Chapter 11: What is it Worth?

After freeing their chains from the post, Seren and Salara found a broken hammer head in the tent and immediately set to breaking the shackles on their wrists. The puncture wound on Seren’s shoulder stung with every strike, and blood had now started to soak down her tunic’s sleeve. Lady Eira had said she would have someone come patch her up, but given the tumultuous state developing out in the courtyard, she didn’t count on that happening. Once they were both free, Seren tossed the hammer head to the ground and cradled her injured shoulder’s arm while Salara rubbed at her sore wrists. The sylvari felt the familiar warm tingle surge back into her fingertips. She snapped them, and a small, orange flame danced on the tip of her thumb.

“Oh, thank the Pale Tree!” she sighed with relief. “And I don’t feel as cold anymore.”

Ignoring the pain in her shoulder, Seren gathered her section of chain in her hands. “Good,” she replied. “We may need those flames later.”

The guard outside still posed a possible problem for their escape. Seren crept toward the tent’s opening and snuck a glance outside. She saw he was still there. With one swift movement, she then swung the chain around the guard’s neck and dragged him back into the tent. He tried to call for help, but Seren pulled the chain tighter, cutting off his air supply while he thrashed. Salara grimaced and looked away as the guard eventually passed out.

“Can you see what’s going on out there?” Seren asked as she bent down to search the guard. She pulled his sword from its scabbard and a small dagger from his boot. Keeping the sword in hand, she stuck the dagger in her own boot for safe keeping.

Salara peeked out of the tent opening, her crystalline eyes tracking movement from all over the camp. Amidst the chaos, she spied a familiar, and rather large, brown and black striped form. She brightened, and nearly cheered when she caught sight of the others with him.

“Seren!” she whispered excitedly as she came back into the tent, “they’re here.”

“Who’s here?”

“Everyone! Well, maybe not everyone. I didn’t see Alena, but she’s small. Maybe she’s in there somewhere—but there they are!” she replied as she clasped her hands together. “We just need to get to them and then we can all leave this horrid place.”

Seren furrowed her brow. “They’re all here?”

She went to the tent’s opening and peered outside. The Byrnes’ mercenaries had now gathered in the courtyard around a group of newcomers, and as bodied shifted, she spied a flash of Nienna’s long, dark red hair. Her heart skipped a beat. She felt an odd mix of relief and anxiety upon seeing the woman who, according to the documents Salara discovered, was her sister.

“They’re surrounded out there,” Seren noted as she pulled back from the opening. “Getting to them could be harder than we thought. Getting around all of that is going to be tricky too.”

“What do we do?”

While they discussed their options, a swirl of lavender light appeared behind them. Commander Morrow and two hooded mercenaries emerged from the portal and immediately seized the two of them. The commander herself held a dagger at Salara’s neck and motioned with her free hand for Seren to drop the sword. Her friend’s life on the line, the young guardian chucked the blade at the ground, and it bounced against the commander’s boot. She looked down at her boot, then over to the lifeless mercenary body on the ground, before flashing Seren a disapproving glance.

“Not a twitch of those fingers,” Commander Morrow warned Salara as she stared at her through her long, light brown bangs. Her short hair sat in a tousled mess on her head. “I’ve seen what you can do, and I don’t intend on getting fried like Malachai. You so much as stretch a pinky, I’ll leave you bleeding out sap all over the ground. Understood?”

Salara tried to remain perfectly still under the point of the commander’s blade. “You try to kill me and I’ll turn you and your friends to ash before I utter my last breath.”

“Gutsy,” Commander Morrow remarked with a little grin. “I like that.”

***

“We’re definitely outnumbered,” Tuborg noted quietly as he nervously adjusted his grip on the leather strap inside his shield.

Dee grumbled as she held her greatsword down low so as not to prematurely provoke any of the mercenaries. “I can see that.”

“Well, I guess it was a matter of time before you showed your face again, seeing as you escaped us in Lion’s Arch. Have you finally come to your senses and brought us the blade?” Lord Aedan sneered.

He strode into the courtyard toward the group, and a few of the mercenaries stepped aside to let him pass through. His cold, grey eyes stared at them all with a fiery malice as he wrung his hand on the hilt of an unusual sword on his hip. Nienna noted its long, jagged form with opaque blue shards jutting out from the main body. It also gave off a strange, blue glow, like ice from the coldest regions of the Shiverpeaks.

“We brought you something, all right,” Clarkus growled as he beat his sword against his shield a few times. The clanging of metal on metal echoed throughout the camp, drawing looks of abhorrence from their surrounding enemies.

Lord Aedan glared at Clarkus. “Lady Valar, get your beast under control, or I will be forced to do so for you.”

Taking great offense to the comment, Clarkus bared his teeth as the fur on the back of his neck bristled. A low growl rumbled in the charr’s throat, warning a line had been crossed. His whole body tensed and poised to pounce on whomever volunteered to go toe-to-toe with him.  

“He is neither a beast, nor do I control him like some pet,” Nienna replied curtly. “But I guess I can’t expect someone with such a narrow mind to understand that.”

Before Lord Aedan could utter a reply, a tall asura with a mechanical prosthetic hand strolled into the courtyard from the airship’s gangplank. He scratched at his bald head, mumbling to himself as he scrolled through information and diagnostics flashing on a small tablet. “What is the holdup? The subject is growing restless. We need to get underway before it—” he looked up and frowned. “Oh. You again. So soon? I’m impressed with your perseverance. Perhaps I should have used you as our next subject instead of the mindless creature I was given.”

Nienna glared at the asura responsible for the death of her dear friend Sir Fendall, and the involvement in both Rhys’ and Liliana’s death. She wanted nothing more than to sever his head from his shoulders so he could never hurt another living being again. Her fingers began to tingle, and she looked down to see a thin layer of frost spreading over her glove. “What can I say, I missed you,” she replied, sardonically, while tapping the flat side of her axe against her leg.

“Stop wasting our time. Are you giving us the blade or not?” Lord Aedan demanded. The veins on his temples grew more prominent, and his grey eyes burned with a scorching intensity.

“I’m not handing it over to you.”

The highborn lord’s face twisted in anger. His hand moved slightly, and Nienna braced herself for a possible strike, but the blade didn’t leave his hip. “What was your plan here then? Did you think you and your rag-tag group of misfits were going to just waltz in here, kill us all, and then stroll out of here with your people?”

Tuborg narrowed his sapphire eyes at Lord Aeden. “Where are they?” he pressed, the dark thorns on his upper lip flexing as he spoke. A gentle hum broke out around them, and Nienna thought she caught a glimpse of a pale blue light in his vicinity.

“We can make this a lot less painful than it has to be for everyone here,” Lady Eira announced as she emerged out into the courtyard. Seemingly unphased by the developing situation as she walked the perimeter of the group, she flashed her husband a reassuring glance. “It’s quite simple. We have two of your people. We’re willing to trade them both for the god weapon. No one else here has to get hurt.”

On cue, Commander Morrow and two of her mercenaries escorted Seren and Salara out into the courtyard. They remained on the fringe: close enough to for visual confirmation, but far enough away to safely escape if negotiations went sideways. Straining to look around the mercenaries in front of her, Nienna made eye contact with both of them. It took everything Nienna had to keep her expression neutral.

“Are you two okay?” she called out to them.

Salara nodded. “Aside from Seren’s shoulder wound, we’re fine.”

“Wound?” Nienna boomed, furious.

 “Don’t worry about us. You can’t give them what they-“ Seren started to say quickly, but she was abruptly interrupted by a sudden punch to her side from Commander Morrow. The young guardian doubled over in pain and clutched her side.

“That’s enough of that,” the commander said, ignoring Salara’s threatening cries as she fought against the other two mercenaries holding her back. “Let the grown-ups talk.”

With shadow encroaching upon the edges of her vision, Nienna stepped forward, ready to rush to Seren’s side and cut off the woman’s hand that struck her sister. She was met with opposition immediately from the mercenaries, with their weapons shoved mere inches from her face. She stopped abruptly, clenching her jaw until it grew sore.

“Do we have a deal then?” Lord Aedan asked, impatiently. “Your people for the weapon.”

Nienna looked across the sea of mercenaries at Seren who shook her head no. Her heart sunk deep into the pit of her stomach. She couldn’t bear the thought of leaving Seren and Salara in the hands of this noble couple and their thugs, nor could she part with the blade. But if she refused to give the Byrnes the weapon, they would likely sick their mercenaries on all of them and take it anyway. She felt helplessly stuck in a situation with no good outcome.

“We’ll back you up if you want to play this rough,” Dee said quietly as she wrung her hands on the hilt of her large, norn blade. “I don’t trust that woman’s honeyed words. Even if we were to hand it over, I don’t think they’d let us leave here alive.”

“Honestly, I don’t either,” Nienna replied.

She looked aside at the others, and they each gave her a little nod, indicating they had her back and were ready to follow her lead. There seemed to be no good solution and there would be no turning back from here. The decision weighed heavy on her shoulders. She questioned whether or not she was making the right choice—if it was worth the fight and the risk of death. The one thing she did know, was she couldn’t live with herself if she didn’t do something.

Before Nienna could fall further into her spiraling thoughts, she mustered a significant amount of energy and threw her axe at the mercenary in front of her. Claws of green energy tore at armor and flesh, igniting the battle that broke out in the Priory camp’s courtyard.