Aliara needs it more

Teysa bared her teeth. Shaman! The kobold shamans were filthy creatures. They communed with twisted powers below the earth and ritually scarified themselves to show their devotion. Their bodies were twisted and grotesque, their injuries visible signs of their devotion. Teysa's face twisted in revulsion as she caught sight of the shaman climbing out of the tunnel mouth. He stared at Aliara with milky, cataracted eyes. Patches of skin had sloughed away from his face and arms, revealing rancid meat and gangrenous tissue beneath. In one hand he held a staff topped with a cluster of fungus and decorated with beads, feathers and bone fragments. His other hand swirled in the air, gathering up the fluttering green sparks. His fingers had fused into hooks of keratin, and his rotten teeth sat like pegs in the yawning chasm of his mouth as he chanted unspeakable syllables.

El'keth would have to take care of herself. Aliara was fast and lethal, but the magic of the shamans was as deadly as it was unpredictable. Teysa swatted aside a kobold that had been creeping up on her and charged the shaman. Somehow, even over the din of the battle, he sensed her approach-- he turned to face her, raising his hand. Some kind of spell? Teysa lifted her consecrated mace to meet it. Green fire leapt from the kobold's fingers and washed over Teysa's outstretched arm, but her mace absorbed it like a lightning rod. Teysa grimaced as she felt her hand blister and char, but the majority of the power was earthed by her mace and dissipated harmlessly. Before the shaman could summon up more power she was on him. He raised his staff to defend himself. Somehow, the ancient wood held up beneath Teysa's stroke, though the **** of it drove the old kobold to his knees. She lashed out with a foot and connected with his stomach. Bones snapped under her boot, and the shaman flew backward into the wall and collapsed in a heap on the floor.

The fight seemed to go out of the other kobolds at once. Squealing in dismay, they dropped their weapons and ran. Several were bitten or hacked to **** in the frenzy to climb back into their tunnel, but the rest scampered quickly out of sight. Their angry yelps slowly faded into the distance.

Teysa was left breathing hard. She turned to Aliara and threw her arms around her. It had been different, Teysa realized, back when they were just traveling companions. They had fought back to back many times, always looking out for each other, but it had been fun. They used to compete, daring each other to ever-greater feats of courage. Now the thought of Aliara in danger made her heart leap into her throat. Teysa had lost friends before and had mourned them, but she knew she could not lose Aliara. It would break her. The thought itself seemed dangerous, a swelling abyss with a gravity all its own. Teysa tried to shake it off, reminding herself that Li was a survivor, that she had been through worse scrapes than a dustup with a few kobolds.

Something of her fear must have come through, because Aliara gently pried her off with a hand on each shoulder. "Enough, Tey! Thanks for the rescue, dear. I'm fine, I promise. Why don't you see how your little friend is doing?"

Teysa looked back at El’keth, expecting to see the drider girl cowering or injured. Instead, she was standing over a pile of dead kobolds with a shocked expression on her face. She stared at her hands as though she’d never seen them before. Her knuckles were skinned and bloody, but that seemed to be the extent of her injuries.

“El’keth? Are you hurt?” Teysa called out. At the sound of her name, El’keth looked over, though her eyes still stared at nothing. “I, I, I killed them,” she breathed. “The kobolds. They, they were attacking me, and I just wanted them to leave me alone, and—“

“Yes, vell done,” said Jez’ria. “They vere just koboldz. Don’t go patting yourself on the back too hard.” She grimaced and tried to stand. Her injured leg flopped loosely, and she staggered on her six remaining limbs. “Ergh! No, I’m... all... right.”

Teysa hung her mace back on her belt and walked over to El’keth. She laid one hand on the drider’s closest knee and was surprised to feel that she was trembling. “It’s ok,” she said, in a quiet voice. “Was that your first fight?”

“Yes,” El’keth mumbled. “It was so fast. I didn’t have time to think! I just... hit them, and they fell over. I didn’t think I hit them that hard.”

“It gets easier,” said Teysa. “It was them or you. Sometimes you have to kill to defend yourself. That doesn’t mean that you have to enjoy it. You’re alive, and we’re alive, because you fought. That’s what matters.” She gave El’keth a reassuring pat on the back, although due to their height differential she had to stand on tiptoe. “You did well. I’m proud of you.”

Aliara began wrapping the torn end of Jez’ria’s severed leg in bandages. “Hold still!” she cried. “It doesn’t look like it’s still bleeding, but I don’t even know if you can get infections. Better safe than sorry, right?”

Jez’ria bared her teeth and hissed, but did as she was bid. “First time I’ve lost a limb,” she complained as Aliara tied off the bandage. “It figurez, the one time they tell me to babysit that spiderling and you two surface dwellers.” There was no real rancor in her voice. “I suppose you saved my life, Teysa. So thank you. You fight vell... for a human.”

El’keth’s cart was intact, and they were able to recover a few unbroken jars and loose coins from Jez’ria’s. There was no question of the larger drider carrying some of the load; she could hobble along, but the muscles in her neck stood out like cords with the effort, and beads of sweat dotted her forehead. She would not call a halt, no matter what, so Teysa called it for her. The look of weary gratitude in Jez’ria’s eyes was, she knew, all that she would get as far as a thank you.

“Let uz camp here for the night,” Jez’ria announced on the third such stop. “Ve vill not make it in one day at thiz rate. Tomorrow ve vill be refreshed.” She sagged against the wall of the cave and clutched at her side, as if massaging a stitch.

Teysa looked around. By accident or design, Jez'ria had picked an excellent place for a halt. The passage widened here and the floor was mostly clear of debris. She collected a few rocks and stacked them in a circle to form a firepit. "Very well. I'll pitch the tent here."

For dinner they had travel bread, a drow creation that Aliara had picked up in the city. It traveled well and was surprisingly tasty. El'keth certainly thought so; she ate ravenously, her fear forgotten. Crumbs spilled down her front. Even Jez'ria tried some, though she quickly fell back on dried salted fish. Most of the driders were carnivores, Teysa had noticed. She found El'keth's appetite curious. The young drider appeared to be recovering well from her shock after the fight; she laughed long and hard at Aliara's bawdy jokes, and listened attentively as Teysa told a story about another fight against kobolds a lifetime ago.

"And so he looks around, then drops his axe and looks up at me with these big eyes and says, 'Truce?'"

The rest of them roared with laughter, Jez'ria loudest of all. "And did you take him up on hiz offer?" she asked. Teysa shrugged. "Naw, I was going to knock him into next week, but I just started laughing and he got away in the confusion."

Afterwards, El'keth spun herself a hammock and anchored it to four sturdy stalactites. Jez'ria merely propped herself up against the wall. "I have slept rougher than thiz," she announced. "I vill take the first vatch. Try to get some sleep."

Teysa stared at the guttering embers of the fire. She was bone-weary, she realized. Her muscles were sore and she was developing a hell of a bruise on her thigh that she couldn't remember getting. Still, there was something she had to do before bed.