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Character: Detraeus
Stage: Apprentice
Luck: 1 (+12 LUK)
Creature: Vispiri Queen x 11 | “Ancient” Gaili (Gaili with Aedaun stats) x 1
Success Rate: 20 - 100

Win x 11: 63 x 11 = 693/2 = 346.6
Win x 1: 100 x 1 = 100/2 = 50

Total: 397exp, Levels to 28 with 19/28exp left over, +78 stat points to distribute, + 1 Gaili orb, +9 Royal Venom

Word Count Required: 3,600+ (Current: 5,282)
Final Word Count: -

Birdsong.

Detraeus squeezed his eyes shut, grit his teeth, and took a mental inventory of his body and surroundings. His hand hurt. His legs ached, stiff as dried wood. His temples throbbed. His tongue felt fat and dry, and when he moved—

Detraeus winced, biting his lip, freezing, and looking down. Ah. Right. The knife from the night before was still in his grip, positioned poorly for his cramped space, and had nicked into his calf when he’d rearranged himself. Eyes open now, he maneuvered himself carefully around, tucking the knife in at a safer angle before crawling out from his ‘hiding’ place and into the daylight. There, he knelt.

After pressing two fingers to his lips and then the earth before him, he shut his eyes, sending up a mental prayer. ‘Thank you, Mother Soudana, for keeping me safe through the night and sparing me to live another day. I fight for you.’

When he opened his eyes again, he brought his knife around, surveying its condition, and blinked. Blood. He’d forgotten he’d used it, and memory of that alone triggered a more in-depth recollection of the full sequence of events. The blood on his knife was the woman’s, likely still alive and hopefully a good distance from here if he were lucky — which he often wasn’t — but potentially still nearby. The man who’d tackled him, however…

Detraeus’ stomach gave a strange twisting sensation as he thought on it, remembering the sight, feel, and sound of bashing rock up against the man’s skull, and his brow furrowed. The man had slumped immediately after. Had he—?

Detra shoved the thought from his mind, stubbornly crushing it out. It didn’t matter. He, Detraeus, was alive and that was all that mattered. That was all he could afford to care about. They had chosen to attack him. Whatever fate his goddess dealt out to them for that was not his to mind.

That decided, he made quick work of wiping clean his single blade as best he could, mentally wondering all the while if the weapon had even spilt blood before. It likely had, he he decided as he finished, given how old and well-used it looked, and he fit it away, fastening it at his waist before standing and surveying his surroundings in full.

He’d traveled further into the Expanse than he’d given himself credit for the night before, from the looks of things. Above him and to his left, the mountains stretched onward and upward: piercing, jutting mounds like jagged spearheads reaching to impale themselves in the sky. The sun painted the half facing him bright in stark contrast to the shadowy crevices where its rays had yet to reach. He turned to face the sun head on. One quarter turn left from the face of the rising sun, that was the direction he needed to go.

North.

Towards his homeland. Towards safety.

A gnawing rumble in his stomach interrupted his thought process, reminding him that if he were going to make it anywhere, he’d need food first. And water, his parched throat added. Detraeus breathed out, feeling the warm, dry brush of his breath against his lips, and he glanced back down the mountainside, towards his ‘camp’ of the night before. A place where, once upon a time, he’d had three full canteens of water.

Had they taken all his things?

They hadn’t seemed to find anything but his coins valuable at the time. What if they’d left some behind? What were the chances that they were still lingering nearby, and was it worth the risk — and the energy — to climb back down and see?

Another rumble in his stomach made Detraeus’ mind up for him. If he didn’t find water, he would die. If he didn’t have shelter or a source of warmth, he would die. Traveling down — quietly — just to check and see if he could salvage some of his supplies would be more than pay itself off if he found anything helpful still left. This in mind, he started carefully back down the non-existent ‘path’ he’d followed up.

At his slower pace — i.e., not running for his life — the trek took the better part of an hour by his best guess, judging mostly from the sun’s position, but when he narrowed in on his desired location, he moved slower still. Eyes and ears on constant alert, he scanned the area. There didn’t seem to be any signs of movement or an encampment nearby. When he focused in on the area he had been, though, he froze.

There was definitely someone still there.

Heart racing, Detraeus was moments away from turning tail and fleeing again when something caught his attention. Or, rather, several somethings. First, a strange, foul smell that he’d noticed earlier had intensified, especially strong when the wind blew in his direction from the east — the direction of his camp. Second, there was only one of the previous three persons waiting down there, which seemed to go against basic logic. Third, whoever it was seemed to be lying in a strange, uncomfortable position for sleep, which had to be what they were doing considering they hadn’t moved a muscle since he’d begun watching. And fourth…

Another gust of wind skirted up the rocks towards him, bringing with it the pungent, stomach turning odor of rotting meat.

The earth around the person’s head was discolored. Darker than the rest.

Detraeus jerked his gaze downward, focusing on the earth beneath his feet and crouching lower still. One, two, three. Breathe. Hastily, he jerked loose one of the bandannas he typically used to cover his markings and wrapped it around his nose and mouth instead, tying it tight behind his head and breathing through the cloth to dilute the smell.

He’d killed a man.

His mind repeated it to him over and over on loop: he’d killed a man. Someone was dead because of him. He’d killed—

He shut his eyes and bit into his finger. No. He’d killed an Orderite. Not a man. A monster. He’d killed filth. He’d turned a torturer — a sick, twisted, murdering animal — into what it was always meant to be: a rotting, stinking body of meat taking up space in the world meant to be ruled by his goddess.

He told this to himself, but it didn’t stop his stomach from roiling. He would get over it, he promised himself. One day, he wouldn’t let his body object like this. This was what he was striving to do. One day, when he was strong enough, this is what he would live to do. He forced himself to look again, and after a deep breath, holding the cloth tight over his mouth, he moved in closer.

The man was dead. He couldn’t hurt him. The man was dead. He couldn’t hurt him. He couldn’t hurt him. He couldn’t—

Detraeus’ knees were quivering by the time he made it within ten paces of the body.

The ‘man’ looked significantly younger than Detra remembered from the night previous. Twenty summers, tops. Perhaps only sixteen or seventeen. His feathers rippled in the hot desert breeze, catching the gusts and trembling as though weeping for their fallen owner. The wings themselves were half outstretched but bent oddly. Stiff looking.

Detraeus pulled his gaze away, forcing himself to focus instead on what he’d came for: salvageable supplies. The place looked pitiful, but it had barely been recognizable as a camp to begin with due to how little he’d brought with him, so perhaps it was little changed. Unfortunately, his attackers from the night before seemed to have taken their ‘revenge’ not by stealing things worthless to them, but instead leaving behind their tattered, useless remains.

They’d shredded his blanket, left two of his canteens with several knife puncture wounds, rendering them worthless, and confiscated his second knife. By a stroke of raw luck, he found the third canteen that he’d taken the time to store more discreetly untouched and, blessedly, still full. Resisting the urge to drink — and not wanting to retch it up thanks to the smell, besides — Detraeus fastened the canteen firmly to person and gathered up the shredded blanket. Knotting together the usable strips, he fashioned something resembling a rope, looped it, and draped that over his shoulder as well.

Then, gathering his resolve and steadying his stomach, Detra turned back towards the body. Though they’d destroyed his things, it looked as though they hadn’t touched their ‘friend’ once they’d found out he was dead — perhaps due to disgust or blind panic — but whatever the case, it left the body with a good number of useful, if not necessarily materially valuable, things on it.

Detraeus’ stomach complained as he knelt by it and continued to roil as he moved his shaking fingers over the corpse, but he held his ground. Eventually, he coerced his hands into full cooperation and stripped away items as needed: good quality boots, too large for his small feet but far more durable than the ratty sandals currently on him; two small daggers, likely designed for throwing, given how lightweight they were; a bracelet of some ornamentation that looked like it might sell for something of value, and finally, a thick, heavily belted coat.

Detraeus nearly lost his nerve in the process of retrieving the last object, given the degree of touching and moving involved as well as increasingly pungent stench as the sun rose higher in the sky. But in time, he worked it free. Privately resolving to immerse it thoroughly in water and beat the smell out of it with a rock if need be next he came across such an opportunity, he dragged the coat away from the body on shaking legs, forcibly ignored the dark, sticky stain near the apparel’s collar, turned from the scene, and fled.

It wasn’t until nearly an hour later, long out of sight and smell of the scene he’d left behind him, that Detraeus allowed his protesting body to sink towards the rocky mountainside into a coiled kneel. Fists clenched against the earth. Head down, nearly touching his knees. Teeth grit as his stomach lurched anew.

‘Don’t retch.’

Detraeus shut his eyes and drew a deep breath in.

‘Don’t retch. You can’t afford to retch. You have nothing to spare. You’re hungry. You’re thirsty. You need everything in your stomach. You can’t.’

He curled his body in tighter on itself, dragging his arms in close and fisting his fingers in the hair at the nape of his neck. Wildly curly, thick, and too hot under the desert sun.

‘Get up.’

“Get up,” he whispered, forcing the words through grit teeth. “Get. Up.”

He jerked up to a sit, opened his eyes to focus on the looming mountains beyond, and then, finally, pushed back up to a stand. Unfastening and tugging loose the bandanna over his nose and mouth, Detraeus resituated it to its ‘rightful’ position wrapped around the markings on his forehead, allowed himself a quick sip of water from his canteen, and pushed on.

It was nearing midday before his growing hunger began to take a truly debilitating toll on his progress. He’d tried more than once along the way to use one of his newfound throwing daggers on some of the smaller, skittering wildlife along the way, but his aim was so poor, he was hard pressed to even bury the things in the same tree he was aiming for, let alone a significantly smaller, moving target.

By the time the sun was approaching its peak in the sky, however, Detraeus’ knees were attempting to buckle with every other step, muscles all over him crying out in fatigue and stomach feeling as though it were attempting to eat itself from the inside out. After finally giving in to his body’s call for a moment’s rest and propping his weight in a partial crouch against the nearest boulder, Detraeus was seconds from lifting his canteen to his lips to at least partially satiate his yearning belly and parched tongue.

Then, he smelled it.

Not sweet, precisely, but something close to it. And starchy. His stomach rumbled, and Detraeus frowned, re-capping his canteen and strapping it to himself again. He didn’t even know if it was edible yet, but it smelled like food, and he needed something to put in his stomach — soon. Thus, not seeing many other viable options and admittedly more than a little entranced by simply the scent of something promising potential energy, he started off in search of the smell’s source.

It took some time, as well as a good amount of trial and error direction wise, but the lure of food kept his body driven until he found it: a leaning cliff, sky high and dotted with more caves than he could count, all scattered along its face like puncture wounds. And, in the occasional drip-like line: a seeping, yellow-white trail of something. From a distance, it looked almost like the cliff face was crying. Or bleeding.

Detraeus moved in, drawn by the now much thicker scent of sweet. Most of the tunnels were out of reach, but one nearest the bottom was close enough that maybe, if he climbed diligently enough…

Detraeus breathed out, dust catching on his lips as the air rebounded off the cliff face, stirring up loose debris. The climb had looked shorter from below somehow, and his fingers hurt, body straining to keep himself pressed tight as he could to the near-vertical earth and hold his balance. Just another arm’s length distance up and to the side, he chided mentally. If he could just make it to the lip of the first cave—

“Hey! Hey, you!”

Detraeus’ fingers pinched the rock beneath him. Every tendon in his body seemed to string up at once, twitching taut like a fisherman’s line upon first catch, and in those first seconds, his mind tripped over itself, stumbling in messy somersaults through a slew of panicked possibilities.

Had he been followed here? Were the other two from the previous night’s party on his tail after all? Had they caught up with him? Or was it a soldier in the woods, hunting this deep for something — anything — to sink a weapon into? It didn’t sound malicious, but it might easily be a trap, and Detraeus’ panic instinct was already reeling.

Funnelling the rush of preservation-instinct-inspired adrenaline into good use, Detraeus forced his body up, scrambling the last bit of distance over and ignoring the terrified lurch of his gut when his feet first swung in nothing but air as he first laid hands on the outer ridge of the cave’s edge. He made it up, though, and immediately scurried into the shadows within, coiling his body up in their protective cloak. His pulse beat wildly in his throat.

‘Look.’

He shut his eyes.

‘Whatever it is won’t go away if you don’t look. You'll only rob yourself of an opportunity to prepare if you need to defend yourself.’

He balled his fingers into fists, biting his lip until it stung. His stomach jabbed at him. Goddess, he was so hungry, why did this have to happen now?

‘You have to look.’

Detraeus kept low, near to the cave floor as his body could go, and inched forwards towards the lip. Stopping the instant he had a full view of the lands below, he narrowed his eyes, and then blinked, temporarily caught off-guard. Drakein? Or…something else?

Detra had limited experience with drakeins to begin with, having only been exposed to those that accompanied some of the hunters, travelers, and other various passers by at the fishing village he’d taken up residence in. But these certainly looked to be the same sort. Granted, the larger one looked significantly more sizeable than any bonded he’d ever seen, but it was the strange looking little one puzzled him more than anything. He’d never known a keindred to sport such a strange head ornament.

Was it actually wearing its own skull?

A distant, low humming sound from deep in the small cave he’d managed to climb into prompted Detraeus to jerk his head around, but soon after hearing it, the sound softened and subsided again, and his pulse calmed. Perhaps, though, a cautionary part of him noted, he ought to sample what he’d came for and make his time in the tunnel as brief as possible.

Eyes flicking once more to the pair of drakeins, Detra’s brow furrowed warily. The younger one certainly looked enthusiastic, if nothing else, though why it had spoken to him of all things was beyond him, and if either of the drakeins’ bonded Magescians were lurking in the nearby landscape out of sight, Detraeus wanted nothing to do with them. Even the thought of having to deal with more strangers in his current state prompted him to retreat back from the cave’s lip and out of sight.

Food.

He needed to see if this sweet smelling substance was edible. And if it wasn’t — it might be the last thing he ever ate.

Detraeus froze, clapping his lips shut on a yelp that tried to fall out when the smaller of the two khehora came crashing against and then scurrying up the cliffside into his cave. When it moved in on him, sniffing shamelessly at his ankles, his body — if possible — tensed further still, and he scrambled backwards, heart beating a rough rhythm against the cage of his ribs and hand gravitating towards the hilt of his knife.

What did it want? It didn’t seem to want to hurt him, luckily, but why was it touching him? And—

When the khehora began to speak to him, small, chirped, chopped words, as though it thought it was communicating with a retarded leklan, Detraeus narrowed his eyes. Seconds after opening his mouth — though he hadn’t frankly decided what, if anything, he intended to say yet — a massive shape filled the cave entrance, and Detraeus’ response froze in his throat. Before he could make a peep or even so much as press himself further back against the cave wall, the grown khehora was prying his wing in between the younger one and shoving it back. It looked significantly more sizeable up close than far away, and Detraeus jerked his hand away from his weapon, not wanting to anger it. If this creature decided it wanted to fight, Detra’s only option was to flee.

Instead, however, the khehora spoke, voice deep and carrying, though almost — gentle? Detraeus breathed out, shoulders sinking as a fraction of his tension ebbed away, and a frown sneaking into place on his features. If these khehora didn’t want to fight him, then what were they doing here? And further still, what in Soudana’s name did they care what he was doing here? Regardless, after his gaze darted back and forth between the massive khehora who had addressed him and the smaller one behind him — who still looked impatient and quivering with energy, ready to barrel back into him at any moment given half the chance — Detra huffed. Perhaps communing with them would waylay their curiosity and get them to leave him be.

“Not exploring.” He glanced from the massive khehora’s face back, down the shadowed tunnel of the cave, and his frown pinched tighter, wary of the increasing hum of distant buzzing even as his stomach rumbled, reminding him — as if he could forget — what he’d originally come for. Cheeks warming at just the thought of his next words and how pitiful they likely sounded to a creature so large and capable, Detra jerked his head back to meet the khehora’s stare with narrowed eyes, challenging him to object. “I’m getting food. I…”

‘I smelled it here,’ lingered on the tip of his tongue, but didn’t make it out. Instead, Detra swallowed back the words and scowled, resisting the urge to curl back up and wait to see if the khehoras would simply grow bored and leave.

He was never that lucky.

Detraeus blinked, tensing again briefly when the youngling wiggled in close, though not as much as last time. It didn’t seem threatening — more wildly enthusiastic than anything, actually, though what it could possibly be excited about, he couldn’t quite wrap his head around. He found it was easier, though, to relax a fraction around the little khehora than around any Magescians he’d met. Something about it simply didn’t put him on edge in the same way.

When the elder one finished talking, though, Detra’s cheeks burned. Shame. Frustration. Anger at himself. Somehow, he ought to have known better, and he probably made himself look a fool, but beneath his embarrassment, disappointment lurked with an even heavier burden: he wouldn’t get to eat. He couldn’t eat this. If not here, though, if not this — then what? He scowled, rubbing the back of his hand quickly across his dry lips and diverting his gaze as he shook his head in answer to the elder one’s question.

“Soudana is my mother.”

Detraeus’ brow pinched in a frown. A pretty name for a ‘lady’? Soudana was a goddess. Could the little khehora possibly not know? Had he never even heard of her?

Before he could make up his mind whether or not responding was even worth it, though, the youngling seemed distracted by the noise further down the tunnel, and Detra frowned. In his limited experience thus far, moving towards strange and unfamiliar sounds coming from deep inside dark, uncharted caves wasn’t generally the best of plans for those who wanted to live to see the next moonrise.

Unfortunately, he was proven right moments later.

At the first attacking jab of the massive insect towards the overly curious khehora, Detraeus tensed, scrambling backwards, but when the earth itself jutted up sharply, skewering the beast in a second’s notice, he froze again, heart rapidly climbing into his throat. How—?

The adult, he concluded seconds later. He had to be a gaili. As the massive swarm unfurled on them from the depths of the cave like a wave of wings and sound, Detraeus felt his breath leave him, body pressing instinctively flat and low to the cave wall and floor as his body could manage. Maybe, a distant part of him thought frantically, if he didn’t breathe, the beasts would focus on the far more capable khehora battler and not touch him.

Swallowing, he reached for his dagger just in case.

Leaving him.

They were leaving him.

Of course they were leaving him.

Detraeus felt his limbs begin to quiver, sound pounding in from every direction, battering his ears as he curled himself up tighter. Was this really how he would die? Skewered and poisoned by a hundred beasts he didn’t even know the name of? He squinted through the masses of buzzing bodies in the direction of the exit. Maybe if he jumped—?

Before he could so much as finish that thought, a massive shape battered back through the undulating horde. Detraeus froze. What—? Where they back? And why—

He yelped, snarling, but then swallowing back a scream and holding on for his life instead as he was yanked out. Feet off the ground. His feet were off the ground. He was in the air, and his heart felt like it wanted to take a leaping dive out of his throat and to the ground below. Much to his shame, he scrunched his eyes shut, rolling waves of fear and raw helplessness getting the better of him.

‘Please.’ He squeezed his eyes tighter shut. ‘Not like this.’

Detraeus came down hard, though not enough so to break any bones, and given the circumstances, he boxed up the pain as he winced and shoved it into a separate corner of his mind. He didn’t have time to whimper. Not with death beating its wings at three-hundred pulses a minute.

As he shoved himself upright, his attention flicked from one beast to the next, watching the larger khehora’s magic do its work and crush into the brittle exoskeletons of the beasts. He seemed powerful, no doubt, but there were so many of the giant insects. Would it even be possible to take them all on? Watching them swarm out, they seemed endless: a river of humming, buzzing bodies with toxic stingers and too many legs to count.

Detraeus crouched lower, adjusting his weight and only barely twitching his attention towards the khehora when it spoke again. Why was it even bothering to ask about him? Clearly, the little one would be his primary concern. Still, Detra curbed the instinct to bolt. If he ran now, there was too much of a chance that he would attract the direct attention of the bugs himself and end up on his own, dead before he could lift his weapon.

Instead, he kept close. At this point, the most effective weapon between himself and certain death was the grown khehora, and he wasn’t about to waste it. By the time the beasts made it swarming around the pillar of earth the khehora had made, Detra’s weapon was back in his hand, he kept himself poised defensively, trying to pay close attention to how exactly the khehora fought these things and where he aimed to do the most damage.