YUVEN

Don't worry, Molvisaliz, I'm not about to leave you. Not again. Not ever again. I don't care the whys, as long as we get you out of here and tear out the roots of this damned cult once and for all. Prickles swept through his blood — the alarm bells of every Storm Warden who supped on the venomous ooze of Derelicts, or had the unfortunate experience of being corrupted to their core. Close together and forced to keep their magelights doused, he focused on the greyscale corners and pulled them along, pausing when the tunnel broke off into junctions. A heavy scent of rust and carrion hit his nose, but when he peered deeper into the darkness, nothing jumped in hunger and depravity. Come on, Molvisaliz... give me something. Into a small crevice, he focused on inside, but when he drew the starry connection through his fingers, nothing sounded out in turn. You're alive... but why can't I...?

"Yuven?" Neven whispered while Maria kept an eye out for cultists.

"I can sense him but it's faint," Yuven told only half of the truth.

Adara had covered her nose with her sleeve, features ashen. "Ugh..."

"Get used to the smell of death, Adara," Yuven mumbled. "It's not good that it permeates the air and we don't see the source." Out of the crevice, he swung around to check their backs before their fronts. "It doesn't seem like they know we're here, so let's keep it that way until the last moment."

"Yuv." Maria touched his elbow and he dragged his attention to her. "That cavern we saw — did you sense the depths below?"

"I did," Yuven said with a sigh. "Which is why we have to hurry."

"What did you sense?" Adara pressed.

Yuven tasted the blood in the air, a shiver through his feathers. Neven's raised above his ears and his brow scrunched. "There is something down there, being fed until it's gorged. I'd say it's a Goliath... but no, a Goliath is too small for what must be down there." Her eyes widening served as an ample warning for the life she sought, the one he made an Oath on. "Neven, can you sense Kemal?"

Shadows dripped down Neven's face when he stared at him, blank and numb. "Let's find Fenrer," was the response he got for his question. "Considering what happened with Julis... he's my priority, and Kemal would agree with me." Neven pushed past him to take the lead, and Yuven choked on the stale taste of rot. In his peripheral, Maria chewed on her lip in concern, but followed the older Storm Warden where he lacked the experience and lost his flimsy resolve.

Old tracks dug into the earth, rusted and splattered with dried blood. It's too quiet. Yuven reached forward, finding himself clutching onto Neven's sleeve as if he was but a child, made worse when Neven tapped his arm two times — an older assurance which forced him to release his grip on his sense of safety when they drew down a junction at the flicker of lights. Braziers sat in crevices, burning with crimson coals and fashioned doorways. Yuven took one side while Maria took the other, and he reached forward to twist the knob. A crack sounded through the hinges, and he let it swing open with his other hand on his crescent blade.

He let his magelight strike the darkness, a hallowed blade.

Adara's tiny scream almost sent him forward with the real thing.

Bodies slumped into divots, with Neven rushing in without care and scattered his own winter magelights into the corners. "Gods," Maria rasped, kneeling down beside one. "This is beyond necromancy and blood magick. Sickening." It drew off her tongue in a hiss, a pale reflection of her Avaerilian blood.

Neven's gaze flicked from side to side, checking over every face. "I recognize some of them."

"Kemal?" Yuven listened to the silent graveyard they stood in.

"No." Neven shook his head. "But some of them are Storm Wardens." He tapped Maria's shoulder. "Burn their corpses. They've been used by this cult enough and I would not have this continue." Once more, Neven examined their faces, counting under his breath each time Maria sent her flames to burn away the pain and suffering the cult caused. Yuven stood by the door with Adara, who trembled in fear, hand close to her throat. "We need to find their oath necklaces, the cultists would have to place them somewhere, there's a lot of magick within them — well, as long as they were alive, but I would not abandon them."

"I understand. We will find them. All of them." Yuven led them out of the room when the last body bubbled into ash. "We're on the right track."

It wasn't a bloody battlefield. It was a massacre — a cruel torture. Tingles swept down his spine, and he grabbed all three of them to pull them into his distorted magick, through the wall at the sound of nearing footsteps. Limbs loose, hanging over the sparkled sea, he tightened his grip at the molded, dark shapes which moved past. Their words an amalgamation of formed intent. Once they disappeared out of his extended senses, he pushed them out of the wall, with Adara tumbling to her knees with ashen pallor.

"I'll never get used to that..."

"Did any of you hear what they said?" Yuven pressed. "I was too focused on keeping us out of sight and mind."

To his surprise, it was Adara who answered him once she collected herself from her evident motion sickness — a note and weakness to be fixed when it came to his magick. "They—" A small 'hurf' left her lips when she brought them up, her tongue out between them. "I heard them mention something about how the experiment worked but..." Another pause, too drawn out when Adara turned to him. "They're proceeding with the awakening now that the Eyes have seen the world."

"I don't like the sounds of that," Maria grumbled without Adara's strange motion sickness.

In his peripheral vision, Neven sucked in his lips and clenched both fists. "Is this what it was all for?" he mumbled in quiet, defeated Navei. "What did you see in those maps, Kem...?"

Yuven swung around to him. "Their sacrifices won't be in vain," he said, causing Neven to look his way. "We will find Kemal. We will find Fenrer. We will make the cultists reap what they've sown in murdering the Storm Wardens and all those innocent people en masse." He stomped down the tunnel once it became clear their presence remained nothing more than a ghostly possibility, searching every nook, inside every door only to find more of the same. More bodies to be burnt. Death stuck to the air, webbing up his throat the longer they tread. A wail echoed through the tunnel, sharp against the nape of his neck. It spiked his blood at the rumbly rattles in the distance. Derelicts on the prowl. Hand on his crescent blade, he searched, following the tug in his heart, until he came across a heavier, metal door. Several wards twisted into its locks, pulsing.

Yuven touched it with the tip of his finger, but drew back when it singed his skin. "Together," he ordered and allowed a glyph to wrap around the ward. Misty tangles pierced deep into its woven foundation, with Maria's joining his, a complete piece to wedge itself deeper. It cracked the metal lock, and Yuven motioned at Adara. "Your turn. I care not how you do it, just get it open."

Adara stepped forward. Silver embers fell across her palm and scattered across the glyphs when she sent them on a wave of power, and his feathers brushed against his ears at the bubbly pressure when the lock melted away. Without an anchor, the wards wilted. Foot raised, he kicked the door open, whose hinges squeaked at the force. Bookshelves tucked themselves around supports, but along the walls, anatomical drawings spread their information. Twisted instruments sat on a nearby table.

"Yuven," Adara rasped behind him before he got the chance to swipe books off the shelves.

"What?" He drew his arm away when she made to pull on it, but he followed where she pointed, along with Neven and Maria.

"Molvei'saliz." Neven nudged himself forward, past the tattered books and to what laid at the back. Fenrer, strapped to a chair. His heart burned at the memories. Of metal manacles bouncing against his wrists. Neven broke the restraints with ease, but Yuven found himself faltering at the red streaks which ran down Fenrer's face. Adara rushed to assist Neven in prying him off the table, setting him at rest on the dirt floor below.

Yuven grabbed onto Fenrer's wrist, but bit on his tongue when Adara dug her fingers into his forearm instead. "Maria?"

"He's alive," Maria whispered after an examination of his face. "Lay him flat... I need to look into his eyes."

Between them, Fenrer laid unresponsive, with Neven closest to his head — and closest to the weight of his failure. Yuven leaned closer when Maria tapped Fenrer's face with a gentle insistence. A soft breath left his lips, and Yuven held onto his when Maria drew her fingers up to his eyelids, then pried them open.

Dull greens, and Yuven raised himself further when Fenrer's eyelids fluttered at Maria's ministrations. Magick wrapped around his body, and Fenrer winced and tore his own eyes open instead. "What...?"

"Fen," Adara rasped.

Fenrer looked between all of them with wide, terrified eyes. "You shouldn't be here." He went to snap himself upwards, but Yuven held him down. "You need to get out of here!"

"You must calm," Yuven instructed, but Fenrer squeezed his arm. "We're here now. We must find Kemal and get out."

"You-You don't understand," Fenrer said and grabbed onto his weak shoulders. Redness dug its barbs into the whites of his eyes, and stained the swirls with crimson. "You shouldn't be here." Though his words were defiant, Yuven hugged him close and found his Oathbound far too weakened from his tribulations. "This entire place, hah—" Trembles wracked his body and spread it to him, and Fenrer dug his fingers into his temples. "What has he done?"

"Molvei'saliz..." Neven stretched his hand outwards.

Fenrer's gaze trailed in the direction of their Guardian, and tears flowed to spread the blood along his face. "I'm so sorry... I tried. I tried so hard and it didn't..." A sob left his throat and he sank deeper into his worthless arms. Yuven bit on his tongue when Neven's shoulders slacked, but he refused to give up hope and resolve when it was just out of reach.

"Adara, take him!" Yuven snapped and passed off Fenrer to her awaiting arms. Up on his feet, he shooed all of them out of the room, but as Adara and Neven drew Fenrer further away from the torture chamber, he raised a hand to stop Maria with a purse of his lips. "...set it all on fire."

"What?" Maria asked, aghast.

"We don't leave a trace for them to use here," Yuven hissed when the other three rounded the corner with Fenrer's panicked breaths echoing through his ears. "You can take what you feel is pertinent — that might help us with what they might've done to Fenrer, but everything else? Burn it, whatever they did to him, I do not want to leave them with the tools to repeat the process." He didn't wait for her to either follow his order or deny it. Caught up with the others, Neven gave Fenrer gentle shakes when he gave a consistent refusal to move.

"We have to move, Molvei'saliz," Neven pleaded. "We have to find Kemal and leave—"

"I'm sorry," Fenrer begged right back. "I tried."

"Fen, it's okay," Adara soothed with a hand on his back. "We're going to get out of here and whatever happened here..."

"None of you understand." Fenrer trembled.

"Do you know where Kemal is?" Yuven forced through his teeth, causing Fenrer's tortured cries to quiet. He waited for his Oathbound to acknowledge him, and refused to be anything less than the calm waves of the ocean against the tide of abyssal blood. "We came across sacrificial circles, Molvisaliz." Stay calm. "It's important that we find them. All of them. Including where they might've taken their arms and armor, including yours. It wouldn't do to have you without your crescent blade."

Fenrer brought his hands closer to his chest, pausing when Adara squeezed one. "I-" It lodged into his throat at his hesitation, and Fenrer nodded instead.

"You must direct us then," Yuven whispered. "You have to." Walk through that muck, like I've seen you do so many times before.

"Please?" Neven whispered.

Fenrer looked between them, then nodded, relenting to the assistance provided. Arm and arm with both Adara, the love he found in uncertain circumstances, and their Guardian, the father figure of their ruined childhoods. Yuven chewed on his tongue, tasted blood, and when Maria returned to him with her pack, he glanced at her for confirmation.

"I hope you thought this through, Yuv."

...me too.