IP: 129.81.35.240
Posted on March 8, 2015 at 03:56:49 AM by alector
| It was well known among the pirates that Ariadne’s children were permitted to run rampant. Whether it wasa show of weakness, that the captain of the leading faction could not control her children, and therefore shouldn’t be able to control a crew, or a show of the morals that so many pirates lived by, outside the laws and rules of a single leader, didn’t matter. The twins had the run of the wadi. For Rhea, that was enough; she was content to explore the caves and work on her reading. The son, Alector, however, was all energy and fight and was constantly on the go. He had explored most of his home territory before he was five years old, and had been training with some of his mother’s crew members in sword fighting for more than half of his life.
He had his own sword now, and throwing knives as well. Both were fancier than one would expect someone with little conventional money to carry, but as each piece was stolen, it was not unheard of. He spent a fair amount of his day on the deck of the ships docked beneath the steep cliffs that protected his home. Some of the lower ranking members of the various crews that spent time here he had bested, which was particularly embarrassing for those pirates because Alector’s voice hadn’t yet cracked. It was pretty sad that grown men who were in a position to be gruff and tough. The entire profession was feared by the citizens of Shaman, but a nine-year-old was someone they would overlook. Occasionally, Alec would wander into the king’s lands under the guise of a homeless child whose peace-loving parents had been brutally murdered by the pirates in the wadi. It would have been difficult to pass as anything but someone from the wadi with his complexion, topped by the deep tan that came from a life under unrelenting sunlight. It was how he’d obtained the knives he owned, though the sword had been a gift from his mother and father. Citizens trusted children at their word because who had ever thought of a child pirate. Of course, Alector wasn’t completely certain he wanted to spend his whole life as a pirate, sailing the seas and exploring. He liked to fight more than anything else, and sometimes it seemed that being in the kings guard or a knight or something would provide more opportunities to better himself. It would certainly make it easier to get into the academy to train in combat. Now was just such a time of hanging in the king’s lands, though Alector wasn’t after gold or property. He’d overheard a conversation between the crew members that there was a call for anyone willing to adventure to join the massive search for something or other. One had even seen a man who was clearly not a member of any faction or crew in the caves searching. No one had known whether the man had found whatever he was looking for, but Alector figured that would be a good excuse to head to the caves and do some training against new foes. So he was running toward the castle in hopes of getting a better idea just what this king was trying to do. The boy was a great runner. Although he wasn’t the absolute quickest person, he had immense stamina from the amount of training he’d done, and his feet were fast enough. Additionally, he was more surefooted that he assumed most soldiers were because unlike the citizens, he’d trained on deck and even in a crow’s nest, where every waves that crashed against the hull of the boat changed the balance that anyone on board would have to have. He ran across the hot sand of the desert and into the woods, where he paid no mind of the roots that were jutting out of the ground. Rajani, his familiar had coiled herself about his neck and left arm – leaving his right free for combat if anything were to happen – where she normally clung. His brown and white wings were folded neatly against his back and out of the way and pressing his baggy shirt tighter to his body, with wrinkles between the appendages, so it wouldn’t bounce and chaff against his chest with each stride. When he finally arrived at the castle, the raggedy clothing and dirt that was almost impossible for him to scrub off at this point gave the impression that Alector had hoped for from the guards. He didn’t say anything, but looked defeated and forlorn, with a hint of anger. The guards looked at one another, and had a woman come out and escort him into the keep itself. More than once, Alector had to admonish himself mentally for getting distracted by the obvious signs of wealth within the great halls, and especially once he and the woman, who had been yammering unheard about orphans in the castle reached a bed chamber and saw what it seemed he was being offered. He wasn’t planning to stay, but it didn’t seem like terrible digs from the look of things. The woman promptly left so that Alector could “get used to his new home” and Alector sat on the bed a couple minutes to make sure she was gone before he snuck out of the chamber and through the halls. He’d never been inside the castle before and certainly didn’t know his way around, but he and Rajani figured it would be faster to find whatever they were looking for if they split up. That was how it came to be Rajani and not Alector who discovered the glowing blue jar of smoke. There was a crowd around the jar, which was nothing the snake couldn’t handle, but at least told her that this was what she and her fairy were looking for. With all the silence that a snake could possess, Raja slithered up the leg of the table and toward the jar. She didn’t have thumbs to open it, but the top didn’t seem to have been properly secured by whoever had last opened it, and the snake did have the ability to knock things over (much to the displeasure of Corsair, the grumpy falcon familiar of Alector’s mother). So she did. The smoke surrounded her and her tongue flickered. It tasted of salt water and iron. It was cooler than home, however, and then Raja saw a nest perched high on a cliff-face. But this cliff wasn’t the clay-red color of the wadi, but deep gray, and seemed to be harder stone than anything else. However, Rajani only knew of one other area with cliffs against the sea. And Alector would be more than pleased to hear of this location. Rajani was jerked free of her sensory overload created by the smoke’s reveal when a rough hand gripped her around the middle and threw her out of the cloud of smoke and to the floor far outside of the crowd. It seemed a few noble women were unaccustomed to serpents and called for a guard to remove the familiar in the most undignified way. Wincing a bit from the impact, the cobra harrumphed and left in search of her fairy.  |
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