ADARA

Swords clanged outside the Warden armoury, where Trainees battled with their partners through the small window, carved in two. Runic circuitry tightened around Fenrer's wrists as he adjusted the shield expanders against his leather cuffs on each arm. He clenched his fists, where green energy flowed through the magic pathways of the form-fitting gauntlets, where they snapped into place with a click. He reached for a bow, decorated into the gilded shape of hippogryph wings. His fingers tangled through the arrows, some of them tipped with gold.

"I thought only crescent blades hurt Derelicts," she murmured.

"True to a point." He patted the hilt of said weapon. "Easier if you can pin them down first." He twirled the arrow between his fingers, then the metal point sat in his palm as he held it out to her, touching the tip with his fingertip. "We have to use every tool at our disposal — some people prefer different approaches, and none work any worse or better for it." He dropped it back among the arrows before setting a quiver. "If we run out of food or want to balance our meals, we're going to need to hunt on the way to Sivaport." He held up his quiver full of arrows with a smile. "I won't be using these for Derelicts. If pressed, I'll just form arrows with magick." He picked up the bag in the corner of the room and headed to her. "Are you all packed?"

"About as well as I could be, Yuven didn't exactly tell me what I'd need for the journey other than 'food, obviously'." Adara pinched her chin at the lack of Yuven's melodic jabs at her inexperience. "Speaking of, I haven't seen him since this morning." Her own bag was attached to the leather strap around her loose-fitting travelling vest, which she filled with books she hadn't finished reading, including Yuven's monstrosity of a book — half if not most of the weight within came from it alone. Adara checked the rest of her effects, and the cook in the main hall gave her a striped container made of tough, but flexible material, full of rations; from flatbread, dried figs and jerky. Fenrer had his own container clipped to his belt wound around his Warden gambison. "Should we go outside and wait for him?"

Galaxies spiralled along the greens as Fenrer twisted on his heel, before he nodded at her and the glittered auras left the deep hues of a forest. "It might be wise." He scooted past her, and Adara took one last look at the painted halls, full of beautiful scrolls of crimson gold amphitheres winding around crystalline gates. Floorboards creaked underneath her boot and she listened to the returning laughter of the Trainees, though a heaviness remained on the senior Wardens, who kept to their own tables and spoke in low voices as they walked past.

I believe.

Adara checked on Fenrer, where strength and determination returned to his face from the exhaustion from before. Fire tickled her fingertips, and she pressed them together to stifle the embers bouncing underneath the surface of her skin. Guards stood on each side of the sun-shaped gate, and Fenrer rested a hand on his hip. "Guess we'll wait here," he said with a nod at one of the guards and turned to her. "How has your training been coming along?"

"Ugh." Adara stuck her tongue out between her teeth. "If Yuven wasn't so thrice-damned impossible..." Her hands tickled with the hidden power which refused to roar. "I haven't been able to get it to bloom, I don't know what's wrong with me..." Frustration dug barbs into her heart, but Fenrer smiled at her, and the weight allowed her space to breathe.

"I hope I can help you with that on the way," Fenrer said. "Yuven mentioned you were struggling."

"I bet he did," Adara said through her teeth. "Where is he?"

Fenrer flicked his gaze over her shoulder, and Adara turned around at the silent hint. Yuven stood there, arms folded with his feathers weaving with the breeze. Several phials lined protective pockets along his straps on his studded leather armour. Adara matched his position when he stalked to them with a nod at Fenrer and a snub at her.

"We need to get moving. I got a report that there's been some unexpected activity around the remaining storm spires," Yuven explained with a wave of his hand. "Sooner we arrive at Euros, better." Adara scowled when he switched his attention to her with an icy crack. "You. Give me your bag."

"Why do you want to see my bag? I packed everything I thought I needed." Adara let it fall out of her hands when Yuven swiped it without a word of gratitude. "You're welcome, by the way." Adara stood with Fenrer while he rifled through her provided travelling bag and dug his hand inside. Fenrer checked his watch while Yuven sniffed and tugged out the small book of Navei poems.

"Is this something you needed? It's taking up space."

"Ah, ah. You'll also notice I packed your five hundred rock monolith that is taking up more space than a tiny little book." Adara clicked her tongue and wagged her finger. "I think it's a fair trade, Ser Traye. If I am forced to bring your 'light read' I can bring a light read for me." Victory coursed through her heart at her plan to one up Yuven.

"Don't call me ser if you know what's good for you," Yuven grunted and shoved the book of Navei poems back inside her bag and air escaped her lungs when he threw it back into her chest. "Let's get moving. I want to be past Azahama by sundown and on the road to the forest before the dark toll."

"The dark toll?" Adara questioned while the dissonant bones clacked with the fall of the sun in Rosa's farmhouse. Tendrils tickled and taunted the edge of the world, but she shook them out and grimaced at the dirt, where the bloody pile took a mind of its own and became a monster with a cracking jaw. It tore through her ears, but she shut herself away from the visceral remnants.

"It's just the time between evenfall where Derelict activity spikes before the night," Fenrer's voice called to her through the darkness, and she followed the light back to her reality. "As long as we stick to our route and take regular precautions—"

"Or, one slip-up and we've just given one lucky Derelict golden platter of Anima flesh and magick," Yuven pointed out with a scoff and tossed a clinking sack straight into Fenrer's waiting hand. "If you get cocky, you die out on the road with no one to help you." He sorted his food containers on his belt before nodding at them both. "I'd rather be past Azahama by sundown. Let's go."

Adara sucked in her lips when they crossed the threshold of safety and into the magickae lands of Dyrin. One part of a greater continent. Jisa's dream left in her hands, she followed the two golden warriors onto the path between Fallholt and the grand city of Azahama. Her fire tickled her skin deep, but never broke the surface to dance along her hands and create beauty — or the destructive power of the King's Summit. Nails dug into her palm, she longed to rip it out through her bones, but found herself on the edge as they kept to the side of the road. Old, muddy carriage tracks sliced a path through the dirt and guided foot-travellers to a safe place among the Derelict infested land. Her boots crunched with the gravel, and she tucked her nose behind her laundered crimson shawl.

So many things of you I left behind... A snowflake, a memento from Mother. A bird made of crystal flames, on the cusp of flight. Silver aurora's danced in her memory, and burned all in her path. Doubt and fear tickled her mind at her supposed latent ability, her talent which meant nothing if it destroyed everything she loved. A massive monster, frozen to the stone of a castle on a bleeding hill. It twisted her tongue with an endless question, broken by her disbelief.

"Can I ask a question?" she whispered and caused Fenrer and Yuven to stop at the split path. One direction led to Azahama, carved into letters of both Common and a language she couldn't read. Another led to the abandoned village Yuven took her to to prove a point.

"It better be a good question." Yuven whipped out a small notebook and wrote something in a sharp scrawl of what she assumed to be Navei.

"Are you certain I'm an Anima?"

Yuven's grip on the notebook slacked as he eyed Fenrer, who frowned at her in return. "Quite awkward if you're not. Is that all?"

"I only ask because..." Adara dug her nails deeper into her skin. "I either can't call upon my magick, or lose control of it, and you told me the Anima were these people with great potential and pure power but... I don't think I fit that bill. Back in Tebora... there was another magickae with me, a young girl," she explained. "Something happened at the crystal, and... are you sure it was me you were meant to save? What if it was her?" What if I lost her because I'm incapable of using my magick and she gave herself up for me?

"Incredible. I have never met someone so completely unaware of themselves." Yuven blinked at her.

"What's with the tone? How is that an incredible question?"

Yuven shook his head with a dismissive scoff. "Fenrer, you're one who zoned on her. You tell her. Walk and talk."

Adara scowled and pushed through the pain centralised on her heart. Fenrer slowed his pace to allow Yuven the lead — not that he needed the extra reason to be an abrasive mushroom. "What does he mean?" Adara mumbled and wrapped herself in the comfort of a crimson shawl. "How did you know it was me?"

"Three times your power awakened the world," Fenrer responded in his seaborn dialect. "Three times I bore witness to the tree of the world set alight in front of me." He smiled at her. "Do you know of the Princess of Evenfall?"

"Uh... no?" Adara walked along with him.

"The Ancient Ivara—" Fenrer glanced at Yuven, who rolled his eyes but didn't interrupt. "Known as the Princess of Evenfall, the eastern cardinal, the carrier of fire and freedom; represented as a phoenix," he said, near breathless. "It is said in the Great Crimson Dusk it was she who lifted the dawn through the passing of time on the trails of her twilight flames. Some say the remnants of that still light the sky with stars." He clasped his hands together. "I saw the river of moonlilies crisscrossing those same stars... and it led us straight to you. I had no doubts when I saw your power from the outside, where you turned a Derelict to stone. Adara... no regular magickae, not even Flares, are capable of that."

"Then why can't I call upon that now?" Adara pressed while they walked and the lamps intensified until they merged with cobbled marble streets.

"It's like she didn't listen to me the first time when we discussed this," Yuven grumbled while they passed open storefronts, where food sizzled in sweet soups, mixed with assorted meats and vegetables. "It's because there is something blocking your connection to the flow of magick."

Adara sucked in a breath. "Yeah, I know — it's called a ward on my mind and my memories are still smothered, thank you."

"I refer to it as self-esteem, of which you have none, thank you."

Rage flowed into her feet and she longed to send a kick into his backside, but her stomach curled while people sat at the benches on the outside of the storefronts, sipping at their meals and chatted their day away without fear of the monsters outside. Her anger died with the fizzle of her inner fire while Yuven took them back to the marble fountain, where the Storm Warden standard weaved in the wind above the low, wide buildings, from the hall to the connected bathhouses. On the other side, the single tower for their post office, where it spiralled into several landings, but never reached the majesty of the spire.

"I will be only a moment," Yuven told them before disappearing into the small tower.

Adara settled herself on the bench growing out of the outside fountain slab. Water trickled and bubbled out of the small runes which fed back into itself to give the illusion of endless streams which slipped out of each feather tip of the stone hippogryph, where their rider raised their crescent blade high in the air to touch the unseen sky. "Is this why he had us get up before the sun even rose?"

Fenrer sat beside her and nodded. "It'll be a while before we're able to get our post until we're in Haneka," he explained. "I'm sure Yuven wants to send a message to Maria 'ere we leave and to see if we have any news from Euros." His gaze lowered to the marble pathway which snaked into the multiple streets of Azahama.

"Maria?"

"Another Storm Warden," Fenrer said. "You'll probably get to meet her by the time we reach Euros — but that'll be a while. We need to get to the Hanekan border. We've a couple moons of a journey ahead of us."

"You'd think Yuven wants to set some sort of record," Adara pointed out with a grin.

"He's not going to." Fenrer returned her expression, where it creased his brow into something genuine and true. "I told him it's storm season in Haneka — the sea will decide how rough the rest of the way through Haneka is. We should have a clear path to the border, though. It's been quiet on the southern side of Dyrin of Derelict activity. It's always worse near the gorge." His smile died into a thoughtful frown, and Adara matched him when he clasped his hands together, where the black band hugged his forearm. "We were here for a couple Turns out of training because the hall at Fallholt needed reinforcements, then we got news about the Anima Confluence recently."

"Me." Adara shrunk into her shoulders. "Was it really that big of a deal?"

Fenrer leaned back. "Anima level magick hasn't been sensed for a hundred turns. You're probably the first Anima to resurge into the world, and I won't lie to you. It scares many people for old reasons."

Her stomach boiled. "That doesn't make me feel better."

"I'm sorry. I know you've been through a lot, but I'm hoping finding sanctuary on Euros will help. We're not the Storm Wardens of the past. You're safe with the Order." Fenrer put a hand over his heart and bowed to her, where the star guarded by a wyvern clinked against its own chains. "I swear — Yuven and I will get you there no matter what."

Adara scoffed. "I think Yuven would sooner throw me to the Derelicts."

Fenrer's grin widened. "Ah, then you have a lot to learn about Yuven. I know he can be... much for some. He's abrasive, stubborn, bull-headed, and more willful than a hippogryph." He tipped his head forward with a nod at the door when Yuven left it with a sharp word to another Warden. "But there is no one in the entirety of Aztryxer who takes their duty as a Storm Warden more seriously than he does. He has vowed to get you to Euros, and he will do just that."

"You believe that?" Adara mused while she studied Yuven, who handed a scroll to the Warden, who took it back inside the post tower.

"I know it," Fenrer insisted. "I give you my word."

Adara stood back on her feet when Yuven rejoined them with a sniff. "Everything is taken care of. Enough slacking."

Adara cringed at his lack of tact, but Fenrer beamed at her.

He could've at least said hello, I've returned.

Abrasive. Stubborn. Bull-headed. Willful.

In a world full of despair, is that what it takes to move forward, Mother? If I can take that next step, will I see what you saw?