Chapter 260

Out of all the Cardinals, Zesshi knew and trusted Raymond the most. He'd always dealt straight with her, and in her rare outings in the darkness to remove some threat, he was her constant handler and guide. Whether because of that or in spite of it, he always behaved more gently with her, treating her as if she were the child of a dear friend, and though it grated on occasion, it was hard not to trust a man who showed care like that. Particularly as she lacked any father of her own beyond the one she wanted to murder.

So, over the years, she'd come to begrudgingly look up to him in a way. 'If Dominic told me to stay in the carriage, I'd have told him to drive it up his ass.' The half elf snorted when they rolled up to a village, and then right through it.

The next few days passed that way, they camped between villages under the night sky. Curiously enough, they seemed to be taking turns being 'ahead' of a man who ran at night and slept during the day. It was such a regular thing that she ticked off the days by his sweaty smell when he loped past them, and it was a full week before Zesshi realized, 'I'd never been outside this much in my entire life…' The stars were twinkling the same as they did each night, a haunch of meat was roasting on a spit over a crackling fire, and the fruit trees at their backs waved gently in the breeze.

More notably, a forest loomed close, and it called to her blood like a siren. 'I've never been this close to it for this long…' Zesshi set her back against the tree and looked up at the sky, the branches were wide-set and offered a clear window to the beyond. "Say, Raymond, what are those stars anyway?"

"The stars are stars… how am I supposed to answer that?" Raymond chortled while he turned the spit, he glanced up at the sky reflexively when she asked. "If I asked you what a half elf was, how would you answer that?"

"Saying they're born half of rapist-animals." Zesshi answered, and Raymond's brief laugh died in his throat.

'She's not really wrong, but not quite the way she thinks.' His conscience gnawed at him, there were a lot more half elves from human violence than the other way around, a secret that was kept from her for her entire life. 'I could tell her, but… how would she respond to that?' There was no good answer, and so he kept turning the spit and held his tongue.

The smell of the meat was flavorful and rich, he held a hand up over it and tilted a little container of salt over the cooking flesh.

"But seriously, I'm asking what they're made of. Are they diamonds?" Zesshi asked.

"No… the Gods' wisdom told us that they're actually giant balls of gas, each one bigger than the whole world many times over, burning billions of miles away. Supposedly, many of them actually died a long time ago, but their light is only just now reaching us." Raymond explained and Zesshi whistled appreciatively.

"Sounds like a folk story or something." She said, "But a neat one."

"It sounds like total bullshit."

A blue haired man said as he approached, veering off of the road. Zesshi sniffed the air, "You're the man who's been running past us over the last few days, aren't you?"

"Given that you just took a whiff, I'd say that means it's been too long since I've bathed." The blue haired man laughed with a self deprecating look, lifted his arm, and sniffed. He pretended to wince. "Yeah, too long."

"You don't have to have good senses to know that much." Raymond said, his hand quietly slipping within his Cardinal robes to palm a dagger, "What do you want?"

"Nothing really. My name is Brain, and I couldn't help but smell the food… again, and," he put one hand on his stomach, it growled at them like a feral beast, and Raymond relaxed, "I was hoping I could ask for a bite. Traveler's hospitality and all that."

An unwritten rule of the road, to help travelers in distress, 'Feed the hungry traveler' was a commandment that even demihumans were said to have embraced.

It didn't hurt that travelers were always armed, and the best way to keep a sword sheathed when a hungry belly was present was to put bread in one hand and cheese in the other, or so it was said.

"Sit. Share the fire." Raymond said and when the blue haired man set his sword down on a log and sat, the Cardinal took his hand off his knife.

"Thank you." Brain said, and took a seat. "My name is Brain, Brain Unglaus."

"I've heard of you." Raymond said immediately, "But aren't you from Re-Estize, what are you doing here?"

"Oh, I'm on my way to Arwintar. I was in Demalbion's capital city when word came of the tournament, and it's a bit of a run for me to get there in time." Brain tossed off the sentence like it was nothing.

Both Raymond and Zesshi stiffened when he said it, Raymond however was in the middle of handing over a chunk of cheese, and such was his surprise that he dropped it.

Brain darted his hand out and caught the chunk before it could hit the grass, "Hey thanks, but try not to drop it in the grass!" He smirked a little, only the smallest upturn in his lip exposed it in the light of the fire, and he brought the cheese up to his mouth to take a bite. It fairly melted in his mouth with a savory tartness that slid over his tongue with the smoothness of water going downhill.

"Demalbion? You were with the demihumans?!" Zesshi asked with sudden curiosity.

"You're not serious?!" Raymond demanded. He'd stopped turning the spit when Brain spoke.

"Yeah sure." Brain said and casually chewed on the tart yellow chunk. "I'm a free sword with no master, I go where I want, and Demalbion is friendly to travelers who want to show their talent. Their Queen is utterly mad for talent. She said anyone who comes to her domain offering to use their talents in peace can expect to be rewarded as handsomely as they would be in the Kingdom of Nazarick or better. There's a bit of a rivalry between those two it seems like. I'd go to the Kingdom of Nazarick, but I still have some history in some of those areas that I'm not quite sure is settled… so I went west."

"That's a lot of walking." Zesshi remarked.

Brain shrugged while Raymond frowned. "Maybe, though uh, old man, you might want to start turning that spit again. I'm not going to look a gift horse in the mouth or anything, but you two probably don't like burnt meat any more than I do."

"Shit!" Raymond cursed and resumed rotating the spit when he saw the char forming on the section of meat closest to the flames.

"You're welcome. But yeah, I've spent my whole life traveling. I've been to the Elf Kingdom, to the Draconic Kingdom, to Re-Estize, Baharuth, the Roble Holy Kingdom… no home means nothing to tie me down, all I've ever done is test my sword." Brain said and slid off the log to rest his back against it instead.

To Zesshi, who had never traveled at all, Brain was like some strange, unfamiliar creature, she looked at him with utter fascination.

"I went to Demalbion to fight for prizes in their arena, it isn't much, but they're building a lot, and I thought it might be neat for the first arena champion to be a human traveler instead of a native of the region. Plus I was just curious about what it was like there. I go where I want, and nobody can tell me otherwise. It's a nice life." Brain remarked and stretched out his legs.

"So why go to Baharuth, the life of an Emperor doesn't sound like it would appeal to you." Raymond asked, the man was so outgoing and gregarious that it was hard not to like his rakish easy manner, and against his will, the Cardinal was curious.

"Nah, it doesn't. I figure I'll win the tournament and just hand it over to whoever came in second. I'll settle for a token payment of gold coins to wherever I am next. The throne doesn't suit me. I'll probably just pay off a bounty on me in Re-Estize, if there is still one, or the Kingdom of Carne, if it's there instead, and then go back to Demalbion."

"Demalbion, not the Theocracy or the Holy Kingdom? Not a human nation? Don't you have some loyalty to humanity in you?" Raymond's religious instincts took over for a moment, but Brain only laughed.

"You're a religious man alright, but no, not really. Listen old timer, I've been all over the place, I've had goblins, elves, dark elves, humans, orcs, and you name it, host me, fight me, and work for me… and lemme tell you this, the average person of every one of those races is a coward. Not one in twenty wants to pick up a sword and die. But I've seen strong ones who are brave because they're strong, and weak ones who are brave because they have something to fight for. From where I'm sitting, they're all bad and all good in the same ways. Just different flesh from one to the next. Like whatever human male raped her mother to make her," he inclined his head toward Zesshi and gave her an apologetic bow of his head, "no offense," he added, then finished, "I've got no real reason to favor my own kind over any other. There's only two sides where I stand, the ones who'd help out, and the ones who'd shove a knife in my back over a pair of boots."

It was a rant if ever there was one, and Raymond didn't much care for it. He sliced off some meat and handed it to the blue haired swordsman. "Here… that should be enough to hold you, and not to sound inhospitable, but I think you'd best run… I'm not in a sociable mood all of a sudden."

"Yeah, fine, old man. No offense meant, just how things are, you know?" Brain said, "Thanks for the meat and the cheese." He said, taking a strip of roast meat, he wolfed it down, snatched up his sheath, and bowed to his hosts.

A moment later, he was running again and was quickly out of sight.

It wasn't until he was gone that Zesshi said a thing, with far better eyes than Raymond, keeping her eye on the retreating dot in the darkness far longer than the Cardinal did, and she was still watching him vanish while she asked...

"Raymond… Why did he assume that it was my mother who was an elf?"

'Shit.' Raymond mentally cursed, and dropped his knife into the dirt at his feet when his fingers fumbled after her question.