The Relistar: Rejoining Vol. I

Rejoining | Ch. 4

IV.

Calamon

Before the Rejoining

A large, hulking man covered in silver fur stirred. His pointed ears twitched as his golden feline eyes closed and tensed.

"Vyncis..." he growled. "Vyncis!"

"Yes, sir." a man with a black topknot bowed before him, opposite the engraved wooden desk in the office's center.

"Did you feel that... that power...?"

"No. An artefact?"

He shook his head. "By the land... full-bodied and fierce was what it was. Not something. Someone. Mind, matter, and all."

"Where-to?" Vyncis rattled the broadsword at his hip.

"He's nearby. Dreslon. We'll head to Cromer." he said as he threw a heavy leather coat over his already heavy fur.

"Cromer? How do you know we'll make it in time?"

The cat turned to the bulletin board behind him, where he had drawn a route across Kylinstrom's map, with a dagger stuck in to hold it up. "We won't. Rouse Faunia. She'll need to see this, too."

"What... is this?" silver-haired and silver-plated Faunia Vleren gasped from atop the church's belltower. The rain still poured down on them, growing heavier with every passing minute, but it did not do much to mask the blood and the bodies in the streets below. It did not mask the blue lights of Hunters making their patrols around the city. It did not mask the perpetual terror now ingrained in the citizens of a once prosperous city.

"An Etherian." the cat said.

"A what?"

Vyncis spoke up as he climbed atop the tower, "Faunia, there are wounded below. Might I request that you lend succor?"

"Y-yes." she hesitated and stuttered. And then with another glance to the town below, she climbed back down the shoddy wooden ladder.

"A poor choice of words, Akvum."

The cat sighed. "I did not think we would be in the midst of one of the distracted. I had hopes that Kasian would have kept us close-knit to Calamon's people."

"Then we do not tell her. Anything."

"I wonder how long we could get away with that." he looked up to the constellations in the dark sky above. "The old gods yet watch our struggle. Iori."

"God of ensnarement and traps?"

"Capture him."

Vyncis took a deep bow. "It will be done."

At the bottom of the ladder, things were no better. And as the hours passed, they only worsened. The conditions travelling through the blizzard were arduous and deadly. Some did not make it. It took Freiya'kara's support to even pass the iced-over villages and towns that blocked the path, when the white-coated and masked guardians of the frost came to guide them.

And then the sky opened up: vibrant colors, howling winds, and cracks as if the sky itself had shattered, or lightning had become ensnared within it... Their world was collapsing.

But they carried forth, and as they neared the epicenter of that sight, they found the boy.

And she approached with her rapier drawn.