Welcome to Gaia! ::

Detraeus’ limbs quivered when the grip of the spell loosened and dropped. It felt like having been coated, tip to toe in clinging sludge only to have the lot of it dry up at once and crumble into sand and dust around him. He drew a heaving, shaking breath, and slumped half his weight against the nearest wall, shutting his eyes and willing his knees to hold him up. He would not fall in front of watching eyes.

When he managed to wrestle his pulse back under control and draw breaths that felt rational as opposed to the last gasps of a dying man, he pushed forward, brow pinching at the sight of Araceli. Part of him suggested he ought to help her up. She had just saved his life—

‘Nevermind that it might have been her who triggered the trap to begin with.’

—and he owed her that much…didn’t he?

But his legs could barely hold his own weight for the moment, so he moved into the room instead, lifting the hard earned ayrala orb and stashing it with the others before moving back towards his dovaa companion.

Exhausted. She looked exhausted, still crumpled on her knees, dark in the face and limp from over-expenditure of energy. Curbing the urge to wince, Detraeus grunted and held out a hand. “Up.”

Detraeus felt a small ripple of tension bunch in his shoulders when her fingers curled around his, accepting the hand up, but she had saved his life. He owed some spark of gratitude, and when she let go again, he closed his hand, bunching it into a loose fist at his side and looking away to distract from the strange, unwelcome warmth back in his cheeks.

At her question, though, he snorted. The binding spell — whatever it had been — had left him shaky. Swamped him with that overwhelming sense of vulnerability. Helplessness. But they had just started to make progress, and the dragons seemed to be getting progressively more challenging, so gods be damned if he was about to turn back now.

Wordlessly, Detraeus stalked forward, letting his actions speak for him as he made for the only obvious tunnel on. His companion, he figured, would either follow or turn back as she pleased. Regardless, he did not intend to need her aid again, and her choices were not his concern.

He scanned the tunnel walls scrutinizingly as he moved, gauging every step and keeping on the lookout for anything out of place. Markings. Recently disturbed rock. Unnatural looking cracks or indentations. Nothing but dank puddles lined the floor, glistening rivulets of moisture trickling down the dark rock in places. Surprising, Detraeus thought, since the air felt notably hot, but perhaps that was more due to their next adversary than the natural environment of the cave. When he drew closer to the next opening, the familiar dancing contrast of light and shadow characteristic of fire supported his suspicions and seconds later, sight confirmed it: a single, massive firani dragon, awake and alert but temporarily idle. Detraeus slowed his pace, and drew a single arrow from his quiver.

“You want to die?” he murmured beneath his breath, barely loud enough to be vocal, and nocked the arrow’s base against his drawstring, eyeing the far cave wall above the head of the waiting dragon. “Come die.”

He let the arrow fly.

Immediately after, as it cracked into the far rock wall and drew the beast’s attention with a jerk, Detraeus loaded two more, firing into each of the dragon’s newly-spread wings and maiming it enough to earn a furious roar. He darted out of the tunnel as it rounded on him. Of all bad places to be when something prepared to aim a pillar of fire at you, a narrow tunnel with no quick escape or defense mechanism seemed one of the worst. Particularly with Araceli following, potentially, close behind him.

Fire billowed along the wall, pools of water on the floor steaming at the barrage of heat, and Detraeus felt the singe of it: searing ripples of scalding air that burned despite him making it well out of the way of the fire itself. As the dragon filled its lungs again, lunging towards him and drawing up for another pillar of fire, Detraeus bolted sidelong — narrowly missing the beast’s claws — yanked free the black dagger at his hip, and buried the blade in its throat. He twisted, grimacing at the waves of nearly-unbearable heat radiating from the dragon’s scales alone, but held his ground, gouging until the light to its magic petered out, and died. Like a candle blown to nothing in a harsh wind.

Then, like any dying fire, the dragon dissipated, crumbling to dust at Detraeus’ feet and leaving him glistening with perspiration and relief. Satisfied, he stooped, lifting up his half of the reward and glancing over his shoulder to see if Araceli had followed after all.

Detraeus’ attention tracked Araceli’s approach, pinned to her as she closed on him. When she lingered, though, not immediately pulling away, his posture stiffened a fraction, eyelids narrowing on her. What did she want with him? Had she really come all this way simply to apologize, and if so, why continue to follow him? Not to mention, she seemed to have a drastically narrower perception of where a person’s ‘personal space’ began and ended, and—

When she reached up, Detraeus froze, previously stiff posture going rigid with tension, but she only thumbed over his cheek. A brief, warm touch. There, and then gone. Before he found the tongue to speak, she was turning away again, darting off towards a backwards-looping tunnel, and he felt his pulse thrum in his throat. He swallowed hard and grit his teeth, squaring off his shoulders.

Why was she so…? What had she even been doing? Hadn’t he made it clear he didn’t want her touching him? Nobody touched him once he made it clear such advances weren’t welcome. Except, on occasion, Martrae’a. And Casseth, though not in the same way. But—

A shrill screech lopped off his line of thought, and Detraeus darted forward without a moment’s debate, rushing after Araceli only to find—

—a slightly oversized bognotti.

He frowned.

Was such a thing really cause for so much worry?

After a spare glance towards her, though, his companion did look genuinely out of sorts, and Detraeus classed the information away as a mildly unrealistic fear for future reference. Aloud, he said nothing, and strung his bow. Clicking his tongue to draw its attention, Detraeus backed into the body of the cavern. As soon as he had it lured into open territory, he fired.

One.

Two, three.

Four arrows.

As it lay dying, twitching on the cavern floor, he spared another glance towards Ara and then strung two more arrows, pulling back hard and releasing them to puncture deep into the beast’s frontal eye sockets. It stilled, and Detraeus curbed his lip’s instinct to curve up at the corner.

“Dead enough?” he asked.

Detraeus paused, midway into drawing a gut-splattered arrow out of the dying beast as the second ‘Thank you…’ of the day left his companion’s lips. Frowning, doubly as confused as before, he returned to yanking his arrows from the bognotti’s body, wiping the muck on his trousers before tucking them back into his quiver.

“All fear is stupid,” he said eventually, stepping away from the corpse. “But sometimes…” He moved back towards the exit, dodging around her as he went, “it is unavoidable. We cope, and move on.” Narrowing his eyes at the sight that greeted him, Detraeus held his ground at the exit to the tunnel. Apparently, in the time they’d been gone, another dragon had chosen to investigate the vacated area, its glistening snout cackling with faint white lightning as it sniffed the area where Detraeus had so recently slain the firani before it. “Company,” he said. “Kiandri.”

Detraeus watched in silent awe, his body poised to aid her but not moving and attention riveted instead by each step of the display. While he had seen ayrala dovaa battle in such ways in the past, thanks largely to his observances in Veinrith’s Stadium amongst fellow ‘pit’ fighters, he had never seen this girl perform anything of particular merit. Nothing to truly catch his attention, and while she had not come across as strictly ‘weak’ he had had his doubts.

Why follow him, for instance? If she hated oblivionites so, then why put up with his presence unless she wasn’t capable of taking on such things on her own. And what of the arvathi when he had first encountered her on Soudul? Granted, she had managed to take some on, but he had no doubt that, had he left her entirely to her own devices at the time, she’d have fallen to their poison on her own.

Here, though, she displayed real strength, and a power that — little as he’d like to admit it — Detraeus envied on a certain level. Power over the air. Controlling every current of wind, no longer a slave to gravity or the temperament of the weather. He could guide his arrows anywhere with that type of magic.

As Araceli floated back towards the floor — her long, dark hair a soft billow of shadow about her and her body transcendent, light as a feather drifting towards the earth — Detraeus jerked his chin away and down, swallowing hard.

Stupid.

Inconceivably stupid.

It didn’t matter what her hair did. Or what her magic did. She was just…

A girl.

A dovaa girl, who hated oblivionites. And he had no business…

He had no business, period.

He started forward, snatching up his own orb and tucking it away with the rest. “Lead the way, sky princess,” he griped. ‘Conqueror of Kiandri. Master of the art of falling like air.’

Detraeus followed closely behind the dovaa within reason, giving her space to move without stepping into her. His eyelids narrowed, though, puzzled, when she drew her fingers over some of the fungi. ‘Strange’ perhaps, to her. On Soudul, such plant life was more than abundant. But he said nothing aloud, his focus primarily on the opening of the tunnel, and as such, he froze at the first rustling of dragon activity, opening his mouth to warn her.

Too late, however.

She stepped out, and Detraeus grit his teeth with a half-wince as the kiandri’s tail bashed into her. Swearing beneath his breath, he darted out and strung his bow. At least the beast’s attention was distracted, making it an easy target for three quick shots. By the time the dragon rounded on him, already injured, a fourth arrow into its opening jaw and lodged down its throat was all it took to turn it to dust. Easier than a firani, certainly.

He stepped forward, ignoring the orbs momentarily — for once — to loom over his fallen companion. He opened his mouth, words like, ‘And you were so graceful last time…’ or ‘Need another hand, wind fairy?’ lingering on the tip of his tongue. Eventually, though, he opted against any of them, none of it worth it, and closed his lips again, stooping to offer her her orb instead and putting his own away.

“Up,” he murmured. “Long way to go.”

Detraeus followed after Ara without comment, his attention still partially devoted to the walls of the tunnels they passed through — wary, and on the look out for any lingering markings of spells that might affect them adversely. Nothing seemed amiss to his eyes, but just as he started to pass her, a minor tremor caught his attention, putting him instantly on alert. Seconds later, a booming CRACK sounded, and the tunnel behind them started with a misty rain of dust that progressed over a few short moments into pebbles and then crumpling boulders.

Detraeus reacted on instinct, snatching out for Araceli’s wrist and yanking her forward with him as he darted towards the next open cavern. The ground shook beneath them, though, as though the entire tunnel were suffering from a minor earthquake, and between that and his unexpected pull of contact, Ara stumbled in his grip, her weight an off-kilter drag to his step. His own feet tripped over the shaking ground, unused to dealing with such dissonance except when sparring with Casseth, and he swore beneath his breath, but persisted forward regardless. Mere moments before the tunnel caved in behind them — like an eggshell cracking in under too much weight — the two of them came toppling forward, Detraeus, and then Araceli. Him falling and then her dropping on top of him.

Hair everywhere.

Shoulder armor digging into his side.

He grit his teeth, pulse still fast in his throat from the remaining rush of the near life-or-death experience. And yet, his brain still managed to register that Araceli smelled of the desert wind. Of spices from places he’d never been. And of lightning, and soot, from their most recent battles. Then, as the shock wore off, and the full weight of exactly what position they were in sank in, he tensed. Her body a warm, unignorable presence on top of him. All over him. Everywhere. Pulse picking back up, heat swam for his cheeks and his chest tightened in on itself.

“Ara—”