Sjal
Approved Character
Fall 50, 124
Sjal looked at the plate of sushi that was being served to her. Sjal had detested the stuff when she had first been offered it, but if she was going to learn how to live in a new country eating things she despised, she would have to step outside her comfort zone.
After scarfing down some jerky she'd bought, she'd been able to relax some and concentrate on meditation. Although she had never been one to sit around and think or contemplate such rubbish, it had been the first proven step towards gaining control over her mental faculties. Well... better control at any rate. So far, she'd barely even found herself able to run pretty fast, and any time she intended to force her body to hit her limits she found herself giving up mentally.
Sjal was about to try to do it again, but an officer named Ayato came into the barracks with a slip of paper in his hand. "Orders for you," he called over to her while pushing past the many new recruits. Sjal hopped up and went over to get it.
"We need your help getting people to safety," he said.
"Huh? Where?" she asked.
"There's a volcano not too far away, and there are people that live at the base. We suspect that the volcano will erupt any day now… we can't have those lives lost if we can prevent it. Thing is, we need help with evacuation. We need someone with your skillset to help."
"This has got to be a joke," Sjal said with a sigh. But she was new and she felt that she ought to prove herself useful even if she did these kinds of boring tasks.
"Okay I'll get right on it. Geeze, I don't know how I'm going to manage to help with that sort of thing." Ayato laughed and said, "well I suppose that you should get on it and try to impress the higher ups. I'm usually the one who keeps track of this sort of thing, but I've got war time preparation to attend to. I can't spare the manpower to send over troops. You'll have to do."
He let out a sigh and continued, "I knew this would come up, it always does. Volcanoes never erupt at convenient times. Unfortunately, there is only one thing that can do the job and it's portals so you'll have to get there in time. We usually handle this a different way. We usually use ensorcelled conjurations to cool them. Problem is, we're in short supply of those at the moment. You'd need to find an exalt capable of emitting a strong cooling effect, fueled by aeris. It'll probably buy you some more time. Problem is, we don't really know who has one available. Administrative misplacement, probably. Or theft."
Sjal groaned and was going to complain some more but she just got whacked on the head and pushed out the door. Ayato threw a crumpled paper after her which contained her only clue as to who and where she should start heading to.
Sjal took the paper and swore then took off into the air. She didn't know exactly where to go but based on this paper she had some vague clues. Problem was, these clues were from like two years ago. What the fuck? Sjal didn't know whether to be angry at Ayato or not but whatever, at least she had something to go off of. She eventually found herself wandering around a bunch of administrative buildings wondering who the fuck would possibly know about what she was after. She settled on a sailor who looked like he was in charge of a ship, or maybe a navigator? She couldn't tell.
Sjal didn't really have any rhyme or reason for being here but whatever, she was here doing whatever in order to say that she did something for the week. The past week had been pretty uneventful. She'd gone on some basic missions, sure whatever. She'd survived all her training one way or another and was itching to do something out of the ordinary for once.
She dropped down and started talking to someone for information. Problem was, the man didn't have information, he only knew that the person that she was asking about wasn't here right now. In fact, he didn't even know that. It was just a guess from some informant of his. He didn't know what to tell Sjal who looked at him expectantly especially since she was a stranger to him. Dare he reveal information to her for no reason? It wasn't enough. Not nearly enough.
"Sjal," he said, bringing his head down to meet her at eye level. He put a hand on her shoulder and started looking her in the eye. "That's not enough," he said. "This place has a lot of people. There's probably tens of thousands if you consider the entire region. Your hunch about the one you're after being around just doesn't mean anything."
Sjal wasn't surprised but she was a little let down. She had been searching for a while and this was the only lead she had. "Surely you can at least give me something to go off of… I've come all this way and I really have nothing else going on but this."
"Statistically speaking, it's far more likely that someone took the aeris artifact and sold it." He didn't mean to be so frank or so forward but the information he was privy to wasn't enough for him to be capable of figuring out just where this target of Sjal's had gone.
"Okay, well if I can't find this artifact, then I still need to get to the volcano. I don't suppose I can take a ride with a sailor, can I?" she asked.
"You can fly… why do you want to sail?"
"I don't know if you noticed, but the skies are kind of dangerous, and I don't want to have this conversation with every skyborne creature I run into. Plus, I'm only efficient at travel if I've been there before. I still need to, you know… get to the destination to be familiar with it."
"I doubt any ship is going to be willing to commit to going out to a volcano. You know, war is brewing. I assume you want to do something to the volcano, but whatever you're planning can't be as important as keeping troops fed… Though you're free to ask other sailors if you'd like. I know my captain would never agree to helping you though. Not without orders to do so."
"Hmph, not like I can pull that kind of influence," she said with a sigh. "Ah well, I'll figure something out."
And so Sjal was set off into the sky with little to go off of. "I guess this isn't the least I've gone off of in the past," she figured while she soared high above the clouds. "Hey, shouldn't I go a bit lower if I'm trying to see ships?" she wondered. But then she realized that she could just keep heading in this direction, stick to the clouds… check that she was still heading towards the volcano in the distance every so often.
There didn't seem to be any limit to how far she could fly at a time. All she had to do was keep her head on a swivel and keep far away from anything else that was flying that looked dangerous.
Sjal eventually lost focus and dozed off. She slowed in the middle of a cloud and only woke up when the sun shone in her eyes. "Huh?" she asked groggily. She realized she was just floating there and wasn't even concealed by a cloud.
"Ugh," she grunted as she floated down. Had she been floating around aimlessly in her sleep? She couldn't even see the volcano in the distance anymore. Sjal did spot a ship, however. She dropped down to hover above the ship, right under the clouds and took a good look at it. Judging by the crew and how some people were tied up to the mast like prisoners, Sjal hazarded a guess that she had come across a pirate ship.
The closer she got, the more obvious it seemed to be. It was a brown ship and was painted with pretty lazily drawn symbols. "I guess these people aren't that successful, or else they'd have a bigger ship or crew," she thought while descending. Most of the people here were just lazing around. There was only one cannon on the ship and it wasn't even pointed off to the side. It was just anchored to the center of the deck. It looked like it could swivel around in any direction though Sjal didn't really see the point in that since anyone could just accidentally set it in the wrong direction and blow off a part of the ship. In fact, she noticed that there were chunks of the ship missing at odd places, probably the work of the cannon. At least now she had established the intelligence levels of these cretins. She landed atop the mast and still nobody had noticed her.
"Hello," she called down to the pirates. They all looked around for her voice and she had to fire a thin burst of flames onto the deck to draw their attention up to her.
"HELLO!" she shouted, "I'm looking for someone. Any chance you men could help me?" She started to descend a little as the men decided what they wanted to make of this. The pirates didn't look all that strong but Sjal wasn't one to judge strength by appearance after having dealt with some super powerful yet innocent looking people in her life.
She landed next to one of them and asked. "I'm looking for a volcano. It's supposed to be out this way, but I've lost sight of it. Which way should I be going?" The man looked back at her with bewilderment.
"You'd better go talkin with the captain." He pointed to a staircase that went into the depths of the ship. "So I just go in there then?" Sjal asked. She might have believed these guys if she didn't see some of the ones in the back drawing their weapons. The pirate nodded, "Yep, just down the stairs to the left if you don't mind."
Sjal sighed, "are you guys just going to try cornering me down there and then attack me and then sell me as a slave or something?" she asked exasperatedly. "I can see you drawing your weapons. You know I could just fly away right? This is a waste of my time."
Sjal opened her mouth and let loose a massive burst of flames as energy surged between her lips. She then extended her arms and flipped her palms outward and behind her to brace herself. A massive torrent of energy flew from her mouth and tore through the deck, literally blasting half a dozen pirates aside as her light beam soared off into the distance.
Sjal felt a little ticked off that they had even thought to attack her, as it would have been fun to cut through them like butter. "Whoa there!" came a voice from behind her. Sjal looked to see someone coming up the stairs. "That's no way to welcome our guest! Those of you who aren't injured, hurry up and fix up the deck and you, visitor! Come have a seat." He drug a couple chairs behind him and placed them down. He then sat in one of them. He motioned for Sjal to take a seat so that they could chat.
Sjal shrugged then took a seat. She said, "I just came to ask for information. I'm looking for a volcano. Which way should I be headed?" She asked.
The pirate looked her up and down before pointing off in the distance. "That way. It's covered by mist right now, understand?"
Sjal stood up and sighed again. "Thanks."
Sjal wasn't too happy about her progress so far. She didn't even know how much time she had before the volcano erupted. The man continued, "now, either pay up for the damages or duel me. An honor duel, if you will."
The back of her shirt was dirtied, and her hair still had specs of dirt stuck between her locks. But, she didn't really care about her appearance at the moment, in times like these. "An honor duel with a pirate? Fuck off." Sjal lifted off the chair and into the air… then flew off towards the direction of the mists.
It was hours before Sjal had the volcano back in view. It was even more menacing up close. She hovered above it and could feel the heat radiating off of it, even if heat didn't bother her she could tell that it was indeed quite hot. It was almost a challenge to see how close to the lava she could get. The bubbling liquid would surely hurt her if she touched it… she thought. But who knew? She didn't feel like accidentally searing her hand off so she would have to save that for another date.
She then started looking around for the people that she was supposed to be helping evacuate. She saw a handful of towns and villages towards the base. They looked to be farming operations, perhaps taking advantage of the fertile land given by the crops.
"Hello," she said as she landed at the center of one of the towns. "I was told to evacuate you all."
She was given quizzical looks. Now that she was down here she could see that people were already preparing to evacuate. Crates were loaded up, bags were packed, animals were gathered together.
Someone said, "just you? Did you bring ships?"
"No, but I brought portals," she said, waving her hand to create a decent sized doorway.
"Everyone," she said in a louder voice. "This is your chance to get out. Spread the word. I'm only keeping this open for a little while as I have to get to the other towns as well."
There was a long silence, but then people started to murmur and walk through. Word spread quickly and before long there was a fairly large queue.
"Hurry up!" Sjal said in annoyance as the ground started to rumble. Great, earthquakes and an imminent eruption. She wondered how they even figured that the volcano was going to erupt soon. Maybe there had been a dragon flying by earlier that had reported it? Who knew.
When that was done, she closed the portal and flew off to the next town. She landed again, but this time the town wasn't so receptive of her help. Despite her identification and orders for evacuation, she was met with skepticism.
One man asked "what right do you have to demand we evacuate, foreigner?" he asked Sjal. "I need you to be very specific. I'm going to explain to you what I'm going to have to resort to doing in very precise detail."
"There's protocol to evacuating, and I can't remember the last time we were told to get into a portal. How can we trust you?"
Sjal shrugged. "Well, you can trust me or die when the volcano erupts. There aren't any ships coming for you, I think you ought to know that by now."
There was a murmur of agreement and she finally got one person to walk through the portal. They walked back a few moments later and said, "she isn't lying. This leads to Motoku." There was another long silence and a low rumble. That really got people moving.
A while later and the town was basically deserted, save for a few stragglers that refused to leave. Sjal didn't know why they stayed, but she wasn't going to stick around and find out. She flew back into the air and tried to fly to the next town, but she heard an ominous sound from the volcano. She looked and saw a plume of black smoke shoot out of the top of it and suddenly rocks started to fly into the sky.
"…Fuck." Sjal sped towards the next town but it was pointless. Lava started to stream down the volcano rapidly and she could tell that by the time she got there it would be too late. And she wasn't about to risk teleporting there when she wasn't familiar with that particular area. Accidentally ending up getting hit by molten rock did not sound appealing.
So, she had to accept that the town was a loss. She felt sad watching the anti-sized figures in the distance running frantically away from the town and getting swept away by the results of the eruption. Sjal flew away as fast as she could, but she did look back every so often to make sure she was safe. Thankfully, she was far enough away and the eruption had been relatively minor. Aside from the smoke and the flow of magma, of course. The towns would likely suffer a great deal of damage or be completely burned down. To think that they had to do this every time the volcano erupted… and still chose to return and rebuild. That sounded horrible.
Sjal didn't need to stick around, but witnessing an eruption was something she'd never done before. It was a simple matter to get back to her nexus of portals and take one to arrive back in Motoku. Once there she flew around to find the evacuees in the place she'd opened portals to. Sure enough, they were being sheppharded around.
She found Ayato and said, "I managed to get a couple of the towns to safety… but I couldn't save everyone."
"That's alright, some is better than none," he said. Not missing a beat he said, "this was all a test to see if you could be depended on. I'd like to say that you passed. You were able to take charge and get the job done, even if the odds were stacked against you. I think you might have some more interesting tasks in the coming weeks."
Math:
-1 apprentice breath weapon cast from Caelum? Gonna say he hasn't cut her off yet in memory threads
-1 expert breath weapon
-1x3 expert aether for the portals
-1 novice to teleport to nexus
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