Broken Branches

he moonlit field had gone quiet again.

Nothing beneath the stars seemed capable of remembering what had happened there. The grass moved softly in the night wind, silver along the higher blades and black where their shadows crossed it, while far behind them the forest had become little more than a dark seam against the horizon. They gathered around Navian because there was nowhere else to go.

Oesora had never left him. She sat knees folded beneath her, Navian’s head resting in her lap. One hand hovered near his chest while the other lay against the grass beside his shoulder, near enough that she could reach him without moving. The cut along her throat had dried into a thin dark line. She had made no attempt to clean it.

Gaz watched her for a time, then looked toward the empty field around them.

He lowered himself onto one knee and planted the butt of his staff in the earth. There was no shouted incantation, only a few quiet words beneath his breath and a turn of his wrist. Stones stirred in the grass. They scraped together one by one, dragging loose soil with them until a rough circle had formed, and within it a pale flame shivered into being. Blue lingered deep inside the gold.

Gaz lifted the staff a little and the flame followed, catching against the handful of dry twigs Karneth pushed beneath it. The dwarf added thicker branches until the fire had enough strength to hold itself. Warmth spread slowly across armor and leather, over weapons still marked with dirt and sap, and across faces too tired to care what remained on them.

They sat as the heat reached them. Jaeshu stretched his legs toward the fire, Karneth lowered himself opposite with his axe beside his knee, and Lunara settled near Gaz with her bow across her lap. There was room enough between them that nobody had to touch anyone else.

The fire crackled softly. Lunara glanced over her shoulder. Oesora had not moved. Neither had Navian.

“He’s safe with her, Lune,” Gaz said. “For the moment, anyway. She can do more for him than any of us can.”

Lunara picked up a straight stick and ran her fingers along its length, testing it for an arrow. When she looked toward Oesora again, Gaz pushed a half-burned branch deeper into the coals. “Give her time.”

She nodded, though there was little agreement in it.

Karneth rubbed at his beard. He stared into the flames long enough that Gaz had stopped expecting him to speak, then shifted his weight and looked toward the ground between them.

"Sorry about earlier, lad.”

The wizard did not answer at first, only giving a small nod. “Mhm.”

“The elf was askin’ questions that needed askin’.”

Gaz’s gaze lifted to him. Karneth gestured to Oesora in the distance.

“I knew Av'elyth wasn’t gonna hurt the girl.”

Gaz looked past him toward Oesora. “The blood on her neck suggests otherwise.”

Karneth scratched at his cheek. “Ach, I’ve had worse shavin'.”

“She isn’t a dwarven warrior, Karn.”

Jaeshu leaned forward with his forearms on his knees. “If you’re both determined to make a fight of this, stand and make it entertaining. Otherwise I’d prefer we save whatever grievances we have until breakfast.”

Gaz turned his head slowly. “I am quite capable of deciding which grievances deserve my attention, ranger.”

Jaeshu gave him a tired shrug and took out his pipe. He rolled it once between his fingers but did not light it. "Its a problem long solved," he said.

The warmth crept back into them by degrees. Karneth stretched one leg toward the flames. Lunara ran her thumb along the bow again, tracing the same patch of wood she had already touched half a dozen times.

For a while, Gaz simply watched the fire. “There is another problem.”

Jaeshu sighed. “Of course there is.”

“I know of nothing that can restore what my brother lost.”

The wizard turned one hand toward the fire, studying his palm as though some answer might have been written there. “Wounds can be mended. Poison drawn out. Strength replenished with time. But Light is not spellcraft. It does not answer the same laws.”

“Nothin'?” Karneth asked.

Gaz closed his hand. “I could sooner persuade fire to freeze. Whatever he poured into that forest is beyond the reach of my ability.”

Jaeshu breathed out through his nose. “So have either of you ever see him do anything like that before? Even growing up?”

Lunara shook her head. “No.”

“But you’re of blood.”

“We... are.”

Jaeshu waited. Lunara watched the flames bend beneath a gust of wind.

“But we haven’t really…” She stopped, searching for the shape of it. “...known each other for a long time. We all left home before any of this. Separately.” Lunara tilted her chin vaguely toward Gaz. “Before he became a paladin. Before Gaz disappeared into whatever it is wizards disappear into.”

Her brother lowered his eyes to the staff on his lap.

“And before I became this.” She nudged the curve of her bow with her boot.

Jaeshu looked toward Navian again. “Hell of a mysterious family you have there. No wonder he needed a raven to get your attention.”

“He is the eldest,” Gaz said, watching the fire. “By the time we were grown, we were mostly stories other people carried home.”

Lunara drew one knee closer to her chest. "Navian always knew what to do next."

For a while under the sky, only the grass moved around them.

Karneth picked at a torn strip of leather around his wrist until it came loose beneath his thumb. “Then we’d best figure out what happens next ourselves, in case—”

“My brother is alive,” Gaz said, locking eyes with the dwarf.

The words came slowly, as though he meant to begin with the one thing he could still be certain of. “Av'elyth... is gone. But dangerous when left to her own thoughts for extended periods of time.” His gaze shifted beyond the fire. “And Oesora…”

Across the field, the priestess had still not looked up from Navian.

Jaeshu lowered his voice. “I don't think Oesora is really here.”

Gaz stared into the center of the flames. “Neither is most of my magic.”

That brought their attention back to him. He lifted one hand. A thin blue shimmer gathered between his fingers, weak as moonlight beneath water, and vanished before it had fully formed. “Whatever I spent in the forest, I don’t have much left tonight.”

Karneth’s brow tightened. Lunara looked at the staff. Jaeshu looked past all of them toward Navian.

“Think he’ll awaken soon?”

“Oh, he'll wake,” Lunara said. “That isn't what worries me.”

The others turned to her. She kept her eyes on Navian. She took a branch from the small pile beside Karneth and set it into the fire. Sparks climbed briefly and vanished above them.

“I just don't know what he'll be when he wakes up.”

No one answered. Beyond the fire, Navian’s head remained in Oesora’s lap. A faint glow passed beneath her palms at uneven intervals, brightening the plates of his armor before fading again. Nothing in him seemed to answer it.

“If he isn’t himself…” Gaz’s grip tightened around the staff.

Jaeshu looked from Navian to the others. “Are five of us enough?”

A low grunt came from beyond the firelight.

Everyone turned. Beeps stood several paces away, broad-backed beneath the moon, his horns catching the silver light. He pawed once at the earth, tearing up a clump of grass, then snorted hard enough to send steam from his nostrils.

Karneth stared at him. “Aye, the six of us are.”

Nobody laughed, but the tightness around the fire eased just enough to notice.

Lunara looked at the empty patch of grass beside her, then back toward Oesora. She set her bow carefully beside her and pushed herself upright.

“If I go check on Oesora, are you going to stop me with the axe, too?”

The dwarf looked at the weapon beside his knee, then up at her. She stood for another moment, brushing dirt from the back of her trousers. Firelight threw her shadow long across the field, reaching almost to where Navian lay. Then she stepped around the stones and walked toward Oesora.

“Let me know how he’s doing?” Gaz called. Lunara threw a half-salute over her shoulder and kept walking.

Karneth watched until Lunara had passed beyond the brightest edge of the fire. Beeps emerged from the darkness into the firelight. He ambled over and knelt behind Karneth, lowering his head to the grass. The dwarf leaned back into the bramblehorn’s fur. They both sighed as Gaz angled his staff toward the fire. The flames answered, rising slightly before settling again. Jaeshu leaned back on his elbows in the grass.

“That little priestess has plenty to answer, and until your brother wakes, I don't trust her,” he said. “Tomorrow, we'll see what’s changed.”

Gaz watched his sister cross the field. “Av'elyth may not wait for tomorrow. Perhaps we should look for her soon. Even just a trail...”

Jaeshu closed his eyes. “She's an elven rogue, Gaz. If she doesn’t want to be found, we won’t find her. Not in the dark. And splitting what’s left of us to chase an assassin who can step through shadows seems a fine way to lose someone else.”

Karneth grunted. “Aye. I wouldn't want to face the little rabbit out here.”

Gaz’s gaze traveled beyond them. “She left angry.”

“She left alive. So did we,” Jaeshu said, opening one eye. “That’s as happy an ending as I need.”

Karneth grunted. “We stay together. For now, at least. This is unknown territory.”

Gaz considered that, then gave a reluctant nod. "A broken branch does not mend by breaking it again." He sounded, for once, less like a wizard composing an answer than one remembering one from long ago.

“And tomorrow’s trouble can bloody well stay there,” Karneth muttered, crossing his legs and leaning more into the bramblehorn. “To hell with solving it tonight.”

Jaeshu lowered himself back onto the grass and pulled the hood completely over his head. “Good.”

Karneth glanced at him, petting Beeps.

“Because in case you two haven’t noticed,” the ranger said, closing his eyes. “It’s been a very long fucking day.”

The flickering firelight had thinned behind Lunara by the time she reached Oesora and her brother.

The priestess looked up at her approach but did not move. Navian’s head still rested in her lap, his face turned slightly toward the priestess, one cheek pale beneath the dark of his beard. Every so often a faint glow gathered beneath her hand where it hovered over his chest. The light spread across the silver plates of his armor, lingered for a breath, and disappeared without finding anything beneath it.

Lunara stopped beside them. The thin cut along Oesora’s throat had darkened as it dried, little more than a line now, though the young archer’s eyes rested on it before moving to her brother.

She lowered herself into the grass.

She sat close enough that Oesora would not mistake the gesture, but not so close that their shoulders touched. Her bow rested across her knees. Beyond them, Karneth’s voice carried briefly from the fire before the wind took it, followed by the low murmur of Gaz answering him. Jaeshu said something neither woman could make out.

For a while, Oesora seemed content to let those distant voices fill the space between them. She combed her fingers carefully through Navian’s hair where the wind had pushed it across his forehead, then tried the Light again. A weak pulse passed beneath her palm and faded.

“I cannot find it, Lunara.”

Her hand remained there after the glow was gone. “I can feel his heart. His breath. There are no wounds left in him that I know how to mend.” She swallowed and pressed her palm more firmly against the armor, as though the answer might be hidden deeper if only she could reach it. “But where the Light should be, there is nothing.”

Lunara watched her brother breathe. Oesora’s fingers loosened against his armor. “I told him not to.”

The words were quieter than the wind moving through the grass. She looked toward the distant line of forest, barely visible now beneath the moon.

“I knew what he—” Her mouth tightened. “I offered him mine.”

Lunara watched the priestess’s hands. Despite everything that she had been through, they were steady as stone. Oesora looked down at Navian again, then adjusted his weight carefully in her lap.

“I have been afraid of the dark for most of my life,” she said. “Long before I understood what this Orath was. Before I knew there were names for any of the things that followed me.”

Her gaze moved somewhere beyond the field.

“I was very young when it found my family. Five, perhaps. Sometimes they would disappear inside themselves for hours and come back frightened. Then there were days when none of them seemed frightened at all.” She stared at the ground. “Those were the worst days. Eventually, I ran.”

Her eyes drifted to the dark steel sword along Navian.

“For years, running was the only thing keeping me alive. Then a paladin found me.” A trace of warmth entered her voice. “I barely remember his face anymore. I remember… the Light. Whatever had followed me fled from him, and he brought me to the Ria.”

Lunara remained still beside her.

“At the church, the clerics told me that if I kept enough of it close, nothing could reach me again.” Her fingers moved slowly along the seam of Navian’s armor. “Then the church fell, and I learned better.”

For a moment she was lost in her thoughts. Lunara listened to the silence with the same diligence.

“After that I kept the Light small in me. Hidden.” Oesora glanced toward the dark field. “I feared what might notice.”

The dark line across her throat moved when she swallowed. “Then I met your brother.”

Oesora traced one finger along the edge of Navian’s breastplate. “He carried the Light as though hiding it had never occurred to him. He spent it on strangers. On people he had known for only minutes. On people who had already made his life more difficult. It was beautiful to see.”

A tired breath escaped her that almost became a laugh. “He gave it to trees.”

Lunara’s mouth twitched once, but Oesora missed it.

“I thought he was being reckless.” Her hand settled flat over his chest. “I still think it was reckless.”

The faintest trace of light appeared beneath her palm. It illuminated the lines of her fingers and the scratches across Navian’s armor before vanishing again.

“But he understood what it was to carry it. I had never met anyone else who did.” She looked down at him and worried a few blades of grass between her fingers.

The wind pressed her hair across her cheek. She made no effort to move it. That was all she managed for a time.

Lunara sat beside her while the fire behind them sank lower. Oesora’s shoulders shook once, then stilled. Navian breathed against her lap, shallow and steady, unaware of either of them.

Oesora placed both hands over the center of his armor. “I have tried everything that I know, Lunara. I swear it. I have prayed. I have given him as much as I can without emptying myself beside him. Nothing stays.” Her eyes closed. “He gave away the very thing is to protect a promise… and now I cannot return it, no matter how much I try.”

When Oesora opened her eyes again, she looked toward the fire, then at Navian’s sister. She touched two fingers to the dried cut on her throat, then lowered them.

“I do not know why Thael’vira knew me. I do not know why there are pieces of my life I cannot reach, and it is torturing me.” Her fingers curled around the grass. “There are things I should remember. I know there are. Sometimes I can feel the shape of them without finding what belongs inside.”

She looked at Lunara then.

“What if… what if Av'elyth was right?”

Lunara did not move. Oesora gave a small shake of her head.

“I am so sorry, Lunara.”

The name nearly failed in her throat.

“I am sorry he did this because of me. I am sorry I cannot tell you why that creature knew me. I am sorry that every answer I have seems to uncover another question.” Her hands trembled against Navian’s armor. “And I am sorry your brother may have paid for things neither of us understands.”

The fire had burned down enough that Gaz, Karneth, and Jaeshu were little more than shapes beyond the grass. Beeps lay somewhere behind them, his broad body rising and falling in the dark. The forest remained a black line against the horizon.

Lunara looked at her brother for a long moment. Then she set her bow aside and reached across the small distance between them, resting one hand on the Oesora’s shoulder.

“He’ll wake.”

The priestess looked at her.

“When we were children, he took a shield to the head while sparring. Put him down for three weeks.” A faint, exhausted smile touched Lunara’s mouth. “First thing he did when he opened his eyes was ask for a rematch.”

Something halfway between a laugh and a sob escaped Oesora.

Lunara rose, collecting her bow, and squeezed her shoulder once.

“He’ll wake.”

The young sister slowly crossed back toward the others. She lay down near the dying warmth of the fire next to her brother, pulled her cloak around herself, and did not look back before closing her eyes.

Oesora remained with Navian, one hand resting quietly against him as the fire behind her sank into embers.

The priestess of Ria would not join them in sleep.