“Although it is true that any reconciliation between our two nations - even with the best of efforts and intentions - would easily take over a century to fully complete, I think many would be quite surprised how much progress could actually be made in just a short amount of time if the experiment were to be given a fair shot. Clearly there would still be people looking to fight on both sides of the divide between our two nations, I am not an unrealist about such matters; still, I do believe that those completely writing off my notions as unfeasible aren’t giving my ideals proper merit. The fact of the matter is that people can, and do, change; if people want to change - then change will have no choice but to happen, regardless of the countless years of bloodshed and prejudice that have come before it.”

- Tallus the Scholar

Chapter 29: “Highly Circuitous”

Once the decision had been made to recommence the trip towards Dulsnik, and the Grand Library that lied within said capital’s boundaries, the marching forward moved at a fairly impressive clip. That none of the four had any desire to be nearby when the corpse of the emerald haired Naun’tkch began to smell - as it most assuredly would, what with the sun presently beating down in a vigorous fashion – was definitely a factor in the current equation. However, more key to the reasons behind the march’s zest was that Jysalef Soresh wanted nothing more than to retrieve the stupid book as quickly as possible, preferably before anything else life threatening could cross paths with him in the course of his errand for the Great Sage Miran Via’s idiotic former student.

Outside of having his feet - fueled on by his contempt for the Scholar Tallus Osmaard - set the tempo for the band’s current rate-of-motion, the vagrant swordsman actually had very little to do at the moment other than think silently to himself. After all, his young ward was presently far too pre-occupied with greatly ineffective attempts to cheer up the mood of the inexplicably withdrawn Latte; and as for the cyan-haired priestess from a foreign land, she was keeping to the back of the group precisely so that she wouldn’t have to accidentally talk to the person leading it up the path to Dulsnik. It was of the priestess heading up the rear of the group that Jysalef was currently thinking about amidst his marching silently forward, and – curiously enough – he was actually thinking that perhaps he shouldn’t have solicited any of his previous vitriol filled verbal barbs towards her.

Eventually, after a great deal of time had been spent silently pondering such unlikely thoughts, Jysalef slowed down so as to purposefully force Reoisce’aihr to catch up with his position. As he traded the group’s vanguard station with Terus, he authoritatively stated, “Maintain your pace as is, there is something that I have to do.” Although the young swordsman did indeed do as his mentor had mandated – it must be wondered if the youth had even noticed Jysalef fall behind him in pace at all, what with his current preoccupation with Miran Via’s pink coiffed assistant.

Jysalef Soresh wasn’t entirely sure what the proper method was for declaring all of what he intended to say, but he did happen to know of a common military saying that declared it was better to risk making a wrong move if the alternative was to wait around and do nothing at all. Thusly – partially for the benefit of his own pride not wanting to admit that he was retreading on things previously declared vehemently, as well as for the fact there were things he was about to say that it would perhaps be to the benefit of those at the helm of the group if they didn’t hear at all – the vagrant swordsman put forth his opening statement to Reoisce’aihr in the Skrandonese tongue, “For what it’s worth, I can’t anymore say that I believe your pilgrimage to Dulsnik is merely a cover for some sort of operation of malevolent intent.”

It was at that point, as the cyan-haired priestess jerked her now utterly bewildered face towards Jysalef, that the sound of her suddenly halting thought processes were probably not unlike a fully loaded sword rack being unceremoniously tipped over. It had never once occurred to her that when she was arguing with her brother, or his disgusting so-called friend, that this confoundingly unfathomable man had actually been privy to the particulars of that conversation from square one. Her eyes twitched violently as she tried to process the myriad of illogical things this new revelation entailed; for instance, why – if he had already known that Lahkt was her brother – did he not stay his hand until after she told him something that he would have already known?

Not noticing the maddening confusion running through Reoisce’aihr’s face at the moment - as he had been sheepishly casting his glance off to the side as he spoke - Jysalef eventually continued his awkward explanation after a moment of collecting more of his thoughts, “Naun’tkch’s wholly psychotic drive to acquire revenge, for my bringing the Lord’s justice to that damnable Death Hawk, is not something I could ever believe to be a staged falsehood; and so there is no possible way - upon the entirety of the Theria - that I would ever dare to fathom that what transpired back there was merely staged for the benefit of confusing me to your motives.”

Let the record show for all eternity that Jysalef Soresh had a highly circuitous, and somewhat terribly flawed, way of trying to tell someone that he was feeling sorry for viciously bawling them out the previous night.

After another moment of deafening silence between the two adults from different countries, Jysalef finally found his next set of words upon the path he was attempting to go forward, “Oh, and I also wanted to state that I am most impressed with your impeccable ability to rationally plan whilst under considerable duress; I have served with many a good man that would never have come to a solution nearly as perfectly arranged as you did back there. Although, there is still the unfortunate matter that I know full well that he…”

Jysalef then made a loud and incoherent guttural sound in the back of his throat as he forcefully cut himself off from his train of thought at that exact moment; after all, part of the entire reason he was here attempting to say these difficult things were because of how he felt about the last time he said something about her brother. It was an absolutely obvious truth that he was assuredly going to have kill Reoisce’lahkt himself at some point in the near future, or die himself in the attempt, but stating such readily-apparent facts did nothing at all to further his current monologue agenda. Thusly, an expedient change of topic was now in order; which brought him to the final matter that had been weighing gnawingly on his mind ever since the earlier would-be assassination attempt.

“Oh yes, and there is one thing of which I wanted to inquire about that has been seriously confounding myself. All the military intelligence reports that I was ever given made it clear that all costs we were to capture any members of the Skrandonese royal family alive, all of whom were to be easily identifiable by their very shimmering silver hair. However, with the way that Naun’tkch was prattling on incessantly back there about his delusional false righteousness, one would rightly begin to assume that he was implying that members of Skrandonese regal blood – when under the effects of the Dolskum root – would actually be sporting a scalp of…”

It was at this moment, for the first time since Jysalef had caught her mind blowingly off guard by talking to her in the language of her own land, that the Skrandonese priestess finally found herself in possession of knowing the words she wanted to speak. Her interruptive response stood thusly, “Silver was merely the color of hair that adorned all that were employed by the royal family to serve as stand-ins in any matters with foreign lands.” Although what she had just freely given forth could have been considered high treason in her own land, she failed to see how it could much matter at the moment with both kingdoms incapable of lifting so much as a finger against the other in the midst of their mutually ravaging economic depressions; besides - considering what she planned to do once her divinely mandated pilgrimage was at last completed - it wouldn’t exactly be as if she’d ever need to worry about something such as an execution.

It was then that Jysalef looked up to the sparse patches of white clouds overhead - lazily drifting across an endless field of blue, or at least the parts of the sky that could actually be seen through the trees - and declared in his own tongue, “I guess my division’s commander actually was right the entire time; whenever a situation would go vastly different than the plans handed down from higher up, he would set about to cursing and screaming that there wasn’t a single straight fact in the intelligence department over even the simplest of details.”

When the cyan-haired priestess heard the swordsman make his nonchalantly derisive comment on the nature of an army’s intelligence like that, she found that she couldn’t help but to begin laughing out of the nostalgia she suddenly felt. However - she immediately regretted it - for the nostalgia was a most vile thing, and in under a minute it had her face buried in her arms as she began bawling over the once warm things that it ultimately reminded her were never going to be coming back. Jysalef Soresh, grimacing in confusion at this sudden and particularly most perplexing response, awkwardly increased his speed so that he could expediently retake the forward position of their travelling quartet.