Kjan arched an eyebrow at the Phantom as if to inquire when, exactly, this change of opinion had occured, but said nothing out loud. "Oh, we make plenty of money," he said in response to Jate, waving a hand dismissively. "We just usually end up spending it on complete strangers. Or necessary expenses. Like ale." As if to emphasize this point, he took another long drink out of his flask. He could have sworn that he saw Tomith roll his eyes, but he elected to ignore it. "At any rate, you're still only barely an adult. The Phantom and I have had considerably longer to develop mature opinions on such matters."

This time, Kjan knew Tomith had rolled his eyes, and he was reasonably sure that he'd heard a quiet snort accompanying the expression. "Alright, then," he said, turning on their silent companion. "How much do you know about women?"

"I am married," the elf deadpanned, though not without a trace of amusement. "Nearly two centuries, now."

"And what have your many years of experience taught you?"

"That she is always right," Tomith replied without missing a beat. He paused briefly, then added, "And that any perceived happiness lost will always be returned tenfold in the end."

Not sure how to respond to that, Kjan settled for nodding contemplatively and raised the flask to his lips again. "Eledhe, you're a woman," he said abruptly, as though the thought had just occured to him. "What do you think about marriage? Anything ever come of that one tall, dark, and moody colleague of yours? You two got along rather well, as I recall."

"Yes, it's a pity you failed to make his acquaintance," deadpanned Eledhe, face shadowed by her cloak and tone unreadable. "I could introduce you if you like. The means of doing so happen to be at my fingertips, as it were."

So saying, she flicked her wrist deftly and a throwing star spun upwards from her hand, razor edges winking once in the firelight. Eledhe caught it between her finger and thumb and it vanished into her pouch. This seemed to render an answer to Kjan's inquiry unneeded.

There was a slightly awkward silence. Then the Phantom took a swig of the ale he hadn't yet finished, and leaned forward to poke at the fire. "I suppose we'll discover who's right," he said, his tone deceptively light. "I'll find me a girl, how about, and tell the rest of you how it is, seeing as you don't seem much inclined to follow Tomith's example."

_________________

It was now Kjan's turn to snort, and he did so rather conspicuously. Admittedly, Phae had always been the luckier of the two when it came to attracting the fairer sex, but the fact did remain that despite being more than a year older (and richer, and more handsome, and of higher ranking), he had been no closer to acquiring the hand of some fine lady in marriage than Kjan before the start of the rebellion.

"I trust you are recalling what happened when you declared that you were going 'get' Lady Lynett at Argan's ball a few years ago," he commented dryly, frowning as he found his flask to be empty. "Or that one time with Lady Anira. Or the incident with Lady Desai and the punch and the subsequent fountain. That one was particularly amusing, even if we're never allowed to show our faces there again within the next two decades."

Pausing, Kjan made to get up and get another flask of ale from their packs, only to find that the remainder of said flasks were in the possession of one Tomith Arken, who did not seem the least bit inclined to part with them.

"...May I have one?" Kjan asked when a few seconds of staring accomplished nothing.

"No."

"Please?"

"I may not be familiar with the human limit on alcohol consumption, but the signs of inebriation are universal," Tomith replied evenly. "No more."

Kjan muttered something highly uncomplimentary under his breath and went to instead retrieve his pipe and a small amount of the remaining pipeweed. Partly because he wanted to smoke, but mostly just because he'd recently discovered that Tomith disapproved of the practice. Yes, he felt slightly like a rebellious teenager for it, but it was a matter of principle.

Sitting back down, he dug out a match and lit the pipe carefully. "Anyway," he said, as though their conversation had never been interrupted, "where, exactly, would you find a girl? If you haven't noticed, the Keep's a bit lacking in eligible young women."

"I have my methods," returned the Phantom loftily, emptying his first flask of ale and reaching absently for another. He wasn't quite paying attention to either Tomith or Kjan; perhaps the topic of matrimony in particular made him especially possessed of a propensity for ale.

He'd never intended to get married. In noble circles, marriage meant responsibility and a wife to natter at you for drinking too much and smoking - a wife you had to keep, because otherwise this noble house or that noble house would shriek its displeasure. Once the rebellion had escalated, he'd never considered the subject. The Phantom was just that - the Phantom - and there was no place for a girl in his life of ducking the authorities and prodding the Regent's boundaries and generally being entirely wrapped up in making life difficult for the powers that be.

Was he thinking about it now?

The Phantom realized abruptly that there was no ale, at least, not where he was reaching for it. He blinked and looked around, finding Tomith looking back at him, entirely deadpan. "Toss me one of those," he said, half-turning back before it registered that the elf wasn't moving.

He arched an eyebrow, entirely unamused. "The ale, Tomith?"

The elf shrugged, folding his arms. "I assume you prefer to wake tomorrow without a sensation of wild horses having run over your head in the night."

The Phantom pretended, briefly, to consider. "Yes. The ale, please?"

Tomith only stared unblinkingly back. Annoyed, the Phantom wondered for a moment at the level of his mounting irritation. "My head's my affair, thanks very much."

"I anticipate being the one to wake you. Therefore it is most decidedly not solely your affair."

The mood around the campfire had rather morphed from a tolerant sort of melancholy to decided awkwardness. The Phantom slouched back against the rock, coming as near to sulking as a grown man quite could. "Being a rebel leader should come with ale privileges," he muttered, glowering.

---

It was just beginning to be light out when Eledhe woke very suddenly, with the strong sensation of having felt something large pass uncomfortably close overhead. She lay perfectly still for a few seconds, listening, and then got up to warily trudge the perimeter of the rocky hollow they'd picked for a camp.

She didn't find anything untoward, not even a rock lizard. Fog blanketed the jagged hills in the pre-dawn light, creating a still, stifling sensation. Some part of Eledhe's mind scoffed at her for being paranoid; ever since they'd managed to unpleasantly encounter those elves in the middle of the night, she'd been skittish. She decided that it must be only the fog, resolved to keep her eyes and ears wide open, and went back.

The Phantom awoke shortly thereafter, with no physical reminder of his drinking the night before except a vague headache, thanks to Tomith. He still wasn't inclined to feel much actual gratitude toward the elf for depriving him of the ability to wash a few worries away with ale, however. He rolled over and poked the ashes of the fire.

"Area's been scouted," said Eledhe abruptly. She was sitting on the other side of the dead fire, absently tossing a throwing star. The action was more contemplative than ostentatious, for once.

Their gazes met in uncertain challenge. The Phantom's first reaction was to feel insulted - he was the leader, after all. Common sense made a faint appearance, he conceded inwardly that Eledhe was probably better at it than he was, and he expressed the sentiment with a grunt, breaking eye contact. She continued tossing the star, with an odd lack of the smug sense of victory he would have expected. There was a short pause.

The Phantom cleared his throat. "And?"

Her eyes flicked up, and the star paused. "Foggy."

The Phantom took this to mean that there was nothing to share - an assumption mayhap not entirely correct - and dropped Kjan's pack on him. Ash and Jate were similarly persuaded into wakefulness, and volatile Dante pointedly left alone.

_________________

Kjan grimaced and made a pained noise, both because the pack was heavier than he would have prefered to have applied directly to his stomach (not that he really liked having things of any weight dropped onto any part of himself) and because knife wounds - like the one still adorning his side - didn't tend to heal overnight. Especially when they were subjected to several days of hard riding. Or had heavy packs dropped on them. He cast about, grabbed the nearest thing at hand (in this case, a small stone), and chucked it at the Phantom's retreating back in retaliation.

Cursing under his breath, he proceeded to remove the offending pack from its uncomfortable position and slowly sat up. It was rather ironic, Kjan reflected as he dug through said pack, that as heavy as it was, it was nearly devoid of any of the things he would have liked to have on hand at the present. Like breakfast, for example.

Once he'd finally found a bit of edible food (his previous assumption that the two words automatically coincided had long ago been invalidated), he stood up with some effort and stretched, deliberately ignoring the dull ache that pervaded his skull. He took a long drink of water - Tomith had yet to return the flasks of ale, he noted darkly - and shook his head a few times to further clear his mind.

Morning routine more or less completed, Kjan made his way over to the Phantom and borrowed the well-worn map for inspection. "We're practically on top of it," he observed after a moment, indicating the map with a nod of his head. "Do we even have a vague idea of what we may or may not be encountering along the way?"

"Not a particle of one," returned the Phantom, a touch darkly. He glanced up, where the sky was an opaque white and the terrain faded into similar white within a few steps. "We're in a desert," he muttered, stuffing various things into his pack. "How is there fog?"

Eledhe, assembling her own belongings, paused momentarily to scan the sky directly above them, but returned to what she was doing without further comment.

The fog didn't occasion much more comment as they made ready to leave - or wander around until they found something that looked halfway promising - but when the Phantom ascended to have a look over what little of the rocky wasteland, he found something that did. To a violent extent. His shout would have echoed magnificently if the fog hadn't smothered it.

"No bloody horses!" he was ranting, kicking savagely at whatever loose rocks happened to be lying around, when the rest of them poked their heads up to see what the problem was. It was true. Every single rope was either snapped or somehow undone from where they'd tied the animals, and there were definite hoof marks in what little sand and dirt were available, leading away at a very fast pace.

The Phantom swore profusely.

_________________

Kjan was just finishing up packing when the shout came, causing him to jerk upright with one hand instinctively resting on the hilt of a knife. Cautiously, he and the others who were awake enough to care went to investigate the cause of said shout and came upon the Phantom in the middle of a tirade like they hadn't seen since Silvryn....

Kjan let that thought trail off and, dodging a rock that had received a particularly violent kick, took stock of the situation. Hoofprints. Snapped ropes. No horses. Angry Phantom.

Not good.

"Did something eat the horses?" he asked, only halfway joking, after the Phantom had somewhat stemmed his steady stream of expletives.

The Phantom cursed once more and turned. "I don't know what bloody well did it," he growled, "but whatever it is -"

"No horses?" echoed Eledhe, slinging her pack over one shoulder and coming up beside Kjan.

It took a very short amount of time for the Phantom to assimilate two things: firstly, that Eledhe's position in general, regarding trust, was very low, and secondly that she'd reported that absence of anything out of the ordinary in her scouting that morning. So short, in fact, that in another moment he'd turned on her, eyes blazing. "You!"

"Me what?" Eledhe's scimitar was half out of its sheath on pure reflexes. "I have to walk as far as any of you! Just because of one incident - dark gods curse it - you idiot horses run away and -"

"You don't want us back at Griffin's Fells!" the Phantom bellowed, growing angrier with her every word. "You've been on their side, all along!"

"Oh yes," snarled Eledhe, eyes narrowed to slits. "Oh yes, I enjoy being called halfbreed and mongrel and expendable cannon fodder! Of course I'm on their side, they've been so kind! Why would I let your stupid bloody horses go? Or are you just sore because someone stole your precious princess?"

She knew it was a mistake, the moment she said it, but decades of casting control to the winds had its price. The Phantom's knuckles were white on the hilt of his greatsword.

"Get out," he said dangerously. "Go, run back to Lord Raen, I don't care what you do - GO!"

_________________

Tense silence filled the air as everyone watched with a morbid sort of curiosity. No one dared speak, nor scarcely even breathe, as they anticipated what might occur next.

It was Tomith who finally broke the spell, and even he seemed hesitant. "It could not have been the mercenary, Phantom Grey. She awoke only shortly before you, and I monitored her movements closely. I would have known if it were she who released the horses."

"Then who are you proposing did it?" Kjan asked immediately, more or less voicing the sentiment that seemed to be shared by most present.

Tomith gave what amounted to a shrug. "We have been tracked, as you well know. Thus far, I have been able to detect their presence, but it is not so this morning. They have either fallen back or moved on - I suspect the latter. Perhaps it is they who are to be blamed." He paused slightly, then added, "It is also entirely possible that something far darker is at work in this place."

Tomith's suggestion, which seemed to voice the unacknowledged thoughts of everyone there, compiled with the unnatural fog, made the atmosphere tenser than it already was. Silence stretched on, seconds elongating into minutes, while they all looked at Eledhe and the Phantom and simultaneously tried to pretend they weren't.

Eledhe dared not be the first one to break it. She wasn't afraid of the Phantom, far from it - but to be abandoned into this, this eerie silence and almost-presence of something far from benign, was a course of events she was anxious to avoid. And despite what Tomith thought, she would die a thousand deaths before she would run into any elves that were still tracking them. She folded her arms and waited.

Finally the Phantom let out a breath. His arms were folded in an attitude that meant, in Eledhe's mind, that she was a hairsbreadth away from existence entirely on her own. She waited.

He couldn't quite bring himself to apologize. Eledhe had, after all, undeniably gotten them into half of this mess, or at least hastened its onset. But neither was he unjust enough to blame her for something that, according to Tomith, she clearly hadn't done.

Take a breath. Count to ten.

"Right," he said tersely. "Tread carefully."

And then they were left with the lovely prospect of trudging through fog. The Phantom dug out his map and stared at it for a few moments, realized he had no way of telling which way was north, and dug out his compass as well. He juxtaposed the two for a moment. Eventually he picked a direction at random.

"Right, follow me. If you see anything, yell."

_________________

Normally, something as simple as the weather didn't bother Ash. Wind, rain, snow, sleet- he was used to it all. <i>So why is this bloody fog making me so nervous?</i> he thought, glancing around warily. <i>Something about it doesn't seem right.</i>

He started kicking at pebbles, sending them skittering across the ground until they were enveloped in the mist. It was a small distraction, and it didn't stop him from thinking about the feeling of something out there in the fog, nor about Tomith's discouraging mention of 'something far darker' at work.

"Hope we're not going in circles." Ash said after a few minutes, just to break the eerie silence. "The last time I saw a fog this thick, it was early morning, about a foot away from the sea." His attempts at conversation trailed off, muffled by the weather.

Oh, lovely. The unnatural fog still hadn't dissipated, despite it being the middle of the day. And how exactly did the Phantom expect them to see anything? Jate could barely see the end of their party! The loss of the horses was the biggest problem, though. He didn't like the prospect of them running away any more than of them having been eaten by some beast. Because, either way, they were gone. And now he had to walk in this creepy place wondering if something might be planning on eating him.

And of course, the suggesting of going in circles was NOT helpful.

He trotted up next to Kjan. "Ah, do you know of any malevolent presence around here? Or are we close to disturbing an ancient burial ground? I, for one, would rather like knowing where the hornet's nest is before I step into it."

_________________
going on a journey through my old claims

It took Kjan a moment to register the question, and even then he appeared distracted. "No burial grounds or hornets that I know of," he replied, waving a hand vaguely. The dense, unrelenting fog had them all unsettled, and even Kjan was feeling a bit on edge. He was constantly looking up to scan what little of their surroundings could be made out, and one hand had been resting on the hilt of a knife almost nonstop since they had set out. The fact that the Phantom was being less than communicative concerning their direction and destination did little to contribute to the overall atmosphere.

Glancing up to the front of the group (where said Phantom was leading the way), he added, "I'd say to ask him, but I don't think he knows any better than we do. Blind leading the blind and all that."

Jate couldn't supress a slight chill at the words. Blind leading the blind? That was great, just great. With luck, that wouldn't become a literal saying. What's out there? The thought came unbidden. Some menace that doesn't want us around? He rubbed his arms, willing away goosebumps.

"What if we don't make it to the Heartshard in time? There's more than just us now. Those elves. They want to take over Kytana. All the poor folk on the outskirts of villages will have no chance. And the Regent won't do anything. For all we know, he may even be in league with them, or duped into helping them. There are people out there. Doesn't he realize that?" The words came unbidden, directed into the air. All of Jate's frustrations and doubts suddenly spilled out, perhaps helped by the concealing fog.

"Finding the Heartshard. That was always the idea, right? We find it, the Princess uses it, and everything's all good. But it's all gone wrong. Kidnapped, then brought back, then snatched away again. And me...." He paused. "What can I do? All my life I've lived on the outside, just watching court drama but being sickened by it. People playing each other for fools, always struggling for the smallest of advantages. And being told to head it all? It's like telling the rabbit to command the hunt. I'll foul thing up, do the wrong thing. I always manage to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. And I don't know how to deal with murderous dominating elves at all. Let alone how to protect a country from them."

He fell silent as he wondered where his newfound talkativeness came from. He almost wished he could reach out into the fog and pull the words back in, shove them safely back down his throat where they could stay safe. Now, ringing in the sudden silence, they magnified and sounded ridiculous. Jate concentrated on his feet, his face flaming.

"I miss it." Why was he talking again? Yet they tumbled out, building upon the former, filling the silent group. "Even with as much as I hated it, I miss it. Mainly I miss our estate. The tenant's kids would be wandering the halls, perhaps playing hide and seek. They'd run up to me crying 'Mister Lord, will you help open this door? It's stuck.' And I'd join the game. They accepted me, like no others did. I miss going hunting with my brother. Yuri was just a kid. Kid enough to not despise me like the rest of them. We'd have such fun riding in the woods and fields. But I had to go to the city, and he had to start learning what the world was like. Wouldn't he be surprised to hear where I am now!"
With a short chuckle, Jate came aware of his surroundings again. Almost all of the group had a thoughtful look in their eyes. What were they thinking?

_________________
going on a journey through my old claims

The Phantom listened, silently, as Jate spoke, feeling his feet carrying him forward like a weary automaton. The fog whited out all but the ground he could see a few steps ahead. I don't know how to deal with murderous dominating elves at all. Let alone how to protect a country from them. He smiled bitterly. Join the club, Jate. Join the band of clueless rebels against deadly warrior elves.

How very optimistic, chided the small side of him that wasn't occupied with feeling overwhelmed and angry at events in general. Aye, well, what was there to be optimistic about? Very little. Very little indeed.

The ground kept on going, and his boots kept on following it, and now everyone had fallen silent. The fog smothered what little sound their boots on rock made. And now the ground sloped sharply and the fog suddenly turned black and -

Oh.

He stopped, following the tower with his eyes. It went up and up, disappearing into fog. The black surface was smooth, faintly shimmering, and rock-hard. On pure whim, the Phantom rested a hand on its surface. The rock felt faintly warm.

Without turning around, he followed the gradual curve of black stone until the beginnings of a spiraling staircase materialized out of the white. He stared at the bottom step, then felt his eyes drawn again up, then turned around. "If you want to stay behind, now's the time."

_________________

Kjan's expression indicated precisely what he thought of that suggestion. Sure, what he could see of the tower seemed dark and ominous and would likely lead to the deaths of them all, but on the brighter side, it wasn't more fog. (He had recently added fog to the list of things which he wished to never see again in his life). Besides that, he wasn't exactly keen on turning back on his own. Whether Tomith could detect the elves or not, Kjan had no doubt that they were still out there and would not pass up on an opportunity to reduce their enemies by one unsuspecting wanderer.

At length, he glanced around at the others, then joined the Phantom at the foot of the stairs. "No sense in breaking thirty years of tradition," he said under his breath, making a halfhearted attempt at a smirk. "And at any rate, it can't possibly be worse than the snail incident."