AVftS-23
 Part of a series of archived posts in AVftS | |
| AVftS-23 | |
|---|---|
| Author: | Emily, Luca |
| Date Posted: | December 5, 2019 |
| Forum Post: | Linked! |
| Word Count: | 1,695 |
| Characters: | Rizali, Kaegan |
- - - Navigation - - - <<< AVftS-22 · Last Post | |
The trees were thick here, but not so thick as to block the light of the moon. Rizali imagined it had something to do with the habitual forestry of Ceadaichte Mòir, and that as they ventured deeper, light might become a distant memory.
The group passed silently through the night until the lights of the village could no longer be seen, when Rizali turned to them, lowering his hood and enjoying the feeling of air once again on his ears. “Now that we’re out of there,” he looked to the trees around them. “I suppose there are a few things we need to figure out. The village didn’t have much in the way of travelling supplies, so we couldn’t have been any more prepared than we are now, but I’m still concerned. As long as magic can still be woven within this place, I can keep us protected while we sleep, but I’m not entirely sure what to do about food.”
He looked up at the trees surrounding them: tall, majestic, and full of life. Furthermore, there were no visible low branches that could be easily broken. A breeze came through at that moment, causing him to add, “Or warmth.”
Kaegan stood in place, his eyes passing over the forest canopy. "It's not as if we're lacking things to burn..." His face remained slightly green from the travel through the whatever just happened, and the nausea competed with his desire to not seem at all bothered, although it wasn't a fully convincing display.
Rizali nodded, only seeming to half pay attention, as he pulled another component from the bag at his waist. He held it out to Kaegan, a small leaf that looked and smelled of spearmint. “Suck on this, it’ll help with the after-effects of the spell. See, my main concern is a fire getting out of control, if we could light one in the first place. I don’t see any dead branches on the ground.”
Kaegan idly accepted the leaf and began chewing immediately. "I'm not sure that's such a bad thing right now," he mused.
“Perhaps.” The elf seemed thoughtful, “Shall we spread out and search for dead branches? I’m sure there must be something nearby, even if the trees here are young.”
Lyndh grunted an affirmation, then walked off deeper into the trees with a right-leaning tilt. For a moment, it was only Rizali and Kaegan standing together, until the elf shook his head. “Stupid old man. Here, take this.” He moved his hands slightly, then cupped them together, and a small light floated out, attaching to Kaegan’s hand.
Kaegan idly accepted the light and began chewing immediately. "This one doesn't taste as good..."
Rizali stared, wondering when they had switched roles and he had become the straight man of this comedy duo. “Huh,” he said, then crafted another ball of light that stuck to the back of his hand. “Anyway, I’m going to go off in search of dead branches to the left. You go straight ahead into the woods, and we’ll meet up when we find something? Then we’ll make camp later on.”
Kaegan blinked for a moment and began to wander forward into the wood. His mouth was beaming with an unknown light enchantment, the back of his head illuminating his posterior. The glow was actually less helpful than he had thought at first. His lit up cheeks blinded most of his vision with red. Finding any dead branches was going to be dificult-ish like this, he thought. With any luck the other two would have gone off and found three days worth of branches and have done everything up for him by the time he returned. Or was found, or something.
He stopped wandering. It was really rather dark now. He smiled and the light of seemingly five suns poured out of his teeth. The forest was now quite bright in the area immediately in front of him. Alas, there were no dead sticks or branches to be found here. Odd. Something about this forest felt like it defied reason.
Rizali watched Kaegan leave, shaking his head. It was a strange experience, travelling with Kaegan. The boy bounced between detached seriousness and all-out slapstick at a worrying rate. Regardless, he had a few things he needed to do while he was out here, and it would be better to accomplish them alone than when worrying about anyone else. They dropped their glamour and wandered deeper into the woods, directly away from the village, using their light to illuminate the path and to help them avoid any roots.
They walked to one of the trees, placed their hand on it, and closed their eyes. A great energy flowed through it, pure life and magic. In a serene whisper, they said, “Adahl urbeshalin, sathan sul’amas me an vir.” Young one, please share with me a path. It was one of the ancient rituals of his people, back when the elementals lived beside them.
The tree was very young, not even twenty years since it had last been felled, but its roots were ancient. As they breathed in the night’s air, Rizali too breathed in the knowledge the tree shared. It showed them where branches were nearby, but it also showed them how the children of the forest navigated, shared with them landmarks they needed to remember, and warned them of things unseen. In return, they shared with it some secrets of Elahána, the rituals handed down from those who had come before, the whispers of the trees. It took from them the images of their memory, and the two thanked one another.
The elf, feeling more at peace than he had in a long time, wove together another long-glamour, appearing back in the male character they had crafted. He knew where some of the branches nearby were, at least, and Kaegan would likely have developed a hell of a headache from keeping that light in his mouth.
“Kaegan,” the elf said, approaching the boy a few minutes later with an arm full of dead branches, “let’s go. Lyndh is itching to move.” He waved a hand and the light inside Kaegan’s mouth dissipated.
Kaegan felt significantly less important, but somehow much more equipped to see beyond the end of his nose. "where did you even get all of that?" he asked.
The elf shrugged, one of the branches from the top of the pile falling onto the ground. As he knelt to try and pick it up, two more fell. He groaned. “Ugh, can you get those? Thanks, I’ll craft another light for you when we get back to Lyndh. I think he might have been seen. Anyway, he found all of it. I don’t know how.”
Kaegan blinked repeatedly "Might have been seen? Might have been seen by what?" he began looking around him and into the canopy of the forest looking for things that might have eyes.
“A villager, most likely. They definitely noticed we’ve left by now, and I wouldn’t be surprised if a couple of them have come into the woods to look for us.” The two were walking back in the direction of Lyndh now, who was carrying a pile of branches three times as large as the one Rizali carried. “It’s hard to explain, anyway, we should keep going. Kaegan, lead the way.”
A ball of light appeared in the Kaegan’s hand again. After about thirty minutes of walking deeper into the forest, the group found themselves in a large clearing. There were traces on the ground of townspeople having possibly once camped in this area, but they had been faded by the elements in the time since then. A stone circle making up the outline of an old firepit remained off to their right. Kaegan stopped walking. "Behold I have led us to safety.”
“Good work,” Rizali said, walking over to the empty firepit and dropping his armful of sticks and branches in with a sigh of relief. He stretched his arms behind his back, then brushed the dead flecks of bark and leaf off of his robes. Lyndh sat his wood to one side of the camp with a grunt and left to take care of some business.
The elf looked to Kaegan, then back to the unlit wood. “Do you know how to… I never really learned the whole flint and steel thing.”
Kaegan stared down at the pile of wood and tilted his head to the side. "Well. It's complicated," he said and picked up a nearby rock. He placed it under the pile of brambles and removed his rusty dagger that was once wielded by the late Local Emperor, Herbert Wallace. Kaeagan held the dagger firmly with both hands, considering the angle of approach, the strength, the intensity, the technique that would be used here.
He swung randomly at the rock maybe two dozen times, as sparks flew into the brush pile. Some of them stuck an embedded themselves in the branches dumped haphazardly into the pit. Eventually, they began to smoulder and caught fire.
“Nice work, you’ll have to teach me that sometime,” Rizali said. “Now I’m pretty sure I learned this spell correctly, I only looked it up when I knew there’d be camping, so this is… without any practice.”
The elf closed his eyes and appeared to concentrate. With small hand movements, almost as if he was making shapes out of string wrapped around his fingers, he gestured to the four compass points of the camp, and then opened his eyes. “I think we’ll be alerted if anything that isn’t the three of us comes within a few metres of the camp.” He sat down near the fire, pulling his robes close. “Still, I think that we should take watch shifts tonight.”
Kaegan picked up a rock and tossed it a metre behind Rizali.
Rizali turned and looked at it, then looked back to Kaegan. He seemed to concentrate, trying to notice anything, then sighed. “I’ll take first watch, then. Stupid spell.”
Very proud of his own success, Kaegan went to bed immediately.