Within a winding, ice-crusted hillside cave, with runes hacked deep into the rock wherever it's visible, Ryssa stands back with her arms folded while the elf paces every inch. In the deeper reaches, dark side galleries have been driven into the rock, old and frost-swaddled bodies stacked like firewood. Fresher cases occupy shallower caverns, each on a rimed catafalque to themself; the caves nearest the entrance contain nothing but such plinths, empty and waiting.
Discreet observations revealed to the paladins the favoured tavern of the cave's night watchmen, and an evening of tale-swapping taproom largesse guaranteed a less-than-sharp pair of eyes on the hillside approach; simple stealth, dogged footsteps, and a soft black-clad stroll behind a turned back led them here. Quiet, earnest words and a small bribe to one of the Stormand guards' clerks gave them the numbered storage-place to investigate; the Mother's quiet priests are everywhere, and so, perforce, the beneficiaries of her small but vital mercies. Gratitude is an indispensable grease to life's wheels.
"Paladin," the elf says, kneeling, head low to peer across the ground, at the faint footprints disturbing the chamber floor, "you won't like this."
"Undoubtedly true," Ryssa says, wry. "What do you see?"
"I don't see any marks accounting for someone lifting the weight of a body," the elf says. "I do see a discrepancy in the comings and goings."
Ryssa heaves a huge and weary sigh. "The drowned and frozen wizard stood up and walked away," she says.
"So far as I can tell," the elf says, "aye."
Ryssa says something that begins beneaths her breath and ends, audibly and bitter, with "—Wizards."
"Wizards," the elf says, squinting still across the floor and its traces, "never saw a sunrise or a smile without thinking how they could make something of their own, something like it. And then, half a lifetime of work later, they'll unveil Cankerlicker's Sky-Orb that conjures a dripping, stinking ball of burning tar half a mile in the air, or Knobstroker's Facial Rearrangement that strategically withers your cheek muscles into a grimace, and they'll finally deem the sun or smiles to be real and beautiful and miraculous, because they can make their own."
The paladin shrugs deeper into her fur-lined cloak. "You think they have — something like me."
"No," the elf says, "not very like, or they'd have disposed of you more thoroughly. But something. They had a time to look upon you, and envy, and work on imitation. An enchantment that raises a sorcerous revenant; to report on their murderers, or revenge on them."
Ryssa lets out a long, steaming breath. "I find myself in two minds," she says, "whether your ambush of him was the worst possible thing, or the most savagely deserved."
The elf smiles quick and bright as the light glinting off a darting fish and rises to her feet, dusting snow from herself. She steps within Ryssa's arms and hops to her toes, pressing a quick kiss to the paladin's lips. "Those are not opposites," she says cheerily.
