#ranirus

A rainy night under one umbrella~

Featuring my K’ajia and @embersign​s Ranirus. Open full image to remove the grain!

Sweat beaded across Nivi's brow as she planted the last of her saplings for the day. Dawn was beginning to rise over the Shroud's canopy though it was hard to tell this deep into its wood; songbirds are what gave it away, only certain ones sang at this particular time of day. The thicker the forest got the various other means you learned to tell time, most commonly through bird or insect song, sometimes by what flowers were blooming or what frons were curled upon themselves. 

Looking around at the desolate, burnt ground she could still make out where certain tents stood and the remains of canopy beds that had fallen from their host branches. Her memories were still hazy of this place she once called home. 'Home' felt like a dirty word when standing in this once-Keeper village. 

Guilt gnawed on her insides as she peered at every little pile of disturbed earth. Each spot filled with a tree sapling or a flower sprout. Each in vague memory of someone she was certain she once knew but were a shade in her mind; sometimes only a fur pattern, tail shape, eye color, or assigned job. All of them a life her brother had claimed. All of them apart of something monstrous and terrible and yet.. they were who she had come to know as sisters. As her tribe.

Did Ranirus visit here? Would he know what these plants meant? Would he think it just some random person of the shroud trying to bring life to burnt grounds or recognize them as grave markers?

She wasn't sure she should even care enough to bring life back to this place and yet some part of her nagged that it must be done. That lingering spirits filled with spite might finally find rest in knowing at least one person remembered who they were. "If you can even call it a memory.." She murmured. 

Even with that flood of images from her past slapping her in the face much of it still felt just out of her grasp. Like recognizing a face but never their name nor voice. Knowing that you know them but you're not sure from where or if they were a friend or someone who upset you. 

This tribe had taken her from her father.. had done terrible things to her brother- She herself remembered vaguely being there and helping in the hunt. She hadn't known he was kin at the time. Hadn't known what she was doing was wrong, the feeling of comradery in a hunt had been exhilarating and removed any true doubt from her mind. Yet it felt like she was reflecting back on a stranger; how had she not seen her past deeds for what they were? Terrible. Horrifying. Immoral. Murderous. The culling of innocent lives simply for being different, simply because she was told to. 

Cupping her hand over the small plant and she gave it a bit of aetherical encouragement. She could feel it root without having to actually physically witness it, drawing her fingers away and rising to her feet. The long fluff of her tail curled inward and wrapped around her ankle. 

These people who used to be her tribe did not deserve forgiveness, she didn't deserve it either.. but they at least deserved peace. They were free from whatever hatred they harbored to make them do the things they did. The things she had done. 

Staring down at earth-covered hands Nivi felt her body grow heavy with exhaustion. Mud turned crimson, thick and congealed as blood from a kill long slain, it dripped down her apron and coated her bare feet. She stared, the warmth familiar and unnerving. Pale hands began to tremble as indigo eyes widened in alarm. "This is not real." She whispered as the scent of copper filled her nose. "Not real!" The woman shrieked, hands shaking vigorously outward to fling the blood off of her. 

Mud was mud once more. Nivi's body shook like a leaf struggling to stay attached to its tree in late autumn; this was the third incident in the last month. Swallowing hard she turned from the marred, ghostly remains of her tribe and began a slow, listless walk toward a familiar shrine. Rest. She just needed rest, that's all. The shrine would provide her protection while she lay her head down for a little while, she had already gathered edible mushrooms and a few shiny rocks to give as an offering. The shrine would give her reprieve... she hoped. 

It starts when the threads lead to nothing. The channels weave into the pit of something, but what is it? Breath hitches; the blank space remains. Keloch doesn't have much time to wonder before he instinctively draws his hand away from Erden's wretched mouth. A mouth that can only smile and sputter the last words of a dying man, so close-- and yet..

                         "Wait."

He looks to Raphael carefully, gold meeting blue, then to the sword already beginning to saw into Erden's scaled throat. "I can't feel anything."  Nothing at all. Emptiness. A vastness. He knows this feeling.  The Halfblood yields to the request with measured curiosity. The pair were meant to bleed the Uyagir out and take everything that remains, but Keloch's aetherical senses speak otherwise. It was like tapping into a dry land for water and there is no oasis in sight. How? A wild look spares to the blackened veins clutching the center of Erden's chest, they roil beneath - alive, like some kind of creature. Parasite.

Another heartbeat closes in; the door opens and closes in a rush of excitement. Anxiety. Its Duroxas. Of course it is. Keloch can see he's already focused on the bound Erden,  "BOTH OF YOU-- GET BACK FROM HIM!"  The shout carries in the chambered space, vibrating into his horns something awful. His own chest swells with sudden seething frustrations as realization sets in to the words that spew from the red skinned man. Something must have been done to Erden, their prisoner, THEIR kill.

Words exchange between the onlookers.  He barely registers them; warnings, explanations, a compound of voices resulting in a circle of blame. Pity, annoyances. At one point, there's a distinct scent of burning flesh as Raphael manages to skewer Erden's palm with a smoldering hot poker.

Duro's maddening words suddenly cut into the brink of the Buduga's patience, rattling a familiar hunger, "His aether is rotted."

              That can't be.

              All of this for nothing?

              What about Seiun?

              ---It wasn't yours to take.

Golden eyes sanction to the Xaela who still lays prone, shackled to table. With a blink, Keloch loses time - already at the side of the table in a magnetic pull. Vindi is at his flank, Raphael across the pitiful display. The gleam of a dagger snaps Keloch's attention swiftly to the blood that now flows from Erden's mouth as the Ishgardian reaps through flesh, slicing the owner's tongue clean out. He inhales sharply and doesn't blink twice, so wholly transfixed that Vindi's attempt to distract bids no reaction.

                       Salt and metal. Salt and metal.

The heavy scent of the gore comes washing through in a surf of Erden's whimpers and gurglings as someone lifts those chained restraints. Its only when the prisoner sits up, does it cue an instinct from the depths of the Buduga. For the throat -- tear it out -- he grabs again, pinning Erden down with enough force to make his head bounce against wood. The pain doesn't come, not even when Erden fights back and claws into his sleeves through the layers of fabric in pathetic instinct.

                     "Keloch. It's done." Raphael's voice, ubiquitous ringing.

                                           It wasn't yours to take.

                                     There has to be something left.

                                                     "Keloch."

Another slam of skull to the table. There's a grotesque crack of teeth clacking together in finality and Erden goes dark in a slump of weight.

                                     It wasn't yours to take!

Taking in air burns his lungs, as if he'd forgotten to actually breathe through the fine lines of the inbetween. Hands are at his horns suddenly, Raphael's hands, and the Xaela's eyes grow wide while the weight as the Isghardian pulls them close to face level. Don't look, don't look. Something is uttered, but all Keloch can hear -- feel, are the vibrations and the weight of the tone that transcends normal signals.

Wordlessly, he follows. The tethered hand is squeezed as they reach the tide, wading into the shallows ankle deep across the beach. Keloch can only seethe at the very serenity of the water, the way it pulls back and forth, endless cycling of soft waves crashing in a buzz to his horns. But there's a drumming there, louder than ever, louder than the hearts in range thumping their rhythmic chorus. It's so much that he doesn't even feel armor being peeled away, pauldrons lifted like a burden,  or the coaxing feather-light touches of guidance.

None of it matters.

Then a pulse fluctuates; familiar aether - so thin it might break apart between them before it reaches the center. Keloch turns to stare down at Raphael who bids whispers, ushering to dip into the wading tides at their feet. It's cold. But there's that nagging again, those terrible urges, they have him obeying but only to snatch massive hands around the Isghardian's neck.

Calm. Those eyes were calm, knowing.. any other time they might have infuriated him. The chill of the ocean creeps to the giant's wrists with pale salted hands. Keloch just looks harder, focusing to find the face through the haze, anchoring once he feels the throat's pulse inching delicately beneath heavy palms. It would be so easy to just . . .

                   now, now, now---!

The call is loud, burning through Keloch's skin and bone in the wasteland of his aetherpool. So empty, he's starving. His teeth bare, glinting dangerously in the dimming sun of the horizon.

                   So easy, so easy.

Sun looks to meet moon again in a drawn gaze, to where a memory and melody sings. It digs its way to the surface of that snarling expression that's inches away from ripping chunks from Raphael's face. But just like that, Keloch's shoulders ease and fingers drift from that neck and massive giant surrenders into the Halfblood's chest. Deep breaths; Keloch gasps for air that was far from stolen, but yearned for in the struggle. It was too close for comfort.

Mild panic hangs in a soft noise, catching into his throat as Raphael cups his face in his hands, lifting. Of course, of course he doesn't tear away and their foreheads meet in this odd unspoken gesture.  But what had he done? What did he almost just fucking do? The questions manifesting mentally abruptly end when Duroxas' presence is felt nearby. Foreboding.

"Do you have any of those potions, Duro. Or crystals."

             "What sort -- aether..?"

                            "Or-- even your own would help. Aether."

Don't do this. Bad idea. You fucking dumbass. The Buduga's eyes widen to saucers. But Duroxas approaches and sits within arms reach, all in offering. Dinner bells. It was all that was needed for the calm to recede, the world 's on fire again - smoldering with aether that rips away at the red skinned Xaela, whose now squared on his spine and eating sand with face. A claim lays across their throat with claws biting into darkened scale, to the flesh; it seems to be a theme here - but a working one at that.  

Drowning, Keloch could be drowning and still it isn't enough. Never enough. The pull he takes from the mage is terrible, raking away sublime levels of magic in a vortex that seems endless. Runes burn white, shining past the blue hue across Keloch's dark skin. Now there's a familiar hand at the nape of his neck, pressing with cooled committment, -- tap, tap, tap--  like rapping at a door.

          The light seeps in through the cracks, another channel is opened.

“Just a little more.” It's Raphael again, coaxing. But it doesn't take much to convince a beast to keep biting when it's teeth were lodged so deeply to begin with. However, the magic suddenly seems insignificant as something else catches the Buduga's senses. It's a scent he's oh-so familair with, surging all attention away from Duroxas to the shining beacon of magics just a few breaths away.  Who was it--?  Vindi? No. The face didn't matter. All that was left was the hunger.

                          “Keloch, how are you feeling?”                            The Halfblood inquires almost innocently.

Again, he bares his teeth – finding footing in the sand in a rise of posture. Unblinking, the Xaela turns to what he perceives as nothing but a festering junction of primordial fuel. The implication sets in the taut square of his shoulders of what he would do next. “Empty.”

Pale fingers grab for his face, inching across the scales, “We will go hunting.” A promise, a plea maybe from Raphael. But Keloch – he can't hear it and tears away in favor for lunging across the sands. To that beacon, the air thickens with potent magics – A FEAST. His bones and blood sing for it, driving him forward in blinding speeds. But a few feet is all that Keloch manages before a noise from behind catches his horns – a splash, a thud, Raphael’s yell strangles loose before the quiet.

                                      He jerks his head to look back                                                               & all goes dark.

                                                 ‘ What is it like being a tool of fate? ’

Silver eyes locked firmly to a knot in the wood pattern above him, one hand idly petting through Ranirus’ hair and the other held skyward, fingers trying to trace the pattern in the wood grain even from a distance. The spotted Miqo’te lay comfortably sprawled across his bare chest, calming breaths causing his body to rise and fall; if he was asleep or just as spaced out Thaldrin couldn’t be sure. At some point the Thaldrin’s shirt had been lost and he wasn’t entirely sure when but given his company he didn’t mind. Nothing lewd or passionate came of it, just the soft feel of Ran’s hair and tail against his skin and the comfort of warmth. 

He could still feel the substance the two had shared coursing through him and it was blissful. All worries and frustrations gone, and all focus was on how light he felt, how comforted he was by the Keeper atop him, how exciting and wonderful this new home and new beginning was. All from a little blue vial. 

At least that’s how he felt for a long while until the glint of his sapphire ring caught is attention. “…Thaldrin?” He breathed the name in a whisper, sound barely passing his lips.

‘Yes?’ The low thrum of a voice echoed in his mind, both heard and unheard at the same time. 

He hadn’t entirely expected anyone to answer him back, glowing silver orbs blinking owlishly up at the ceiling. “I don’t want to hurt them.”

‘So then don’t… but it’s never been that simple for you, has it, Snuffles?’ Came the heady sigh. 

”I thought I could escape having the cards stacked against me. I’ve made amends. Duroxas and I both have… Has he told them? Why would he tell them? Surely he wishes to escape his deeds too.”

‘If there is anything that will always be the same for us, Snuffles, it is that nothing will ever be in our favor. Such is the way of anyone who has forsaken the Goddess. We have to pave the way on our own.’

“What sort of advice is that?” He whispered with a huff, trying to remain quiet enough to not disturb the resting prophet. “Are you telling me I –should- do something to prove myself?”

‘I am saying to do nothing would maintain exactly where we are now.’

“That’s not fair. We shouldn’t have to start six feet under. We should start on the same grounds as he started. His family started it- Not us. Not me. How come I’m being punished again for something that these people know nothing about? All because they simply don’t trust me? For what reason? This is supposed to be a new start.” His words grew louder, more heated. 

All at once panic set in, as if finally hearing himself speak outloud- Speak to his other self. He fell still, heartbeat racing as his breathing grew difficult, chest tightening and goosebumps rising. No. No, no. He was a singular person. He was both Thaldrin and Snuffles; there were no two. Not anymore. Just one. Just Thaldrin Imbertain. This had to be the Blue- had to be the come-down. 

‘People like us... like you- You don’t get to start from the beginning.’

Trembling fingers felt a sudden warmth and he jumped, staring at the olive-brown hand that gripped his hands. Ranirus hadn’t even lifted his head, clawed digits guiding Thaldrin’s hands back atop his head to his ears; the Elezen had stopped petting them at some point. With a purr and a gentle nuzzle to softer part Thaldrin’s stomach the Miqo’te shifted his position to rest facing another direction. A light blush rose to his cheeks and he let out a breath he hadn’t known he’d been holding. 

Kiss? Kisses?? Big ol’ smoochos???