Welcome to Gaia! ::

Having three new appendages was a lot to get used to, and Raemos found it hard to do so in the cottage. It was the house he had grown up in, the house his family lived in now, but he wasn't sure he fit there anymore. He had wings and a tail, now, striking among a family of Orderites, and there was a lot of thinking and reckoning to do about them and what these new growths would do to his carefully constructed self identity. He couldn't do any of those things with his father looking at him in that way he had, tinged with wariness and fear. Raemos had thought they had gone beyond such things, that he and his father had finally come to terms with each other. But no – his wings had grown in, and his father was not happy.

So, Raemos had retreated out into the vast desert scrubland that his family owned, with their herds of sheron – somewhat diminished from the Mara invasion of before but still strong and sturdy as always – roamed and ate. The kargoth and Kugel were back as well, and Raemos could see their tawny bodies dotting the horizon around him. He walked towards the distant blocky shapes of the sheron. With them, he would not be alone. With them, he would have a place to think and be useful, all at once.

The funny thing was, when he was little, he would have done anything to have wings. Of course, these were not the wings he had dreamed of. Instead of the gloriously feathered wings of his mother, father, and sister, he had been 'blessed' with leathery, membranous wings full of bones and sinew. They marked him as different. They marked him as not of his family, more so than even his dark colors did.

And the tail... It twitched and jittered behind him, yet another reminder of his alien nature. He wasn't sure if he hated it or not yet.

He wasn't sure how he felt about any of this.

He was shaken from his thoughts by a loud sound, like the rumble of thunder. He squinted into the distance and noted, to his dismay, that the sherons silhouettes were coming closer, ringed by a haze of sand and dust.

They were coming fast.

Very fast.

With a startled yelp, he leapt into the air, his wings unfurling and fanning out instinctively as the herd rushed towards him, mooing desperately as they came upon him. They churned below him, a torrent of white-rimmed eyes, bodies, hooves, horns, and destruction, shaggy and sweating in their panic. He flapped in the air, wary, his hand to his weapons.

A creature chased them and it soon came into view, rushing forward to grab a straggler in its massive mouth.

”A rhamidon...” Raemos breathed, as he began to cast his magic.

At the first strike of his magic on its great back, the beast heaved, turning to him, mouth open wide. Its skin was thick – too thick for his magic to penetrate – and the sun was too much to try anything more, so he closed, flinging spells to hold it back before slashing with his sword.

He scored a hit, but it drew little blood. The creature swiped at him with a great paw, the force of it sending him flying into the nearby sands. Raemos grabbed at his spell component bag as it trundled over to him, mouth gaping and scattered with the remains of its sheron meals. Snatching out a sac of venom, he rubbed it on his sword and rolled out of the way as it snapped at him. He ran beneath it, slicing at its underbelly with his sword – there was only so much he could do, and soon its thick flesh yanked the sword from his grasp.

He threw magic at it to buy himself time, and barely managed to not be cut to pieces by the beast's ridges as it tried to roll on top of him. Raemos was desperately silent as he tried to slip his magic into the beast, to seek out and destroy its life force, but whether by magic or nature the beast resisted his shadowy threads. All he could do was beat at its thick skin and bones.

And then, miraculously, it fell, foaming to the ground.

The poison had worked.

Raemos, cautiously, retrieved his blade and – using the wound as an entry point – slipped his magic in to kill the beast. He wiped it clean of blood and residual poison, and headed out towards the dusk cloud that marked the stampede – the next problem that would require his help.

At this rate, he thought sardonically, I won't have time to think.

(799/300)