Caelian is a spirit who was born without the ability to feel emotion. Found as a child by the forest goddess, Gaia, she grants him four elementals that allow him to feel positive emotion. As he's living in the Eternal Forest, a dark force ends up c...
As Caelian and the others walked across the scorched plains, they were all surprised when a giant shadow momentarily fell over them. Caelian looked skyward, and he saw what seemed to be a giant bird with a human face and body fly over them. It's fiery wings beat against the air, buffeting them with the air currents it generated. It flew off into the distance, disappearing into the horizon.
"What was that?" Caelian asked.
"Oh! Is Ifrit," Evelyn said cheerfully.
"Ifrit is... a giant bird man?" Caelian asked.
"More akin to a phoenix, but to put it bluntly, yes," Damien said. "He must have been scouting out the land. I wonder why he hasn't—"
Before Damien could finish speaking, fire rained down from the sky, surprising all of them and causing Evelyn to let out a loud yelp. She crouched down to the ground and held her arms above her head in an attempt to protect herself. The fire seemed to stay away from where they stood, only raining down in a radius around them.
Caelian watched as the corruption caught fire, blazing up into white smoke before both it and the fire vanished into thin air. The fire burned brightly on the bones sticking up from the dirt, melting them away to reveal the purple and gold crystal hidden underneath them. As suddenly as when it came, the fire disappeared, leaving everything purified in its wake.
"Ah. There we go," Damien said. "Guess he is doing his job."
"Evelyn, are you okay?" Caelian asked, gently touching her shoulder as she whimpered. "It's okay, it didn't hit us."
"Yeah, what was that about?" Damien asked as Evelyn slowly lowered her arms, "Did you really think your god would torch us like that?"
"N-no," Evelyn said as she shakily stood up. "Is just... Nevermind," she mumbled.
Zephyr frowned. "Hey, Evelyn, I've been kind of meaning to ask this, but... Are you... afraid of fire?"
"H-huh? No, 'course not!" she said defensively.
"Really? I just noticed with how you act around it, and how scared you were just now—"
"Evelyn isn't afraid of fire!" She huffed.
"All right, sorry," Zephyr said.
"Anyway," Damien interrupted. "It looks like we don't need to worry about—" They paused as a sprite flew past them. They frowned as they watched red, sparkling powder fall down in a trail behind them, causing oozing green pustules to pop up in their wake.
"Spoke too soon," Damien said.
"What are they doing...?" Caelian asked as multiple sprites began to zip around them.
"They're spreading corruption," Damien said.
"They can do that?" Zephyr asked.
"Yes," Damien said. "Hey!" they shouted, surprising some of the sprites and causing them to flit away. They took off after them, leaving the others to take a few seconds to realize what was happening before joining the pursuit.
The plains around them turned into stony craigs as they ran, with sharp rocks jutting up out of the soil and cracks running through the ground. The sprites were far out of sight, but it was possible to still follow the trail they left behind.
As they rounded a corner, Caelian was surprised to see someone standing several yards in front of them. They had multiple sprites hovering around them, and as they held out their hand, one of them landed in their palm.
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