YUVEN

'Imagine for a minute, a creature who casts a shadow over the land, a silent hunter despite its huge size. Those are wyverns, Yuven, the beings we come from, the beings which gave rise to us when they danced with the faefolk of the icy caps, whose souls we still carry. Up to the last moment, their prey remained ignorant to the chase, for the wyverns were patient, intelligent, and although solitary, communed with their own with ease, without fear and sang instead of thrashed. Between their scales, feathers, muffling the sound of their beating wings. Graceful at any height, able to strike through the clouds and fly free.'

Fairytales; nothing more than an allegory for naive children. Wyverns long died out, with their remnants passed onto the Avaerilians, who shoved their heads into snow dunes, and lacking wings, they used their boots to stomp their useless pride, and the closest stretch of their vaunted ancestors came through one man's voice. Yuven held on tight to the spike, his knee against one of the larger scales covered with feathers. It crinkled against the wind, the barbs splitting at the slight breeze. Ice slipped through his lungs, and came out his nose as a powerful mist to equalize the temperature within, with Adara shivering against another spike, her hands shoved between the opposite sides for warmth.

Euron Traye. Fenrer's faith. He dug his padded fingers against the spike and choked it, before bringing a hand up to his chest when the rust stained the air he tried to breathe in. He made it look so simple... of course, why did I not think of choking it up, surely I haven't tried that before. It's not as if that's all I do. Yuven drove his fangs against his jaw and dragged his fingers down the tough bone. And I'm not a damned wyvern, Neven.

Sapphire capped glyphs flowed through the horns of stone and brought it to live as a construct, and Neven walked with someone else's heavy, false shoes. Wings billowed around their carved armor and glaive sharpened with magick. Fumes left the wyvern's nostrils in golden clouds with the thunder of crushing boots, and Neven brought himself up to a wyvern's eyes and faced it without fear of its mangled teeth, wrought with decay. And that's where Fenrer disappeared to, he was waiting... he knew all about Neven's plans. Hurt dribbled down his ribcage, but he let out the tension through his lungs with one last plume, twisting to Adara, whose words rocked with Fenrer's borrowed wisdom. So, she can listen, but that means naught if she can't put it into practice. He adjusted his knee when the white wyvern flew through the thick clouds and came closer to the beacons Neven set off right under his nose. He leaned against the spike when Euron, or Evyriaz, angled his wings into a slowing stop, before he landed on the bridge in near silence, barely cracking the old stone with his claws. His neck craned up the wall, to the multitude of ruined spires and broken lives, with the only hints of life being sputtered fires the Wardens set up all across the city for relief from the cold through the debris.

But what can I say?

Euron withdrew his neck and kept himself low to the ground. "I truly am in a different era." He pressed his muzzle against the ground, which gave them a slide down to the ground. His boots smacked against the bridge, and he rolled out his shoulders of the icy stiffness the flight caused, a trickle of odd familiarity dancing across his back. Adara joined him, and he scowled at her when she bumped into him with a small oof. Tix'snuv clambered down with a quiet coo, shaking out his feathers and tail.

"What are you going to do now?" Adara asked what he was reluctant to speak out, and Yuven bit on his inability for words.

"Return to the mausoleum and continue my vigil." Euron's tail swung over the side. "I must make sure the crystal was unaffected by the Obscura."

"Wait, crystal?" Yuven lunged for the wyvern. "There's a crystal down there? Is it an elementia crystal?" Adara's eyes widened in realization and she swung her head upwards at Euron when he lifted himself higher, revealing the gateway into Irimount.

"It is not an elementia crystal," Euron explained. "It is a piece of Naveera's heart, the Forge which gave unto me the power to pull the Derelicts out of the sky. It was imperative it remained unscathed, even at the risk of my soul." He shook out his neck, and clumps of snow fell from his larger feathers. "Though my memory has been burnt... that much I remember. All I could recall, save the names of those I love, that I repeated for time eternal... that are now gone..." He lowered his head. "We do not live for thousands of Turns."

"Derelicts make it so no one lives past fifty turns if they're lucky." Yuven grunted, then stepped back when Euron craned his neck towards him. "Twenty... if they're not so lucky." The time-limit I've been imposed with, and it's all I can do is to remember their names before it's taken from me. It hovers over me, I know it is coming, but I do not know when, just that it is soon. Their faces start blurring... He touched his brow with the tips of his fingers. Worms wiggled at the edges of his vision, but he ignored it, as he always had and always would until the end of his lifeline. Hope bled into empty dread as he stepped back when Euron opened his wings wide.

"Forsaken," he rumbled out in a single song. "I am to return to my vigil, and we will see each other again when the time turns once more through space." He waddled over to the edge of the bridge, then fell forwards into the mist below. In a puff of clouds, Yuven leaned over when distortion rippled and created snowy blooms as Euron disappeared into their shared magick, back into the cistern full of Traye tombs.

"Now what?" Adara asked.

"We return and give our report, nothing more and nothing less." Yuven headed for the cracked archway into the city of the dead. Sound coursed through the streets, echoing across the chimes hooked to the upper trellis. Bones of the draugr collected into neat piles and burned in a circle of fire glyphs, one last proper rite. Yuven headed back to their base camp, raising his head when a shape of a Storm Warden lunged up from their seat and scrambled towards the estate Neven once called home.

"Why do you want me to lie to him, Yuven?"

He stopped at Adara's quiet inquiry and continued his momentum long into his turn. "Fenrer's faith matters too much to him, and I don't care about whether the Ancients were deities or not, but what I do care about is my Oathbound's sense of the world," he explained once more. "You would be shattering everything he believes in if you tell him... so let him believe until we know more. End of discussion." He twisted on his heel at the sound of quick footsteps and the shout of his name, right into Neven's arms when he wrapped them around him. "Ai!" He flapped his arms in shock at the unexpected attack of affection. "I am fine." Neven let him go, where his long golden feathers fluffed out with his harried fidgeting. "Any major injuries?"

"No... the plan worked." Neven breathed out his relief. "And what of your side of things? What happened?" His gaze flicked over to Adara, who rubbed her arms. "Let us discuss further in the estate. While you were gone we managed to reactivate some of the magitek generators. It will be warmer inside." Before he walked away, Yuven hooked his hand around his arm. "What?"

"Fenrer? Maria?"

"He was still sleeping when I left him," Neven explained. "As for Maria, she was handling some of the injuries we sustained. Once we are well-rested, we are going back to Euros. Home."

Yuven took the explanation for its value and followed Neven back into the light of flames. Spheres of magick hung around the main footfalls into the city. Wards expanded on the weave of spiderwebs, mixing into golden colours as Neven ushered them into the estate. He let Adara shuffle past him into the living area, where Neven cleared out the frost lichen and fixed it down its growth ladder into the small aqueducts of water beneath. Tiny hearths blazed to life in the foyer. Embers crinkled, and a smile formed on his face when Maria revealed herself from around the corner, washing her hands with a clean cloth. "Yuven." Released from Neven's grip, he went straight into her arms instead. Into the sun of love. All the words he left unsaid stuck themselves to the back of his fangs, and he chewed on them and the impossibility of Euron's final act of defiance against the husk. "Are you okay?"

"I am fine," he repeated. "You?"

"Tired, but everyone made it out in one piece — which I'll take the victories where I can get them." Maria patted his arm and urged him to the couch while Adara went to the backdoors, tucking her shawl further around her shoulders in eerie silence. Yuven spread his arm over the couch and glared at her back.

"Sazaka." He bit on the last of names when she turned to him in uncertainty. "You should get some sleep."

"Are you... concerned about my well-being?" she questioned.

"No, I want to talk privately and you standing there defeats the purpose of that."

"The answer is yes," Maria replied and sent a wry grin his way when he leaned closer to her and scowled. "I may not be able to speak Navei, but I can speak your language, Yuven." She leaned into his resting arm as Adara nodded and went down the corridor, pushing past the silk veils. Neven prodded the braziers along the walls with the tip of his finger. Clicks sparked the runes within into a blaze of familial love. Yuven stretched his neck forward when Neven grabbed a tray of cups off the delivery point from the small kitchens, bringing it forward before putting it between them.

"Why didn't you tell me that statue was a crystal construct?" he blurted out the moment Neven's hindquarters sat upon the couch.

"It wasn't relevant to what I needed you to do." Neven blew on a small firestick and slipped it into one of the holes on the table. Bags sat underneath it, filled with maps and parchment awaiting adjustments.

"You told Fenrer." Yuven drew his arm from around Maria and set it at his side instead. "Am I wrong?"

Neven sighed. "Yuven."

"Why did you not tell me your plan from the start?" Yuven asked.

"What difference would it have made?"

Maria clapped her hands against her knees and lifted herself from his side, and Yuven resented his own confrontation of choice. "I'm going to let you two hash this out," she said with a more frustrated grunt of an added Hanekan word he barely heard. "I'm just going into the kitchen to grab something to eat." WIth that, she flounced off, and Yuven returned his attention to Neven.

"It doesn't make a difference." Yuven folded his arms and legs. "We cleansed Evyriaz, and he returned to the cistern beneath Irimount." He tossed papers out onto the table. "There's some sort of crystal — no, not an elementia, I asked," Yuven interrupted Neven when he opened his mouth. "He called it a Forge. We'll want to let the Warden-Commander know, but Irimount as it is is not habitable for extended postings, and Miesero—" He grabbed Neven's hand when he reached forward for one of the cups. "I still don't agree with using this place as a permanent base of operations. We should stay away from Naveera, not inject ourselves into it. The blizzard does most of the job when it comes to Derelicts. We've gotten rid of the largest threat, so I say we leave it at that and let them handle themselves."

"We need some sort of foothold here."

"Are you saying that because you mean it or because you're homesick?"

Neven's lips folded inward and revealed the tips of his fangs. His hand drew out of his own to hook a finger into the cup's handle. "I am saying it because Derelicts learn the longer they are left," he echoed out one of the fundamental rules of the Storm Warden Order. "I am not suggesting to turn this into a permanent stay, Yuven. Far from it. It is best things are kept an eye on though, and Irimount, once cleared out and confirmed to be safe... will be the best place for the Order to seek refuge on the off chance others are sent into Naveera." He sipped. "Your tea is getting cold. There's stardust in it."

Yuven cupped the mug in his hands and took his own sip to try and quell the fiery fury in his lungs. "You're the senior Captain here... I am ruefully required to defer to your judgment of what happened here. It is your report to give." He rolled out his shoulders and leaned further into the couch. "I think you'll regret it, though. This is not the Naveera you believed it was." Cold steel bounced against his wrists when he moved them. "This is the real world, Neven, you cannot shove your head in books and try to make it reality — that is not your duty. Your sole duty is to the Storm Wardens alone. This Naveera is not the one in your tales." Lost in the contention, he put the cup back down on the tray. "And I wish you had told me your plan from the start."

Neven frowned. "Would you have changed course if I had?"

His question caught him off guard. "Whatever do you mean?"

"You were so intent on taking down the wyvern, Evyriaz, by yourself," Neven pointed out with parental tension. "Had I told you everything, you would be intent to do the same in every facet, but you are not the only capable Storm Warden here. You are also not the sole bearer of our duty, as you say. You do not trust others."

"I have damned good reason," Yuven hissed through his spat. "You know that."

Neven's feathers thinned and he lowered his gaze to the cups. "I did not say you didn't have a good reason, Yuven," he said after a long minute of silence between them. "Underestimate me as you will... but I've been at this longer than you." His tongue slid between his lips when he straightened himself out, and Yuven tasted shame in equal measure to his own uncertainty.

And rust.

Yuven raised his fingers to his lips when Neven switched his attention to the same glass doors Adara stared out of, before opening his mouth to let the taste spill out. Stickiness clung onto the tips of his fingers, and when he drew back, he frowned at the stringy black ooze slipping down the ridges. He wiped his hand when Neven turned back around, then raised his shoulders into a shrug of his last pieces of life. "You dream too much, Miesero. I'd hate to disappoint you."

In the grasp of black blood.

"Dreams can give birth to songs," Neven replied with sweet, blissful unawareness he longed to keep Fenrer in. "You haven't disappointed me, Yuven. Goodnight." He went through the other corridor.

Maria came from around the bend and squished herself out of Neven's way as Yuven lost himself in the sapphire flames. He raised his head to her when she came closer. "Myl'la," he whispered and caused her to stop, lifting his tar-soaked hand to open it in full. "You think I can still have one last laugh? Think I can keep up the facade?"

The truth of the Expulsion Event — with none of Euron's capability to bear through its tearing fatality as Maria moved for him in strained concern in the reality in front of him.

After all... I'm not a wyvern. I'm not long-lasting, and you're wrong, Miesero... I am going to disappoint you.