CHAPTER 14

The trek through the Valtans felt like it took forever. It was a full day’s travel from one ridge line to the next. Each valley they crossed was different, separated from the outside world by permanently frozen and snowy peaks that divided the region, and allowed nature to take a different path, free from contamination from the outside.

The first valley had been the highest up, the smallest, and the coldest. Evergreen trees dominated the whole expanse. Seeker and Ithella had crossed the entire thing in a single day, and had even begun their descent into the next one by the time the sun set.

The next one had lacked trees. A particularly large mountain seemed to keep the whole valley in perpetual shadow, so only ambient light could reach it. The entire expanse was covered only in moss and grass, with a single large lake at its center, and had easily been the most unpleasant to cross. The lack of trees meant it was hideously windy, and the cold had made that wind sting. The two times they made camp while crossing it, they did so in the shadow of large boulders, and Seeker had cast grand spells to shield herself, Ithella, and the horses from the worst of it. It was at the first camp that Seeker realized the priestess was hewing the branch she’d picked up the day before into a staff.

She’d considered working on her own artisanal project, but quickly found she needed finer materials, and a more comfortable environment to achieve anything productive.

The third had been much like the first, but warmer, and with a different, darker species of trees dotting the landscape. It was a particularly dense forest, and got quite claustrophobic at times. They’d encountered a pack of wolves which harried them for a few miles, until Ithella struck them with magical lightning.

The fourth was barren, hot, and humid. Sulfur-rich geysers dotted the landscape, shooting foul-smelling hot water into the sky, which rained down on the land and coated everything in colorful stalagmites. All of that water gathered into a single, large river, which had over the millenia carved a way down into the fifth valley. When they made camp along this scalding-hot river, Ithella had placed her wooden staff in it, and anchored it for the night with a basic binding spell. The next morning, after Ithella got what little rest an elven priestess needs, the wood had become slightly malleable. Ithella used another series of spells to take advantage, and gleefully straightened out what little wonkiness remained in the weapon.

The fifth and final true valley of their trip was the most pleasant. Warmed by the hot river that ran through it, Seeker and Ithella saw a landscape that looked summer-like, despite it being late winter. Cherry and citrus trees extended far and wide, spreading radially out from several farm houses dotted throughout the valley. A particularly curious farm hound approached their carriage as they passed, and whined until Seeker relented, and tossed it a piece of dried meat from the pile Ithella had on hand for snacking.

Food had, for once, not been a problem. She had seized a lot of it from Gorance’s estate after all. Plenty for the priestess to regain her strength, and for her to feed to Lanri, as she was doing now that they were following the hot river out of the last valley, and into the reaches of northern Remere.

“C’mon, Dear,” she urged Lanri. She had released the spell keeping her asleep a few minutes ago, but rather than casting a spell to wake her, she had… magically encouraged the mortal to remain sedate, and not particularly curious. The exhaustion of healing certainly didn’t hurt Seeker’s plans.

“Hey…” Lanri purred with a sleepy grin.

“Hey, yourself, Dear. I have some breakfast for you.”

Lanri slowly blinked, and yawned. “Already? Didn’th you jus’ hand me dinner?” If there was one thing Seeker had learned from her time with Lanri, it’s that mortals lose their sense of time after a while. If left to sleep as they usually would, they were pretty adept at estimating how much time passed. But once that sleep turned into several days… they got confused.

“Not quite,” said Seeker, as she held up a tray of cheese and dried sausages. “Eat something.”

Lanri obediently reached out, and picked up a wedge of the cheese. “I’d really like s’me water,” she complained as she chewed it.

Seeker nodded. A week of hardtack and salted meats would get anyone parched. She put the plate down on the carriage’s floor, and helped Lanri to sit up straight before she handed her a water skin. Deep in the mortal’s mind, she could sense questions manifest, about what happened to Gorance, or why her leg felt weird, and get snuffed out by her spell. Lanri drank greedily, and once she emptied the skin, Seeker gently urged her to lie back down, and gave her another piece of cheese as she made a mental note to make her eat some fruit when they got to Cerene, lest she get scurvy.

She watched as the girl chewed on the cheese. She could tell her mind was struggling with the spell. She would never notice it, of course, that was part of what it did. But subconsciously, she would begin to grow uncomfortable that so many of her thoughts didn’t lead anywhere. Forcing her to focus on something would help, though. “Tell me about the cheese,” was what she settled on. She cringed slightly at how dumb that was.

“It’s pretty good…” Mumbled Lanri. “Very… salty. Very harsh.” A moment passed, and she offered a piece to Seeker. “Would you like some?”

Seeker shook her head. “No, thank you. I don’t need to eat. You do.”

Lanri snickered, faintly. “I know that. A single bite won’t be the diff– difference between… uhm… starving to death, and… not.”

“Right. Fine.” Seeker took the piece of cheese, and ate it. It tasted fine, she supposed. Like milk, salt, and acid. Perhaps a little closer to going bad than she would have knowingly fed Lanri, but far from rancid. Still, she twisted the plate to present the sausage, rather than the cheese.

“You look worried,” commented Lanri. Seeker’s attention snapped away from the tray of food, and up at the young woman, whose mix of concern and oblivious drowsiness was as amusing as it was endearing.

“I’m not, Dear,” she assured her. “You should go back to sleep, though. We’re almost there.”

Please don’t cast that fucking spell…

Seeker laughed at the thought. Even in this state, half asleep, Lanri had grown adept at projecting her thoughts to her. “Well, do you think you’ll fall asleep without it?” She teased as she pulled the blankets back up to Lanri’s neck. There was a telling silence from Lanri, and she smiled. “That’s what I thought,” she told the woman as she gathered her will. She wouldn’t need much of it to put Lanri to sleep, she knew. She might not even need to say the spell at all. Just wanting it might be enough.

I’m glad you’re here, Seeker.

But the spell had become something of a ritual, by now. A mystic underscore to mark the end of a conversation. A way to force the perpetually thoughtful Lanri to leave an issue behind for now, and take a break from it. The fact that it also let Seeker delay telling her about her leg was… secondary. “Dormez,” she intoned, lacing the words with her will that Lanri be asleep, and it almost instantly became so.

The poor thing didn’t even have time to add a last remark, or thought. As exhausted as Seeker’s magic and healing from her injuries had kept her, her light simply went out as soon as she heard the spell. She smiled, and ran a hand through her dark brown hair, then got up, and stepped out of the carriage. They had set up camp for the night just past the final ridge on their way to Cerene. Looking along the road, she could see a great many hills ahead and below, covered in dense groves of bamboo.

The foul-smelling, hot river they had been following for so many miles had cooled significantly by now, though the water was still warm to the touch. It snaked between the hills, and only a few miles away, met the city that was their destination.

“Did she eat?” Asked Ithella from atop the wagon. The question caught Seeker off guard. Ithella hadn’t shown any interest in Lanri before. Oh, she’d been happy to listen to every anecdote Seeker had, but she never once asked questions, and Seeker hadn’t wanted to violate Lanri’s privacy. “Your Grace?”

“Oh. Yes, she did,” Seeker said as she climbed onto the wagon beside the priestess. “Your staff is coming along wonderfully,” she noted, mostly to change the subject. After the last week of traveling, Ithella had carved an elaborate pattern of knots and angles into the two meter long rod of wood.

“Thank you,” said Ithella as she used the weapon to tap the two horses on their rumps. “Marchez, s’il te plaît.”

“You didn’t charge your words,” Seeker noted as the carriage began to move. They were definitely going downhill, so it was more a matter of keeping the speed low than of making the horses contribute.

“I didn’t need to,” Ithella said. “They figured out what the spell does. Now they just listen to the words.”

“You trained them? Already?”

“Oh, no. They were already trained, Your Grace. But over the last week, I have not for the life of me been able to figure out what language they respond to. Now they respond to ours.” Ithella spoke with a certain warmth, Seeker thought. She’d grown fond of the animals over the last week of travel.

“Would you like to keep one of them?” Asked Seeker. She suspected she and Lanri would need at least one of them in the coming weeks and months, if she couldn’t find the courage to take Lanri wherever they needed to go the fast way. But a priest needs a steed, and while these animals weren’t Astorian warhorses, they’d kept their calm in the face of the pack of wolves, and Ithella herself was obviously keen on them.

“I believe I would, Your Grace,” said Ithella, and she sounded like she was barely suppressing her glee.

As they traveled down the hill, each of them working the breaks for all they were worth, Seeker began to grow suspicious of the valley. Like most people, she knew the farther east one went, the fewer reasons there were to do so. But so close to a minor city, she would expect some activity, if only hunters scouring the bamboo hills for wild chickens, and carters ferrying food from those mythically lush farms they’d passed.

She saw evidence of neither, and it worried her. The river, loudly racing down the same hill they were descending, was far too rapid to navigate. It couldn’t be that these farmers were moving their fruit that way. They had to use the road they were currently on. But that obviously wasn’t the case, either. It was grassy and firm, not the heinous series of quagmires it would be if anyone regularly used it. Eventually she asked, “have you seen anyone since we left the Unminded Lands?”

“That bothers you too, does it?”

Seeker nodded. Ahead, she could see the city that was their destination. It was very much alive, she could tell. Chimneys bellowed smoke into the sky, and despite the distance, her eyesight was more than good enough to see people about, manning the walls or tending the few fields of crops that were immediately adjacent to the city. “They look like they’re under siege.”

“They’re not. There’s nothing laying a siege.” Ithella handed Seeker the reins, and pulled out the map. “What would even be besieging them? There’s nothing in five hundred kilometers that doesn’t swear fealty to the king of Remere.”

“That’s your domain,” said Seeker. She might be one of the more worldly angels, but politics weren’t even remotely part of her mandate. Though, she doubted they would be particularly relevant. The city itself looked like it was under siege, but as Ithella said, it didn’t seem to be. “A prowling monster, perhaps? That would dampen a city.”

That didn’t quite ring true to her, either. It was possible, she supposed, but it would have to be a vile monster indeed for a whole city’s worth of priests, soldiers, and magi to be unable to deal with. She decided to stop speculating. For now, they had far too little information for that. All they knew was that they hadn’t seen anyone on the road yet, and that that was abnormal.

________________

Four more hours of riding quickly passed. She had spent a lot of their trip recounting anecdotes from her centuries in Ishara’s service, and for this final stretch urged Ithella to return the favor. They reached the bottom of the valley only a few miles from the city walls, it was then that their goal disappeared behind the plentiful bamboo chutes.

The road they traveled was still devoid of others. Though grass no longer grew on it. Since entering the bamboo forest, the road had had metal plates buried vertically along both sides, and the surface was a stark white from what must be people hammering lime and chalk into it regularly for decades. Measures to keep the bamboo from sprouting and making it impossible to travel, Seeker guessed.

As Ithella’s story reached its climax, she suddenly cut herself off. “Do you hear that? And do you smell it?”

Seeker did, on both counts. Up ahead she could hear several people talking, and she smelled meat cooking. She couldn’t see anything yet, though. There were still a few bends in the road before they would get to within eyesight. She and Ithella instinctively quieted down, though the horses and carriage remained as loud as ever.

First, Seeker heard a man’s voice. “An then I says, I says to the cap’n, ‘you’re no good in ‘ere either, drinking like you do!’”

“You’re drunk now!” Came a woman’s voice, followed by the whole group of people bursting into laughter.

“Who fuckin’ cares? If the baron wants to invent spooky villains to scare e’ryone, that’s ‘is business. But it don’t mean I gots to take it seriously!”

“Hang on,” said the same woman. “D’you lot hear something?”

“Ah, piss!” swore a new voice, followed by a hissed command to hide something Seeker couldn’t quite make out. As the carriage turned the last bend, four guards stumbled into the road. Three of them carried glaives, and their presumed leader carried a thin, faintly curved sword. All four of them were wearing armor made of large leather panels and scales, with the occasional band of metal to give it structure.

“Halt!” Ordered the officer. “You’d best state your business.”

“We have business in the monastery,” said Seeker.

“An’ what business might that be?” The officer slurred his words heavily. He and his squad clearly hadn’t expected to see anyone.

“None of yours,” said Ithella. “Stand aside, gens d’armes.”

Seeker rolled her eyes as she watched the officer consider that. Had he any sense, he and his men would obey. Though, if the daytime drinking was any indication, such sense had long forsaken his unit. She looked past him. These four looked to be guarding a single building, quite a ways from the city. There was a relatively wide clearing of farmland ahead, surrounding the city on all sides, and providing lines of sight in all directions. More guards stood guard at the gates, she could see, and they looked far more sober than them.

“Excuse me?” Managed the guard officer, eventually. “I’ll ‘ave you know it’s my duty to intercept outlanders. It was mandated by Baron V–”

Seeker sighed as loudly as she could, and reveled in the fact that this was enough to derail the drunk man. “I don’t care,” she said. “Move, or we will move you.”

The woman of the squad stepped forward. She was a pale human with blonde hair, and looked sunburnt. “Oi! She’s threatening us, Sarge.” The rest of her squad laughed.

“Don’t kill anyone,” Seeker quietly told Ithella. She had a routine set of spells to clear exactly this kind of hurdle, but she could tell the warrior priestess was eager to deal with this.

Ithella grinned at her, and jumped down from the carriage’s driving bench. She took the staff she’d been honing for the last few days, and twirled it around in a lavish flourish. Seeker felt magical intent release as the elf invoked a spell, though she wasn’t sure which one. Not that it particularly mattered, she supposed. Watching a priest of Daray fight was guaranteed to be interesting, no matter what spells she used.

“The elf’s looking for a scrap!” scoffed the sergeant as Ithella quickly approached him. He clumsily drew his sword, and took a step closer.

Ithella stopped, and raised a single hand, gesturing him to stop. Seeker was genuinely surprised he obeyed. “My patron demands I declare myself to you. I am Ithella Val Gyr, Daughter of War.” Seeker watched in delight as the guard sergeant swallowed, and took a step back. To punctuate, Ithella pulled the iron medallion of Daray from her cloak, and held it out. “I would very much like to fight you, sergeant. But know that if you strike at me with a bladed weapon, I will take it as an attempt on my life and consider your lives forfeit. Now, as Her Grace said, move aside or be moved.”

The Touched never failed to entertain. But, these drunken fools might just be stupid enough to not only think they could beat Ithella, but that they would be rewarded for it by their lord. She decided not to risk it. If they were sober enough to think, they would be deathly afraid of Ithella, as they should be. Seeker gathered her intent, her will that these fucking idiots run away as they should, and intoned “Crainez la.”

The spell took hold almost immediately. Seeker could see it in their faces. They were drunk, and easily swayed. And now, they were terrified, too. The sergeant, along with one of his men, immediately turned and ran away. The woman, slightly more disciplined, stared at Ithella with wide eyes, but stayed put and shivered where she stood.

The last man simply fainted. He slumped onto the white road with a sigh, and Seeker barely suppressed a laugh. She saw Ithella appraise the man for a moment, then look up at the woman with interest in her eyes. It wasn’t that the guard wasn’t scared, of course she was. It was how she was reacting to that fear that Seeker assumed interested Ithella so.

The priestess stepped closer, over the fainted guard, and tapped the guard’s weapon-wielding hand with her staff. “You’re relieved of that, femme d’arme,” she purred.

“P–please don’t… Please don’t h–hurt–”

“Shhhh…” Cooed the priestess, who easily took the glaive, and tossed it aside. Seeker quirked an eyebrow. Surely Ithella wasn’t trying to do what she thought. Regardless, she had been disarmed, so, when Ithella said “you didn’t attack me. So I won’t, don’t worry,” Seeker released the spell. The difference was palpable. The guardswoman’s face softened a little as her body stopped pumping her full of adrenaline, and the intoxication came to the forefront once more.

She smiled slightly at the priestess. “I’m sorry we tried to–”

“Oh, I know you are.” Ithella was soothing, and blatant. Seeker would recognize that tone anywhere. It was the tone of a conqueror about to enjoy the spoils of war. The tone of trying to earn someone’s love, after demanding their fear. “Why don’t you come along with us..?”

“Mara.”

“Mara,” agreed Ithella. “A perfect name. Why don’t you come along with us, Mara? So you can help us explain ourselves to the guards at the gate, and show us to the monastery?”

Seeker grinned in approval. Ithella was doing a masterful job of it, and judging by the sunburnt woman’s faint smile, the alcohol in her system and ebb of adrenaline were making her very susceptible. “I… I don’t know. I’m supposed to–”

“Right,” interrupted Ithella. “You’re a good soldier. You follow orders. But… don’t the orders of a priest of war trump those of a mere sergeant? Don’t you think your captain and your lord would want to meet us?”

“Puh–probably, yeah…”

“Then… I want you to pick up your glaive, and escort us to the city walls, soldier,” purred Ithella. Mara nodded, and obediently retrieved her weapon as the priestess dragged the fainted guard out of the road, and laid him down close to the fire the squad had been huddled around before they arrived.

Seeker crossed her arms, and gave Ithella a deeply amused look as she climbed back onto the carriage. Taking a page from the priestess’ book, she said “marchez, mes amis,” to the horses, who began pulling them along, instinctively matching the pace Mara was setting in front of them.

Ithella looked at Seeker, and gave a coy shrug. “Seduction can be a powerful weapon, Your Grace,” she said with a grin. “It’s far more honorable to avoid an unfair fight than to invite it.”

Seeker laughed. “Oh, I agree. But that?! That was quite a display, Ithella Val Gyr.”

“I take it you approve, then?”

“Oh, it would be very difficult not to.”

________________

“Where the hell do you think you’re going?”

Seeker stared at the gatekeeper in surprise. Ithella’s plan to have Mara escort them into the city had seemed like such a good one, but now that they were at the gates, faced by six more angry soldiers, all but one of them with their glaives raised in threat at them, she was beginning to rethink it. “Guardsman Mara here is taking us to see your captain,” she said.

“Where’s the rest of your squad?” Asked the officer of this second unit of soldiers. Like the one on the other side of the field, he was identified by his carrying a sword, rather than a glaive. He was the picture of sobriety, unlike the sergeant they’d met a few minutes ago.

Mara stared at him like a stunned deer. She was obviously on intimate terms with her own sergeant, and this man wasn’t him. A pale and tall elf, he carried himself like the gods had personally declared him to be the very model of a modern duty officer. “I…”

“Her squad ran away from me,” said Ithella, who hopped down from the carriage’s bench, and took her staff with her. “And if you do not bid your men to lower their weapons at once,” she paused, and presented her medallion like the badge of office it was, “you’ll be jealous of them for having gotten the chance.”

The guard officer straightened himself, and the soldiers under his command all stood down. A far more appropriate reaction to a priestess of Daray than what the sergeant had managed. “My… apologies,” he said as he bowed.

“You are forgiven,” said Ithella. She was an entirely different person when speaking to anyone except herself, Seeker was beginning to realize. Ithella pointed at the large wooden gate ahead of them with her staff. “You will let us into the city, I hope.”

“I cannot.”

“Excuse me?” Asked Ithella with ice in her voice.

“My sire has forbidden all travel from the mountains. There are bandits about.”

“Then fucking deal with them, you cowards!” She snapped. “A few hungry ne’er-do-wells with spears shouldn’t worry a village militia, let alone a city’s guard.”

“With all due respect, there are fifty of them, and they have at least one war mage with them.”

Ithella sighed. “Do I strike you as being their vanguard, officer?”

“Well, no, but–”

“Then. Step. Aside. If you need help with these… bandits, you can petition me for help after I’ve had a chance to rest in your city.”

The guard was about to protest again, Seeker could see it in his eyes. She decided to speed things along. “Before you object again, officer, know that she is not asking. She is one of Daray’s Touched. She has decided to enter your city, and you have no power or right to stop her, regardless of what your lord may claim. Just open the gate.”

The guard officer ground his teeth, and grunted, “fine. Let them through, corporal.”

A moment later, there came the groaning of men and wood. Seeker presumed it was the guards on the other side of the gate removing a brace. The groaning quickly stopped, and was replaced by the creak of hinges as the gates swung open to give Seeker a clear view of what lay beyond them, and it was impressive.

A wide avenue greeted them, giving her an excellent view of the city. It was wide enough for three carriages, and was lined on either side by long rows of wooden tenements, none of them less than three stories tall. People went about, bustling past each other as they carried things to and from the plethora of businesses she could already see from outside. Ithella climbed back onto the carriage, and set the horses into motion, bidding them to follow Mara.

As the horses pulled them through the gates and into the windless shelter the tall stone walls provided, the smells of the city made themselves apparent. Seeker smelled livestock, bread, and ale all at once. Mara guided the horses onto the main avenue, presumably in the direction of the monastery, though Seeker couldn’t actually see if that was the case.

A group of giggling teenagers ran past the carriage, carrying a few small jugs. A nasty looking man wearing an apron was in pursuit, and yelled at them. “Oi, you ‘aven’t settled your tab!”

Seeker smiled at the sight. She loved cities. They were where mortals tended to be the most passionate about what they did. Love was common, fast, and furious. A little cheaper than she liked it to be, though, as exemplified by the handful of brothels they passed. She didn’t quite hate brothels, but it was close. Almost everyone who would work in one who was actually willing and suited to it were acolytes or priests of Ishara. The vast majority of the young men and women who worked in them did so out of desperation.

Attractive people stood outside of them, offering fake flirtations to anyone they imagined they would be able to stomach sharing a bed with for the night. Judging by the faintly oblivious grins on their faces, they had taken or been made to take something to lower their standards quite a lot.

One young man approached the carriage, and obviously forced his voice to be as soft as possible when he spoke. “Hey, red. Lookin’ to spend the night? Have a thoughtful ear to talk to?”

Seeker did her best not to scowl. “I’m taken, kid,” she managed, then intoned “vite,” to the horses, lacing the spell with her keen desire to be anywhere other than in front of a bunch of brothels.

“Suit yourself, toots,” he huffed as the horses sped up.

Getting to the monastery involved a few turns, and Seeker sighed in relief as she saw it. It was a large, U-shaped, white stone building, built up against the walls that made up the city’s fortified central keep, but with clear space around it on the other sides, marked out by a wrought-iron fence. Past the fence, in the center of the courtyard created by the U-shape, stood a tall, brilliant statue of Ishara herself. It was cast in that same rose gold Seeker’s sword was made of, and a pretty, young woman was polishing it.

Seeker shot Ithella a glance, and the priestess knowingly nodded as she said “arrêtez,” to the horses, who came to a stop. “You too, soldier. Stop,” came as a flirty afterthought. Mara halted as well, and almost immediately began to lean on her glaive with the complete lack of grace only a drunk and tired soldier can manage.

Seeker chuckled. “You have fun whipping her into shape,” she told Ithella as she climbed down from the carriage, and approached the fence. She watched for a while as the young woman she didn’t recognize kept working on polishing the statue. It was likely lightly enchanted, Seeker knew. A basic spell to fascinate people, and capture their attention for longer than it would otherwise.

The woman quietly hummed a tune as she worked, and Seeker listened to it for a while, trying to place it. A minute passed, then another. After the fifth, when Ithella and Mara had long disappeared from sight to go do Ishara and Daray only knew what, Seeker decided she wasn’t going to wait for this. She approached the gate, and tried it already strongly suspecting it would be locked.

When it didn’t open, she smacked it as hard she could with her bangle. The girl’s head snapped up from her work, and she scowled at Seeker. “Whatcha want?”

Seeker rolled her eyes. This girl definitely wasn’t a priestess, or even an acolyte. Just someone who cleans the place. “I want you to retrieve the abbot.” She tried to remember who that was. If her memory served her, the abbot would be a human man named Jean. Jean… something. “Jean, I believe.”

“Abbot Du Bois?”

“That’s him!” Seeker happily said, her memory jogged by the reminder. Ishara’s organized temples were vast, and while she could recognize Ishara’s Touched on sight, she was far from having memorized all of their names.

“He’s busy,” said the woman with a shrug, as she went back to cleaning the statue. Seeker made a note to have words with the abbot about letting someone like her touch a sanctified statue.

“You misunderstand me. I’m not asking to see him. I’m ordering him to see me.”

“Uh–huh,” said the cleaner with a shrug.

“I know him, you know,” Seeker said as she put a finger on the lock sealing the gate. “He’ll be less than pleased that you didn’t inform him I’m here.”

“I’m sure. And the baron will be upset, too.”

“At the risk of sounding cliché, do you know who I am?”

“Not the faintest.”

Seeker focused on the lock. She visualized the pins within, the immaculate, expensive mechanism of brass and bronze, and imagined them opening. She gathered her intent, her desire that it be so, and whispered “Ouvriez.”

A slight click as ragira flowed out into the world, and made her will reality. Seeker smiled. If she remembered abbot Du Bois correctly, that would send him running into the courtyard in record time. She pushed the gate with the one finger she’d placed on the lock, and it swung open with a heinous creak. The cleaner’s head snapped up, and her scowl had grown. “How the fuck–”

“I’ve summoned the abbot myself,” Seeker said, brushing her off.