#caedrinn godrickson

[emmettkane]

[This story is based on Pathfinder: Wrath of The Righteous and takes place partially during and immediately after the quest "A Strike From The Sky". No real game spoilers present.]

Worry Not

I take the bolts from my quiver and set them aside. Half of them are splintered, a quarter are missing feathers, three have lost their heads. All of them are covered in either blood, dirt, or both.

I start to wipe down the quiver with a wet rag and then, from beyond the open flaps of my tent, catch sight of a movement: a flash of golden-white hair, the sun dripping off of it in streaks.

My heart skips a beat.

I dry the quiver and set it on the floor next to me. “Not now,” I chide myself. “You’ve got work to do.” I set the broken bolts in one pile. Those are to be sent to the fletcher so that he can take the feathers and heads to make more. The good ones, I wipe off one at a time and return to their home of leather and wood.

The hair flashes again as its owner’s head is thrown back by laughter. Daeran is amused. The person he’s talking to, a camp follower who mostly does laundry for the soldiers, looks disgusted. I didn’t hear what Daeran had said to elicit that response, but I can imagine that it was filthy.

He glances over the camp follower’s shoulder and through the tent flaps. His eyes are bright green, so pale they seem to glow. They lock with mine and his smile dulls. The corners of his lips are still upturned, but they are pinned there uncomfortably.

I realize that I’d been wiping the same bolt over and over, and had taken off one of the fletchings in my daze. I watch as it drops to the floor and when I look back up, Daeran is gone. Despite the bustle beyond my canvas walls, the liveliness of the war camp, I feel suddenly alone.

I rise and retrieve my crossbow. Events from the night prior run through my mind as I take off its string.

---

Screams, battle cries, roaring flames. Then come the flapping of gargoyle wings, their hideous screeches, the vile incantations of their clerics and priests.

---

I  put a fresh string on my crossbow and look it over for damage, probably for the hundredth time today. There is none, but I feel like there should be.

---

A grotesque, stony face with razor sharp teeth gnashes at me and I stick my crossbow in its mouth. Mercifully, the magic with which it is enchanted also protects it from harm. My hand is less well guarded. I have no time to muse on the pain, however, as another of my companions buries a glaive in the gargoyle’s hide, and another pierces it with a silvery bolt of magic.

It falls, dead, into a heap and I stagger away, clutching my most recent injury.

“Oh dear, fearless leader,” comes a sarcastic tone, jovial and sly. It’s Daeran, sidling up to our group with another roughened squad of our soldiers. “That’s quite the wound,” he remarks, waving the soldiers past and back towards camp. “Iomedae clearly favors you this evening, as I have arrived in the nick of time to tend to this fatal blow.”

I grunt and snark back, “If she favored me so, perhaps she could’ve warned me about the gargoyles.”

Despite the banter, I hold my hand out impatiently. I haven’t even asked where he’s been, how he got free, whether or not he’s hurt, and he still comes to treat me readily. He clicks his tongue and enunciates the words to a spell, and golden swirls of light play across my palm, soothing and mending and stitching the tatters of flesh, winding the muscles taut again.

I look at him and I’m caught again by the radiance of his hair, which seems perfect and clean despite his own obvious wounds. His eyes, too, take hold of mine, and it takes more willpower than I’d like to admit to look away. I do, though, and finally ask, “Well then, thank you. Are you alright? Can you still fight?”

Now his grin, ever impish, turns into a proper smirk. “Me? Alright? In this mess?”

I brace for a list of complaints. I can hear them in my mind already: a sarcastic jab, a sideways criticism of my leadership, maybe an off-color comment about my current condition.

“I’m fine, all things told, so…worry not?”

I am surprised. 

It’s said as a question, but there’s a note in there that I’m not used to hearing from him. It almost sounds like…trust.

---

The rest of the memory of the night is a blur and I’m thrown back to reality in short order. I’m clutching my crossbow so tightly that it leaves imprints of its grain pattern in my hand. I set it down and walk over to the entrance of my tent.

Since this morning, camp has gotten itself back together well. I, on the other hand, can’t help but worry. I worry about the dead and the wounded, I worry about the living that must now care for them, or deliver final rites. I worry for my advisors and my inner circle. Perhaps, even if just for a moment, I worry about myself.

Daeran though? I just imagine his smiling face, his bright green eyes, and his shining locks, and I worry not.

[This was a birthday present for @daisy-todd-draws and features their OC Caedrinn Godrickson as The Knight Commander. I don't normally do fanfiction or w/ever, but as it turns out, it's actually quite fun :3]