Belden- (Pre-Beaugro) 1x1 Oriel and Redsparrow

[Oriel]

Alec had always known that Faypine was the most aggressive among the nations seeking to refine their elemental bloodlines. Worse, the falcons and their kin were seen as the experts on producing the most promising children. If Roran and Mylas had been born in Faypine it was likely that only the former would have survived into young adulthood. The little power that Mylas inherited allowed him revive plants that gardeners believed to be beyond hope and, like a grapevine, to find water in Esterbrush’s desert. Both talents were like to make him a wealthy man in adulthood, but in Faypine the first measure of value was Arena strength.

He hissed under his breath. If anyone were to blame, it was those like himself who had the power to stop it and remained blind or insensate to the troubles of their fellow elementals.

“What you have seen would be enough to break the strongest of us,” Alec said gently. “No power on this earth is able to keep the good from dying when they should not, or to shelter everyone who needs protecting. We can only continue to live as best we are able. Honor and remember the dead, but let them rest beyond pain.” He glanced pointedly in the direction that Peter and Lilly had gone. “Your duty now is to the living. And to yourself.”

Alec stirred the dust at his feet with the toe of his boot, erasing the eerie symmetry of the pattern that radiated outward from where he sat.

“Luke is right. The only people who aren’t afraid are those who have nothing left to lose. You got yourself and the other two to safety. It’s difficult enough to protect yourself in that situation, let alone two others who aren’t your element. What’s truly astonishing is that you managed to save anyone else.”

He grimaced. “Believe me, I would know. I’ve got the scars as evidence.”

[Redsparrow]

James sat and listened to both of there comments on his behavior and history. "I know.." his response was exasperated. "Everyone is always saying stuff like that, but it doesn't change what happened."

Luke smiled and ruffled James's short hair. "Pain and regret are part of the healing process. I am just glad your brave enough to tell us about it."

James eyes lit up and a wide smile seemed to creep across his face. "Your going to live in the castle? Mitch is sure to like that."

Luke seemed a little startled by James's comment. "Yeah, its part of the deal for brining me back to work for them. I honestly don't know what Mitch thinks of it, but James we have talked about this, it's rude to spy on other peoples lives."

"So that means we will be leaving to Belden even sooner then we though?" James asked sadly, ignoring Luke's disapproval of his knowledge.

"Yes, but once there you guys will live in a place of your own with loving parents and siblings."

James looked sad for a moment. "Draco says that you can't keep watching us, that you are going to change things for us and that I need to be strong and let you do that."

Luke wrapped his arms around the boy and hugged him tightly. "When I am done, I will come find you. I promise."

"I known. May I be excused? I am growing tired." James said after Luke let go of him.

"Of course." Luke said giving the boy a hand up.

"Goodnight Luke and Alec, It was nice meeting you. I apologize for my behavior and hope I will have the honor of speaking with you again soon." James excused himself from the room.

Luke stood and messed a little with his hands before looking back at Alec. He had shown far more emotions to Alec then he had to anyone for years and couldn't help but feel a little vulnerable. These kids were the closest living things to him and a very real weakness. "Alec, if you could keep these kids between the two of us I would greatly appreciate that."

Luke almost laughed at his request, here he was planning to blow up a castle and his fear was Alec telling someone about the three elementals he had? "Oh how I envy your life my friend." Luke said shaking his head. "What I would give to even know my children."

"Its funny how time changes someone, just ten years ago and I didn't even care about the mother let alone the outcome of any child. Now I spend nights awake, racking my mind for their names, trying to find any that may still live." Luke was surpassingly young looking for such a hard life. However in that moment sorrow took his eyes and with it went twenty years of youth. Perhaps it was just the lighting or the late hour, but Luke had never looked so old. The expression passed before long brining the fire back to his eyes.

"SO plans, lets see where were we?"

[Oriel]

"I'll be dead before they pry a word out of me," Alec muttered. Though his freedom had cost him the better part of his life and most chance of being able to raise his children, he refused to regret what it allowed him to accomplish during his trips between the shifter nations. Smuggling out those slated to be culled, spiriting off the unusual talents to Belden, and seeing them all trained gave him back the steel he thought he'd lost in the Arena.

Luke's nervous movements struck a familiar chord in him. "Funny, how they teach the strongest of us to fear each other," he said. "My training is telling me that right now you have the upper hand in this room. That I should have power gathered and ready in case of a lightning strike. Ridiculous, yet so a part of my routine that I've never been able to stop it, even among friends." No matter that they had known each other for years at this point, at first crossing paths near Esterbrush's border and then later building the foundations of an elemental network strong enough to oppose their shifter masters.

"Plans or no, I'm still trying to figure out how I would have gotten such a reputation," Alec groused. "It's not as if I lead all of Esterbrush's patrols. Plenty of those people achieved their results all on their own. I don't expect felling a Swan tree will be much different. We'll need a few separate groups to coordinate while we're actually dislodging the ..." He couldn't help himself and stumbled midsentence. "Forgive me, the castle."

"Faypine won't believe that Belden was responsible unless they think I was hired as rogue," he offered. "It may have to look more obviously of my work than yours, just to keep them from looking in your direction afterward."

[Redsparrow]

"Lets hope it doesn't come to that." Luke smiled, he had started to relax a little, Alec was worth trusting. If he said the kids were secret then Luke didn't have to worry. However the tension between the two men had not died down, Alec was still pulling at the his power. Luke had grown use to Alec having the earth at his summoning at all times, so much so the though of not feeling his energy was a strange one.

"I have no game in attacking." Luke added, more for curiosity reasons then not. "I apologies for my constant probing." Luke had, as Mitch put it, an annoying atmosphere around him. By sending waves of energy into the air Luke could sense objects around him similar to a bat's sonar. Unfortunately like static it had the unappealing effects of making hair stand on end, clothing stick to bodies, papers and cloths float eerily and dust spiral around his focal point.

For pure experiment Luke lessened his energy, he focused the waves to a single point then changed the energy from waves to heat. It formed as a small ball of flame that he raised close to the ceiling to better illuminate the room. An odd action of trust towards Alec. The chance of anyone showing up was slim to none and even if they did they would have to break the door down first, giving Luke plenty of time to kill first then ask questions later. The only thing this action did was disarm him in front of Alec. Luke was curious to see what it felt like to have Alec not pulling from his element, to feel the energy around them turn neutral.

Alec's fear of the arena was real, his scaring was both physical and psychological. Luke had never seen the scars on his arms, but he had seen others ask about them. Alec's obvious disapproval of the question lead Luke to respect the unknown and not probe farther. He had been made the example that Luke had grown to fear. As Kern had put it, think of the money they will pay to see the light leave your eyes. The thought made the hair stand up on the back of Luke's neck. "We fear the unknown, such raw power is unpredictable." The few times Luke had locked into battle with Alec or Joss was enough to make him hesitate to do it again.

"As for your reputation, I don't understand what you mean? All I see is a fearful respect of your power and leadership. Would you rather be known as a womanizing alcoholic? I violent sociopath?" It was a tease, his attempt to find out what Alec thought about himself while avoiding any conversations that could lead to the Arena or Joss.

"Faypine will always look in my direction, I am there witch and witch hunts are the councils favorite pastime." Luke regretted saying that as soon as it slipped form his lips. For what Alec knew about Faypine and Luke was not everything. Some memories Luke kept to and from himself. "What a damaged group we are."

"But yes, anything I do will have to be well hidden within the rubble. Which shouldn't be to hard, I need to heat the tree enough to explode. I believe I can do that without leaving any chard marks."

[Oriel]

Alec felt the ripple of Luke's influence recede and then fade to a memory of charged air. The remaining currents stilled into the lapping ebb and flow of wind that prevailed in the absence of outside elemental power.

"Nothing to forgive," he said, loosening his grip on the motes of earth that danced between them and scattering the patterns that had formed at his call. His awareness sank farther below the earth, a touch as of reassurance rather than a summons. With Luke so pointedly discarding his weapons it was hardly fair to remain armed, himself. Earth and dust still murmured to him in a beat as familiar to him as the sound of his own heart, but without the creeping imbalances that he had learned to recognize as a sign that another powerful elemental was nearby.

All of the greater powers left ripples that could be felt in elements other than their own when they were being actively used. Each movement tumbled over into the others like a ship diving into the trough between two great waves. Arena strategies often centered on reading these shifts in an opponent's focus in order to predict the next direction of attack. A greater crest in one moment signaled a more committed strike in the aftermath.

No matter how often he practiced, Alec had never been able to read these subtleties. Earth danced when he called, roaring through him so loudly that it drowned out all other senses. On patrols and out in the countryside this deafening to other signals was little or no disadvantage. He launched huge masses of rock or called sandstorms without interruption and let the earth sing in his blood. In the Arena, no matter how he tugged, only a bloody scrap of his element was left to him and the space was so close that it hurt to breathe.

Flashes of thinking about what he hated most tempted him to reach again into the ground, but Luke's question unclasped the fist of dread that had begun to dig into his stomach.

"I hate being recognized," he said at last. "Someone who was talking to me about the price of timber or the health of their youngest child just a moment before -- all of that stops. They freeze. Waiting for me to turn into some monstrous force of nature, I suppose. Waiting for the earth to buckle and shift if I so much as lose my temper."

"A legend is an uncomfortable thing to be," he finished. "Now and again I manage to pass as a blacksmith, instead, which is always pleasant when it works. No one lives in fear of a smith raining destruction on their heads."

In much the same way that Luke knew to avoid asking about his scars or about his fight with Joss, he knew better than to pry too closely into his friend's business with the Faypine council members. Some histories were still too raw to be hauled out for inspection.

"Damaged, yes, but more importantly still alive," Alec said lightly. "At least as long as we're careful while we practice. Tearing up the roots and roughing out the ground near the base ought to keep them too occupied to look carefully at the interior of the tree. Without obvious char marks they should stay focused on the damage they can see."

[Redsparrow]

Luke felt the presence of Alec's element begin to fade away, it was enough to give him a childish rush of excitement. He resisted the urge to pull his back into action, to take control of the ambient energy and consume the empty space ending the strange silence that feel between the men. He couldn't quite explain the uneasiness of no longer feel Alec in the room via electricity or flow of earthen energy.

Shrugging he gestured to the damp slouching ceiling, buckling floor, uneven doors and windows that made up his house. The entirety if the building was clearly poor work, from both carpenter and metalworking. "I beg to differ, every night I fear the work of the blacksmith. But I don't think your legend is of wrath, no matter you still have time to change that.

“Now then, there is a place in the swamps were we can practice. The falcons do not go there due to the high water level and giant tree arachnids. Shall we be off?”

[Oriel]

"Giant spiders," Alec repeated. "Wonderful. One more thing to love about Faypine." He shrugged back into his earth sense like an old scarf and looked with new eyes at the fittings in Luke's room. The metal rasped at his faint touch, a grudging sour note overlaying its echo.

"Should probably replace the roof brackets," he added. "They're pitted with rust. If they fail, you won't have any warning beyond the roof falling down around your head."

Metal affinity, a thread bound through the rest of his connection to earth, struck in odd moments to remind him not to stand beneath the facings of old buildings or to shift his hold on a hammer while shoeing a horse. The earth of Faypine sloshed vaguely in a way that Esterbrush's sand never had, the roots of the trees grasping and spreading through the loamy soil rather than striking downward into underground aquifers. Pulling up trees here meant undermining and dislodging the giant root systems as well. At least if the falcons weren't going to look at the char marks first.

[Redsparrow]

Luke shrugged off Alec’s comment. With any luck he wouldn’t need to worry about the structure for much longer.

Night had fallen hours ago and with its darkness the two were able to slip onto the side roads of Faypine unnoticed. The roads were raised only a few feet above the swamp that bubbled and trickled all around them. The constant drown of insects with the occasional bullfrog croak had become such a part of Faypine that Luke couldn’t imagine not hearing them. For any other travelers the mosquitoes would be unbearable, however Luke had long ago tuned his electric field to either stave them off or flat out kill them if they came to close. He extended it protect Alec of course.

Compact dirt, stone and moss held the roads loosely together, during the wet season all roads with the exception of the major trade roads would become submerged. They never truly dried out after the three or four months of being under. This gave them a spongey, uneven and quicksand like effect.

Luke rarely took these roads due to how hard it was to travel along them. There had been many a time that he had lost boots and wagons into the muck. Thank goodness Alec was with him. The man seemed to be able to stabilize road enough to make travel for the two quick and almost effortless.

The maze of roads lead them farther and farther from Faypine’s main city. Before long even the flickering lights of houses on the bayou began to grow scarce before finally vanishing completely. Through the dense canopy the rays of moon light would periodically light the road for them, it wasn’t until hours of walking had past and any sight of life had vanished that Luke began to light the path with his fire.

Their road began to slim down until they could only walk in single file, when it ended Luke used his flames to burn a hole through dense thorn bushes. Carefully he worked to create a path just large enough for the two men to get through. It was on the other side of this thorny tunnel that they broke onto a major road once more. It was clean cut high in the sky, which allowed the road all the natural lighting it could get, for security reasons.

Once on it the two walked in silence for a long ways, they were nearing the edge of the falcon’s territory. It was a reached area were the swamp became so unpredictable that no one attempted a living.

At what seemed like an arbitrary location Luke stopped and pointed into the depths of the forest. “Can you create us a path? There is a cluster of Swan trees, back there, no one will notice if one or two go missing.”

[Oriel]

Alec had already resigned himself to being eaten alive by insects in Faypine's swamp only to feel the judder of Luke's energy colliding with his own and holding the buzz at bay. He strengthened the roads beneath their feet as a matter of course, either sifting the drier and coarser material closer to the surface of the soil or bodily holding it together where it buckled. The farther they traveled from towns the more the air began to weigh on his shoulders. Unlike the drier climate of Esterbrush or the merciful cold of Belden, Faypine clogged his lungs with the taste of silt, moss and water.

His shirt had become a second skin after only an hour of walking. By the time they passed beyond all light save that cast down by the moon, he'd long given up trying to keep his sodden hair out of his eyes, the silence making him all too aware of his own panting breath. For spirits' sake, it was more like swimming than walking.

Luke's question lifted him out of his daze.

"Walk on," he said. "The soil will hold you."

Or it would as long as he bade it, covering the muddy surface with buried pebbles and rougher stones to provide traction for their boots. This gift, just one among many, had allowed him to move Esterbrush's forces through trackless deserts as quickly as if they had been traveling on permanent roads. With support from the "lesser" elementals in his company he'd been able to maintain a hold on a path large enough for the entire group to travel over several days. Without the others creating guides and shoring up his focus, he'd have burned through his reserves by nightfall.

Alec's foot brushed against the gnarled surface of an enormous root. He knelt wordlessly beside it, running his hand over the bark while Luke's fire retreated into the darkness.

"Are any of them dead?" he asked hopefully. The live ones bent near him and, though he had little affinity for plants, he knew the spirits would not easily forgive him the unnecessary destruction of something so old and still so alive, its roots running like blood vessels through the earth.

[Redsparrow]

"Some, yes. If you like we can take those down first. But I think it best to practice on at least one living one." Luke's trust in Alec was strong, however every step he took he found himself fearful of meeting the wet muddy surface of the swamp. In this area that would be a mistake from which he would have no choice but let the earth claim him.

Luke let his flame grow larger and brighter at the sound he knew all to well. The creaking of exoskeletons high above, as the creatures creep curiously closer, watching the pair make their way across the ground. While musk deer and alligators were somewhat common, humans were a rare treat.

Giant arachnids, they were famed for their intelligence and above all lethal venoms. In his twenties Luke had taken up hunting the creatures, the venom was a valuable commodity and sought after for many reasons. Snowden used it to poison hunting arrows, leaving prey paralyzed and easy to catch. Belden was able to extract chemicals from it that allowed for some of the most vivid pigments to be stable and fade resistant. Faypine, well Faypine had its uses for the stuff. Esterbrush's use for it intrigued Luke the most, they could create some of the strongest pain killers known with it.

Efforts made by many including himself to supply the worlds demand for the venom had driven the large creatures to more remote parts of the swamps. Areas were few could manage to track them down, it was when looking for the spiders that Luke had found this cluster of swan trees.

The noise of the creatures moving became gradually louder as more gathered above them, the strange clicking and chattering that made up their spoken language soon filled the air. Luke let out a low clacking noise that he had learned years ago from watching the creatures. It was a sound they used when they found something dangerous but knew it meant them no harm unless bothered. This noise seemed to satisfy some of the growing curiosity in the group.

Luke paid them little attention as the swan trees began to come into sights. Looking up they could see the massive nests and tangles of spider webbing that covered every inch of the canopy, blocking out any light that may try and siphon through. The lack of light had killed off most of the more common plants in the swamp, it had instead favored ones that lived off the dead bodies of older arachnids or the remains of their prey.

These plants were dark in color, tend to have more spines and bearded fruit and flowers that smelled of rotting flesh, all in attempt to attract the drown of flies that also feed off the gruesome remains. Luke had never felt bad for kill the spiders, they were dark creatures who killed their own young and each other given the chance. They would spread to any part of the swamps that they could and change them into the pit of rot that now lay in front of the men.

"Lets see here." Luke said scanning the place. "It looks like that far one has seen better days."