B3 C62: A Touching Reunion

Nadja was feeling great. Great!

Each stretch of earth vanished beneath her feet as quickly as it arrived, her legs moving faster than they ever had before. Was this how people with higher stats felt all the time? She loved it! Nadja sincerely hoped there was a lot more of the wine to go around, because she could get used to this feeling.

And if her speed weren’t enough, her increased stamina definitely was. All this running and she wasn’t even winded? As someone who’d never put a single point into Endurance, she hadn’t known you could feel this good while running. Plus, the extra Dexterity seemed to be helping her regain her balance whenever she started to stumble or fall, which for some reason was happening a lot. Probably the rough forest terrain. Regardless, it was incredible!

Almost incredible, in fact, to make her forget why she’d sprinted out here in the first place.

Almost, but not quite.

I’mmmmm gonna catch you! Here comes Nadja!

Exactly what she was going to do to the Shadow of Ftheran when she caught her, Nadja wasn’t sure. Club her with her bottle of wine for a while? Ring out an apology from her? Well, whatever. The exact details were a work in progress. All she knew was that first, she had to catch up.

Unfortunately, that was proving to be a little hard.

The rogue, as rogues often were, was fast. Worse yet, Nadja could have sworn the bastard was pulling some sort of disappearing act on her. Now and then, Nadja would lose sight of her, only for her to reappear some time later. If anything, though, that only confirmed her suspicion that the woman she was chasing really was the Shadow of Ftheran which further confirmed that she was the one who’d knocked Nadja out as well.

I could be, like… such a good detective. Like. So good. It was truly a shame she hadn’t been offered a Detective Bartender class. Although maybe a dual bartending-cooking class would have been better. There was a thick smoky scent in the air that was getting stronger as she continued, and it was activating some powerful cravings for a good hunk of meat.

Maybe they’d have some at the mess hall? It had to be pretty packed right about now considering how many voices Nadja was hearing up ahead. She marveled at how far she could hear now that her Perception had shot up a full ten points.

I bet food would taste even better right now… Damn. Why didn’t I try that right after drinking?

Well, whatever. Something for later.

Ultimately, had the speedy, dark-cloaked figure been trying to shake Nadja off, she likely would have succeeded. Thankfully for Nadja, however, the woman seemed to be entirely intent on getting to her destination as fast as possible, moving in a perfectly straight line.

As a result, when Nadja finally burst through the treeline and out of the forest, her target was briefly visible about fifty meters ahead.

Of course, there was a lot more to see as well.

Namely, a shit ton of people fighting.

For the first time since she’d left Verin’s house, Nadja paused.

Ohhh yeahhh. War. That sucks.

The forest was far too large to completely encircle, and it looked like she’d exited off to the side of the main fighting. Still, she was more than close enough to take stock of the situation, noting that an entire swath of the treeline was alight in a painfully bright conflagration. Arrows and spells littered the land between the two forces, the stray shots weathered by foot soldiers and adventurers alike as they fought in the middle.

For the briefest of moments, Nadja’s higher order thinking managed to rise to the surface of her booze-laden brain.

That looks… bad. Should I be dealing with this right now? Didn’t Elphaea tell me to stay put at Verin’s?

Unfortunately, as she contemplated, Nadja took another swig from her bottle, and those higher order functions quite promptly drowned.

Doesn’t matter! I’ll be quick. Like fwoosh, fwoosh, fwoosh. In and out. No one will catch me. And if they did, what did it matter? She was from Ftheran in the first place. They’d be nice, wouldn’t they?

Not wanting to waste another moment, Nadja burst into motion once more. As if to celebrate her forward progress, the earth surrounding the distant flaming trees suddenly erupted with all manner of vines and roots which promptly wrapped themselves around said trees. By all rights, the flames should have swept them up like they did the trees, but the exact opposite happened: In a single heartbeat, every bit of fire vanished.

Given the exact method, it was fairly clear who’d done the deed, too.

Wooo! Go Elphaea! Elph, elph, elph, elph! That’s my friend-slash-boss!

She’d have to compliment the dryad on her spellwork when she returned to the forest. For now, though, there were more important things to do!

If the battlefront was a chaotic mess, the area immediately behind it was slightly less so. A sizable mass of soldiers were spread out loosely, some actively using ranged attacks, some just standing in reserve. That seemed like an odd thing to be doing during a big battle, but what did Nadja know? Maybe their commander was hesitant to spread their troops too thinly or maybe the current fighting was only considered an initial probe. She wasn’t sure and frankly didn’t care much.

What she did care about was the fact that the Shadow seemed to be headed straight towards them.

Booo. That’s such an annoying direction to be running towards. Stop that!

Well, whatever. If the Shadow could manage it, then a stat-boosted Nadja could too!

As one additional layer of complication, though, while the rogue was managing to conceal herself with her invisibility skill and the ample natural cover of the city’s old ruins, Nadja was not having as good luck on that front. Well before she reached Ftheran’s main forces, one of the soldiers spotted her. Intent on personally giving her a warm welcome, he broke off from those around him to run her way.

“Hiii, don’t mind me. I’m from Ftheran, see? I just need to sllllip by for a personal issue.” That explained things nicely, right?

Perhaps wanting to give Nadja a personal escort, the soldier continued to approach until he was only a few meters away.

Inexplicably, he lowered his spear.

Nadja barely had time to process that before the man closed the gap and thrust his spear forward, aiming right at her chest. Slow on the uptake, it was all Nadja could do to throw herself to the side.

“Wait, don’t do that! Bad! Not a fan!” Nadja shouted at her attacker.

Somehow not dismayed by her words of wisdom, the soldier only attacked again and again, forcing Nadja to dodge his attacks in rapid succession.

It was a terribly frightening position to be in.

Or, it was for the first few seconds. After that, there was only one thing Nadja could think.

Woah. He’s slow.

Another lunge threatened to run her through only for her to effortlessly side-step it. Who was this joke? Was he even trying? This wasn’t even a warmup compared to the attacks she had to deal with when being trained by Rock. Add in an extra ten points to Dexterity, and this was a breeze!

“Swoosh, swoosh, swoosh. Fffasst Nadja. Nimble Naj!” This was kind of fun, actually!

Reveling in her first real fighting success, Nadja didn’t even register the man’s frustration or the swears that flew from his mouth. Eventually recalling that she had somewhere to be, however, she decided that she was done simply dodging about.

“Sorrrry pal.” On his next thrust, Nadja stumbled just barely out of the way before rushing up to her attacker.

With all the grace of a drunk buffalo, she then took her handy-dandy wine bottle and brutally clubbed the man in the head.

Down he fell.

She would have celebrated her first serious victory had the fight not caused her to lose sight of her target. As it was, she cursed, scanning ahead in hopes of finding the rogue again.

It was only thanks to her temporarily enhanced Perception that she even caught sight of the woman again, watching as she popped into existence and then disappeared almost immediately afterwards. It looked like she’d already reached the soldiers, somehow managing to slip between them without being noticed. With an exact direction to charge towards, Nadja set off again.

Wonder where she’s going… If just barely, Nadja had the presence of mind to look further in the direction the Shadow was running. Mostly, she just saw more soldiers. One of them, however, was different! He had a horse!

Actually, he has a really fancy horse. And armor. And… a crown? Oh! Wait! That’s the king!

Once again, Nadja lamented that she hadn’t chosen a detective class properly befitting her deductive skills. In fact, she put those same skills to use right then, taking what she knew and going one step further.

Sneaky invisible rogue.

War.

Making a beeline for the king.

Oh.

Oh!

Oh my gods! She’s about to assassinate the king!

That was like, a very big deal!

In fact, was Nadja supposed to care about that? It wasn’t exactly like the king was her king anymore, and the guy was kind of being a dick right now, what with all the burning stuff and fighting.

On the flip side, if he died, what happened to Ftheran? Who would even take over in that case? Nadja was pretty sure he had a daughter -- one of those freaky mega-holy types. What was her name again? Cally? Lilly? Carlisle? Regardless, Nadja truly doubted she’d be able to rule the city, let alone the entire kingdom.

Ultimately, however, Nadja was spared from further thought on the matter. If her initial approach had caught a few eyes, then her subsequent clubbing of one of the soldiers had brought everyone’s attention her way. This time around, a veritable host of soldiers peeled off from the main force to deal with her.

Rather than waste time fighting, Nadja did her best to rush through the gaps between them, or when she had to, barreled them over with her now considerable Strength.

And for a while, it even worked! She was proud to say she got pretty far into the group of soldiers before they managed to fully surround her.

Oh. This feels bad.

It was right about then, with multiple spears pointing at her from all directions, that Nadja realized she may have made a mistake.

All at once, four drinks’ worth of booze seemed to evaporate from her brain, letting her fully appreciate just what kind of situation she was in.

“Wait, pause!” she said half to avoid getting skewered and half to think of something reasonable to say. Catching sight of her cloaked quarry still popping in and out of existence while weaving through the crowd, though, the perfect excuse came to her. “I’m from Ftheran! I’m here to warn you! Look! The Shadow of Ftheran is about to assassinate the king!” She pointed for all she was worth, injecting as much urgency into her voice as she could manage.

One of the soldiers in front of her scoffed. “Like I’m going to believe that the gods damned Shadow of Ftheran is behind me. What do I look like to you, huh? You think we were all born yest-”

Thankfully, the Shadow chose that exact moment to pop back into view, and even if one of the soldiers was too proud to follow her finger, that didn’t go the same for all the others. Mr. High and Mighty’s words were quickly drowned out by a chorus of curses as the others caught sight of the cloaked figure rushing towards their king.

Shouts and warnings spread through the army like a wildfire, outpacing even the fast-moving rogue. Nadja sighed with relief as the soldiers lowered their spears, no longer a moment away from killing her. She could barely even be sad that she wouldn’t manage to catch the Shadow. What had she been thinking? Or exactly how strong was that wine, anyway? Even as the soldiers decided to bind her, she could only be happy it wasn’t something worse.

Maybe I need an alcohol break. Hells.

Past that, she was far too focused on the Shadow to think about much of anything else.

On the woman ran, for whatever reason completely eschewing her invisibility skill, bobbing between the rank and file soldiers with a neigh-unbelievable sinuous grace. Forewarned by the chorus of shouts, her target spun about on his horse, facing her squarely. So too did the king’s plate armor-bedecked royal guard, rapidly forming a solid wall in front of him to intercept the would-be assailant.

Nadja stood there transfixed. Either she was about to witness the toppling of a local legend -- the very same woman who’d caused her mountains of grief -- or full on regicide.

When she was at last only a few paces from the royal guard, the Shadow’s hands shot up, Nadja tensing as she expected some sort of attack.

It was no small shock, then, when the figure threw down her hood instead. That shock was only compounded when she yelled out.

“Dad! What in the hells are you doing?”

Dad?

The king sat stock still on his mount before managing to find his voice. “Is that- Calilah? Calilah, is that truly you?”

Oh. So that’s what her name was.

Every single person in attendance froze, the tension only broken when at last the king spoke again.

“How did you escape? And what are you wearing?” He leaned forward in his saddle, examining his daughter as closely as he could from that distance. Based on the way he scrunched his face up, it was clear he was just as alarmed as he was relieved.

One element in particular seemed to draw his ire more than the rest.

“Calilah, gods above, is that a nose ring?”