Legend of Ransera

Glade 2, 123

It had been raining nonstop since nightfall the day prior. This was not the nice gentle spring rains of the northern continent. It wasn't even the seemingly neverending moderate streams of North Ecith. No, this rain was heavy, hard, tossed and tumbled by turbulent winds. This was more akin to the monsoons that very few ever experienced, with the drops pelting skin and sand harshly, coming down straight, diagonally and sideways.

It began the moment the stars had come out, and Yeva had faded away, back into the Astral Sea. It began when the first tears of Norani fell to the sand, finding her arms empty, realizing they had been so close and yet were still so far away. Norani herself was still sitting, her knees to her chest, down on the beach as the waves crashed around her. Despite many of the waves being a few meters high and crashing down violently, none seemed to strike the Elementalist. Even though the winds tugged at hair and clothing, blew wet sand into every crevice and orifice they could find, the Orkhan was sitting there, a picture of sad serenity, the elements responding to her but not toward her. Her long hair was wet, dark, clinging to her back as it cascaded down over her naked form and sprawled out in the sand behind her. Her tusks and eyes sparkled every time lightning overhead cracked.

She was just watching the turbulent ocean, trying to get a handle on herself. She'd come so far, done so much, but now, she just wanted to give it all up to find Yeva, to bring her home, to revel in the joy and beauty of their love. The Captain had tried to approach her earlier, a pair of coconut drinks in hand, and she sent him scurrying back to his favorite tree with an especially violent blast of wind.

Her heart hurt so much. To have been able to touch Yeva again, to communicate with one another, to have her hand lost in those curls, to have... She didn't want to keep reliving that scene, but at the same time she wanted only that and so much more. She felt bad for sending the captain away like that, knowing that he had helped Yeva to at least be here in that limited capacity. It was the greatest gift one could ever ask for, and no one had even needed to ask.

She felt bad about the storm overhead. She knew it was here because of her. She could hear the elements' own confusion, but she knew they'd been confused ever since the Eclipse had first arrived. She knew now that they were out of sync because only Winter was here in the world. She didn't know what weather would be required this time of year for this part of the world, but she knew that if she didn't do anything, the elements of the world would only delve deeper into the confusion, into their fear.

She said their names, and Ooshi, Glorpb Glorbp, and Zzzik all appeared. Ooshi, the tiniest of vortexes puffed up, on high alert at all the other confused winds around her. Glorbp Glorbps watery eyes turned to the bay, stunned at what the water spirits were doing there. Zzzik streaked off, racing up into the clouds, having no patience for things like waiting or thinking. Norani's eyes were red from a night of crying, from a night not sleeping, but she asked Ooshi and Glorbp Glorbp a favor, and asked in the shared language of the Titans that she suspected only her and Astrid might speak, the language that all spirits of the world could understand.

"I need help. Can you find someone for me? Anyone?"

And with quick nods, accepting this responsibility, the two spirits went off to find someone to help.

Destyn didn't spend as much time in South Ecith as he had before the acquisition and setting to soil of his special little seed. This week was different, though. It was special. Yesterday a door had appeared to him, just as it had on that fateful day he was invited to join an expedition to another land whose sands he'd never trod... skies he'd never soared. He came to learn, on this special day of this special week, that the one who'd invited him was, in fact, a god- The second, in fact, that Destyn had met in his young life.

The first time Destyn had met a god, it had been at the moment of his greatest trauma. Arcas had appeared to serve as saviour, though Destyn didn't know who or what he was at the time. Arcas had been a god that was acknowledged by his clan, but held in no particular esteem. There were certainly no Dawnmartyrs amongst Clann na Feithidí Uisce of The Court of Summer. Vhexur was another matter. There was a god in whom Destyn had taken a particular interest. He, himself, had been a trickster once. He delighted in pranks, until such joys were unceremoniously torn from him by humourless humans. His days of chicanery had yielded up the bloody fate of his clan, and only now was he far enough in his grieving process to even begin to feel the pangs of nostalgia for those whimsical days.

He was musing over this when the grey skies above opened up to weep their torrents. Destyn tended to enjoy rain, those this was an angry and aggressive monsoon. The peels fell so fast they looked more like beams than droplets of water, and they stung as they battered his skin.

Wrinkling his nose, he sought shelter beneath a nearby promontory. Seating himself on a rock there, he decided to wait it out. When the rain fell lighter, it would surly stir strange things to waken... things he might like to observe, to commune with... perhaps even eat. His thoughts were upon buggies when his eyes fell upon something he had not seen before... Not even in the strange surroundings of South Ecith. This was because it was unique. Even a dormant Summoner like Destyn could recognise it for what it was.

"Hello, little cute spirit. Did the rain wake you? There is, you know, room enough here if you would take shelter with me."

Glorbp Glorbp looked up at Destyn with big, watery eyes, bobbing there lightly in the air. At Destyn's offer, it gargled happily, recognizing the Rune of Summoning, a sign of friendship to the little Phycaal, which helped to bridge the communication that Destyn initiated. The little water elemental bounded forward, nestling into Destyn. As it did, the rain seemed to direct itself towards Destyn specifically, but softer, appealing to his desire of such. Glorbp Glorbp laid there, curled up, lightly drifting off into a bubbly, snoring snooze.

That was when the winds began to play with Destyn's hair. His rune would allow him to hear the laughter coming from Ooshi as she swirled around him, hidden within the winds she controlled. She tugged and yanked on anything that was loose and could flap in the wind, before she appeared before him, swirling about herself. She noticed Glorbp Glorbp sleeping, despite having been given a task, and her winds grew a bit more angry, the entire beach swelling with their fury.

She bounded toward Destyn, her unintelligible speech coming out as whistles and slices of air as she reached for him. She slashed a tiny arm outward, and opened a wind tunnel, slicing through her own winds and the rains, a direct path leading far down the beach toward the Elementalist.

Norani looked up, feeling the disturbance in the elements, peering up the wind tunnel toward Destyn and the spirits. She smiled sadly, realizing that they had found someone that they thought might help her. She squinted, realizing it was one of the few she didn't know so well from the Expedition. Destyn, mayhaps? Guilt spread through her, she'd been neglectful on this expedition. She'd barely come to know anyone, first too self absorbed in her anger and pain at her family's betrayal of her, throwing herself fully into her time with Yeva. Then when Yeva disappeared, her pain and fear dominated once more. She'd never taken the time to get to know anyone else here.

What a fool she'd been.

Even now, she knew, she was letting her emotions, her dwelling upon her own pain, her own selfishness, was getting the better of her. She knew she needed to be part of a family, to be surrounded by those that cared and understood. The spirits of Agst'rasera had helped to fill that void, to help her heal the pain. But she couldn't continue living a self absorbed life, not allowing others the chance to get to know her.

She'd always been a curious girl.

With a blink, she melted into the winds herself, racing through the tunnel, reforming herself, seated in the sand across from Destyn. She smiled softly at the Fae, "Hello."

Glorbp Glorbp was still sleeping and Ooshi was still playing with Destyn's hair, "Ooshi and Glorbp Glorbp like you."

A small pause, "I am Norani Windwalker, and I apologize for not getting to know you earlier." As she spoke, the rain began to soften, bits of eclipse laden twilight piercing through the clouds, "What's your name? What brings you upon the expedition?"

Destyn beamed gleefully as the adorable little spirit accepted his offer and nuzzled close. The cool drizzle of a far more pleasant portion of rainwater shifted to dance against his face and the many bare bits of flesh uncovered by his increasingly tattered garb.

"This is, you know, delightful..." He whispered, mostly to himself, as the spirit succumbed to slumber. Destyn might have joined it in the Land of Nod, had the sound of another spirit not interloped on their moment. This one was not so calm and pleasant. It seemed distressed, or perhaps perturbed. He knitted his brow in confusion and shushed the wind-wending wisp.

"Hush! You will wake the baby! He chastised, as the wind whirled and cast away those lovely drizzled droplets that had been caressing him moments earlier. Actually, the wind felt pretty nice also and the spirit seemed to find peace, if not stillness. Just as he was settling into comfort again, another was there.

"You are not a spirit, though." He informed the Ork as if it would be a revelation to her. "I have, however, seen you around. You are, you know, big like my friend Imogen when she does not make herself a small critter. Also you have the big under-teefs like she does. This tells me that you are, I think, a Ork." He nodded, sagely.

"I, also, like them back. Greetings, Norani Windwalker. No need to apologise. I am often alone or, you know, not around. But I am Destynrael Dromlach’darach de Clann na Feithidí Uisce. I bonded with The Duck when first I stepped through the door, so I wanted to help The Duck. That is why I came on the extuhpishun. How about you, though?"

A soft, sad smile spread behind her tusks, "Yes, I am an Orkhan, of a small village called Ounokt Nora in the Ecith Commonwealth." Ah, a friend of the great witch Imogen Ward as well. "Greetings to you as well, Destynrael Dronlach’darach de Clann na Feithidí Uisce." Norani found it surprising at how easily she was able to say most of Destyn's name despite its length. She didn't recognize the name's linguistic origin, and wondered if it was similar to Ecitharese.

He had asked her a surprisingly difficult question that came from a place of conversational innocence. Norani was quiet for a moment, as she looked out at the storm raging over the bay. She knew now that storms themselves were not imbalances, but rather were the corrections to the silent and hidden imbalances that grew over time. She knew that these imbalances compounded from the smallest of things, a wind flowing off the wrong way, a bit too much water in another place, a fire spirit increasing the temperature just one degree higher than appropriate.

She also knew that imbalances in her own life seemed to come from the smallest of things. Her family-around-her and fallen apart not due to their lies and secrets, but to her own inability to stop, to listen, to wait, to heal, to try and find understanding. These were all things that Yeva had tried to teach her in their time together, things the elements had tried to teach her. That and the fact that an Orkhan alone was like an element alone, out of balance, lost, and destined to spread ruin.

She took a deep breath. As she exhaled, the storm began to soften, "I wanted to run away from the pain the family-around-me had inflicted upon me. I lied to myself, saying I wished to aid Yeva Bleu in the Expedition to help the Duck and the Captain. I came because I am selfish and fearful." Another deep breath in, another out, and the waves grew smaller, the winds softer, the rain turning to a drizzle, the clouds growing more transparent.

"My heart hurts, Destynrael Dronlach’darach de Clann na Feithidí Uisce. I am on the greatest mission, the highest responsibility that one can possibly have, and yet my heart wants me to make a choice, a choice that shouldn't even exist." She looked over at the young Fae through watery eyes, her voice wavering, her throat tightening, "I must save this world, this realm... but..." The tears streaked down her face now, "I want nothing more but to sunder the walls between the realms and to find She, The Fire of My Heart." Her head hung low as the tears dropped upon the sands between her knees, staying there, not absorbing, balled up, reflecting her elemental imbalance.

"I don't know how to not be selfish."

A sniffle, "Have you ever had to make an impossible choice of the heart?"

It took a moment, but not a long one, for Destyn to realise that Norani Windwalker was not in a happy place, nor even a mildly contented one. It was in the tone of voice with which she elaborated upon her background, and even in the way she said his name. In Kalzasi he was surprised when people pronounced the whole thing correctly, but not as much outside of cities where people tended to be less distracted and lost in their own little worlds. Out here it was harder to ignore the breadth of the larger, greater world. Even when one did, something like rainfall would come to draw a body back in and remind them, in no uncertain terms, that the world was larger than they.

He settled back a little, listening to her anguished reply and nodding along.

"I do not know Yeva Bleu..." He interjected briefly, then allowed her to continue. He knitted his brow, confused and concerned. Both of which burgeoned at the talk of saving the world. Those were high stakes indeed. He blinked a few times, struck dumb by the weight of the question posed.

"I... have never had to save the world before, Norani Windwalker, but I have made foolish, selfish choices that cost others dearly. I have followed the whimsy of my own heart against the advice of my people... of Clann na Feithidí Uisce. And now I am the last of them." He pursed his lips and looked down at the little sleeping Glorbp Glorbp, a wistful sigh escaping his nostrils.

"I think the world is very beautiful, and I do not want it to end, but that is not my choice to make. You should, I think, make the decision that will saddle you with the least regret. Because regret is the most terrible feeling of them all. It feels like creeping sickness at times, and sudden, piercing violation at others. It never really goes away, it just changes shape like a Rathari. So." He nodded, as if he'd needed to verbalise the words to convince himself of their veracity.

"Tread the path of least regret, when you can."

A small, tear filled chuckle, "I should hope that you've never had to do so." A quiet moment, a whispered pondering, "I wonder how many times the world has had to be saved without any of us ever knowing?" Ooshi wandered over, and Norani's hand faded into winds, mingling with the little spirit's form. "It's hard to look back at when we fail to heed good advice." Her heart hurt for him, she was glad that she still had a family, no matter how strained and estranged and confusing the state of it might be. The thought of them being gone forever was unbearable.

At least with Juno, she had no memory with which to be haunted by. She could understand the kindness her family had sought to give her, even if she still didn't agree with it. Destyn proceeded to describe one of the many feelings that had been whittling away at her for the last year, and her throat was tighter, drier, with her eyes freely flowing silently, drops falling into the sands, spreading the darkness into the grains.

She could feel the truth in his words, the truth she knew, the truth he knew when he shared them, and she knew the choice she'd make. It was the one she had always wanted to make, the path right and the path true. She nodded, "I am sorry you had to suffer such pain for your wisdom. You honor me greatly by sharing it."

Ooshi blew up at Norani's loose hairs aggressively and spouted some words in their shared, secret language. An eyebrow raised, "I think I was supposed to meet you here and now and not a moment before. Yeva Bleu reads and interprets the signs, and the spirits act upon signs of the gods as well. I think our paths were meant for this time. For I know two others that are the last of their kinds as well, one having given me this mission, and one who this mission surrounds."

Norani whistled shrilly, and a few moments later, Ruvaf, her great flying companion glided over from his perch in the trees nearby. He raised his wings over to shelter them from the rain, but Norani shook her head. As she finished, the storm parted and ceased rapidly, bringing back the sun to the bay. She smiled, let out a sigh to release some tension, not realizing how much she'd been holding her breath, clenching her jaw. "If it is okay with you, I will ask Ruvaf here to take you to a dear friend of mine. She is the last of her kind and is falling ill. It might do her heart good to have meet you as well."

A moment as Norani did some quick planning. Her mind made up now, she'd need to find Imogen for some advice of a more magical nature, and at the very least recruit her. "Destynrael Dronlach’darach de Clann na Feithidí Uisce you are a kind and wise soul, you have a demeanor with the spirits who have helped to guide me, who are among my dearest of friends, and who will help me soon in this mission. If you will go with Ruvaf, I will meet you there, and we can save the world together. It's my first time as well, so having some help would be appreciated." A soft smile, "It will be dangerous, but there likely won't be a more worthy reason than this." Ruvaf bent down and she stroked his beak, "He's big enough, he can probably carry three people now."

Zzzick raced down to Norani now that the storm was gone, zipping and zapping from point to point, unable to sit still now that its focus was no longer needed. Norani reached out slowly, patting the little lightning sprite right as it appeared where she knew it would, and it stopped, then came forward. "These spirits will guide your journey, protect you, show you the way, if you choose to join me in this." She smiled as she felt Glorbp Glorbp wake too, bubbling happily in Destyn's laugh, "I will go find some more allies, and some more friends."

She cast her gaze on Destyn, "Thank you."

Destyn chuckled wanly.

"I do not have much wisdom, I do not think. Plenty of regret, though. Perhaps these are cousins." His eyes darted to Ooshi, as the spirit sprung to activity once again. His gaze remained fixed upon the spirit even as Norani spoke again, in terms most fatalistic.

"It is so. For we did meet here and now and not a moment before." He nodded once, with firm certainty. He perked at the sudden, shrill whistle and sat upright, jostling Glorbp Glorbp slightly in the doing. He proffered an apologetic pat, and shifted his visage to regard Ruvaf. He didn't need long to contemplate his response to Norani's request.

"I will go. But I do not need to be carried, for I have wings and can fly all by myself. I will follow Ruvaf to where your ailing friend waits and, of course you know, welcome the company of any kindly spirits who might wish to join me." At that his smile was broad.

Destyn seemed taken in by Norani's surety. If she was certain that their paths were portentously aligned, then he would abide by her perception. He'd taken a similar path with The Duck and hadn't come to regret it. South Ecith seemed like a portentous place, after all, and it had served him well saying yes to the turns his path there took, whether it was foraging for fruit with Imogen, or being gifted the precious seed now being nurtured in Kalzasi far to the North.

He bowed his head to Ruvaf, and set Glorbp Glorbp aside.

"Lead on. I follow."

"Thank you."

Norani reached out, touching Destyn's arm lightly, smiling a bit, still trying to prepare herself for what she would have to do with this quest. She then reached up, touching Ruvaf's neck, touching her forehead to his beak, "Please, take him to Agst'rasera, and keep both of you safe. I will come for you both, after I finish my tasks." Ruvaf gave her a knowing look, one she recognized as both him giving his consent and displaying his worry. After all, the two had rarely ever been apart since Ruvaf hatched all those years ago, and certainly never at this distance.

Which gave Norani an idea.

She closed her eyes, focusing on her aether, pulling it through her animus rune upon her back, and she pushed it through the physical connection with Ruvaf. The aether spread through his body, recording every little detailed, how every bone connected, every bit of tissue formed and function, how his heart was beating just a bit faster in worry at leaving behind his eggmate. She continued to flood him with this aether, and then she pulled it back into herself.

Upon her back, a small, incredibly detailed ink version of Ruvaf, a Ci'uvan, was spreading its wings, flying around the great tree. She opened her eyes, realizing something new that came with this power, with this bond. She let loose a squawk, an exact replica of the sound the pterosaur made when speaking to others of his kind, and occasionally to her. Or at least, that's what Destyn would hear. But what Ruvaf heard was something far different, and never had he heard it in his own native tongue.

"I love you, Ruvaf."

He squawked in return, "I love you too, Eggmate Norani."

Tears were flowing now, but Norani held herself together, savoring this beautiful moment with her oldest of friends, not allowing the clouds of her mood to summon actual clouds. She could feel that her magic would protect him just as surely as it did her. She nodded, stepping back from him, wiping her tears on the back of her arm. He gave her one last look, flapping his great wings, kicking up sand in all directions as he took off. Much of it hit Destyn, of course, for he didn't have the same elemental protection as Norani, who had not a single grain of sand upon her.

She smiled at the Fae, "Travel safe and good luck."

She watched as Ruvaf circled about, waiting on Destyn, and once both were alighted, she called to the winds to be at their backs, to carry them, to protect them.

Destyn the Bestyn
Loot: 1 Free Trip to Agst'rasera
Injuries: None

Points: 10, may not be used for Magic

Skills Used Eligible for Expert/Master Progression: Caregiving

Lore Development Opportunities: N/A

Comments: Destyn coming in clutch with the emotional support.

Norani
Loot: -1 emotional baggage
Injuries: None

Points: 10, may not be used for Magic

Skills Used Eligible for Expert/Master Progression: Leadership

Lore Development Opportunities: N/A

Comments: Norani was, in fact, present in the thread.