We Feel the Evil Coming

    "Three days journey to the black banded prominence," Wake murmurs to herself. She's been walking, day and night, without pause for rest or drink or food. Her mind is cast ahead at what must be done. What must be said.

    She turns her head to the south and west, her eyes narrowing. "They are coming closer. They will not be turned away. It will not be a swift victory. I have to find them."

    A sudden gust of dry air kicks up the sand, then gusting faster yet to blast her with the abrasive material. Thankfully The Right Clothes leave her covered with white cloth from head to toe, with a thin layer of gauze covering her eyes.

Goldenblade is out here in the Westelande desert as well, though she maybe shouldn't be. "Hail, traveller!" she calls out seeing Wake trekking across the desert. Wake might not recognize Goldenblade from so far away, but there's not so many people with a katana on each hip that insist on riding horses, and Wake may remember this one from the recent Exodus from Eas. It's got it's saddlebags packed with supplies, at least, or one of them is, the other one is decidedly less populated.

She will ride closer, since this is clearly a person and not a giant ant, and then closer when it seems not to be a Palace Lander or bandit, which was her other worry. Then close enough to ask, "Wake?" She's American, she has trouble with noble titles. It's all down to the tea. She is wearing a similar outfit to Wake's, though a bit grubbier, as she rides up.

    Wake doesn't stop, but she does turn to look at Goldenblade. "Oh, hello Goldenblade!" She is deep in a strange mood, though, and somehow glides into a curtsey to greet her friend without breaking stride. It's a strange gift.

    "What brings you out so far? Did you happen to see a black-banded prominence or a group of nomads roaming the desert?"

    She stumbles for just a moment, but keeps her pace up in any case. "There are people out here and I want to meet them. To talk to them. And help them, if I can."

Goldenblade considers Wake's words, being in a strange mood, herself, though the old man inside her mostly ignores the detatchment. That's /normal/ for anyone concentrating hard, is what she says if forced to resond on the subject. It makes her harder to read, though. But she replies, "You're more likely to find giant ants out here as people. But here," and she'll lower her hand to pull Wake up to sit across her horse's withers. Sidesaddle, because Wake's a lady. "I can at least ride you to a better place. I'm just scouting out where the ants are that are threatening the Sher Kar," she explains. "They're kinda bad around here, it's not so bad up north, and there's more nomads and fewer giant ants."

    The Baroness accepts the ride. She sits roughly. She's clearly not the world's best rider. Or perhaps she just can't focus her head on anything but what lies ahead.

    "Ants. Yes, those would slow me down. I need to go farther out, to find the nomadic tribes. I know they are out here." A pause for thought, "Somewhere."

    Even now, she's looking ahead, peering at the horizon. "Everything seems to look the same out here. The desert is formless, and has a way of tricking the eye."

Goldenblade nods grimly to Wake about the desert looking the same, and admits, "I've got no knack for anything, either, but we're south of Breg Epona by almost a day, and I'm scouting this place for the Westelande army." She'll take Wake's hands and pull them around her, Goldenblade's, waist, because falling off will be very bad if she has to gallop. But it's better than trying to ride double on a peko. She checks the sky and the angle of the sun, which will let anyone knows what direction North is, if they know the time of day. At least to within 30 degrees either way, and that's enough to get out of /this/ area.

She heels the horse into motion, and depending how bad a passenger Wake is will determine how much she needs to hold on, but Goldenblade is at least solid, and sitting on the horse gives a higher view of the surrounding land, allowing Goldenblade to head for a likely-looking point on the horizon. "I'll set you down closer to sivilization, at least, and if you've found anything to eat in this desert, I'd be amazed. My saddlebags are close to full," becuse she also skips meals. "So, you can take a bit with you."

    "Oh, I have food," says Wake absently. And plenty of water. Just, you know, eating is just not worth her time right now. She tilts her head at the mention of civilization, "Well, if it is the right civilization, yes. But not the big cities. I am looking for wanderers, and I must find them somewhere out here! It's just.. hard to track anyone when the ground is either stone or sand, and whatever they happen to be riding, they aren't letting it leave any other signs behind."

    She registers enough awareness to pluck out some of the offered food, even if she doesn't think she needs it. It is /rude/ to refuse generosity. Since swallowing proves essentially impossible with her parched throat, she'll even drink, though she nearly drops her canteen as she does so.

    "I'm going to get them all together, Goldenblade. All of them."

Goldenblade ohs about Wake having food. You don't expect that, necessarily, of people wandering in the desert. She nods, though, about the right civilization. "Westelande wouldn't like you poaching their soldiers," she agrees. "But the desert is filled with tribes, wandering from oasis to oasis. That's what you get in deserts, where few places are big enough to support a large or permanent population like Breg Epona." Goldenblade, sociologist. Well, when you're a bricklayer for a living, and you didn't grow up watching TV, you develop other hobbies: hers was reading, so she's got a smattering of a dozen odds and ends.

Riding northward, she nods at Wake's assertion thar she wants to bring the wandering tribes all in. "You probably need to team up with a scout or tracker," she suggests. "Maybe a local who knows the desert and tribes well."

    "An oasis!" Wake suddenly blurts out. "Of course. I.. have been going about this all wrong! I can never hope to catch the nomads in their wandering. Instead, I can wait where they are destined to come. Goldenblade, that is brilliant!"

    Why didn't Wake think of this? Well, probably because she can only think of moving and the mission. Paradoxically, her focus on the mission has blinded her to the solution. Maybe that's not really much of a paradox.

    "I need to go to a remote oasis. One where only the nomads are likely to go. Away from the centers of the empire."

Goldenblade has, entirely by accident, help solved one of Wake's difficulties. That's good. She rides on, it's going to take a while to get -anywhere-, "Not that I know where any oases are," she adds with amusement, "so you'll still need a local guide. But we can certainly find one of them. And they'll know where the oases are more than one tribe or another." And they can stop in town for more food. Dry menu rations taste like cardboard, but she doesn't much care, herself, and generally doesn't notice. Luckily, the horse has an idea of which way to go as Goldenblade's thoughts drift to mechanisms. Clamps, hoses, suits of metal and waxed leather.

    Wake stares off into the distance for a time. "Thank you. I mean, really. You know, you are always helping me. You have been a great friend. And though it is really hard to think now, I want to make sure you know how much I appreciate everything. All the support, the open conversation, and the road! That beautiful road. It hurts me to let our enemies touch it without battle, but our revenge will come one day."

    Honestly, she has not heard if any war has started yet, or if Eas has been taken away from the remaining Olympus defenders. It is almost impossible to pay attention to such things.

    "A guide, though. Yes. That is good. They can tell me where to go."

Goldenblade shakes her head as Wake thanks her, and she says, "Back in the day, if a fellow didn't keep busy, he was lazy. So my ma always found ways for me not to sit idle. 'It won't do you any good sitting around like that,' she'd say. When I was young, I'd go out and play." This was back when kids played outside, of course. "When I was older, there were always chores around the house. I was the youngest, so I got the easiest chores. Though as my brothers moves out of the house, more of their chores fell back on me. That's one of the reasons I took the job in Japan when it came up. The price of eating mom's cookingg was laundry and yardwork and a dozen other things."

She chuckles as she thinks back, to sixty-some years ago. "Every fall, the yard had to be raked clean. Every summer, the grass needed mowing. And none of the new-fangled power mowers, either." But she's blathering, and remembering those old rotary crosscut mowers has distracted her towards a project idea also...

    Wake listens closely, struggling with her condition to take mental notes. "It sounds like you had a good childhood and were well-prepared to live on your own, when the time came. I wonder what your mother would think if she saw all the amazing things you have done here. Not many people could ever hope to achieve so much in the dream before."

    Wake shakes her head, trying to shake out the cobwebs as the ride goes on and on. She can't be sleeping the saddle!

    "How familiar are you with these lands?" she asks suddenly. "Other than that one wave, I have rarely been so far east."

Goldenblade nods about having a good childhood, and being well-prepared for life. "It's true," she agrees. "But the wonder of this place is that it's not nearly as hard here to do things as it is in real life. A lot of things get done automatically, by the game, I'm assuming, that you just don't need to take care of. For all the little things like cooking, where you have to do it step by step, there's things like first aid that are just push-of-a-button. But a lot of people have done far more here than they've ever tried in real life. Real life is full of setbacks and disappointments and things that can't be done, so you've got to start over, or try something different. Here, it's so easy, it's ... well, it's easy. Making a road? In real life, it'd take hundreds of men and machines the better part of six months what we did in half that." She shrugs.

"And anyone who doesn't want to gets a free ride, it seems, which makes it pretty typical for the young kids, not having to work or diig low-impact arts and crafts, I'm sorry to say." But as to how familiar she is with the land, she admits, "Not very much. We're going vaguely toward the capital, but we'll hit that or the coast, or the road, and from one, I can find the rest. And from the capital, we can find you a real guide."

    "So true. There are a lot of shortcuts here. The place clearly was designed to more rapidly get to the results, but there are some things that remain unchanged. Trust is no easier to gain here than it was before, and it is just as easily squandered. The hard decisions remain, and the struggle for our better humanity is as difficult as I remember it. Perhaps it may be worse here, because being able to cheat death makes us think that lesser harms are more permissible."

    Wake falls silent for a time, a memory tickling at her attention. "I hope Tae is doing well. I hope all my people are safe and cared for. I always do my best for them, but sometimes hard choices must be made. Even though I ride through these wastes, my heart and soul are with them still. But.. with luck, I shall find more people that I can guide and grow with. You build things that could last forever, Goldenblade. What I forge is not so permanent, but I hope it shall prove strong and that I will be up to the task of proving myself again and again to those I serve."

Goldenblade can only shrugs at how hard the decisions to be made are. "They're not hard to make, but they're quite hard to live with, for some people, I think. People still think much the way they did back in real life, even with this new reality here. However real it is or isn't, it's what we must deal with." Goldenblade, the practical. "But you're right, there -are- hard decisions to be made, but the consequences are less severe for nearly everything, so things in general are more open to people. Want to climb a mountain? Fight a tiger? Worse case, you'll wake up tomorrow in a chapel. That's a far better deal than real life."

She smiles over her shoulder to Wake, and says, "I'm sure Tae and all your people are fine. And if what you do is less permanent than what I do, you are building of much more ephemeral material. Hopes, dreams, desires, goals, effort. That all together may not last forever, but it can take us to the moon, too, so the potential for greatness is there."