It was hard work, pulling Shoyna against the winds she conjured up so easily. Fingers ran hot, the length of Lucero's arms were taut and strained The light armor she wore was too heavy, the leather too constricting. Her hood felt like cloth meant to suffocate her instead of protect her. Her legs hurt, her chest heaved, and it was all beginning to feel like Shoyna might win if only because Lucero could never be the victor in a fight of attrition.

Lucero would give her all regardless, knowing that relief was right around the corner. The harpy screamed and pulled Lucero with a hard jerk that rattled her spine to her shoulders then up her neck to her head. She felt her ankle twist, began to lean forward too much, too much slack, ready to tip.

The blast of sound from Shoyna after Syr Horoth had thrown the net on her was a fatal mistake: the net seemed to get tighter, wrapping around her better than if she had just stayed still. Every thrash and kick only had it feeling like her wings had been clipped. She struggled on the ground, twisting and turning, rolling over, kicking and scratching, biting and snapping. With the shroud wires still around Shoyna, the harpy now distracted by a physical net, Lucero could finally breathe.

With that single breath, she started calming her heart. Through the wires, the steady tempo of Lucero's heart clashed with the dissonant beats of Shoyna's heart. Two maestros, two orchestras, but only one song was allowed to be played. Lucero's lips moved quietly, no sound coming out, but it aided in Lucero's concentration.

Slowly, Shoyna's movements became less frantic, the fear ebbing away just enough to for the harpy to quiet her ear-splitting screams.
 
Horoth held the tie that bound Shoyna tight and tried to not let her go from sheer pity.

Her feathers were frayed and some had blood on them and the look in her eyes was a pain he had seen before. Every once in a while someone in the pits started screaming like that. It was the denial of their own reality that spawned it and it could drive one completely mad if they were not careful.

As she began to feel the effects of Lucero's gentle power and her flailing eased he relaxed his arms a bit but kept his hold tight. Shoyna became still eventually but that did not mean she was less dangerous.

The ringing in his ears was deafening even after he reached up with one hand and unfastened his helmet to remove it. He barely heard it clatter to the ground.

"Lucero..."

Horoth found his voice to have become a whisper.

"... are you alright?"

Even now he could see her limbs shaking from the strain. Her limit in that area being reached and perhaps broken yet her efforts persisted.

Every bit the knight.

@Lucero
 
It was the calm of digging for potatoes beneath soil that colder than the sun. It was the calm of mending socks, sitting on a stool, her mother cutting up green squash on the kitchen table for dinner. The calm of the simple tasks that would bring joy later, the subdued gratification always twice as warm. It were things that Shoyna would not about, being a harpy, but the slow living of life was something that practically universal across all species.

Lucero's heart and lungs were dying for air. She didn't when it had happened but she had tipped forward after all. The blind knight thought her ribs would break, the sharp intake of breath more like a gasp of pain. Then came another large mouthful of air, gulping it down. Her stomach felt twisted like a cloth being rung out. A bolt of blue seemed to have struck her right between her eyes, numbing and icy and needling.

"I..." Another big breath, chest heaving, face strangely pale with lips looking more purple than red. "I am fine, Syr." Eyes rimmed red as if she had been crying too hard, but it was such a clean crimson line that it almost looked like peeking below a cliff to see the shape of a river. "Thank you, without you I would have...." Instead of finishing her sentence, she smiled.

Lucero looked down at her hands, seeing the invisible threads of shroud that connected her to Shoyna. She plucked the threads off of one hand. It was easier to get up, her legs still strong enough to pull her back. Instinctively, Lucero reached for Horoth.

"Help me out? I think Shoyna will be fine now, but just in case, I'm still connected to her so... maybe not grab this hand?"
 
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Lucero sounded as if she was speaking underwater, the dull of her voice barely penetrating into Horoth's mind. He had to guess what Lucero meant and half of that was reading her body language and lips.

Without a word he took her trembling hand in his own and hooked his other under her other shoulder. Lifting her, armour and sword and all out of the tangle of fallen tree branches.

It was strain, not nerves that had her now and the only thing for that was time and certainty.

"I have you."

His own voice barely happened, it felt like he was mouthing words and as he put her down, clear of the debri, he noticed the quiet screaming of his own head, like wind that never ceased but he kept a hand on her back and breastplate, kept Lucero upright.

"Breath deep, keep your arms up."

The question of Shoyna and what to do with her could not wait much longer now that the physical danger was done.

"Lucero, you should know."

He let her take a few breaths as he resisted the urge to raise his voice to hear himself.

"I can't hear you very well right now. I think it was my helmet, it made her attacks worse somehow."

Horoth had only just gotten used to the idea of currency. He was a far cry from the understanding of physical laws that govern reality such as how sound became amplified by certain conditions and he had no clue as to the effects of strong harmonic residue environments on human hearing but he knew he was deaf.

It was a small matter though in the scheme of things. Shoyna was hurt, her blood marked feathers told them that. She was the one who needed care now.

@Lucero
 
Lucero may have been tall, but she was lean and thin. Sijtli use to call her flaquita more than her own name. Once she was unfastened from the precarious hold of the fallen tree, Lucero could fully turn and look at Syr Horoth now. A dark blue and gray cloud muddled his head, dull and heavy. It looked soft and bouncy like the marigold flowers that only grew in her hometowns' region inside the free states.

Syr Horoth spoke louder than he thought, his hands gentle, his voice deep. He laid out a choice for her that he had never intended: Shoyna or him, the Kostroma protector or him, the mission or him.

The blind knight didn't say anything, made up of Dawn's early rays that took them time to spread across the world. She nodded her head, raised her hand not tied to Shoyna and felt Syr Horoth's face, fingertips mapping out a cheek and then a jaw, knowing now how to angle her hand to his right ear. She didn't say anything.

She could breathe through her nose now, no longer needing her mouth to hang open. The runes branded into the pads of her fingers were warm like a bath at the perfect temperature, tracing the shell of his ear there would be a grittiness to them as if she had packed a thin, delicate layer of sand onto her hands.

"Shoyna will not die," Lucero said, she could not read lips but he could. She could only hear and yet he couldn't. Communication was important, communication mattered in missions. Helping Syr Horoth first was putting the mission first. It had nothing to do with her inclination to aiding her brothers and sisters of the order first. Lucero breathed in deep, getting the scent of Syr Horoth and slowly began the process of undoing to the hurt, the cloud she saw, once dull and soft, now flashed and became sharp. "It will hurt if I only have one hand."

But Syr Horoth could handle some pain, couldn't he, given his past?
 
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