Quest Will this Never End? (Ronan, Solicah)

[Ronan]

Everything happened so quickly. The light filled everything for but a moment, and then he followed the cries. Sam needed him. He saw the battlefield, the Drykas warriors charging forward on their striders. This had been brewing for a long time. The Akalaks would pay dearly for infringing upon the Drykas homelands.

He was barely aware of Solicah at his side. He nodded fervently to Sam, pulled the leather armour at his side on, and picked up the emblazoned sword too. There was fire everywhere, smoke drifting across the battlefield. This battle had to be won.

He whistled for his horse, caught in the fever of battle.

"For Endrykas!" Ronan shouted, joining Sama'el's call to arms. Nothing mattered except the survival of his people. The scent of blood had risen. Smoke and fire, ash and blood. Battle. Life and death. That was the crux of it all.

Finally, he turned to his golden haired friend and gesticulated wildly. "Come on - we have to be quick!"

With that, Ronan went to mount the strider that had come out of nowhere, and prepared to charge towards the nearest plume of smoke.

[Solicah]

*
Solicah's worry shifted suddenly to alarm as the world cracked and frayed around him. Madness engulfed the world, and Ronan seemed to be caught in stride with it.

He reached out to Ronan again, hoping his touch could ground him, could lend wisdom but it could not, for Solicah knew no more about the chaos which had swallowed them than Ronan.

The young Drykas could not settle his companion's heart when he himself felt that burning rage blazing in his own peripheral, when fractions of his heart screamed for revenge. But, he was not so taken by the violence, by Ronan's nightmare, as Ronan himself was.

He stepped back, tripping hard as a contained stream of flames barreled past his flammable golden curls. The smoke settled uncomfortable in his lungs as he struggled to calm his heart and anxieties.

"Calm," he commanded himself, and slowly, one stimuli at a time he stripped the surrounding war away and pressed his exposed unarmored skin to a near by anvil, bordering a hot pit of coals ready to overspill at any moment. The metal was frigid, more than it seemed it should.

He let go of his awareness, his safety, and reached for his people, stretched his metaphysical fingers out toward the web, so that he might feel closer to reason. To his strider, to his mother, to his Ankal.

"Fill me with wisdom, and reason. Answer what my heart desires, how do I aid my brother? How can I give him the weapon's he needs to make sense of this senseless world? To right this wrong?"

Solicah had spent nearly half his life dancing to the tune strung by the endless webbing of the grasslands, but never had he felt so far from his mind and body as he did in that pavilion. Never had he felt so much fear...

"No matter the temptation, my son, never let go of this strand." He remember the uncharacteristic sternness of his mother's voice and the distant tickle as she ran Solicah's strand, tethering him to his young body, through her adept fingers. "Know your limits, and your duty to our people.

Wonder away from yourself, and we will never bring you back whole. Remain whole, and we will always guide you home."
*