[The Norkari Mtns.] Chalet du Sommet Minuit

Artemis picks up where Naoki left off. "I'll skip over the details of brothel life for the next few months. Suffice it to say that Naoki and I quickly became friends, and I did what I could to impart the scraps of knowledge that I had to her. This was an exceedingly difficult task, given that I had no memories to lend the information context, but we muddled through it as best we could. The most important thing that came out of those months was that we discovered that I was capable of some forms of magic, an ability which I spent many nights training in utmost secrecy. None of the brothel workers knew I could perform magic, and that fact gave us a glimmer of hope that escape - and survival afterward - might be possible. We bent our minds to the task of searching for a way out; we spent our 'work' hours subtly fishing for pieces of information and looking for holes in the guard schedule, and our rest hours drawing maps in the dust on the floor. Slowly, a plan took form.”

“It was after midnight on a stifling night in late summer when we made our move. We grabbed our moth-eaten blankets and Naoki’s book, the sum total of our worldly possessions at the time, and waited for the guard to pass. A conjuration made short work of the lock, and we were moving, slipping down the hallways on noiseless feet. We rounded a corner, and saw the door. We were almost free! Then, a shout froze the blood in our veins. A guard had discovered the empty cell earlier than we anticipated, and now they were on alert. Stealth forgotten, we dashed for the exit, hoping to make it out and get away before they could stop us. That hope was crushed when a guard stepped into our path, club drawn.”

“I hurled myself at him, faster than he expected, and managed to get him in a chokehold. A sharp twist, and it was all over. As his strangled cries stopped and his lifeless body fell bonelessly to the ground, a woman’s scream rang out. My head snapped to the source of the sound, and I saw the owner, flanked by his guards, holding one of the girls by the hair in front of him, with a knife to her throat. Walk out that door and she dies, he said. That was the breaking point. Originally, we just wanted to get away, to sneak out of the town and leave it all behind. When we saw the fear in his hostage’s eyes and the cruelty in his, our objective changed. We were going to make those monsters pay. Every godforsaken one of them would feel the fear we felt, feel some small amount of our pain as they died screaming.”

Artemis’s voice is trembling with uncharacteristic emotion, and her words carry a vicious undertone. She takes a moment to compose herself before continuing.

“Kill them. Naoki’s whisper cut through the air, and I was in motion. His guards rushed to meet me, and I rushed past them, leaving one clutching his torn throat and the other dead before he hit the floor. They never stood a chance, but neither did his captive - I was too slow. As the owner saw his guards go down, the knife across her neck flashed, spilling her life onto the floor. A conjured blade sank deep into the owner’s arm a moment too late, forcing him to release his hold on the knife, and another one hamstrung him. A final blade nailed his other hand to the floor, and I left him bleeding on the ground without finishing him. A swift death would have been too kind for him.”

“As I rushed to the cages to free the girls and kill any remaining guards, Naoki headed to the kitchen. It would be empty now, for sure. There would be no reason for the guards to be protecting it. The coals in the hearth would be just what she needed. She took a jug of oil and broke it against the wood of the walls, then lit it. As the flames rose, she repeated this act, again and again, until the kitchen was a raging inferno. Lighting a torch, she moved through the areas I had cleared, setting fire to anything that would burn.”

“I joined her outside, after both of our tasks were completed. We stopped and stared for a few minutes, watching our torment - and our tormenter - go up in flames. As the fire roared ever higher and the group of girls started to disperse, we moved deeper into town. The flames were already starting to spread to the adjacent buildings; the burning brands we carried speeded the grim work as we went. It may seem rather brutal of us, looking at it now with the luxury of morality, to have torched the entire town like that, but there was little doubt that the townsfolk knew of the Casalesi, and did nothing to stop it, to say nothing of the mayor’s more… direct association. With the village in flames, we cast aside our brands and waited. Soon enough, the mayor and his personal guards appeared, trying desperately to stop the fire from spreading to his manor. I ran up to him, looking like a frantic young woman, yelling for help. In the ghastly light of the fires, it took him a few seconds to recognize me as one of the brothel girls. By then it was too late. His expansive gut spilled to the ground, his blood in death doing more to put out the fires than his body in life. His guards were better trained than the others, though, and ingoing for him so directly, I had inadvertently surrounded myself. I struck quickly, downing one with a thrown blade, but the four others still had me surrounded, and all my element of surprise was gone. With the skill and experience I had then, there was absolutely no way I was going to survive those odds. At least, until a sword burst through one of their chests. Naoki released the blade and staggered back, hands shaking. The shock of their comrade’s abrupt death gave me all the purchase I needed, and after a hard fight, the others soon fell.”

“We left the town, and spent the night huddled together on a hill nearby, clutching our blankets to our chests and watching the flames cleanse our suffering. When we hit the road in the morning, we left behind only desolation, a smoldering ruin of ashes, death, and a few wailing survivors.”

“The years after that contain their fair share of interesting stories, but the specifics of them will have to wait for another time. Suffice it to say that we wandered homeless for a long time. We kept body and soul together through odd jobs where we could find them, and petty theft where we could not, but it was little more than survival. There was a path forward, but none upward. No one was willing to hire two homeless women for anything more than menial labor, eliminating any chance of working our way up to something meaningful. Starting our own business was out of the question due to our lack of capital. Marrying into wealth and power wasn’t an option, as it would involve a long, grueling, and risk-fraught slog through social circles, with precious little guarantee of success - to say nothing of the fact that our success would depend on another, a prospect which didn’t sit well with either of us. Our long-standing dreams of success, of wealth, of prosperity, were firmly out of our reach, barring extensive criminal enterprise or a miracle.”

“After a moderately successful attempt at starting a criminal organization was shut down, we fled that city, arriving one day at the bones of a city just starting to rise from the ground. A group of people getting a fresh start. Perfect for us. We survived in the nascent Isra for a short time, before fate led us one day to a shitty bar in a ramshackle building. The Midnight Sun, a rickety sign proclaimed. We went inside looking for easy marks, but instead, we found the strange old woman who ran the place. She took one look at us, and said she was getting too old for this, then asked Naoki if she wanted to try running the bar. She jumped at the chance, and I jumped with her. The struggle to keep it going was not easy, at any point along the journey. There were times when we were within a hair’s breadth of having to close up, but we kept going, kept fighting. Grandma gave us a running start to see if we could make it, and, well,” she gestures to their surroundings, “make it we did.”

Arya would eventually take a seat as well on the corner bench Artemis had previously sat in while reading before she entered. At Artemis' inquiry she seemed to fall into a thoughtful state for a few moments, her brow quirking slightly the only indicator of the inner turmoil she faced. In the order of paladins with which she had trained and spent most of her life with, many traditions and customs that came with such a religious order were ingrained into her from a young age. These now outdated and seemingly archaic rules that Arya had followed for most of her life had been for the most part invalidated once she met Lum'valia, and the experiences she had since then also helped to change her views on some things. 

However, they still played a part in the decisions she made at least to some extent. Purity was an important virtue that a paladin was meant to uphold. This meant one had to be abstinent. Arya had followed this code for a long time, but she had already broken some of the rules before, so perhaps this particular one could be broken too. Her mind then hovers back to other thoughts however, such as whether this was the right thing to do, or if things were going to fast. 

Despite this indecision mentally, her body seemed to have already made up it's mind, not that it helped Arya in the slightest. Sighing, Arya would lean forward, propping her elbow on her lap as she held her head in her right hand, trying to come up with words to say, eventually she would glance up again at Artemis, 

"I don't know what to say... Uhm. I feel like I am ready for this, but I am unsure if it's the right thing to do right now," Arya shrugged self-consciously. 

Arya seems to contemplate the words Artemis had spoken to her. Her feelings were quite a confusing mess, but her words seemed to have some truth to them, either that or her comforting touch and words were very persuasive. Arya's own eyes would make eye contact with Artemis' then as she raised herself to sit up straighter. 

"It's true I do want to do it right now. But still, I have some doubts. We've only met today and I'm afraid I will regret it afterwards. If it is true that there's nothing to fear, then it would be fine..." her voice trails off for a moment as she thinks, before she speaks again,

"You know what, I'm tired of being afraid, I will do what I want now, or who I want now."

And the hunter catches the prey. Am I good, or am I good?

Outwardly, Artemis betrays no signs of her celebration, opting instead for the lascivious smirk, a slight quirk of red lips under darkened emerald eyes. She might need to talk to Arya in the morning to allay any lingering fears, but that would have to wait. She has much better things to talk about at the moment. Her voice drops.  "You look sexy when you're so assertive."

With that simple proclamation, Artemis closes the distance between them and captures Arya in a searing liplock that puts even their makeout session in the kitchen to shame. Her kiss is hot, hungry, and full of want. Her hands roam Arya's body, exploring the soft curves ordinarily kept hidden by steel. Every action, expression, and whispered word promises unimaginable pleasure, and that night, she fulfills her promises to the utmost limits of her ability.

[Fade to black]

[Morning]

It was late morning when Arya had awakened, a slanting beam of sunlight penetrating the thin gap between drawn curtains to strike her in the face. Squinting at the bright light, Arya would turn away from the light, towards the interior of the room and whom she shared the bed with. It was so warm underneath the blankets, between her own heat and the heat she could feel radiating off of Artemis she did not want to ever get up and face the relative coldness of the air outside of those comfortable sheets.

Slowly Arya would draw a bit closer to Artemis' warmth until she was just barely nestling up to her form. It seemed Artemis had yet to wake, and Arya did not mind waiting until she did so out of her own accord. It would only give her more time to savor the moment.

The hand extended was taken and Kate led the palm to her cheek, pressing it softly against her skin. “Don’t think for a second that you need to become something that you aren’t. You have the power to change. We all have that power. Don’t let your past define what you’ll become.” Her encouraging tone bordered on pleading as she exhaled the last word: “Please.”

Kate’s lips caressed the palm of Naoki’s hand, before she led it down to her waist. She extended her hand across Her lover’s waistline, so that their arms formed a cross-shape behind their backs. “I’d love to see the greenroom, for sure.” Her voice was more energetic now. Almost as if to compensate for the seriousness of their last conversation. Kate figured Naoki could do with a little something else to think about.

“As a professional botanist, I will need always need to be on the lookout for ways to hone my craft. The old shoppe is just a reformed barracks, the undergarden was all too gravelly. It’ll be fun to have, you know, dirt for once. Or it could be severely inferior to my old place”, Kate joked. “After all, I am a master gardener. I could grow Puffballs in Sakand.” Kate cackled. “Sorry, gardener joke."

She laughed awkwardly and started walking to the direction she inferred could be to the greenhouse. She wasn’t sure of the direction, but hoped she wouldn’t run into any rooms full of skeleton-filled closets.

With a smile that is now sincere, Naoki nods, and follows Kate down the hall, enjoying the double sensations of their hands on hips. How does she manage it, Naoki wonders. How does she manage to be so… soothing. So warm, so comforting. All the time. Though mere presence and a few comforting words, Kate is always able to calm Naoki down, and make things seem fine. That’s another reason, Naoki realizes.

In an even better state of mind than before the conversation, Naoki proceeds into the greenroom, and is rather impressed. Though she has no metric by which to judge the quality of the soil or the tools, it is much larger than it seemed on the plans, the roof quite high overhead. That, and it is very comfortably warm, which is very much to Naoki’s preference.

However, Naoki’s personal preferences are irrelevant in this context; this isn’t her greenhouse. Instead, she looks to Kate, an eyebrow raised with trepidation. Would she find it suitable?

Arya returns her own mischievous grin before closing in, locking lips with her for few long moments as her hand's explored the blond's curves momentarily. Thoughts of the previous night would come to mind, making it hard to resist stopping right there, however a few moments later Arya would pull back for a moment,

"Mmm, perhaps my laziness has to do with the fact you kept me up most of the night?" Arya said lightly, before adding, "Silver though, that seems to be an interesting nickname, I would call you gold, or maybe golden, but that just doesn't seem to have the same ring to it."

"Well, you didn't seem to mind at the time," Artemis remarks slyly, her hand drifting south to accompany her remark with a playful squeeze of Arya's rear. "As to the nickname, since I call a lot of people 'sexy' I couldn't very well use that, regardless of how fitting it may be. With my choices so limited, it was a tossup between Silver and Ruby - I still haven't decided which I prefer. What do you think?"