The Swirling Sky
"On your right!" A shrill whistle ripped through the air as an arrow flew over Elsword's shoulder and into a bandit's wrist. Shifting his feet, Elsword lunged and caught the towering bandit with the flat of his blade, knocking his head into the knot of a gnarled oak. The bandit stumbled to his feet, raised his club overhead, and then felt a sudden need to bring his face flush against the road. Glancing at the fallen and slumped over bandits around him, Elsword relaxed and lowered his shoulders. The crinkling of leaves drew his attention to the roadside and a woman effortlessly stepping through the underbrush as though it were a clear ballroom floor. Latching her bow to her bandolier, she brushed a lock of hair from her face and tucked it behind her ear as she made her way to the nearest unconscious bandit and confirmed his incapacity.
"Good job! Maybe we can get one of them to tell us where they took the El." She smiled cheerfully and Elsword nodded, struggling to get his sword strapped to his back. A light trickle of blood fell from a gash above his left thumb, making the negotiation of straps and buckles unnecessarily difficult. He glanced around, checking for any lingering danger before he lowered his head and asked for help.
"...Rena, could you-" His voice barely rose above a whisper.
"Oh, sure." Rena strapped the sword in tightly and buckled it down, chuckling at Elsword's embarrassment. Perhaps it was because he became a knight at such a young age, or because of the high standards he held himself to, that Elsword waited until the very last instant to admit that he might need help, much less to ask for it. Still, the two of them had taken out five bandits, all adults, and without having to kill any of them, so Rena was rightly impressed that he'd been able to manage to stay in the fight with only a few light cuts and scrapes to show for it. She smiled brightly. In her memory, the ending of this battle, small as it was, stood out as one of the more pleasant experiences of her life.
Just up the road, the air shimmered and burst into light. Stepping out of the breeze, a petite young girl floated down to the ground and promptly collapsed against the nearest tree, breathing heavily and wiping the sweat from her forehead.
"How did it go? Did you catch them?" Rena held out a skin of water which was quickly taken from her hands. After downing the better part of a liter, the mage stood up proudly and grinned.
"Of course! I'm not some-"
"Aisha! You took way too long." Elsword glared at her and scowled.
"You idiot!" Aisha stomped over to Elsword and they stared each other down, "Who was the one that rushed in without thinking and let them get away in the first place!"
Rena moved alongside them and "Hey, let's calm down-"
Elsword was almost growling. "If you weren't so slow and out of shape they'dve never got that far." He scoffed and crossed his arms, "Why did we need to bring along a kid like you anyway?"
"Come on, Elsword, Aisha, stop-" Again, Rena's airy insistence went completely ignored.
"You-! I'm two years older than you!" She shot him a sharp glance and mumbled to herself, "He should be calling me 'Miss Aisha' or 'ma'am' or something..."
Elsword looked her over, twice, and was still skeptical. "...You look like you're about eight."
Aisha raised her wand. "Do you want me to smack you!"
"Bring it on, runt!"
A swift gust swept down against their faces, the wake of Rena's heel as it split the air and slammed against the ground.
"Cut it out!" Rena glared sternly. "Do you even know what you're doing? Wasting time arguing about wasting time..."
Elsword threw his arm down in protest. "But-"
"No!" Rena's eyes narrowed and her mouth turned down. "If we're going to work together, we'll need to have a nice talk about how to get along with other people."
"It was his-"
Rena pointed to the road. "Sit. Down." Elsword and Aisha didn't hesitate and within an instant they were on the ground, staring up anxiously at Rena's scowling face. A sudden roar erupted from the roadside just yards away as one of the newly conscious bandits struggled to his feet and charged at Rena. She stepped forward and thrust a knee into his stomach, stopping him cold and shattering a rib. Her feet danced on air as she shifted to his side and swung her heel around to the back of his head, dropping him face first into the dirt just inches from where Aisha and Elsword sat.
"Now..." Rena smiled brightly and clapped her hands together, "Let's tie all these guys up and then we can have our talk, okay?"
Some time later, after a half dozen bandits had been thoroughly secured, interrogated, and decorated with tar mustaches, and after Elsword and Aisha learned the virtues of friendship and, more importantly, of not making Rena angry, the skies clouded over until they began to overflow. Taking shelter beneath a rocky overhang, the three took stock of the situation and discussed their next course of action.
"Hm..." Rena leaned against a soft, moss-covered boulder. "Even though they said the bandit's leader was hiding out in these mountains... it could be months before we searched through every cave... I wonder if I should've interrogated them a bit harder?"
"N-no, they could barely talk by the end anyway, so any more would have been bad..." Aisha smiled awkwardly and tried to forget the bandit's pleas for mercy. Granted, they did provoke Rena when they called her a cow and told her to bend down a bit lower, so Aisha didn't feel that bad about the state they were left in. "...not that I'll ever have the problem..." Aisha grumbled to herself and stared out through the trees and into the mist hanging from the mountainside. Something in the sky seemed out of place, but she couldn't say what it was... the swirling wisps of clouds and a persistent curtain of rainfall made it hard to see anything above the trees clearly. Still, the scene bothered her, and she was certain that some part of the scene before her was severely out of place. She scanned the shadows of the mountain for any sign of movement or any indication of the El until a light splash broke her concentration. Elsword had stepped out into the rain, his hair already dripping as he headed off into the storm.
Aisha hurried after him, stopping just short of the rain. "Wait, Elsword, where are you going?"
"I'm gonna scout around." The turned his head and answered her from over his shoulder. Flecks of rain splattered against Aisha's face and she raised her voice to fight the cadence of the rain.
"By yourself? What if you get caught or something happens to you?"
Elsword grimaced. "I won't get caught, sheesh... I'm a knight, I'll be fine by myself."
"Stop being so stubborn and-"
"Okay! Be safe! We'll stay here and figure out a way to get the El back to Ruben once we find it." Rena hopped over and waved happily as Elsword nodded and headed off into the rain.
Aisha stumbled through a half-formed protest but her voice was swallowed up by the wind. She turned back to Rena, confused and annoyed. "Why'd you let him go? He's going to get lost and probably start a fight with a bear and then we'll have to carry him and the El back with us."
Rena giggled lightly. "Don't worry about Elsword... he's going to take a while to warm up to the idea of working with other people." She tilted her head back and smiled softly, "That's just how it is when you're young and you feel like you've got something to prove to yourself..."
Satisfied for the moment, Aisha kicked a stone carelessly and took a place on the mossy rock next to Rena. Although she had stopped complaining, she was still pouting.
"He really must be stupid though... he's definitely gonna catch a cold, and his armor's gonna get ruined."
Rena grinned slyly. "Oh? It seems like you're always really concerned with what he does for someone who just thinks of him as a stupid kid."
Aisha's eyes went wide and she bolted to her feet. "No! I'm not worried about him!" She began fuming just as the lightest blush tinted her cheeks. "It's just that, he keeps making it harder for us to get things done, and he doesn't think before he charges into things."
"But it is impressive that he's got such clear convictions at his age, isn't it?" Rena laced her fingers together and stretched her arms over her head. Still pouting and fuming, Aisha turned to face the forest.
"What are you talking about? He's not impressive at all..."
They spent a moment in silence as Aisha replenished their supply of water just before the rain started to let up. Standing in the clearing between the mountainside and the forest's edge, Rena traced the lines of the clouds and followed them to their center. Nodding to herself, she returned to Aisha and pulled a map out of her pack. After sketching a broad circle over the mountains, she scrawled a few notes and boxed off a small area just a half day's travel to the north. Curious, Aisha approached and peeked over her shoulder.
"What's all that for?"
"Ah, this?" Rena smoothed out the map and held it up for Aisha to see. "This is where the bandits are hiding the El."
"Wait, how can you tell?"
"It's the clouds," Rena walked back to the clearing and Aisha followed. "The El is huge, and so even from inside a cave it'll make the air breathable for miles all around it. There's a small safe area here because of the El buried in the mountainside, but up ahead there shouldn't be enough El to let the rain fall freely over the forest..."
"Ah! Unless they have the El they stole from the El tree somewhere nearby!" Aisha smiled approvingly at Rena and then looked off into the distance. Her boots fastened and her bags secure, Rena rolled up her map and held her bow at the ready.
"Alright then, let's go find Elsword and then head toward the El. We might be able to make it by nightfall and catch them while they're asleep."
"Right." Aisha nodded and grabbed her wand and tied an El crystal around her wrist. The two headed out along the edge of the forest, following Elsword's muddy footprints along the way. A hundred yards out, the veil of light from the El scattered through the rocky mountainside faded and a stifling stillness filled the air. The ground was littered with withered plants and corpses, victims of the rapid suffocation that follows in the absence of El. After almost an hour of walking, concern turned into anxiety.
"God! How far did he go? He was supposed to come back after he took a look around us. And why'd he have to walk through such a creepy part of the forest?" Aisha hopped over the body of a boar, fresh as though it had died that morning. Despite it's excellent state of preservation, it was impossible to know when it's life ended for sure as the absence of El stopped all natural processes, even decay. Glancing around warily, Rena tried to look for any signs of a disturbance or struggle, but all that was evident were the footprints marching on toward the north.
"We should hurry... he might have figured out where the bandit's cave was and gone on by himself."
"No way, Elsword could never figure it out on his own. He's way too stupid and too-" A quiet rustling stopped Aisha in her tracks.
"Ai~sha," Rena bounced over to her side, "you should give him a chance, just because he's not... wait... Aisha, what's the matter."
Another rustling in the underbrush, in the middle of a forest devoid of El where nothing can live or breath. Slowly, Aisha drew her wand and walked around the blackened tree. As she rounded the corner, the rustling stopped and she discovered its source. At the base of the tree, a tiny white rodent quivered and shook against the peeling bark and withered leaves.
"Ah, that's it? Rena, it's just a baby phoru. What's it doing way out-" Then she noticed it. There was a small El stone hanging from a low branch. Rena came around to take a look for herself and saw it at just the same time. It wasn't just an El stone hanging on its own... rather, it was a pendant, hung from a chain and tangled on the branches. Aisha recognized it right away.
"!... It's Elsword's!"