She isn't sure how long it is, this time.

It could be days. Weeks. She never knows until she comes back out of it. There's never company; she always braves these mists alone. While that usually makes things worse, this time she is spared the horrors of unbeing. This time, her dreams and memories are a comfort.

With effort she can remember the cool green of her mother's eyes. Snatches of a discordant desert lullaby. Dawn colouring Mirrah's battered sandstone. The delicate perfume of night-blooming desert flowers. Sand winds.

She remembers her brother. His hand at the back of her collar, hauling her off the battlefield by main strength while she roars and rages for one last fight. His grimace as he swigs the cheap wine he's using to clean her wounds and soothe her nightmares. His roguish smile when he knows he's right.

What she wouldn't give for his patience right now. He would help her find herself again.

At last she opens her eyes to a world leached of colour. The rush of falling rain drowns even the waves. Most of the downpour has washed away the blood and debris. Behind the mask, her face twists as her heart reluctantly starts beating again.

Reaching up with trembling hands, she shucks off her gloves, half-numb fingers fumbling at her mask's buckled straps. When she finally wins free of it she flings it aside. With a ragged snarl she hauls herself up, twisting to brace herself on her hands and knees.

The sea witch isn't here to begrudge one dead knight the opportunity to be noisily sick.

Lucatiel of Mirrah crouches for several minutes, panting. Finding her footing takes more concentration. When she pulls herself upright, she stands precarious as a colt, legs braced stiffly and shivering uncontrollably... but she stands, even as the rain tries to batter her back down.

Trembling hands reach up to her own face. She finds the ridge of rot around her left eye, following it down toward her jaw. Her fingers lay flat to measure the span: Three fingers' worth. Was it so many the last time this happened? Rain beads and rolls down her face; streams from sodden blonde hair as she thinks. No. It's spread further.

Onward and upward.

The woman looks to one side, then the other, surveying the ruins. Pieces of the battle come back to her, fragments. The sea-witch hadn't even left a body behind.

Her eyes nearly close as she tries to think, shivering in the rain. Her thoughts feel slow; syrupy.

What happened this time? Highscribe brought the group here to retrieve the mermaid's voice. The child had been entrusted to her care again...

--The child.

Ianthe, something whispers, through the fog of her thoughts.

Guilt hastens her onward, wavering before finding her balance. No doubt the child is devastated. Ianthe had watched her die. The details evade her, no more than fragments: The gleam of her rapier, pointed trained on Methuselah's heart. Candlelight and the warm glow of lamps. The smell of tallow and smoke; rotting fish and seaweed. Your answer, Methuselah, she had demanded of the sea-witch.

Stooping, she retrieves her things with exaggerated care. The rain is a blessing in the desert; here, it's a torment. The mask she slides into place, meticulously. Her gauntlets she slips back onto her hands. Nobody had absconded with her hat, and she tilts it to empty the rainwater, placing it back on her head. It squishes, conspicuously, against her wet hair.

The buckler takes longer. After finding it lodged in a broken tree trunk nearby, she wrestles it free, eyeing it in displeasure. Warped and bent. Lucatiel shoulders it with a sigh.

Taking a last looks at the ruins, she straightens her hat and turns, shivering and squishing her way down to the shoreline. Her first order of business is to find a boat and pray she doesn't drown on the trip back. Secondly, she'll have to pick up Highscribe's backtrail.

Slinging her sodden braid over a shoulder, Lucatiel takes precisely two more steps before her body rebels. Landing on hands and knees, scabbard banging against the stone foundation, Lucatiel exhales through her teeth.

Perhaps this may take longer than expected.