Welcome to Gaia! ::

Lithian groaned, squeezing his eyes shut and flopping backwards onto the cot beneath him as yet another knock sounded at his door. His sister had rented out the second floor of one of the few nicer taverns in the port town, enough rooms to give them each a bed and space to themselves. After his encounter with the leklans the day before, however — and enduring the humiliating experience of first losing himself in the market and then finally making it back bruised, dirty, and with partially chewed on clothes — he’d had no interest in venturing out for anything other than food or drink.

Books, Lithian decided, were enough activity for him from now until the end of time. If it was Abronaxus’ will for him to fight, he wouldn’t have made him so abysmal at it.

“Lithian…”

Lith brought his book up to his face, propping over his nose and eyes like a tent as the door creaked open.

“Lith.”

“Mmh.”

“Have you been in here all morning?”

“…define ‘all—”

“Lithian.”

Setting his book briefly aside, Lithian sat up just enough to eye his sister, his smile half-hearted, uncertain, and sheepish. “I’m researching battle techniques?” he offered tentatively.

Ysette’s eyes flicked towards the title of the the book in his hands, at which point he immediately jerked a hand over to cover the text, but too late. “Romiqus and Juliara?” Her lips pursed. “Isn’t that about a foolish Orderite woman who shames herself and her family by falling in love with and then killing herself over an Oblivioni—”

“No,” Lithian blurted, tucking his marker back into his spot and slipping the book under his pillow.

“Lithian—”

“I wasn’t—”

“Where did you find that book?”

Lithian’s cheeks heated. “A place…”

Ysette sighed, a short, curt sound, and then approached his cot, propping her hip on the edge and watching him carefully. “Lithian…I know mother and father encourage you reading, and encourage you to think about the world as openly as you can, but…” She frowned, settling to a sit at the end of his mattress. “You must understand, Lithian, there are those out there who cannot be helped. Obvlivionites are soulless creatures. Their goddess stole their very essence in order to make them fitter warriors for her. No matter what pretty stories are written about them, they do not feel, they have no capacity for mercy, no concept of emotion, they are raw logic and brutality. They think and they kill. They are not like us…”

Lithian’s eyes dipped, and he reached up, rubbing out of habit at one of his horns. “I know, I just…Mother says—”

“I know what Mother says,” Ysette cut him off, and Lithian bit his lip. She sighed, looking as though she instantly regretted her brusqueness with him, and she reached out instead, touching her fingers to his hand. “Come. We’re travelling an hour or two west of here soon to visit a friend of mine on his plot, closer to the Expanse. Then we’ll be heading north to a village near my main outpost where you can see how things are really run on the ground. We’ll progress your training there.”

Lithian blinked, puzzled. “A plot? Like a farm?” He sat up. “They have farms on this continent?”

The edge of Ysette’s lips curved up amusedly. “A few. With limited success. His is mostly a ranch of sorts, though. He raises kargoths.”

Several hours later, after packing, unstabling and bridling their hastars, and starting off towards the residence of Ysette’s friend, they arrived with dusk well on its way. Because the matters Ysette frequently took to discussing with her various acquaintances were of little interest or relevance to Lithian, he found himself wandering aimlessly in the warm light of the setting sun, casually observing what farms looked like outside of the Plane and taking in the scenery. After his experience with the leklans, though, he kept a wary distance from the penned kargoths despite his fascination. Though he’d known, logically, that such creatures existed, the sheer size of them in person still overwhelmed him.

It wasn’t until deep fuchsias, saturated purples and mauves were bleeding into the sky above that Lithian noticed the first signs of something out of place. Large, rounded prints in the softer, dusty areas around the kargoth pens. Paw prints, certainly? But with scrape marks as if sunk into the ground with massive claws, and the occasional deep, dark blots of red-black marring the otherwise yellowish orange, packed earth.

Lithian stooped, ever curious, and reached out towards one of the aforementioned splotches of color. Seconds before his fingers touched it, a loud, low bellow shook the air, and his head jerked up. Immediately afterwards, a significantly higher pitched screech echoed out, and Lithian tensed, squinting in the direction of the disturbance.

Dunkels.

Several of them, from the looks of things, and Lithian frowned, on edge as he watched the dark, nocturnal beasts circle and dart in, ever closer to a clearly disturbed looking kargoth. It wasn’t his job to deal with this, right? Though he’d been practicing, he couldn’t even take on leklans successfully, how was he supposed to take on even a small flock of bloodthirsty, hungry flying beasts with sharp teeth?

Seconds from deciding to head quickly back towards the main house to contact his sister and the owner, one of the beasts swooped down, sinking a mouthful of greedy teeth into the side of the kargoth below and prompting the massive beast to wail and rear back as blood started to stain its coat. Lithian’s heart lurched, gut churning, and before he could think twice, he was scrambling over the main fence, into the main pen and sweeping a hand low to pick up a fist-sized rock as he went.

“Abronaxus protect me,” he muttered to himself as he started towards the scene of the commotion, his pulse kicking into overdrive as he closed in on the massive, crushing feet of the panicked kargoth, “…from definitely the worst decision I’ve ever made and possibly the last I ever will.”

He slung the rock at the closest dunkel.

“Get off it! That’s not dinner,” he shouted. “You’re hurting it — eat some insects or something!” After several more stones, a fair share more shouting, and one near-death experience with the kargoth’s feet, the three dunkels screeched obscenely, finally diving away from their massive ‘prey’ and starting down towards Lithian instead.

Lithian swallowed, shoulders sinking with an impending sense of doom as he realized only a bit belatedly that he hadn’t quite thought his plan through to this conclusion yet. “Kiandris strike me down and put me out of my misery…”

One of the three dunkels took a sweeping dive towards him, and Lithian swung, bashing one of the smaller rocks still in his hand sloppily against it to dislodge its attack but wincing anyway as a talon raked into his shoulder regardless. As it regained its equilibrium and just before the other two started in on him, Lithian turned tail and began fleeing in the opposite direction.

“Water, water, water,” he panted to himself, eyes darting around in a desperate search as he ran. Why had he chosen peisio and then come to a desert to train? Somewhere along the line there, he sensed a disconnect between logic and practice because—

Another piercing screech cut into his thought process and Lithian squeezed his eyes briefly shut, stumbling and then ducking fully as another of the flying predators took a dive at him. There was no way this could end well. No possible way this could end well. He was going to be eaten. He was going to be eaten, and all his brain could console him with was the fact that, ‘Well, at least it couldn’t possibly get any wor—’

A low, quaking roar rippled over the flat earth of the kargoth pen, and even as the dunkels fled, rightly panicked, what was left of Lithian’s hope for his future snuffed out like a wicker candle left too long after a night of reading. As he forced himself around and upright to confront the source of the noise, Lithian’s pulse stuttered hard in his throat. Before him stood nothing less than a fully grown, deep rust-brown baowi, mouth open and teeth bared between slow, angry pants as its focus came to zero in on him.

Lithian’s fingers shook, panic instinct making his breath quiver as he exhaled. Then, he spotted the water feeder: a large, upright tube, stoppered off at the bottom by a smooth ball bearing, designed to conserve water and keep it from evaporating in the desert heat — as well as keep other stray creatures out — while still providing the livestock with a reliable water source they could access simply by nudging their trunks up against the thin feeding tube at its base.

Water.

His weapon, if he could convince his magic to access it.

And, like a dam cracked by the necessity of survival instinct, two, fresh new emotions swamped Lithian in full: anger and calm. A brittle, focussed combination, balanced between frustrated outrage that he of all people ought to be faced with a death sentence at now of all times, and the cool, centered sense of peace that came with knowing you may well be experiencing your last moments.

Lithian flicked his wrists down, eyes pinned on the baowi before him as the beast snorted, but the rest of his focus entirely on his magic as he tugged at it, latching onto the water source and gripping tightly as he knew how. Down. Down. Down, he yanked at the water in the feeder and then parted his palms, forcing its shape out. The entire structure broke with a SNAP under the split of the water, and the baowi snarled. And charged.

Lithian rocked his weight, slinging his heavy whip like a battering ram. “Get back! I just got here,” he snarled back at it. “I don’t want to die.” And his wave hit with force of a surge, soaking and near toppling the massive beast and delaying its first attempt at an attack.

It roared back as it staggered upwards, gaining its balance and snorting loudly, shaking itself.

“Get…” Lithian drew a breath back in, curving his stance up and regathering the water with his magic, “…back!” In one, sweeping push, he urged it all down and out like a wave, catching and forcing the animal a significant distance farther away, as well as — this time — knocking it completely over.

Lithian’s body shook, his muscles strung out, and his energy fading fast like a light show that spent everything it had to offer all at once and then petered to nothing. In front of him, though, the beast looked incredibly discouraged, and after one appraising growl low it its gut, it seemed to deem him not worth bothering with any further, and retreated. Seconds afterwards, the air — now fully dark with night — lit up like a fire show from behind him.

“Lithian!”

His sister’s voice was a dull roar, muted by the fact that most of Lithian’s focus was concentrated on keeping his rapidly failing knees from letting him topple over.

“Lithian, Lith, what happened?”

Abstractly, Lithian felt Ysette’s arms circle him as his body gave out on him, the fire of her magic petering to nothing and his head falling limply to her chest as she lifted him. She was talking, but he could no longer make out what she was saying. Perhaps now would be a very good time to rest.

He had lived after all…right?

The world went dark.