NEVEN

It wasn't supposed to be this way! You are my Oathbound! You cannot protect me! Whatever happens both of us will experience and I won't lose more names or you! The longer Kemal remained out there with only random spurts and inklings — it was when the panic rose which drove him once more to slip past his guard in Aine and grab the Obscura Text for one final answer. One final question. It became all too clear, and he found the path, though forced to go around the cove to find some sort of beach. Forests thickened when he hopped off his tiny surfboard of ice, glaive at the ready while he sprint over logs, through underbrush, the Obscura Text wound tightly against his belt. Kem, what did you do? It slammed into his heart. Tearing flames down his organs, but he ignored it, and the slow withering of the grass into the unknown. Teh Obscura Text hummed in his ears, burning his skin and thoughts. No more names lost. Never again. He leaped over a broken log, going as fast as his legs would go even as bile and blood filled his nostrils.

All to get the horrific pit in his stomach to fill.

It pulsated, the starry connection faltering when he concentrated on the sensation. He reached his hand for it, the final stretch for answers and to bring the justice of the Storm Wardens upon the cult—

Stars faded at his fingertips.

Leaves crunched under foot when he slowed to a stop, studying his hands at the lack of stars between him and Kemal. The sensation disappeared, but it took with it every other inkling. The boughs rumbled with massive footsteps, until it too, fell quiet when he tried to find the source. "What?" he asked the wind alone. Around trees, he called out a single name — and the power within it. "Kemal! Kem!" He looked underneath thick branches, peeked into open thickets. "Kem!" He grabbed the Obscura Text, which had drawn itself a map of his destination, until the strange ink started to fade into nothingness, leaving only where he had been, where he had come from. Into a sprint again, he followed the last inkling before it too left his soul. He perked up at the sight of barricades, though it doused at the sight of ruined walls and buildings. Another town — one not in his maps and archives. The signpost was too rotted to figure out where he was.

"Kem?" Neven asked again and abandoned duty for answers when he rushed through the town and out the other side into the densest part of the forest. Another tremble rocked his bones, and he withdrew his crescent blade to rush for the sound when it intensified. Answers. It was time for answers. As he crossed into the forest, he slammed to a stop when a massive pair of crimson orbs grew out of the tree with a rattled moan. The Derelict grabbed onto the branches with twisted tendrils, forming with its environment as it straightened itself out. Decaying air left between its jaws. As he prepared himself to fight through it, he froze when the rattle formed words.

"Ca...pt...ain."

What? Neven choked, costly hesitation.

It swung downwards. Neven went to meet it with what little strength he had, but it dissipated into rot and fell on top of him in black ash.

Silence filled his ears and tickled his feathers when he examined himself as the ash slipped off his armor with ease, burnt away by the gold light of his crescent blade. It left an oozing trail from its path, and he followed it with a quicker pace. The forest edge cleared, and he stumbled into a grove. In the center, an empty basin, whose gemstones cracked and the crystals around it melted into frozen crimson stone. "Kemal?" He wandered closer, through the red-splattered grass until he reached the edge of the pond, kneeling down to investigate the old, mossy stone. He brushed his fingers against it, tasting it on the tip of his tongue, but he raised his gaze at a glint at the bottom of the basin. Inside the basin, he slipped himself to the deepest part and knelt down onto the eroded pebbles to try and dig at what it tried to bury. It pressed between his fingers, and he found the chain of a necklace. Pried out of its tomb, he overturned it while the chain hung between them. Old blood caked it, but he swallowed his fear and tried to scrub at it with a small glyph of misty water.

It dripped off to scatter over the stones instead.

Soft hues of honey browns filled the tiny crystal of a Storm Warden's oath, and sapphire-studded mist rumbled behind it. "No," he said with a shake of his head, standing up. "No, no no." He pushed his magick into it, but the confirmation proved too great and him too weak. "No. This isn't—" Words lodged into his throat when it left out a pained chirp rattling his vocal chords when he stumbled out of the basin. "Kem!" he called out. "You dropped your necklace! Kem!" A laugh dripped off his tongue as he rounded the crystal grove. "That's not like you to be so careless!" He shook the necklace at the shadows as the Obscura Text pulsed at his hip. It trembled in his shaking hands, creating a quiet refrain when the chains clinked against each-other. Neven choked Kemal's oath, focusing within instead of without. Stars scattered without route, a direction to go, with no Kemal at the other side. Broken out of it, his own weak chirps left his lips when he tried to catch his breath, his feathers piercing against his ears.

Ooze slipped into his mind, and he swiped the Obscura Text off his belt to open it, to relieve the pressure. "Give me something!" he demanded it, flipping through each blank page. "You've always given me something! Where is my best friend? Where are all those people who disappeared?" His fangs bared down at it, using his thumb to rifle through the pages in quick succession. Blank. Empty. Nothingness. He shook it too. "Tell me! What must I do to be given answers? Have I not given you enough already?" Another shake, it pulsed deeper into the recesses of his mind and he sucked in air when it sliced through his temples and he found himself on the ground. He tore at the pages, ignoring the pain of the expanding migraine as he hunted through the pages. Each little ink stain he investigated. Each craving he followed to the next blank page. His fangs stabbed into his lips when the book slipped out of his hands and rested in the withered grass. As all followed before it for his failures — his duty to protect not only the innocent, but the ones under his command.

"Ca...pt...ain," the rattled voice of the Derelict sounded in his ears, far too distant. "Captain! Captain! Captain!"

Neven dug his fingers into the dirt below, where it oozed between his fingers, clotted. "I told you," he hissed, mist pluming out of his nose when he exhaled frustration. "I told you your questions were going to get you into trouble and now look, Kem. Why didn't you listen to me?" The Obscura Text continued to pulse, the sinew along its spine wriggling with thin spiderlegs. He grabbed onto it, but released excess magick past his lips at the strike of pain into his temples, causing him to grab onto the ground again. "Come on!" he snapped, tearing it open again even when it tried to snap itself shut on his fingers. "Why didn't you listen! I made a direct order!" Pages crinkled underneath his clenched fists when he tore out page after page for answers. Each one danced on the wind when the screams of all the Storm Wardens who died under his command rang out through his world. Guilt poured into fury with each tear of the page. Serrated edges which tore into his skin, the only sensation of reality he regained when his blood stained the golden chain in turn.

Torn pieces of parchment sat around him in a circle, with the cover of the Obscura Text untouched, with the cover twisted and curled on itself. "Give me answers," he pleaded, sorting through what he ripped out. Blank. Empty. Nary an ink stain left except dots of damp tears when they rolled down his face. "Tell me." Each one slipped out of his hands, unable to hold on too long to the unanswered questions. "Why was it not enough?" Another page flipped over, the map left to him while some of the pages started to turn a crisp black. One turned to ash when he tried to salvage it and put it back into the book, but it crumbled.

Another slipped down his fingers in crushing waves of guilt.

Ashes to ashes.

He tried to grab onto the Obscura Text itself, but it faded out of reality, too ruined by his temper tantrum. Until nothing else was left but the single page with the map which guided him to his position. It fell into his lap when he looked between his ash-soaked fingers, trying to catch his breath. "Why did you do this to me?" he asked the wind. To himself. To the man who could no longer answer his questions in return for some of his own. He tried to reawaken the starry sinew, but the stars on the other side doused and left no path to follow in his soul. He curled and uncurled his fingers to try and get the ash off of them. It smeared crimson when he tried, stinging at the cuts along his palm. "I don't-understand." It hitched into his throat when he continued to feel out his own limbs. "You were among the best you couldn't have been... this place looks like it hasn't been touched in Turns but the sensation I—" His lungs refused to expand any further when he kept curling his fingers over and over. "You weren't gone for that long—" He swayed on his hips, unable to feel the sting of his tiny wounds from his tearing at the pages. "You wouldn't be so careless—not to leave your Oath. You never—" Neven dug at the ground, to try and reach the Storm Wardens he himself buried. It was nothing but dirt, gravel, and old blood. It caked underneath his fingernails when he tore at the grass for answers. "Why can't I reach? What did you do? Why?"

The breeze faded against his feathers.

On wobbly knees with the map back in his hands, he studied it while the pulsating of his mind subsided — and the relief it brought was replaced with numb pain. Kemal's calm, firm words of Irimount's fall — his parent's deaths. Sea to sea. Uncertain of where his own body was taking him, when he next blinked, he found himself right where he began. On the coast by the cove. Over his shoulder, the waves crashed against the rocks. Wh-What? He snapped his gaze around even as water lapped at his soles. "Kem?" he asked again, the power of a name. Of course, he was going to go find him. He looked down at the paper in his hands, but it snapped a whip of reality into his mind. Doused stars.

"Captain!"

"Captain! Captain! Captain!"

He jumped in his own skin when Aine rushed for him, Kemal's oath necklace locked in one hand with the paper in the other. They slowed to a stop at the sight of both. "Captain?" they asked. "Where did you run off too?"

"I went to go find Kemal," he said with a shaky tremble off his tongue. "I found him." He raised the necklace with a shake, and Aine's eyes widened. "Here he is, do you mind if you bring him back to the Lodge? I've got a lot to talk about. Got to write a report to Euros."

"Captain, you're—" Aine's attention lowered to his dirt-smeared, bloody hands when he pushed falsehoods into the hands of someone else. "You should get seen by a chirurgeon. You've been gone for a couple days and people were starting to get worried—"

"A couple days? What are you talking about?" Neven asked with another tremble off his tongue. "I've barely been gone a bell at most. Look." He pointed out into the horizon of the sea, where the sun barely rose over the water to set it aflame with answers. "It's dawn."

"Aine, what's going on?" another voice to join the cacophony when another Storm Warden whose name failed to fill his mind ran up. "Captain?!"

"Why is everyone so surprised?" Neven questioned. "I wasn't gone that long." They weren't gone that long — to be forgotten.

Aine took a small step back from him and turned to the other Warden. Loto? No, Loto went with Kemal... yeah... I think that's Yuzla? Something...? He tensed up when Aine shook their head at their new arrival.

"We need to get him to the chirurgeons, he's out of his mind."

"I am quite in my mind, thank you," he said, but for all it was worth, he might as well have been speaking Navei. I'm speaking Common, aren't I? Common. Common. "I am fine." I am speaking Common! Listen to me!

Both stared at him. "Aine...? What's going on?" Yuzla mused.

Aine held out Kemal's Oath necklace. "I think... Kemal's team can now be considered among the missing... presumed dead."

"No." Neven gave a wild shake of his head to deny the claim. "I found them."

Hands clutched his elbows and dragged him forward. "I'm fine," he chirped. "I'm fine. I'm fine. They're fine." Another shake, though he found himself powerless against the combined efforts of Aine and Yuzla, who checked on him with deep frowns of empathy. "I'm fine." It shook against his lungs.

It struck a bolt through his heart, and the darkness swallowed him in silence.