Fated (Chapter Thirty-Seven)

[tanadin]

 In which our Ahnrak group FINALLY reaches their destination and we meet 2/3 new characters that they'll encounter in the city.

Shit's about to heat up soon.

Chapter list: http://tanadin.dreamwidth.org/382.html
Map of the continent: http://tanadin.deviantart.com/art/Fated-map-544073443
Character status spreadsheet: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1RKoeOLYhQctmZ5McNHc_kid0tjfb1BxyuD8i95FmFQE/edit?usp=sharing

Chapter Thirty-Seven

Kingdom of Orvex, Minecraftia. October 15, year 573. Time instance 483Z.

It was about noon when Nia had the group pull the boats over to the bank of the river, informing them that they only had to walk a few hours through the forest to reach Ahnrak. Shred seemed pleased about this development, as did Mira and Teramelle.

Niel glanced back at the boats once they had retrieved their things and had gotten ready to set out. "What about the boats?"

"They've served their purpose. We'll be walking on the way back." Shred informed him. "Let's get going."

Nia checked the map and led the way into the trees, the rest of the group not far behind. Not surprisingly, Niel had to stop to ride on Teramelle's back after about an hour. He just couldn't keep up with the quick pace that Shred insisted they take.

Several hours passed in relative silence, only occasionally broken by a short conversation. For the most part, the group was glad about being able to stretch their legs instead of sitting around all day.

They eventually reached the city, pausing once the massive stone walls came into sight. None of them had ever actually seen a city before and were blown away by its scale.

"I've never seen anything like this." Niel whispered. "This is...wow."

"Imagine how many people are in that space." Shred muttered. "Defensible, though."

Nia eventually shook off her awe and led the group to the closest gate. Two guards stood beside the entryway and stopped them on their way in, clearly surprised by the group. They had rarely seen pigmen and Skullblades before, but the baby dragon and the unicorn were new.

Shred informed them that they were here to find some friends of theirs. Teramelle snorted and tossed her head in agreement. The guards looked at each other before waving the group in.

Shred immediately picked up Mira, not wanting her to become lost in the crowd. She glanced at Nia. "What now?"

"I have no idea. I guess we just...wander around? Teramelle will let us know when one of the others is nearby, right?"

Teramelle snorted again and turned to look down the main street that led towards the docks.

Unicorns: knowers of fate.

Adrian nodded to her and the unicorn led the way down the street, ignoring all the stares she drew. As they approached the busy docks, Niel noticed a bizarre scene. Well, the scene wasn't so bizarre- it was the people involved that got his attention.

A girl with a large axe on her back and a horned metal helmet was holding back a smaller, angrier girl who was doing her best to get to a man to fight him. The girl in the helmet looked almost bored, as if this happened every day. The other girl was what caught Niel's attention, however.

She was completely devoid of color, from her skin to her hair. Only her crimson eyes gave her color, as her light metal armor was gray and her cloak was white.

Niel was fairly certain that albinos didn't usually have eyes that red and felt the instinctive need to avoid her, but Teramelle snorted and walked towards the three. As they drew closer, Niel could see the man slowly backing away from the albino, whose words could now be heard:

"-and I'll tear your eyes out, I swear on me mum!"

"Mom's dead, Claire." The girl with the helmet said tiredly.

"I swear on me mum's grave!"

"Mom was cremated."

"On me mum's ashes!"

"Her ashes were scattered in the ocean and probably don’t exist anymore."

"Then I swear on the ocean, who is also me mum!"

"Oh my fucking god, Claire."

Claire turned around to glare at the other girl, who had short, dark brown hair and green eyes. "Just let me at him!"

"If you had been paying attention instead of making threats, you would have noticed he was gone." The girl rolled her eyes and let go of the albino.

Claire whirled around, looking for the man, and eventually stomped her feet in frustration. "What a coward! I could have kicked his ass any day, I-"

"Excuse me." Nia interrupted. "I think we're looking for you two. Could you possibly hold this?" She held up the glowing stone.

The girls stared at her, then Teramelle, then the group at large.

"Who are you?" Claire demanded, recovering first.

"Children of prophecy." Velloh informed them. "The unicorn thinks you might be with us. If the stone glows when you hold it, then you are."

As the two girls looked at each other, Niel decided that they were probably sisters, despite the albino being shorter than he was and her sister being around Shred's height.

As the older girl opened her mouth to speak, Niel heard a sharp intake of breath from Nessy and glanced over at her. Her eyes were locked on Claire's cloak, which appeared to be made from white scales.

Albino dragonscale.

A low growl rose in Nessy's throat. "That's a dragonscale cloak."

Claire looked at it and nodded. "Yeah, you have a problem with it?"

"Yes. I do. Anyone who hunts and kills dragons is someone that I won't associate with."

"It's a family heirloom." The other girl said quickly. "We don't know where it came from, exactly. I was supposed to inherit it but I figured that it fit her better."

Nessy’s eyes narrowed suspiciously but she fell silent.

Nia cleared her throat. “The stone?” She prompted.

“Oh, right.” The older girl took the stone without any hesitation, clearly not too afraid of what it might do. She raised an eyebrow when it remained lit. “This means…?”

“You’re one of us.” Adrian informed her.

She nodded slightly, handing it to her sister. Claire tossed it to herself a couple of times, noting how it went dim anytime it left her hand. “Okay. So you’ve got a magical rock. How does that mean we’re in a prophecy?” She handed it to Nia, frowning slightly.

“It only glows when one of the people in the prophecy touches it.” Shred told the girls. “And by looking at you, I’d say you aren’t really doing anything, are you? You don’t live here and have nowhere to go.”

The older girl stared. “How did you-“

“Lucky guess.” Shred shrugged. “Are you coming with us or not?”

The sisters looked at each other.

“We don’t really have much of a choice.” The older girl confessed. “We’re out of money and will have to start sleeping on the streets soon.”

“Might as well get an adventure in.” Claire shrugged. “Let’s do this. Prophecies usually mean I can fight things and Zekara can’t even stop me.”

Zekara groaned. “Great. Anyway, my name is Zekara and Claire is my half-sister. We had the same mother, but…” She trailed off.

“We heard.” Adrian sounded sympathetic. “Don’t worry. We’re saving the world and no one’s died so far! Right?”

“Not as far as we know.” Shred said darkly.

“Great.” Zekara rolled her eyes. “What now?”

“I hope I get to fight a lokolang. That would be fun.” Claire seemed to be talking more to herself than anyway.

Adrian glanced at Teramelle. “Is that everyone?”

The unicorn snorted and shook her mane.

“That’s a no.” Adrian sighed. “Back to looking, I guess.”

~~~

Trymdas leaned against the tree, sighing quietly to himself.

There was no way he was sleeping. He hadn’t slept the previous day and he could skip today too. He’d only sleep when he was too tired to dream, if possible. He couldn’t deal with seeing Vorna die again. Worse, when he had tried to sleep earlier, he had gotten brief flashes of some kind of horrible monster covered in blood, someone in the group’s blood, before he decided that staying awake was probably better.

Unfortunately, Trymdas was exhausted. He was no stranger to staying up for days at a time, his current record being five but he was able to handle three without too much difficulty. However, he wasn’t used to walking through the entire night, constantly stressed over his teammates finding out things about the past that shouldn’t, that couldn’t be uncovered and about what his brother might do if Samuel came snooping again.

He shivered, slipping down into a sitting position. His limbs felt like lead and his eyes were threatening to close. He had wandered a ways away from the camp to get away from everyone, to get away from everyone’s energy. As always, he was struck by the urge to run, run as far as he could, the moment he was out of his brother’s influence. He shivered again, knowing he would need to return to Valkan soon or the magic that linked them would warn his brother that he was gone.

Troubled and bound to the cause of it all.

Trymdas looked at his hands momentarily to convince himself that they were unchanged and got back to his feet, swaying slightly. He stumbled back towards camp, realizing that there was no way he could stay up all day.

He passed Samuel on the way, as he was on watch. Samuel raised an eyebrow at Trymdas but didn’t ask questions, knowing that he wouldn’t get any answers.

Trymdas sighed and he collapsed on his sleeping bag, but from relief or resignation to nightmares, he didn’t know. He was asleep.

-~-

Sevadus leaned back in his seat, sighing quietly. He wasn’t sure how he felt about Trymdas. The kid was clearly troubled from some kind of horrible past, but what it could possibly be, he wasn’t sure. He was overall a shy and not very talkative kid, making him quite different from the Mindcracker he was descended from.

Sevadus glanced up at Pyro and Anderz as they chattered excitedly about their descendants and noticed Kurt doing the same, getting a little wave from the man. He waved back, noting that soon every descendant would have been found.

Zisteau, seated beside Kurt, was aware of this as well. He had one arm around Kurt’s shoulders and held the orb in his other hand, allowing him to watch Velloh run around with his group in search of the third descendant within Ahnrak. He honestly wasn’t that surprised that his descendant would end up with the group with the Davions in it- part of him had expected it.

He looked over at Kurt’s orb, seeing that Xullos was asleep. Kurt seemed to be dozing off as well, occasionally blinking open his eyes and looking around the room to make sure that he hadn’t missed anything.

Zisteau held back a sigh as he realized that Kurt was just as stressed as the rest of them. He frowned slightly. Speaking of stress…

…he wondered how Vechs was doing.

~~~

“It’s not here, it’s not here, it’s not here!” Vechs raced around his room, digging through every drawer, looking under every table, and knocking things to the floor in his haste to find what he had lost.

“Maybe you left it in a map.” Blame offered.

“No, no no no! They’ve stolen it, I know they have!” Vechs paced anxiously, practically radiating stress from his entire body. “They’ve got it and who knows what they could do with it, who knows how they managed it, but they did, they took it, they…”

“Vechs.” Blame grabbed his shoulder and spun him around to look into his dark eyes. “The Hostiles don’t have it. You probably left it in your map when Zisteau went to get you. Why don’t you go look for it there?”

Vechs left the room muttering about how they weren’t safe, leading Blame to groan and lean against the wall. Who knew that taking the orb would cause Vechs even more stress?

He felt paranoid, though, that Vechs would somehow find out where Blame had stashed it. He waited a couple of minutes before following Vechs down to the portal room, searching for the right door. He looked around to make sure he was alone before going in, immediately walking towards where he had hidden it.

Blame willed the roots of the tree to move and reveal the orb. He carefully picked it up and ran his gloved fingers over its cracked surface. It was a wonder this thing even still worked.

He resisted the urge to flip through the Hostiles to see what they were up to. He placed the orb back in its hiding place and left the map.

He didn’t notice the figure that had followed him in.

Vechs waited until Blame left to move forward and move the roots of the tree to retrieve the orb. He sighed in relief and looked through the Hostiles, finding nothing out of the ordinary. He slipped it into his toolbelt and once again left, feeling a mixture of better and worse. The Hostiles didn’t have it, which was good, but Blame had lied to him. That made him feel awful as he walked down the hall, but he supposed he understood why Blame had done it. Still, he needed to keep tabs on the Hostiles…

Vechs shivered, telling himself that the cold presence behind him was his imagination, it was a hallucination, it wasn’t-

“Vechs!”

Vechs screeched and turned around, swinging wildly at whoever it was behind him and falling. Chad ducked, almost dropping the large chunk of ice he was carrying with a magical field. “Woah, hey! It’s just me!”

Vechs didn’t move from his position on the ground, breathing heavily. Chad carefully set down his ice block and sat down beside him, putting a hand on his shoulder. “You okay, Vechs?”

Vechs slowly shook his head.

No. He hadn’t been okay since before Norazdomu had shown up with the orbs.

 

Comments

[eclipse3]

I already like those two, especially Claire!
G.C. (::)(::)(::)(::)(::)(::)

[thezombineer]

First?

[(Anonymous)]

Claire is my new favorite character
She's so awesome XD
Also Norazdomu smells cause he's a meanie face >:c
-Random Anon

[(Anonymous)]

NEW DESCENDANTS! Yay!

That orb needs to be crushed and burned to a powder. Norazdomu is a two faced skunk.

"Not as far as we know." Oh Shred, you're scary. Or she just guessed.

(::) (::) (::) (::) (::) (::) (::) (::) (::) (::) (::) (::) (::) (::) (::) (::)

-the lurkiest lurker

[jiminee]

AAAAAh new descendants, awesome :D
Oh right. This group still doesn't know about Vorna :c
and shit somebody seriously needs to help vechs?"!?!1 WRgnjskr
/#/ /#/ /#/ /#/ /#/ /#/ /#/ /#/ /#/ /#/ /#/ /#/ /#/

[(Anonymous)]

GOD FUCKING DAMNIT TANA STOP MAKING VAKS EXPERIENCE SO MUCH PAIN HOLY WHAT. Also i hope irl vechs' bronchitis feels better D: -iirkolav anon