YUVEN

I am coming, Maria, Miesero. I won't let them take you away from me. Not again. The Umbral Redirector's diamond peaks pierced into his palm as he waited in the volcanic bubble with his small, chosen team and their hippogryphs. Warden Haven ruffled the feathers of a speckled sable mare, while Fenrer adjusted the saddle around his gray colored one, who shook its head with a huff. Tix'snuv stood silent, strong and ready, his stringy tail still with the wind. Another Warden carried extra supplies for the Irimount Outpost, and he fiddled with the chain of his Resonator as he watched Fenrer slip extra blades into the saddle's frog.

"Be careful, you two."

Yuven twisted around to Adara, who stood on the edges with her hands locked together and a crease to her brow. "We won't be there long enough for it to matter." He slipped his seax's into Tix'snuv's saddle and latched them in place with his own personal supplies. His fingers drifted through his feathers as Fenrer wandered past him to meet Adara halfway. "I want you to keep training while we're gone. You don't get to slack just because I'm not around to keep you on track. Maybe this will be good for you, who knows." He rested his elbow on Tix'snuv's haunch as Fenrer cupped her hands in his. I'll feel better... when I can see them. See them safe and back home.

"We will," Fenrer assured with a warm, unaffected smile. Yuven drove his fingers into the straps at his Oathbound's lack of concern, but he bit on his tongue until he tasted blood on his fangs as he knelt down to fasten protective casings around Tix'snuv's scaly fore-limbs. "This isn't like last time, Adara. We're prepared."

"They were too," Yuven grumbled and twisted on his ankle to the other leg as Tix'snuv leaned his neck down to chuff into his ear. He patted his beak then pushed it out of his way. "You'll get food once we're done..." An indignant squawk was his response, but he found himself drawn to the two distracted squirrels when Fenrer leaned forward into a kiss of closeness starved. "Don't take too long..." he grumbled and caused Fenrer to snap back out of Adara's reach. A light glow set Fenrer's sun-kissed skin on fire, but Adara folded her arms with none of Fenrer's uncertainty around relationships. Back on his feet, he pushed Fenrer back towards his hippogryph to take his place in front of Adara instead.

"I won't stop training." Adara scoffed, though he found the words he wanted to say whispering out of existence. Her finger prodded him in the chest, and he swatted it away with a huff. "Just remember what I said, stop giving Fenrer grief — and we are going to tell him the truth. Go get them back or I'll start calling you a stubborn nuglet again."

"Once more, what is a nuglet—?" Yuven stopped himself short of the inane argument when the volcanic barrier solidified and the twilight sea splashed against his feet. "Forget it, Sazaka, if that's how it is." He threw his arms up and returned to Tix'snuv's side, who sent one more chuff into his head and scattered white-strands over his brow.

Maelstrom stars crashed around them and cast the darkness upwards with the stream of light. Fenrer's irides echoed the tempest of teleportation, the bow and arrow when he glanced around though the colours splattered with their multi-colored souls. It pressed upon his magick, the tingle of wings upon his back as he all but launched Fenrer and Adara into the unknown, with Sivaport across the horizon. His friends turned into falling stars along the flow. Memories shattered as he found himself rolling across a wheat field — not one of his graceful landings when a spurt of blood left his lips before he could right himself. It's over... that was luck. Luck. Not divine providence. Luck. He held on tight to Tix'snuv's reins, then checked on Fenrer as he continued to look upon the paths unseen. What would the truth do to you... Molvisaliz? Voices echoed out when his gratitude came out as, "At least you've decided to not pray in front of a shrine."

"What?" Fenrer's oceanic voice followed the beat of the sea laden with stars and crimson clouds.

Ugh. Yuven sent an internal facepalm straight into his own nose the moment Fenrer's gaze turned downcast. "Idiot..." he cursed at his inability in his mother tongue, faltering when Fenrer squeezed his shoulders into his neck with a drifting attention. He went to correct yet another mistake, but the maelstrom stilled into a blur of snow and ice, bursting apart the volcanic bubble as they took the first, hardest step into the mountain cradle of a ruined city of alabaster towers. Wind tore open his feathers for regulation as he clicked his tongue and pulled his small team forward, past the bright lampposts. Shadows cast underneath the flakes as they drew closer to the old Headquarters for the Irimount Knights, repurposed for the Storm Wardens.

One of the Warden Guards at the entrance slammed to their feet, but then relaxed. "I didn't realise they were sending more..."

Yuven stopped at the wrought-iron gate with a scowl. "Where are Neven Lotayrin and Maria Ollain?" He gripped the reins in his hands tighter when the Guard whistled out a certain tune, causing another Guard to rush forward to join them.

"We... don't know," he admitted and rested his hand on his crescent blade. "Last I saw Neven Lotayrin or Maria Ollain, they went out into Irimount, towards the gate... they haven't come back since."

My point is proven time and time again... Yuven took in a breath and nodded at Warden Haven. "Feed the hippogryphs. Fenrer, with me. We're going to follow their trail, from start to finish." He stepped past the gate when it opened with a high-pitched groan when the Wardens pulled it on its hinges. Echoes of his own footsteps made him stop when he turned at the lack of Fenrer's self-assured, heavier ones as he remained by his gray mount, who shook their head out again in agitation with a clop of their back hooves at his rider's apparent stunlocked emotion. "Molvisaliz, we need to get this done. You said you were with me."

Fenrer approached him and Yuven resumed his steps. "What was Captain Lotayrin up to?" he asked when the Warden Guard took his other side. "What was he doing before he left? Did he ever find a map?" Lamps lit up the snow strewn stone paths. Steam fluttered out of makeshift chimneys in some of the tattered buildings where some Wardens took shelter from the endless cold.

"I believe so," the Warden remarked. "Although... I believe he found something that agitated him. He came out of the old headquarters the morn of him leaving, at least, I think it was morning."

"Did he say what he found?" Yuven pressed.

"Not a word."

Miesero... "We brought supplies." Yuven stopped him with his hand. "Go get them into safe storage. Commander Faehariel will be sending stonemasons to repair the buildings. Come," he sent towards Fenrer, who trailed behind inch by inch until it was only them at the steps into the fort built from ebony foundations and dark bricks. Magelights flickered in the braziers and sent periodic flame bursts into the dead coals. He pressed his fingers into Fenrer's chest to stop him entering the building. "What's the matter?"

"Nothing." Fenrer gave him a blank-faced stare.

Do not give him any more grief, Adara's annoying voice barked between his ears, and he cursed her for her skills when it came to people instead of magick. Yuven brought both hands up to Fenrer's cheeks. Dawnspread embers tickled at his fingertips with a fever pitch, but Fenrer remained stalwart and in good physical health. A sudden urge to shake him awake slammed into his elbows, but he resisted to find the whispered words he left in the wind. He opened his mouth as an outreach of comfort as Neven had done over and over again, and then it echoed his broken meaning, "I need you to concentrate on the task at hand." Irritation bled over his truth when he followed the single impulse in his elbows to give Fenrer a light rattle. "Yes?"

"Mhm."

"Good." Venom dripped down his tongue when he let go of Fenrer and sent air glyphs to open the doors. "Let me know if you still sense Neven's aura. He was looking for a map before but we had no time for a deeper search the last time... and then the comment that something he found agitated him, which I find hard to believe; Miesero never gets agitated, not that easily." Arms folded, he let a cold mist escape from his lips and his lungs circulated the intake of breath into warmer spreads. "Map first. If there were any copies, he would've left one here for later adjustments."

"Yuven... I sense..." Fenrer drew the spirals over the unseen as Yuven took him to the previous record room, full of yellowing or frozen scrolls in cupboards. Yuven grabbed onto the lamp and sent a tiny white glyph into its center to power the rune. "His aura path is so faint... he hasn't been here for a while."

"I am aware of that much..." Yuven bit the moment he found the map and unfurled it and recognized Neven's scrawl over the border lines and paths. "It... looks like he was going to first head to a county called Usokal before coming back here to update the map." Ink swirled on the edges of the map when he drew his finger down them, the parchment's sensitivity to magick a boon for changing lines. "Once we figure out what possessed him to leave without due preparations or sending an alert to what he had planned..." Yuven sighed at the silence. "Fenrer, I swear to the Infernal Hells if you are having an Auric Trance—" He turned around to confirm his suspicion. In rather creepy fashion, Fenrer loomed beside a stack. Opalescent flames swallowed his eyes as he stared into nothing and spoke nothing. "How? What emotion is so intense?"

The moment he wrapped his hands around Fenrer's forearm, Fenrer tilted his head in the direction outside of the room. "Is it his?" Yuven pleaded and touched Fenrer's shoulder to try and bring his Oathbound back to him. "You said it had been a while, Molvisaliz..."

"Winter hungers for the truth," Fenrer's voice came out an echoed, blank emotion. "Why?" His fists clenched with someone else's old pain and realization. "Four tenants broken... what did I believe in?"

Miesero... what in the hells did you find? Another impulse swept up his arm to shake Fenrer, who swayed without resistance. "Follow the path, take me to where the source is," he ordered, and Fenrer, lost in a siren's trance, obeyed with a stiff gait. Yuven kept a hold on the back of Fenrer's shirt. Old pillars groaned underneath the weight of the roof as the flags fluttered against the wind oozing through the cracks along the walls to create an ominous, low howl.

"Tell me it isn't so..." Fenrer said with an empty heart as they descended a set of stairs into a small cellblock. Dread collected through his mind. A crimson soaked pin. "...faith unyielding."

You're not a fool, but you may be desperate. I need not do anything... you'll do it yourself. Yuven tried to shake out the words which echoed throughout the Ice Gaol, where a dangerous monarch kept him for information he no longer had. Directed towards the crumbled wall, he approached with Fenrer looming behind him with no more Auric mutterings born of the flow he lost himself in. Blood coursed through his ears when he stepped into the past, closer to the ruined doors. Deeper. Lower. Into tunnels, Yuven faltered to a stop at the tickle.

"Monster born..."

Voices cold tore through what remained of his memories, long stained by the extent of the corruption. Air caught in his lungs when Fenrer brought a hand up to his mouth. "No!" Yuven rushed through the system on instinct and followed older, cruel shadows until he shambled to a stop at a different cell block. Scrolls filled the stacks, and multiple littered the floor, torn open. "No! Godsdamnit!" Yuven pushed himself through and stopped a mere inch from the shattered metal bars. In the cell, a storybook stained with blood. Manacles, rusted to the wall. "No..." His knees gave out from under him as he sat in the ruins. Miesero... where have you gone?

He froze when a firm hand touched his back.

Fenrer lost in his Auric Trance but followed the flow to him instead.

"Sapphire flames burn down the cage," he stated through the prophetic voice. "Again and again... I am so close."

Yuven got off the cold stone and faced Fenrer as his hand drifted off the back of his leather armor. "Usokal," he said and held onto Fenrer's lean shoulders. "We must find him. I will not let this place ruin him, I refuse to let it break his heart again." He prodded his Oathbound's cheeks when the opalescent spirals dimmed. "Take yourself off the remnants of his aura, it's my turn." He waited for the opals to wash out, and then steadied Fenrer when he staggered from the Auric Trance. "We fly, but first, let us grab ice compasses and warming tonics."

"He's angry, Yuv," Fenrer whispered as they rushed out of the Knight's Headquarters. "But it's not at you."

"I know, and I know exactly what has driven Neven to this," Yuven growled. "We both knew he was investigating something about a cult, and showed us the state Kayal was left in... and something tells me he thinks the fall of Irimount is connected to his present. It will never leave us be, and we will never be free until we end this." He stopped by the refectory, where alchemy stations simmered with the alchemists placing their concoctions in storage. He swiped a couple of extra for his team, handing a strap to Fenrer before tying his own to his leather holder with his medication. Back out into the cold, he wandered over to where Warden Haven and a couple others groomed and prepared the hippogryphs. "Usokal is our destination, it's the last place Neven was headed before he disappeared. If you don't want to get lost, make sure your compasses are focused on this location." He flipped out his own and pressed his thumb against the needle.

"You don't think he got lost in the Wastes...?" Fenrer whispered.

Yuven chewed on his lips and drove his fangs into them. "No... I think something worse happened." Runic circuitry lit up white underneath the needle, and he snapped it closed before hauling himself into Tix'snuv's saddle. With a huff, his hooves clopped against the pavement with his front claws as the others ascended into their own. "I will periodically leave glyph flares for you to follow if I get out of sight, but they will not last long, and I will not be coming back for you if you get lost. Go back to Irimount if you get too disoriented." He clicked his tongue and trotted out of the wrought iron gates to peer up at the blizzard clouds.

You broke my cell... but I can never run away from my bloodline, can I, miesero? He put a hand against his heart and pleaded for a single reprieve in his life. Myl'la... I hope you're both safe, that you're both taking care of each-other. I'm coming for you. Reins locked in his hands, he urged Tix'snuv forward with a thought.

Wings spread out around him to take the place of ones he never had in the first place. Wind blew against his face as Tix'snuv bounded across the long street, and with a powerful burst of his wings, he sent himself into the air. Out into the frozen waste of Naveera's heart.