Aelara

The elven woman can’t help but reflect on the last year or so of her life as she and her friends travel the winding tunnels, passages, crevasses, caves, caverns, and more. Born and raised in a city as she was, she’d usually find the minutiae of nature difficult to care too much about. Wild plants, for example, are obstacles, food, or dangers, and sometimes more than one, so it’s difficult for her to care too much about the specifics of what each does.

She’s very much aware that’s an attitude that could get her killed, which only makes her appreciate Yvonne’s presence all the more. But while she finds the details of plants and animals impossible to keep in her head for long, the formations of earth stick with her much easier. If asked, she’d say it’s because Earth is her natural element. There’s a small part of her that has to admit it’s at least partially because Ragnar is happy to go on and on about them.

She doesn’t allow her eyes nor her mind to linger on him for long, however. They’re far from Fourdock right now, and actively searching for a hostile dungeon to boot. Being distracted right now could be a recipe for disaster. Instead, she does her best to focus on her magic, and on the three extra companions the party has for this particular bit of scouting.

Her magic is simple enough to work. She can sense the angle and depth of their current path probably even more accurately than Ragnar can. Her feel for terrain is partially why she’s the party’s cartographer, with the other part being that her handwriting is easily the best of all her friends. Aranya’s handwriting is shaping up quite well, but she’s not here and also still needs to practice if she wants this particular responsibility. Not that the kobold needs more responsibilities heaped on her shoulders.

She can’t let her mind linger on her newest friend, either, so she resumes tracking and feeling the earth around them, searching for dangers. Ragnar and Yvonne both seem pretty convinced any natural dangers have cleared out, thanks to the army of leech-head monstrosities that recently came through, but that’s a reason to stay vigilant, rather than to lower their guard. That enemy dungeon could have ambushes set up along the route. Aelara hasn’t spotted any just yet, but she’s not willing to bet there won’t be some eventually.

The new companions help with that, at least. She’s been aware Thedeim has had earth elementals for a while, but she hasn’t really interacted with them much until now. Now, Ragnar has a rockslide riding him, and Aelara is using her affinity to carry another. And beyond just the slides, there’s the wyrms. Most of the parties have a rockslide or two, and a wyrm, but Thedeim’s scion wyrm decided to join with their group.

She would have never described something that looks like Nova as timid, but there’s really no other word that fits her quite so perfectly. She can feel the wyrm scion as she follows along, feeling the void of earth around the scion as she turns it to magma, before letting it cool behind her.

She should try to get a sample of the cooled magma. Most of it seems to cool back into more ordinary rock, though it’s different from what it was before Nova’s passing. Occasionally, however, she’ll leave a bit of obsidian behind in the areas she breaches the surface. The idea of playing with rocks reminds her they’ve been traveling for a while.

“Are we going to make camp soon? Or are we planning to get back to the main trail first? Oh, and when should we drop one of the slides to let it do… whatever it is it’s going to do?”

Ragnar hmms at that as Yvonne considers more quietly. “It’d probably be a better idea to camp off the main trail, in case reinforcements come up it.”

Ragnar nods at that wisdom. “Aye, I’d rather no’ wake up ta all those spiky feet stompin’ on me.”

Aelara shudders at that idea. “Me neither. Should I start feeling for water pockets?”

“Yes please,” comments Yvonne as she squints down the tunnel they’re traveling. “It might not be necessary, but good to do it anyway. There’s signs of other things walking these tunnels, and the lichen doesn’t look too desperate for moisture. I think it’s going to open up pretty soon, and there’ll be access to water.”

“Should we leave a slide there?” asks Aelara as she glances back to the one she’s floating along behind her. It’s difficult to get a read on a living pile of rocks, but they seem pretty content with their current situation.

Ragnar shrugs, causing his own slide to clack and grind from the movement. “Ah dunno. Teemo said they’d know when ‘n’ where ta drop them, an’ they’d let us know.”

“Nova would let us know, too,” agrees Yvonne, though Aelara isn’t so sure.

“Do you think so? She seems like she might not want to bother us.”

Ragnar laughs as Yvonne smiles and answers. “She’s shy, sure, but she’s not going to let that stop her from doing her duty. Teemo says she’s trying to live up to her name.”

Aelara and Ragnar both nod at that. Aelara still doesn’t quite understand the full meaning behind it, but she at least knows it’s a very powerful name, another one of those weird things Thedeim thought up. She also knows a bit about the weight of a name. Still, even with the weight of that name to potentially talk about, everyone stays quiet as they continue down the tunnel.

Yvonne’s instincts are correct, and soon the tunnel opens into a very wide, yet also very short cave. Ragnar shows perfectly why dwarves are so short, and walks with ease, even as Aelara and Yvonne have to almost double over to mind their heads. They’re probably not the only ones who have to do so, as the floor is a rough gravel, and the ceiling seems to be full of the bases of stalactites that lost battles with harder heads.

Aelara can feel a lot of divots for small pools of water, as well as the snaking contour of a stream of some kind, and shares the knowledge. “We have puddles everywhere, but a stream that way.”

“Let’s go to the stream, if you’re feeling like making us a campsite in the wall nearby?”

“That sounds good. I haven’t had to cast much today, so I should be able to manage something. It’ll probably need to be a cold camp, unless you want to leave the fire outside.”

“Think Nova’d be willin’ ta play campfire fer us?” asks Ragnar, and Aelara smiles at the image as Yvonne shrugs.

“We can ask. Otherwise, we can do a cold camp. It’s not too bad down here.”

Aelara nods, and soon the cave opens up a bit for the stream. There’s room to stand, but not much besides that. Still, Aelara and Yvonne take the chance to stretch as well as they can, and the elf moves to the wall. She hollows out a section well above the floor to start, splurging a bit to give enough room to truly stretch once inside. From the new chamber, she creates a few divots in the wall big enough for bedrolls, then climbs into the new temporary space.

The others quickly join her, and she sends a pulse to let Nova know they’re stopping for the night. The wyrm scion pokes her head up right in the center of the main chamber, and looks around curiously before Yvonne gets her attention.

“Nova, would you mind being our source of heat for camp? You’d mostly just need to stay there. You don’t have to, if you don’t want to,” she reassures with a smile. Nova tilts her head as she considers, then nods and settles into place.

“Wonderful!” exclaims Aelara with a wide smile, and moves to sit near the scion. “I have a dried soup mix I’ve been wanting to try, so this could be a great time to do it. I also wanted to talk with Nova, if you don’t mind?”

Nova looks a little intimidated, but doesn’t refuse. Aelara takes that as permission and sets her rockslide down, letting it mingle with Ragnar’s as Yvonne gets water from the stream. She gets as close as she can to Nova without feeling like she’s sitting in an oven, and gives the scion a smile.

“So, I've noticed you sometimes make obsidian.”

Nova already looks confused, so Aelara points at the cooling magma around the hole she’s resting in. “The smooth parts. Most of it cools back into basically ordinary stone, but some of it will make obsidian.”

Nova turns to look at the cooling rock like she’s never noticed. While Aelara partially wishes she was doing it on purpose, it just means she can explain herself fully, without Nova having any preconceptions!

“Obsidian is special earth. Here,” she says as she magically breaks off a small piece of the obsidian, still too hot to handle directly. “In a fight, it can be a deadly sharp weapon.” She shears a flake off and stretches out a single hair, which the flake cuts without resistance. “It’s a bit fragile, and not exactly common, otherwise it’d see a lot more uses. But I like to do something a little different with it.”

Nova tilts her head in confusion as Aelara concentrates on the obsidian, and it starts to shift and flow like it’s magma again. “It’s a little easier with normal stone… normal stone doesn’t mind being shaped. Obsidian keeps wanting to break,” she speaks as she focuses, and she even pulls up a small piece of the stone floor to attach to her project as she gets close to finishing. She smiles once done, and holds it up for Nova to see. The young scion seems absolutely mesmerized by the obsidian rose with the stone stem, and seems to almost blush when Aelara presses the stem into the softened rock around the wyrm.

“There we are. You should try it with your magma, Nova. It’ll be good for your control, and it might help you to do what you want.” She glances at the obsidian rose, and Nova’s beady eyes follow her gaze. “Don’t let your name be all that defines you, ok? It’s a powerful one, so it’s easy to be intimidated by. Don’t let it define you. Make your name live up to you, not the other way around.”

Nova sinks a little as she thinks, and Aelara is glad to be distracted from her own thoughts by Yvonne bringing over the water. As she gets some going for tea and digs out the soup mix, she can’t help but think back to when she heard those words herself. She needed to hear it back then, and she can only imagine his smile if he knew she was able to maybe help someone else by passing them on.