The air burned. Cinder spinning in the air, combusting. A storm of ash carrying the wails of a village being raided by men unknown to most of them.. A man, in his early-midlife, stood coughing. His eyes were closed as he was bent over. Behind him was a home of brick and timber on its way to cinder. Wood beams for the studs* and joists* crumpling apart onto themselves, spreading ash outwards with a scorching gust.
He rose, letting out a scream. The ground shook, then it hummed like that of a tremor of a falling tree. All of the ash dropped like gravel sinking into water. The man looked around, the need to kill radiating off of him to the point where no man could not notice it even from a blurred glance. A noise came to his ears, one that he knew full well of. A horse in a charge, the rattle of metal came with it’s chain barding*, trinkets lashed* onto it’s flanks.
He turned with a step towards the charging horseman. He took another, his eyes registering the man. A spellsword, dedicated to the art of flames by the evidence and dress. A curious thought spiking quietly of why a pyromagister would delve so low to raiding, on their stronghold no less. This would be a place for a Smitter
Not caring for the abnormality in the very much obvious and dire emergency he had found himself, he exhaled, mentally sharpening his resolve to make sure such a thing would end in one way. Their death by his will. He pulled the fallen, muddy ash off the road as a storm, the residue water steaming and mistying into a fog around the middle aged man. Next thing to defy the sciences were the stones of the once-affolunat village, racing down the avenue like greyhounds on the tail of a deer buck.
The horse that were in the way of such stones didnt live long, only remembering the agony of feeling its legs becoming a pink mist. The rider of the unfortunate beast did not have the luxury of such a short agony. For it was only his legs that were eradicated, his torso sharing only a part of the torture and his skull was not crushed by the instinctive mercy that the Earthshaker held. Not after the raid which they found themselves in.
The middle aged man, now exposing himself as one those who bent the very grounds and mountains to their greater will, lifted his head, feeling the airs and heat touch his senses as he did something many other people of the arts thought his kind could do. The Earthshaker grabbed the entire “isness” of the roads, held the ashes in the vortex as they swayed. The feeling the same way one might try to have a dust-feather land on one’s palm. Then he held his breath.
Then the man grabbed all of the heat in the clay bricks, stones and, with some success with the daub* of the houses. Then he pulled it in. His hair rose to attention like quills of a porcupine, only drooping minutely with the beat of his active heart. The Earthshaker open his jaw and let out a deep throated yell, and the earth obeyed his demands.
Ash in the entire town went from red hot to the dead grey of its future self, with no heat residue on it. Raiders through the streets found themselves now in the similar situation that the horse-back pyromagister found himself. Alive, but in pain a person would not normally experience in their livelihoods with their ability to walk forever stricken from possibilities,if they get out of the dire consequences of sacking a town that homed an Earthshaker that is…
With the power of the magic the Earthshaker pulled, the yell turned into short screams of pain which were nature’s retribution of defying her and the sciences’ wills. But he kept silent after a round of the screams, satisfied the men he promised to murder were almost certainly in his grasp.
While taking in deep gasps, the exhausted Earthshaker walked over to the raider who tried to charge at him. The standing man took a kick to the defiler square in the face, causing a thunk and a shock to go through the man’s own leg. In a raspy voice the man quietly commented to himself how he should have kept up the morning stretches as well as a habit of exercises. “If I did, i would have been so out of breath already, '' the man thought to himself.
Groaning of the laying man brought the earthshaker back to the reality, along with his lungs convulsing in a coughing fit that felt more like they were trying to separate from the earthshaker’s body. Looking down, the earthshaker grabbed the hood and yanked the hood back, the actual motion being anti-climatic in the earthshaker’s opinion. He then squinted his eyes as he studied the exposed face.
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The face shown was one the earthshaker knew damn well. “Suurik?” the man gasped, naming the person he was looking at. He fell back, the shock robbing him of the rage-fueled strength the earthshaker was powered by. His shock, however, did not get a verbal response. Anger sapped away the little ability Suurik had to speak, the greater portions of his speaking poweress being pulled away by the pure pain of lacking anything below the pelvis.
The eyes of pyromagister Suurik said it all however. Filled with spiteful retribution, the anger manifesting ugly ghastly green smoke from the outer tips of the man’s eyes. A tipoff of the power which the magister had of the magical arts.
The earthshaker made a cruel laugh, mockery and reciprocated resentment in the noise. The earth bowed up, placing the crippled pyromagister as the earth magician slammed his shin into the pyromagister’s skull. The earth shaker squat down to become eye-level with Suurik, holding the crippled man’s hair to keep the eye contact. “You filthy ass of a bastard’s right; desiccated testicle. You really are this selfish? Are you still on your vendetta about Samaj? Even though that good man already died for your apathetic country?” the man asked. Suurik just glared back, the grim smoke spurting out in larger gloomy plumes. Bloody streams covering his jaw as he hacked out blood. The earthbender just squinted, it was about Samaj. The man shook his head as the further verification made him further irritate. Suurik decided to do this decades after good Samaj died.
“Narcissistic as well, I didn't know I should have held you in lower regards than I already did” the middle aged man said, unable to find the right words to express the true depths of his despite. So instead, he just mentally tugged one of the street cobblestones to drop on Suurik’s head. Taking him away from the mortal plane .
Standing up, the man’s hair fell back to its resting spot, sporadically spread out against his backside,. It was the colors that of a limestone. Matte* yellow with inconsistent spottings of grey,black and streakings of red. Coughing a bit, the earth shaker dusted his clothes off in a callously casual manner. Small chimes rattled out from his overshirt, looking down he pinched a spot, some of the chain mail hidden underneath the shirt clumping up.
Still wondering on why one of his friends went with a triangular mail instead of the normal looped still bothered him, even if it was just a small nag at the back of his head that could be heard over the current ruckus. “We both thought moving out here would handle it.” the man said to himself. Then once again getting back to the previous ruckus, he heard something…was that a?
It was! It was a wail that came from eight paces behind the earthshaker… “Ezemn!” he thought to himself, his heart sinking as fast as a rock does from a bridge. The man turned around and rushed towards his friend, looking for him with both his mental sight and his physical eyesight. The bond of such a friend couldn't be given up easily, not the one the two men had made through decades and decades. But his friend, Ezemn, wouldnt have left his crown jewel in the road, his child. No father would in such a state as the village was in now. The earthbender looked down, focusing on the kid who wailed in the way you could only hear in those worn torn countries deprived of the calmness of a civilization.
The child, no more than six, grasping the stomach of a man who had a figure that would make oxen become embarrassed of their physique, when the man was alive. But now, now he looked like someone’s unartisicly gorey rendition of a porcupine-snake chimaera. Long arrows sprouting out of him, arms nowhere to be seen near him. His legs bound and lashed where an actual whipping boy would go pale by just looking.
“By the gods and all that is praised”
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Skirm's (not) seriously scientific sassy glossary
Studs: (you <3) wooden beams that bear the weight of a structure, going from the “floor” to the “ceiling”
Joists: the supports beams for a floor or a ceiling
Barding: horse armor, OR a decorative cover. (I mean armor for this entry
Lashed: to have something tied with cord or string
Daub: an old construction mixture of animal shit, clay, sand and soil with straw.
Matte: not to be reflective. Like a typical tree’s bark. The opposite would be glossy, which is like a clear stream’s or calm pool’s surface. (hair tends to be in the glossy-satin range( satin is basically the halfway of glossy and matte))