"Einervaene." Lightning goes as we pass under the protective cover of an insulated tree, a general but diverse breed found all over the continent. Though the weather is not bad in terms of lightning or rain, I still welcome the chance at some shade.
"What is it, Lightning?" I ask my ancient friend as I glance up at one of the small birds hiding amongst the rubbery leaves. Its coat shimmers and the little, cute thing chirps at me cautiously as it bounces across the branch it is on. I smile and wave before turning away and heading for the edge of the canopy's shadow.
"You have been using me to help the people of this land quite a bit. The reason I am with you as well, it is to save a life." he remarks and I blink slowly as I think about what we have been doing these past few weeks. Sometimes we've made things worse, but we sorted those problems out too. Lives have been saved and those not in danger will still find themselves awarded more than they thought possible.
"Are you bothered by it? I'm sorry if that's so, I thought you we-"
"I am not bothered, it has just left me thinking, specifically about what happened when we arrived here." he assures me as he harkens back to when we were still sailing the All-Coast. A time I am thankful is over as it felt so long, so insufferably and unbearably long. All I could do was wait when I needed to get somewhere urgently... Not that I've helped myself in that regard.
"That dragon terrifies me even now, but, you scare me more." I giggle, hoping to amuse my electric friend as he snakes out into view.
"I do not like that." he tells me with what I hope is some equivalent to a smile. Even after having him bound to me after all these years, Lightning is still so strange and alien to me. His power is not my own but my body has been altered and changed in accordance as if it is.
"So, what's on your mind, Lightning?" I ask as I navigate my way across the uneven bricks making up the path. Carefully, I avoid the deep grooves between them that are designed to carry away the potentially lethal rainwater.
"I want to help the people of this world more, but, my services to you keep me restrained. Much as I still have yet to reconcile with my old partner, I miss what we did in ancient yore. We saw the world and protected it, letting it flourish even as the dictations of the impossibly grander sought its end." Lightning reminisces as he seems to arch his head up to gaze at the horizon his actions helped to ensure.
"I mean... The agreement was you come with me to help my mother." I recollect with a strange, worrisome sensation in my gut. I do not want to part with Lightning, but, as a god or something close to it, I can trust him to come back in my time of need. Right?
"Still, with your permission, I would like to go out into this land, that which your people have come to know as Eusorochii. I would like to ensure the land does not degrade further, that no more parts fall into the sea below. I want to see the land that my dearest of friends came to make as his final action upon the world. The last thing I was able to make with him, though we never finished."
Coming to a stop by a busy terrace, I glance down to Lightning before catching a glimpse of Brewbrt as he wanders over a hill. Mother comes to mind and I start to weigh all of my options here. I cannot really tell Lightning he needs to wait when he has already spent so long stuck at the top of Anvil-Peak. The time he's spent isolated from the world treats my entire life, my family's entire life as but a grain of iron sand in its totality.
"Will you... Will you be there for me when I need you? When -I- need you to do what I sought you out for?" I ask.
He says nothing as he starts to part from me, forming somewhat the image of a man.
"When the time is right, say my name with all your heart into the heavens. I will answer." he explains as he starts to fizzle from view. Reaching out for him as my uncertainty grips me, he vanishes before I can properly counter his aspirations. Sighing initially, a smile starts to form and I wave towards the bolt of golden lightning striking away with such odd slowness. Thunder gently booms back and my smile widens a little before it goes away.
Bringing my hand to my chest, I sigh as I look at my skin, all of a sudden all the duller. Feeling for my magic, its hideous blue nature ripples across my fingers and I quickly hide it away. I do not know why my life has turned out this way, why I've had to turn to ancient powers just to save it. But, for all the troubles it has caused me, I am glad it allowed me to meet him, to meet Lightning, the rod struck thrice to form Mesofunderod.
It's amazing, really, for all the suffering I have had to endure, for all the problems I have brought to the Bosphama name and Mother especially. It has allowed me to live a life far grander than anything I might've had should my magic have been the proper colour it's meant to be. But, strangely isn't. I've seen so much of the world and I still have so much of it left to see should my life ever go that way again.
Though they are all only memories, some bitterer than others, I met so many amazing people. I laughed with them, cried and played, our feelings were sincere and their losses and triumphs afflicted me much the same it did them. For all the troubles caused by the colour of my power, something I choose to remind myself of with another flicker of it. I wouldn't say with any certainty that I would change it.
Lightning gives me a sense of certainty, he does, he's given me hope I thought did not otherwise exist. Even if I live a facade with his presence within me, he'll allow me to save Mother. All the worries dragging my mind down, all the pain that has scarred me both sides of the pass between Wind and Lighting. I will see it through, all will be right soon, I just need to keep going.
Get home, find Mother and stake my claim of purity.
"Someone's slowed down for a reason!" Brewbrt calls as I register the sound of his armour clanking and thudding down the road. Turning to him with a renewed smile, I look over the man who's been with me the whole way since I left Suhurlodst. I barely knew him when I arrived in his small town in the wilderness, but, he's a true friend. Keeping me safe and ensuring I learn more about the world as I go through it.
A lot of the skills he learned whilst he travelled around with Mother are being passed onto me. I am sure, that, once I save her, she will notice these changes in me and be all the prouder for it. There is still a lot of wisdom and skill I can hope to glean from him and I would be prudent to get as much of it as possible. So, as he comes closer, I start to wonder.
"Brewbrt, would you mind telling me a story?" I ask as he comes up to my side and I spin around quickly, my braids gently whipping about. Flicking the one on my back over to the front, the old man looks at me with a raised, silver-green brow.
"What's the occasion?" he asks as his bag rattles heavily with the vast wealth of proof he has accrued over his fascinating life. For all I have seen, I doubt it even comes close to all that his eyes have.
"Am I not allowed to show interest?" I question with a slight pout forming as his difficulties start to show through.
"I mean, you stormed ahead because you can't take a joke." he exasperates with a breathless laugh. I frown and push at his arms, hmphing my head away as my strides pick up.
"Fine. Be that way." I state before his arm swings around and brings me in. Stumbling up to him, I bang against his plate armour as he smiles down at me.
"So, what you want to know about Skybomber Brewbrt?" he asks me, puffing an already hardy chest even further with pride. I smile and force my way out of his limpening grip to which he fakes a tear.
"Let me think..." I ponder as I try to recount what stories he has told me already. A lot of the time, he picked an item from his great bag as a memory jogger. So, I slow down and pull out the first thing I can get a reliable grip on, despite his joyful interference.
"What'd you grab?"
"Tell me about how you came across this." I say as I hand over a strange, key-like thing with a bright, empty and clear gemstone at its top. He starts to fiddle with its many metal twigs and they snap into place before the machine blares to life. He recoils at the high pitch and snaps one of the things back out of position.
"This is a pre-Liquid Mountain relic, much like most of the other things I have. Including this here armour, though, the gold foot is your fault." he explains, recounting all the stuff I already know, defeating the point of my curiosity.
I roll my eyes, "I know all of this!"
"Just making sure..." he mumbles with an out-of-sight smirk that he thinks he hid well.
"Well, come on then!" I impatiently demand with the roll of my cackling wrist. He raises a brow at my magic and places some of the branch things against my bare skin. A bit of pressure is applied and I step away as my skin feels weak all of a sudden. There's something dangerous about those tips...
"As you might recall, the Jherikra of the years before that great flood were a magic-lacking people. The Wind Mountain had not awoken yet, its power sealed by the gods when they returned mankind to the world. Such exposure to magic would've killed them, yet, as we spread across the world. Delving deep into the core and becoming Errakurds, climbing the skies to become Eusorochii. Jherikra was left behind."
"Yes, I remember, they were a strange, alien people with powers over magic we otherwise find incomprehensible."
"Correct. Their lack of an elemental influence allowed them to look into magic as it truly is, the stuff of raw, divine power. But, for all this esoteric knowledge, they were terrified of people like you and me. We're faster, stronger, longer-lived and well..." Brewbrt adds on before he ends his point on the creation of a small orb of wind magic. The silver-tinted emerald pulsates with his power and he disposes of it with a casual throw behind us.
Clutching my hat, its power blows over us with insignificant violence, disturbing much of the loose foliage. Leaving it to float away on this new, inexplicit breeze. I look back towards the artefact as Brewbrt disarms it further before he hooks it where he can. He looks to me as my eyes happen to head the same way and his mouth opens to no words as his mind catches up.
"During the war that lead to the Time of Liquid Mountains, they developed weapons like that for the suicidally brave. Their people were long used to the idea of such awful attrition, an idea that remains to this day amongst the Jhermonikra. As you probably felt, this little item can easily pierce its way into you, even though it's not all that powerful."
"A fancy dagger?"
"A bomb timer." he corrects.
"A bomb, like gunpowder?"
"A bomb in that it turns you into the explosive. All that power your body processes and lets in or out, it breaks that system down. That which the blood of a god formed from clay is torn apart in a violent explosion." he elaborates with a grim expression, almost as if he's had to use such items before. His armour is proof enough that he will use such ancient pieces of art and death.
"I've often asked why you packed so much, but, why'd you bring something like that?" I question, disturbed by such a cruel device, regardless of its desperate circumstances.
"The world is very dangerous, Einervaene. A lot of this I have found no reason to use thus far, but finding no reason then does not mean I will see anything of the sort in the future. Unfortunate as it is, what is so easy to find in the ruins of the ancients are weapons. A whole land was flooded for so long by the people of the Water Mountain. For all their likely pomp back then, they were brought to that decision by the terrifying understanding of what raw magic can do."
"Raw magic, huh." I mutter as a specific, cloaked figure comes to mind. Shrouded in bluish fire, he stands above me with pairs of talons and an awful roar hidden behind a beak mask.
"Now, the bit you probably want to know more about, how me and all the others came to find it!" Brewbrt cheers as he rattles me from the side until I laugh as I try to force him away.