Aidan
The Realms
Secondday, 4th week of the 7th month, Godless Age 597
Late morning
Starchaser village, Mistvale Highlands

Brighid frowned at Aidan, her playful mood instantly evaporating. "Are you sure, Aidan? I do not like the idea of you facing that creature again, not so soon."

"Neither do I, but I'll be ready this time. I have at least, what, a week to prepare?" He looked at Ailis, who nodded agreement. "Besides, I won't be going in alone. You'll be with me, Brighid, and presumably, we'll be part of a team. We know what we're facing now." Brighid looked like she wanted to argue, so he continued, "I need to do this, love. If I run from my fears, I'll never grow past them. I have to face them head-on." She still looked dubious, but she gave him a reluctant nod and clutched his hand tightly under the table.

Aidan turned to Ailis and asked, "I have some things I wanted to ask you, while we're here." At her gesture of consent, he continued. "When I mentioned the altar under Ceallach Macht," he carefully avoided thinking about what happened in that room, "you reacted as if you knew what it was. Will you tell us?"

Ailis grimaced. "I have suspicions only. There are a few possibilities, some worse than others. In all cases, though, your initial assessment was correct: destroying the heart should, at the very least, vastly weaken the enemy. I wish I could tell you more, but I will not know for sure until I can examine it myself."

Aidan nodded. I figured as much, but it didn't hurt to ask. "Alright. I also wanted to ask for your assistance in a less-dangerous matter. I will be speaking to each of the other Councillors over the next few days. What will it cost me for your help convincing them to vote in my favor the next time the matter of the Rite of Acceptance comes before the Council?"

Ailis arched one pale eyebrow and gave him a haughty look. "I set the petition in front of the Council and voted in favor. Is that not enough assistance? If you need more, you have a debt you can call in."

"Is that the only price you will accept? Think of how much easier it would be on Brighid. I have some experience living the life of an outsider; I can handle being marginalized, isolated, and hated. Is that something you want for your daughter, though?"

The silver-haired Councillor's eyes began to gleam; this was a woman who enjoyed verbal spars. "There are many ways to protect her from that. If you can handle the reactions of the tribe, I do not see why I should expend extra effort and political capital to protect you as well."

Brighid stirred beside Aidan. He squeezed her hand and caressed her palm with his thumb—Let me handle this—and she subsided. "If helping your near-family isn't enough reason, consider this: you are a scholar, correct? I come from a land so far away that I am confident you have never heard of it. I know histories, mythologies, tales, and technologies that you never had and never will have access to except through me. I am not asking you to burn favors or debts for me. I will persuade the Council, or not, myself. I am asking for advice and insight. Information for information, is that not a fair trade?"

Ailis snorted. "My information has real and immediate value to you. The value of your information, on the other hand, is entirely unknown. Perhaps it would be a fair trade, but maybe I would wind up with nothing."

Aidan remembered a similar conversation with Brighid and suppressed a chuckle. He couldn't keep his lips from turning up at the corners, though, and Ailis arched an eyebrow at him. "Is there something funny about what I said?"

He shook his head slightly and allowed himself to smile. "No, it's just that someone," he glanced at Brighid, "said almost the same thing to me just a few days ago. Like mother, like daughter."

Brighid leaned her head against his shoulder and added softly, "She is bluffing, anyway. All Lore Subskills only advance when learning new things, and Mother is very close to level 100 in several of them. She wants to hear what you know very badly."

Ailis frowned at her daughter, surprise flickering across her face, followed in rapid succession by anger, disappointment, and realization. Then she straightened and said, "I have no right to expect loyalty from either of you. Very well. Yes, Aidan, I am interested in what I can learn from you. However, what I said earlier is still valid; it remains to be seen how valuable what you know is. I will need a little time to consider how best to help you. Here is what I propose: return here tomorrow. Then, you will tell me some of the histories of your homeland, and I will reciprocate with a similarly-valuable piece of information about the other Councillors. We will proceed, like for like, until one of us feels that we have exhausted the value of the other. Is that acceptable to you? Brighid is always welcome in my home if you wish to have a second opinion of the fairness of the trade."

Aidan glanced over at Brighid, seeking her opinion. She nodded slightly and said, "Mother abides by her deals. She always said that you can only betray someone once, because afterward, they will be watching for it. The implication," her eyes cut sideways, towards Ailis, "was that you should make it count. There is nothing for her to gain from not dealing straight with you here and now." She left unsaid that the same might not hold for the future.

Aidan nodded. "Then we have a deal, Ailis. I will return tomorrow morning after breakfast if that is an acceptable time? I will leave it up to Brighid whether she wants to accompany me."

The silver-haired centaur bobbed her head in acceptance. "Yes, that should be fine. I shall see you on the morrow, then." That was a clear dismissal, so Aidan and Brighid stood up. Brighid hugged her mother again, and they made their exit.

"Let's return home," Aidan suggested. "I'm sure you still have plenty of work to do in your forge."

"I can think of more pleasant ways to get hot and sweaty..."

"As can I, but at the moment I am not very happy with you. It's partially my fault; I heard your do's and don'ts but didn't tell you mine. But that's something I would rather discuss in private, or at least not out in the street."

Brighid lowered her eyes and led the way back towards her home. They traveled silently, trying their best to ignore the stares and whispers of those they passed. Still, in the few short minutes it took, her shoulders slumped and her head bowed. Aidan stepped up to her, cupped her cheeks in his hands, and turned her head towards him. He stood up on his toes and kissed her softly. "I still love you, flame of my heart. That hasn't changed, and it never will. I even understand why you did what you did. You had to show your mother just what she was interfering with. You fell into the same trap as she did, though, love. You only saw the end and didn't consider the harm that the means would cause."

He stroked her cheek, then asked, "How would you have felt if your mother brought someone you barely knew to you and had him speak Divine Speech? One second you're confused, the next you're convulsing in pleasure due to the power of his voice? How would it feel to know that a stranger had such total control over your body and mind, to have that control forced upon you in your own home?"

Green eyes opened wide, then began to swim with tears. "I ... please let me go with you to Mother's house tomorrow."

Aidan shook his head. "You never need to ask my permission for anything like that, love. In fact, I'd prefer you didn't; I don't want to control everything you do. I have enough problems just controlling everything I do." He smiled at her, and she gave him a tentative, teary smile in return. "Now come on, you have work to do, and I think I should get some practice time in as well."

Brighid leaned down and pressed her lips to his, letting her hair fall in a vermillion cascade around them. "I love you, Aidan. Thank you for everything you do for me." She kissed him again, then asked, "Would you like to learn Smithing? Much of my work is simple, repetitive labor that would usually be done by apprentices. With your Trait, it shouldn't take you long to pick up the basics, and that would free me up to work on the more complex pieces. You would be helping me and learning a valuable Skill."

Contrary to her combat training, Brighid was a patient and thorough teacher when it came to Smithing. After getting Aidan appropriately protected with a leather apron and gloves, she started working on an arrowhead. "Aside from nails, arrowheads are the quickest and easiest thing I normally make, and with the attack on Ceallach Macht imminent, we need the arrows more," she explained.

She began by heating the end of a long metal rod in her furnace, then beating the tip flat. She heated it again, then slowly turned the rod along its long axis, forming the flattened patch into a circular socket using the tip of the anvil as a guide. After heating the rod a third time, she placed it over the narrow tip of a steel wedge and struck it with her hammer several times, breaking the section with the socket free from the rod.

She then affixed the socket to the end of a different rod, heated it yet again, then began to form the actual arrowhead. With a few precise strokes, she shaped it into a rough diamond shape, then worked on each side in turn, evening them up. Finally, she dipped it into a barrel of oil to quench and temper the steel, then showed Aidan how to sharpen the edges on her grindstone.

Then Brighid handed him one of her smaller smith's hammers and guided him through the process. Predictably, with no experience in Smithing in either world, he made several mistakes, but Brighid was patient with him. Once he finished making dumb mistakes—around the time he reached level 1 in Smithing, in fact—she set him up at a smaller anvil. "Just do your best and do not worry if any come out unusable. Whatever I cannot fix, I can melt down into new ingots."

By the time the sun was setting behind the western mountains and Brighid called a stop, Aidan had managed to make a couple dozen usable, if low quality, arrowheads. He was also drenched with sweat and regretting his lack of investment in Might and Endurance; his arms were quite sore. Even his left arm, the one not swinging a three-pound hammer repeatedly for hours on end, got a workout from merely holding his targets still.

Aidan and Brighid adjourned to the river to bathe. There was a minimum of horseplay this time; they used the general bathing area of the river rather than Brighid's pool. Once clean, they returned home, ate another meal of meat-and-tubers, and retired to bed. Aidan kept his promise from that morning, showing Brighid the depths of his passion, and bringing her to the height of pleasure repeatedly before exhaustion overcame her.

Before he joined Brighid in slumber, Aidan decided to distribute his lingering attribute and Skill points from reaching level 5; he allocated 3 points to Charisma, 1 to Willpower, 1 to Toughness, and 1 to Endurance. Curious to see what would happen, he assigned the 25% Skill bonus to Swords.

Sure enough, he got the bonus experience for re-leveling Swords to Novice. That’s an exploit. I wonder if I would get additional spells for the magic Skills that way? Aidan thought, but then re-considered. The price is too high. One death is enough for me. He snuggled closer to Brighid and closed his eyes, trying very hard not to remember what he had paid for that 50 experience.

Zurai

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