10. Downhill fast

Mirage took the mountainside in long strides downhill, leading Toby along while Nimbus floated a scouting perimeter. Walking beside her was the party's warlock, who'd been dodging her questions on and off all morning.
  It was a little while after noon, a clear day, and would be warmer if they weren't still so high up the mountain.
  "So remind me," Mirage said into a companionable silence, "how far we need to go to reach this tower?"
  "It took me two days, but that was walking all night, too." Cypher answered, grim. "Not much to be done about it, unless you want to split up - you'd be faster on the pegasus."
  At the mention of Toby, Mirage smiled, retrieving a candy from her pocket and holding it out for him. Toby ate it from her hand, leathery horse-lips tickling her palm.
  "Such a good boy," she crooned into his ear, stroking his satiny muzzle. "Toby could probably carry us both... if you two can make friends." She looked sidelong at Cypher. "Or I could take my glider while you ride him."
  Cypher regarded the creature critically. "I'm not sure that's a good idea," he said, "I haven't met an animal that'd let me near them in a long while."
  Mirage paused, considering. Granted, their party generally travelled on foot, so it wasn't like she had seen him interacting with animals much, but it still seemed like a broad stroke.
  "When was the last time you tried?" she asked.
  "Does it matter?" Cypher's tone was annoyed, his gaze evasive, looking anywhere but her or her mount. "You could just ride him and I'll catch up overnight." He looked at her then, chin raised in challenge. "Unless you still don't trust me out of your sight."
  Mirage sighed. Audibly. On purpose.
  Then she led Toby to a gnarled tree growing near the path and tied his reins while Cypher squinted at her.
  "What are you doing?" he asked, wary, all-but backing away as she reapproached.
  Mirage moved fast to grab him by the wrist, pressing a candy into his palm as she pulled him toward the nickering pegasus.
  He resisted immediately, boot heels skidding on the rocky terrain. "Fucks sake, Mirage, I really don't think-"
  "Come on, chickenshit," she interrupted, straining less as he gave up digging his literal heels in, stumbling behind her.
  "That's not-"
  As they approached, the pegasus was backing away, tossing his head and beating his wings.
  Mirage stopped about five feet away. Cypher was making a 'told-you-so' face in her peripheral. She rolled her eyes, let go his wrist as she approached Toby alone, stroking his neck and speaking softly in an attempt to calm him. The horse settled a little, but his nostrils were wide and his ears were back, and he wouldn't take his eyes off the human.
  Keeping a calming hand on his neck, Mirage kept up a soft murmur of soothing voice. With her eyes and the slight jerk of her head, she indicated Cypher to approach again.
  "Slowly," she coaxed.
  Cypher opened his mouth, but then shut it, sharply, his mouth pressed in a tight frown. But then he shrugged. "Okay, fine," he said, in the voice of one who fully expects a result to be anything but 'fine.' And strode forward, slowly, setting his feet down from heel to toe.
  "Don't force it," Mirage cautioned, watching him, "just... try. Slowly, now."
  With every careful step the warlock took, Toby backed up, stepping away from her hands, looking between her and the steadily approaching warlock until he was at the limit of his lead. Then he tried to take off, but found he needed his head for that, too. He nickered, stomped, blew through his nose, showed his teeth.
  Cypher stopped, still several feet short of candy-offering distance. He cocked an irritated eyebrow at Mirage.
  "I think its going well," he snarked, eyeing up the panicked beast.
  Mirage closed the distance and took the sweet. Toby ate it from her hand, still watching the warlock.
  "We'll work on it," she murmured, untying the reins. As they rejoined the road, she passed another couple pieces of candy to Cypher.
  "Must be your winning personality."
  "I don't want to say I told you so - no, wait, I do." He shook his head and popped one of the sweets into his mouth.
  For a few minutes, they walked in silence. Then, then out of nowhere, Cypher spoke.
  "I ever tell you I used to have a dog?"
  Mirage's head whipped to face him, her expression shock and delight. Cypher was looking forward, his face carefully neutral, gaze on the trail ahead.
  "No kidding! What was their name?"
  "Well, not me specifically," he amended, "She was a Family pet. Is, I guess. Her name's Rose." He smiled, warm. "Some kind of hound mix. Louder than anything you ever heard, but my god what a suck-up."
  "Awwww that's adorable. Did you pick that name?" Mirage's smile was automatic, wide. Cypher with a dog. Getting licked on the face, speaking in that goo-goo talking-to-a-widdle-puppy voice. It was bizarre, but also oddly easy to picture.
  "No," he said, heedless of her delight, "Mom did. After the trellises where we found her. She was a pup, someone left her in a box with her brothers and sisters. Never did understand why someone wouldn't want her. She used to sleep at the foot of my bed, then get up go to dad's room, repeat until daybreak. Anyway, last time I was home, she bit me."
  Mirage blinked, her smile falling. He held out his right hand, pointing out a semicircle of faded but unmistakable tooth scars with his left.
  "Mom thought maybe she was sick or I startled her. But I didn't. I just said hi. I don't know why I thought meu do- thought Rose would be different. Nothing on four legs has let me near it for over a year now. They can tell."
  Mirage was silent, letting the moment stand, cold under its shadow. The only sound was the crunching of boots and hooves on mountain gravel. She did her best to school the sympathy on her face. Nobody liked to be pitied. Cypher least of all.
  "Thanks for telling me, Cypher."
  He shrugged. "It's not a big de- I mean it kind of is, but- you know. There's worse problems. I mean..." He sighed, exasperated.
  "So eloquent."
  "Shoulda been a poet"
  "A gift of gab, I can see why Ta'lok lets you do a lot of the talking for us." Mirage raised an eyebrow, sending a half-smile sideways.
  Cypher snorted. "Ta'lok lets me do the talking because the alternatives are mister always-on commander-mode, the nature hermits, and you."
  "Pff-" Mirage laughed, affecting indignation. "I'll have you know I am a goddamn delight."
  She let the bickering take the conversation back to a lighter place. But after some time, the problem of travel logistics had to be answered.
  "Okay. We're not ready to fly yet, that's fine." Mirage reasoned, "Like I said, we'll work on it. Until then, I don't think it makes sense to split up. Not just because you're a shifty motherfucker" She gave him a smirk to let him know she was mostly joking, "but because I'm not going in there on my own. It's too risky. So we may as well stick together."
  "Cosigned," Cypher replied, "but if we're going to keep talking strategy do you mind if we do so over lunch? Some of us were cruelly denied of caffeine this morning."
  "I suppose. You're nothing but skin and bones, and if you're going to be any help to me in that tower, we can't have you flying away like a leaf on the breeze."
  "Stop, I'm gonna get a big head," Cypher sighed, fanning himself briefly before indicating a scattering of rocks low enough to sit on.
  Mirage chuckled, but nodded agreement. "Nimbus," she called, smiling as the cloudform swooped down to hover near her shoulder, "have a look around, won't you buddy?"
  The tiny elemental whirred into the higher air, spiralling above and exulting in the space. Mirage watched him climb into the blue with a smile, then sat down and dug some of Cri's kitchen stash out of her pack.
  Cypher plopped down on a stone opposite her and did the same. With his free hand, he dragged his grimoire out of the pack.
  Mirage watched him flip through, scanning for something, then pause, reading some recent-ish entry.
  "I was thinking about the time thing," he said, looking at the page, "how it seems to be running slower in there. The nice thing is it makes me slightly less crazy about how slow walking is. The bad thing is I was trying to think of why anyone would want time to go slower and I don't like any of the answers."
  "What are those answers?" Mirage asked, pausing between bites.
  He counted them off on his fingers. "One," he said, cheerful in a way that made Mirage reflexively prepare for something grim, "someone's a sadistic fuck who doesn't want anyone to die at a respectable speed. Two, someone is getting ready for something and wants more time to prepare. Those are the only ones that feel halfway likely. Three is like, whatever's running the setup in there is just crazy and has no rhyme or reason, but they're too organized for that to be true."
  "Huh. " Mirage paused, considering. "I'd only come up with option two."
  "That's because you lack my encyclopedic understanding of all that is fucked-up and off-putting" he drawled.
  Mirage snort-laughed, and he grinned back at her.
  "Except when ropes are involved, right?" she returned, a big shit-eating grin on her face.
  He laughed, "a-fucking-parrently," he said, still looking somewhat dazed about it, "Geez, do I even want to know where you learned how to do that? No, I definitely don't, never mind."
  She laughed, "All right, all right, so it's probably option two we're looking at." She paused, considering. "I think our primary objective has to be to get our people out, and secondary is to figure out how to disrupt whatever bullshit is going on in there. Unless," she continued, "completing the secondary objective facilitates the first."
  "Agreed." Cypher shut his grimoire one-handed, setting it down on his bouncing leg. "I don't know what kind of bullshit a group like that would be planning," he added, "but I'd like to have a go at cutting it off once everyone's okay."
  "You know I love a good sabotage mission," Mirage agreed with a grin. He frowned, sobering, fiddling with the leather strap that held his notes shut. "I don't think I told you about the people in there."
  "What about them?"
  "I smelled cult bullshit from their hideous decor," Cypher started, but the self-amused cadence of his sarcasm faltered under the furrows in his brow. "And I'll bet I'm still right about that," he added, "the thing is, I have no idea what it's a cult to. There was no iconography I recognized - and I'd like to think I've got a pretty good lexicon on that stuff. They didn't talk much around the prisoners, but you'd think we'd hear a 'hail so and so' or something at some point. Also, this seems pertinent to your interests as the party sneak: I don't think they sleep, either."
  Mirage frowned. It complicated things. "Is it possible that the rest of those people are also under a spell?" she asked, but Cypher shrugged, his mouth tight as he shook his head. She pressed on. If conjecture was all they had, theories were better than nothing.
  "If they're...I don't know, thralls or something..." She considered it, then shook her head with a shudder. "Ugh. Not catching them napping is annoying. But yeah, what is this about you not sleeping? Not to get us off track. Has that always been a thing? Seems new."
  He shifted in his seat, glancing away. "Yeah, kind of. Anyway they could be thralls, I guess, but thralls we've dealt with before were kind of, running automatically. These guys were giving and taking orders."
  "'Kind of' like it's new?" Mirage asked, ignoring his topic shift, "Or 'kind of' like it's always been a thing?"
  Cypher's frustrated scowl was directed at his boots, and lasted only for a second. "Eh, I've-"
  "ARE YOU TELLING ME WE COULD HAVE HAD YOU BE OUR GODDAMN LOOKOUT THIS WHOLE FUCKING TIME?" Mirage's realization shook the mountainside. "UGH I hate taking watches!"
  Cypher flinched, but there was some relief in his face as he shouted to interrupt her steamroll.
  "IT'S RECENT! Jesus, it's recent. I used to sleep. I don't anymore."
  "Oh. Okay." Mirage looked at him, considering. She'd assumed, when he mentioned it the night before, that he meant he'd had trouble sleeping. Waking up in the night, tossing and turning. Gods knew those weren't new.
  "It's fine, really." Cypher was putting his grimoire back in his backpack, drawing the top shut, dusting crumbs off his thighs as he stood. "One less thing to worry about."
  He stood up, looking at her, composed. "Shall we?"
  "Fine" my ass. You look like death walking. I can only guess how you feel.Mirage didn't buy it for a minute, but let him have this one. No telling how far was too far to push.
  "If you think you can keep up, sure."
  He grinned, "Right back at you."
  He took a step forward, and then wasn't there anymore.
  Mirage stared for a second at the empty air he should have been standing in, then a distant "Hey!" from around fifty feet down the path turned her head.
  Cypher was waving, a smirk playing over his sallow features. "You coming?"
  She laughed, stepping into the air and hovering the distance in moments. "Nice trick. Wish I could pull that off, I've been working on transforming myself into a mist every now and again to get through barred windows and doors but sometimes...it doesn't work."
  He looks at you sideways, not even trying to hide being impressed. "You can turn into mist?"
  "Sometimes. Hold on, let me try."
  He noded, eyes locked on.
  She took a moment to secure Toby in place, then closed her eyes and focused.
  Her feet slipped into the air, dangling lightly above the earth. She breathed in, and exhaled into separation.
  She floated forward, a shimmering suggestion of incandescence. The noonday sun refracted silver through her droplets.
  She rematerialized a few steps ahead, facing him.
  The warlock's expression was one of undisguised admiration. As she reformed, he smiled, slipping something subtler under wraps before she could name it.
  "Not bad," he said, giving a short one-man applause. "That'll be handy, for sure."
  "If it works," Mirage said, proud all the same. "I tried it escaping this one asshole's house I busted into before, and got stuck in the window bars."
  He snorted, laughing. "Oh wow, that'd be a sight. Well, if it happens in the tower maybe the guards will be too busy laughing to notice anything else."
  "Yeah, maybe." Marwa returned a half-smile, thinking about what they were up against.
  A moment passed, both of them thoughtful. But apparently about different things.
  "So, Auria's most wanted, huh?"
  She tooka mocking bow in his direction, "Yep. Didn't wreck enough shop in Ignia for some patriotic assfucks, apparently."
  "I'm assuming you don't still think that was me, so do you have any other idea who could have told?"
  "No, I don't think it was you. You gave quite the convincing speech the other night."
  He gave a small, sarcastic bow, but he wasn't smiling. "Okay, good."
  "I don't know who told, or what the motivation was. My only guess thus far is some way to...get at my parents? Set some sort of precedent? I don't know, I don't think it was super public that I was arrested or you would have heard."
  "You might over-estimate how involved the rest of the realms is in your war," he said, keeping his tone neutral.
  "Right, but if it was for clout, "The daughter of famed musician Lydia Noor caught doing blah blah blah", then it could be internal political bullshit."
  "That's true," he says, thoughtful, "Though you'd think the move would be to try and get the favour of Famed Musuician Lydia Noor."
  "Like I said, it's only a half-assed theory. Don't have much else to go on."
  "Makes sense. I was just hoping you knew who I have to turn inside-out"
  "Who YOU have to - aw are you going to avenge me, Cypher?"
  She grinned, batting her eyelashes.
  "No, I'm going to avenge the years that conversation took off my life expectancy," he grumbles, but she could see a dark-red tinge on his cheekbones.
  "Anyway, if you're done fawning over my dashing heroics, we can pick up the pace a bit. Air's better here."
  "You are hilariously easy to sneak up on, for sure."
  Mirage stopped walking. "I should probably apologize, huh?"
  He stopped reflexively when she did, and she turned to face him. She regarded him genuinely, removing all jest from her voice and face.
  "I'm sorry I doubted you, Cypher. That wasn't fair for me to do, when you've been nothing but a friend to me. It's not an excuse, but only an explanation - it was a long day, I was running on fumes. Reacted without thinking."
  He shrugged, and his usual slouch deepened further in discomfort. "You had some good points," he said, avoiding her eye.
  "Doesn't mean I wasn't an asshole."
  A shield of snark. "I'm sure I'll find some way you can make it up to me."
  Mirage composed a face of mock disgust. "Ugh. I don't like owing you."
  A mirthless smile, and he snapped his fingers. "Aha! I've thought of something already."
  He looked her in the face, then. Mask of a smile firmly in place. "You can drop it and we'll just pretend it never happened."
  Mirage paused, baffled a moment.
  "...Sure."
  "Great!" Smile still in place, he faced forward again.
  She watched him continue walking, raised shoulders and fast feet betraying his affectations.
  Cypher had never been great at vulnerable conversations, but his discomfort here was palpable. Something about their... conversation in the tower was continuing to eat at him, beyond her accusation.
  "Not to be weird," she ventured, freezing him in place, "but are you sure that's all? You don't seem pleased."
  For a second she was watching his back for a reply. "You can tie me up if that would make you feel better"
  She regretted the words as soon as she said them, cringing into the earth.
  "Please, I'm a gentleman, I'd at least get you dinner first." The quip seemed to come out on autopilot, then he turned, shaking his head.
  "Listen, there's a lot going on right now. I was tired, you were tired, we both said things we shouldn't have. Can we not just call it a draw and... start over?"
  She looked at him a long moment. He looked back, then dropped it.
  "Yes, of course" / "I just don't know what you thought was going to change,"
  Their voices overlapped, confused at each other. Cypher looked like he was writing a new language entirely of invented curses in his head.
  "Wait, what?"
  "Nothing," he fumed, attempting to start walking again.
  "No, come on."
  He continued grinding his teeth to dust. She waited.
  "Okay fine. I get that you don't think I fucked you over anymore, which, yeah, that stung," he admitted, "But you don't think so anymore, and you were tired, and so it's fine. But..."
  He seemed to hate the word even as he dragged it out. "You also keep saying things about how it's past time for secrets, and, I mean..." He looked like he was being strangled. "You know I can't tell you everything, you get that, right?"
  "Yeah, I get that," Mirage said, quiet. "I'm not expecting things to be...different than they were before Ignia."
  Uncomfortable, she started walking again.
  Cypher walked next to her. The silence was heavy.
  After a moment, he sighed, frustrated.
  "If Cri were here..."
  Mirage smiled, tired.
  Then she flinched, the image of Ta'lok snapping her wings flashing back to her mind. She pushed it away, fast.
  "Cri would have something oddly wise to say, for sure. Something involving mice, or stars. Or planes."
  "We had a fight before we moved out," Cypher pointed out, as if it were the time of day.
  Mirage's head whipped to face him. "You did?"
  It was hard to imagine Cri in a fight with anyone. But somehow least of all Cypher. Out of everyone, Cri seemed to be the only one he was comfortable looking in the eye, meditating next to, who could touch him in comfort without making him jump.
  "I was in a piss mood. At you, if I'm being honest." His gaze was evasive, directed mostly at his boots. "And she was saying something about her everything-is-connected deal and I said no it's fucking not before I could stop myself."
  Mirage listened, waiting.
  "I don't think she's still mad or anything. I don't think she was mad to start with. I don't think I've ever seen Cri mad, actually. Anyway I owe her an apology, I guess. And since I can't do that right now, I'll at least pay some respect to what I know she'd tell me to do if she was here, which is to say I don't want things to be like they were before Ignia."
  At a loss for words, Mirage was silent. He waited, avoiding her eye.
  "Whatever you want, man" she murmured when she found her words.
  He shrugged, then looked up, an actual smile, if only half one, on his face. She returned it.
  "This group really falls apart when someone's missing, huh?"
  "If by someone you mean me, then yes, I understand how hopeless you all are without me." She looked at her feet.
  "Truly powerless. But also it's been not even one day travelling without Cri and the others and we've had like, three fights. Short ones, but still."
  "It's actually a good thing we agreed not to talk about last night anymore because if she hears I drew a blade on you. Whew. I think she might actually get mad at me, and I don't want to see an angry Cri."
  "Well now I really can't wait to find her"
  "You know when her head tilts at that funny angle and it's like, is she thinking about murdering me, or having lofty thoughts about her place in the universe?"
  "Definitely murder when I tell her you nicked me."
  "NONONONO It'sfineIt'sfineIt'sfine"
  They passed the rest of the afternoon in lighter spirits, joking and teasing, avoiding the wounds.
 

---

  By the time the sun started to go down, they could see the mountain slopes softening into foothills ahead, forming the edge of the valley where their friends were imprisoned.
  The foliage grew thicker as they descended. as the shadows grew long, Nimbus sent an impression of shelter, cool air, the scent of green leaves. They turned off the path to follow it, and found a sturdy code of trees on a shelf-edge, sheltered from wind by a three wreckage of a landslide long past.
  Mirage found a softer party of turf, and stretched out some blankets she'd borrowed from Cri's place as both bedding and tent.
  while she worked, Cypher sat against a tree outside the makeshift shelter, outside, grimoire on his knees, squinting to write through the last of the daylight.
  Above, the first stars were coming out, bright and cold against the darkening sky.
  Once camp, such as it was, was established, Mirage untied Toby and led him to the cliff face. He let her on right away, and she noted with satisfaction that he only danced for a moment once she was mounted.
  She took the Pegasus through some paces, running off what she could remember from friends and acquaintances. Take-off, landing, turns and stops. Then she let him have his head and they burned the days energy in the glittering dusk.
  When they landed again, Toby was calmer and already notably more confident in his maneuvers. It was, by then, fully dark out, and Cypher had lit a lantern at some point.
  Its light illuminated a strange scene. the warlock was sitting where he had been, the grimoire still open on his lap, but he was not looking at it. His eyes were fixed on middle distance, and glazed over, arms slack by his sides, pen forgotten, loose in his fingertips.
  Hushing Toby, Mirage softened her footfalls and crept closer.
  He was breathing, so that was good. And the grimoire was still by all appearances just an ordinary notebook.
  it was lying open, though.
  craning her neck, Mirage squinted at the page.
  It was, by all appearances, complete gibberish. He was using the Common alphabet, but the spelling no sense for any language. the letters were all equally spaced, with no differentiation between words, just one interrupted string running line after line down the page.
  Mirage suppressed an exasperated sigh. Of course he encrypted it.
  She glanced back at his face, checking for signs of awareness. None. it was unnerving, how vacant his expression was. He'd been like that in Cri's tower, too, but it was a hundred times creepier sitting up.
  Watching him, Mirage had an awful thought. Maybe the reason he wasn't affected by the magic in the tower, wasn't turned into some sort of "thrall" - if that's what they were - was because he was already in something else's thrall.
  The thought made her feel sick.
  But she didn't have time to be upset. Mirage began to memorize as long a sequence of letters from the grimoire as she could.
  When he came out of it, she had already backed up. she moved forward casually, from Toby's position, raising a hand in greeting. He blinked a couple times, glanced up, then offered a casual smile.
  "Have a good ride?"
  "Yeah, Toby needed the exercise, and as much as life on the road allows, I've been trying to work with him. Get him used to me, you know."
  He looked at Toby with a baleful face. "Good fuckin' luck, buddy"
  Toby nickered while Mirage scoffed.
  "How dare you, I am a GODDAMN DELIGHT," she huffed, flipping her hair over one shoulder before marching past him to the blanket-tent.
  He shook his head as she passed, but she still caught him smiling. He spun his pen in his hand once, and then resumed writing his gibberish.