Summer 1, 120
Astra savored the welcome coolness of thirst-quenching water, poured down her back nonchalantly. She overlooked Bastion from a distance where an oasis dispensed its life giving water to passing travelers. She observed the people passing by, most of them heading towards Bastion, but there were plenty heading away from it as well. The sun was still bright... And she always dreaded being out in the bright sun. It was not fear but rather a sort of boredom that told her that she would probably not enjoy the next couple hours.
There wasn't much trouble out this way. Being so close to a place filled with powerful mages tended to project peace around it. There was little more stupid than trying to commit a crime when your victims might be able to tear your head off. Sad, because Astra would love a chance to feed on blood. Were men condemned to kill rabbits to satisfy their bellies? Besides, these flesh-eaters made an incredible waste by leaving the blood and bones - if they were going to take the life of a poor animal, they might as well do it properly and to the end.
Men were ungrateful. And hypocrites.
A sigh escaped the rusalka's lips who left her perch only when the sun started to go down. Camps had been set up around the oasis, not forgetting to leave a corner for wild animals that came to hydrate themselves - unscrupulous hunters had set traps there that Astra would have happily destroyed if people didn't keep an eye on the area. There were certain things that had to be respected.
She took the cover of a thin tree and settled down for a quick nap… but then she heard a howl. As soon as she heard the cries, the Astra hopped up and pulled out her bow. Her piercing gaze scanned the clear night. She distinguished a silhouette... a woman... an aelf... nothing looked strange about her other than that she was running. What was interesting was what was chasing her. It looked like some kind of mountain lion. This particular variety certainly lacked judgment to come this close to where travelers set up camp, but it wasn't unheard of for attacks to happen.
In any case, with the aelf running at full speed towards her, she would undeniably be involved in the fight. And what's more, if Astra helped her, then maybe she could make a new connection. The aelf's face was barely visible to him when she loosed an arrow.
She was already preparing a second arrow when a shrill sound of cracking ice came from the lion. The aelf panted, having turned around to use her magic to freeze the lion and break it apart with abation. Astra cocked her head to the side and said, "good evening, Aelf. To what do I owe the pleasure of your company and that of this lion at such a late hour?"
The aelf notched her own arrow, aimed at the lion, then released thes string, making the projectile whistle through the air. The aelf watched the trajectory of the projectile to estimate where it would end up, then replied, "perhaps I should introduce myself to begin with. I am Princess Anubis. I was delayed in my travels and got to the oasis later than expected. As for that of the lion, I do not know what grievance he may have against me."
Astra chuckled because despite the various accents she encountered at Bastion, she had slight difficulties in understanding her diction... Her gaze wandered along the woman's body and saw that she was wounded. Astra took the time to study her. Beautiful, regal… these confirmed the presentation of what she expected from a princess. These were the assets of the nobility.
"Looks like you got scratched," Astra commented as she cut some cloth off of her sleeve so the aelf could wrap her arm with it.
"It should be fine," Anubis said as she got up. "Unfortunately I cannot stay long in your company, my presence is required elsewhere. And I plan to set off again tomorrow morning." Her tone suggested no chance at compromise, despite her injury.
"You should stay with me if you're worried. We can keep an eye out for each other," Astra suggested.
"I regret, I cannot accept to your offer, however sensible it may be," she declined.
"I am also a princess," Astra clarified, "of the Hazel Mists. If you must go to Bastion then we should go together. I would not want your death on my conscious."
At least this woman had enough sense not to try to contradict her again. The smell of her blood had aroused an insatiable hunger that Astra tried to ignore. It would have been more than inappropriate to simply feed off of her.
"Very well, we can travel together. Though, you do not look like you would be much use in a fight," Anubis said with a frown. Astra was pretty with an air of innocence about her. She smelled like she would attract trouble, not repel it. Taking a compass out of her pocket, Anubis checked that she was still going in the right direction. The young woman passed her sleeve over her forehead to remove the sweat that was beading. She had to go Bastion and this desert would not prevent her from reaching her goal!
That had been the plan, but when Astra awoke the next morning Anubis was gone. After asking around Astra found out that the woman had been seen heading towards Bastion far before the sun rose. "What a fool," she thought as she walked towards Bastion. She'd have to figure out exactly who that girl was and why she was in such a rush.
She shook her head and packed up her bag, intending to join the group she'd been travelling with before they set off on the half day trek to Bastion… but then she heard someone crying nearby. It sounded off because it was an adult's voice.
"Hey! Are you okay? Are you hurt?"
She took a few steps to the side in order to regain relative stability in view of the sand dunes that the wind was shaping at leisure under her feet, and stood for a moment with her mouth open and her eyes wide.
"It's nothing," the sandy haired man said as he rubbed his eyes.
Astra frowned and bent down to retrieve a map off the floor then shook it to make the grains of sand fall out, "I think you dropped this..."
Although the man seemed strange, he seemed rather timid. He took the map and turned around to scan the vastness of the desert. "I hate the desert. I'm sick of it."
"Heading to Bastion?"
"Yes, like everyone else," he said, folding the map and tucking it into his pocket. "I'm supposed to join the Academy, but I'm having second thoughts. I grew up in a village far away and becoming a scholar is my shot at giving my family a better life."
With a small apologetic smile, the young rusalka found him rather endearing. "It's a rigorous tough thing to join the Academy, but it's worth it."
With that, she took her compass out of her pocket, and looked at it carefully, squinting above the glass dial. It was easy to get disoriented in the desert with all the sand blowing around. Looking up at the sky, covering her view with her hand, Astra sighed as she looked at the too-hot sun. Then, she turned back to her companion of fortune.
"Come on! If we fall behind, we're going to end up travelling alone which is never safe. Try to think about the nice feather beds you'll get to rest on in the city!"
She readjusted her travel bag that was hanging over her shoulder. "And don't say that it would be better if I left you here, I have no intention of letting a future scholar dry out in the desert!"
Then, as cheerful as a child discovering a new world, she took his hand gently and led him out of his dark thoughts. She didn't want him to dwell on the danger, whether it came from the blazing sun above them or from a sand monster. She just wanted to live and move forward! Around them, the gusts of wind were blowing the sand away, but Astra tried her best to ignore them.
She would have liked her traveling companion to share her enthusiasm. She subconsciously tightened her hand… but then she started to get a headache. One moment she was walking along a dune and the next… all she could see was blood everywhere around her. Her blood. She felt her breathing hoarse and her ribcage hurt with each breath. She blinked again and she was back on the dune with tears streaming down her face.
Her madness… it was making her see things now? What did these visions want from her? What had she done? Nausea suddenly took hold of her throat, and after a few steps, Astra fell to her knees in the sand, both arms out in front to support herself.
Her head was spinning, she had a lot of trouble thinking, or even understanding what was happening. She felt something in her back without understanding what it was. Astra let out a little moan, worried, not knowing what was happening. She suddenly felt lighter, and her cheek rubbed against something soft. It took her a while to understand that it was the man's clothing, and even longer to realize that he was carrying her.
The young woman saw him against the light, almost black in contrast to this too bright sky. Nevertheless, he guessed she'd come to when her lips started moving.
"I didn't think I'd be saving you" he said between grunts. He was a scrawny thing, definitely more suited for book reading than hauling a princess across a dune.
She smiled slightly when she heard him, blinked, and replied despite her voice muffled by her shallow breathing. "Thank you..."
Astra must have dozed off for a moment, because when she opened her eyes again, not even having been aware of having closed them, she was lying on warm sand, and there was shade above her. Where was she? She was no longer nauseous, and was now breathing properly. When she wanted to sit up on her elbows, she felt something again against her cheek. Again it was the fabric of the young man's clothing.
"You... You managed to find some shade?"
She sat up completely on her elbows, and looked him in the eyes.
"Without you... Without you I would be dead! I... thank you very much!"
"With me you can die too you know?" he replied, "I couldn't find the others and as far as I know we might be going in the wrong direction."
She saw him get up and pour some water down his throat. "Now I've done some research and I'm pretty sure we're on the right track. We just need to clear that dune and we should be able to see something… a path or maybe even Bastion."
Astra sighed and got up, dusting off her clothes full of sand, then also turned her back to the young man.
Astra went to the large bent cactus that provided the shade, and examined it. Some seemed to be giving fruit, which seemed to reassure her.
Astra approached him, then, with a sudden gesture, nestled in his arms, putting her arms around him... She wanted to feed off of him. Nobody would ever know, they were here all alone… But no, she didn't need to at the moment and she didn't think it was wise. She ran a finger along the young human's cheek, gently caressing his smooth skin.
"What's your name, anyways?"
"It's Nrath," he said before he planted a kiss her cheek. He blushed and contemplated her... Large, round, eyes stared at him with a certain affection.
Her eyes were fixed on his, and, very delicately, she had taken Nrath's hand and removed it from her cheek. Then the young woman sighed, lowered her gaze, and, avoiding Nrath's with a fluid movement, quickly straightened up and turned her back on him.
"I think... you haven't yet grasped my true nature," she whispered.
She put a finger on her cheek, where the human had left a kiss as tender as it was passionate, then shook her head, ready to speak again, when suddenly her sensitive nose tingled. Then she heard a strange sound.
She turned towards her companion, worried, and meticulously scanned the ground. She looked at the clothes that the human had crumpled into a ball to put behind her head. Her pupils suddenly narrowed and she stretched out an arm towards Nrath's although she was too far from him to touch him.
"Back up... slowly!"
At the same time the desert snake, which had made its way under Nrath's clothes looking for shade, jumped onto him too fast for a normal human to dodge. It clamped into his leg and started wrapping its body quickly around him. The scrawny boy was powerless to stop it, and Astra could do little to help. She reached to her side and realized that she didn't even have a weapon on her. They must have been discarded while she'd been carried. Stupid, stupid! Why had her madness decided to strike? She wanted to squish the sun into a tiny ball and punt it so far away that it could never make her so weak again.
She didn't even think that hemomancy could save the boy. She could maybe pry the snake off of him, but there was absolutely no chance of healing him before he died. So, she ran. Tears streamed down her face as she jogged up the dune and crested its peak. There she saw it, Bastion not even that far away. She saw the path with people on it, trudging along despite the heat. But they couldn't get there in time either. Nrath's screams had already stopped and he was probably close to dead already.
"Sorry," she whispered, not wanting to even looking back. Then, she started to slide down the dune to join the other travelers. What a wasted meal that was.
She avoided asking herself what she thought of him now, and very quickly she turned her gaze to something else. She was angry with Nrath's for being so weak like many other humans, she was angry with him because he should have just left her to die, and above all she was angry with him for making her feel guilty for not being able to help.
"You're going to start by calming down because this is getting beyond madness," she murmured to herself. It seemed to her that she was having trouble focusing because of the madness that was growing in her head. It seemed to strike the worst on hot sunny days like this. A real great condition to have in a gods forsaken desert. There were some months where nothing happened at all, and some days when it struck multiple times. The unpredictability of it was the worst.
The young woman fell silent for a moment, trying to contain her anger. She continued more calmly, but still more or less in the tone of the vexed girl who was not happy. "You need to stop thinking that you are incapable because you don't have a handle over this madness yet."
Astra sighed very heavily, then, gently, began to free the negative thoughts from her mind. "I must leave the past in the past. I must make the choice to move forward and to stop feeling sorry for myself."
The young woman scratched the back of her head as if it helped her think less, which made her terribly cute, like a little kid bored by what was ultimately a minor problem.
When she finally got to Bastion, she talked to her friends as if nothing had happened. She was somewhat less there because he thoughts kept wandering back to her very long morning, but it was a wound that was going to heal with time.
She'd just gotten some homework done and gotten to her feet when a student walked up to her. He was a tall, muscular man who was quite good looking but he had a tired and worried expression on his face. Ah, that was right. It was feeding day. He was supposed to seek her out on this day of the week and then bring her back to his dorm room which was coincidentally all to himself at this time of day.
When they got inside the room he kissed her. She loved how he kissed - it was like a blaze of ice and fire at the same time exploding on her face, then quickly flowing from her lips to her chest. A strange feeling of peace and fury mixed together, absolute calm and a storm. Her eyes became slightly moist, she didn't know what it was, maybe her emotions were getting the better of her.
They exchanged few words. She had fed on him many times before, to the point that he knew what to expect. That didn't make the experience any less terrible. He had an innate fear that built up whenever he was around her and when they were alone that fear exploded. He was especially scared because he knew that if he ever messed up, it would be his life.
After feeding, the young woman gently looked at him with delighted smile that she could not control. Then, gently and quickly at the same time, she framed the young man's face with her hands and said, "you were a good boy today. I hope you stay this handsome for a long time. You'll probably live a long life. Be happy that you get to be around me!"
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