22 Glade 125
The day after the dinner, after the roof, after Kaus had reached inside their bond and stretched Raithen open, the twins had left for home. They had kissed him and said they would be back once other obligations were attended to. It was just another day.
Things kept happening that made Raithen sure, while they were, that they would change everything, change him, that he would be different after. But he never was. He had thought, with Khyan, with Finn, with Kaus... Each felt individual and vast; all encompassing in the brief moments of the connection. But they had come to nothing. Was he stupid, for thinking that one encounter that felt like everything to him could mean as much to another?
When it felt like he was being crushed, everyone knew, his family, outsiders, and all acted as though everything was just as it was supposed to be, no one objected or even seemed to notice that anything was other than ordinary. So, it must be normal, and right, what happened to him and the aftermath, or lack thereof.
The urge to run that have grown inside him at Hilana's dinner table grew in strength as he felt Kaus' bond fade as distance grew between them. Like being hollowed out, one portal jump at a time. Hurling himself after them, ripping his way through the slipspace was not a viable action. Not socially acceptable.
Sitting at dinner, listening to his family talk between them of political things while his insides were slowly grinding him apart, he happened to hear mention of his brother's beloved in his mission to the cursed Ecithian Commonwealth. The idea formed in him without really passing through his brain for processing. Excusing himself from the table without anyone noticing, he went to his room and put together a pack of the new things he couldn't do without.
The mirror he used for speaking to Hilana, and now that his Traversion was powerful enough, theoretically others. Two sets of clothing from his mercenary days that would survive harsh travel, his spear and fléchettes. A dozen more, small things that one needed to survive in the desert. A note was left for his mother, explaining where he was going, that he wanted to learn what he could from the enemies and support Finn in his work. She could call him back, as could Holy Avaerys, to whom he was bound. But he would leave. The way was long, hard, empty, and he wanted that.
Wrapping a keffiyeh around his head and face, as the sun set, he took flight. The way out of the city was well know, and for many miles outside, he had flown and mapped all his adult life. Beyond were places he did not know, and he wanted those, the places that did not know him.
Using Kinetics with his flight he could have propelled himself at speeds beyond what any living creature could achieve unaided by magic, but that would take him to his destination too soon. The test of the desert was what he wanted, the hardness of it, the fight.
So he flew, braving the strongest winds, the storms of sand that would have scored the skin from his bones had he not had such skill with Kinetics, and even then, it was a struggle. The struggle was the point. When landed during the days, making what shelter he could with nothing but what was within him, fighting nature and wild creatures for access to water and food.
Weeks in, when he felt like he had passed the tests of the desert, each as they came, and he needed something new to work on, he turned to his newer rune. Traversion hopping himself from place to place recklessly dropped him into new problems every day, even as his ability to propel himself through the slipspace grew stronger. Sometimes he made Railways and then shot himself through them with Kinetics so fast it felt like his form might be coming apart just before he came out the other side. He wished, in those moments as he felt the aether that connected the particles of his being stretching near to breaking, that they would. Shattering apart, becoming everything and nothing, drifting forever without any notion that any one mote had ever been part of a person, it would be peaceful.
There were lots of ways to connect Traversion and Kinetics, just as there had been many ways to connect Flight with Kinetics. All of them required him to think in three demissions, to understand movement, weight, and space. By the time he began to slip through villages, through people, as though they were nothing, he felt stripped down to his bones, hard and solid as he had not felt in a lone time, maybe ever. His body was thinner, but not dangerously so, he was as good a hunter as any but the best of the deep desert Vastian tribesmen. Hilana would have been proud of him if she had seen some of the things he had done, but he hadn't told her when she had called him via the mirrors. Mostly, he had asked about her and spoken little of himself as his face darkened and he grew lean.
He stopped utilizing the longer slipspace jumps as he neared the capital, flying instead, using Kinetics and small jumps in tandem until the three skills felt like one in his head. Landing just outside the walls, so as not to be shot at, he explained that he was a messenger from his family to Finn, using all the proper addresses of person and positions. The guards did not like it, but they let him in and even directed him to where Finn was living.
When he showed up, the servants looked at him as though he were a starving mutt showing up to beg, but they knew enough not to deny his name. When he was led to the room Finn was in, he unwrapped the face covering and grinned, white teeth a shock against his now deeply tanned skin.
"Hello, brother. I hope you don't mind me dropping in. I thought I might be useful."
The day after the dinner, after the roof, after Kaus had reached inside their bond and stretched Raithen open, the twins had left for home. They had kissed him and said they would be back once other obligations were attended to. It was just another day.
Things kept happening that made Raithen sure, while they were, that they would change everything, change him, that he would be different after. But he never was. He had thought, with Khyan, with Finn, with Kaus... Each felt individual and vast; all encompassing in the brief moments of the connection. But they had come to nothing. Was he stupid, for thinking that one encounter that felt like everything to him could mean as much to another?
When it felt like he was being crushed, everyone knew, his family, outsiders, and all acted as though everything was just as it was supposed to be, no one objected or even seemed to notice that anything was other than ordinary. So, it must be normal, and right, what happened to him and the aftermath, or lack thereof.
The urge to run that have grown inside him at Hilana's dinner table grew in strength as he felt Kaus' bond fade as distance grew between them. Like being hollowed out, one portal jump at a time. Hurling himself after them, ripping his way through the slipspace was not a viable action. Not socially acceptable.
Sitting at dinner, listening to his family talk between them of political things while his insides were slowly grinding him apart, he happened to hear mention of his brother's beloved in his mission to the cursed Ecithian Commonwealth. The idea formed in him without really passing through his brain for processing. Excusing himself from the table without anyone noticing, he went to his room and put together a pack of the new things he couldn't do without.
The mirror he used for speaking to Hilana, and now that his Traversion was powerful enough, theoretically others. Two sets of clothing from his mercenary days that would survive harsh travel, his spear and fléchettes. A dozen more, small things that one needed to survive in the desert. A note was left for his mother, explaining where he was going, that he wanted to learn what he could from the enemies and support Finn in his work. She could call him back, as could Holy Avaerys, to whom he was bound. But he would leave. The way was long, hard, empty, and he wanted that.
Wrapping a keffiyeh around his head and face, as the sun set, he took flight. The way out of the city was well know, and for many miles outside, he had flown and mapped all his adult life. Beyond were places he did not know, and he wanted those, the places that did not know him.
Using Kinetics with his flight he could have propelled himself at speeds beyond what any living creature could achieve unaided by magic, but that would take him to his destination too soon. The test of the desert was what he wanted, the hardness of it, the fight.
So he flew, braving the strongest winds, the storms of sand that would have scored the skin from his bones had he not had such skill with Kinetics, and even then, it was a struggle. The struggle was the point. When landed during the days, making what shelter he could with nothing but what was within him, fighting nature and wild creatures for access to water and food.
Weeks in, when he felt like he had passed the tests of the desert, each as they came, and he needed something new to work on, he turned to his newer rune. Traversion hopping himself from place to place recklessly dropped him into new problems every day, even as his ability to propel himself through the slipspace grew stronger. Sometimes he made Railways and then shot himself through them with Kinetics so fast it felt like his form might be coming apart just before he came out the other side. He wished, in those moments as he felt the aether that connected the particles of his being stretching near to breaking, that they would. Shattering apart, becoming everything and nothing, drifting forever without any notion that any one mote had ever been part of a person, it would be peaceful.
There were lots of ways to connect Traversion and Kinetics, just as there had been many ways to connect Flight with Kinetics. All of them required him to think in three demissions, to understand movement, weight, and space. By the time he began to slip through villages, through people, as though they were nothing, he felt stripped down to his bones, hard and solid as he had not felt in a lone time, maybe ever. His body was thinner, but not dangerously so, he was as good a hunter as any but the best of the deep desert Vastian tribesmen. Hilana would have been proud of him if she had seen some of the things he had done, but he hadn't told her when she had called him via the mirrors. Mostly, he had asked about her and spoken little of himself as his face darkened and he grew lean.
He stopped utilizing the longer slipspace jumps as he neared the capital, flying instead, using Kinetics and small jumps in tandem until the three skills felt like one in his head. Landing just outside the walls, so as not to be shot at, he explained that he was a messenger from his family to Finn, using all the proper addresses of person and positions. The guards did not like it, but they let him in and even directed him to where Finn was living.
When he showed up, the servants looked at him as though he were a starving mutt showing up to beg, but they knew enough not to deny his name. When he was led to the room Finn was in, he unwrapped the face covering and grinned, white teeth a shock against his now deeply tanned skin.
"Hello, brother. I hope you don't mind me dropping in. I thought I might be useful."
