#ash was giving incredibly strong energy of a friend who peer pressures you into helping them do something that you know in your gut WILL

[nrth-wind-a]

@flamekeeperbellroc​ - Christmas Gift!

Drabble Below Cut!

Prompt: First meetings --

It begins, as everything does with them, with an eruption.

Molten rock sparks and begins to concave, as it swirls in its pit, pressure and heat building to capacity. The hot land around the full-to-bursting mountain quakes, and splits in places, as something gives, and earth explodes outward, flinging with it, smoke and a figure in it.

They awaken halfway through their arc. A breath is sucked in, a gasp, which is all black ash and acrid gas, but it does not hurt them. They feel invigorated.

Their descent begins, and they hurtle toward the heated surface of their new dwelling place— it is exclusively theirs— but before they impact, they throw their hands out. Flame jets from them, and the opposing force is so strong that they rocket into the air once more. When they land, it is islands over, and the crater they create rolls through the ground, expanding until it is enormous and deep. And there, in the center, steam is pouring from them, as they stand to their sum height.

They look down. They can see. They can see themself. Their hands, their fingers, curling with the sensation of… rather, simply with sensation. There are nerves, and veins, and they burn white hot with energy. The planet on which they walk, the dirt between their toes, is barely older than them— they can feel that. How can they feel that?

They marvel a moment longer at their flesh and sinew, before they follow the curiosities of their mind, and look up. There is no reason not to indulge, not to follow whimsy.

They laugh softly, and oh, their voice feels like the way magma moves, thick, but liquid, changeable. Slick.

They will come to learn that their emotions do the same, but not yet. There is no cause for any emotion but joyous anticipation, for now.

For, now, they are alive.

—

Across the planet, and across time, ice begins to crack.

—

Born a number of moons apart, and entirely unaware of the other, Mage Wind and Mage Fire begin to go about the processes that echo in their heads, left there perhaps by ancients that seek to rise again. Ancients that are buried at the heart of a planet, that had roamed until they could no more. Ancients that sought champions.

Two of the three had been completed, but a triangle is no triangle without three points, three sides.

Three magics.

And the first magics will be formed from threes.

Mage Wood will come soon. She is not ready, yet. She must be connected to everything the other two are not, and thus, she must grow; her roots must pulse to the crust of the land and back to the core again, before she will be ready to carry what she must.

In the meantime, two opposites must first become complements. It will not do otherwise. Nothing will do otherwise.

—

Bellroc— that is their name, was the first word from their lips, and they are not sure how this came to be, but they do not believe it is the most important question on their mind because the one that is important is— Bellroc must go on a search — where, and who, is the new one?

They know nothing but that his dominion is in the North; the part of the planet they’d avoided previously. It is cold. It extinguishes them, makes them feel sluggish and vulnerable. They will go, though. Because they must. They know it.

They know that they are to bolster the power that flows through their veins, and they know that they are lonely. They know that he may be, too, if they wait too long. They also know that he will be seeking to grow in his own arcana as well, and what better way to do that than to do it together?

They’d always suspected that they weren’t meant to have been alone at their formation, but had held no evidence of this, until they’d felt something… join them. Until they’d felt him.

They’d felt a soul solidify into life, had felt the gale forces of all the winds on earth whip past them, going north, and moments later, they’d felt a shift in the very plane of magic itself.

So they followed the wind, flew north themself, and ignored the way the cold seeped between their feathers, and rose the hairs on the back of their neck. They wanted to find—

An aura that was utterly freezing washed over them, as their feet singed snow, when they landed. They were close.

Too close, it already felt like, as they heated their hands and blew into them, letting warmth caress their face. They hated having to expend magic while it was still so new to them, but they’d had yet to truly overextend with even the greatest displays of power they had, so perhaps they were simply underestimating themself. They weren’t sure. Everything was so new.

They tried to project a non-threatening personage, for they did not know how this… North Wind would react to their flame and sparks and heat.

Not well, would be their immediate next thought, as they felt a gale force stronger than anything that could comfortably be passed off as natural whip across them, forcing them to throw up their hands in front of their face to interrupt the flow, so that they could get air into their lungs. They stood their ground despite this, burying their feet into the snow, heating enough that they could melt ankle deep in it, get a stronger foothold.

“Who are you, and what are you doing here?” A voice creaked through the wind, winding around them in a way that made it impossible to tell its direction of origin.

“I am Bellroc, Keeper of the Eternal Flame, and you—… you are like me. You are— we are— the first. The first on this planet. The first… thing that I’ve met. And you’re like me.” Their voice did not waver, but was gentle, soothing, though it shifted.

It must not have alarmed him, however, as a curious head appeared from behind a snowbank, and ah, he was much closer than they’d thought. Clever thing. He’d practically stood in front of them.

He approached slowly, almost… not afraid, really. Warily, perhaps. The way one approaches when danger is not immediately obvious, but could be. Or, if they thought it could be. Bellroc meant the stranger no harm.

As if they could hurt him anyway. His gaze was disarming, piercing them in a way that sent their chest feeling wild and open. There he is. They thought. A fellow. A friend.

His eyes raked up and down, and then back up again, to meet theirs. He tilted his head, and they had to resist the urge to copy him, to do to him what he was doing to them. They stamped on the idea, instead taking the plunge, deciding that any more caution would stall them longer.

“What is your name? Do you know it?”

He recoiled for half a second, curling in on himself, but after what was written across his face a self-admonition, he seemed to unfold again, taking another step forward. They were now close enough that their arms could likely touch in the middle, as their peer’s voice sounded again; it still sounded like wind, but was less overwhelming and deafening, and instead washed over them like an easy breeze. “Skrael. I am called Skrael. Of… of the North Wind.”

Bellroc felt a smile bloom before they could nip its bud, “Skrael.” They repeated. “This is… good. Thank you for telling me. I—”

“You said you were like me.” He blurted, to their surprise.

They blinked, and while he seemed to regret his question, they couldn’t help but find it… incredible, to be interrupted. To have someone who could interrupt them. They almost wanted to ask him to do it again.

“I did.” They said, choosing caution first. They couldn’t get ahead of themself. They barely knew him.

Yet… the magic that passed between them… there was little they knew about him in the factual sense, yes. But, it rather seemed that their intuition was much more educated. They didn’t know, yet, things like the extent of his power, or what he dreamed about, or how his footfalls sounded. But they knew that, though they could hardly call him familiar by information, something about him was drawing on their chest, reassuring them that they would, someday.

“Can you— are you—” Skrael faltered on his words, seeming as though he were grasping for something that was just out of reach of his own head.

“Arcane?” They finished for him.

He nodded, and something warmed in Bellroc’s chest that they couldn’t entirely attribute to their magic. They’d guessed his words correctly.

“Yes. I am. Would you like to see?”

His nod was so rapid and enthusiastic despite himself, but it only endeared him to them further.

They couldn’t resist a private smirk beneath their mask, eager for the chance to get a real, genuine reaction at the things they’d been learning to do.

A flash and some golden runes scrawled into the very air itself later, they were juggling flame between their fingers, growing it to toss from hand to hand. They waited, watching him admire the thing, preening at his quiet noise of wonder.

After they gestured for him to step backward a bit, they shot him a wink, and then hurled the ball into the sky. It streaked upward, leaving red and orange in its wake, before it reached a certain point in the air, and shed its containment, exploding outward in a show of sparks and radiance.

The look that Skrael gave them made them feel like they could soar.

“I… cannot do that. But— I can do—” Skrael paused, to inhale and exhale, readying himself.

Mere hours old, Skrael’s power would need growing. But it was something that Bellroc couldn’t do, the way he couldn’t create flame.

With a look of concentration, and a determination that waved off of him strong enough for Bellroc to feel, a flurry of ice and wind expelled from his hands, which he wound around them in a pretty dance; it was so intricate, and so different from what they’d grown used to, that they even forgot how much they hated cold, because to witness his ability, young as it was, felt like the greatest luck they’d ever stumbled into.

“Incredible…” They breathed, and Skrael ducked his head shyly.

A smile was etched into his face, however. “It is nothing yet. There is… a pull. This is only the beginning, I think.”

They nodded, and, while they knew what his intent had been with the words, it felt as if there was a second, beneath it, as they smiled back at him, knowingly, “Skrael… I think you are right.”

#flamekeeperbellroc #christmas 2020 rpc gifts #okay to rb!