Solo A Passing Breeze

[Keene Ward]

The twenty-ninth of spring, 515 AV

His shields flickered, their own light produced but casting no shadows as he approached. He could see each layer, something he imagined wasn't due to mastery, rather a familiarity with something that he looked at daily. Changes in the shields' quality and structure were easy to spot, the images of what things were supposed to look like clear and crisp in his mind's eye. For the most part, his shields had held up very well. Occasionally one would need a revitalizing breath of djed or a slight adjustment of the fractal structures, but they did their jobs. Ever since Atziri had pointed out that a shield required not only the djed of the creature or thing to block, but a substantial enough or pure enough specimin, he had not made the same mistake of tasking against wood or stone again.

Currently, he stood over the cave's entrance, the carcass of an insect held carefully in the palm of his hand. He let his djed loosen, the boundaries of what was his hand and what was not along with the thoughts, feelings, and memories of what it meant to be a hand all drifting towards the task. The shimmering cloud of projected djed drifted off of him like a subtle steam, slowly wrapping around the hand that held the bug, chipping away at the deceased creature's essence until it was able able to replicate and spread the subtle changes needed to remember what the thing was and what properties it possessed.

Once he felt confident the shield would serve its purpose, the pale white cloud drifted forward. He had grown practiced in carefully placing each crystallized fragment so that when the shield "froze" it would cover the opening. The defensive magic had become much easier for him to control over the course of the season, the daily (and often twice daily) practices had allowed him plenty of time to configure his tactics to find the best and most efficient way of layering his shields as he had been instructed. As the icy tendrils curled and wrapped around the surfaces he willed it, Keene snapped the entire structure into being, a slight glimmer ripping the surface of the entrance's scintillating curtains. Trailing a finger just above his newest addition, Keene traced the areas that were most often the problem: around where the shield extended into empty space, the anchor points on either side of the opening, and the point of "origin" where the spiraling frost extended outward and away.

While his shields had grown progressively more and more precise in both function and structure, he was well aware there were things still beyond his capabilities. Master Relos had spoken of multi-tasking, something that Keene had tried several times on his own to no avail. When he had tried to do so, the djed had been - for lack of a better word - confused and unable to block anything at all. There was a way to do it, he was certain of that, but the steps to get there were vague and uncertain.

Stepping back, Keene pressed his hand that held the bug against the shield, a very slight greenish flash pulsed for a moment as his palm felt resistance, as if the bug had found the only point in the air where a sturdy, invisible pole lay to reject all advances. Pulling his hand away, Keene picked up the fly and tossed it at the barriers. Again, a flash of green signified that the fly would not pass, only this time the creature disappeared. He had found that that was the case with smaller object and fragments. His shields absorbed the djed they were tasked to keep out, something that was not an unconscious decision. While their maintenance wasn't all that taxing, but he found that if he could have the shields absorb the djed when they could rather than simply reject it, they became much more self sufficient. If the objects were too large, however, most times the absorption was minimal if at all, a hair there or a patch of color there, similar to how his djed was tasked, scraping off little bits of information.

Turning to face the afternoon skyline, a familiar breeze wrapped itself around his feet, tinges of excitement and content drifting through the invisible currents that tousled his hair as it danced about his head. Keene raised a hand, his fingers running through the sylvan entity almost thoughtlessly. Ever since he had found the remains that the winds had seemed to want him to find, the breeze in question had returned, becoming something of a natural expectation to find as he made his rounds about his daily duties. It did not always stay with him, nor was it very prompt in its comings and goings, but Keene found that he did not mind it tagging along with him, or perhaps he with it. He still had work to do, and with his weathery companion, Keene started back down into the valley, keeping his steps light and placing his feet with care to create minimal noise as he descended.

[Keene Ward]

His fingers pressed into the carcass, the flesh beneath the fur sending little shivers up through his skin to crawl at the nape of his neck. Whatever the thing was, it was dead, and the breeze did a fine job of reminding him, kicking up the fetid stench of rot with every drifting movement it took. As he remained crouched, breathing shallow through his lips, Keene's eyes scanned the creature, memorizing its features as the ticks passed by. The breeze grew weary of waiting, or perhaps simply found something more interesting and drifted of, leaving him alone in the humid, muggy atmosphere made all the more pleasant by the gathering heat of entropy.

It had a human's face, or something close to it. The eyes were wrong, slitted and milky - though whether they had been clear before or if blindness had been present before death, Keene couldn't say - and they sat sunken into the skull that seemed too small. Large, leather ears protruded from a few inches behind the eyes, their veins easily discernible in the island's ever overcast grey tone light. They consisted of at least half, if not more, of the entire size of the head, a curious proportion that Keene could find no reason for. The neck was long, covered in a patchy, stringy fur that wasn't quite hair. Its body, splayed out on the ground as if it had lost the strength to continue moving, closely resembled that of human if that human had been mixed with a rodent. Its legs had wide, expansive thighs that tapered down into spindly calves with an elongated foot, but the foot seemed simply a bastardized copy of Keene's own if his had been stretched and warped to match it. The arms were furred only to about the middle of the forearm, unnaturally elongated and tapered down into bloody, ragged claws. There was no tail, as far as Keene could tell, but the thing had bloody stubs around where the shoulder blades had hunched in the throes of death.

Whatever it was, Keene decided that a sample of its djed, even rotting, would most likely be more than enough to keep any others of its kind from entering the cavern, though he had the feeling the beast was a singularity, much like most of the things who's djed he'd used to erect his barriers. Letting a trail of res seep from his fingertips until it formed an angled shape reminiscent of a knife, Keene pulled the res together with a twitch of his fingers. The pale blue liquid hardened, its nature shifting more and more until it hung in the air as a marbled blade, held aloft by the res that remained within it. In a series of three precise and forceful movements, the creatures fingers were removed. Guiding the make shift stone razor back to him, he set it on the ground beside him, the res that was left seeping back to rejoin his djed as he stared down at the severed digits.

Choosing the index, Keene drew a careful breath, a slight tinge of nausea playing at the back of his throat as the creature's mottled blood languidly seeped from the places he'd cut into it. Centering his focus, Keene sifted through his thoughts, carefully placing aside those he had just used to draw fourth his res and instead accessed the gentle, swirling clouds of his djed, drawing it forward, up, and away. The djed rippled off of him, shimmering as it traveled from his skin to drift about the severed finger. He pulled at the finger's essence, taking care to saturate the shield's task in both bone, flesh and blood to truly capture the nature of the beast he wished to contain. There was a strict adherence to repulsion in his tasking, a requirement that the djed only learn what the thing was, not to absorb it into itself. As the scintillating, opalescent mist took a more ruddy, rusty hue, Keene wrapped it around the finger, compressing the specs of ice into a frozen shell, wrapping it tightly and completely around the target. Immediately, as the shield solidified, there was a dull flash of murky red before it faded and the shield returned to its natural, frosty state.

Reaching down, Keene carefully wrapped his fingers around the object, the sensation of gripping nothing conflicting with the weight he knew to be there as he lifted it into the air, grey-green eyes staring with a steady study for a few ticks before placing the finger into his pocket. Blood was difficult to get out of clothing, and the smell of rot was almost more difficult. He wanted to avoid contaminating his clothes if he could help it, as while the beast's stench was bearable, it was not preferable. Pushing himself back up to his feet, Keene was rejoined by his invisible companion. It pulled at him, a mix of excitement and curiosity in its currents. Having no other reason to remain in what had become the creature's open faces burial site, Keene let the wind guide him away. The rodent-like creature's face still clear in his mind, it mixed with the cracked, bleeding visage that had once been so sunny a disposition. He did not understand the nuit, and while he felt no remorse for the soul that had been lost to the experiment he had no doubt had been deemed a failure, it did little to assuage the carefully contained hatred he had managed to confine to the pit of his stomach. There would be a reckoning, of that he was certain, and every death and wasted life would only serve to stoke the steady flame all the more.

[Keene Ward]

The breeze guided him for a good while, winding through the trees at a relatively languid pace, though still fast enough that Keene moved in a steady jog. His breath came evenly in and out, the effort of a movement beyond his gliding steps minimal. At his feet moved over the even ground with a juxtaposed meter, it became apparent what the breeze had discovered and wished to show him - though Keene supposed "wished" wasn't quite the proper terms, as he was still uncertain whether the winds had their own individual wills or if they simply did things according to some arbitrary whim.

A nuit sat in a little clearing, his body propped up against one of the gnarled trunks of the junipers, his frown a near mimic of the twisted branches that sagged above him. Typically, Keene was not particularly adept at telling a nuit apart from a weary human or whatever race they occupied, but the man before him was dripping ichor from the stubs where his legs had been, from what Keene could tell, forcibly removed. The nuit had removed his shirt to wrap the fabric around what remained of his legs to staunch the loss of ichor, though from the expression on his face, it seemed he didn't believe it was a very lasting or effective treatment.

Coming to a halt a good distance from the man, Keene raised a brow as dull, grey eyes rose to meet their cousin's tinted with fleck of green. The nuit's gaze quickly slid over Keene's body, noting the leather vambrace strapped to his arm with a flash of recognition and - though Keene was not aware - hope. "Ah, a Warden. You are Atziri's boy, are you not?" The man's voice shook with pain as he worked to keep his face businesslike. Keene nodded and the nuit mirror the motion with bob of his own dark head of hair. "Good good. I need you to take me back to the citadel."

The man looked expectantly at Keene who stood unmoving, his limpid stare unwavering in its perusal. "May I see your ring?"

Blinking, the nuit gave Keene an exasperated look, his facade of strength crumbling some. "M-my... What?" With none too small an effort, the nuit shifted his weight, pulling his hand out from under him to reveal a wizard's ring. "Now will you help me?"

Keene nodded, moving forward with the wind dusting the ground behind him in a gentle swirl. Kneeling down, Keene stared at the nuit's legs. The ichor had long since saturated the bandages and had begun to pool beneath him. Glancing up at the nuit, Keene titled his head slightly in question. "Does a nuit's ichor function similarly to blood?"

An unamused grimace met Keene's inquiry. "If you mean do we die if we loose enough of it, yes. We die." He spat out the word as if it were a filthy mouthful of refuse, but Keene focused more so on the fact that the nuit was essentially dying rather than the manner in which he spoke of it. Carefully, Keene began to remove the bandages. At first, the nuit started to protest, but as Keene was the only creature within a thousand paces of offering him any hope at survival, his mouth simply opened and closed silently as he consigned himself to whatever it was the Pulsar planned.

The smell of the ichor mixed with the strange, biting taste that hung in the air like some sour cologne, but it was far preferable to the overwhelming rot of the beast he'd found chimes before. The viscous liquid clung to his fingers, slick and cool like a soup that had been left out over night. As he worked to carefully reapply the bandages so that they clung more tightly to the skin and were better secured, it took him several chimes and tries to get it right. All the while the nuit grunted and hissed beneath his admittedly clumsy administrations until the bandages on both legs were far more aligned to the contour of the skin and where the leg had been removed.

As time had passed, so too had the ichor, and Keene quickly began the second, and what he preferred to be the last, step in keeping the nuit alive until he could get him back to the citadel. Djed sloughed off of his hands and arms, drifting towards the ichor that stained the bandages, the ground, and Keene's fingers. The tasking moved fairly quickly, Keene's practice as well as combat forced snap shields made it easier to focus on what it was he wanted to reject. He pushed the rejection over everything else. The shields would need to last only until the Nuit could be safely delivered, there was no need for them to absorb anything beyond what was given to them.

The mist wrapped itself around the bandages, extending to encompass a few inches of skin to better anchor it, before the gentle twitch of his fingers coaxed the icy particles that made up the scintilating cloud that had taken on a lighter, almost white, sheen into a frosty coat, icy filigrees concealing the ragged cloth beneath them. There was a muted shimmer, almost as milky white as the ichor itself, before the shield's flare settled down and the nuit's ichor ceased to flow any farther than the thin strips of cloth he'd imbued with both his will and essence.

Rising up, Keene stated down at the nuit, wiping his hands on his trousers to remove what he could of the ichor. "That should keep you from... bleeding any more." He wasn't sure if the proper verb was "ichoring" or not, and judging from the nuit's pained - and wholly uncaring stare - the semantics didn't seem to matter. "Are you injured anywhere else?"

[Keene Ward]

The breeze had died down to a gentle whisper, the scent of the nuit's embalming liquids mixing with the muggy heat of the day. He shifted, wincing as he pushed himself forward to look at Keene's work with a frown. "No... No, I'm fine." The nuit raised his frown to regard the young pulsar. "Now, I need to get back to the citadel." The command was far less weak than before, carrying with it a familiar hint of the undead's natural capacity for superiority that Keene had come to find as the normal for most of the island's wizards. Nodding, Keene pulled his gloves from his pocket, further wiping his hands on his shirt to remove what vestiges of ichor remained before slipping his hands into them. The nuit raised a brow but said nothing as he reached to grasp onto the offered hand.

While the touch of the dead was not quite as painful as that of the living, Keene doubted it would be in either of their best interests if a large part of his concentration were to be focused on forcing his hands to stay wrapped around the cold, clammy skin of the injured wizard. He was glad for the sleeves of his shirt as the nuit gripped onto his arms, sending a shiver of discomfort down his spine. With a grunt, the nuit shifted from his resting place against the tree only to let out a howl of pain as the stubs of his legs received the majority of his body's weight. Immediately letting go, the nuit slumped back, panting and no longer trying to conceal the immense pain he felt. Keene stared down at him, a frown on his features as he noted that the undead seemed to feel pain just as easily as the living. It was curious, though perhaps not all that surprising.

Pausing in his efforts to extricate the nuit in a way that wouldn't cause him undue pain, Keene frowned down at the legless man, eyes flicking from the body itself to the surrounding area. There was little to fashion a make shift sled of sorts to carry the nuit on. While he supposed he could create a plane of ice slide the nuits body over, Keene wasn't sure he that was all that efficient or even advisable given that it was several miles back to the citadel. While he possessed the strength to do it, there was something to be said for convenience. Setting the idea aside for the time being, his eyes settled on the shimmering, frozen shell of his shield's weave that was so tightly fitted around the no longer seeping limbs. He supposed it was possible to turn the nuit himself into a sled, given that the man wasn't particularly picky with his mode of transportation.

Having little to no bedside manner, Keene knelt down, the nuit only partially recoiling from the proximity of the young initiate, his weary gaze wary but heavily frayed by the pain and loss of ichor. Death for one of the deathless such as he was embarrassing, certainly, but to wither into nothing beneath the futile ministrations of a pulser was even more so. If the pulser had a plan, any plan, the nuit reasoned that it would be better than rotting to death in the fetid wilderness he had trapped himself in.

With a steady flow of breath, Keene's djed shifted. Little things like the exact temperature of the a day five hundred thirty-three days ago and the scent of a specific bucket of water that he'd dropped somewhere in his twelve year sloughed off from him, mixing with all manner of specks and flecks of what made him him. The cloud slowly formed, this one much larger than before as it was meant to encompass the entirety of the nuit's body that would be dragged across the ground should his plan prove fruitful. Rather than specifically the ichor, Keene expanded the task to sample the entirety of who the nuit was. It took several chimes of silent concentration, the only sound that of the breeze that had settled in the gnarled branches of the juniper above, occasionally sighing a contented rattle through them. When he felt the task was properly suited, he wrapped the djed under the nuit like a mat, wrapping it up and around first the stumped legs, then torso, then neck and head as well as the upper shoulders.

It gave a soft, milky flash before it settled in, and the nuit raised a brow at Keene's efforts. "What was that?"

Keene, the thought of an explanation never having crossed his mind blinked back at his charge. "A flare."

No amount of pain could stave off a superior being's natural reflex to bring down condescension on those who were deserving. "A flare from what." His voice ran dry, unamused at Keene's seemingly oblivious nature.

"A flare from a shield." "Was that so hard" was grumbled the nuit as Keene's gloved hand slipped to grip the nuit's opposite, turning his back to the man as his other hand gathered up the nuit's other. "Please let me know if this doesn't work." Before the nuit could ask exactly what might not work, Keene started off, dragging the nuit behind him like so much of a sack of potatoes too heavy to properly hoist over his shoulders. The breeze drifted down from its airy perch, bouncing along beside them to join in with a subtle shift in the air as the muggy heat was given a moment of respite by the weather's whim.

[Keene Ward]

They didn't get far before the nuit let out a concerned call for them to stop. Careful to release the nuit's wrists only after he felt the man pull back in refusal, Keene turned a blank stare back at the cause of such issue. It was quickly evident why the nuit had requested they stop. His trousers, or what was left of them had slid a good portion down to about the middle of his thighs and their was a pained expression on his face that suggested more than just the fabric had been affected by the earth below. Keene frowned, kneeling down once more to better examine what had happed.

"I won't tell you how to use your magic, Warden, but I would appreciate you-" He attempted to pull the trousers back into their proper position, but lacked the leverage to do so. Keene assisted, and together they rescued the pants. "Thank you. I would appreciate you take this seriously." The dryness of the nuit's voice rivaled that of the deserts of Eyktol, but to Keene it was no more than a simple - if not unneeded - request.

"I am taking this seriously." The words were said almost in emotionless pacification as his mind was focused on more important things. He had tasked the clothes, or more correctly, the outer shell of the nuit's body, clothes and all, against the nuit with the idea that the shield would act as a barrier between the chilled, preserved flesh and the ground below. Unfortunately, that had resulted in the clothes themselves still quite affected by the ground, as the shield had done little to stop the friction as they'd traveled the handful of steps. The origonal shield had severed where the pants and slid down, creating a jagged edge on both sides where the pants had be hoisted back.

Frowning, Keene ignored whatever else it was the nuit said, instead djed once more separated from him in itself, drifting first to the pants. It was far too much work as well as taxing to task against the ground: too many variables and not nearly enough djed to compensate for every layer. However, if he tasked against the fabric of each of the nuit's articles of clothing, it would have the same effect as the finger in his pocket or, in theory the body itself. As the djed was tasked and stacked over the previous shield, solidifying with a shivering frost, Keene moved next to the shirt then to the bandages just in case. He could feel the magic becoming a bit more of a strain, warning that while he still had some leeway, it was best that this be the final stage of his plan. If it failed, he would have to find another, non-magical solution; most of which intoned a very harrowing journey for the both of them. He spent a few chimes melding the split halves of the origional shield, molding it so that should the pants shift at all, the tension wouldn't be enough to snap the barrier as it had before.

Once he was done, Keene stood up again, appraisingly staring down at his handiwork as the nuit finally got his attention. "I said are you even listening to me?"

Blinking, Keene turned to stare down at the exasperation frustration that was mixed with both the effort of strain and pain. "I am now."

"Clearly." The nuit had lost all semblance of poise and prestige. His life was ebbing away, and the only hope he had for survival had spent the past five or ten chimes staring intently at his rear end. While not particularly uncomfortable, it did not bode well, even if the boy had said he had a plan, it didn't seem to be working. "I was asking whether you think we have a chance of getting back before dark or not." He was sounding a bit less feeble with his ichor contained, even if it was depleted to a level that bordered on dangerous.

Keene glanced up at the overcast sky, light still steady but fading. "If this works, we might." If not, they were in for a long night.

Once more taking up the nuit's hands which were offered much more reluctantly, Keene started off once more, the breeze weaving in between his steps like some ethereal snake. He supposed the entire situation had been catalyzed by the wind's help, and he wondered once more whether Zulrav's children were, perhaps, far more cognizant of their actions than he had at first thought. Keene doubted the nuit held a gem similar to the one he'd found before. That time, the wind had been far more concerned, nostalgic even. As they walked, it offered him little more than quiet content, as if it was pleased with a job well done. Mostly well done.

"Can you jostle less? I still feel things, you know. I'm not meat." While the shields proved successful, the strain of the nuit's weight was soon felt, especially when the ground rose in a slope. Pressing on, Keene plodded his way to the citadel, the nuit filling what would have otherwise been silence with chatter that bordered on nervousness and boredom both, hardly the marching song that Keene would have liked.

[Caesarion]

GRADES!

Keene :

Experience

Skill	XP Earned
Investigation	+1 XP
Observation	+3 XP
Shielding	+4 XP

Lores

Lore Earned

Creature: A Nuit's Freakish Experiment

Loss of ichor means loss of life

Save The Pants!

Loots

Notes :

Nice writing as always, Keene!

Alea iacta est!

If you have concerns, questions or praise (inmydreams;_;) for your grade, drop me a PM and we'll do a number!