I’m back. Whee. Introduction of a new character…will she be help or hindrance to the thief duo?

Well, hope this turns out a little better. Bleh.

EDIT: I stand corrected, this one is even worse. It’s jerky and needs heaploads of editing before it even approaches good… please forgive me! Flame me if you want, I know I deserve it this time round. ;_;

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i. Li
I turned to glare at this bossy newcomer, who walked around us both and bent down beside his still form. She glanced at me and, between us, we lifted him up; it reminded me of how I’d had to haul him out of the subway and made me grimace. This is twice he owes me. I glanced at our would-be benefactor; scanning her clothes, and fixing on the red Moonlight, I demanded, “Are you a cleric?”
“I’m the next best thing you’ll find in this saltwater back-country,” she said dryly, and motioned with her head towards the steps. Together, we managed to haul him up to the main street, leaving the trail of rookies behind, gawking.

“My…house is this way,” she said, nodding at a side street. I paused and stared at her; she returned it with a cool, level look that just made me even more ticked off.
“Why are you helping us out?” I snapped. “Az has his fair share of enemies. For all I know you could be one of them. Why should I trust you?”
“Option one. I ditch you two and your friend joins the ranks of the zombies at El Nath. Option two. I help you, like a good and charitable person, and you are duly grateful. Which do you prefer?” Again with that cool look. It said it all; it seemed to say, I have the upper hand over you. And I’m laughing.

Not half as infuriating as Az’s smug grin, or even his amused look, but pretty effective. Which reminded me.

“Fine,” I growled. “But if you double-cross us, I’m going to chuck you off a pier. Got it?” One of my hands moved towards my Steelys, just to show her I was serious. She smiled at me neutrally and said, “I’d like to see you try.” I just glared at her as we continued, finally stopping outside a dingy-looking door which I took the liberty of opening. With my boot.

“I expect you to pay for that,” she said, as we took the first step in. The first thing that would hit you about the room was the term: filthy rich. The carpets said it, the paintings said it, the furniture said it. I’d never seen such a rich room before. When I’d finally recovered enough to be able to say something beyond incoherent babbling, I muttered, “Yeah, whatever,” lamely.
“Third bedroom on the left, down that corridor,” instructed the mage, and ducked out, leaving me to drag one unconscious bandit down there. A little more effort, and I managed to put him on the bed, then began to pull off his boots.

“What are you doing that for?” the magician asked, and I stopped, turning to face her and trying not to look embarrassed. She was looking sort of bemused, holding a bag of bottles in one hand.
“Wearing boots in bed gets the sheets all dirty,” I muttered, trying my best to not sound like a little kid and failing pathetically. She switched to looking plain amused and I had to remind myself a couple of times that she was helping us out before I ‘accidentally’ punched her in the face.

“I wouldn’t worry about that,” she said finally, walking over and opening the bag. I knelt down beside her and nearly toppled backwards as she shoved a load of Antidotes in my arm. The next thing she said nearly floored me, though.
“The servants will take care of it.”

“You have…servants?” I was nearly yelling. “What are you, some rich recluse who grew sick of the world?” She looked up at me sharply and grabbed a few antidotes back, then stood up and pulled off Az’s pilfer. I stood up with her, still not wanting her anywhere too near him, and watched warily as she began to feel her way around his skull.
“No, that’s my master,” she said abruptly, startling me. “I’m just a rich-recluse-in-waiting.” I blinked. Master? But before I could ask anything else, she snapped her fingers and held out a hand. “Give me a red potion-”

Az groaned and I was kneeling beside him instantly. “Az!” No answer. “Az, you idiot!”
“You’d better not touch him, or you’ll make him worse,” the magician reprimanded. “Just-”
“Finesse,” whispered Az, and I stared at him. He hadn’t said that name in…well, over years. The magician’s eyes narrowed, but she didn’t say anything, apart from, “You’d better be quick with that potion, or he’s going to be mumbling about a lot worse.” I fished the potion out and handed it to her distractedly, as I remembered the last time that name had been mentioned.

ii. Flashback
[i]She stumbled blindly through the snow, one hand raised against the flurry assaulting her face and eyes, the other tightly clutching the tobi throwing-stars in her pouch.
“Az!” she screamed, slipping. She went down facefirst in a snowdrift, and raised herself up on hands numb with cold, cursing to high Orbis as she managed to stumble back to her feet. The soft mound, perfectly imprinted with the shape of her body, was trampled as she Hasted forward, leaving snowy trails in her path, still calling the name. A low growl from in front of her ensued; with a growl of her own, she skidded to a halt and, powered by fury, hurled three Lucky Sevens at the offending beast. It went down with a groan, and she toiled on, not even stopping for the glint of mesos.

“Az!” she repeated, and the wind blew harder in her face, as if defying her. She raised a fist and let out a string of choice curses that would have made a pig blush, shouting into the wind and letting her words be ripped away by the roaring. Then, on the edge of her vision, she thought she saw a shape move. Her Haste kicked in at maximum speed; she tore through the snow, leaving trails behind, yelling the same name.

When she reached, it was to catch the falling bandit as he slumped to his knees in the snow.
“Az?” she repeated tentatively, shaking him. He looked up at her, his expression like a man who had just stared down death and lost…not himself, but worse. His grip was painfully tight around her forearms, but she was just so glad to see him alive that she didn’t care. Carefully, she removed her pack and rummaged one-handed in it, finally producing a container of steaming red bean soup.
“Here, drink this before you die-” He caught her hand and she juggled the soup, barely stopping it from spilling; staring at him, she asked, “What’s wrong?”

No answer came, just the same haunted look. Carefully, she handed the bowl to him, and he drank it in one draught, finally lowering it after a long bout of silence, save the howling of the wind. She opened her mouth to say something, but he cut her off.
“Finesse is dead, Li. They killed her.” She watched in horror as a tear brimmed and trickled down his cheek, helpless against his pain. “Those damn pirates. They killed her.” At that, he broke down and sobbed, collapsing against her; she supported him awkwardly, still shocked. “Essy. She got taken away from me. My Essy.”[/i]

iii. Li
So why now? I hadn’t heard Essy’s name mentioned once since El Nath, and if he was remembering her again, something must have triggered it. I wanted to be convinced that it was just random chance, that maybe this was just Az being his typical self and babbling in his sleep…but something told me otherwise. Namely, the fact that he was lying there unconscious and not the person who had trashed him. The mention of Essy would have brought up all those long-suppressed memories…and probably distracted him enough to earn that opponent the time they needed to knock him out.

“He’ll be fine. He’s just concussed,” the magician said, turning to me, and I jerked, startled.
“Really?” I paused, trying to think of something to say that wouldn’t make me look like a complete idiot. “Uh, thanks.” Failure, ouch. She didn’t seem to care, though, as she threw the contents of her bag together and got up.
“You two are welcome to stay here till he gets back on his feet. It shouldn’t take too long. I’ve given him a few potions and the Curealls should prevent any internal bleeding, so you don’t need to hover at his bedside like a pining lover.” My cheeks went warm and I knew I was going beet-red; she smiled coolly, obviously mistaking my intent.

“A pining lover?!” I sputtered, and the magician shrugged, heaving the bag onto her shoulders.
“Sure looks like it to me,” she said dryly. I leapt to my feet and my hand automatically went for my Steelys before I stopped myself.
“You don’t know anything about it,” I snarled. “You don’t know the hell he’s been through, you don’t know about how much he’s been, and how much I-” She held up one finger in a gesture so reminiscent of Az that I just stopped dead, staring at her blankly as she spoke.
“Don’t talk about going through hell when you haven’t been there yourself,” she said, and I could’ve sworn that was the first trace of emotion I heard in her voice apart from sarcasm, smart-assedness or apathy. “When you’ve suffered, you’ll be able to understand a person who’s been through pain better. Until then, don’t try to defend them, don’t try to sympathize.” She turned away, edges of her robe sweeping the floor, and added, voice returned to normal, “We don’t want sympathy. And we can defend ourselves just fine.”

I couldn’t say anything to that, so I just asked the question that was on my mind. “What’s your name?”
“I get called Allamar.” She didn’t turn around; I followed her out into the corridor and down the hallway, into the kitchen. The fact that there was a little fountain filled with Magic Rocks didn’t faze me. I think I was becoming desensitized to ‘rich’…nah, I wasn’t. I took the opportunity to filch a few.
“‘You get called’? That’s a weird way to put it.” The question was half to distract her while I concealed my new cache. She just glanced at me and set about putting away the potions; when she next turned around, I handed her a couple of bottles. She looked at them as though they had sprouted legs, and then looked at me across the counter for a long second before she accepted them.
“Just because I get called that doesn’t mean it’s my name,” she said finally, when she had finished putting them away. “Or that I call myself that. Put those rocks away, I saw that. And you?” She pulled out a chair and sat down, producing a couple of pure waters from a nearby cupboard. Scowling, I tipped them back.

“I’m called Li,” I said, accepting the bottle she pushed towards me across the tabletop. “The unconscious guy is Az.” Again, her eyes narrowed, but she said nothing apart from, “I’m sure those aren’t the names you get called at home.”
“‘Home’ is a long way away,” I said, grinning as I opened the bottle with a Steely. Allamar looked disgusted; in one hand she produced a small fireball which she used to expand the cap, then removed it with a quick twist. Okay, a fire and poison wizard. Which didn’t explain how she knew so much about healing. I asked her as much, and she shrugged. “My master is a Priest. One of the best.” There it was again. Her master. I somehow couldn’t find it in me to see this sarcastic, abrasive magician calling anybody ‘master’.

“Uh…why does someone like you call anyone ‘master’?” I asked curiously, and she smirked at me over the top of her bottle. The Avarice arm was twitching violently underneath the counter. No! No punching. She helped save Az. Damn.
“Because he is my master. Too hard for your low-intelligence brain to understand?” Ooh, that made me want to start yelling. But, against my better judgement, I slowly, slowly moved my hand away from the throwing knife pouch, pressed my Avarice onto my lap, and made an effort to answer politely, “Yeah, because you’re all smart-assed and offensive, and you’re not the kind of person who looks like she’d say ‘master’ to anyone.” All right, so maybe I was still working on the ‘polite’ part of it. She didn’t seem to care, though. Instead, she just shrugged and said, “Looks are deceiving. Like you, for example. You look like a sensible person, but you’re really quite stupid.”

If there was a sure contender with Az for ‘person who annoyed me the most’, Allamar would have been it. I seethed silently for a moment before picking up the pure water and swallowing it quickly, to keep myself from throttling her; unfortunately, I drank it down a little too quickly. The bottle clunked onto the counter as I bent over, coughing and choking. I heard the magician’s voice say acerbically, “Case in point. Idiocy proven.”
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Looks like this newcomer is sure to rasp all across Li’s nerves. But what about the fighter? Will she return to finish the job, or are the thief duo safe? Find out next time. =D

Thank you for feedback-ing me!