Welcome to Gaia! ::

It was nearing the middle of autumn, but sweat beaded on Raemos' brow anyway as he finished hammering the last magical ward into place around the crop fields. He, the priestess, Talon Sterben, and some of the other mages in the guild had worked hard to enchant them the day before. and he had installed more than a third of them himself. Time had been of the essence, and Talon and his sister Selza assisted, but Raemos knew he had done most of the work. It was just as he liked it.

Hopefully, the exhausting work would pay off, and there would be no more crop loss due to strange magical animation. The blood moon was a bizzare time indeed, especially, he noted in the dark land.

“Hey! Rae!” called Selza, waving at him from across the field. He waved back. “How about we break for a drink, eh?” It was a joke – Raemos rarely touched drink, and even more rarely still in public.

“I need to check the arrays.” he called back.

“Oh come on. You've probably checked them a thousand times already!” she laughed, walking over.

“He needs to.” said her brother, walking up next to Raemos as well, “If the alignment of the wards is not absolutely perfect, then all of our work will be in vain.”

“Pah, perfection. You mages and your magic and your need to have everything perfect. You'll make someone an infuriating wife. Both of you will.”

Raemos smiled mildly at her joke.

“Yes. Well.” said Talon, coughing awkwardly into his hand, “We cannot afford to lose any more crops to... animation... events.”

“Gods... so serious!” Raemos imagined Selza rolling her nonexistant eyes, “Well, I'm getting a drink, with or without you two idiots.” she said, smirking saucily at them both.

“Can she call you that, sir?!” Raemos said, turning to Talon in surprise.

“Alas” said Talon, who outranked them both, “She is doing this, very commendably, off duty on her own time. So she can act as my sister, not my colleague.” Talon spared a moment to share a pained expression of resignation and indignation with Raemos, “So I cannot cite her...”

“Damn straight.” she said, smirking.

Talon quickly looked away. “Don't get any ideas, Assistant Corporal.”

“I would never dream of it.” said Raemos. He'd called Talon worse than 'idiot' in his letters home. He looked out over the fields, seeing the wards spread out in a lattice into the forest at it's edge. “Sir...” he said quietly, pointing to the forest, “Movement.”

They all tensed. The movement could be anything, from a harmless selala to one of the beasts that infested this foul wood. It could be a stray sheron or a bandit. This was a land of uncertainty, and they were there to protect the townsfolk from it.

“Shall we investigate, sir?” Raemos said, his gaze tracking its movement.

“Yes.” said Talon, drawing his scepter. Raemos did the same, as did Selza, though for her it was a mace.

They approached slowly and carefully, and soon a low buzzing sound could be heard. Raemos could see the flicker of wings and barely make out, against the soft light of Endeldarth's trees, a bulbous creature, long of abdomen, hovering amidst the shrubs. “Vispiri.” he whispered.

“Lets take care of it.” said Talon. The air grew thick around them as they summoned their respective and dark magics.

Though both were potent mages, Raemos's magic was very different than Talon's magic: his was a magic of solid shadows, that crushed and snuffed away life. It had a mind of it's own, like a hunting beast, and was never completely under Raemos's control.

Talon's magic, on the other hand, was like smoke but even more ethereal still, a magic of drifting and choking and silence. The man seemed to control his magic completely: There were no spurts of rebellious independence, no fits of bloodthirst, no strange anomalies in his casting. Raemos almost envied that level of fine control, but he had to work with what he had.

Raemos, of course, had never spoken to Talon about magic. He did not like the man, and though he was polite in a professional capacity, he had wanted to punch the Soudanite more than once - while on duty, even. They were not friends.

Still, as Talon's smoky magic coiled towards the huge, poisonous insect, Raemos could respect the way it seemed almost an extension of the man.

His magic, however, was hungry for blood and death, and happy – always happy – to be used. It slid along the ground, a living shadow that lurked behind the Vispiri and, oozing quietly upward, loomed like a pillar behind it.

The magical wisps fouled the beast's wings and it faltered in the air, buzzing angrily, before Raemos's wave of shadows crashed down upon it, grinding it into the ground. If there had been more Vispiri in the area, or if it had just been one of the mages at work, perhaps the insect would have had a chance.

“It's dead.” said Raemos, relieved. It was always nice to have an easy threat to deal with.

“... You guys realize that both of your magics are as creepy as Oblivion, right?” remarked Selza.

Of course it is thought Raemos, snidely, That is, after all, where our magic comes from.

She prodded the dead insect with a foot, “Its dead, but its not over yet. We have to find the hive and get rid of it.”

“The hive?” asked Talon, “You are saying its a scout.”

“Yes.” agreed Raemos, “It's a scout... see the way the wings are angled...?”

“I don't care about that.” said Talon dismissively. Raemos remembered, again, that he hated the man. “The point is, we should indeed find the nest it came from. Raemos, remain on guard here and check the arrays. Selza and I will investigate.”

“Very well.” said Raemos, saluting (somewhat) ironically. Not that he was upset with his task. No: it was important and required a lot of trust on Talons part. Despite how much he despised the man, Raemos knew that Talons professional trust did not come easily.

He began checking the ward arrays, making sure they were angled to interact with each other just right. They were: there would be no more animation events in these fields, at least until the next Blood moon.

A yowl behind him caused him to turn suddenly, and he brought a magical shield up just in time for the claws of a trio of small creatures to skitter off of it. “Lafahz Gaom!” he intoned, letting the thick magical miasma settle on the creatures as he drew his sword for combat.

They were feline in appearance, short and stocky with tiny tails and a set of small wings on their backs. They struggled against his miasma, glaring at him with brilliant eyes. He felt an invisible force shove him, breaking his concentration on the spell, and one of them shook itself free of the magic.

“For our god!” it shouted in a strangely accented version of dragonic, leaping at him bravely. He slashed it and it landed, skidding, it's side gashed.

The others managed to free themselves, forming a triangle around him. “For our god, the great one, we present this sacrifice!” they sneered, baring their fangs.

Raemos's magic, already excited, pooled around him. It was slimy and hungry, a predatory nightmare that wanted only death for these interlopers.

Raemos spread his hand, commanding it forth, and it obeyed gleefully, wrapping itself around one of the creatures and shoving it to its side, enveloping it like a gelatinous serpent in suffocating, crushing darkness.

The others attacked and he sliced again. The one that was already injured screamed as he cut deeply into it, and then, quietly, it fell to the ground and did not move.

The third, howling in fury, latched onto his uniform with it's powerful claws and swiped at his face. The claws tore into his cheek, and, angrey himself, he shoved at it with his magic.

It uncoiled from around the other feline, ripping his attacker off of him and holding it in midair, strangling it like a noose. Raemos was not cruel enough to let it die of suffocation: He approached and, mercifully, stabbed it through as it hung there. Finished, he let it fall to the ground, dead.

The last one, it's bones crushed and its muscled bruised, struggled to its feet. “Our god will have revenge...” it choked out, backing away, it's ears low in surrender.

“If you say so.” said Raemos, watching as it crawled back to the forest. He allowed it to leave – it was not likely to get very far, but if it did, he wasn't going to kill something that had surrendered. It was dishonorable.

When it was out of sight, he looked over the beasts thoughtfully.

Giogimar he realized. He had only read of the elusive and intelligent dragon-worshipping beasts. They lived everywhere on Magesc... but why had this group of three attacked him?

Well, they were dead now. As he waited for his comerades to return from their scouting, he began to investigate the bodies of the cat creatures...

(1561/1200)