Private Tales For the brave

[Ivan Skender]

Falwood

“Fuck.” - He cursed under his breath, as he finally made it over the crest of that ridge, only to find yet more bloody trees.

While in the Falwood this - in and of itself - was not surprising, Ivan had thoroughly been expecting to see some signs of civilization. He'd been fairly sure they were starting to get close to Vel Cirak and so houses, tilled fields, or even smoke columns from chimneys, indicating some signs of life, should have started appearing. Instead he’d gotten trees; even more trees.

Rather concerningly, this meant that either Vel Cirak was even further away or, more likely, that they were well and truly lost.

They…

That brought his mind back to reality. A few steps away, Odessa Urahil was trailing behind him. He offered her his hand, so as to hoist her over onto the crest.
​

- "I don't know where we are." - He admitted, as he helped her up. - "We should've been approaching Cirak, but…" - He motioned frustratingly to the valley below. - “No signs of life anywhere.” -

While he’d tried his best to keep them on track, the truth was that the two of them had been wandering ever since losing their guide about a week ago. It had been a rather conspicuous situation, when they’d become separated. Ivan remembered trailing the man - he wouldn’t have been more than a couple of metres ahead - through a thick mist, but then at some point he’d stopped hearing the pathfinder's footsteps, and then… well, they’d never seen the man again. While the two initiates had made some regular stops on the path that had been agreed upon over the next few days, the guide had never shown up again.

At the risk of becoming lost in the wilderness, they had turned back to return to Vel Cirak… or at least they thought they had. The constantly dark, overcast sky made navigation difficult, as did the thick foliage wherever they went, and so, as that forested valley unfurled in front of him, Ivan came to the realisation that they may not have been heading in the right direction after all.​

 

[Odessa]

Another day, another mission. Odessa sighed, paying more attention to the dirt beneath her boots than the man beside her as they trudged through the dense Falwood. A friend of her brothers, Ivan, muttered something but again she paid him no mind.

Truly, Odessa couldn’t care less if they were close to their destination or lost without a possibility of being found. She’d been trapped within the cold dark walls of the academy for too long now. The issue was only partly her fault. She had refused to go on another mission with Leander. All he did was try to rizz up any other female initiate and she wasn’t sure which part was worse: the cringe-inducing pick-up lines or the cold, hard rejections he received. Lumen, Aelita, Ysobel, Natasha…The three blondes seemed to hate his guts and the other one was plain weird.

As if Odessa, the human pin cushion had any room to call other people weird.

I don’t know where we are…..

“I know.” She hopped from one stray patch of cobblestone in an otherwise overgrown jungle to the next, her arms spread to maintain balance and when she finally caught up she accepted his assistance over the crest. “It took you far too long to admit it.”

She scanned the valley. Ivan was correct, there were absolutely no signs of life that Odessa could sense. They were completely and utterly lost. Still better than missions with her brother.

“We can try again. Another direction. See if that gets us anywhere. Or…” She didn’t finish speaking before she continued to trek through the grass. Ivan got them lost, so Odessa was going to get them un-lost.

Ivan Skender

 

[Ivan Skender]

He raised his brow at his partner.

- "Uhh, you're going the wrong way." - He said, bemusedly, as Odessa suddenly trailed off ahead of him. - "That way is East." - Or at least he thought it was East. - "It leads deeper into the woods." -

He took a step forward from where he had been standing, inching closer to the edge of the ridge so as to catch a better glimpse at the valley that unfurled in front of them. He sighed. If he'd had Leander Urahil with him, he would have been far less concerned, since, even if they hadn't found their way out of the woods, they could have easily dispatched whatever horrors the Falwood threw at them. With Odessa however, well... he just didn't know for certain.

Though they'd grown up at the same place, and had shared on pretty much the same hardships, Odessa Urahil was little more than an acquaintance to him. They'd known of each-other's existence for years and yet, they'd barely spoken more than a handful of words to one another every time they met.

For his part, Ivan mostly hang out with her brother, Leander, with whom - in his mind, at least - Odessa did not seem to have the closest of relationships with. Though he had always found Odessa to be pretty, her cold demeanour, as well as her seemingly ever-present annoyance had staved off any potential plans he might have had to make a move. Well, that and the fact Ivan did not want to antagonize her brother for such a trivial concern... not for a stranger anyways.

He sighed again as his partner continued to trek through the grass, scoffing at the prospect that Odessa did not seem to be easily dissuaded.

"She's got the Urahil temper alright."

- "Do you even know where you're going?" - From the confident tone in which she'd spoken earlier one could be forgiven for thinking as much, though the words in and of themselves did not raise such a sunny picture.​