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Character: Janatheil
Stage: Apprentice
Luck: 1
Creature: Kiandri Dragon x 5
Success Rate: 6 - 100

Win x 5: (25 x 5)/2 = 63

Total: 63exp, Levels to 11 with 8/11 exp left over, +30 stat points to distribute, + 5 Kiandri Dragon Orbs

Word Count Required: 1,500
Final Word Count: 2,632

Janatheil adjusted the sword at his hip, his wings loose behind him and flitting every few steps as he hopped from boulder to grass to boulder again. It wasn’t his imprinted weapon, of course. He’d yet to have the opportunity to choose that, though, at thirteen, he was well enough impatient to do so. ‘Not ready,’ his combat tutors had said, emphasizing that he was still too wild and impulsive and he might choose too rashly. Janatheil snorted to himself. Little good it would do, in the end. He had no intentions of becoming any less ‘rash’ or ‘impulsive’ any time soon. Preferably not ever.

It kept life exciting.

Such as now, for instance, well out of range now of where he ‘ought’ to be and into the surrounding mountainside. When he behaved himself, everything was arranged in a schedule, ordered, neat, and tidy. Up at thus and so hour. Studies for so much time after. Then training with a blade. Lunch. Lessons of another sort. Stand up straight and don’t be late, address persons of authority appropriately, and so on — and so forth. Janatheil drew his blade.

“Aha!” he addressed a phantom opponent, jutting forward with blade outstretched. “Coward!” he accused. “Surrender now, or face death like the lowblood you are—defend yourself!” He lunged, swept and then dove, engaging in a makeshift duel that jogged up and down the base of the mountainside, entailing a great many gesticular and outright theatrical leaps, bounds and spins with his wings involved. He paid little mind to quite how far he went, confident he could find his way back in the end. Or that someone would find him. Even becoming truly lost would simply be an adventure in itself, so what did he have to worry for?

It wasn’t until he saw a small plume of smoke ahead that he quieted, and slowed his pace. A camp? More nobles on a hunt, or commoners? Or was it perhaps a house, nestled away in the wilds? He knew some poorer folk inhabited the more distant regions — and even nobles enjoyed, on occasion, building lavish getaway abodes farther from the smog of the lower city. Ceasing in his play in order to indulge his curiosity, Janatheil held his sword at his side, and started towards the source, slowing again only as he came in range and keeping more to the shadows, then.

It was a fire. Modest, but enough to cook from, which seemed to be the current case, and a small camp set around it. Then—

Jana froze, eyes narrowing as one of the camp goers came into view. Dark, coffee-brown skin, hair the color of blue morning glories, and horns. Squinting, he lowered his stance to a crouch, wholly curious. Was it a dragonborn? Or hybrid? And what was a foreigner doing so thickly into Serenia…

Janatheil’s eyebrows darted up, wings flitting curiously as another — this time clearly hybrid — man approached the first he’d seen. Likely both hybrids, then, since they kept each other’s company. Intimately, as the case appeared to be. Janatheil curled his toes in his boots, shifting to touch a hand to the tree he had crouched beside and debating. It wasn’t really his business to eavesdrop, but at the same time, it wasn’t really their business to be on Serenia in the first place. He sheathed his sword, drumming his fingers atop the hilt and settling to wait.



Lithian blinked, stilling mid-motion as Casseth approached from behind him and pulled him in. “I—mmm…” A light, breathy laugh escaped him and he shook his head. “Something…good…” He tilted his head sidelong, baring his throat to Cas’ advances temporarily. “Spiced, maybe…I’m not sure what all we have stocked, currently.” Twisting in Cas’ hold, he hummed and leaned down, catching his mate in a light, lingering kiss. “But whatever it is, we will need to start it…or we’ll be left with nothing to eat, mm? Come…help me get something togeth—”

Lithian stilled, attention catching for a fraction of a second on something inordinately bright in color amidst the grasses — a pink-lavendar color — but his eyes, never particularly good, couldn’t discern whether it was part of Serenia’s natural lavish landscape, or something else altogether. Despite having met Avani first, Lithian was well aware not all of Serenia’s inhabitants would be so friendly as she, and thus — wary — he pulled briefly away from his mate.

“One moment…” He shifted, growing to his full size in dragon form and carefully placing himself so as not to tread on any of their goods. One whiff of the air told him his suspicions had been correct, and his keener draconic sight narrowed on the source. He snorted, wings stretching languidly. A warning, if not particularly concerned, given the size of their ‘intruder.’ «Love, we have company…»



Janatheil swallowed. Debated. And ran, bolting off into the forestry in the opposite direction of the dragon’s camp. Unfortunately, the fates, for once, did not seem to be on his side. Not but thirty seconds into his sprinted retreat, he came to a stumbling, staggered halt, face to face with the gleaming gold eyes of a kiandri dragon.

“Oh, ******** me…”

Janatheil’s pulse threw itself against his chest. One moment, a dragon, the next moment, another dragon, but this time landing over him and snarling. The same dragon from the camp. The dovaa-hybrid. Blue. Peisio?

When the earth shook, cutting upwards in a wall, he blinked, confused.

…gaili?

Then, he heard the other voice, and jerked up, drawing his blade. Oh. One gaili; one peisio. He snorted, moving out from under the larger one and flicking his wings. “What?” he asked. “And miss all the excitement?”

‘Excitement’ in this case apparently included four more dragons. Janatheil swallowed.

Once comforted by the fact that he was fairly sure the hybrids were not out to hurt him, Janatheil ceased worrying terribly much about them and focussed on the task at hand: a hunt. Blade in hand, he grinned, and darted forward, out from under the far larger blue beast above him and towards the irate, glimmering gold kiandris. One screeched, lighting cracking out an instant later, and Jana beat his wings, flitting up and then skirting over, and in. He rolled, under the belly of his attacker and jabbed, driving his blade up.

The creature wailed, wings beating hard and lifting it away from his sword. Moments later, Janatheil vacated the area as it — wounded, but not out of the game — came swooping back for him, talons extended and energy alive around it. Deadly, concentrated in the wrong portion of the body with too much power. Talons caught at his pant leg, raking part of the way down his calf and catching on his boot. Jana spun, sweeping his blade back around to hack once at the dragon’s neck and then, as the grip on him loosened and both of them toppled towards the ground, he jabbed it in, through the beast’s throat and out the other side with some substantial amount of effort.

As it dissipated, leaving behind a glimmering soul of energy in its wake, Janatheil panted, pulse awake and alive. All but oblivious of the pain throbbing through his leg, he reached, snatching it up and then standing, attention darting about in search of his next target.

This was far more fun than any politics lesson.

Lithian tensed, snarling as Casseth fell and immediately diving for the attacking dragon. The smaller kiandri stood no chance, crushed to the ground one moment by Lithian’s driving talons and pinning weight and broken the next by a yanking snap and drag of Lith’s jaw on its neck. In a matter of minutes, quiet again fell on the forest, nothing but panted breath filling the spaces of silence and glimmering soul orbs breaking up the dark of falling night. Lithian shifted, shrinking back down to his humanoid form and darting over to his mate’s side.

“Casseth—are you…?” But already, his magic told him that Casseth wasn’t severely hurt. Shocked, certainly, and winded, but not in any real risk of immediate permanent harm, and Lithian’s nerves relaxed a fraction. A shuffle to his left, however, drew his attention sidelong.

The boy.

Janatheil grimaced, pushing himself upwards and then frowning as his body swayed without his permission. He wasn’t that badly hurt. It was just a scratch. Surely. He shook his head, ignoring the dizzy swish to his vision as he tried to focus in on sheathing his sword and find his balance. He needed to get home. Had to get out of here. Now that the dragons were defeated, there was no telling what the hybrids might…do if…

Janatheil’s knees staged a mutiny, and the last thing his saw was the ground leaping up to greet him before his eyes were hit with black. Only with whimsical distance did a part of him register the illusory, dreamlike presence of a grip on him, hammocking his fall. Then, nothing.

Lith blinked, then flushed, adjusting the weight of the boy in his arms and following after his mate. The boy was young. Pureblood ord, unsurprisingly, with pale blonde hair, vivid lavender skin and a smattering of multi-colored freckles. Wealthy, from the look of his clothes. Having come from a wealthy family himself, Lithian knew well enough the look of nobility, and it was written all over him. What such a child was doing out in the wilds of the Serenian forests eavesdropping on foreigners, Lithian couldn’t begin to guess, but it mattered little in the end.

His focus for the moment, as Casseth had guessed, was to see the boy healed. This in mind, he crouched on arriving at camp, laying the young orderite out on a stretch of furs and arranging his things before getting to work removing the cumbersome cloth in the way of the boy’s wound. He cleared, cleaned, and then healed, applying his magic first to slow and then stop the loss of blood before turning to ointments, salve, and bandages to dress it properly and let the magic — and the boy’s own body — do its work. Once satisfied with his work and that the boy was resting peacefully, he turned to Casseth.

Thankfully, the work there was more limited, and in relatively little time, his mate was tended to. As he finished, he huffed, leaning in to press a kiss to Casseth’s cheek before glancing furtively to their unasked for guest. “I would have been alright, you know,” he murmured. “You didn’t need to dive in like that.” He hesitated. “Surely the boy is not out here alone…dressed like that, someone cares well for him, and there will be a search party if he is gone too long.”

“No,” Lithian murmured, thinking aloud as much as speaking to Casseth, “you wouldn’t…I doubt either of us would. I was only ever in their capitol city a handful of times and…even in the company of nobles, there were always stares from those who did not recognize our family sigil.” He frowned, thoughtful. “He is noble. It is likely there we will have company, in time, if he does not wake and go on his own before such a time. I doubt—”

The boy stirred, and Lithian quieted.

Janatheil, for his part, had trouble piecing together for the first few moments how he had gone from perfectly fine to…laying…down? On strange furs, in a strange camp, with—

He stilled, half propped up on his elbows as his attention landed on his company, and his pulse picked up a fraction. The hybrids. The dragons. Of course. “You—” He frowned, swaying as he pushed to right himself but managing to better, at least, than last time. “What did you do to me? Where—” His attention darted around the camp, curious in spite of himself. “My family will be here soon, you know…” He shifted, getting comfortable and noting that, despite the implications of his previous statement, it actually seemed as though his leg had been tended to, not damaged further, which was promising. “S’not safe for mixbloods like you to be here. What are you doin’ in Serenia?”