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Race: Saurian

Bloodline Powers: Strength, Rending, Emberbreath

Greater Mysteries: Fire (Noble) 3, Wind (Noble) 1

Lesser Mysteries: Heat 4, Oxygen 4, Embers 4, Pressure 4, Current/Flow 4

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Sam closed his eyes and exhaled, cutting off excess stimuli that were cluttering his senses. He reached out with his mind, touching the mystery of air, and information rushed into him like a stiff gust of wind.

Suddenly he could feel an expanding sphere of air around him. Every pebble, animal and blade of grass jumped into focus, a thousand silhouettes assaulting him all at once.

He gritted his teeth, exhaling once again as he tried to focus his search further. Samazzar sifted through the outlines in his head, discarding the plants and landscape until he only held the images of objects that could possibly be animals in his head.

A shift in Sam’s focus overlaid his understanding of heat onto the landscape. The black and white landscape marked by the absence of wind erupted into a rich display of reds and oranges. He turned out a number of the colder objects, narrowing his attention until he was only observing nearby living creatures.

He opened his eyes, pointing halfway up one of the valley’s nearby walls. Behind a boulder, the air ran over a pair of two smooth oval that glowed with significantly more heat than the surrounding rock.

“I think there are two behind the sandstone outcropping,” He said, squinting into the morning light. “Remember the plan.”

“I use my bloodline power to visually confirm the scarabs and call the target out to the two of you,” Takkla responded. “Once I have an angle on the bugs, I find a place to land and keep an eye on them while you both approach.”

“And then I don’t get to use my axe,” Dussok said grumpily.

“Correct,” Samazzar responded with a nod. “The reward is for intact scarab shells, and I have no doubt that your axe would shatter them in a single blow. We don’t get anything for a splattered scarab.”

“And that’s why Dussok and I will be helping you with your fire, little dragon,” Takkla replied, glaring at Dussok. “I will be in charge of raising the oxygen levels around the scarab and Dussok will superheat the flame.

“Great,” Sam said cheerfully. “And with any luck we’ll flash cook the scarab before it can escape. Even if Takkla can sort of fly, I’m not keen on chasing these things all over the valley, especially because we don’t know if there’s anything big and dangerous hiding around here.”

Dussok grumbled something incomprehensible as he kicked one of the nearby rocks. He looked away from the two of them, muttering quietly to himself.

“I still want a chance to use my axe.”

“Don’t worry,” Samazzar responded with a quick wink and a slap on the big saurian’s shoulder. “I’ll find us a mission where you can really swing it around. Something with plenty of monsters for you to hack apart.”

Takkla just rolled her eyes and scrambled toward the rocky incline of the valley’s wall. It wasn’t so steep that Sam or Dussok couldn’t climb it, but at the same time, the uneven and rocky ground would be difficult and slow going. They would have no choice to drop to all fours at points in order to continue their ascent.

A pang of jealously filled Samazzar’s heart as the ghostly image of a pair of wings sprouted from Takkla’s back. She sprang into the air, the phantom wings pumping once before she landed atop a boulder. Takkla paused for a moment, cocking her head to the side as she surveyed her rock strewn path.

When she started moving again, it was at a slow jog, using her keen eyesight to pick a careful path filled switchbacks up the side of the valley. After about forty-five seconds, she had to use her wings once more, but in a little under two minutes, Takkla came to a pause.

She scrambled atop a large rock. Even from a distance, Samazzar could see her chest pumping from exertion. Takkla reached up, tapping the scales just under her right eye before pointing in the direction where he had sensed the scarabs. Then she raised her hand holding up two fingers.

Sam smiled at Dussok, flashing his sharp teeth at his sibling. His sibling grumbled slightly as he slipped his axe into the sheath made of cave rat leather that was strapped across his back.

“That sure looks like confirmation to me,” Samazzar said brightly. “Are you ready to go and hunt some bugs?”

“I’m ready to help you hunt some bugs,” Dussok corrected, lacing his fingers together and stretching his arms out. The big saurian’s joints popped audibly as he titled his head to the left and the right, limbering himself up for the climb to come.

“As I understand it,” he continued, “I will be operating in a supporting role while you do the actual fighting.”

“Takkla still has a spare net,” Sam offered. “We can’t harm the scarabs’ shells, but you can help by throwing a weighted net over them if they try to escape. As long as the bugs can’t open their wings, I doubt they’re going anywhere.”

“No,” Dussok replied. “As much as I hate to see Takkla working unsupported, that is her skillset not mine. I can throw a net further than her, but I doubt I’ll manage to catch anything other than a boulder.”

“Maybe a log or a bush,” he amended, the ghost of a smile playing across his muzzle. “Regardless, anything I catch won’t sell for much.”

Samazzar grinned at his sibling before turning back toward the side of the valley. He began jogging to the right, making sure to keep the boulder where the scarabs had been sighted between him and Takkla.

Then, he broke into a run, sprinting at the sloped dirt and rock. Sam jumped, smiling for a moment as the air flowed past him before his chest slammed into a wall of stone. He tapped into his bloodline, letting the magic flow down his limbs and into the talons that sprouted from his fingers.

They dug furrows in the sandstone, carving out handholds. His feet skittered against the tan rock for a second before they found purchase as well. Sam reached up with his right hand, shaving away at the stone to create another grip.

As he worked, Dussok jumped past him, massive hamstrings propelling him to the lip of the rock face. The entire incline shook as he slammed against it, but the big Saurian managed to grip the edge. With a deep grunt, he pulled himself over the top while Samazzar began making his second handhold.

A couple of seconds later, a big scaled hand filled his vision as Dussok reached down. Sam swung his free arm over, gripping the offered appendage.

Dussok exhaled, the muscles in his arm bunching up. Then, Sam felt himself lifting into the air. He grabbed onto the edge of the stone wall with his left arm, and added his strength to the effort.

After a moment of grunting and exertion he found himself face first on the top of the outcropping beside Dussok. Samazzar’s scales had protected him from the worst of the scrapes, but from the soreness in his shoulders, he could tell that he was going to be stiff the following morning.

“You know Dussok,” Sam said quietly as scrambled up onto his hands and knees. “I’m usually pretty jealous of Takkla’s ability to fly, but I don’t think I’ve ever been as envious as I am today.”

“She can fly, you can breathe fire,” the big saurian replied dryly. “Try being me. I got the bloodline power of being really big and strong. The rest of you gain mystic powers, and I’m just better at arm wrestling.”

“Don’t worry,” Samazzar consoled him. “It’s only a matter of time before I manage to secure more draconian heartsblood for us. We’ll have you in a fresh new body with exciting powers faster than you can shake a tail at it.”

“But for now,” he continued, nodding toward the boulder where the scarabs had been sighted, “we have to earn our tuition. Plus, even if you don’t develop a bloodline ability, being able to use the mysteries is basically the same thing.”

Dussok grunted, and Sam took that to be an agreement as he scurried off. He needed to drop to his hands and knees to deal with a steep incline once, but in barely a minute the two of them were flanking the scarab’s hideout.

Samazzar made eye contact with Takkla, and she tapped below her eye before raising two fingers and pointing at the boulder once more. Sam nodded back and elevated his hand, four fingers extended.

He curled one finger, counting on Takkla’s keen vision noticing the movement as he arched back summoning the sparks and embers that slept in his blood. His throat expanded slightly as he put a second finger down.

Sam opened his muzzle, spitting out a ball of sparks and flickering flame into his left hand as he lowered his third finger. His willpower cradled the flame, feeding it air and heat to keep it from disappearing entirely as he cocked his arm back.

His fourth finger touched his palm just as he threw the sphere of flame. As it was in the air, Samazzar wrapped his mind around the fire, frowning slightly as he felt its ephemeral and weak nature. It didn’t have proper fuel, and even with Sam’s support it wouldn’t last for long without something to feed it.

Under Samazzar’s control the ball of flames split into four arrows that darted downward toward the boulder. Two hit the heat sources that were the scarabs while the others struck a bush and a stunted tree respectively.

The flames exploded to life as Takkla and Dussok added their wills to the equation. The influx of oxygen and heat turned what had been a dying flicker of red and orange into a bonfire that was hot enough to score the surrounding rocks.

Samazzar seized the inferno with his mind, compressing the roaring flames into a sphere centered on the two scarabs. He lost all magical sense of them as the fire ate air itself only to be magically fed more oxygen.

Five seconds later, it was over. The fire raced through all of its fuel leaving a black scar on the hillside that glowed blindingly white in Sam’s heat vision. Across the way, Takkla held up a hand palm outward. She leaned forward squinting for a moment before tapping below her parroseye and raising a closed fist followed by giving Dussok and Sam a thumbs up.

He stood up, stretching his back to work out the residual soreness from the half-crouch that Samazzar had adopted for the task of climbing and sneaking up on the bugs. He walked closer to the boulder, only stopping once the heat from the brief but intense fire began to be a bit much.

Takkla’s voice caused him to jump as she spoke just behind Sam

“That was easy, weren’t these supposed to be special or something?”

“They’re supposed to have a bloodline of some sort,” Samazzar replied. “The request for scarab shells came from Daedolyn, an elven music magi. He wouldn’t have offered a reward for them if they were something simple or easy to collect, but Crone Tazzaera’s bestiary didn’t even have an entry for them.”

She walked past him, cooling the ground in front of herself with the mystery of heat to clear a path to the scarabs. Crouching down, Takkla rapped her knuckles on its shell. It was the size of Samazzar’s thigh and covered it black ash. It ‘thunked’ as Takkla hit it, and she looked up at Sam with a bemused look on her face..

“Well, regardless of whatever power it might have had in life,” Takkla said, her magic cooling one of the shells before she reached down to pick it up. “It looks like the merchandise survived the attack.”

Takkla ran a claw over the shell, scraping some of the ash off and revealing the brilliant gold of the shell beneath. She pulled out a length of rope, deftly threading it through one monster’s shell and then another.

“Music?” Dussok asked, ambling over to Sam and watching Takkla at work. “What sorts of things can you do with the mystery of music? I understand fire, poison, rot and air. All of those make a warrior stronger, but what use does music have in combat? Also, do you have any clue what this Daedolyn fellow want a bunch of bug shells?”

“No clue, and no clue,” Samazzar answered with a helpless shrug. “All I know is that Daedolyn has enough parros to put a serious dent into our tuition, so whatever the mystery of music does, it must be lucrative.”

Takkla finished tying off the shells and tossed an end of the rope to Dussok. The big saurian slipped it over his right shoulder and gave it an exploratory pull. Its cargo clattered across the rock, making a lot of noise but moving freely.

“I don’t know if it's because we cooked most of the scarabs’ meat off,” Dussok said, “but the shells themselves are fairly light.”

“We’ll have to be careful where we drag them though,” Takkla observed, walking over to the two shells in order to check her knot. “They’re loud enough that we might as well be walking around and ringing a bell.”

“But that’s why we have me,” Samazzar replied with a bright smile. “The scarabs can’t hide from my senses, so we’ll always have the drop on them. We can just find a safe spot to leave the tow rope behind and sneak up on them again. The plan worked the first time, so I don’t really see a need to change it.”

Without any further ado, Sam closed his eyes, focusing his attention on his magical senses once more. It took him a couple of moments to sort through the static. After weeks of practice with the first level of air magic, he was a lot better at sifting through the information it provided him, but it was still a bit like taking a handful of gravel, throwing it into the air and expecting to be able to track one of the individual rocks.

About ten seconds later, he opened his eyes. A grin lit up Samazzar’s face and he pointed his index figure at a rocky outcropping across the valley.

“Six of them,” he said triumphantly. “All clustered in a circle just out of view. I think they’re on top of some sort of flat rock sunning themselves, but whatever it is they’re doing, all of the scarabs are immobile.”

“I don’t know, little dragon,” Dussok replied worriedly, shaking his head. “That sure is a lot of them. We really don’t seem to know a lot about the scarabs’ ecology or life cycle, let alone what sort of bloodline magic they possess. Maybe it would be better for us to focus on insects that are isolated or in pairs? We know our system works with them.”

“But we’re not just here to collect scarabs,” Sam responded. “Remember what Crone Tazzaera said? Once we’ve collected the shells, it’s time to set up a base camp and explore the volcanic area North of the Vale. We need to be ready once the next request mission is assigned, and the sooner we collect the scarabs we need, the sooner we’ll be ready to prepare for the next step.”

Dussok opened his mouth to say something, but caught himself instead. He sighed, reaching up to scratch the scales on the back of his head before eventually shrugging.

“That’s the truth,” the big saurian said uneasily. “Still, I can’t help but worry that we might be going a little too fast here. We can always spend two nights in the valley rather than one if we want. Takkla made sure I was carrying enough food.”

“We’ll be careful,” Samazzar assured him. “Remember, we can cook the scarabs from a distance. They shouldn’t even be able to reach us, and if one or two escape, we can simply run away while Takkla traps them in a weighted net.”

To Sam’s side, Takkla nodded resolutely, her clawed hands gripping the heavy rope of the net. Dussok sighed, setting down the tow line laden with scarab shells.

“Fine,” Dussok relented. “Just remember Samazzar. If anything seems off, we run away. Things are finally starting to work out for us, and I don’t want to jeopardize that just because you’re feeling a little anxious about the timeline for collecting scarabs.”

Samazzar gave his sibling a thumbs up, and Dussok sighed. That was as much agreement as Sam needed, and seconds later he was skittering down the rocky embankment, Takkla just behind him.

He skidded to the foot of the valley in a cloud of dust and tumbling stones, pausing only for a second before jogging toward the scarabs. Sam veered to the right once as his periodic pulses of air magic revealed the hulking figure of some sort of bear. From its size, it clearly had a magical bloodline, but it wasn’t draconic, and he didn’t have a request to harvest materials from it, so the beast was just a pointless and possibly painful distraction.

The air tasted sweet in his lungs as he ran through the lush forest that filled the bottom of Redfern Vale. A smile stretched across his muzzle. To Sam’s left, a field of the eponymous red ferns stretched out in the shade beneath a copse of tall trees with smooth bark. To his right, a tangle of trees covered in creeping, flowering vines butted up against the staker, rockier slopes that lined the valley.

This is what it meant to be alive. Greenery whipped Samazzar’s scales as he rushed past, blood pumping in his veins, a goal on his mind and a grin on his lips.

He slowed as he reached the opposite side of the valley, putting a clawed hand against a tree to steady himself as he waited for Dussok to catch up. Unsurprisingly, Takkla had kept pace with him. Sam had never raced her, but he suspected that the smaller saurian would easily outrun him if given the chance. She was quick and agile to a degree that her abilities almost certainly stemmed from some brand of bloodline magic.

Finally Dussok huffed to a stop next to them. Samazzar closed his eyes, checking once again. He gave his siblings a thumbs up before holding up five fingers and pointing at a large flat rock just outside the forested floor of the valley.

The scarabs, each about knee high, sat in a circle on a large flat rock in the sun. Their shells glinted gold in the sunlight as they warmed themselves and rested.

“Sam-” Takkla hissed, but he was already in motion, loping forward on his hands and knees until he was well within a stone’s throw of the scarabs.

Samazzar could hear Dussok and Takkla behind him, but he didn’t wait, instead coughing a ball of sparks and flame into his right hand. He reached out with his mind, wrapping the sphere with his will before sending it flying toward the dozing bugs.

It passed through the air, barely taking a second before it detonated above the scarabs. Sam closed his eyes, grabbing hold of some of the fire with his mind and guiding two spears of flame into a nearby bush and fallen tree.

Takkla and Dussok’s magic washed over the fire, increasing the oxygen mix of the air and the heat of the flames. Where there had once been smoldering kindling, a bonfire roared to life.

Sam swung his right arm toward the rousing scarabs, sending a wave of flames crashing over them like a tsunami. He bit his lower lip as he spread his consciousness thin, gripping the cascade of flame and bunching it around each of the five scarabs.

Dussok grunted, and the fire became noticeably hotter. Even at a distance, Sam could feel it drying at his scales and pricking at his closed eyes.

A ripple in the air was the only warning Sam got. Without even thinking, he threw himself backward, tackling Dussok and Takkla. A wall of pressure slammed into him, accompanied by a deep ‘thump.’ Then, there was only ringing.

Samazzar could feel something wet beginning to trickle out of both his ears, but he didn’t have time to focus on it. Standing atop a nearby rock, a sixth yellow scarab stood, almost glowing in the sun. Yellowish white energy arced back and forth between its mandibles as it built up power for a follow up attack.

He broke into a sprint, scooping up an arm sized sliver of wood that had splintered off of a nearby tree when the insect’s first blast had shattered it. Sam fought through the dizziness, spitting a stream of sparks onto the end of the stick.

A flash of yellow jolted from between the scarab’s jaws, and Samazzar tossed his impromptu torch into the air as he dove to the side. The ground where he had been standing exploded, pelting his scales with gravel a fraction of a second before another wave of pressure slammed into Sam.

Somehow he could feel it. Even as the air vibrated in his chest and blood flowed freely from his nostrils, Samazzar recognized what his attacker was using. Sound.

The world blurred and spun around him, but Sam pushed on. He wasn’t exactly sure what the scarab’s attacks had done to him, but from the amount of warm blood staining the sides and the front of his face, it had certainly done internal damage. Still, as much as the attacks hurt, it was nothing compared to a fairly average day of studying the mystery of fire.

Instead of focusing on what was happening to his body, Samazzar pushed his senses toward the bug, trying to gain some inkling, some insight of what it was doing.

Each assault manipulated the air, twisting it into rapid pulses of pressure that assaulted everything around them. The scarab reared back onto its rear four legs, mandibles crackling with energy once again.

Sam could feel it, the way the air hummed around the monster as it used its jaws like a magical tuning fork, building vibrations to the point that it could unleash them as an attack on the struggling saurians.

Just before the torch clattered to the rocks next to the insect, Samazzar pushed through the hazy fog of vertigo to grab hold of the dying embers atop the smoldering stick. He pushed oxygen and heat into it, causing the splinter to flare to life even as he sent a wave of the resulting flame into the scarab.

It probably wouldn’t be enough to kill the insect. Samazzar was having trouble focusing after being nicked by its attack twice, and even if he were in his top form, he had needed Takkla and Dussok’s help in previous fights in order to make a clean kill, but there was no question that his attack hurt.

The scarab fell to its side, the sound wave discharging from its jaws without being launched. Another wave of dizziness washed over Sam as he sprinted through it, but the monster seemed to be in much worse shape.

It was on its back, legs kicking wildly in the air as it struggled to right itself, but Samazzar didn’t give it a chance. The fire was all the distraction he needed to leap atop the struggling insect, bloodline active, and slash downward with his magically enhanced claw.

The shell, strong enough to resist an inferno, split easily under his assault. His hand sank deeper, almost up to his elbow as he disemboweled the struggling monster. It kicked its legs one last time before going entirely still.

Samazzar remained crouched over it for a couple more seconds, ensuring that the monster wouldn’t come back to life the second his attention was elsewhere. Finally, with a groan that was swallowed up by the steady ringing of tinnitus, he stood back up.

His ears and nose would need treatment. There was no question of that. Hopefully the ceramic containers he used to store his potions and reagents had survived the short but brutal fight, but Sam wasn’t all that hopeful.

Samazzar looked around the valley, taking note of his siblings shakily returning to their feet. The good news was that everyone had survived the battle, and they were in a resource rich valley. It shouldn’t take him all that long to secure the ingredients he’d need for some minor healing salves. He had been planning on exploring it anyway to prepare for the garnet expedition, it just seemed that the timetable had been accelerated.