RP:A Secret, Beginning

Venturil Clinic

Raidh wanders back to the clinic at a late hour, alone and on foot (Nidrun is still in the company of Emilia while the dragon's in town) and moves quietly through its rows of tightly tucked-in patients, nodding to the soft-shoed nurses in their white and red healer's gowns as they tend to mostly sleeping patients. Blue eyes scan, by gentle candle-light, each bed she passes until she reaches the one in which Sacrilus rests. There's a simple timber chair by the bedside, and Raidh sits on it.

Xersom 's otherwise complete nudity was now covered by the blanket of the cot that he laid in; he had managed to fend off any of the mortals that deemed it wise to remove his mask, but the hour was growing late, and his energy depleting with the weariness of his body. For a moment, he slept, until Raidh's slender body seated itself in the simple timber chair at the bedside. It caused his intense green and faux eyes to open, fixated upon her as the former General of Arrecation took a moment to realize his surroundings. "Not your fault," he rasped, and reached a hand out in invitation to take. "But you could've killed me. I am surprised. Why didn't you?" Each word was a struggle to get out, just as each breath was a trial to suck in.

Raidh didn’t say anything for a moment. Then was quiet for enough moments to make the silence awkward, while she stared at Xersom’s hand. Her slightly unfocussed gaze would make it clear that mentally, she’s back on that tor with her axe in hand. She frowns, blinking it away, “I don’t know.” She leaves his hand alone, “It was not our battle. I did not wound you, there would have been no honor in it.” Yeah, that’ll do. A nurse bustles in to check the patient, providing a welcome opportunity to change the subject. When she’d fluffed pillow and checked vitals and gone again, Raidh said, “I am concerned, with you wandering about and naked with it, that my brother will start looking at you too closely. If he knows you for what you are, then one of you will die.” Her frown deepens. “As it is, I have had to tell the guards you’re a madman I’m helping. Lest they draw sword on you for showing your… “ one brow rises, “bare essentials to the wife of the King.”

Xersom chortled a laugh that was curtailed by a coughing fit at the woman's wry words, which caused both of his eyes to briefly close for several long moments before those intense greens were once again revealed to Raidh. "The wife of the King. Kings have come and gone plenty since I first walked Lithrydel; the only true king is the Nameless One, now forever unable to reach our world." His head rolled so that he could strain those faux eyes to meet Raidh's own, concerned gaze. "It's harder to kill me than it looks, aye? If your brother seeks my head, I'm afraid only his kinship to you will save him. As for the King... I'd like to meet him one day. If only to ensure my continued survival in these lands. There are creatures far stronger than that Thunderbird that desire my head on a pike. Creatures even I do not wish to fight against." A gentle sigh escaped him; "A madman. At least it is truth. Perhaps it is best I wander far from Venturil, after all. Away from eyes of queens and swords of their guards, yes?"

Raidh doesn’t know which part of all that to address first, or at all, so she just dives into the thoughts his words have stirred in her, “I warn you not for your own sake, but theirs. I love my brother. All my kinsmen, and the King. Well. I quite like him so far, he’s a good husband, and the only King this land has, these days, even if he’s not your ‘true’ one. I do not wish to be the cause of harm to any of my people.” She’s approaching the subject of the dragon’s going from the land, and it shows in her obvious discomfort. “The King might understand, but my brother will surely not. I cannot change the ways of the Riddarnir, set for these thousands of years, overnight. So if you find me where others’ eyes might find you, it is best you are not naked, or ..you know.” She makes a dragon-y kind of face, her hands hooking into faux claws. “If we meet, it must be in the wilds, or always as humans. With clothes on. Or,” she shrugs the alternative.

Xersom closed his eyes and grinned as she let her words fall into a shrug, though the grin was wry and teasing. The blanket was pulled up further on his chest with each and forsaken-rune inscribed hands, "Aye. To think that you've been in the company of a dragon -me, no less. Surely they'd be angry." Her brother and the Riddarnir, that is; he couldn't imagine this King cared much as long as she wasn't in harm's way, or rather, even knew the very idea of -what- he is. The General of Arrecation; the Face of the Damned, who slaughtered vast armies with his seven brothers before Norodruin felled him. Eras of memories. "There is no home for me here, Raidh. With the gap between this city and your people closing swiftly, my lair is quickly becoming unsafe for me." His eyes opened then, "I meant you no harm. Still I do not. But death will bring me damnation, not salvation. I will not let it come to me. Even still my lair as it is is safer than he rest of Lithrydel. Help me keep it that way, so that I may exist and keep my hands clean from the deaths of any of your people."

Raidh thought about it, a moment. “Your lair? The cavern I was in?” She hoped so, for news of a stormbringer inhabiting the area will surely discourage the Riders from venturing too close. Certainly, the horses would balk as her own did. “I saw paintings in there, old ones. Perhaps as old as you, maybe older. I recognised Thuruz, rune of lightning and force, and the rest came more easily after that. That’s how I knew what to say.” Something occurs to Raidh then, which has her startle visibly. However, she tucks the thought aside for later rumination and continues, “You said that other things, terrible things, are hunting you. What are they?”

Xersom snorted lightly, "The cavern you were in was merely at the lip of the entry. The paintings there were of more recent times; the further you draw into the cave, the more ancient they become. Toward the center are languages and writings that I've even forgotten they predate me so." He casually spoke, "Though many are hesitant to enter, and without the ability to fly the lair is far more difficult to reach than most deem desireable." He turned his head back to look toward Venturil's surprise queen again, briefly studying her features, "Things that would either leave your people and these people alone, or lay siege upon all the lands to get to me. I am more concerned for those that seek only my head. Terrible are the ones that would lay siege, but they are able to be thwarted and defeated. The ones that move in small groups, the templars, they are... not terrible to you. Holy men. Of virtue and order." His hands twitched lightly, and his breathing became heavy, even strained. "But they would see me damned. I do not wish it. I wish to exist. Will you not help me exist?"

It is a difficult question, and an easy one all at once. “I will not raise my hand to the cause of your destruction, while you come to me and mine in peace. This I vow, on Othinn the Seeker, my ancestors and all my gods.” It is a serious vow, one that could make her an oathbreaker, a creature unworthy of the Great Hall of the honorable dead should she not hold to its geis. But what has she done, she wonders. There were reasons beyond the obvious, as to why the Riddarnir of old had purged their lands of dragon-kind. Strange fates had a way of twisting around them, like a snakes. They wear faces not their own, and speak literally with forked tongues. Yet, millennia of suspicion and hatred cannot hold up against the goodwill of this one, tow-headed girl. “You know,” she is speaking quietly now, for the nurses are shushing them in case they disturb the other patients. “My Amma used to say that there is not one creature living which cannot redeem itself, while it draws breath. Even a coward may enter the Hall of the Brave,” she says it like it’s the most unbelievable thing in the world. “If he commits a great act of selfless courage. I think you do not have to be damned, if the tally balances toward honor by the time you die.” Raidh manages a smile despite the gravity of the conversation. “You, though,. may have to save a million puppies and little old ladies, to make up for your history. Best you get started on that pretty soon, methinks.”

Xersom watched Raidh's vow with the brevity and concern that she bore upon her shoulders, and it was with the seriousness of the words she spoke that the dragon in human disguise, the wraith of old, released a breath of relief at such. Her following words made him snort, "We'll start with the safety of your king's city," which was his own vow of safekeeping; there would be nothing to march on Venturil or the Riddanir without the ancient standing in their way. In a more serious note, and with a display of a custom perhaps even the Riddanir had forgotten despite their isolation and traditions of old, the man feebly reached out to grasp hold of the woman's lithe fingers. Her knuckles were brought to his lips, but he did not kiss them; he spoke against them in a way that his lips chastely brushed along her flesh in formulation of each word, in symbolization of his vow being remembered in her very flesh. "I will always come to you and yours in peace, and never terrorize them the way my kind has in days old, both dragon or wraith." It was whispered, but made it out in voice if not by his lips forming the words, before her hand was released. His head fell back to the pillow, the antic of movement obviously a strain on shattered ribs, as a trickle of blood escapes his mouth and down the corner to his chin. "You know you would have died had you gone up there instead of seeking shelter."

Raidh exhales through her teeth and nods, “Aye, I think you speak truth there.” Her smile is wry, “I love my father, and am glad to do his will even if it’s folly. But I think he can look for his own griffins if they are living on that particular tor.” It occurs to her that Jerica was probably wondering why they’d not set off yet on that promised quest, and mentally urges herself to find her sister-wife soon. She gropes for a clean cloth off the bedside table, and mops the blood from the dragon’s mouth. “That old bird really did a number on you, didn’t it? Our legends say the stormbringer is a herald of war and great peril and that it last appeared over the very battlefields you fought on in ancient times. Perhaps it’s come to keep you company, one old fart to another.” More likely, it was looking for a meal; in the legends she doesn’t mention, the Thunder Bird’s main source of food is dragon-flesh. She hopes it’s decided that this particular dragon is not game it might wish to hunt again. Raidh rubs the back of her hand, to which Sacrilus had spoke his promise, like a lucky charm. More seriously, she adds, “It’s funny, that you of all beings should stand as champion to the Riders, and the men of the West. But perhaps therein lies your path of redemption. Even if it must be a secret one, for now.”

Xersom closed his eyes only when that blood is mopped from his mouth, but they remained closed thereafter as he continued to listen. If the Thunderbird sought him for a meal, he would perhaps be the most ferocious of prey that the creature had ever fought; especially lacking its brood after releasing his fire upon them in that dangerous inferno. But when she was done speaking, he didn't comment on her words -instead, he merely opened a single eye lazily to look at her, "Perhaps I will show you the skies when I heal, Raidh. Would you like that?"

Raidh looks into that eye and shakes her head, shuddering slightly. “Thanks, but no.” Like all the Riders, she is a creature from the vast, golden-green flatlands and even climbing a particularly tall tree would give her vertigo. “What I would like to see is this lair you speak of, though.” She rises to her feet, “Don’t give the nurses any trouble, will you? I’ll have some fresh clothes brought to you in the morning, for when you are hale enough to wear them.” She says that last part, rather emphatically, and with a grin. “I have much as yet to do before I rest this day.”

Xersom closed his eye with a wry grin, "Be safe, queen." He said nothing of showing her his lair.