Heirot

Celeste smiled "hungry now huh?" She dug in her pack to pull out a small bag of mixed nuts and fruit, mainly peanuts, and raisins, high energy foods. She put some in her hand and offered it to Caleb.

Caleb looked from the food to her and back at the food. He inched forward and grabbed one of the raisins. Gripping it in his front paws, he perched on her wrist and began nibbling at it furiously.

Celeste giggled, and watched Caleb. she also munched on some of the trail mix too.

Caleb finally finished the raisin and looked up at the angel, who was giggling at him. He tried to decide if that meant she was laughing at him. It occurred to him that he liked her voice; it had a musical quality. That made him care less about begin giggled at. He stretched forward to take another raisin from her palm, when a familiar sensation made him pause. He couldn't see the horizon through all the trees, but the orange tint in the sky and the telltale shudder he'd just felt told him he was running out of time. He tilted his head up at the angel, knowing he should go, but what were the chances she'd still be here in the morning? Wait...why was he even concerned about that? His tail dipped uncertainly as he looked at the strange girl.

His ears dropped as he turned away from her and leapt from her wrist to the ground.

Celeste tilted her head and watched the little glider. She had a feeling he was going to leave, but she knew that he'd want to no matter what. It just made her sad to see him go, when she had been traveling for months without a companion.

Caleb looked back at her for a moment before running off as fast as he could go to find a safe place to change. He ran through the ashen streets and finally found a house that hadn't collapsed - yet. Dodging under the dislodged front door, he scurried into a room blackened by soot and ash. The roof had collapsed, and chunks of charred wood were scattered haphazardly in the room. The soft orange dusk sky showed through the open roof above him.

Well, he didn't have much option to be picky. He chattered uncomfortably as his heart began beating almost too fast to bear and his body felt extremely hot. The glider picked a spot on the floor and curled there, waiting to ride out the change. The blackness swallowed him, and when he woke, he was a man again, coiled up naked on the sooty floor.

Caleb sat up slowly on his hands and knees before climbing to his feet, getting a feel for where his muscles were. He looked around the room and spotted a beaten up bureau that looked like its contents may have survived the fire. He went to it and pulled at one of the drawers, only to have the whole front of the bureau collapse. Rollign his eyes, he pried apart the broken boards and pulled out the contents of the drawers. Of the entire bureau, the most salvageable clothes he could find were a pair of pants with several holes charred through them and a shirt that was missing nearly the entire left side from heat damage. Both articles felt like they might rip apart right in his hands if he put too much pressure on them, so he put them on carefully and sighed. He probably looked like some kind of male stripper with an arson fetish. He pulled a strip of black fabric off one of the less intact shirts and used it to pull back his long brown hair into a tail that hung to his waist. Satisfied that this was as decent as he was going to look for the day, he walked to the door and pushed it open.

Bad idea.

Apparently the door was the last bit of support holding the place together. The walls groaned dangerously, and there was a loud sound of wood cracking and splintering apart. Caleb dove outside and rolled across the ground as the house collapsed behind him in a roar of wood and dust. It was loud enough to be heard for at least a mile across the deserted city.

Well, so much for lying low.

Celeste sat were she was, looking around for some sort of shelter. None was to be found, she stood up before walking into the destroyed city, she felt a tang of pain in her heart as she recalled this is what the great city of Quintara looked when the opposing army burned it down, countless Faralonians died, and many more missing. She closed her eyes as she remembered the fire that ripped through the royal castle, her one true home, how her Mother tried her best to send the flames away using the wind magics she controlled, and Axle, her older brother, youngest of the three she had, using the weak water magic he could to put out the flames. She escaped, but barely, her wings singed and her feathers blackened. That was nearly ten years ago.

She still to this day didn't know if her five other siblings were alive, or where they were. So she kept fighting and and surviving for them, in their memory she would grow, and then die.

Stephan was glad that the snow storm had ceased, it made it far easier to travel in. However, did not end the snow. It sat high on the ground, up to his knees in some areas, and he trudged through it, his calf muscles burning with the effort of it. It was like the sands, except far worst.

The snow did help with one thing. It made it dead quiet, and allowed for his senses to spread out, to concentrate and see if he could hear anyone else out there with him. He heard a loud sound, and it was the sound of pure destruction somewhere. The way it echoed off the trees made it hard for him to tell which direction it had come from. Trees, he thought sourly. If he had been in the desert, he could have told exactly where the sound had come from.

But, something else caught his senses. Something that smelled familiar, accompanied with something that smelled dreadful.

He paused, his yellow eyes cutting back and forth. “Don’t worry about hiding,” he said allowed, his arms coming up from his sides and rising into the air beside his head. “I already smell you…” He reached behind his head for the hilts of his short swords, and drew them slowly, the sound of metal filling the air as it brushed against the metal edges of his sheath.

A man dropped from the trees to the snow bellow the limb he’d been sitting on, just a few feet down the path in front of him. He heard one dropped down from the side, and both of them looked equally unforboding. It was rather a disappointment to the young assassin. Still, he felt they were not alone.

The one from the side came at him first, and he twisted on his feet, kicking up snow as he did. He sliced him across the middle, and when he doubled over Stephan twisted again, doing an about-face in the opposite direction of the body, bringing his sword up as he did so. It sliced the head off of his enemy. He through his other sword, and it struck dead center in the other, now running assailant.

Yoruhana's emerald eyes watched the young Raith. She waited, and as he dispatched the bandits she stepped forward, the hood of her black cloak down, showing her blood dyed hair and blazing green eyes.

"you seem fun" she murmured "care to try that on me?"

Stephan smirked behind the cloth that covered the lower half of his face. “I thought I smelled blood,” he said, shifting around to face her, his legs in a ready stance. His yellow eyes, which were created specifically to force the feeling of fear into people, stared at her unflinchingly.

“You willing to lose your life that badly?” he asked her as he stepped over to the body of the dead bandit and pulled his second sword free with little effort. “If so I’d be happy to oblige you.”

Yoruhana smirked "cocky huh?" she drew a thin katana from her side.

Stephan grinned handsomely, though she could not see it. “You call it cocky,” he said as he circled towards her. “I call it factual information. Now, be a good girl and attack so I can be on my way.” He tilted his body slightly towards her, his swords at his sides.

Yoruhana slashed the snow sending it at Stephan's face, and ran at him.

Stephan tilted his head slightly to the side and closed one of his eyes. That was a sad attack, he thought sourly. For a moment there he had thought she might actually be formidable. He had lived and fought and worked in the desert. Sand was the first thing people went for in a fight, always trying to kick it into his face to blind him to other attacks. He was too used to it, and as such, he knew well to hone his senses to other things, like the sound of her feet moving across the ground.

When he heard her close enough, he faked a lunge with one sword, and twisted mid lunge, moving to take off her head.

Yoruhana dodged but barely, she lashed out with her sword, she smirked. "do you know what I am?" she whispered.