Private Tales The Failure of Nobility

[Kristen Pirian]

Yet again, taken aback. And yet again, Edric was correct. He imparted with perfect clarity the stark truth of their situation. He had quite the gift. A way to cut through all of her preconceived notions, exposing her to her own foolish thoughts in so rapid a manner as to leave her stunned.

Gosh. Kristen felt as though Edric could speak so to her father and he, too, would helplessly be persuaded. Some men, Dreadlord or not, had a kind of magic inherent to their voice alone.

The Heart of Aktash. Their closest, their only, salvation. The Proctors had warned them against this place. The same Proctors who, if Edric's grim deduction of them was true, wanted the two of them to perish in the desert. Why, one could very well come to the conclusion that the warning against the Aktash Oasis was given deliberately as a sort of hedge to perhaps ensure their deaths, should all else fail. There was startling plausibility to it.

Kristen looked down. Reprimanded. Then back up to Edric. "I apologize. Now..." It pained her greatly to say it, "Now is not the time to follow rules and structure. Especially if..." This pained her even more, "...what you have said about the Proctors is true."

She glanced over to the dead scorpion. The desert? Or the Proctors?

Then she pulled off her other assembly of leg armor. Her gorget. Just her right pauldron, and the chainmail underneath, and all of that stifling weight could be gone off of her.

Kristen tried to lift her left arm again, and the pain was so acute that she let out a strained gasp and let it fall back to her side. She could move her arm, it wasn't broken, but, BY AIONUS, it would be torture to get her pauldron off in her condition.

Sat on the sand, she turned a bashful look up to Edric, eyes wide with quiet pleading, and asked, "Could...may I ask for your help?"

Edric

 

[Edric]

Edric grimaced, but didn't object as he squatted down besides Kristen and began to strip off the pauldron.

At the beginning of their flight into the desert he had considered leaving her behind. Surviving on his own had, at the time, seemed easier. Now he was forced to accept the reality that without Kristen he would probably end up just as dead. It wasn't like he could keep banking on those strange scorpions appearing, and even then we're it not for her he'd never have been able to kill it.

So he'd have to rely on teamwork.

Something Edric was not exactly known for. "I'll cast the spell."

The Initiate said as he pulled the pauldron free from Kristen's shoulder and unceremoniously dropped it into the sand. They wouldn't be needing it anymore, and carrying it back would only make it harder on the both of them. Not like she couldn't afford a new one anyway.

"I have more energy." To put it lightly. That creature's life coursed through him like a torrent. "But…"

This pained him. "I'm going to need your help putting it together."

He'd never been the best student, and if they only had one shot at this he most certainly didn't want to fuck it up.

 

[Kristen Pirian]

Pauldron off. She undid her belt and swept her tabard over her head and tossed it aside. Then came her big coat of mail. Kristen struggled to get out of it, fiercely biting her lip whenever she had to maneuver her left arm, but soon she was shed of this last piece of metal armor.

And OH! OH BY AIONUS! It felt as though she could finally breathe again. The difference was immediate in how much cooler she felt, how much lighter she felt! Her arming garments were, as she had feared, ghastly to look at, dingy and dirty and stained with splotches of sweat, but she found that she could not care less about her unsightly, ragamuffin appearance. There would be a more proper time to worry about it once they were safely out of this desert.

She let her head roll back on her shoulders, her face skyward, eyes closed, just breathing and taking in how much better it felt to be shed of her armor. And she said, "Thank you, Edric. You are a gentleman."

The last part...it sort of came out on its own. She was mildly anxious, not sure how he'd take it, but she didn't call further attention to it.

"The spell. Yes, the spell."

Kristen got up. Looked over her notes once more. Then she used her mace and drew in the sand a circle, taking several tries to get it as perfect as possible. She looked up to the sun, tried to remember where the Guiding Star had been in the brilliant night sky, and made in the sand circle notches to indicate the cardinal directions. She extracted from her book that picture from the briefing, the one of the Heart of Aktash, for Edric to focus on.

"We will have to sacrifice your water for the source. All of it, to have the best chance," Kristen said. Her lips twitched with evident worry. "If this does not work..."

She gave her head a small shake. "But we have to try! Edric, for what worth you may find in it, I...I believe in you."

He was her senior in experience and ability. A fearsome warrior, and surely graduation would be but a formality for him. Though he was frightening to be around, his prowess formidable and demeanor intense, Kristen, if she were made to admit it, looked up to him.

Edric

 

[Edric]

"I don't think anyone would call me a gentleman." Edric rebuffed, though his tone was much less harsh than one might have expected. His head shook, and then he silently watched as Kristen began to prepare the spell.

The sketch of the Oasis was plucked from her fingers, and her studied it with a slight frown.

It wasn't unique...not really, from what he could see. He wondered briefly if it would be enough, or if this would just be another end. A frown touched his lips, and he tried not to voice that concern as Kristen quietly pleaded with the air.

Strangely enough, his thoughts reflected her own. "We'll figure it out if it doesn't..."

Edric did not sound so sure himself, but he tried not to think of whatever else could happen. His eyes closed for a moment, and he pulled the water skin from his belt. Even if this worked, they might find themselves without anything to drink for days...

It was a gamble no matter what.

"Alright." He stepped forward, plucking free the water skin and pouring it into a small well.

Then he said the incantation. His words were quick, but not rushed. There was a slight spark, and then he felt the snap of some of his life pulled away as the spell began to work. Eyes sealed shut, and he tried to focus on the oasis. At first nothing happened, and then an odd burning sensation rushed over his palm.

Fingers pulled open almost immediately, and there within his skin sat a compass. It pointed to the left, shifting slightly just as Edric moved. "Well shit..."

Edric exclaimed, half surprised it had all worked.

 

[Kristen Pirian]

Kristen stood, patting the sand off from the arming garments. She watched with a half-closed fist covering her mouth, brow narrowed in worry. She was as diligent as she could be with her notes, but had she written down everything important concerning the divination spell? There was nothing to be done about it now. All she could do was watch.

Edric spoke the incantation. Not knowing what precisely the outcome would look like, Kristen's eyes danced all over him, the circle, everywhere. Looking for something clearly different.

Did it...? Nothing...seemed to...?

Edric opened his hand. Therein the magical compass, faint and ethereal, pointing the way. She couldn't believe it until Edric spoke, and then it finally registered.

"It worked! It worked!" Kristen said, crying out with glee, jumping into the air and pumping a fist skyward in her excitement.

What a magnificent deliverance from their ghastly circumstances! Now they actually had a clear direction in which to go, with the promise of hope at the end of their journey.

Kristen lunged forward and threw her functional arm around Edric, carried away in the spirit of celebration. Her joyous laughter abruptly stopped. She realized what she was doing. She pulled back quickly, snapping her right arm down to her side. Then quickly up to brush a lock of hair from her face and back down to her side again.

"S-So...we ought to get moving then. Ha, ha...ha."

Oh she hoped Edric didn't think she was trying to attack him. As silly a thought as it was.

Edric

 

[Edric]

The moment Kristen latched onto him like an oversized tick Edric seemed to utterly freeze in place. His entire body seemed to go rigid, as if he was a deer that had somehow been trapped in a ray of torchlight. He seemed to wait for some sort of attack, as though she were about to try to crush him.

When nothing came and she pushed herself away Edric seemed to almost immediately relax.

A cough echoed from his throat. "Yes."

There was a level of awkwardness to his voice, mostly because he didn't exactly know what to do now. Hugs...physical contact of any sort aside from the visits to the brothels weren't exactly something he was used to.

Eventually he cleared his throat.

"We should..." He held up his hand, showing Kristen the compass. "Go."

No use in sticking around here waiting for another scorpion.

Without waiting for Kristen to respond, Edric reached down and scooped up his waterskin. He hooked it back onto his belt, and then began to walk in the direction of the compass. Wondering what sort of life Kristen had lived where 'hugs' were normal.

 

[Kristen Pirian]

The day marched on. The shadows cast by the highest dunes turned slowly, growing longer with the slow descent of the sun. There came that brilliant redness in the west as the evening began to settle in.

Still they had more ground to cover. Ground. Augh. Calling it ground seemed far too charitable. Shed of her armor, Kristen felt light as a feather, but the sand still clutched at her boots, each step earned with more effort expended than the rich soils of their homeland. It reminded Kristen of when she was younger and was allowed to walk through a tilled field, the looseness of the soil then much like the sand here in Amol-Kalit.

Walking in silence for so long was...unbearably uncomfortable. How could Edric stand it?

The urge to conversate got the better of her. "Do you think the Proctors were lying? About the Heart of Aktash?"

She watched her long shadow move as she spoke, hers trailing just behind Edric's own.

Edric

 

[Edric]

The silence was absolutely blissful.

There was something about the calm quiet that quite settled his nerves. The desert helped, in an odd sort of way. He could not have said why, but it felt oddly like ho-

Kristen talked.

Her voice was like the shattering of a window, or the running of nails over a chalkboard. He almost flinched as she asked a question, the quiet meditation that had been running through his head broken in a single syllable.

Not that he could really blame her for it.

Edric knew what he had said, what he had thrown at her had likely shattered some deep reality that had been instilled within her. Kristen hadn't grown up in the Academy, she'd been pampered, spoiled for most of her life. The reality they'd lived in was so different they were hardly the same species. "Honestly?"

He said finally.

"I don't know." Edric rolled his shoulders. "I'm not exactly the best student, Kristen."

A truth most already knew. "It's not too far-fetched that a people would want to keep their sacred oasis safe though."

That at least, he could easily believe.

 

[Kristen Pirian]

Speculation. They just couldn't be sure, could they? About the murderous intent or lack thereof from the Proctors, and as a corollary about the truthfulness of the dangers of the oasis she and Edric were headed towards. Yet while the first might perhaps remain in possible doubt longer, the second would be discovered once they found the Heart of Aktash.

Kristen nodded grimly to Edric's conclusion. The desert-dwellers might not specifically mean to kill them, but could well forbid them from entering the oasis and partaking of the waters. Which itself was a death sentence, one simply less direct.

Still, she was stuck on the idea of the Proctors wanting her dead. She had been ruminating about it all the while of their oasis-bound trek. The Proctors. It could be one, it could be several, it could be near all of them (Evangeline she could exclude, and there wasn't a word from Edric that could convince her otherwise).

"I wish that I wasn't a Pirian," she admitted as they walked. "Right now, at least. I suspect that is what has garnered the potential ire of the Proctors. If I were of the lower strata, if I were nobody...I..."

In her mind was formed an apologetic manner of statement, the same sentiment she'd felt before and not expressed earlier: I wouldn't have gotten you into this. Yet again, she failed to say it.

Because another truth sprang forth first.

"I would have been at the Academy when I was far younger."

Kristen seemed to have surprised herself by saying it aloud. But it was the truth. She'd been sheltered away from the brutality of the Academy on account of her aristocratic birthright.

Edric

 

[Edric]

"Probably." Edric said in agreement to both of her statements.

He had never been one to sugar coat...well anything at all. There had never been a reason to. The truth only made one stronger, a fact which Proctor Renou had practically beaten into him from day one at the Academy. Nothing would change his mind on that.

Especially since he wholeheartedly agreed that Kristen would be much more useful if she'd been at the Academy from an earlier age.

That or she would be broken like Chas. "But."

He couldn't believe he was saying this.

"Neither of those things are your fault." A part of his soul seemed to scream as he spoke those words, but he knew them to be true. Kristen hadn't chosen to be kept away from where she belonged, nor had she chosen to be a Pirian. "Some things are just beyond our control."

A lesson he'd learned to survive. "Whether it's being put into a box."

He shivered, remembering the feel of that cold steel surrounding him. "Or thrown into a desert."

Lips thinned.

"All you can do is keep going." Over every obstacle. Over every person that stood in the way.

 

[Kristen Pirian]

Edric was by far the most terrifying initiate of the class. To Kristen, this was true even when considering Noel, Beatrix, Ignatius, Jaxan, Bull, and Charon. She never willingly approached him, and she never wanted to. She balked hard when she was informed who she would be accompanying on this mission, and earned a hard smack on the back of the head from Proctor Magomo for it. Even in the midst of the disastrous outcome of their mission, Kristen was more terrified of Edric than anything else.

So it was strange that, for the briefest of moments, she wasn't terrified of him. With quiet admiration she regarded him, open eyes and raised brows and lips parted. What he'd said was as close as she would get to a modicum of recognition, and in that she was content. Happy to have heard him say it.

And what he said last touched on something that had been bothering her for quite some time. Longer than she truly knew.

"I do not wish to always be like this," she said quietly. "The noble little princess."

Her utter failure at Vel Acan. Tormenting her in her mind's eye.

"And that is something within my power to change."

She swallowed. Nervous.

"I-If I am to be a Dreadlord," she fought against that nervous streak, steadied herself, "then I should become a Dreadlord. For all that it entails."

Edric

 

[Edric]

Edric continued to walk, listening to Kristen while keeping an eye on the desert around them. The compass continued to point their way forward, but as she finished speaking Edric came to a stop.

His feet kicked a little bit of sand, a frown touching his face for a brief moment. "I don't even know what that means anymore."

It was a fact that he had not spoken out loud, even in his talks with Noel or Eleanor. The subject was a sore one for all of them. The Revolution had changed so much, some for the better, some for the worst, but he still didn't know what any of it meant.

Not for him. Not for his fucked up little family.

"There's some people that think Dreadlords can't even be made anymore." Edric said with a slight frown, not being sure if he was one of them.

"Before the Republic..." He frowned, looking at Kristen. "Before you got there. They used to beat us. Lock us in cages. Force us to..."

Edric trailed off, head shaking. "I don't know what makes a Dreadlord, Kristen."

He paused for a moment.

"So maybe before becoming one." Edric suggested. "You should figure out what it means."

The words were not meant to be cruel, not in the least. It was an introspection, a thought that had been slowly trickling in his mind for near a year.

 

[Kristen Pirian]

Kristen stopped when Edric stopped. And when he spoke, a silent gasp overcame her. To hear Edric, Edric, of all people say such a thing was near incomprehensible. Perhaps the sheer bewildering nature of it could only have been surpassed if spoken by Noel. Still. Edric, not knowing what it meant to be a Dreadlord? Sooner would the sun bury itself in the sand than he would say those words--so Kristen had thought.

But he explained himself. Succinctly, and well.

The Revolution. Of course. Entrenched firmly within Kristen's mind was the picturesque image of a model Dreadlord of old, the tough and formidable battlemages who protected Vel Anir by keeping at bay the terrors of the world with their fearsome magical might. The Anirian Guard was world renowned as the finest military upon Arethil, and so was it also said (by her family and fellow Anirians at least) that the Dreadlords were the finest mages in the known world and stood lofty in this honor without compare. She had seen--

(Selene)

--it herself and had been awed by what she witnessed. That was what thought it meant to be a Dreadlord.

How would the Revolution change that?

(how could it POSSIBLY change that?)

"S-Surely you must have some notion," Kristen said. This with a tiny, curious, note of urgency. "You have trained for it tenfold more years than I."

She looked askew for a moment, trying to think of a way to word what she meant to ask.

"If you were made to state what it means to be a Dreadlord, and you were disallowed from simply saying I don't know, what...would you say?"

And quickly, as if worried he would need more convincing, she added, "If you will tell me, I will tell you!"

Edric

 

[Edric]

Edric stopped, staring at Kristen for a few seconds.

It was clear that she had some sort of notion in her head, a belief. He wondered where that had come from. The odd picture that was held in her mind so firmly. When he stared into her eyes he could almost see an echo of it.

For some reason, he found himself feeling envy. He had never felt such a strong emotion, only once and...his head shook. "Kristen."

His voice was strong, firm.

He didn't want to hurt her, oddly enough. He wasn't trying to cut her down or destroy some sort of dream that she'd held all her life. Edric was harsh, honest, even mean by some standards. Yet he never did it to be cruel. Never did it just for the sake of causing pain. He wasn't like Liliana and her apes.

"From my first day at the Academy I was beaten." Edric's voice trembled a bit. "They tortured me. Tore off my fingernails. Gouged out my eyes. Put me in a box."

He tried to steady his voice, keep it from cracking. "One time they even tried to drown me."

It had all been meant to push his magic. To see just how strong his abilities were. To help him become...the best version of what he could be. That was what they had always said. What they'd whispered to him as he lay dying, stealing life from helpless prisoners.

"They turned me into a killer." He said softly. "A murderer. The best that could be."

It wasn't ego. It wasn't narcissism. It was simply the truth. "That's what a Dreadlord is to me. That's what it was to me."

Edric paused for a moment, letting the words sink in.

"Now?" He shrugged. "Now I don't know."

Slowly the Initiate glanced around. "Now there's only one reason I'm going back, and it's no-"

He cut himself off. She didn't need to know that.

 

[Kristen Pirian]

Kristen went rigid when Edric spoke her name in such a tone. Almost assumed the position of attention, as if he were a Proctor. All at once that terror of simply being near him was summoned once again, and she was reminded heartily of it.

Then she thought her ears must be deceiving her. Some falsehood spawned of the fatigue from endlessly trekking through the desert. Edric's voice didn't tremble. It never trembled.

The content of what he was sharing was more detailed, more personal, than what Noel had told her of the old Academy. There another layer of fear was added.

They turned me into a killer. A murderer. The best that could be.

At first Kristen's thoughts snapped to Evangeline. What little she actually knew of her time in the Academy. Then they came right around to herself. A killer, a murderer. It was implied everywhere in the Academy, it was the very trade of a soldier--Guardsman and Dreadlord alike--and yet Kristen, through some powerful compartmentalization of thought, simply refused to engage with it. She'd not reconciled her training with what she would be expected to do with her martial and magical ability--not for herself. All she had allowed herself to see was the sparring, just that, that was always to her how combat would end. With both parties eventually rising to their feet.

Even now, behind her wide eyes, she refused to believe that she would be made to kill. The disconnect between acquisition and use of power and the act of killing remained.

She didn't press him when he cut himself short. Not now. Not with that renewed iciness of dread in her veins. Maybe not ever.

But she would stay true to her word. She would tell him what being a Dreadlord meant to her. It came down to idolization. Idolization which made her relent to her family's insistence and which kept her from quitting the Academy. And she idolized Evangeline. But...there was one she idolized more.

"It is terrible," Kristen said, her voice tiny, barely peaking above a whisper, "what they have done to you."

Another nervous swallow.

"But...they made you the best. You said so yourself. And maybe one day..."

(the ship)

"...you can take that power they've fostered in you..."

(crashing onto the beach)

"...turn that evil on its head..."

(the fires incinerating the Cerak warriors)

"...and you can do..."

(and there she stood)

"...some true good."

Kristen looked to the dying light of the day. The encroaching dark from the east swallowing it up.

"That is what I hope to do."

Edric

 

[Edric]

Edric listened to Kristen, his face impassive.

It was an insight into how her mind worked, how that optimism and hope hadn't yet been beaten out of her. Anyone else might have been impressed, might even have embraced the girls point of view.

He wasn't one of those people. A decade of torture, of beatings, of abandonment had shaped him into a person. One conversation would not. Could not change that. Though Edric knew that wasn't what Kristen was trying to do. She was just sharing why she herself was doing this, what she believed.

In a way he could respect that, even if he didn't believe in it.

"Good luck." Edric countered, his shoulder rolling a shrug.

What else was there to say? Sure there was a Dreamworld where he might have believed in Kristen's quest, some reality where he regarded and took on her philosophy. But it wasn't this one. Not now and certainly not here.

Slowly he turned away from Kristen, glancing put into the desert.

"We should find shelter." In his mind the topic was now done with. None of what they'd talked about would matter if they died out here. "It's going to get cold."

 

[Kristen Pirian]

Good luck. Kristen wanted to take it as encouragement. Desperately wanted to. But, like a fallen log barring passage down a road, doubt prohibited her. What was left was a sobering emptiness. One that would fill back up again with optimism in time (sunshine is never more than a day away), but for now there was just that sunken pit in her chest. Did Zana ever feel such a way? Did she ever have doubts about the Revolution?

Kristen put it aside. Practical matters were calling. It was becoming dark.

She looked over the Great Dune Sea. Let out a sigh, a touch despondent. Not only were they terribly ill-equipped, but the environment itself offered next to nothing to be of aid. Just endless sand, it seemed.

"It's hard to believe that this place and our homeland exist in the same world," she said. And then she thought of the previous nights, the rough going of simply coming to rest in the sand, devoid of any and all comforts. "Where are we possibly--?"

She stopped. Squinted. Took a hesitant step forward and peered with head forward on her shoulders. She raised a tentative hand, pointing.

There was something. A shape. Not far, on the crest of the next dune over. A tiny thing. A creature.

"Is that...that looks like a fox," Kristen said, her voice hushed, as if to speak too loud would alert the creature to their presence--if it hadn't already looked their way, hard to tell.

A sudden jolt of subdued excitement, glancing to Edric. "W-w-what if it has a den? Somewhere? Maybe?"

Edric

 

[Edric]

Edric closed his eyes, tried to focus.

He knew that out here his eyes were hardly the best sense to rely upon. Instead he tried to focus on that other sense, the thing that he had first learned about in the fight with Henk. It was a ripple, a small pulse in the ether of the universe itself.

Life.

Edric could feel the pinprick of that strange creature that Kristen had mentioned, that little fox. It bound over the sands, rushed through the dunes and ran away from it's den faster than he would have thought possible.

Left behind was nothing. No signs of life, no children. Slowly his bright blue eyes once again fell open, gaze flickering over towards Kristen. "I think...you're right."

The Initiate said slowly, stepping towards the direction the creature had come from.

"It's better than burying ourselves in the sand." Edric joked, trying to create at least a little bit of humor.

 

[Kristen Pirian]

A small bark of a laugh from Kristen. "Augh...am I mad to say that I would rather fight ten of those giant scorpions than to spend another night being chafed to death?"

Her next thought involved a lot of shoulds. Should they survive this ordeal, and should she graduate from the Academy, and should she ever learn who among the Proctors was (or were) responsible for this, then Kristen had a mind to bring all the weight of House Pirian down upon them in whatever punishment was slightly above appropriate. Strangely, not for the attempt on her life--though that was not an insignificant part--but for the more pedestrian charge of indirectly subjecting her to sleep so uncomfortably in that sand. It made little rational sense, given the other hardships she'd been subjected to (not to mention all the ones she hadn't been subjected to, but Edric had). Yet the desire for this petty vengeance burned brightest.

Kristen stepped off with Edric, and together, as they had done in their endless repetition over the past few days, ascended the dune. The desert fox had scampered off, disappearing in the increasing murkiness as full night was settling in.

Kristen held a hand to her brow. There was no sun from which to shield her eyes, yet the motion, in this desert, had quickly become a reflex when looking out far.

Something dark. Darker than the surrounding sand. In the distance.

"There," Kristen said. "Do you see that? An outcropping of rock, maybe?"

The joking mood infected her too. "Or a bundle of ten scorpions to make me eat my words."

Edric

 

[Edric]

Edric glanced in the direction Kristen pointed in, his gaze sweeping towards the outcropping in the distance. A slight frown touched his lips as she mentioned the scorpions. It was a joke, he knew, but after a day in the sun and the conversation they had he was hardly in the mood for humor.

In a way he found himself impressed that Kristen somehow kept her chipper attitude. Like she'd built up some sort of resistance to misery through the years. "Not Scorpions."

Edric commented with a frown.

"There's nothing alive over there." He hadn't been able to sense the monster before it attacked them, but that was because he hadn't known where to look. "At least I think…"

He glanced at Kristen, then shrugged before setting off again. As he walked his eyes glanced down at his palm, noting that the outcrop was off the path the compass wanted them to go. He frowned, but knew it was better to have some shelter.

Eventually the two Initiates managed to reach the dark stone. It turned out to be a cliff that seemed to have fallen in on itself, a few bits of brush having long ago taken root and died. "We can make a fire."

Edric pointed out as he began to pluck some of the brambles from the ground.

"Find us a cavern big enough for the two of us." That along with the fire should keep them warm enough.

 

[Kristen Pirian]

It took a long moment before Kristen finally got it, making the connection between Edric's magic and how he could be so sure that nothing was, indeed, alive over there. Much like every other initiate who faced him in the sparring arena, she had been focused solely on his ability to drain the very life essence out of his foes. He'd done the very same to the giant scorpion once its resistant carapace was pierced. Now though, she realized the utility his magic brought. He could, to some degree, sense the presence of life.

She let out a sigh of relief. "That is good to know."

At least I think...

Kristen's tongue clicked against her teeth. She concluded, "That is still good to know."

She followed after him and together they reached the earthen rock protruding from the otherwise unbroken sea of sand. This was a good sign, at least. They'd walked far enough that the landscape was slowly changing. They'd made some level of progress, and weren't just trudging through the desert to a ghastly and inevitable death by thirst or starvation. There was even some old scrub brush tucked away in these walls of stone!

"Right," Kristen said. "There must be something suitable."

She went looking, feeling her way along the smooth, eroded rock face with her hand and by the meager reflections of starlight. Hello, she found the desert fox's den. But, naturally, while it was suitable for a fox it was hardly so for two Dreadlord initiates, especially ones of their size. She kept searching.

Deeper in among the rocks, where the ground descended and a ravine was formed, Kristen found something. An arching stone entrance, where perhaps thousands of years ago a strong underground river had flowed. She had to duck her head to enter, but the channel was wide enough to comfortably accommodate the two of them. The tunnel descended further into blackness, but...what could possibly be down that way? More desert foxes? This was the best they had.

She stepped back out from the river tunnel. Waved her hand. Called up, "Edric! There's something down here!"

Edric

 

[Edric]

Edric heard Kristen call out, his arms filled with bundles of brambles and a few other things that he thought might burn well. It wouldn't make for the best fire, but at least they would have a little warmth in the cold desert night.

If they could even get it going.

Swiftly he made his way over the rocks and down the ridge that he'd seen Kristen go over. It took him only a few minutes to find the strange stone archway, likely carved by nature itself. He laid most of his found wood out by the entrance of the cavern.

There was no guessing what sort of ventilation they would have.

Survival was one of the things that they stressed at the Academy. Edric had lost count of how many times he had been thrown into the Falwood or near the Cortosi isles and simply been told to survive or make it back to the Academy.

Oddly enough, those had been almost pleasant trips. "This will do."

He said with a frown, noting that the cavern seemed to run further into the cliffside.

"As long as we're careful." There was no need to explore what was back there, even though he couldn't help but wonder too.

 

[Kristen Pirian]

Once Edric arrived, Kristen sat down by the cave's entrance, her back to the stone wall. Her knees she tucked close to her chin, arms draped around her legs. In the stillness her body took the opportunity, via the prolonged rumbling of her stomach, to remind her that she had not eaten since the mission turned upside-down. In one respect this was good: once the hunger pains went away, that meant starvation was truly beginning. This grim detail had been highlighted in one of the many survival classes meant to prepare her for situations just like this.

Kristen glanced down toward the blackness of the descending cavern. "I'm hoping that if anything should be taking shelter there, it is more of those desert foxes."

She would offer an extra prayer to Aionus and to Astra herself tonight. Surely she and Edric had suffered enough, and could by the Holy Sentinel's grace enjoy one night of relatively relaxing rest.

The temperature was dropping. How quickly the scorching heat of the day evacuated the desert land! Days of summer, nights of winter. At least all of the sweat on her arming garments had evaporated.

She looked to Edric, her stammering only half caused by nervousness this time. "W-Would you like some help starting the fire?"

Edric

 

[Edric]

Edric couldn't help but agree. After that scorpion had all but burst out of the sand he couldn't help but have his hackles up. This place was dangerous, and not just because of the sand and sun. He hoped nothing would come out of that darkness, but he'd most certainly would be prepared for it.

A frown pulled at his lips for a brief moment as he peered into the dark, then turned on his heel to start the fire. The brambles and branches were neatly organized, not into a pile but a perfect camp stove arrangement.

They had no food to cook, but it was how he'd been taught.

Seconds later Kristen spoke up and he half turned. "Can you start it?"

He had absolutely no idea what the limits of Kristen's magic were. All he knew was that she could make those chains, and she usually wore armor. Everything else was a mystery to him. A fault of his own ego, he'd never paid much attention to the...lesser classmates.

Especially those who had popped up only a year ago.

 

[Kristen Pirian]

"I have an i-idea," Kristen said. Both the cold and the nervousness born of uncertainty shaking her voice.

She stood up from her seat against the wall and stepped outside of the cavern's arching entrance. "My Conjurations are not completely ephemeral. They can affect the world around them, and these effects should remains...even after c-conjuration itself has departed."

Kristen unhooked her book of verses from her belt. Opened it up and held it with both hands, the words and images therein centering her mind into the proper reverential frame. Unlike other spells from other disciplines, it wasn't about strict adherence to a specific set of words and motions. The words and motions were a guide, placing one's mind into said devout frame, sealing one's magic into a beseeching missive sent to the Heavens.

She recited, "Holy Sentinel, Guardian of Time, upon You I call, lend to me and those who might gaze upon your work a reminder, that none may escape the Thread of Mortality."

An Ashen Crucifix slammed down into the ground from above, a small shower of sand sprinkling Kristen's boots in the aftermath. The Crucifix stood a towering nine feet tall, its wooden edges smoldering in a malignant flame. Kristen, despite her recited verse, seemed unaffected by the magical terror emanating from her summon. She turned and collected one of the thinner dry shrub branches from the pile Edric had made. To the smoldering edge of the Crucifix she held it. Held it for a long moment.

"Come on, come on, come on..." she whispered to herself.

Then, at last, a tiny flickering. A flame! The shrub branch had caught fire! Kristen turned, a giddy grin on her countenance. She cradled the burgeoning flame delicately, as if it were an infant, and slowly came back to the cookfire arrangement Edric had made. She touched the small flame at the end of the branch she held to the pile, nursing it to life with a few breaths, and soon the campfire was growing. The Crucifix outside collapsed to nothing, dissipating.

"I've never lit anything on fire with my Conjurations before," she admitted, sounding quietly proud of herself.

Edric