Chinks in the Armor

After their impromptu fight by the postern gate, there was a new tension in the air in the suite. There was a cautious, even uncomfortable silence in place of the naked hostility. In the communal sitting room, Kaelan and Grakka appeared to consciously avoid needless interactions, timing their entries and exits with a newfound accuracy. Eye contact was brief when paths did cross, and gaze slid away as though it was not desired for either party to acknowledge the recollection of their struggle on the dusty ground.

Kaelan had to tend to more than just the bruise that had appeared on his ribs where Grakka's knee had struck him. The struggle had a peculiar resonance, an unwelcome recognition of her unbridled strength and strong personality. It complicated the plain disdain he had felt before, but it wasn't admiration yet. Jory, his squire, was reapplying salve when he clucked over a scratch on Kaelan's knuckles. "Must have happened during drills, Sir Kaelan?" Jory innocently asked.

Kaelan muttered, "Something like that, Jory," not wanting to go into detail about how he had gotten cuts and bruises from battling with his goblin wife and not wearing armor. The whole thing seemed more and more unreal.

Grakka also appeared changed. Her typically erratic energy, which she frequently used to drill her troops or pace, appeared to be more restrained and directed toward a more focused, silent assessment of her environment. Perhaps the explosive physicality of the day before had been a necessary release, leaving a watchful calm in its wake. She walked in her usual quiet, but her posture changed slightly—less directly challenging, more coiled and ready.

Kaelan was still having trouble falling asleep several nights later. He was burdened with the demands of his job, which included sustaining the tenuous peace pact, managing the incredibly sluggish investigation into the fire, keeping order in a keep boiling with interspecies conflict, and negotiating the impossibility of his political marriage. The only sounds in the keep were the sighing of the wind around the tower and the distant stomp of sentries. A lone light flickered shadows on the hefty oak table in front of him, which was covered with documents, as he sat by himself in the center sitting room.

He was no longer actually reading them. According to the fire investigation's reports, there was no evidence of the oil-soaked rags the captain had first stated, conflicting eyewitness testimonies from terrified stablehands, and faint tracks near the postern gate that could have belonged to anyone. He pulled up another piece of parchment, a list of casualties from a campaign two summers prior, with familiar faces and names that he remembered painfully. Men who perished thinking they were defending the kingdom, never realizing that their commander would marry into the exact group they were fighting to save.

He felt a deep fatigue that went beyond the physical exhaustion. His normally perfect posture sagged as he leaned back in the heavy chair and rested his head against the carved wood. Weary and unprotected, he ran a hand through his hair. With the combined weight of years of conflict and the unknowable burden of this peace, he let out a sigh. His voice was scarcely audible as he whispered, "Generations of bloodshed," to the empty chamber, "just to trade steel for… this." This precarious truce, this coerced closeness, this never-ending tightrope walk across a pit of loathing. Was it really a step forward? Or simply a different kind of warfare, one that is waged with gritted teeth and forced smiles? It seemed overwhelming and crushing to try to close the gap between his reality and Grakka's.

The slight sound coming from the doorway leading to Grakka's chamber was not audible to him. As was her custom, she had ventured out in silence, either in search of water or just to prowl the edges of her imposed domain. She frequently went into the suite at night to make sure her barricades were in place and to listen for any odd noises. Her senses were on high alert as she hesitated in the deep shadow just inside the sitting room, melting into the stone wall.

However, there was no imminent threat in the room—just the human knight's lone figure, slouched in his chair and lit by the candle's sole flame. She perceived him as a man who was displaying a certain amount of weariness rather than as Sir Kaelan, the armored embodiment of human power. No, it went beyond that. Even if the load wasn't real, she could identify the sag of shoulders under a heavy load. She heard his low mutter and recognized the idea, if not the exact wording: the effort, the cost.

Grakka watched him with indifferent interest. This was human-style vulnerability. It is an internal unraveling rather than a wound or a physical vulnerability that can be taken advantage of. Odd. Goblins usually didn't slump beneath the weight of objects; instead, they pushed until they broke or conquered. But the input was absorbed by her practical intellect. The human kingdom had been ravaged by the protracted conflict, and Kaelan was the thread that held the tenuous peace inside the keep together. Being torn between the demands of his monarch, the prejudice of his people, and her own distrustful presence made his position naturally tense. This fatigue wasn't coincidental; rather, it was a natural byproduct of the circumstances and a sign of the strains he was under.

She didn't have sympathy, which is a pointless human feeling. However, she sensed... comprehension? Just recognition, maybe. The polished armor was acknowledged to be not impenetrable. It concealed a core that was vulnerable to damage from sources other than goblin knives. She didn't entirely understand the weights he carried; they had to do with ideas like "diplomacy" and "honor," which sounded ineffective to her, but the weight itself was identifiable. Although they hardly ever displayed in this way, she had witnessed elderly goblin chiefs also grow weary.

For another long minute, she stood there in the shadows, examining this new information about the knight. She then retreated into the shadows of her room as quietly as she had come, leaving Kaelan utterly oblivious that his private moment of weakness had been observed.

Between them, nothing had changed explicitly. There were no gestures or words exchanged. However, Grakka had a fresh piece of information that she kept hidden in her mental evaluation of Sir Kaelan. He wasn't simply a'softskin' trying to be diplomatic; he was also a fairly competent combatant. Moreover, he was a creature that could be crushed by the very tranquility he had vowed to protect. A vulnerability that could be exploited, maybe. Or perhaps, just possibly, the first indication of something essentially, tiredly… shared.