Perl
Perl dropped Selena to the ground, and then collapsed after her, every muscle in his body quivering and spasming from overexertion. The blessing of the War Aspect was leaving him, as was all the adrenaline that had fueled him, kept him alive. Now there was just Perl, and Perl had done far too much.
“Selena... You hanging in there?” He turned his head to where the girl lay, her body still in the same pose as before, her device, now jammed and silenced, was slightly lowered, and her other arm up, shielding her face from the spray. There were tears on that face now.
“I... I thought I was going to die, Perl.” Her lip was quivering, and then she sobbed. “I was going to die...”
Perl didn't have anything to say, so he rested his head back, and let darkness take him.
Glynn Fifer
Glynn closed the door quietly. The horde appeared to have passed without incident, intent on following Mr. Sunder. With a sigh he turned around to his two new companions. The big one, a soldier, by the looks of it, was unconscious. The girl’s face was streaked with tears, and she was doing an adequate job at stifling her sobs. More importantly, she was encased in... in some manner of disgusting hardened goo? So that's what Sunder had been shouting about, back while he was casting a wide flameblast.
“Hey. Little miss.” He walked over to the girl. The girl's head swiveled, but she was face-down, and with her body encased as it was, she couldn't roll over. Well, he could do that for her.
“Hey... hey there.” The girl sounded weary, both physically and emotionally.
Glynn grabbed onto a shoulder, and rolled her over onto her back. He noted that she looked more than a little silly, posed as she was. “I'm Glynn Fifer, cousin of... of Kallaster Poe. We met your friend Mr. Sunder out in the city, thought we would help each other.”
The girl nodded. “I'm Selena, from Durkerim.” She tried to smile, but it came off looking pitiful. “Do you think you could free me of... of this stuff.” The thought of it seemed to darken the girl's thoughts, and Glynn judged she would be crying more if she still had tears.
“I'll try.” Glynn reached down to the arm over her face, and tried to bend it to no avail. He frowned, and took out a knife. “Who's your friend there?”
“Perl.” The girl looked up at him. “Jack's right-hand man. The two of them were together even before Jack started the Associates.”
Glynn whittled away at the hard shell. It was tough, like leather, but thicker, not in sheets. “He looks like a soldier.”
“I think he was.”
Glynn frowned. “What was was he in? Did he fight the Hobs? Fight in the North?”
“No, he fought... oh, I see. You're Southern, aren't you? Did you fight in that war?”
“No. I was training to be an officer when the war ended with that treaty.”
“Well, I'm sure Perl won't care. We're all in this together.”
Glynn wasn't so sure, but he kept that to himself. He jabbed at the hardened shell of goo with is knife, and was rewarded by cracking the outer layer of the shell, and releasing a section of intestine that had been encased in the goo. He tried to ignore the smell. “Miss... um... what's your name again?”
“Selena.”
“Right. Selena. You don't seem to mind me being Southern. Why's that?”
“I'm from Durkerim. It's nearly in the new territories, way up north. The war—The War of Southern Betrayal—never reached up to us. It was something we heard about, something the garrisons were pulled away by, but we were more concerned with whether the Hobs would attack again, or whether the Northerners would try raiding, like they did before the Norther War.”
Glynn shook his head. “Lousy, treacherous Hobs.” He studied the shell a bit more. “Hey, you can breathe, right?”
“Not very well, I can't breathe in all the way.”
“But it's attached to your clothes, not to your skin.” He grimaced. “Good thing too,” he said, shivering at the thought. Not a good way to go.
“Oh, I see what you mean. You just need to cut a few lines, and then the whole thing can come off like a shell. Wish I wore gloves, now.”
Glyn gritted his teeth. “I'll try on your sleeves, first. Just... tell me if I hurt you.”
“Yeah.”
Glynn wiggled his knife. It wouldn't be terribly easy.
“Hey Glynn? The disease is transmitted in through cuts, right? This shell might be contagious. So... be careful, okay?”
Not easy at all.
Selena
“You still doing okay?” asked Glynn. Again.
“You're worse than my mother,” said Selena, inspecting her one free forearm for cuts. The leather vambrace had come off easily enough, and and the sleeves of her shirt underneath had barely been nicked. “If I knew you were going to be such a worrywart, I'd have not mentioned the contagion. You didn't cut my arm, you're not going to cut my torso. It even moves less.”
Glynn wiggled his knife, trying to bore into the shell of dried goop, then stabbed into the nick. “Sorry Miss Selena, I just worry – it's hard to gauge how hard to stab you without actually stabbing you. I wish I had a saw. Or maybe if you were some dandy in distress, Kall could actually be convinced to just shatter this thing.”
Selena smacked her hand against the ground. The goop didn't break, but her hand didn't hurt. Probably could be used as lightweight rigid armor, if someone could synthesize whatever ingredient made it harden like that. Speaking of armor...
“Hey Glynn. Maybe you should free my legs first. I can breathe alright, and running might be more important.”
“Miss Selena... you do realize that you are wearing pants, not greaves or even a skirt.”
“So?”
“There's only one layer to cut off.”
“Okay, it's a bit more dangerous than my torso, but I'm sure you'll manage fine. Pity I didn't wear a skirt.”
“No, it's not that... it's... Look, I'd be taking off your pants.”
“Oh.” That hadn't occurred to her. “Well, I am wearing undergarments.”
The bald man rubbed his temple. “You sound like my cousin. I'm not taking off your pants.”
“Yes, yes you are. They have to come off eventually, unless you and Perl plan on carrying me everywhere.”
“Look, I'll keep working on your torso, your friend Perl can cut your legs free.”
Selena glanced over at the unconscious warrior. He was turning his head back and forth, as if he were in some bad dream. “We're actually not that close. I'd rather have you.”
Glynn was biting his lip, and reddening slightly.
“No! I mean, you know what you are doing, you're not as clumsy as him, not as tired... Look, just get my pants off!”
“No!”
“Just do it!”
Glynn stood up quickly. “You're not in a place to tell me what to do!”
Selena stared at him. Was that outrage on his face?
“I'm going to do this my way, and you don't get to have a--”
There was a roar, almost bestial, from Selena's side, and for a split second, she saw Perl tackling Glynn off of him. Then there was a crash on Selena's other side, and the sound of fists hitting flesh.
“Perl! Stop!”
Perl
Perl punched the Southerner in the face, then grabbed the man's head, and smashed it down onto the packed dirt of the floor. He could feel the War Aspect rising inside of him, and Selena was shouting behind him, but none of that mattered. He had the man now, and Perl wasn't going to let him get off any of that horrible magic. Maybe the Southerner had already corrupted Selena, but maybe not.
Perl mashed the man's head down again, then adjusted his position, so that instead of just straddling the man, he was also kneeling on the man's arms. The man appeared to be gratifyingly senseless by now.
“Stop it Perl! He's a friend!” shouted Selena, and a pebble flew past him. Perl scowled at his foe, then elbowed the man in the nose, with a satisfying crunch.
“What did he do to you, Selena?” Perl asked, still sitting on the bald man. He tried to look at Selena over his shoulder, but the angle was wrong.
“What? He was just trying to get this goo off of me.”
“Feh.” Perl spat. “That's not what I heard.”
“He didn't want to cut off my pants! He was refusing!”
Perl punched the southerner a few more times for good measure. “You say that now, but he's probably magicked you.”
“Magicked me?”
“Got inside your head, the bastard.” Perl slugged the bald man again, splattering the blood oozing from the man's broken nose. “He's a Southerner. No sense of right and wrong – if they don't like the way you think, then they change it with that magic of theirs. I've seen it before.”
“That's not what happened!”
“That's not what you remember. It's just chance that you want him to take off your pants, and now remember always wanting that, hm?!” Perl grabbed the southerner by the throat and squeezed. “Foul dog.”
“I wanted my legs free so I could run if we were attacked by the dead!”
Perl snorted. “Sounds like damn Southern trickery to me.”
“No! He never cast a spell! Urgh. Look, if I were in my right mind, what part of myself would I want free first?”
“You're just trying to justify what he made you think. Don't you know what he was going to do to you?”
“Okay, if he cast a spell on me, would he be yelling at me after I was under his spell? Or did you see him cast a spell after he was angry?”
Perl started at the mess that was the southerner's face. He really didn't look that different. Perl spat at the memory. “You weren't around when the south invaded us. You didn't see what they did to people. You weren't there.” Perl could still smell the village burning, see his sister's soft brown eyes... “They aren't people. The magic warps their minds. They may think they're advanced, but really they've just made themselves like animals again.”
“Perl, listen to me. There was no spell. Listen to what I'm saying.”
“I don't care.”
“How can I prove it to you if you don't care?”
“You can't.”
“And if you're wrong?”
“I'm not.”
“You are. You'd be murdering an innocent. His name is Glynn.”
“He's a southerner.”
“In my eyes? I don't care. You'd still be a murderer to me.”
Perl scowled. She would hate him if he killed this southerner. But it would be safer for her – he knew better, after all. Maybe she would understand in time, even if the spell never faded.
“Jack trusted him, Perl. Maybe you don't trust me, but at least you can trust in Jack. Jack sent him to watch over both of us.”
Next: Chapter 11