(no subject)

[shadowstrikes]

Dust always had a very particular feel upon the tongue: a mixture of the instinctive need to spit out the taste of something that did not belong in the mouth and the awareness on every level that it was one of the flavours of defeat. Hakkyuu had felt the wrongness of dirt against his lips before, sometimes from gravity alone, sometimes with an angry pressure upon the back of his skull, sometimes mixed with copper and pain, but he had always resisted both the presence of it against his mouth and whatever the cause that had put him there. But as he lay upon the dry floor of the Crystal Desert so many miles from the confines of Ebonhawke and stared up with huge, terrified eyes, it didn't occur to Hakkyuu to think about the grit getting sucked in against his teeth with every panicked breath he drew in, nor to lift a hand to wipe a messy, wet trail of saliva away to rid himself of the wrongness in his mouth. There were more important things for his instincts to focus on in that moment, like the form hovering a short distance from him.

There was no part of that moment, winded and sore in an uncharted area, that did not feel like a bad dream to Hakkyuu. He'd watched from outside of the stronghold that he had lived his entire life in as the Elder Dragan swept up from the south and transformed the land beneath it to crystal and death in the wake of the breath of its thunderous roar and in the shock of bearing witness to the destruction he could only think that it had to be unreal because these were the kinds of images described in legend and book, not seen with the eye like a storm cloud rolling across the mountain. But watching fawner and charr forces instantly transformed to deathly moving formations of black and amethyst crystal stumbling their way from the scorched land that would soon be referred to as The Brand toward him instilled the only clear thought Hakkyuu could muster clearly through his shaken and shattering psyche.

Run.

And he had. A fast as he could for as long as he could, and then pushed even longer until he fell upon his knees and let the contents of his stomach burn up through his throat and hit the dust ground hotly between his splayed hands, the image blurring through watery eyes and the sounds of his own choked sobs muffed behind images of shambling crystal horrors.

After the immediate euphoria of throwing up wore off and the adrenaline that had sent him tearing from the Branded faded out, the shock truly set in and without knowing where he was, which direction he was headed, and with no sense of agenda, Hakkyuu walked. He didn't know how long or how far he'd walked after watching the dragon take flight, or how long and far he'd run after the Branded spotted him, and again, in the flats of the desert, he'd walk again with no clue how far or long he'd go with is sense of self held away from his consciousness as the haze of shock was the only force driving him forward.

It was impossible to say how long it may have taken until sheer exhaustion forced him to stop, but instead the encounter he had with another being was what interrupted the otherwise unrelenting forward path Hakkyuu had unwittingly forged for himself. The creature seemed to melt upward from the desolate ground, a bright flash of purple movement in the sandy backdrop, with golden spear in hand spinning to capture what little light poked through the clouds against the long edge of the blade and length of the hilt. The world spun, Hakkyuu's mouth felt dirt, and the image that swelled into view in his eye filled him with a third dose of the cold, unbelieving dread he'd felt in such a short space of time.

The figure loomed, tall and menacing and clearly not of--or no longer of--the realm of the living, and Hakkyuu choked on an attempt to get air into his lungs as his wide eyes drank in the sight of what he was sure in that moment was nothing other than glorious, fiery death. For what else could a creature formed of spun tarnish and flaming purple wings bring to him? What else could he possibly expect to find behind the metallic-looking face that bore three pairs of eyes and sharp protrusions like a beetle's mandibles? What else could he expect but for that golden spear to be the weapon used in his execution?

When the Margonite extended a gaunlet-esque hand toward him, the grey muscles in the bicep shifting unnaturally as a talon brushed upon Hakkyuu's forehead. He must have made some unholy sound of terror as a searing pain unlike any he had ever known rolled through every nerve in his body and drove him to his feet only to stumble and crash backwards once more against the sand. Perhaps he meant to say words to warn the creature off, perhaps he even thought he said them, but they were only guttural sounds of primitive distress as he waved one hand furiously in front of him as if to ward the Margonite away and grasped his head where the creature had touched him with the other.

He was going to die here. After everything, he was going to die in the desert, far from his home.

Comments

[entheogens]

"I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.”

Henry David Thoreau had never lived in Tyria. Walden was a book that Aurus had never read. But if anyone could have encapsulated the reasons that he went into the desert, it would have been this man. Ironically, for Aurus, the woods had felt too alive, too busy for his purposes. The woods were too much like home. The desert, at least in theory, had offered what he thought he was after.

In point of fact, deserts are a lot more full of life up close than they appear to be from afar. They’re just not particularly full of plant life, certainly not of a ferny sort. They require a different kind of resourcefulness than other environments do. So what Aurus’s life in the desert turned out to be, was not precisely what he’d planned for. And maybe that was what he liked about it.

There was one routine that he maintained faithfully since arriving here, and that was the perimeter patrol of his “territory” (a loose term for the span of sand where he eked out an existence). This was a distinctly animal-like practice, he felt, but it was a practical one. He made the circuit, which was a little over three miles from start to finish, twice a day—near dawn and near dusk, staying inside in the worst of the heat in a cave where a natural stream of water trickled down the back wall into a little pool.

The cave, which had high hollow ceiling of smooth, pale sandstone, was airy and light, and Aurus had very much made it into a home, growing the necessary furnishings out of the sandy earth and making creative use of the space’s natural contours. Once the location had been found and the home there made, his routine had taken shape around defending it.

This was where the patrols came in.

One never truly cleared the desert of threats, but within the three mile perimeter that Aurus maintained, there were fewer giant bugs and beasts. After enough weeks spent clearing them, they began to respect the boundary lines more. Those that appeared on his turf were summarily exterminated.

And after enough weeks, he knew every rock and bone and ruin in his circuit. He knew which birds and desert creatures would pass each day and at what time. He knew every ruined structure, every neighbouring cave, every path between the buttes. This was how he knew when the strange trio of apparitional humanoids first appeared.

They were not within his territory per se. If they were, he would have confronted them directly. But he’d glimpsed them for several days near a rocky promontory a few hundred metres off to the west, and he’d begun to watch their movements. There were, he now felt certain, three, though he’d never seen them all at once. He could spot the differences in their bodies though, their armour, the different purple glow of their exposed skin, the difference in how they moved and floated.

There was a malevolent feeling about them that made him wary, even without having encountered one up close. He had no name for them, but he sensed that they portended ill.

Was it the same ill which took wing in the northern sky some days later? He couldn’t say. But that did make him strike out from his usual patrol, forging his way across the sands towards the screeching sounds of battle that filtered down, echoing from the crystalline beast that swooped and dove through the sky on the horizon.

The battle had been long over by the time Aurus had got to its site. It was the better part of a day's walk before he arrived, and what he saw when he got there changed him in ways he wouldn't fully understand for years: he knew, without knowing how, that the body on the sand was Glint, just as he knew that the dragon he saw in the sky was Kralkatorrik, now active, though it was long gone by the time that Aurus had arrived.

He lingered through the night by the site of the battle near the mouth of Glint's lair, wakeful and watching, thinking about the things her body had made him feel, the presence that remained here even after her death, and long before dawn by the soft white glow of the moonlight, he headed towards home again.

The whole desert itself felt different now. The impact of what had transpired seemed to reverberate subtly in every stone, every creature, every grain of sand. The night felt otherworldly.

It was near the end of that night when the cresting of a dune brought the gleam of purple again into sight--a recognizable beacon on the rim of his territory, though far from where he'd seen it before. He saw the purple wings and the three rows of eyes beneath the helm before he saw the boy the creature raised its hand towards, and he saw them both before the Margonite saw him. Not before the boy screamed though. Aurus didn't need, nor did he wait, to ask what was going on.

Drawing his hammer, he leaped towards the Margonite with an earthshaking force, aiming a blow to land against the thing's head. Amethyst and crystal had done more than enough damage to the world for one day. He would not stand by now and see it do more.

[shadowstrikes]

Without having enough general wherewithal to appreciate it immediately, the absolute truth was that when a second large, powerful-looking creature launched itself into the vicinity, Hakkyuu could feel neither shock nor relief in relation to it.

There was nothing to feel except the intense fear and the reminiscence of pulsing pain, and even as his wide eyes flickered between the Margonite and the other creature facing off against it, there was no mental space to process any possibilities about what was going on at all. There was no capacity to wonder if he was being recused, or if this was simply an on-going conflict between the two that he'd happened to be present for, or if this was something to do with predatory behaviours by animalistic creatures in their habitat, or if these were even two separate species.

He couldn't wonder about any of that, he didn't care. All he could take in and acknowledge was the hard metallic crack that sounded from the hammer hitting the side of the Margonite's head and sending it toppling off target. Clearly, the floating purple-winged creature had not expected company either and the blow to its head had landed with every bit of the intended force.

Both Hakkyuu and the Margonite decided on their own individual courses of action, and in a strange kind of way they converged on a like-minded point: both were powered by a sense of survival. The Margonite's was to turn focus from the boy and onto the sylvari, a curved black and amethyst scythe forming in one clawed hand before sweeping the weapon around in a curve to its front. The Margonite wasted not time on the formalities of sportsmanship that may see one bowing to an opponent and instead rushed on it's attacker, the scythe spinning in an arc toward Aurus. Perhaps the Maronite already had a sense that in terms of skill, and with an injury to the head already dazing and slowing its responses, that this would not be an encounter that would end well for it, nor last terribly long.

While the two combatants engaged, Hakkyuu ran. Or at least he tried as best he could, but as it turned out he was a kind of exhausted that he would never have expected. The combination of shock and adrenaline with hours of walking across miles of open flatland had left his muscles weak and unwilling, instead resulting in a scrambled attempt to stand and a few clumsy steps forward before his feet tripped over one another and he fell forward upon the ground. Refusing to look back however, scared of the possibilities of what may be rising up swiftly behind him, Hakkyuu crawled his way forward, desperately trying to create distance and furiously willing his legs to carry him.

He made it over the slope of a sand dune, at which point his blood ran cold to see two more of the floating creatures made of purple and tarnish. One hand additional limbs made from the same lilac energy as the scythe-wielding Margonite behind him, and the other had no headpiece at all and instead the eyes shone bright and amethyst in the pale dawn light. Perhaps he screamed again, but perhaps there was total silence, but as Hakkyuu's consciousness left him in that moment, he had no way of knowing.

The two other Margonites seemed to watch the battle below, neither providing reinforcement nor approaching the figure of the boy fallen only a few feet away from their otherworldly floating forms. They seemed, in the moment, to be more interested in the fate that may be dealt to their kin.

[entheogens]

For now, Aurus could not divert his focus to watch where the boy had gone. For a moment he'd been aware of him in his peripheral vision--falling to the ground, crawling--but beyond that he could not be Aurus's concern.

Having dealt one solid blow to the Margonite before him, what Aurus had to do now was to finish off the battle, and with that scythe in the creature's hand, the sylvari was not going to take his victory for granted, no matter what advantage his first hit had won him.

Dodging to the side, Aurus targeted his next swing lower, aiming to take the creature out at its knees. Whether it floated or walked, striking at the joints should knock it down and win him a further advantage. He wanted this battle over fast, and cleanly, especially since he knew there were two more of these things, likely somewhere near by.

[shadowstrikes]

The scythe-wielding Margonite perhaps in some contexts would be a skilled and formidable fighter--maybe even in it's life as a human, the Margonite had been an adept warrior of repute before becoming a servant of Abaddon, body twisting to a combination of energy and metal. Maybe that would still be the case if Aurus had not managed to secure such a significant advantage early on. The focus for the Margonite was clearly a matter of offensive action, not defensive maneuvering. The blade swept forward, sailing over the broad curve of Aurus' shoulders as the sylvari went low.

Aurus had a very good battle plan in mind when he went into this fight as well as the ability and sheer power to back it up. By the time the Margonite realised it's second grave error, there was only enough time for it to try and sweep away from the second blow at the last second. One spindled leg avoided the sweep of Aurus' hammer, but it left the other limb to catch the full force of the weapon and the swing behind it, the heavy weighted end of the hammer crashing with shattering force into the leg and splintering the metal casing like a rock through an iced over lake.

Despite their apparent ability to float, the impact to the leg was enough to topple the Margonite entirely, sending it tumbling backwards to the sandy ground with one hand grasping out for something to grab when there was only air.

The two observers continued to do only that and merely regarded with their extended silence like two judges having passed sentence. Perhaps they knew full well what the outcome would be now and were simply waiting for the final confirmation.

[entheogens]

Wasting no time in continuing to press his advantage when the Margonite fell, Aurus closed on it at once, striding over and stomping one heavy booted foot down onto its gut, pinning it before it could move away and moving without pause so it wouldn't be able to convert the placement of his foot to its advantage.

He raised his hammer over his head and drove down a two-handed blow that should land solidly in the creature's skull. Unless something unforeseen happened, he should cave its head in and finish it off right here.

And since he didn't want to take for granted that everything would indeed go as he planned, he was also keeping his senses tuned to what was happening around him, just in case one of the thing's allies was closing in or trying to sneak up and take him unawares.

[shadowstrikes]

There was no space to move or dodge by the time the great power of the Secondborn's foot came down upon the Margonite's chest followed by the crushing force of the hammer; splinters brass shrapnel shattered and purple energy wisped out from underneath the hammer's head nestled in the curve of the creature's shattered skull.

There was no sound of distress or pain, only limbs spinning wildly for a final ditch attempt to find some kind of last second opportunity to prolong it's life, but there was nothing to be done.

From their spot on the highest point of the sand dune, the two remaining Margonites watched as movement drained from their fallen comrade. There was a long moment of them watching the scene in silence, then obviously turning their stare collectively upon Aurus. There was a pause, a consideration across the sand in a moment that made it unclear if they were considering a collective assault or not, but after holding the Sylvari's eye for several long seconds, the floating creatures turned to drift away from the scene and away from the boundaries of Aurus' perimeter. Preservation was clearly a higher priority than avenging their lost member and there was a distinct level of respect being expressed toward Aurus' territory. That included, evidently, the unconscious human boy laying upon the dusty ground.

[entheogens]

Wrenching his hammer free of the wreck that had been the Margonite's skull, Aurus turned to survey the horizon, eyes very much searching for the other two of its kind, half expecting them to launch an attack of their own. When he did catch sight of them there atop the sand dune, he stood facing them down at a distance, hammer held ready in front of him. If they did decide to attack then he was obviously prepared, and when they retreated?

The sylvari's stormy purple eyes watched them go, assessing what meaning to take from their withdrawal. They had clearly realized it was not worth it to try and fight him now, like this. Did that mean they would not try at a later time? Did it mean that when they turned and retreated across the desert they would keep going and not come back at all? Those things were all uncertain. That, however, was often the way with living here. He would be on his guard in the days and nights to come.

Frowning back down at the corpse of the Margonite he'd killed, Aurus realized that there was another question which wanted answers he did not have: were these things indeed related to Kralkatorrik? And if so, in what way?

He could still see one side of the row of three eyes visible beneath the cracked helm and caved in head of his foe, the purple wings now limp and twisted. And he was aware that the dragon's flight had begun to do something to the creatures here, or at least some of them. He'd seen at a distance devourers that seemed to have become purple crystal, and though he did not know the extent or what it portended, he doubted that the one or two he'd seen would be the end of it.

His gut told him this thing he'd killed wasn't quite the same matter, but he had no answers. He couldn't be sure.

That did, however, bring him back to the question of the boy. If he had become some sort of crystalline beast then perhaps a conclusion could be inferred. That was if he still lived at all.

The desert made it easy to follow his tracks at least, and Aurus made his way up the dune where they led. The other two Margonites could have taken his body away, the sylvari realized--once they'd gone beyond the swell of the dune, they had been out of his sight--so he was almost surprised to still find him lying there on the sand, and evidently neither purple nor crystal.

Rolling him over onto his back, Aurus knelt down to have a good look at him, brushing the sand off of his face as he did. He was still breathing, at least for now, but even without whatever damage had been done by the creature's attack, he still might die of exposure--his skin looked badly sunburned, his lips dry and cracked. If he was going to survive, Aurus needed to get him inside straight away.

For that reason he decided that, if the boy didn't immediately begin to wake on his own, he would not try to wake him now at all. Instead he would just stow his hammer, pick the unconscious body up, fling him over his shoulder, and head back to his cave as quickly as he could.

All damn day trying to write this piddly tag >(

[shadowstrikes]

Aurus' forward-thinking to possible retaliation from the remaining Margonites was not an ill-placed notion at all, even as the floating creatures faded entirely from view with the morning light breaking across the barren land. In the aftermath of the brief and brutal battle, a silence hangs on the air for several moments before the soft sounds life began to hum through the desert once more as normal.

The boy didn't stir as Aurus approached, nor did he so much as furrow his brow as he was lift and flung unceremoniously over the sylvari's shoulder. In regular circumstances, he would be furiously kicking and yelling, demanding to put down and making a spectacular ruckus in the service of preserving his pride. Though he lay limply across Aurus' shoulder, limbs hanging down heavily, head flopped lifelessly to one side and doing a rather good impression of a sack of potatoes. Whatever will he may have to rouse himself for more than a half second to open his eyes was deeply lacking, not to mention that even if he did manage to crack an eye open, he was mentally shut off so much he couldn't even really take in anything around him. For all he knew, he was already dead.

[entheogens]

Given how comparatively small the boy was, Aurus didn't struggle terribly much getting him back home. He was fatigued by the time he got there, of course, having walked through most of the night already, but his burden ultimately had only made his legs a bit more tired than they would have otherwise been.

The cave where Aurus made his home did not have a bed per se. Instead it had a naturally grown hammock of leaves and woven vines, suspended between two trunks that the sylvari had grown out of the earth. Shifting the boy into his arms as he entered the cave mouth, he lay him carefully down here, then set aside his weapons, stripped off his gloves, and set to work. Given how the boy seemed all but dead to the world, Aurus didn't worry about waking him.

He filled a bowl of water at the back of the cave and, using a cloth, wiped what dust and grit he could from his mouth. Then, holding him partially upright, he squeezed a thin slow dribble of water between his lips. This he had to do again and again so as not to risk choking him, but once he'd managed to get a full bowl down his throat he figured it ought to be enough to allow some manner of recovery. Beyond that, all he could do was put a cool, damp cloth on his brow to try and ease the heat of his sunburned skin.

Standing back to consider his "guest" for a moment, Aurus did what he could to try and figure out where the boy had even come from. There was nothing in his pockets that answered the question clearly. There were, he felt confident, no human settlements within easy walking distance of his home. But then if this boy had come from someplace within easy walking distance he likely would not be in the state he was in now. He obviously wasn’t Elonan though, so he had to have come from Ascalon—from Ebonhawke? It was a damn long way. Well, hopefully when he awoke he would be able to offer some answers.

Turning away, the sylvari went to prepare himself some breakfast and sit down to meditate. Wary that his guest might wake at any time and keenly aware that he did not yet know whether the Margonite’s touch might have warped his mind to hostility, Aurus carefully kept his weapons within easy reach and where the boy would not be able to grab them if he awoke. Several hours later, though, it seemed the boy showed no signs of stirring.

Aurus checked over him again, dripped more water into his mouth, felt his pulse and the temperature of his skin.

The sun was up now and rising in the sky. Though it was far cooler in the cave than it was outside, the heat was nonetheless rising in here too. It was the part of the day that Aurus would always opt to spend inside regardless, and since the boy still showed no signs of waking, he picked a comfortable seat on a broad sandstone shelf, leaned back into the smooth curve of the alcove, and lightly slept for a while.

***

Two days later, the routine that Aurus had established on day one persisted.

When he awoke in the morning, he checked on the boy, gave him water and some broth made from boiled cactus fruit. Then he went out to do his first circuit of his lands.

The first time he'd done this he'd worried about leaving the boy alone, lest he either woke while Aurus was gone or else lest something come to harm him while he slept unprotected. It was a risk either way: if, for example, the two remaining Margonites were watching from afar and merely biding their time, leaving the cave could give them their opportunity. But if Aurus did not make his usual patrol, it would take no time at all for his territory to grow more wild and dangerous again.

In the end, he'd decided to head out seemingly on his patrol and then double back and watch to see if anyone or anything approached the cave mouth. After half an hour, he'd been satisfied enough that no threat lay in wait, and he'd thus been patrolling at his usual morning and evening times ever since.

When he returned from his morning circuit, he ate, meditated, checked on the boy again, meditated some more, and then patrolled again before his evening meal. He'd also grown a second hammock towards another alcove of the cave a short distance away--at this point he had no idea how long the boy would remain unconscious or what he would do if he did not wake, but he still had to manage his own life within this limbo.

He'd more or less blocked off a five-day window in his mind: if the boy had not awoken in that time, Aurus was going to have to find a way to get him to civilization and into the care of someone who knew more about human ailments and medical treatments than he did. Because by now, Aurus had given him the best herbal tinctures he could think of, added a variety of remedies to the water he dripped into his mouth, and checked his body over for snake or spider bites, just in case (which had necessitated at least mostly undressing him). It all turned up nothing and so far hadn't seemed to make any noticeable difference in his recovery at all. The best that could be said was that his sunburn now didn't look so bad, a fact which made the stark paleness of his skin stand out even more.

[shadowstrikes]

The safety Aurus provided Hakkyuu's unconscious body to recover from the physical shock and fatigue he'd sustained. That wasn't to say that he slept entirely soundly however--periodically, he would thrash and spasm slightly where he lay in Aurus' botanical hammock with faint noises of discomfort that rarely raised any louder than a low whine.

Aurus' willingness to incorporate being Hakkyuu's caretaker into his daily routine made all the difference in the boy's short-term recovery time. Over the days, as the sylvari diligently checked for physical damage and treated the small amount that marred Hakkyuu's body, it really was simply pure, concentrated exhaustion that kept the boy effectively dead to the world for as long as he was; Aurus' five-day window of time was generous.

When Hakkyuu awoke it was initially not even a whisper or a whimper, but a silent opening of his eyes to stare directly ahead of him. The moment he awoke, he happened to be on his side with the wall of the cave in his immediate eyeline. He blinked slowly, not to clear any hazy, lingering sense of grogginess from his head, but simply to wait for his vision to adjust to being closed for so many days consecutively and try to make sense of what he was seeing. He frowned, realising finally two things. One, he didn't know what he was looking at, and two, that he couldn't remember anything beyond falling upon the sand dunes in the desert.

Twisting his body in the hammock to start to sit up, the aches and pains in his muscles overtook his attempt to map where he was as he winced in a deep shudder and hunched over. It was a kind of pain that didn't have a single, easily-identifiable location, so he reached to his shoulder to rub his flesh, then move to his neck when that didn't seem to alleviate the soreness. This didn't work either, but it did allow him time to stare around from his newly elevated position and spot the entrance to the cave.

Soon, the information began to filter into his brain that he was somewhere that was occupied by someone, not a predator's lair littered with bones or consumed prey. That was a relief. He also figured, judging by the light he could see beyond the cave's entrance, Hakkyuu guessed it must have been the height of the day and the coolness provided by the cave was suddenly something Hakkyuu was quite grateful for.

Then, he noticed something else just on the edge of his vision and turned his eyes quickly to look more directly just to the left of the cave entrance. There, evidently, he found the cave's main occupant, and realising this the tension rushed into his body. He'd never seen anything like the figure settled silently on the slightly elevated sandstone; he could tell this was a creature of immense size compared to himself, even while sitting, but he had also never seen something with blue skin and fern falling from it's head and strange angles and textures to the face.

In Hakkyuu's mind, he couldn't entirely tell if this was or wasn't the creature that attacked him out in the desert and the uncertainly made fear and adrenaline swell in his chest, but while the blue figure was still and silent so was Hakkyuu, even as he stared at it with wide, worried eyes then started to flicker a look around the cave with a more urgent project in mind of how to get out in one piece.

[entheogens]

For a long moment after Hakkyuu awoke Aurus sat in his meditation spot unmoving, crossed-legged with hands at rest on his knees. Presently, though, the change in the energy of the cave and the feeling of being watched reached him. Reaching out with his senses and not perceiving any danger, he allowed himself to surface back to the present moment gradually, like a slow countdown, and when he opened his eyes he looked ahead of him out towards the mid-day desert before turning his head and shoulders to look over at the boy.

It was, by then, no surprise to see that he was sitting up. It would have been more of a mystery had he not been, in fact.

"Ahh, you're awake," he said mildly, not moving from where he sat, though perhaps with the slight impression of someone who was judging all that he saw. "Good. I was beginning to wonder." (Not much though--the fact that the boy had shifted and sometimes moaned in his sleep had reassured Aurus that nothing too dire had affected him.)

[shadowstrikes]

The time it took for Hakkyuu to process the words that Aurus offered to him lagged behind the initial shock that it was speaking to him in the first place.

That, combined with the sharpness of the sylvari's eyes and the colour of them, did very little to reassure him even if his words were aiming to calm the boy.

Instead, he was frantically trying to place what this speaking creature was. He knew conceptually about other major races, but Hakkyuu had only seen asura and norn in small does, charr aplenty from a distance, and otherwise his main encounters were with other humans and skritt.

All the secondary realisations were starting to settle in, like how he could hear and feel how heavily his heart was pounding since the statue-like creature had started moving and speaking. His eyes flicked away from his dubious company briefly, partly looking for another exit (of course, there was none), some kind of weaponry (he didn't immediately see his boots which had the only, small flick-knife that he owned), or... something. He didn't offer any kind of reply back, but the way his face had twisted and his eyes had widened as soon as Aurus started talking probably said plenty, especially to reflect the panic he was feeling. He just felt no reason nor energy to mask any emotions or reactions on his face.

He then frowned and glanced down at himself, the crease in his brow deepening as it dawned on him how...lacking in clothes he was. But for all the short glances away he had, ultimately his attention came back to Aurus very quickly and steadily and he surely looked like he was ready to spook and bolt at any second.

[entheogens]

"Hm."

Well it was perfectly apparent to Aurus that he was looking at pretty much flat out stark panic, or at least something teetering right on the brink of it. What was much less apparent was the question of how best to deal with it.

His gut feeling was that standing up and approaching the boy would probably be...less than productive. So instead he opted to "ignore" him, or at least to turn his back as though he wasn't terribly concerned with watching what he did. In point of fact he was still paying very close attention, so if his guest did choose to attack him he was by no means going to be taken unawares. By all appearances, though, he might just as well be about to return to his meditation.

"Your shoes are near the back of the cave," he said. "Do shake them out before sticking your feet in them. You can never tell what might have crawled inside."

[shadowstrikes]

Whatever Hakkyuu was expecting this... thing to do, diverting his attention from Hakkyuu was not it.

He blinked a couple of times, his shoulders starting to relax and release some of the tension that had rushed into them before he gingerly started to move his weight across the hammock to dip his feet over the edge.

Swallowing thickly, he teetered on the edge of the makeshift bed for a few seconds, staring at the back of Aurus' head and shoulders. He tilted his head slowly to the side, trying to gauge what was actually going on in this creature's mind, but of course he can't read anything.

After a good minute of trying to figure out what is going on, Hakkyuu steeled himself and let his weight drop off the edge of the hammock. His legs shake and wobble beneath his weight in a way that he wasn't expecting to, making him snap a handout to grasp the rigging of the hammock to steady himself. He scowled, as if the exhaustion in his muscles was a mild annoyance and inconvenience rather than something that is the effect of many hours walking non-stop.

He started to inch his way around the edge of the cave, palm braced against the wall to steady himself on the way to mouth of the stone opening. He can already feel the intense heat of the desert as he draws closer to the exit, but there is something far more pressing that he needs to deal with after sleeping for forty-eight hours. Even with the oppressive sun beating down, Hakkyuu has to piss something rotten. He briefly wondered, while he did exactly that, if the strange blue guy in the cave even urinated like other creatures.

When he was done, Hakkyuu hobbled his way back into the large alcove and sighed deeply from the relief offered both from the coolness of the cave after the moment out in the midday sun and from the lightness provided by an emptied bladder.

His attention moved immediately to Aurus once more as he rested his weight against the cave wall. He swallowed again, trying to see if his voice would serve him still.

"What happened?"

It was more of a rasping croak than what he'd usually expect to come out of his mouth, but for the moment it was better than nothing.

[entheogens]

Aurus had cracked an eye when Hakkyuu flanked him and headed out into the sun, but he'd also snapped that eye closed before the boy could see him looking when he returned. For all intents and purposes, it would therefore look like he'd continued meditating right up until the moment when the boy spoke. (In reality, he'd not returned to his meditation at all but had instead been carefully assessing how the boy moved, his steadiness or lack thereof, his apparent disorientation and how he handled it.)

At that point, with a wholly unhurried air, he opened his eyes and turned his very direct gaze on Hakkyuu, giving him an answer that was completely matter-of-fact and also completely devoid of all detail or elaboration:

"You were attacked. You've been asleep for two days."

[shadowstrikes]

He didn't repeat the length of time he'd been asleep aloud, but a look that flashes across his face showed that he wasn't expecting that answer. He lowered his eyes for a moment, giving himself a few seconds to think, though doing so made him starkly aware of the sound of his own breathing which felt loud and distracting.

Shaking his head, Hakkyuu realised that it wasn't the sound of his breathing that was bothering him, but the wave of dizziness that casually swept its way over him.

He dropped to a crouch, arms resting over his knees as he hung his head.

"... You didn't attack me." he muttered, partly a statement, but open enough to be a question.

With his eyes closed, a few images from the recent events began to filter back into the front of his mind. Hakkyuu lifted his head slightly to look at Aurus once more.

"That dragon. What happened to it?"

[entheogens]

"There's water in the back," Aurus said as Hakkyuu sunk down. It was by no means a direct confirmation that he hadn't been the one to attack the boy. Really, he didn't think he ought to acknowledge that it was a question in any direct way, since logic and all the evidence of his behavior now should be evidence enough.

When Hakkyuu asked about the dragon though, Aurus was quiet for a moment before answering. To him, there were two dragons involved in the events of days previous, and he had to remind himself that for this boy there was likely only one--a wholly different experience of the same set of events.

"Out there somewhere. It disappeared into the desert. Where I couldn't say."

At this point Aurus knew he could be certain of very little save that Kralkatorrik was by no means dead, and he wasn't going to offer any false assurances. Just because he'd not seen the crystal dragon in two days didn't mean it wouldn't emerge again.

Now, having answered those questions, he felt that he deserved to ask one himself: "Your name?"

[shadowstrikes]

Without lifting his head too much further, Hakkyuu set a strong stare on Aurus, trying to gauge as best he could what he could or couldn't trust from this creature.

Abruptly, he stood up though and walked, in as straight a line as he could manage, to the back of the cave to find the water Aurus mentioned having. The need for fluids was much greater than his desire to try and pry a hole of truth out of Aurus' skull under with his glare alone.

The knowledge that the crystal dragon was out there, somewhere other than where they were, was both a relief and not entirely, but for now 'not here' was a good enough answer.

Cupping his hands beneath the steady trickle of natural water, starting out drinking in slow, measured sips before he knelt down to collect the water that had gathered in the bowl on the ground in his palm to drink more quickly, though more messily.

After a while, Hakkyuu tilted his head back and let out a half-sigh, half-moan of refreshed relief before turning his eyes back on Aurus and rubbing the back of his palm against his dampened lips.

"What about it?"

[entheogens]

Aurus turned his head very slowly to give Hakkyuu an unimpressed narrow-eyed glower over his shoulder.

While he didn't expect the boy to be immediately warm and chipper, he didn't think much of the deliberately obtuse act that he seemed to be pulling. 'What about' his name indeed.

"You should tell me what it is." There was just a hint of impatience to that suggestion, because really, he should not need to be spelling this out at all.

"Unless, that is, you'd rather I just call you 'boy.'"

[shadowstrikes]

With a sense that the large blue figure wasn't about to attack or try and eat him, at least not yet, so it left him with a small amount of defiance as he held Aurus' stare evenly.

"Do what you want."

He looked beyond him then, to the entrance of the cave in thoughtful, knotted silence and a scowl on his face. In that moment at least, Aurus could call him whatever he pleased.

There were a lot of questions rushing around inside Hakkyuu's head, but after a second he shook his head and rubbed his eyes.

"How far from Ebonhawke are we?"

[entheogens]

The refusal of a name--not for any good reason evidently but just to be willful and contrary--gave Aurus a fair impression of the sort of person he was dealing with here. He gave a mild eyebrow raise, not of surprise but more simply an oh I see. He, however, was going to more wisely pick his battles and how he fought them, and this was one he would fight by simply ignoring. If the boy wanted to shroud himself in some kind of secrecy that was his business.

Just like it was Aurus's business to casually point out how futile protecting his name was when everything else he said revealed something more about him. "Oh, so you are from Ebonhawke. I'd wondered.

"It's a long way. You're lucky to be alive."

[shadowstrikes]

The somewhat petulant scowl deepened as Hakkyuu tired to decide, in this rather limited exchange, if he found this guy irritating or if it was the whole unfortunate situation that had his patience so low.

"What, you know any other human settlements this side of Lion's Arch?" he sneered, followed by a snort.

But then he looked down, quiet again as he thought hard about the implications of 'a long way' and how lucky he really was or wasn't. The longer the silence lay, the more that naming Ebonhawke aloud started to feel like he'd just dragged something spiky up through his throat and let it drop from his mouth onto the floor, leaving a rawness inside him in its wake. His features softened slightly at their hard edges, the exhaustion coming to the surface a little more clearly before he shook his head and dragged a hand down his face. And then all the softness was gone again as he looked up at Aurus again.

"Which direction is it?"

[entheogens]

It was no surprise to see the facade momentarily crack, given that it was no surprise that all this defensiveness was a facade. The boy was obviously no warrior.

Regardless, Aurus wasn't going to get into the particulars of the local habitations, the various smaller settlements and outposts, the possibility of nomadic bands wandering the region.

Instead he simply said, "North," and (presuming that the boy would probably not know one compass point from the next out here) pointed with one finger in the general direction, "That way."

It wasn't an offer of aid or even of real guidance. If the boy wanted that he would have to, if not ask, then at least indicate it. For the moment, Aurus was again facing forward, not bothering to look at Hakkyuu but instead seeming ready to just return to his meditation.

[shadowstrikes]

As far as Hakkyuu was concerned, he didn't need anyone's help anyway. He got here well enough, didn't he? (Barring nearly dying from exposure, being attacked, and only really being alive because of the actions of this stranger and the home he'd set up for himself inside the cave, but those were all minor details.) He could get back too. He had to get back. Presuming Ebonhawke was even still standing.

What if the walls had been shattered and the charr had overrun the place? What if the dragon's damage was so deep and destructive that there was nothing left to overrun? Even so, he had to get back and find Vrenille. No matter what the state of things, Hakkyuu was sure Vrenille was alive. He had to be. There was no other possibility that his mind could accept.

He glanced toward the exit of the cave again, a little disappointed that his unrealistic expectation that noon would have suddenly become dusk hadn't happened yet in the passing of only a few minutes.

"How long will it take to get there?"

[entheogens]

"Two days walk if you make good time, longer if you run into trouble."

Trouble, in Aurus's opinion, was likely, and his tone of voice said so. Whatever state this boy had been in when he left Ebonhawke, he was undoubtedly weaker now than he had been then. He'd managed to make it here by sheer dumb luck, the chances of him making it back again were even worse, especially if did something stupid and set off unprepared like he almost seemed poised to do.

Again, though, he said none of this. If this boy was as contrary, stubborn, and headstrong as he seemed, it would probably be worse to warn him of these realities outright than to just leave him to his own steam and see if he had at least the slim amount of sense it would take to work them out on his own.