On A Whim

"On A Whim" is a BOTGD 2 oneshot written on May 13, 2019.
== Summary ==
Darien has an encounter with a very odd half-breed that saves him from bandits.
== Full Text ==
Darien wasn’t one to lose track of time easily, unless he was neck-deep in his studies, like he often was in his time in High Central. Books used to drain hours of his time without complaint, often long into the night. But he hadn’t been to a true library in years, and the lack of pursuing his favorite hobby had given him an uneasily accurate perception of just how slow things could go.
You would assume the stress of being bound and blindfolded would only heighten his awareness of time passing, but you would assume wrong. Had it been an hour? Ten minutes? He was bored, and freezing, and hungry, and impatient. He had better things to do than to be slung over the shoulder of a muscle-bound bandit, and yet here he was, doing exactly that. Being useless.
Once more, he tried investigating the bandit’s mind, but there was nothing of interest, nothing that could give him the upper hand. He groaned and kicked at his captor again, managing to connect with an elbow–maybe not his, but someone’s. There was a grunt of pain and a low curse. “Let me down!” Darien demanded.
Darien suddenly hit the ground in darkness and confusion, baring his teeth and thrashing angrily to try and displace his bindings. The blindfold was yanked unceremoniously off of his head and he spat dust out of his mouth, glowering up at his captors, who were backlit by a low firelight. They looked to be nothing special, but they had gotten the upper hand on him. That irritated him…and embarrassed him. “Release me at once,” he snapped, very aware of his old noble attitude creeping into his voice.
The lead bandit cackled. “Ah, I knew we got a spunky one!”
“He ain’t got nothin’ on him, though, boss,” one of his lackeys complained, tossing down a plain leather satchel by Darien’s side with a flump. “Just papers.”
“Don’t need no papers,” another grumbled angrily.
“That’s right, you don’t.” His mounting annoyance was giving him a burst of courage in the face of men that could very well kill him. “So let me go, and I’ll forget this ever happened.”
The lead bandit grabbed the front of Darien’s tunic and growled in his face, his breath hot and rank, “You’ve gotta have somethin’. Ya better give me somethin’ valuable of yers, or it’ll be your life I take instead.”
Darien’s heart thundered faster as he scrambled for a solution to “I–uh–”
“Excuse me.”
The bandits turned around in confusion, and Darien peered around from around his captor’s armored form to see a cloaked figure standing on the opposite side of the campfire. He barked out a laugh. “‘Excuse me!?’ What kind of lost little pansy do we–?”
The stranger tilted his head to the side. “Will Fareman.” He said the bland name with an odd accent that Darien hadn’t heard often, but one he placed as being from the Far South.
He stumbled to a halt, his mouth hanging open stupidly. “Wh-wha?”
In the distance, the group heard a faint bellow, a distinctive dragon roar to the east. The bandits stirred nervously; the newcomer didn’t move. “That is a juvenile Rumblehorn attacking your main encampment,” he said calmly, “and your leader is in immediate danger. If you do not stop this extortion and leave to stop the dragon, he will die, and your brethren will seek vengeance on you for the rest of the season for abandoning your posts. Three of you will be killed, and the rest will be chased away and become tortured slaves to a rival group of highwaymen.”
Bewildered, the bandits looked around at each other, and Darien managed to pry himself out of the ringleader’s grip as he stared suspiciously at the cloaked man. The roars increased in intensity. “What are you on about?” he said, with a tremor in his voice that he failed to hide.
“You have less than an hour.”
He snarled and kicked Darien in the side, gesturing to his men. “Get a move on.”
“But boss–!”
“I said, let’s get out of here! I ain’t riskin’ it.”
Incredibly, the group began to slink back into the shadows, leaving their hasty camp behind, and they began to run off into the night, arguing angrily with each other. The cloaked man stood unbothered in the midst of them until they were gone, and then he stepped forward and walked around Darien, kneeling down to assist with his bound hands. He heard the sharp clink of a dagger, and then his wrists loosened and spread apart. He sighed in relief and pulled his arms apart, pulling the loose ropes away from his arms.
“Uh…I should…certainly thank you, I suppose,” he said cautiously, looking around at the man, but he found himself staring at his knees as the man had already stood and was retreating back around the campfire, looking back and forth for any other wrongdoers creeping in the woods.
“You are welcome, Darien.”
Darien squinted at him. “You seem to know lots of names that aren’t yours.”
“I know many, yes. Dinner?”
Blinking in surprise, Darien saw that he was peering into the pot over the fire, and a decent smell was drifting from its contents. He raised his eyebrows and looked back up at the man, tilting his head a bit to try and peer under his hood. His proportions seemed strange. “I wouldn’t say no to a meal. But won’t they be back soon?”
“They will not.”
“O…kay.” He shook his head and scooted closer to the fire, fumbling for one of the tins that the bandits had intended to use for their meal portions. He handed one to the stranger, and as he did, he finally saw his face lit up in the firelight–he was a half-breed, apparently part goat. He felt a gut reaction that he immediately pushed away, and as his savior spooned part of the bandit’s supper into his bowl, he nodded firmly in thanks. The two ate quickly, in silence.
“Why did you save me?” Darien questioned, when they had both finished and been quiet for a minute afterwards.
“Why wouldn’t I?” he responded placidly.
“So you don’t know who I am, then?”
“I know exactly who you are, Magistrate.”
Darien mentally stumbled at the mention of his Councilmember title, and he frowned, starting to try and prod at the half-breed’s mind. “Do you, now.”
“I do not know every detail, but I heard that you have changed. So I decided to help you.”
“Maybe I could’ve helped myself.”
The goat man gave an odd chuckle. “You couldn’t have.”
Darien broke through something in the half-breed’s consciousness, and he suddenly yelped and bent over, clutching his head, as his mind vibrated with what felt like repeated images of the same vision, over and over and over again, imposed on each other, over each other, inside each other, the same sights and sounds crashing over his consciousness, and he felt like it was ripping him apart. It was too much, too much information for him to process. The bandits were surrounding them, and then they were gone, and then they were ransacking a corpse, and then they were corpses. He saw his own face from the goat’s point of view, at one point it was pale and covered in blood and dead, at another it was curved up in a beaming smile, and at another it was up far above the half-breed in a cold, uncaring look, also covered in blood, but it faded out as the vision slowly went black.
“Hey.”
Gasping, Darien jerked upright and shook his head as he felt a hand on his front–or rather, a hoof. He had trouble focusing on what was in front of him at first, and his eyes darted aimlessly until he finally saw the stranger in front of him, very close to his face. His eyes were shaped exactly like a goat’s, too far away from each other and with rectangular pupils, but they were bright and and intelligent and focused on Darien.
The mage ran a hand through his hair and exhaled shakily, becoming aware that he had broken out into a heavy sweat. “S-sorry, I must’ve…” What the Hel was that!?
“Are you injured?”
“Sure, I think so.” He pulled away completely from the goat’s mind and drew inward as far as he could. He would not make the same mistake twice. “Bumped my head, perhaps.”
“Perhaps.”
The half-breed stepped back and sank to his knees again, resting in front of the fire. Darien took another moment to breathe deeply and collect himself. His curious mind was in a frenzy, but even thinking about what he saw was giving him a headache. “I’m sorry–um–who are you? I never caught…anything about you, actually.”
The half-breed seemed to think about that for a moment. “I am passing through.” The dragon roared in the distance again, and Darien looked around at the sound nervously. “You will forget me soon enough.”
“Not likely.” Darien frowned at him. What an enigma. “You know things…you know too many things. Won’t you tell me what’s going on? Ignorance is a prison that I’d like to be free of.”
The dark-faced goat tilted his head up from underneath his hood, the heavy fabric swinging softly beneath his horns. His eyes glittered darkly in the firelight. “Do you believe in gods, Darien?” he asked.
The man was vaguely unsettled by the animalistic stare, and confused by the apparent change in topic. But he snorted and answered, “I’d be an idiot not to. I’ve seen them myself.”
“Seen them.” Darien looked up for a reaction but the half-breed’s stare remained keen and undecipherable.
“It sounds ridiculous.” He reached for and tossed a thick branch onto the dying fire and the sparks swirled up into the inky night sky. “Some days I feel like I’ve finally gone mad. How are people supposed to respond when you tell them you’ve seen the faces of deities? How can I blame them for disbelieving?”
Darien seemed distressed now. “And yet, you think they might believe you, because of course they believe in their gods. But to believe that this wayward stranger may have had the ability to lay eyes upon them? Unthinkable.” He snorted again. “Unbelievable.”
“No,” the wanderer interrupted. “Believable. Who did you see?”
Surely he is jesting, he thought in irritation, eyeing the animal face of his temporary companion. “Hel,” he finally muttered quietly. “Eir, the goddess of healing. And…Odin. Odin and his army.”
“They fought each other.” It was stated as fact.
“Yes,” Darien agreed. “That’s why he…wait, how did you guess?”
The stranger shifted in place, his hooves sliding through the dead leaves in order to make himself more comfortable. “No guessing involved,” he said simply, in his strange accent. “The higher gods fought to the death. The lesser gods now walk without rulers.”
Darien felt a bit lightheaded. “Did…are you…one of…?”
“No,” he said shortly. “Skadi, you claim your dislike of ignorance and also hold your own naivete. Will you believe anything?”
“Forgive me!” Darien said in angry, mock offense. “Forgive me for believing impossible things when I’ve seen gods walk as huge monsters on our land…”
The goat paused, and he seemed to be collecting himself. “You are right. Apologies. I have seen gods myself. I do not doubt you.”
Darien wanted to jump to his feet. “Who are you!? Who did you see?”
He hesitated again, and this time Darien sensed something more uneasy stirring within his mind. “It is not within me to tell you,” he finally replied.
Disappointed, he folded his arms. “That’s no answer. What about a name, at least?”
Another long, hesitant pause. “Milae,” he finally murmured. “That is what you may call me.”
Darien dipped his head. “Well…thank you, at least, for saving me, though for the life of me I couldn’t explain how you did it…”
“It needs no explaining, it was simply done.” He stood, his cloak swirling around his hooves. Darien hastily did the same. The sounds of fighting had slowly died away, and there was nothing but the cold wind whistling through the grass and scrub and the distant whoop and call of nighttime creatures. Darien gathered up his bag from the ground and held it in his arms, and he turned back to Milae, opening his mouth to ask a question.
But he was gone without a trace.
Darien stood alone in a camp that didn’t belong to him, slowly closing his mouth and looking around in a puzzled way, finally deciding to step away from the fire’s light and continue on his way.
“Goodbye, then.”
Category:Events
Category:EU
Category:Darien Whiteland
Category:Yun Milae