P.S: Yo. Sorry it's been a while - EXAMS (DX) and slight case of writers block. I got kinda fed up with trying to write something that didn't want to be written so this chapter's quite a bit shorter than usual...this is I guess part 1 of a 3 part mega chapter, and I'm hoping to get the other bits up soon. Thank you SO MUCH for everyone who's sticking with this and my somewhat...laid-back rate of posting...Cheers to Stuffs, my beta-writer and Sheepy who got me back on track and convinced me not to give up on this :P Also, in terms of the name things - the way I'm putting it is Heads and Deputy Heads of Houses (and their spouses) can go by Lord and Lady 'Family Name' but everyone else has to go by Lord or Lady 'First Name'.

R&R if possible. Enjoy!

L2

Lorlen,

I hope you'll forgive me when I tell you I am not truly sure what to say at this moment. However, as you will no doubt be awake by the time I get to Waterford, I felt it my duty to leave something for you now.

I'm sorry for what happened earlier, all of it - it never should have happened, a huge mistake on my part and I hope this will not damage our friendship. Truth be told, I can't say I remember what exactly happened leading up to the moment when I woke up this morning – my memory is mired in fog to say the least, but I recall enough to know that what happened was wrong.

I do care for you Lorlen, deeply, as my best friend and the brother I never had – but I must marry Laria. I will marry Laria. And if our friendship ever meant anything to you, you will not stand in my way. Marriage is a frightening prospect, Lorlen, and I need your support to see me through this, not for you to corrupt me further with selfish thoughts and expectations.

Don't make me choose between yourself and my family, my dear friend.

I am sorry to end this on such a sour tone, I wish it could have ended otherwise; but please, accept my heartfelt hopes and wishes for your future safety and happiness.

Take care, and thank you - for everything.

Akkarin.

The storm came out of nowhere, a comfortable summer evening gone bipolar.

No-one had seen the clouds lingering off the coast until it was too late; a seaside manor, bright with life and the lights from the hanging chandeliers suddenly small and obsolete, a solitary candle amidst the approaching darkness.

The master and mistress had noticed first, their figures woven into one as they'd embraced on a balcony. She'd clung to him in silence, tears of frustration and anguish dried on her face, anger's departure leaving her drained, exhausted and hollow as she listened to his heart beat, a soft steady pounding beneath her cheek.

She looked across the balcony, at the brooding clouds on the horizon and shivered. Her husband too looked at the clouds and frowned; the guests that had come particularly far would no doubt have to stay the night. But the others would want to get away quickly…

He whispered something to his wife and she agreed straightaway to his mild surprise and concern, meekly slipping out of his arms as she headed back into the building. He looked back at the landscape one last time before stepping back through the thin drapes, calling for silence as he informed his guests about the change of plans.

The rain arrived soon after, hammering at the brickwork and the windows as it demanded entry. Most of the nobles had fled at the news of the changing weather, but a few - more than their host had truthfully wished – opted to stay, servants escorting many to spare bedrooms, whilst others made themselves comfortable in lounging chairs. Very few people spoke, drained but too tired to sleep - talking in quiet worried tones about the severity of the rainfall.

It wasn't until the early hours of the morning when all the lights were finally extinguished. Upstairs, Lord Kerrin, Deputy Head of House Velan, threw an arm around his wife's waist and her held close as she pretended to be asleep, a thoughtful frown on his face.

A floor above them, their son slept on oblivious to the mayhem, sheets twisted and slipping off the bed as he whimpered quietly, hips twitching as the phantom hands and lips caressed and teased him, fingers, teeth and hot breath making him squirm as they ghosted over his skin.

A few miles away, a Healer with long dark hair sat in an old wooden chair in his rented inn-room, playing chess with his carriage driver, a young man called Davin who was getting married in just under a week. Lorlen moved his black piece across the board and smiled as he put the enemy king into check.

Back at the Guild, a teenager lay sprawled across his bed as his mother and father, dressed in green and purple robes respectively murmured quietly to each other in the next room about a strange man who had paid their new neighbor a visit.

There was no-one around to hear the final cry of another coachman, driving through the rain from the Velan's mansion, as the vehicle's metal wheels lost their grip on the saturated ground; the white carriage careering off the edge of a sharp turn and over the edge of a cliff that looked out a small deserted beach by the turbulent sea.

The driver was killed instantly upon impact, the House incal sown onto his coat staring accusatorially up at the sky.

Behind him, the carriage windows had smashed and a pale hand, skin cold and clammy, was the only sign to onlookers that the vehicle's lone occupant had not escaped either.

The gem set into a ring on the passenger's finger grew dull, its colour growing flat as drop after drop bounced off its surface with a soft decisive plink.

Back in the inn, Lorlen smirked. Checkmate, he thought as he knocked the white king over, a blue gem at the end of his necklace glinting in the candle-light as he leant over to shake his opponent's hand.

The young Healer leant against the wall closest to the window as he peered down at the road outside from behind the screen. Last night's rainfall had left the streets waterlogged, the paths and roads submerged beneath the murky water. All means of transport in the area had apparently ground to a halt because it was deemed to unsafe to risk travel in. Lorlen considered going by foot; but the thought alone was foolish and even if he tried, the journey would take the best part of a day – and that was without trying to carry his suitcases through the forest as well. There was no point. He would simply have to stay put.

He sighed dramatically, his breath covering the glass in a fine mist that he idly traced in patterns in with his fingertips. Kyralian weather, he mused in irritation, more temperamental than even the most fickle mistress.

Lorlen yawned widely and blinked hard in an attempt to clear the mist from his eyes. He hadn't slept very well that night, due in part to the general lack of rest from staying up to play chess against Davin, and partially because he just hadn't been able to sleep; which was why he'd spent the last five hours or so rooting through his suitcase for a good book to read.

The Healer had finished the chosen book a short time ago, drained from the effort of recalling long lost memories and from the grief of recalling his mother's voice in his head, reading the same words to him when he'd been a boy. It was the first time Lorlen had read the book by himself, having not even looked at it since first unpacking at the Guild; hiding it underneath a few obscure items of winter clothing at the bottom of his wardrobe.

He reached for his cup of sumi, sipping the hot bitter liquid carefully so he wouldn't burn his tongue.

It was strange how looking over the story now made him think about it differently and see things in a different light. It wasn't so much to do with the issue of freedom as it was to do with the characters themselves – for example, if the father had known his son was so reckless, why had he not kept a better watch over him? Why had they not waited until night-time to fly instead, when the sun's heat wouldn't have been an issue?

Or perhaps, no matter what time it had been, no matter how close a watch his father had kept on him; the son would always have escaped one way or another. Maybe it was the in the boy's nature to be reckless, selfish and self-centered - he didn't care about what his father or anyone else thought or wanted from him because his freedom, his survival and his happiness was all that mattered in the end, the rest of the world be damned-

The knock on the door made him jump, the porcelain cup slipped from his fingers and hit the floorboards with a high, clear sounding smash that left his ears ringing. Lorlen cursed, the words feeling unfamiliar in his mouth as he scrambled to pick up the broken pieces.

"My Lord?"

"One moment please!"

The Healer brushed all the grass towards his cupped hand, movements quick and jerky in his haste to tidy the mess. He glanced up at the door; watching in case the servant entered. The pain of a stray shard slicing into his hand was almost sweet in its sharpness and he cried out more in surprise than pain. He healed the wound quickly but the blood still remained; the Healer still looking at the red liquid with caution and a little fear when the servant entered.

"My Lord!"

Lorlen grabbed the blue gem at the end of his necklace with his bloodied palm and tucked it back into his shirt. He got to his feet and straightened himself. "Are you alright?"

The Healer smiled briefly and nodded, wiping the smudged blood on his trousers.

"Yes, yes I'm fine! I-I'm sorry about the cup, I'll buy a new one, I promise."

The servant smiled almost fondly at the attractive young man with the long dark hair. She had a son his age and he looked just as adorable whenever she embarrassed him in front of guests.

"Oh don't trouble yourself with that, my Lord!" She knelt down and scraped up the porcelain pile into her hands having put a letter on the table. The shards went into a small pouch wrapped around her waist and she brushed her hands off on her tunic, before handing the letter to Lorlen. "This came for you just now, brought up from the Guild by a passing magician who had to rush off quickly."

Lorlen's breath caught, taking the letter from her cautiously as she bowed and left the room, closing the room behind her. He looked at the handwriting and half recognized it, though he wasn't sure where from…

He put the letter down, regarding it with suspicion and fear. He didn't have a high opinion of personal letters from magician acquaintances right now.

Dark eyes were drawn back to the sheet of parchment left unfolded on a small wooden chair by the fire.

Just one sheet. Apparently Akkarin hadn't had much to say.

The Healer hadn't read it until a little over an hour ago, though it felt like a lifetime had passed. He'd gone through it a grand total of three times but could recite the entire thing by heart if required; the words branded into his mind, still legible even in the years to follow when the heat had dissipated, the pain dulled and blunted with time like an overused sword.

But that was then. At that point in time; Lorlen felt like the world was ending, and perhaps in a sense it was.

The Warrior's words had awoken Lorlen to the fact that Akkarin did not intend their separation to be merely physical. No matter how nicely he'd tried to dress it up, ultimately it all came back to one fact – Akkarin was abandoning him; just like he'd done to everyone else.

It really shouldn't have shocked Lorlen as much as it did - for all his popularity and attraction, Akkarin was unnervingly apathetic when it came to how others regarded him; it was a lesson he'd stood by and watched numerous people fail to grasp; believing that the charming, charismatic young man they saw on the surface was all there was to it.

Was that naivety? That was probably what Akkarin would call it, but Lorlen saw it more as misplaced hope.

Everyone wanted to believe he was genuine, so much they accepted what they saw as fact; until one day his friend would decide that their usefulness to him had expired and drop them like unwanted baggage. Their resultant anger was however, unjustified; and that was why Akkarin had never really cared. It had been their decision to believe him, to depend on him – he had never implied he was a trustworthy, reliable person, he had signed no binding contract saying they would be together always.

But Akkarin was like a light, a star, the Sun – you didn't realize how close you'd strayed until you were already falling…

It's just…

Lorlen's eyes welled up, his fists clenching by his sides. He remembered everything that they'd been through. They'd been so close; Lorlen had traded away his conscience to remain by his side, telling himself that warning every girl his friend had dated in advance would've make no difference – they'd never have believed him, and why should they. He was just 'jealous of Akkarin's popularity'. Maybe he was.

But he'd forgotten, 'best friend' or not, to Akkarin, he was just like all the others – expendable.

…I thought I'd be the exception…

That was naïve.

But perhaps, in a sense, he'd been lucky. There was no doubt that he'd been burnt by this, but he'd also seen it coming. He and Akkarin hadn't been friends from the start; he knew how to cope with life without him.

The Healer walked over to the chair and picked up the letter one last time, realizing that when, or perhaps even 'if' Akkarin ever returned; things would never be the same. And perhaps that was not a bad thing.

He scanned the passage one last time, and tossed it into the fire.

Two days later, clustered remnants of white painted wood were seen drifting just off Kyralia's south-western coastline. A House incal was found etched into one of the pieces, and the townsfolk sent a letter to the household asking if everyone was alright – someone could have been in that carriage, it was best they informed the family just in case.

Three days after this, they received a reply from a Lord Tagin who thanked them for informing them of the 'lost' carriage, but politely informed them that this loss was of no consequence to either him or his family, and that they should kindly learn to mind their own business.

A week or so after Lord Akkarin's farewell gathering, the same Lord Tagin (the letter was very specific in that it should be delivered to him alone) received an urgent message from Lord Velan, Head of Family Velan and House Delvon, requesting that they meet as soon as possible to discuss a new and deeply unsettling development that had occurred within his own household; news of the upmost importance.

Lord Velan never received a reply.

Akkarin was bored. Hopelessly, irrefutably bored out of his skull; and it was not a sensation he enjoyed. He huffed in displeasure at the unnecessarily shiny wooden paneling of the ceiling as he lay on the bed in 'his quarters', hands pinned to the pillows by the weight of the head. He'd been at sea with the crew of 'The Eyoma Nushi' (apparently Vin for The 'Laughing Leech') for what felt like the last seventeen years but had in reality been a little over a week, during which time the young Warrior had successfully concluded, multiple times, that land was infinitely preferable to the sea.

Despite his father's worrying before he'd boarded the morning after the party, once the horizon and the ocean had cleared in the aftermath of the storm, he'd suffered from virtually no sea-sickness whatsoever. Well, apart from that one time about an hour into the trip; but according to the captain, an almost overly polite Vindo man called Teno, such a reaction was perfectly normal amongst those not used to sea-travel - especially amongst Kyralian magicians, the youngest member of the crew and Teno's second son, Jano, had claimed.

And though the joke had been at his own expense, the reassurance that hurling all over the deck after a particularly violent wave was normal, was in itself, comforting to his somewhat smarting ego; he didn't want to come across as a welp with zero-stamina in front of strangers.

Akkarin allowed himself a smile. Strangers.

Indeed the company had been one of the major perks of the entire trip so far.

He wasn't treated like a Lord here, or even necessarily a magician – just as a guest, an old friend, and it was so…liberating not having to live up to the expectations of others. The young Warrior chuckled. He'd say he'd gotten at least somewhat drunk virtually every night he'd spent here, playing Vin drinking games with the crew. He blamed Jano. That man, though still a couple of years younger than him, was a bad influence. They were as bad as each other.

There were fifteen men on board that he'd seen, as this was quite small by his family's boat standards (he hadn't even known his father had owned a boat), and they were all polite and friendly, once their initial wariness of him had worn off. Probably sometime during the course of the first evening.

Akkarin had gotten slivers of intriguing information from Teno when asking him about any old Vin stories involving magic or magicians, partly out of research and partly out of genuine curiosity. Tales surrounding a mesorima – a Reformation of sorts within Imardin itself that happened a few centuries back when it had been destroyed, not by a fire as had been hinted at in his classes; but by the entire city being levelled by a single devastating wave of power with a one source. A man.

Akkarin had tried to find out who this man was, who could have caused such destruction on that scale but Numo, Teno's oldest son, had looked at him a little hopelessly when the Warrior had looked to him for a translation.

We know not how you say in your language.

Akkarin hadn't pushed the subject any further as the entire crew looked a little unsettled and afraid, and in rooms that small, silence was an oppressive suffocating force to be avoided as much as possible.

Still, he vowed to do some research into that if he got the time. He hadn't been surprised to learn that the Guild had its fair share of wardrobe skeletons but this, he hadn't expected anything like this. The Guild's destruction and rebuilding was something they'd seemed to conveniently skip over in lessons about Guild History, aside from Lord Margen's convoluted explanations on the psychological effects of making the building out of stone and not glass or something else dumb and inconsequential like that…but perhaps there was no use in getting his hopes up. It was most likely just an old story used to inspire fear and respect in non-Kyralians so no-one would be tempted to invade again.

That sounded like the kind of thing magicians would do.

He closed his eyes and listened, extending his senses to cover the entire boat. The people, he feel could them moving, bundles of energy, in most cases blurred and indistinct wandering about the ship – except for one person who shone much brighter than the others.

Numo had magical potential, enough that he would almost have definitely been trained as a magician had he been in a Kyralian family. And Akkarin found himself glad, not only for Numo, but for his brother and father that he had not been trained; as amazing as being a Novice had been, there had never been anything close to freedom on this scale, his rich House classmates would probably look down on him for being the son of a sailor, he'd be at a disadvantage because his knowledge of the Kyralian language wasn't equal to theirs and…he wouldn't have liked there. He'd have hated it.

Akkarin was pulled out of his thoughts by the sounds of a bell ringing and someone shouting something. The sounds of footsteps running up and down the corridor were tremendously loud and the young Warrior sat up a little too quickly, bashing his forehead against the ceiling and cursed.

Emerging from his room a short time later, he made his way onto the deck.

"What is it? What's going on?"

Jano looked up and smiled brightly.

"Arrive Capia soon. Look!" He pointed off into the distance and Akkarin squinted after him. He couldn't see a thing. The sailor laughed loudly behind him and put a hand on his shoulder. "You see soon. Vindo have good eyes." Apparently so, Akkarin mused. "Anyway!"

The two of them sat on crates on the deck and talked, the Warrior telling him about the Guild and his family, whilst Jano told him about how he became a sailor until a hand was laid on his shoulder. It was Numo, calling him away somewhere, looking a little nervous. The younger brother smiled at Akkarin "Must go." The magician watched them go for a moment, before going to the railings of the boat and looking off in the direction Jano had pointed in. Pale squares seemed to grow out the sea itself, getting bigger as the boat ventured nearer and Akkarin smiled. Capia. At last.

A/N: Apologies for the random cut-off ending. I kinda lost the will to write after this point :P