KEMAL

Always presented with the smallest of opportunity, he gave it a couple days for Neven to adjust back into the swing of their posting, to reacquaint himself at the Lodge and to do introductions between the reinforcements and the old-timers — Kemal being one of them with his memory of home a blur in his mind as each Turn passed onto the current one. Among them, fresh Storm Wardens who took their Oaths, though when Neven showed them their section on the posting board, it was hard to ignore the fact it involved no patrols for them. The reaction to this information was mixed. Some appeared relieved that the worst they had to do was guard the outside of Asairai. Others frowned, pursed their lips, but went along with Captain Neven's orders. He raised his hands when some looked at him for confirmation, but he had something important to handle as Neven dismissed the gathered Wardens through the rest of the Lodge.

"Ready to see what I found?" Kemal stole out his notebook from his pack across his belt. "We'll check out the cove first, and then I'll point out what I found in the ruins. Maybe you'll see something I missed seeing as you have the fresh eyes from being away for a few moons." Better to get you away from crowds so you can answer my questions without being worried that someone will overhear it. "We still have a lot of ground to cover, and I think it best we start looking further out while leaving a sizable chunk of the reinforcements back at Asairai to protect it from possible Derelict attack. If these cultists found a way to redirect Derelicts..." Kemal interrupted himself, he nudged Neven in the back to take him out of the main part of the Lodge, with the small, stout mail tower tucked in the center of it.

"I would very much like to see." Neven lingered behind him when Kemal left through the beachside gate.

In the guard towers, Storm Wardens remained vigilant with the Elvkin warriors, often playing card games in a lull of alertness. Kemal allowed them their sense of rare peace to wander further until the thick trunks of the forest shielded Asairai, a deceptive defensive position. Waves crashed against the pearl-white sand, churning it into darker, sparkling hues from its touch. Without fail, he often found Neven surfing upon the wide crescents, no matter the size nor the risk of Derelict nibblers looking for a quick, reckless snack. He wandered across the old stone path creating a separation between beachfront and undergrowth.

"I noticed you didn't surf the first thing you got back," Kemal pointed out.

"We have work to do... isn't that what you'd say?" Neven threw back with a flick of his pale-gold feathers. His pointed ears quirked up at a slight angle when the tips of his fangs revealed themselves. "I can always surf later when I feel we've got enough done."

Kemal chortled. "We never have enough done as Storm Wardens, Nev." He twisted around to walk backwards, having tread the path a thousand times in search of answers to burning questions. "Next time, I'm the one taking a break back to Euros. I need to make sure my home hasn't gone up in flames while I've been gone with Stigan at the proverbial helm. Maybe sample the latest harvest of wheat and grapes." Even better, I don't get to call my little brother 'Lord Tyronai'. Ech. Got to make sure he hasn't gotten too big for his britches. Forwards facing, he continued on his route until a strip of crags tore themselves out of the ocean to form upwards into cliffs through the forest. "Julis said there was something odd about this cove, but couldn't discern what it was."

"I suspected as much." Vindication filled Neven's sapphire abyss, but Kemal continued to test the waters.

"Did you get a chance to have an Aurus Healer look over you while you were back at Euros?"

Vindication melted into tight-lipped annoyance. "I had much to handle while I was over there, what with Yuven's Expulsion Event. I'm afraid that was the first priority for me considering there was not much to do in ways of our work here. Only having to help set-up a new post in Irimount after we cleansed the Corrupted wyvern." His gaze ducked over to the hungry waves. "Among other unremarkable matters which yet prevented me from seeing an Aurus Healer. I will continue to have it looked at if Julis needs something to do between patrols and auric searching for this cult."

Guess I need to change tactics a bit if you want to dig that feathered head of yours in the sand. "You were lacking details when you told me about that. I consider cleansing a wyvern of all things quite remarkable." He shrugged and kept his greatest weapon close at hand when they drew near the entrance to the cove full of glowing tidepools. "We took a closer look at the murals along the walls. Like those ruins, we haven't been able to accurately date them. Though, from what I could decipher, the murals in the cove at least are dated around the time of the Great Crimson Dusk, or sometime after."

Neven stuck his tongue out between his sharp fangs. "Old."

"Alright, Ser 'I live two centuries'." Kemal controlled the tone to keep Neven content. He squeezed himself through the gap, releasing the pressure in his lungs the moment rocks were no longer crushing his rib-cage. Envious of Neven's relative ease with his leaner frame, he waited for his eyes to adjust to the dark while Neven's pupils formed into vertical slits. "Yes, which leads me to believe that the ruins may be around the same timeframe, but older. There were some magick runes that I've never seen in books before carved throughout the place."

Neven drew himself forward past the damp, bioluminescent moss which retreated into the smallest crevice at their movement, a soft, radiant glow of magenta's mixed with soft blues. "So, you've been wondering if what we are hunting down may go as far back as the Great Crimson Dusk? I suppose that would make sense, would that... we had clear answers for that." Kemal drifted to a stop at Neven's wording, and folded his arms when they entered the tidepools full of smooth gemstones. Unaware of his stop, Neven traced his hands along the paintings. "All I know is what the Obscura Text, for a lack of a better word, showed me when I opened my soul to it."

"I still say that was risky."

"I know what I signed up for." Neven hissed through his nose with no hint of venom or anger, a quiet, Avaerilian vocalization after he drifted off. Feathers fluffed, he turned to him with a smile. "So, where do you wish for me to start in regards to what I found out? It is a lot of ground to cover, but I know you will think up questions I didn't even consider." Neven examined the pictures with a curious, bird-like motion to his eye when he followed the crescent of the cave. "Lots of them." He peeked into the tidepool, keeping his balance on the moist, half-eroded rocks.

Kemal pushed his magick through the entrance way. Rocks squeezed against each other with the spin of his glyph, preventing any from following to listen in on the conversation. "You signed up to battle Derelicts, root up cults, and I suppose if you want to be pedantic, are a Guardian — which means you are uniquely qualified to take care of children thrown out of normal circumstances. Of which you still technically are even though Fenrer and Yuven have come of age." He huffed when Neven opened his mouth, an argument furrowing his brow. "By average, not by Avaerilian, who are not average."

"Yes." Neven quirked his brow.

"You didn't sign up to be tortured."

Questions created openings.

"Tortured? I thought you were going to ask me questions." A rattle echoed from both his vocal chords to ring out with his feathers with Neven on the immediate defensive. "Usually you're the one who wants to keep things on track, to ask things related to what we're doing. This cult is killing people, Kemal. Killing them. Vanishing them. Must we have this argument again?" His fangs snapped against his lower set in the same rabid irritation. "Why have you brought this up?"

"You're not denying you were tortured though."

Neven turned ashen in the afternoon light. "As I said, I felt no need to make comments on unremarkable things which didn't pertain to the matter at hand. That being figuring out the aim of this cult and how to stop them before anyone else loses their lives."

"Ever thought that maybe it does matter?"

"I wasn't tortured by a cult," Neven bit through another nasal hiss.

"I know you weren't. You were tortured by Naveerans by way of some sort of rune circle. They burned the runes into your very magick. Am I wrong?" Neven's defensive anger died to the truth of his gentle spirit. His arms tucked against his body, his feathers folded over. Vertical irides turned into beaded panic. "Here's how I view it, ya stubborn puffball," Kemal continued and gave his Oathbound no opportunity to avoid the situation. "I am your Oathbound. I suspect you knew I would've known something was wrong if not straight up experienced it myself. Take a guess on which one was the case." A rhetorical question, but Neven flinched in reply. "I'm glad to see my giant magick served to give you a measure of protection, but get the down out of your head, Nev. It may have been politics, but how many questions did you really ask?"

Neven hugged himself tighter. "Everything that I could..."

"And?"

"They were after Yuven."

"Because he's a prince of Naveera?"

Neven nodded. "And they thought I was preventing him from his birthright, so they decried me as an Oathbreaker and traitor to Naveera and my name." His fangs slid over his lips to tear into them at self-resentment. "Irimount... I don't even remember the last thing I said to my parents. I don't remember what they said back." He leaned against the wall. "I don't even know if they would've been proud of me." Despair broke the song when Neven revealed the rest of his fangs with a shuddered exhale through his nose. "I left them to die in Irimount when I told them I would come back to them as a Storm Warden. Because of their death, an entire county may be doomed to the same disappearance we've always dealt with in the Frozen Wastes without the cradle's protection. Maybe I have sullied Atoran's legacy... even if it was the right thing to do, I can't help but wonder."

Kemal faced the young, feathered boy after he dragged him across the chasm. Uncertain in his goals. Shaken out of his normal, he sighed and walked right back onto the bridge. As many times as it took. "I think the only person who could decide if you sullied that 'legacy' would be Atoran himself, and last I looked, he's been dead for about a thousand turns." Kemal air-quoted then scoffed. "Oh, please, Neven. Those bastards would never understand the sacrifices we make — this is why we take the Oath. In a perfect world, politics wouldn't affect us, but guess what, they still do." Kemal narrowed his eyes. "We can do our best to keep ourselves separate from that damned game, but that's not how it works. We still have to play the game as Wardens, even if we're working with a different set of rules from everyone else. Everyone lives. We fight. Everyone dies. We fight. No victory without sacrifice. Wake up, Neven Lotayrin, I won't let you forget what you told me back then." Kemal shoved his shoulder to jolt him out of the birthed despair. "It was your life, but if you want my opinion, I never got the sensation your parents would've ever felt that way. I saw the letters you wrote to them when we were younger."

"Bad luck," Neven chittered.

"Unintentional stumbling," Kemal threw back, and Neven dropped his head again. "You always said you thought your parents would like me. You talked about how they would've liked Euros and the sun. You said to me, 'If I, one Avaerilian can see the sun... maybe my people can escape the blizzard,'" he repeated the words Neven had evidently forgotten. "I don't think you sullied any legacy, Neven. You gave a child a safe place in a world that would sooner destroy all the others. If they can't see that, they are never going to see any other way but their state of affairs. You woke up. It is not your responsibility to open their eyes."

Neven hugged himself further. "I... didn't even recognize my home," he whimpered. "Even with the destruction and ruin it... looked different. Felt odd." He tucked his head against the wall. "I found that accursed cell Yuven was trapped in by the cult which killed so many people. People I knew and the chains which they held the Husk until its host was ready. Their twisted manipulations..." Tears slipped down his cheek. "I... I looked upon the mob as they publicly humiliated me and... lost all my faith in them and called them pathetic. It's always been us." He sucked in his lower lip further until his fangs fully poked out. "It's not the blizzard killing us, killing our culture, our dying language, our very existence as people, as descendents from a joining between the wyvern of the skylands and the fae. It's always been us doing it to ourselves." He shook his head out in the silence. "I do not know if it is related to what we are handling, but if it is... I can't see it."

"Cults have always used politics to fuel their dark magick," he pointed out.

Neven's cries quieted. Through the mist, his pupils thinned until they nearly disappeared into the sapphires.

"What?"

"There were Derelicts in Volaris," Neven whispered and hauled himself off the wall. "The current seat of Naveera's power."

Kemal jolted when Neven broke apart his glyph with ease to stomp out of the cove. "What'd you figure out?" Questions upon questions, and the despair which once filled Neven was replaced with terrified determination.

"They're targeting the blood of kings!" Neven whipped around with a gasp. "One has already fallen to eke blood into the soil of Dyrin. I am so stupid." He rushed across to the beach, and Kemal kept his pace. "Which leaves the Hanekan monarch and what remains of the Naveeran bloodline... but blood has always been a potent, unpredictable piece of our magick." He chewed on his lip. "Bad." He let out panicked breaths, but Kemal grabbed onto him. "I don't have time!"

"Tell me what's going on. What is going through that head of yours, Nev."

Neven dug his fingers into his shoulders. "Kemal... when Haneka first formed... how many kings were there?"

"Two...?"

"And why is Naveera ruined from inner war?"

Kemal pieced together. "Two families vying for control due to..."

Neven tore a smile onto his face. "Kem... Yuven has the blood of kings. It manifests in his spatial magick, the ability to move through the planes unimpeded. It is one half of the whole which was broken so many Turns ago if you put any stock in Naveeran fairytales. They've already used Yuven's blood in Irimount and it almost resulted in his death." Neven's feathers pinned against his ears. "But if we form pillars on the backs of the powerful, think. Naveera isn't the only one to experience civil war. But unlike Naveera, it was built in harmony by two different pillars at its conception."

Kemal choked on ancient sea shanties. "Fenrer has the blood of kings."

Neven let out a tortured sob. "Imagine the damage the cult could do if they not only got one pillar of power... but also the other and let it soak into the land? No, worse... imagine what would happen if they killed them. How much ruin do you think they could wrought?"

Some of his questions were answered, and it revealed a terrifying truth.

"I need to warn Fenrer and Yuven to not leave Euros under any circumstances!" Neven snapped as he rushed for Asairai. "And to bring the remaining kings into sanctuary!"

Shit...