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WARNING: Objectionable content/trigger warnings for violence, coarse language, and suggestions of sexual vulgarity among other things. Read at your own discretion.





Ataya disliked the desert.

Admittedly, he had never been on especially amicable terms with it in the past. Despite having grown up in it and been raised in its rocky mountain range, cooler weather had always been more his element. But travelling alone, for days with nothing but oppressive, suffocating heat and sand — endless sand — did nothing to improve his relations with it. He managed well enough, used to it as he was, but it depleted his energy to be constantly frosting his clothes in an attempt to be cool, and if he overdid the dose, it became wet against him when it thawed. That, though, was at least cool also and gave him some reprieve as it evaporated.

It didn’t help that with solitude came something frustratingly akin to loneliness which didn’t agree with him either. At all. He thought of his sister, her upset at his revelation that he would leave, and his mother’s as well. He thought of his father, how cross he would certainly be knowing he had left without word to him.

And he thought of Dysarrin.

In the face of his best intentions, he thought of Dysarrin a great deal. Especially the man’s unfortunate choice to spend his first use of the word ‘please’ on attempting to dissuade Ataya’s current action-in-progress, and the guilt that it left in his gut the further he traveled from the mountains and out into the burning sands was downright unpleasant and unwelcome. A mood kill, so to speak, among other things. He worried, too.

Worried that the idiot would never follow him. But of course he would, surely he would? Worried that if he did follow him he would become lost or distracted or hurt. But maybe he would be as ‘invincible’ as he seemed to like to imagine himself? He had survived this long, after all. Worried that something, anything would happen and the wild man would never make it before him again.

The ache that the thought caused was more pronounced than it had any right to be, and Ataya dismissed the thought as firmly as he could.

The trouble with a great deal of time to oneself with nothing to distract the mind, of course, was that the mind tended to wander as it pleased regardless of where it might be initially directed. Much to Ataya’s frustration, it ‘pleased’ to dwell on things he’d rather it not a large portion of his travels. He made do. It wasn’t as though he could turn back, after all, and Dysarrin would find his way. Surely.

It wasn’t as though the brute completely depended on him for every rational decision he ever—

Well.

It wasn’t as though the brute listened. So clearly he was capable of at least functioning on his own.

Ataya spend the better part of a week and a half in the desert, trusting the direction of the sun, the burn of his self-designed spell-compass and his gradual but carefully-pieced-together understanding of the map he brought with him to lead him in the proper general direction. The great number of variables — how long it would take to arrive, how large, exactly, the city itself was, how he would know if he missed it entirely — itched at the back of his mind, causing doubt in greater and lesser quantities depending on the swing of his mood, but by his eleventh day, after combating everything from gaili dragons to territorial desert wildlife to the sand and sun itself in order to assert his right to be there, he was well beyond changing his mind.

On the eleventh night, he set camp alone in the shadow of a rocky stack to serve as a wind breaker. It was a slow process, made slower by his lack of sight, but minimalist by necessity: bedding laid out where he could arrange it flat, a spell circle for protection and warning with simple magics so as not to drain him, and another spell for a small, floating fire since the desert provided little, if any means for feeding a natural one. He ate equally simply, drinking from a canteen filled with ice thawed by the desert’s heat and eating sparingly from a selection of nuts, dried fruit and a strip of newly caught and cooked meat. While the desert was not abundant with wildlife, Ataya did not miss the passing opportunity to stop the heart of a curious desert bouken or other wild critter suitable for replenishing his stores.

It was still a strange thing to him, to settle to sleep alone.

Alone in his own space, of course, was common. But having lived to date always in a home either with his parents or his uncles or — in more recent instances, on occasion — in the confines of Edmun’s bedroom, Ataya had never truly had occasion to sleep entirely alone. It was a strange and frustratingly empty event, in comparison to what he had imagined: freedom, space, choice without obligation and adventure. Instead, the winds whispered low over the sand, the night air cold and distant as it chilled with the sinking of the sun, and only Rannah’s occasion soft wicker broke the monotony to attest that there was some life there with him.

Ataya shut his eyes, turning to cloister himself in his furs, tangled beneath his hair, and ignore the weight of silence.

He could not say what woke him. He could not even say how long he slept or when he slept. He knew only that when he woke, his breath rushed loud from his lips, sharp against the eerie quiet and joined only by—

Voices.

Ataya’s breath slowed.

“—s goin’ this way—”

“—disgusting—”

“—ould you two shut up? I see her hastar.”

“—not like it’s going to be difficult. It’s just one messblood mutt.”

Ataya shut his eyes, and seeped into shadow. Finding Eurielle by her energy, he pulled her in with him as he went, the rest of his magic rippling out like ink over the dark sand and pinpointing on the shapes of the intruders. Once well behind them, he took shape in the shadow, silent as his aiskala frost dusted through the air and marked the hunters for tracking purposes. One shivered.

“Goddess, is it always this cold at night?”

“Didn’t I tell you to shut u—” Whoever was speaking paused. “She’s gone.”

“What do you mean she’s—”

“For reference,” Ataya said, slipping himself just enough into the shadows as he spoke that his ‘voice’ reverberated, not quite here, nor there, “…though I doubt at this point that any of you will live long enough to put the forthcoming advice to use: when ‘ambushing’ a shadow mage…night is not typically the wisest of choices. Unless of course you are just here to amuse me, in which case…” He sank, rippling over the sand to the sound of curses and a bright flare of light, and then appeared a fraction of an inch behind the first body he came to. As his body solidified, he reached, layering long, bony fingers in a loose coil around the side of the bandit’s neck and pulsing out with his aiskala magic as he did, feeling it skitter in dual directions: up and down the veins of the man’s neck, and deeper, towards his lungs as he choked. “Bravo.”

Pain ripped into his side, boring deep, so fierce and immediate that for a moment, Ataya could only choke as the blade that came with it dragged him back against another body.

“For reference,” a coarse voice sneered, the press of it hot against his ear, “you’re not the only one who can play tricks, you sarcastic little s**t.” Blood. Ataya could taste blood. Bad sign. “How is your magic feeling, eh?” When the blade withdrew, Ataya staggered, and would have sank to the sand but for a sudden, gripping yank to his hair hoisting him back upright and rooting him there. “Ah-ah-ah, did we say you could kneel yet?”

Panic lurched against the cage of Ataya’s chest as he struggled and reached for his magic—and hit a barrier. It wasn’t powerful, but there just the same, walling him off, and plenty solid enough to leave him, for the moment: blind, weak, and magicless. Helpless. For the span of the next several seconds it took the great bulk of his willpower not to crumble inward into absolute hysteria.

“It’s no wonder we thought it was a woman, huh?” a second voice supplied. “Would you look at all that hair. And he couldn’t weigh but what…half a sack of grain?”

“Maybe it’s the broken genetics. Certainly would make an ugly woman either way.”

Ataya jerked against the hold restraining him, snarling but immediately regretting it as pain ricocheted up his side from the source wound and broke the snarl into a half-bit keen—not helped by the increased grip on his hair.

“Temperamental like one, too. Do you suppose all messbloods are this mottled, or do you think we hit on something special?”

Ataya shut his eyes, gathering the fringes of his energy and focusing inward. Silence. Silence. Silence. Nothing else mattered but this: where was the source of the block in his magic? Breathe in — two, three, four — out — two, three, four — in…

He searched, mentally funneling his resources and doing his best to block the gouging pain and outside prattle of voices. As he observed, the block worked to a pattern. On every fifth breath there was a fraction of an instant where it weakened, leaving an opening to shove — if lucky — a single spell through.

“You’ve done us the disservice of killing one of our friends already though, you see,” one was saying when he allowed his focus to shift back temporarily to them, “so now we can’t just give you a clean easy death…we’ve got to teach you a lesson.”

“Real disappointed you weren’t a woman, though,” the one holding him said. “Was looking a bit forward to toyin’ with a nice, hot…” The fingers in his hair bunched, dragging back to expose his throat, “…tight little hybrid cun—”

Ataya smashed his head back, cracking it into the man’s face and earning himself some hybrid between a yelp and a snarl before he was slung to the sand like a broken rag doll. Moments later, he was being dragged forward again, this time by the front of his robes.

“I don’t know what you think you’re setting yourself up for, mage—”

“I think you are going to let go of me,” Ataya panted. “And then I think you are going to run. Immediately. Or I will kill you. And then I will kill your friend. And then I will ******** your corpses and leave them in the desert to rot there until the scavengers come to pick them apart—”

A thumb to his open lips, and a cracking laugh cut him off. “Do you know what I like about you, hybrid?”

Ataya exhaled, counting. One, two…

“Nothing.”

He jolted forward, making use of the close space between their faces bash their mouths, catch his teeth on the other’s lip, bite, and yank, fingers simultaneously moving for his weapon hand. In the garbled scream that followed in sync with the taste of blood and flesh, Ataya appropriated said weapon, spat out everything in his mouth, and sliced, cutting off the scream at the throat.

…three, four…

The instant other man seemed to come within range, Ataya twisted, shoving as much ice into the bandit’s chest as he could on the single pulse of five before staggering backward and swaying to the multiple dizzinesses competing for dominance: loss of blood, exhaustion of magic, and physical depletion. After forcing himself over to touch barely shaking fingers to the wet, slippery — and pulseless — throat of the first and then to the chilled, stiff — and thankfully equally pulseless — throat of the second, Ataya allowed himself to briefly collapse with a groan.

“Rannah…”

Off to his far left where he had reined her for the night, his hastar gave a wicker of acknowledgement.

“Next time, remind me: kill first, mock after. Potentially not quite as satisfying but much less…” Ataya winced, “…window of opportunity for sustaining unpleasant side effects such as excess bleeding, knife wounds, and exposure to stomach-turningly poor sexual ‘humor.’” In the pause that followed as he caught his breath, Ataya tested the boundaries of his magic again. He was not entirely certain how long he lay, just like that, counting the pulses and gathering his breath, waiting as whatever poison barrier put upon him gradually dwindled into nothing.

When it did, though, he hummed, forcing himself into a slow, ginger sit and then coiling his fingers — all of them by now caked with some combination of his own blood and theirs. Curious, he moved to one of the fallen men.

“Did you know that an impressive selection of magic grounds itself in the proper utilization of blood as its base one?” Ataya asked. “I am sure you did…after all, you went about hunting a warlock. But with that in mind…” Reaching, he touched his fingertips again to the chilled skin of the bandit’s throat, and then down, as though painting a line, “…it seems almost sacrilege to spill so much so carelessly without putting to some use, don’t you think? Death is such a fickle thing, after all…” With the tip of his middle finger and some of the still-damp blood available, Ataya drew a careful, precise pattern on the skin of the man’s chest, then forehead. “For simple things, it does not take much…and I did make a promise, didn’t I? As to what I would do to you, were you foolish enough to keep my company?”

Once finished with the runes, Ataya shut his eyes, fingertips perched like the legs of a spider to the dead man’s throat as he gathered magic to him. Then he spoke, spellwords dripping in twisted shapes as though from a different voice entirely. Ataya felt the magic seep out with them, pooling over the body, then focusing on the runes and funneling in until—

When the figure beneath him twitched, chest jerking upwards and back bowing erratically as a poorly-managed puppet yanked to the call of a new master, Ataya relaxed, and the corner of his lip coiled.

“It just wouldn’t do for me not to keep a promise, you see…”