, Hla managed to gather himself some as they fled, her words grounding him as he struggled to fend off the fear of his god.

As the woman asked a question of Hla, he took a breath to speak - realized he hadn't breathed the entire time her arms were around him, as if he were prey frozen before a predator trying to hide even his breath - and managed to repeat her words quietly. "Knight... calls..." he murmured, his mind racing to catch up. "...we... are aware of them, but that is the extent of our knowledge... We - they - cannot distinguish the calls amongst nature, nor know their meaning..."

He'd heard that some acolytes managed to catch a Knight or two making some kind of bird call, but never saw or heard enough to decipher what was being communicated. They couldn't even tell the calls were false, had those acolytes not seen them make the call with their own eyes.

As Hla allowed himself to breathe once again, he spread his awareness out, reaching into the Shroud to regain his senses. Their spirit reached out and delicately stroked the threads of energy around them, as if a spider sensing motion on its web, or a bat pinpointing its surroundings from the sound that bounced off the walls. The forest around them began to take shape once more. As did the woman beside him. Hla's grip on her was suddenly relinquished as he realized he'd been digging his claws into her, yet his hand hovered close. He was afraid of the kindness being shown to him, yes, but moreso afraid to let it go. It was a strange sensation tearing his heart in twain.

Slowly, he pried his hand away from Josai and clung to his cane-staff. At least it was unchanged. Had been by his side since sacrificing his eyes for power. Still held its same purpose - simply to be there to support Hla and his magic. Something of a comfort. Familiar.