The Destruction of Solitude [private/invite only]

I'm so attached to this idea that I figured I'd just write out the first post before inviting people.

Most people think of Hakobe mountains as a universally cold place. They have a reputation for blizzards and monsters, true, and there are altitudes with year-round snowfalls, but those aren’t places where people live. Daytime during the summer can be very pleasant in the region’s string of small villages. Clouds rarely obstructed a gentle sun, and the temperatures could reach upwards to seventy-five degrees fahrenheit.

Today was one of those days. Elias took his time hiking along the stone and dirt. A striped scarf hung untied from his neck and his deep red windbreaker was unzipped over a grey cable-knit sweater. Elias had pushed up his sleeves, stubbornly refusing to take off any more layers in the sun’s warmth.

A signpost jutted from a pile of rocks around a bend in the road. Elias didn’t need to glance at it to know that it said ‘Holdenridge, 1 mile’. In other words, home. At least for the recent couple of years of Elias’ life. He let out a sigh and quickly pushed down any thoughts of taking a break. There was almost no way he’d stand back up. His backpack was heavy enough, and his chest and legs were already sore from the long day’s hike. After over a week of walking back from his visit to Oshibana, Elias was eager to get to a warm shower and his own bed.

That dream would never come true. Holdenridge was in ruins. Only a few lonely log walls stood surrounded by the splinters of their cabins. The roof of the main hall, the village’s largest building and the only one built of stone, had collapsed. Cracks had spidered over half of its walls. Elias’ eyes darted around. He didn’t immediately see any corpses, but that meant nothing. He flung his backpack to the ground  and, ignoring blazing sores in his body, sprinted toward the main hall.

“Hello,” Elias shouted at the top of his lungs. “Anybody!”

Elias’s eyes turned red. He hadn’t even been gone a month. It was supposed to be a quick journey to Osaka for books and spices. He cursed at the vanity of it all. Elias could’ve paid anyone else to get those things for him and the town could’ve been spared the destruction. He ran for the outdoor entrance to the main hall’s cellar, only to find it covered in rubble. Still, Elias knelt and clawed at it.

“Mister Alvin?” Elias shouted into the pile. “Can anyone hear me?”

He wasn’t an especially powerful mage, but he was strong enough to fight most of the monsters and deter the more average members of Errings Rising from causing too much trouble. Maybe the old man had whisked everyone away from the destruction. Though Elias had never thought him capable of that kind of magic, it was a glimmer of comfort against the alternative. His thoughts turned back toward the cellar. There was an entrance inside, so he ran around the main hall and kicked down a side door.

Even the intact half of the main hall was a disaster. The benches and tables had been strewn about at best, though most had splintered when crashing into either each other or the walls. The indoor entrance to the cellar was a trapdoor behind the bar, and that area was especially a mess of broken glass and splintered wood. Elias cursed out loud for not having a spell to easily clear the destruction. Still, he had to try something. Elias raised his hand and shimmering, pale yellow light coalesced into a black double-headed axe. He took it and began slamming The axe’s head into the pile of wood, crushing it into even smaller splinters. Each blow inched him ever closer to the cellar’s trapdoor. Rage and frustration slammed through Elias’ heart, and the red in his eyes began to bleed beyond their irises. Someone had to be alive in the cellar, he’d decided, and some monster must have wandered too close to town and he’d been gone at a bad time. There was no other option, and any survivors in the cellar would tell him that.

I couldn't figure out what was in the barrel T.T

Even though Elias kept smashing the shards of glass and wood into ever smaller splinters, it didn’t do much to clear the way to the cellar. If anything, it served to accentuate the problem. So he kept slamming his axe into the pile of debris and grew more frustrated with each swing. Hints of sweat began to tickle Elias’ brow and neck while his muscles started to burn with the exertion. Those distractions prevented him from noticing that two new presences had entered Holdenridge’s main building before the human announced herself by declaring the place was a mess. That, in Elias’ mind, was nothing short of an understatement.

Under normal circumstances, the newcomer’s statement would have only made him angrier, likewise with the apparent fact that she’d taken his backpack. But he hadn’t expected to see any other faces so deep in the Hakobe mountains, much less a young woman and… an orca? Elias stopped what he was doing. Faint memories of picture books fell through his mind as he fit the word to the creature and with it, the red in his irises drained away. His face, though, was still slightly flushed with effort from moments earlier.

Most travellers through the Hakobe settlements were either small peddlers or mages. The latter sort tended towards the darker variety, but it was always hard to tell. She made a comment about Elias’ handiwork with the debris. He said nothing, choosing instead to lean on the ruined bar and let the stranger play out whatever was on her mind.

She asked if he had anger issues, and for his axe. She conjured a tendril of water to take it.

“Don’t see why not,” Elias replied. His voice was flat as he tried to soak his words in sarcasm. “Looks like you’ve already rifled through my other things.” Elias tossed his axe the few feet between him and the water tendril. The stranger took the weapon and looked over for a few moments before tossing it to the side. It evaporated into strands of pale light before touching the ground.

Then she cleared the debris, paying no heed to the cellar door beneath it. She made a broken-glass mosaic that loosely resembled her orca. A breath of laughter escaped from Elias’ throat. The stranger was completely out of touch. So preoccupied with playing games and having fun that she didn’t even consider what the destruction around her meant. Elias found it baffling.

“Flattering,” he said when the stranger finished her vaguely humanlike statue. Elias could only assume it was him, considering he was the only vaguely masculine-shaped individual present. “You can call me Elias, though, and I don’t have anger issues.”

He would wait a moment for the stranger to reply before kneeling on the floor.

“I’m looking for this town’s survivors,” he said while brushing one hand across the floorboards. “There aren’t any bodies or blood, so they’ve gotta be somewhere.” Elias’ finger caught on a small switch between the boards. He pulled it and winced a heartbeat before a sharp click pierced the air and a square trapdoor, about the width of a man’s shoulders, fell open. “You can help out if you want,” Elias continued in a crouch, paying more attention to the splinter in his finger than the stranger. “Otherwise I guess you’ve got the run of the place, unless some monster or an Errings Rising mage decides to traipse on through. They can be, ah, tougher than you’d think.” He’d finally picked the splinter free by now and wiped the welling dot of blood on his jeans. Then Elias sat with his legs dangling into the cellar and swung down.

His landing was punctuated with a dull thud and the stirring of dust. Like most good cellars, the air in it was cold and musty, but not particularly humid. Just chilly enough that even wearing a sweater would feel brisk. The only light streaming into the dank and musty room was a pale beam from the cellar door above, so Elias raised one hand and conjured six motes of bluish-white light. They immediately spread through the cellar, casting sharp shadows over huge barrels on racks as well as crates full of produce from the summer harvest, such as it was so deep in the Hakobe mountains. A couple of pig legs hung in one corner, every inch of them covered in curing salt. All the normal things Elias would expect to find in the cellar at that time of year.

But no people. Piles of dust and grout had clearly been knocked from the ceiling, no doubt a result of the main building’s destruction, but it was also clear that no one had the thought - or the time - to try and take refuge there. Elias didn’t want to believe it. He crept around the cellar, peeking behind over crates and behind barrels in the hopes that he might find someone, or at least some sign that a villager had been in the cellar. Frustrated and resisting the urge to curse at the top of his lungs, Elias called a mote of light back to his hand and flung it at a barrel. The end shattered, but Elias didn’t bother to look inside. Instead, he paced the other side of the cellar and stared at the ground, muttering to himself about what he should do next.