In the northeast of Rhium lay Nemea, that most ancient of former kingdoms. Conquered by She-Who-Reigns as multifarious others over uncounted ages, it was influenced unto a parity and sameness with its youthful neighbours and enforced kin. But never wholly. Within its lushly cultivated bounds, they honoured old ways, told old legends, upheld old traditions. In the streets and stadiums of its small cities and villages, greatness was prized over goodness as the godbeasts of elder days intended.

The province’s beating heart was a mountain; Archaia the Indelible, named for its unbreaking nature. Expansive and towering, with stone the solid black of an abyss, its grasses and trees were delicate dances of twining gold and green that were forever shifting to the song of present storms. The white-capped peak could be found in the northernmost reaches of the territory, bordering the Eversea, acting as one of two sentinels to the Bay of Beginnings.

Were one to look yet further north from the citadel spires of Archaia, they would sight a civil counterpart - Lucent, Rhium’s gleaming capital, the birthplace of knighthood; a silver star surrounded by ancient forestry. Below, past cliffs and copses of fruiting trees, there stirred wilds and roaming beasts, and the occasional anaphore, where knowledge was stored and studied prior to the proliferation of the library.

It was in one such construction, pale and aged, and protected from all that might seek to unduly intrude, that rebels of conscious intent congregated. Together they waited for transportation across the Strait of Woe, the toll of bells forgotten so common were they.

~ X ~

“Is supremacy a mountain to be overcome, or have we been lied to by the Soothsayer?” The query came without impetus, and filled the anaphore with cutting ease; mountain air swam against wet pillars and vibrant vines, softening the syllabic sin.

Three were the youths who felt the subtle weight carried by the uttered Epitheton as it settled across their shoulders in cursory fashion. Together they felt terribly small in that second stretched towards infinity, as if a celestial giant had focused the whole of its immensity on their collective with a stare of starry breadth.

Shivering as the moment passed him by, the broadest of the assembled trio regarded his lazing friend with a gimlet eye, gaze the blue of open skies. He strode to and fro across marble blocks, booted feet rhythmic in their plodding. Crowned by a riot of midnight curls, his frame of bronze was illuminated by gilded braziers and torches. Hung from the pillars and domed ceiling, their firelight glimmered strangely against the greens and golds of his robed dress - in the space between thought and motion, their flickers froze in sympathetic fright. So too did the luminance highlight conflicted features. Hushed, the youth’s voice - heavy with remonstration - cut to the matter’s heart.

“Why ask such a question, Arkas?” His brow knit. “You dare ruination, as if Their Epitheton has not reduced the greatest of knights to creatures of base madness. You speak boldly, as if my mother’s authority does not linger in the air of this anaphore.”

As if she was not Doombringer, Lord of Nemea, She-Who-Reigns’ most able executioner.

“I am aware, Alcaeus. Recall, I would not be here otherwise,” warned the elf, his pale tresses rising and falling in feathery waves to frame golden features of delicate make; and when next he spoke, his tone was lighter by half, and contained within itself a secreted smile that creased the corners of his mouth - a sudden, if expected change; for as many of his kind, he was spry and partial to mercurial moods.

Fingers skewed widely, Arkas adjusted his pearly robes and went on: “Are we not - like so many others across the breadth of history - a unity intent on deposing the Lord of Bells from Their Tower Throne? We are, of course,” he snorted. “I presume this legendary figure who holds command over Rhium would have struck us down if our attempts offended Them so. The Daughters of Io faced destruction for such. The Order Selenus, too. The Solipsists, the Renards, the Grey Fathers – I could go on.”

“More besides, we ascribe the workings of destiny to the godking on high: ‘Destiny a winding road, Fate its culmination.’ Surely this conversation of ours falls beneath such a purview - it is a path, no?” Arkas floated up from his sprawling sea of cushions, shoulders rolling. When no answer resounded, he sniffed, “My point is thus: that we still breathe absent the grand attentions of your mother and her ilk means we’ve not gone against Their edicts; a necessity, piteous as we are.”

Pace newly weighted, and loudly at that, Alcaeus’ countenance was the grim grey of the sky above as he breathed, “So, you test Their patience? You test my mother’s mercy?” Sparks danced across the length of his tongue, speaking to hesitation. Once, twice, thrice his heart beat. Then, his jaw set tight as could be.

“Will you do so again?” he asked.

“I test Their resolve and interpretations,” Arkas corrected, leaning backwards so as to sink into languished softness, gaze gleaming intently. “And yes, I think I shall. Daring, I know. But if the Lord of Bells holds true to Their edicts, all the better for us; our most base presumptions are proven true. If not…” He shrugged amiably, easily, a slow grin curling his lips. “I’ll be dead, and I like to think all of us - we comrades in this most epic and common of quests - have long since accepted such a possibility. Mothers, fathers, siblings, elders, beasts, zealots, agemates, boredom. The list of potential endings goes on.”

Alcaeus shook his head with resignation evident in the faraway light of his eyes, tasting remembered blood, hearing remembered cries. Travesty was reflected therein, for it was not so long ago he first encountered his mother’s work: the seacity of Fairbright blazing, broken and battered into so much driftwood by the weight of a fallen storm. The citizens had drowned, dying in droves as leviathans of the Eversea came to feast in numbers not seen in an age.

‘Indeed, it hasn’t been long at all since my curtain of ignorance was stripped away.’ Mere months, in truth. ‘Would that I had known before she instilled her teachings…’ Mayhaps his blood would not seethe so, too dense and full and alive with something he refused to be, whispering in the dark of night, begging for attention.

Over the sound of pattering near and far, the crisp clarity of rain washed away phantom sensations.

Alcaeus dispensed of his thinking to quietly recite, “‘Rally not against Fate. Recoil not before the Enemy. Rise righteously and with great Virtue.’ You know well how these edicts are interpreted, Arkas. To do otherwise: to rage against uncertain fate, to run from the undefined enemy, to be anything but virtuous by the definitions of She-Who-Reigns… You speak of daring; I ask that you consider caution. I would not have us die without goodly cause. Not when the limits of rebellion are best known to me, and even then scarcely.” Not when they lacked the strength to resist for true.

Body, mind and spirit, Arkas remained unmoved by the protestation; and the characteristically clever crinkling of his eyes and mouth seemed to quietly inquire, ‘How ever can we learn more of these limits if we do not venture further afield?’

Alcaeus sighed disappointedly at the muted music of it all - at the defiance which graced his ears like so many whispered winds, and how utterly inadvisable such thinking was. For as with all who stepped towards true supremacy - that utmost expression of sovereignty over oneself - he and Arkas and their friends did so at great risk. Each for reasons all their own, united by a desire to depose the godking on high.

To needlessly multiply present dangers? His brow furrowed; foolishness was perhaps too kind a word to describe such folly.

Voice laced with carefully curtailed frustration, Alcaeus shared as much, to which his elven friend tutted, finger waving to and fro in the face of such surety. The former frowned and grunted in response, and neither of their doings were unkind in make or effect. But they were questing, curious, and in their own ways an establishment of supremacy; a familiar circumstance for the involved parties.

Thusly was there a beat of contested silence wherein the youths matched gazes. Will encroached upon will in the space where their spirits met, and the anaphore strained as notes of strength dyed by desired wisdom sought to subdue daring propped by quickness of mind. Marble shook and cracked, shifting beneath their volume.

Blueish and gold, storms both, they sang beyond common conception.

Were either of them a differing agemate, the end result would have been put into question. It was rarefied for certainty to lie extant in contests of supremacy where youthful pages such as they were concerned. Least of all when the two of them were both as thunder and lightning and wind and rain. But neither Arkas nor Alcaeus were common. The former was a rarefied genius of a storied people who numbered amongst the first to have been borne from the womb of Rhium. The latter was a monster whose parents had injected the wealth of epochs into his learning. Thus, the result of their conflict was as ever.

The anaphore grew alive with heavy static that dragged at the pillars, threatening to combust small piles of dust as it strangled what breezing air entered its hold. Thunder beckoned squall, and waves of billowing loss weighed upon but one of two - and so the moment passed: Arkas dipped his head in honest acceptance of the layered defeat; a practiced motion of sixteen years that was accompanied by an exaggerated yawn.

Lax and bright in his presentation, shoulders dispensing of the tension’s dregs with a roll, the elf surreptitiously conceded to Alcaeus, “Since this abruptness of mine has been overly weighty, let us instead discuss the Calling. We were speaking on the merits of banding during this most grand of rituals, were we not?”

Alcaeus chuckled gruffly at the helpless, faintly apologetic undertone of his oldest friend, and how terribly upfront his change in topics was. Doubtless, there would be greater challenges to their status quo. And equally known to him was the danger Arkas might bring with his whimsy. Still, and confidently so, he was grateful for the concession and conveyed as much in saying, “Aye, we were. You wished to recruit Dea and Ryder, yes? And Catherine? I believe you said something along the lines of storms and fires fitting well with one another when faced with the Brecilian,” as if they had not already planned on joining together. Such was inevitable, in truth.

His reply elicited a mirth-laden snort from the third of their cohort; a short and squat boy whose pudge denoted a fondness for eating well and long. The youngest of the trio, he was bald and pale and bearded darkly, with expressive eyes of emerald bordering black. Seated at a low table, he thumbed through one of the many tomes which littered their dusty surroundings in haphazard piles.

“Something to say, Tomard?” asked Arkas. The sharp-eared boy was back to lounging, his customary smile in place; and the laxity of his posture did little to disguise the caustic rise and fall of his query. The naked disapproval of the Otis native’s presence fluttering in the gold of his eyes went unremarked.

“No, nothing at all, Arkas.” The pudgy youth chuckled wheezily, bright and keen despite the elf’s deep-seated mislike. “I was merely wondering when it was our mutual friend lost his nerve. For the life of me, I cannot recall a time when you were less than perfectly confident in all the years of our acquaintance, Alcaeus.” In response, the so-named youth hummed, his asking for patience plainly done in the dull note.

The quietest of the trio bore an even smile as he looked out across the verdant forestry that lay outside the anaphore. It was beautiful scenery, marked by dangers beyond his reckoning. His sister’s collection of beasts and spirits roamed therein, and they cared not a whit for the will or word of any but those more dangerous than themselves. There lay worse things besides, too: ancient dwellings and forgotten entities who owed only his mother fealty, unreal entrapments hidden by golds and greens, simpering songs seeking to seduce passersby…

Tomard’s question stoked a wearied worry he had only just put to rest - and it reminded Alcaeus that the forestry and anaphore were not as the Woodsea which Arkas called home. Suggested unto him by his reclusive father, this place in the lowest of Archaia’s plateaus could not be possessed of true peace and privacy. Not when the Doombringer’s influence had long since seeped into the histories of the marble and stone, roots and recycled bones.

Imagining her watchful spirit frittering beyond his perceptions, taking his every action and word into account, measuring his being against the mysterious metrics of her inscrutable master: Alcaeus’ smile fell, and his gaze narrowed at the greyed sky. Suddenly, Arkas’ testing was not nearly so foolish as it first seemed.

He huffed, for nearly was not entirely, and he had been silent overlong.

Thoughtlessly following the distant descent of three raindrops, the mighty son said, “We’ve never before congregated outside the Woodsea’s embrace, let alone within the heart of Nemea, where my mother’s influence is unimpeded by rivalrous others. Neither has Arkas thought it well and good to invite the attentions of She-Who-Reigns, before this day, which even his honoured elder cannot belay.”

A faultless cast to the pleasant lines of his face, Arkas chimed, “There is - as I only just mentioned - the matter of the Calling to be considered as well, Little Tom. The thought of squireship can be rather daunting; its passage marks the beginning of a person’s majority. And that is without considering the dangers which await us in answering. Truthfully, it is a wonder our dearest friend’s not yet spiralled.”

Monotone, it was a purposefully poor addition to Alcaeus’ admittance, and a yet poorer distraction, and not only for its invented difficulties. Still, Tomard hummed agreeably as he turned another brittle page.

“Of course, of course,” he sniffed, eyes rolling as he played along. “To be bonded with a knight is important; to try for such an honour is much the same. It’s not as if the both of you are going only because Paternus has willed Rhium’s sons and daughters of import do so, lest they face termination.” Tomard scowled at his own words, then shook his head with a sigh. “The fact remains: Arkas’ question lies unanswered. As the weakest and least learned of our merry lot, I would like to know what the prodigal son of Nemea has to say.”

“‘Is supremacy a mountain at all?’”

Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

The echoed question came from three throats, their words charging and stirring (and otherwise flavouring) the anaphore’s air with copper notes.

Despite his vexations, Alcaeus managed to round away from his watched raindrops with a smile at their mutual saying. It was a small thing, but true, for his thinking turned to those days afore, when his mother had been full of loving wisdom. She had been so beautifully kind then, her presence soothing instead of foreboding. The thought of her proximity had neither disturbed his stomach nor hastened the beating of his heart as it did now. His father had been livened and outgoing, and his sister present in all things, instead of venturing in faraway Dhule by her lonesome.

Nemea had been honoured in his mind; a force for broad wellness, instead of a place where strength alone decided that which is just and good. Greatness had not been prized above all else, while She-Who-Reigns of many names had been little more than the brightest of those stars which dappled the unseen sky. Yes, all the world had played at sensibility. Such times were passed, however.

Alcaeus’ smile bloomed with melancholic fondness.

“Mind, body, spirit, history: the soul as we know it. Supremacy means to stand above in all things.”

Blue matched gold, then night, and the son of Nemea repeated the last of his mother’s lessons to a ponderous quiet. Arkas’ smile was wan, and Tomard’s vision unfocused.

Into the silence, Alcaeus mused, “I think it must be a mountain, in some fashion – for some reason. Even if it is one we ourselves are not privy to. Supremacy would not be nearly so difficult an attainment, otherwise.” His smile slipped as he assessed Tomard’s placid mien. “Laconic, I know, but-”

“Less is more,” Tomard interrupted, though not unkindly. Arkas and Alcaues blinked in concert, and he snorted his amusement at their nonplussed reactions. “Are you not the one who said as much to me?” he asked.

“I suppose I was,” Alcaeus recalled, and there was shared laughter between them, and muffled mirth from Arkas, the elf’s smile cheered.

So settled peace for a time, as the trio resumed their waiting: watching, resting, reading.

In the distance, clouds of darkest pitch climbed over the horizon, undulous heralds all.

~ X ~

Thunder boomed alongside rain like splintered waves, seeking to soak the terrestrial plane. Cascading down leaves and ringed trees, the waters were bright with inner light, feeding well the rich soil of Archaia. From the invigorated spans of mountain-earth, low brushings and thrushings splashed back towards the sky in dissonant series, praise their choral unity. The ephemeral essences grated gracefully against one another, and were slow in their respective risings.

Not a drop of moisture threatened the anaphore, for its pillared exterior refused the storm entry. Neither did the music of the mountain or storm pierce its shell, for the marble of its make absorbed the harmony’s strength.

Alcaeus stared in rumination at the subtle doings and enchantments, his face illuminated by the flash of lightning - and in the forest’s thick, roars and howls echoed into the faux night. All but the most esoteric of the wrought works were revealed to his senses: flashes and glimmering shades were they, radiating heat or autumnal chills stretched towards the peak of Archaia in hues of crystal blue. His mother’s influence, all.

“Is it time yet?” inquired Tomard, who had not once ceased reading in the hours they had been made to wait for transportation across the Strait of Woe.

Alcaeus eyed his friend, who was to him debtor and financier, too. Over the hummering of Arkas’ snores, he listened to the staccato storming and shrugged, “Near enough. Marcus will see to us soon, and you’ll have your opportunity to enter the Merchant Guild’s foremost institution after inevitably failing the first of the trials.”

“Hmm,” came Tomard’s hummed acknowledgment, resignation and excitement lacing the long sound - and in the blinking instant thereafter, a fourth presence made itself known.

“The Brecilian awaits us,” rumbled the crisp coppering voice of Sir Marcus Altus, who was suddenly beside his charge, not a one of his long crimson hairs out of place. The firelight simmered at his speaking, and Tomard fell stiltedly from his seat to impact the floor whilst Arkas stirred from his slumber.

Unmoved by his elicited reactions, the centuries-old knight stood stalwart, looking little like his plated foemates and comrades. Dressed in armour of burnished bronze carved in echoing of his musculature, he instead seemed a stately warrior from times relegated to myth and memory. Hung from his belt, a nameless sword sat inert, pommel covered by the faintest of dustings.

Alcaeus greeted him as a hundred times before, lingering on the lonely scar which marred his form; a long cut along the length of his neck, thin and pale.

“Hello to you as well, Marcus,” he smiled - and as those hundred times, there was no response.

The son of Nemea’s stare was disappointed, for the placid figure whose joyless visage greyed the air… months since the destruction of Fairbright, and still he was unrecovered - still, his will was a broken lesser. It boded ill for the full return of riven faculties.

Indeed, there existed no simmering retort or jape to be found in the confines of Marcus’ mouth, merely the basest neutrality. Flat and pink were his lips, parted by faralong sorrow. The strong features they should have shared were softened, and the storm of his spirit pitiful. Cheeks hollowed, eyes dull, he was a stranger; a husk fueled by duty and the woman to whom his state was owed. Crystal blue hues bled into the green of his gaze, striating an alien vigour.

Not for the first time, Alcaeus felt a redoubling of his desire to lay low She-Who-Reigns. His mother might have been responsible for Marcus’ numbing (and worse besides), but the sinful circumstances behind her present self could be blamed on Them and Them alone.

‘There will be a reckoning for this world They’ve wrought.’ Aught else was unbearable. For the seacity of Fairbright and its citizens. For the lowly laid orders whose only crimes were publicly questioning the dogma they’d been led to believe. For the deprivations They had forced upon the polities of Rhium, whose cultures and histories had been twisted into anachronistic modernity. For the violation of his mother’s freedoms, and a thousand-thousand yet worthier reasons and more horrific travesties.

‘She-Who-Reigns must be cast down from Their Tower Throne.’

Vim sought to hurry the beat of Alcaeus’ breast, goldenbright and beastly in its wrathful drumming; a roaring threatened his blood - and a deep breath calmed him.

“Ho~” he exhaled to the sound of crackling thunder and bone. To his right, stood stretching wiry arms overhead, Arkas grunted knowingly. The elven youth then frittered with his robe of pearl before he came to stand beside Alcaeus.

Recovered from his fall, and rather red-faced from the sudden surprise of Marcus’ arrival, Tomard kept quiet as he mirrored the motion.

Marcus repeated: “The Brecilian awaits us,” to which Alcaeus hummed resignedly.

“Of course, cousin. Let us be off, then.”

Marcus dipped his head, and the pitiable storm held at bay by dint of his lessened will flourished dully. Clouds enveloped the quartet, lightning soaked their vision, and thunder roiled like waves upon the shores of their skin.

Blue eyes blinked open: a wall of woven mythril and durium towered overhead, silversnow make radiant despite the lack of sunlight. Below, a grey road stretched between forest and edifice, the latter lacking an entrance. The air was ever so slightly warmed and the winds diffused in this location, and the journey’s first portion concluded with the tolling of some faraway bell, bright and soft and symphonic with the storm’s western clatter.

Tomard hurled.

Wordless, unconcerned by the sick, Marcus returned to Nemea in another whorling mass of cloudstuff, greydark tickling the senses as it collapsed in on itself to reveal an emptied space. Arkas sniffed at the abrupt departure, whilst Alcaeus set Tomard back to standing with softened strength, palm patting a gentle rhythm against the middle of his back.

“Easy there, Tom. Breathe,” he advised his woozy friend. The son of Nemea frowned blamefully at himself, then sighed as he met Arkas’ searching eyes. He clicked his teeth at their humoured glint. “I forgot Tomard’s never experienced flitting before. I should have brought along medicine.” The elf snorted, grinning wryly as he looked away to survey the Brecilian, deepening Alcaeus’ frown.

“You should have reminded me, Arkas,” he reprimanded, knowing for certain his friend’s memory was impervious to fault.

“Indeed,” Tomard wretched into the wet air, gaze glassy, mouth dribbling bile. Wiping himself clean with a wet sleeve, he shook his head and bit out, “I’m thrice as useless as I might have been, now.”

Lax in the face of Alcaeus’ unenforced opinion, Arkas said to Tomard, “It’s not as if you intended to pass the first of the trials, Little Tom. This is merely an inconvenience of some extra minutes. Think of it kindly, even.” He gestured at the shorter youth’s pudge with a nod. “The lengthened walk between Lucent’s southern gates and the Brecilian will do you some good.”

Tomard sniffed at the ineffective jab, and mustered grit enough to walk. Though the doing came with difficulty, manage he did. The bearded youth wanted to idle, but doing aught besides striding in answer to the Call risked death from on high, courtesy of Paternus. The soft belling warned as much. And so, with limbs delayed in their reactions, his organs feeling as if they were clambering up his throat and past his teeth, he huffed and puffed his way past the amused elf, teeth clenched in an amiable smile.

Arkas knew as he: combat was not his arena, mercantile efforts were. Tomard had never been gifted in asserting his will through body or spirit, and so he had left those learnings to languish. But his mind - oh, his mind was another matter entirely. Allies, armours, weapons, services and secrets whose doors opened for currencies real and not - Tomard could and would find the greatest of them as he had their lessers while living on the tripartite border of Nemea, Pax, and the Woodsea, in the city of Otis.

When Alcaeus and his fellows tore Paternus from His throne, it would be with arms acquired by Tomard, inside plate and chain and leather acquired by Tomard. Not that any of those accomplishments, present, past, or future, would impact Arkas’ opinion of his fellow youth’s inability to stand for himself without aid from another.

In the dark of Tomard’s gaze, Alcaeus saw the pale shadows of those feelings form and fade away, and followed behind his stubborn and occasionally oafish friends, exasperation at Arkas’ outlook clear to see in the subtle scrunch of his brow.

They had argued before on this matter, in the fashion all and sundry did when the subject was suitably serious. Arkas had been met with defeat in every instance, and his opinion had altered in small ways to allow for perceived weakness in those he had attached himself to. Yet, the core of his beliefs remained the same: ineptitudes and fragilities were to be expunged, body, mind, and spirit. It was an aggravating notion to contest, but such was the precept upon which his people had built themselves. Such was the will of the Woodsea.

Sighing an exhalation through his nose, Alcaeus digressed his thinking.

Together in silence, the trio trudged through rain, striding over smoothened road of solid grey, away from the city of Lucent. Their destination lay in the west: the Brecilian, most honoured of forests, where Merlyn first met Artus, who would become the city’s founding ruler and foremost ally of She-Who-Reigns until his untimely death at the hands of his brother. Thickety and wild, and tall enough in all places a hundred men stacked upon one another’s shoulders could just scarcely espy over its top, there was but one viable entrance to and from its boughs. Sat at the bottom of the slope they’d been transported to, it was bordered darkly, and disallowed further perception.

Down they went, they rebels three, hair and clothing soaked, two with thoughts of furthered strength, one with want for temporary retiring. Along their storm-brightened back, below the city wall of silvered strength, fires burned, waters surged, earth upturned, and winds swirled; and from those localized phenomena came agemates and their sources of transportation: beasts of burden with wings or hooves, or both or neither, knights resplendent, and guardians bold; their multitudes appeared in fits and spurts before the unbroken whole of western Lucent.

Each arrival coincided with a bright belling: ding, ding, ding!

Familiarity eluded Alcaeus’ senses, as well as those of his companions. Through the rain and cacophony of sidled wills, they felt naught but newness. Together again, they ignored their eventual passersby and slothful shadows in favour of interlocution. Their friends and allies had either entered the Brecilien already, or were long in coming.

They discussed as much for some minutes, sighting distant agemates, observing those whose steps were unencumbered by injury. Into a dull, vast thundering that sang for unseen leagues, over the tolling which so defined the Calling’s forested trial and much besides, Tomard eventually waved his drenched silks in an unhappy gesture and grumbled, “If nothing else, let this serve as a reminder: Paternus is a wistful sort. I can see no other reason for this unbroken streak of suffered storming! Would that They were dead or dying of boredom, unconcerned with this frightfully old ritual!”

Abruptly, he grimaced, short legs forewarning of a stumble.

Booted feet sloshing, belt slick with hard rain, Alcaeus held his friend steady by the shoulder and chuckled, for Tomard was well and fine enough to complain. Shaking the weakness from his limbs, the son of Otis grunted gratefully, to which Arkas scoffed - and the Brecilian’s influence finally showed itself as they had reached halfway between it and the outermost wall of Lucent.

The forest’s shadow reached graspingly, oppression its air. Barked fingers swaying, it both beckoned invitingly and forbade through a promised danger, setting aright the hairs along the back of Alcaeus’ neck. He felt a weight upon and against his body like so much hateful sap, seeking to slow his approach. He could well see those who found their journey ended, strength faltering before the effect. Tears streamed from their eyes, and piss their lower halves. Many were the youths who clawed at the ground in an effort at continuance, despite.

“Well, this is mightily unpleasant.”

The son of Nemea snorted at Tomard’s glib tongue, as he continued unimpeded, their path tapering from sloped greystone to muddied dirt. Sodden by soaked leaves and twigs, it could fit a dozen lumbering carts, each astride, and was populated by hundreds of upright agemates. Through sheets of storming and willful spirits, Alcaeus noted the echoes of a friendly face.

“Dea was here, recently,” he shared, smile turned towards the forest.

Arkas sensed further ahead, and barked a songful laugh. “Aye, and she’s currently kicking in the teeth of some poor boy, that cousin mine. Come, let us hurry and bring her along!” The elf awayed with his words, like the winds whipping against his back. Featherlight against the ground were his steps, and swift as any whip was his form.

Arkas was a blur of golden glee, and Alcaeus shook his head. Trouble will have been since stirred when he joined his friends. But such was minutes more from the present. For now, there was Tomard to accompany - and accompany he did. And when his friend could go no further, he wished him well on his return.

Facing Lucent, sandals caked with mud, Tomard smiled pleasantly. The Brecilian’s influence was lighter by half, for his intent was one of departure. “Fortunes guide you as well, Alcaeus,” he said, voice brightened by a hobbling wince. “I do believe you’ll need it.” Then he was walking, unbowed.

Blue eyes electric and far in their focus, Alcaeus regarded the way forward: there were perhaps another hundred steps between him and the Brecilian proper. Here, for the first time, he could properly perceive the fullness of the forest’s disdain.

Despite his neutral view of the Calling’s purpose, Alcaeus recognized the historic trial’s worth. More than a simple tool by which worthy pages were tested, there existed a promise of broadened perspective within. A good - or great - guarantee, as an abundance of such lessons was needed.

Yes, for a time he had been afeared it might fail to spur him onwards. However, the derision and pressed-upon presence set to rest his worry. No faltering failure was there in the might of the Brecilian. The forest had simply waited before acting against his person.

As an avalanche, the shadowed boughs rained holistic dismay upon the son of Nemea, shadows thickening against his person. Sickness sought his stomach, and doubt his thoughts. Fear gripped his heart, faint as the measliest of phantoms.

Strides strong, Alcaeus pressed forward with nary a pause. He paid little notice to agemates since passed or unarrived, for they were not as he and those he called friends in striven excellence. Instead, he cast his focus upon the Brecilian proper, where long limbs topped the path in arching fashion, acting the gate to a world of forested pitch. Below, shards and hunks of wooden limbs could be seen. They were shaped as daggers and swords, shields and other such knightly weapons; and as they passed into the Brecilian, none failed to choose one or a multitude of the piled things, echoing Artus of long departed afore.

For his part, Alcaeus hefted a spear of sorts; a crude thing to whom piercing and severing were unnatural. It felt strong in his hands and was stained by lightning. It would be enough.

Prepared for the Calling’s next trial, the son of Nemea breathed in time with a thundering.

In-

And.

-out, before striding into the darkness.

Birdsong greeted him.

~