"This should be an all right place to rest for now."

The small shambles of a company pulled to a ragged halt, horses weary, evidence on the assembled faces of nerves drawn taut from a night of constant viligance. Slowly and stiffly, various individuals dismounted, set themselves to necessary tasks around the makeshift encampment, here someone checking the packs, there people tethering their mounts and brushing the caked mud from their flanks. No one was quite willing to let their guard drop yet, as evidenced in the restless stances, swift movements at the slightest sound. Here in the Grasslands, just about anywhere could feel like the middle of nowhere, but they knew to give in to that illusion would be fatal; their pursuers were still close. Nevertheless, rest was a necessity, for those who tracked them as well as themselves.

Dios provided a shoulder to cling to as Sasarai dismounted-- or rather, was dismounted by two of his aides-- from Tzel, the white warhorse flicking his ears back in concern as a trailing leg scraped over his back. Waving off the extra assistance, Sasarai let Dios alone guide him to a place to recline in relative comfort, a slender collection of decade-old trunks offering itself as a useful backrest. He settled himself there, letting the boundaries of his body slip away into the cluster of trees as those with medical training sought to busy themselves about him, like blood flowing to a wound to congeal.

The bandages around his right hand had become dirty from travel, and Sasarai turned his head away as they were unwound, a wince in his expression. To look at his hand without the Rune was like looking at a face that lacked some defining feature, the eyes, the mouth, was closed up and twisted up all wrong where those things should be. To almost anyone else, it would look like the back of a normal hand: marred by a wound that looked deeper than it was (and yet at the same time did not convey the depth at all), scar tissue already silvering at the edges thanks to his still-intact Flowing, which lapped anxiously at it but could do no more for him for fear of closing up more than the physical wound-- he was having to rely on chemical treatments for the injury and the pain, which he disdained at the best of times, and he now frustrated at how they added extra layers of clouding to his already dulled mind-- but if one did not flinch from battle gore, it was not a frightful sight. But to him, it was the absence of something fundamental, and just the thought of it, his hand so blank, so devoid of the fullness that ought to nestle there, made him feel nauseous. It focused his attention on the lightness at his core, the way the ground under him wasn't the indisputable down that it used to be, felt like just another direction. He stared up at the canopy of leaves overhead, his other hand shielding his eyes from the mottled patches of sun. There was no especial sense of its being above him. It was just somewhere other than him.

He steeled his gaze down to the ground instead, fighting the urge to let his eyes slip shut for fear he would lose orientation completely. His hand reached down to press against the earth, to cling to the succour of its chill surface, to find a handhold there; his fingers clawed into the ground, more fiercely than he ever otherwise would have. Gripping cold earth against his palm, he could feel the rushing of currents beneath the surface, the rhythmic pulse of energy winding through every atom of the soil, like underground waterways. They brought him trickles of understanding, tiny threading tendrils of his Rune's presence within like water to a parched throat. He felt calmer, clearer, now, than he had in all the night's riding.

Sasarai did not tether Tzel by instinct; the bearer of True Earth had no need of a rope to stay his horse from wandering. The animal would calm immediately at his magic's touch, and would stay bounded within any circle the earth mage drew around him. But he was no longer True Earth's bearer-- no; I have always been, will always be, True Earth's bearer; that it has been wrested from me wrongfully does not change that.-- and now the horse wandered over to him as well, worrying at the sleeve of his uniform with his teeth in a manner Sasarai knew to be affection.

"Looking for something, boy?", he teased gently, his voice low with weariness as much as to soothe his companion. "Looking for treats? No, there's nothing there. I've nothing up my sleeve, no, no," he giggled as the whiskered mouth tickled him, "stop it, there's nothing there. There's nothing in my hand. I don't have anything for you."

The irony of his words laced around his thoughts, a little bitter thread, but he refused to entertain its spirals. He let it drift away, let all thought slip away into the currents secret and deep.