Swords and Sorcery, Blood and Euphoria

Miss Scarlet

People have this, romantic attitude towards elves. They see beauty, no, no, make that perfection – beauty is too warm a word, I think, and that's all they can see. They don't think to look past that. But I suppose they don't know Adrianna.

She's sleeping now, by what's left of the fire. It'll go out soon, I suppose I should be trying to re-light it, but it'll be sunrise in an hour or so. No point. She looks so peaceful when she's sleeping. That gash in her arm is healing nicely, I think. I wish I could sleep. I don't object to keeping watch, of course not, given the sheer density of creatures after our blood in this area if I so much as shut my eyes for ten seconds they'd be upon us. No, I just wish the pain would let up for long enough for me to relax my muscles, to get a moment of peace and stillness before we start out again tomorrow.

Nothing they tell you can prepare you for what it's really like. It's that damn romanticism again, that misty-eyed look that comes into people's eyes when they think of wandering adventurers, on a mighty quest, battling evil with swords and magic and searching for justice, or truth, or anything.

Hah, yes, so noble. So exciting. Nobody tells you about the blood. I've lost so much of it over the past few months, in one way or the other. Not a day goes by where I don't pick up some new wound, my body is something of patchwork quilt of scar tissue and I don't think I'll ever be able to pass for 'normal' again. My arms ache, more or less constantly. They do now. My broadsword is responsible, I believe. It's weighted at the tip, I strongly suspect, meaning I have to strain my forearms horribly just to keep the damn thing level, or to stop it from clattering to the ground in a fight, or hell, even to hold on to the stupid, ridiculously heavy piece of scrap metal that I foolishly call my weapon.

I can't do magic. Well, okay, I can, it's in my blood, but… not in the normal, idealistic sense of the word. My family and the village elders taught me to use my skills, my birthright, but it's nothing special. Adrianna has been helping, teaching me a few more incantations for my arrows, and how to apply the strangest of concoctions to the tips and the shafts and whisper things I don't understand and then there's a moment of heat and pain and when I fire the arrow it's enchanted, it's magical. Heh, and I imagine it hurts when it hits you. I wouldn't know, of course. But when you get right down to it it's a metal point flying through the air at high speed, of course it's going to hurt. My magic, well, I can't help but feel it just provides a bit of a show. A few bright lights never killed anybody. Hmph, see how I lose faith? I hate myself for it, but it's inevitable.

Adrianna, now, she can do magic. She can fill the air with fountains of phosphorescent globes, she ignites the sky, she conjures lightning from nowhere and controls it with her mind, she can fire bursts of acid from her fingertips. She draws on some mysterious energy within herself, she calls upon her lifeblood and weaves it into devastating spells, unleashes this raw, almost uncontainable force and directs it where she pleases. She's started wearing gloves, now, when she's not fighting. I think it's because she doesn't want me to see the blisters. It pains me to see what's become of her hands. Burned almost beyond recognition, those hands that used to be perfect. They itch and hurt, and sometimes she whimpers in her sleep and drags her hands across the grass, thrashing against this pain she cannot defeat. The magic takes its toll.

And of course, she can't stop using magic. It's our quest, isn't it? We have a mission now, we have an evil alliance to destroy, and, somewhere, we have the shadowy figure behind it all, Eldrith. To be honest, I can't remember why we're doing this. It started with a case of petty theft and suddenly we were in it over our heads, engulfed in a torrent of mysteries and criminals and who were we to argue with fate? So we went onwards, allowed ourselves to be carried away with the adventure, the struggle, the battle, and look where we've ended up now.

In some stinking swamp, or bog, or whatever the hell it is, with thick peat coating my skin, flaking and itching and dried into a solid coating that smells worse than those damned sewers. I know if I scratch at it I'll just wind up scratching the skin off my arms and legs – I've done it before, we both have, you learn to cope with it, I suppose.

The armour gets painful after a while. I think mine's starting to rust, and the money's running out. It weighs, it's too much of a burden, we generally just grab enough coins to keep us fed and watered but if I tell Adrianna that we're going to have to attempt to salvage my armour then we'll have to go hungry for a while, and I don't want her to suffer. Not that it's likely we'll be arriving at any kind of settlement soon, so there'll be no shopping. We'll scavenge, as we usually do. I miss the city, I miss Baldur's Gate, hell, I even miss the damned dwarf village.

It's the air, I think, it's so moist and hot and sticky that it gets into our armour. I feel like it's got into my very bones.

The dwarves didn't like Adrianna. I guess this image of elven perfection is only held by humans. They thought she was another Drow, they even attacked us when we first arrived. Even after I got things straight they thought she was a spy, or a traitor, or, in some cases, an aloof, snobby bitch.

But she's not. When we first met I was intimidated, ashamed of my clumsiness, ashamed of my size. There she was, perfect and composed and a picture of everything serene and marvellous and I felt like some dirty, brainless oaf, an uneducated monkey who didn't even deserve to look at her.

It didn't last too long, of course, or how could I stand to go on this adventure with her? No, she stumbled, she faltered, she made mistakes. She got hurt, she got bruised and battered and she bled, just like everyone else. And she cries when she's had enough, which I don't do. That's when our roles are truly reversed, that's when she feels inferior to me. She lets me comfort her and hold her tightly and still she cries, and then she's ashamed of her weakness, ashamed of her lack of strength or moral fortitude or whatever she imagines it to be. I just think it's her being human, but of course she doesn't think of it that way.

I guess I could, if I tried, show her that I am just as weak as she is, that I give up hope at least twice a day, that most mornings I want the ground to swallow me up and devour me just so I wouldn't have to stand and force my legs to support my weight, force my fragile arms to heft the broadsword one more time. But I'm not perfect. I'm only human.

It's nights like this that I want to curse everyone who ever spoke of travelling to me. Everyone who contributed to my growing obsession with the life of the wanderer, with the search for money and powerful foes. With slaying my enemies and being adored by the townsfolk, with shining breastplates and heroes' welcomes. And I do curse them, frequently, in a non-stop string of words, some that make sense, most that don't, but I need things to fill the silence, to take my mind from the pain and the blood. Oh, Tyr, the blood! It's million times worse than the peat and the mud and the dirt. It might be mine, it might be hers, it might belong to a rat or an ogre or even one of those accursed zombies that have been so frequent in their appearances of late.

The battles themselves are frantic, and exhausting, and they never seem to stop. We run on our adrenaline and our fear – yes, we're still afraid of whoever or whatever assails us, as I say, we're only human. More or less. We're there for each other, though, I know I'd never be able to cope on my own. We watch each other's backs, we see to it that we both pull through, that it's the enemy who falls into a bloody, crumpled heap, not us.

When we climbed the mountain she went blue, she sneezed and coughed and snivelled. Her nose was red and raw, if I remember correctly. So, no, perhaps she's not perfect. But who needs perfection? She's my comrade, my companion, the best friend I've ever had. She's saved my life countless times, she's grabbed me by the scruff of my neck and hauled me backwards just in time to prevent those evil Beholder traps – you know the ones I mean, those stone eyes that spin and shoot magical missiles – to prevent them from catching sight of me.

Sometimes the magic makes her faint. It's frightening, to see it happen. The blood just drains from her face in a moment, and she's white as snow and she murmurs things, incomprehensible things, then just collapses into the ground. Sometimes she doesn't come round again for days. But she insists that we carry on, I suppose we both do, we can't quit, we have to use all our strength; she has to cope with the bleeding hands and the fainting and the lapses and I have to struggle with my armour and sword and my arrows and do you know how hard it is to string a bow and pull it taught when your wrists hurt so much you think they might be broken, when you can't even bend your fingers properly?

But to everyone else she is the epitome of everything elven – she is beautiful and swift and talented and frosty and cunning and intelligent – and I think I'm the only one who truly knows her. Jherek is intrigued, he says, with her bravery and power, well, intrigued with both of us, he says. He is wary of her, perhaps a little distrustful. She doesn't seem to mind, she lets me talk to him whenever we meet. I can't help but wonder if we'll ever see him again. Ethon is quite in awe of her, he gets a strange wistful look in his eye whenever he talks to her. He says she reminds him of foreign climes, of faraway places and peoples that he'll never get to meet. She makes him sad. Ah, but Fayed, that priest we met, he is perhaps her greatest admirer. She saved his church, she saved his life, she held him and whispered kind words to him when he was attacked by a skeleton in the crypts. She defeated the evil, at least in his eyes, and she can do no wrong.

They all think she's perfect, don't they? On some distant pedestal. Hard to believe it's the same person, isn't it? Ah, but she's only human. In a purely metaphorical manner, of course.

When we get back to Baldur's Gate I want to go to the Elfsong and actually have a proper dinner there, actually sit at the bar and drink some ale and laugh and joke with whoever's around. I want to get stupidly drunk and stumble to some inn afterwards, singing and cursing and smiling. I want to go for a walk with Adrianna, I want to know if Alyth is married, and if not would she consider having a meal with me some time, I want to jump about in that fountain until I'm out of breath and soak all the passers-by. I want to be disreputable and notorious, want to be able to sleep until noon, I want to go for a day without hurting. I want to be happy. I want her to be happy. I want to see Adrianna's hands without their gloves, I want to see her pale, smooth, flawless fingers without the burns.

But this is my life. We are together, and we fight, and we sweat, and we bleed. And this may not be perfection, but it's all I've got. And yes, it'll do. It's not the ideal, it's not the fantasy, it's not dashing or noble or honourable. It's life and death, and it's pain and torment but Tyr, it's euphoria and adrenaline and childlike glee, it's companionship and the closest of friendships and it's ties thicker than blood and it'll last forever. It's saving the world and the innocent victims, and helping the oppressed and slaying the evil.

It's my job. It's my blood. It's as simple as picking up my sword and putting one foot in front of the other. And I'll do it, and I'll smile through the blood and the dirt. When she wakes up, we'll go onwards, go find this sunken palace and this Onyx Tower and this Eldrith the Betrayer. I wouldn't have it any other way.