“Hold on a second,” Valor called after her and she paused to look back to him. He had removed the bridle from his horse and thrown it over his shoulder casually. Patting the Arovanni on the neck he walked up behind her and without so much as another word picked her up, one arm behind her back the other behind her knees.
Jala squirmed a moment and shook her head. “Valor, I can walk,” she insisted. The thought of being carried around like an invalid was humiliating. She squirmed in his arms again trying to force him to set her back down.
“On a broken ankle up a steep path with loose rocks and moss. That seems like a disaster waiting to happen. Quit squirming before you make me lose my footing and we both suffer for it,” Valor snapped impatiently and continued the climb to the cave.
“I feel like an idiot being carried about,” Jala objected again.
“And you will look like one when I fall on you and the combined weight of me and my armor flattens you,” Valor shot back. His breath was coming in shallow rasps from the effort of the climb and their long walk.
“You shouldn’t be doing this with broken ribs,” Jala scolded but ceased squirming.
“And you shouldn’t be forcing me to talk at the moment,” Valor replied, his words clipped short by the exertion of getting them both to the cave.
“So, how long have you two been married?” Fiona asked dryly as they reached the cave entrance.
Jala snapped her mouth shut and stared at Fiona, eyes wide while Valor simply scowled at the woman. “You know perfectly well that we aren’t married,” Valor snapped as he carefully sat Jala down at the edge of the cave entrance. “Personally, I’d like an explanation as to what is going on. While I appreciate your holding the smaller demons at bay, I think we deserve some answers as to what you want from us.”
“Inside, and then we will talk,” Fiona said with a smile that held no warmth to it at all. She turned away from them and disappeared into the dark interiors of their make-shift shelter.
“I suppose we do bicker a bit too much,” Jala mumbled. The loss of Finn was a deep wound and Fiona’s words had prodded it sharply with her words.
“She was being a bitch,” Valor replied, offering her his arm for support as they headed into the cave. “I will cut her some slack on it, however. Having your head removed by your husband no doubt makes you bitter toward matrimony as well as being dead for three hundred years. I suppose she has a right to be nasty tempered.”
“Speaking of bitchy,” Fiona drawled turning to look directly at Valor with a smile, “I suppose hobbling around with broken bones has the same effect on you. Sit down while I rummage about in here and see if I can find anything useful.”
“What is that smell,” Jala rasped, turning her head away from the innermost part of the cave. The air was fetid and the worst of it seemed to be coming from that area.
“The rotting dead. This was Nasurai’s lair,” Fiona replied calmly and summoned a light spell above her hand. Raising her arm she held the light aloft for them to get a good look at their surroundings.
“Nasurai Blackwolf?” Valor asked in astonishment. He barely seemed to notice the tangled bones and rotting flesh that littered the floor of the cave. Jala however, found her gaze fixated on the grisly display and felt her stomach lurching in response.
“The one and only. You just destroyed what remained of him, but don’t trouble yourself over it. Anything that was good in him died long ago. Death saw to that. He was one of her five guardians. With luck I can guide you around the other four so you do not have to fight them,” Fiona replied in a distracted voice as she prodded the pile of bones with her boots.
“I thought the Darklands held spirits. Yet, you aren’t a ghost and those certainly have a bit of flesh left to them,” Jala said weakly, her stomach still complaining at the stench.
“If you are going to vomit, hobble back outside for it, please. There is enough filth in here without adding more,” Fiona said without so much as glancing up. She kicked aside another pile and a wave of putrid air rose from the tangle of bodies. Small white forms wiggling through the rusting armor drew Jala’s eye and she stared in disgust at the maggots until Valor stepped in her path of vision.
“Take out the bottle of brandy I have and hold it under your nose,” Valor suggested quietly before turning back to Fiona. “Answer her question. The Darklands is supposed to hold the souls of the dead not the bodies. Explain why everything we have faced so far is flesh and bone.” His voice took on a sterner note as he addressed her and she stopped rummaging through the pile long enough to look up at him with amusement.
“Ahh. That’s adorable. Does it work in the sunlit lands? When you growl and snarl, do the puppies above cower?” Fiona asked, her tone mocking. “The more powerful of the dead can emulate bodies,” she began, motioning down at herself. “As thus. They are by no means our true forms however. We don’t eat, breathe, or piss as mortals do. We are simply solidified essence, and we don’t like to discuss it. Nasurai however was a demon. One of Death’s little creations. As I said, she has five guardians so those would be greater demons and then all of the little creepy crawlies you have seen would be lesser demons. The ones near the edge of the forest were animals in life. The ones by the boundary where you came in were formerly goblins. The deeper you go in, the bigger and badder they get.”