“And so her magic,
The priestess did cast;
So that her brother
Might not breathe his last.

The cyan-haired man
Still had roles to play,
But his traitorous
Friend rotted that day.”

- Excerpt from the “The Ballad of Jysalef”, as Written by Gulosc the Bard

Chapter 28: “For The Crows”

The pulsating blue light, which burst forth from where Reoisce’aihr leaned over the unbreathing body of her fallen brother, basked both onlookers – as well as the trees that lined the dirt path to Dulsnik – in the same light that had been blindingly brilliant when it was last seen put to use in Kyosem. However - this time - the magically beaming glow of the Sael’fuizhon ritual lasted neither as long, nor reached the quite the same level of all-obfuscating intensity, as it had when last it was seen in action. However, matters of subtlety – such as this - were completely lost upon Jysalef Soresh.

After all, the only other time he had ever been present during said ritual’s invocation was when he himself been the one laying dying upon the ground before the cyan-haired priestess. Yet, even if the vagrant swordsman had been magically omniscient – and thusly fully cognizant during the events that transpired back then - his mind would still have been too engaged with other matters to take notice of the differences in the aura of the spell’s current use. Foremost at the helm of these matters that currently raced through his mind, as the blue tinged light blasted out in all directions, was the thought that this was all actually being done entirely in vain.

It was as a result of these thoughts that he - when at last the Skrandonese spell had finally reached its climax - felt obligated to step toward the foreign priestess and then play the role of a harbinger of less than desirable news, “I hope you do realize that even if you have spared him from the reaper’s hand for the moment being, he will be there shortly - all the same - even without the help of my blade to hurry him along. After all, where is it that you think you might set him up for the time being to sleep safely while his body sets about to mending itself?”

It was a valid question that Jysalef had put forward, to be sure. The vagrant swordsman had been laid up for far more than just an hour or so when he himself had been spared a trip into the thereafter; but he – unlike the now still breathing cyan-haired man laying before him – was not a foreigner from a land both hated and reviled with great contempt. Before them laid the capital of the entire Corsinthian Kingdom, Dulsnik; even sneaking in there on her own – as she originally been intending to do – would not be a trivial matter completely free of risk for Reoisce’aihr, but attempting to lug in an injured man with her would only increase the likelihood of cover blowing attention being drawn to an absolutely unavoidable peak.

Of course, one might quickly venture the likely solution that she could have just chosen to stay behind and tend to him herself in the woods rather than venture forth into Dulsnik under the protection of Jysalef Soresh. After all, the man in question was indeed her very own kin and presently seemed important enough to her as to be worthy of such a self sacrifice being embarked upon. Unfortunately, the one named Reoisce’lahkt would have to be kept from freezing at night if his body was truly intended to be allowed to recover successfully; and in the cloggingly thick woods that surrounded the path from Kyosem to Dulsnik, any such fires would only lead to a wildly spreading blaze the likes of which might have even made envious the dragon that Jysalef recently slew singlehandedly.

However, the response that the Skrandonese priestess gave back – which came forth without skipping a beat at all – was quite unexpectedly calmly delivered, “I intend to leave him here on the path. Where as your entire body was mangled under the crushing force of the dragon’s maw, my brother was only stabbed a single time by a man; he will be unconscious merely for a couple of hours, not many days such as you were.”

Jysalef Soresh – now suddenly more driven to stubbornly be the victor in the matters of whose logic was more superior, than of obligations to break bad news – pressed forth against the explanation delivered to him by declaring, “That your brother is nearly well again is all fine and dandy, but we are presently standing upon a major thoroughfare between a massive center of commerce and the capital of this entire blessed land; in other words, this here road is very well travelled by many a person. If you just were to leave him laying here by the side of the road, even if you pulled his hood up, at least one person – whether by motives Samaritan, or perhaps less noble – would eventually feel compelled to inspect his body long before he could wake; at that point they would find the mark of the Dolskum Root upon his hair, and they’d do him in whilst he slept themselves.”

Furthermore, although Jysalef had neglected to point it out in his rebuttal, this section of the forest was also home to a good deal many of the same scavenging Leeokas the he had recently run out of Elpsiod. Without someone standing vigilantly over her brother’s sleeping body to keep them at bay, they would surely – ere he woke - make a move to scavenge him if he were to be drug a ways off the path into the obscuring thickness of the woods. There was always the possibility of setting a fire and gambling that its flickering would keep the Leeokas wary long enough for the cyan-haired man to awaken, but – as stated before – not in a forest this densely populated unless one should have a desire to see the entirety of it burn down.

The priestess, as she once more calmly countered a declaration of failure put forth to her by the vagrant swordsman, began rifling with great purpose through her brother’s belongings, “As you will shortly see, I am not worried about his body being perchanced upon any time soon.”

Almost immediately after making her declaration, she triumphantly pulled out an iridescent cape from within a satchel hidden on the underside of the robes that Reoisce’lahkt wore. The shimmering cloth that she withdrew was immediately recognizable to the three present that currently watched her actions; after all, it was the very same ‘Cloak of Reshaping’ that the would-be assassin had disguised himself as a Leeoka with back in Elpsiod in an attempt to gain the element of surprise. After first draping the magical garment nearly entirely over his sleeping form, the woman promptly set about to chanting some sort of ritual in the Skrandonese tongue that was presumably meant for activating the cloak.

As Jysalef watched Reoisce’lahkt quickly take up the form of an almost entirely innocuous bush along the edge of the forest path, albeit one the produced a faint snoring noise if one were particularly inclined to listen intently, a horrible shiver ran down his spine as his mind was ripped unwillingly back to the days when he was still in the employ of his kingdom’s coin. His unit - while approaching a battlefront in the lands of Skrande, so as to shore up the Corsinthian forces already locked in battle with the enemy - had been marching along through what had appeared by all rights to be an innocuously empty field; that is until every single part of the scenery suddenly turned into a damnable Skrandonese soldier and charged them from all sides. For Jysalef - and the others that had survived that contemptible ambush - it was truly a miraculous day blessed by none other than God himself, but God hadn’t exactly cast his favorable glance equally upon everyone in Jysalef’s unit when the snare had been pulled.

Not wanting to be lost in thought about a time when so many of his friends were untimely ripped from him, the former soldier violently shook his head to clear himself of such thoughts. “Alright, we have to take our leave from here immediately; we too would not want to be here when any passerby finds this scene.” At this point - for emphasis - he toed the corpse of the emerald-haired Naun’tkch, whom was presently lying perfectly still in quite a sizable crimson pool of his own blood. However, as he nudged the very dead assassin’s body, a most mean-spirited and sarcastic thought came forth to Jysalef’s mind, “Or perhaps the priestess would rather we first waited long enough for her to resurrect him as well, so that we have no new advantage of numbers over her brother whenever it is that he comes after us next!”

It was then that Reoisce’aihr’s face was suddenly filled with a venomous contempt the likes of which none of the other three standing had ever before seen from her. However - as made clear by the retort that she quickly snapped back - the anger presently seen within her wasn’t necessarily aimed entirely at Jysalef, “For all I care, you can leave him for the crows.”