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Yep. More. Raemos felt a groan beginning inside and clamped his jaws tight against it as he drew his sword again. Right. More. They just would have to deal with it. He'd just have to deal...

He grunted as more colorful heads peered around the rocks, shrieking and crowing and making all sorts of echoing in. He was no longer worried about Maeron and Darke: They were strong and could handle themselves. But himself... would he ever be at their level? Would he ever be good enough to be a warrior for Aevah's army? Would he survive here?

The argaroo were too far away to hit with the sword, but he ws getting the hang of using his magic, and with a painful swing and a surge of energy - from where he had no idea - he hit one with a lucky slash of magic as it peered down - as blunt as the sword it came from but effective, as the bird's neck was crushed under the magical dark pressure and cracked, the argaroo flopping limp and lifeless in its own nest.

All hell broke loose, a storm of squawking and shrieking and flapping as the aragroo defended their nests, and Raemos was aware of a ringing - in his ears, in his body, in his hands... his hands especially, he realized, as his sword was vibrating. He could almost barely keep a hold of it.

But he had to, as an argaroo went right for him. He slashed upwards, feeling his tendons and injury scream at him and, reaching for magic again, let loose another magical sword slash. The alkara crowed in rage, but Raemos didn't hear it. Not over his sword's ringing, which became a horrible, high pitched, ear-piercing scream and then, a terrible shattering crack, sent him hurtling backwards amid a shower of sharp metal fragments.

He fell to the ground, crying from the pain of sharp metal fragments that rained around him. Fortunately, his clothing and goggles stopped the worst of it, halting what could have been serious wounds with the power of cloth and hide and glass. Still, though, he bled, from wounds of before and wounds after. He dropped the ruin of his old sword's hilt and brought his hands to his ears as his whole head rang like a bell from the sound and impact.

Fortunately, the injured argaroo was affected too. It reared back, squalling, as the sound echoed through the canyon, leaving an audible absence in its wake.

(4265/4500)

Raemos managed to in a break in the pain finish off the injured bird with a blast of raw dark magic, hitting it in its wound and crumpling it to the ground.

The pain was not gone, however, and his head still rang with a shrill, bell-like, painful note. The world sloshed around him as he stood up, unsteady and bleeding, and began to stagger towards Maeron.

"Maeron, are you..." Raemos stopped, looking up at the bird. He felt weak and tired and all too inferior to the proud, colorful beast before them. He swallowed, his throat dry and sticky.

Seren's light... he thought dizzily, I'm going to die. With a final effort, he drew out his magic, cloaking his hands with clouds of inky, smoke-like miasms. He was addled from all the batterings he'd taken today, and he only had a few more magic blast spells in him, but he'd use them. He wasn't going to die without a fight, and certainly wasn't going to let the far more worthy Maeron fall with him.

The argaroo fanned its tail feathers out, bobbing its head arrogantly as it sized them up. Once it was done strutting, it let out a loud KAAAAW! and attacked, snapping at Maeron with its beak, it's talons raised to stomp on the insolent insect that dared to disturb its flock and its nest.


(4493/4500)

It was always good to have a khehora in the fight. and not fighting you. This was something Raemos had learned with Suluksati and Grrel and it was something that pretty much held true always. Teeth and claws and large bodies always made things a lot better. He would never have claws or teeth: he wouldn't even have gorgeous feathery wings, accursed freak that he was - even that beauty was denied him.

He was thankful for the khehora, and for the goggles that kept his sockets clear from the blood he knew was running down his face. He felt tired, but he managed to pull more of his magic out - easier, almost. He was drawing from the oblivion that called to him, the darkness that lurked at the edge of exhaustion, waiting to pull him into its cool, silken embrace if he only closed his eyelids.

He could pull the bird away while he was at it.

It was difficult - the magic wanted to start and stop, to flow and not flow. It wanted to do as it pleased, and his pain and tired, hungry body made it all too easy to let the magic take over and bear him away to that tempting nothingness that he hoped to Seren was sleep.

But he held onto it none the less, slipping it from shadow to shadow in the chasm until he saw it gather around the Argaroo's legs. He let it coil upward, and it jerked - resisting his control, up and along its feathery hackles and its scaly talons.

And then he pushed.

Its legs flew out from under it, pulled by smoke and shadow made solid, and the bird wavered, distracted, trying to balance. Raemos smiled tiredly, the magic giving him both a thrill and a pain. There. He'd done his support thing.

He just had to keep standing a little bit longer, just to see it through...

(4816/4500)

Was it dead? Yes it was. Rae felt like a marionette whose strings were slowly being cut, standing only because that was what he had been doing before, the momentum of the act all that remained as his mind spiraled off on pleasant, if murky and vague, tangents, the magic he'd summoned receding back to the empty place it had come from.

Raemos blinked - invisibly behind his goggles - and dragged himself onto the feathered form that was offered, barely registering, at this point, that it was Darke, that Maeron was there, and that he was in Ayr. He was just done, half gone, and exhausted.

He was barely aware of being carried, and tumbled off of Darke's back into the nest. He was slightly aware of that part, but mostly that he was on something that was soft and stank of animal and rot. "Thank you..." he managed to murmur, though he soon sunk into the grasses and found himself unwilling and, perhaps, unable to move as he drifted vaguely between sleep and wake.

Raemos had never slept in before. Like a finely tuned clock, he was always awake and ready to take his walk before the sun rose, whether he wanted to or not.

Today, though, he remained curled, stiffly, on the stinking nest, consumed by void-filled dreams and the occasional burst of pain like a star in the night.

Maeron's voice filtered into the void and he stirred, finally, long past the time he was used to waking. He was soon fully awakened by the pain that had laid in ambush for his waking mind. His shoulder, his legs, his face - everything ached or was sore or just felt plain bad.

Rae yelped in pain as Maeron jostled his shoulder.

"R-really?" he managed, opening his eyeless sockets, still hidden behind goggles that had become increasingly uncomfortable - they were not meant to be slept in. He felt, in fact, like a kargoth just before they molted, as if his clothes were like his spare, outgrown skin. But, of course, he could not moult them, and the dirt and blood that caked them. Doing so would be immodest, and dangerous besides - what if Maeron found out about his horrific, cursed appearance? What if he knew? No. The closed, damaged as they were, stayed on. He wouldn't even remove them to straighten or air them out. He didn't have the strength to bother, anyway.

"We only j-just began..." he murmured, coughing as he forced his battered body to sit up. Barely. "Or did you mean this nest..." he said weakly, roughly nudging at the filthy straw.

He swallowed onto a dry throat and reached for his canteen, only to discover that it had been rent and punctured by the fighting of the day before.

He took it out and showed it to Mae, sheepish. "Could I, perhaps, have some water, sir?" he said meekly, his voice hoarse.

He wondered where Darke had flown off to, and what that meant.

Raemos drank at the canteen greedily, gulping down the water and soothing his parched throat, feeling his strength grow somewhat as the water hit his stomach with a cooling splash. He handed the canteen back, savoring the last bit of water he had taken, feeling guilty about all he had drunk – though he had tried to leave some left for Maeron. He had just been so thirsty...

“All right...” He could move now, a little. Stiffly, he began to slide himself to the edge of the nest and work his way down, his wounds aching with every movement. “I'm very sorry for holding you back, sir...” he apologized as he slowly, and painfully, managed to reach the solid, feather-strewn ground. He sat again, back against the canyon wall, resting as his body protested even that exertion. “If I wasn't so...” Stupid. Cursed. His hands hurt at the mention of his magic, wounds from the shattering of his sword, and he squeezed them under his arms, pushing away some of the pain. “... foolish and weak...” he said, “You and Darke would have been able to have a grand adventure...” he coughed, but was unwilling to take any more of Maeron's precious water supply – Desert life had ingrained into Raemos an appreciation for water and a sense that it could be posessed. “But now, you will have to cut your visit short.” he looked down the canyon as Darke returned, slumping dejectedly. “... I'm sorry.”