Xexial stood on the roof of the Onyx Tower watching the storm sweep across from the southeast. Dark, foreboding clouds rolled towards them. A sickly green pestilence that spread across the sky like a gangrenous rot. Even from this distance, he could see traces of lightning dancing across the bloated cloud. Shards of arcing light raced across the undulating mass. Thunder followed several long seconds later.
Absently, his bare hand reached for the lanyard that hung around his neck. His thin fingers grabbed only air. His sighed and let it fall away.
Khyriaxx told him that there had been no lanyard, nor had there been a vial of any kind on his body when the spriggan found him. Immediately Xexial had known it was no deception on the spriggan’s part. It was simple to deduce why the vial was gone.
“Always such a clever boy,” Xexial muttered to himself as he directed his gaze to the long expanse of trees on the southern horizon.
When Xexial and Ashyn gave the oaths of commitment, both parties shed blood. The purpose stated was so that one could always find the other if they were alive. The reason sounded sincere enough, but Xexial knew of course that the giving of blood was far more one-sided. Rarely was an apprentice wizard ever gone from the master. No, this was for the master alone. It was so the senior wizards could hunt down the students if they ever became recreants. Clearly, Ashyn recognized this threat and absolved himself of the problem, or the chance of any other wizard hunting him by taking the contents of the vial.
Couple that with the fact that Ashyn’s connection to magic was severed, it made it nigh impossible to track the renegade boy by traditional wizard’s means. It was why Grind had come to the Onyx Tower. He had wanted the blood and hoped that Xexial wouldn’t be foolish enough to keep it all on him.
He hadn’t. He kept some secured amid his personal effects in a chest in his quarters. Yet somehow, Ashyn knew, and he found a way past the wards and into the Onyx Tower. He was very interested in knowing how Ashyn had managed such a feat.
The Maba-Heth’s breaking and entering didn’t surprise him in the least. Trained to hunt rogue-wizards, he would specialize in the subversion of wards and barriers. Ashyn never trained in anything like that though.
He shook his head of the distraction. Now they would do it the hard way. Xexial eyed the bulbous mass in the sky. The impending storm certainly would not help matters.
He had to give Ashyn credit. He planned well. Executed even better. Where Xexial thought the lad lamenting the revelation that his sister was alive and enslaved, the boy instead was plotting, devising a means to not only escape from Xexial, but make him difficult to follow for other wizards as well, namely the Maba-Heth. Xexial wondered how much Ashyn knew about them. What they were capable of. Xexial couldn’t discount that Ashyn knew a lot. The kid loved to read.
The elder wizard managed to stall the Maba-Heth’s desire to track Ashyn for a few days. Primarily it was so Xexial could gather strength back from his month-long coma. He also knew it was to build resolve for the task ahead. Xexial did not cherish the idea of hunting the boy. Ashyn had always looked to Xexial clearly as a father figure. A father was not something Xexial could ever be for the child. It wasn’t in his character, nor could he be such a thing to a fellow wizard. Such affection was a liability.
No, Xexial saw the lad as more of a confidant and colleague. Maybe even akin to a younger brother, had Xexial ever known such a thing. Still, the liability of emotions or not, Xexial knew they existed for Ashyn. It irritated him that he had to admit it to himself. He would have to hunt his little boy brother.
“Man,” he said silently admonishing himself. Ashyn was grown now. Not a boy. His decisions had weight and repercussions. Ashyn had to answer for them. The way Xexial saw it, Ashyn’s saving grace protecting him from the Maba-Heth’s judgment was that, technically, he could wield no magic. When he left he was lame. No magic, not a wizard. Not a wizard, not a threat.
It was a thinly woven thread but it was something. A vain hope that when they did confront Ashyn, the Maba-Heth would be too confused as to why he had no power.
Before that could even happen, before he could even risk approaching the boy, he needed to know how Ashyn did what he had. How he acted as a secondary conduit, syphoning away the feedback that should have killed Xexial. Perhaps the real question that haunted Xexial, was could that ability be reversed? Could Ashyn afflict feedback as well as he took it? If he could, and Xexial couldn’t discount the possibility of it after all he saw the boy capable of, then they ran the risk of confronting a foe they couldn’t handle.
His mouth moved subtly, “Know thy enemy.”
So far everything he studied in the throne room had turned up no clues or revelations. It was a conundrum that he couldn’t solve, and until the arrival of the swirling dark mass in the sky, he knew he had been desperately losing time. Not so much anymore.
Next to him, he saw a set of quills bounce nervously. “Thoughts?” he asked as he glanced down to the spriggan.
Khyriaxx pulled off his monocle, cleaned it hastily on the fabric of his tunic, and then fastened it again looking at the storm. “Be gathering a lot of force in the Gulf of Malleus.” He pointed a clawed finger towards the front of the cloud. It looked like an anvil head.
“It will hit us like a wall and then be sweeping over us, a torrent of rain and wind. Likely be several days of it. Look at how it moves. See how the head turns?” Khyriaxx opened his hand and spun his finger over his palm slowly in a circle. “It be cyclonic. Be like the rotor of a turbine.”
Xexial looked at him with a raised eyebrow. Khyriaxx snorted his displeasure at Xexial’s obvious ignorance to all things technological. “Like my fan at the home,” he admonished, “It be self-perpetuating. It uses the warm water from the Ire Ocean’s surface.”
The lithe creature then pointed up to the sky. “It then re-condenses it into clouds and rain. This be very cool compared to ocean. That be bad.”
“How bad?” Xexial wanted to know.
Khyriaxx shrugged. “Just look at the algorithm for yourself. You take these two opposing temperatures and you be mixing it with some dampness, a little wind, and perhaps a nasty storm out on the ocean and then…”
Xexial’s gaze burned down at him waiting for his overdramatic stall to pass. Khyriaxx didn’t even notice. “The result be a slow spin. From there it continues to pull in water and gather size and force. If gathers too much size, then it be hitting us for a long time. It will only dissipate if it breaks from the gulf.”
Khyriaxx looked up at him surprised at his lack of knowledge. “Really this not be uncommon for these parts. I be seeing one or two every season of greening.”
Xexial eyed him dryly. “Forgive me for not being a student of weather.”
“Forgiven,” Khyriaxx said with the wave of his tiny hand, clearly oblivious to the flippancy of his remark. “We really still be travelling in that?”
A raspy voice called from behind them, “Yes.”
Xexial glanced back at the scales who was standing at the trap door. He looked irritated that the duo continued to stare at the impending storm for so long.
Xexial knew that if Khyriaxx was correct, and he had no reason to doubt it, they were indeed looking at a very violent tempest. “No. We won’t,” he countered.
Grind’s emerald eyes narrowed at the elder wizard. “I will not be stopped from finding the recreant any further. Especially not due to a tinkling of rain.”
Xexial chuckled and shook his head. “You know nothing of this region.” The human pointed behind him to the storm. “That is not like the smatterings that Jaës sees occasionally. It is a cyclonic storm as our friend here has pointed out.”
“So?”
“Have you ever seen a cyclonic storm?”
“I have witnessed some mighty squalls on the seas east of Jaës,” Grind shot back at him, crossing his arms. “I was a sailor before becoming a wizard. And I’ve never feared them.”
“Good on you. But stow your pride and think about those squalls on the sea,” Xexial said as he stared hard at the Maba-Heth. “Now take that storm and push it inland. Take those winds capable of creating such massive waves, and apply them to everything you see before you.” Xexial swept his arm out before him. “Imagine, as deadly as they are now mustering strength to move the immovable. Winds so harsh that they can rip trees from the earth.”
“Can split rocks, too,” Khyriaxx added. “And cause floods.”
Xexial nodded. “Waters will pour on us by the bucket full. In these lowlands, there will be turbulent run offs and perhaps even flash floods.”
Grind hissed, “This is speculation.”
“This is fact,” Xexial fired back. “When the storm reaches us, there will be little protection from its effects outside of the tower. And because it is cyclonic it will continue to barrage us as it pulls from the gulf.”
Gavius Grind bared his sharp teeth. “All the while your former apprentice gets farther away from our clutches. Very convenient.”
“We cannot track in a deluge,” Xexial said flatly. Xexial added a little more quietly, “Besides, I know exactly where the lad is, you need not worry about that.”
Thunder rolled behind him.
The scales issued out a hissing laughter. “Ah yes, you think to tell me the fool went into the Shalis-Fey to rescue his sister? Classical misdirection at its finest. You are the foolish one. Foolish and old.”
“How long have you been a Maba-Heth? Clearly you are not very good at it,” Xexial told the creature brazenly. He watched with some satisfaction as the scales’ frill went from green to a deep gold.
“You would do well to watch your tongue, old man. The Seven still think you are dead.”
Xexial ignored the threat and turned to face the dark forest on the horizon. “If you knew your quarry at all, like I’ve been trying to educate you on these last few days, then you would know the Shalis-Fey is exactly where he has gone.”
“He would go to the heart of his enemy? One that he claims is now dedicated on the issuance of our obliteration to all their kin. Because of a woman?”
Xexial nodded. “Indeed he would. Ashyn is bold and headstrong. He also has a streak of nobility in him, and he feels that this is something he needs to do. Additionally, there are two things that Ashyn Rune excels at more than anyone I have ever met.”
Khyriaxx looked up at the wizard curiously, just as the scales growled, “And what be those?”
“Being stupidly impulsive and surviving impossible odds.”
“He would not survive the Maba-Heth!” Grind balked suddenly.
“Without my help, I guarantee he would survive you. We leave after the storm.”
Grind’s frill became so flushed at the insult, it was almost bronze. With nothing else in his quiver to argue with, the young wizard hunter stormed back down the hatchway. Xexial won the battle, and it granted him the reprieve he needed to continue his research, but the war was far from over. The Maba-Heth was a trained hound. He wanted to track and he wanted blood.
“You knew it be a cyclone storm!” Khyriaxx said after the Maba-Heth stomped off.
Xexial allowed himself a rare small smile, “It’s not that uncommon for these parts.”
Khyriaxx nodded and smiled. “It’s going to be a powerful storm, but I be seeing worse. It is just speculation though, you be knowing that, right? The storm can break away from the sea very quickly and lose all its power in a matter of days.”
Xexial looked down at the spriggan. “When the pouring rain and the howling wind starts I guarantee the scales will not know the difference.” Xexial could hear a door slam from the Maba-Heth far beneath them.
“Besides,” Xexial added, “at least this will chase the Ferhym away from your home.”
The spriggan let out a toothy smile as the realization of it hit him. Then, after a moment of silence, he asked, “Is the tall hue-mon really in the Shalis-Fey?” Xexial had no reason to lie to the tinkerer. He nodded.
“That boy be brave or stupid,” Khyriaxx remarked.
“Little of both,” Xexial answered. He knew without a doubt that Ashyn was in those woods. And he knew the boy was still alive. It was his nature. It was who he was.
The boy was just lucky like that.