Learning new tricks

“Helian bitch! Cut tongue before talk!”

The man continued to spit a quite impressive string of heavily accented insults at her, mixed with even more in Ozainae. Ah, swear words. Always the first gateway to a foreign language. Back in Desdem, Ekero certainly had been able to add quite a few to their vocabulary, especially to Tarmen’s, who had spent more time with him than her.

So he did speak a bit of Helian. Still probably wouldn’t help to get in depth. She sighed audibly, partially for show, but also partially because she was hit with sudden bout of headache that made her vision swim and brought a ringing to her ears. It was gone as fast as it came, but she took a casual swig from her waterskin anyway, just in case she had managed to forget to drink properly again.

“Language.”
she eventually chided mockingly, interrupting his tirade.

“You might want to mind your manners, or I might decide I am getting annoyed. You won’t like me when I am annoyed.”

She didn’t know how much of that he caught up on, but it served to have him pause for a long moment.

“I see Helian spies are a lot more effective than we thought.”

Alexis suppressed a frown, both at the statement itself, of which she didn’t really know where it came from, and the sudden lack of accent in his speech. She had to put even more effort into keeping a neutral expression as the explanation for both caught up to her.

There was no accent because he wasn’t speaking Helian. And what he most likely referred to was that neither did she. They were both speaking Ozainae.
What. The. Fuck. Just happened?

One moment she could barely introduce herself in Ozainae and the next the language felt as familiar as Garrahn and Helian. To a point she hadn’t even realised she had switched to it. Just. What the fuck?

Alright. Fine. Not the time to ponder the implications. Gift horses, right?

She collected herself and returned her attention to her captive.

“You’re not the only ones curious about their neighbours.”
she shrugged.

“So with that out of the way, as I said, I’d like to chat. Ah, but I remember. You’d rather cut out your tongue, right?”

She smiled slightly, and picked up one of his curved daggers, looking at it appraisingly.

“Since you are a little tied up right now, should I do the honors?”

Alexis lay the weapon blade first into the fire, letting it heat up the sharp metal.

“Or do you want to change your mind on that?”