Time and Again
"Behind you!" Aisha called out to Rena as the sands shifted around her. With the ground beneath her feet giving way, Rena dove forward just as a huge claw shot from the sand and snapped at her heels. Within seconds, a pair of colossal scorpions emerged from the earth and surrounded them, moving in slowly with their tails raised high. Elsword and Aisha drew their weapons and backed up to where Rena knelt with her bow at the ready, glancing between the two pairs of pincers closing in on them and looking for any opening in their guard.
"Ah, I've heard about these." Rena perked up and smiled to herself cheerfully. "It's okay, when they get this big, they normally aren't too poisonous."
Raised just above their eye level, the scorpions' tails swayed menacingly as they approached, their stingers the size of a spearhead and just as sharp. Aisha's eyes went wide and she turned to Rena in protest. "I'm pretty sure that's not what we have to worry about!"
Rena ignored her apprehension as she rose to her feet. "Oh, and try not to hurt them. They're just animals trying to find food, after all."
"Are you serious?" Elsword glared at her skeptically and Rena smiled awkwardly.
"Well, I did say 'try'..."
As they stood debating with one another, the scorpions lunged forward, snapping their claws and thrusting their tails into the ground. It took each of them a moment to realize that they'd missed their prey entirely. By the time they saw their own empty claws, Rena was already yards away and firing a volley into their eyes. Shielding themselves with their arms, they charged toward her blindly and quickly fell to their feet as Elsword slammed his blade across their backs. Before they could get to their feet, he slid around behind them as Aisha rushed to their flank. Exchanging a quick glance, they each hurled a massive burst of flame toward the addled scorpions and the smell of pungent scent of burnt hair and charred shells filled the air. Everyone stood back as the smoke cleared, waiting anxiously and expecting to see a pair of smoldering corpses.
"Heh, that was easy..." Elsword grinned faintly and cocked his head to the side, scratching the sand out of his hair. Relaxing, Aisha sighed and wiped the sweat from her forehead.
"Is everybody-" Just as she turned to survey their wounds, the blackened beasts rose and charged toward her as she let out a sudden shriek. Immediately, she spun her wand around her wrist and swung it down hard, sending a huge black stone spinning through the air and into the ground between the scorpions sending them both flying. Scrambling to stand on their spindly legs, the traumatized scorpions finally scurried off into the distance, burying themselves in the sand some hundred yards away. As the massive, jagged rock she had summoned sank into the sand, Aisha smiled awkwardly.
"Is everybody alright?"
Elsword blinked, shaking his head out to dismiss his momentary awe. "Yeah."
"Yup, I think we're all alright." Sighing fondly, Rena stretched her arms out over her head and turned her eyes to the fiery sky painted by the setting sun. "It looks like we've only got a few minutes of daylight left. Let's go find a nice rock to set up camp." She smiled brightly enough for all three of them which was convenient since neither Aisha nor Elsword were looking forward to another night of sleeping on slate, even if it was better than having a bedroll full of sand. Fortunately, they didn't have to trek far to find their lodgings for the night and they managed to get a fire going just as the sun retreated beyond the far mountains. The desert air was full of the light of El from the mountains and canyons nearby, giving them a sense of relief and a clear view of the sparkling night sky. Once they had a healthy fire and full bellies, Rena grabbed her sleeping bag and hopped over to the far side of the campsite.
"Ah, I'm so worn out~" She forced a yawn and smiled, waving to Elsword and Aisha as she laid out her bedding. "Goodnight!"
"Goodnight...?" Aisha waved back, confused. "Isn't it still early for that?"
Elsword shrugged as he pulled a slender tome from his pack. "Let her sleep if she wants to."
Aisha bit her tongue, slightly annoyed by Elsword's curt response but not willing to start a fight over it at this hour. Instead, she grabbed her own grimoire and opened it to the last page she had read, still not even half way through its bulk after weeks of study. With the fire crackling nearby and the moon overhead, the evening passed peacefully and she was grateful for the genuine calm. Despite the near absolute silence and stillness of the barrens, there was something deeply unnerving about the lands without El. Even though she knew she would be safe as long as she held onto the crystal in her bracelet, she couldn't get herself to relax when death was literally within arm's reach.
As the night wore on, the tranquility Aisha had grown so fond of was ever more frequently disrupted by grunts and grumblings of frustration from the other side of the fire. Resigning herself to a scarce forty-seven pages of progress, she closed her grimoire and walked over to Elsword.
"What're you making so much noise for?"
He scowled and frantically flipped back and forth through a half dozen pages. "The stupid book stopped making sense!"
Aisha leaned over his shoulder. "What part? Let me see."
Elsword kept a hold on the book, pouring over a page and gritting his teeth in frustration. "The whole part. It says you can make swords from magic and it sounds really cool, but then they don't explain it and they just have a lot of pictures with messed up math all over them."
"Oh, those are the incantation formulas. It's just like algebra."
"Like what?" Elsword looked at her as though she had just lost her grip on sanity. Granted, he looked at her with that expression frequently, but this time he really meant it. Frowning, Aisha sat down next to him and pulled a stub of charcoal from a case in her pocket.
"Algebra. You know, math with numbers and letters and symbols?"
Elsword blinked, the skepticism in his eyes unchanging. Aisha sighed, disheartened. "Alright, let's ignore that for now..." She pulled out a piece of parchment and started scrawling notes across it. "The four base elements are easy to conjure just by concentrating on them, but if you want to do more complex things, you need a formula for it, and that formula is the incantation."
"So I just need to say some stuff to make it work?" Elsword grimaced, glaring at the diagrams before him with contempt. "Why don't they just put the words down there then?"
"Are you crazy? That'd take up a hundred pages for every spell!" Aisha shook her head to calm herself, remembering that she was speaking to someone who had just started learning magic within the past month. "If you had just one incantation, it'd be the exact same magic every time, and you'd have to memorize a different incantation whenever you wanted to use the spell in a different way."
"...huh?"
"...okay... like this..." Aisha handed over the parchment she'd been scribbling on and began explaining the process of incantation formulas and how they helped to focus your intent, all the while struggling to keep herself from pushing Elsword into the fire each time he shouted at his grimoire in frustration. For another two hours, they worked through magical theory and Elsword's stubborn irritation at its difficulty, whiling away the night until the kindling for the fire was completely spent. Mentally and physically exhausted, Elsword sauntered off to his sleeping bag and turned in for the night, leaving Aisha to toil over her bedroll, fluffing it in a vain attempt to escape the inevitable discomfort of laying on solid rock for eight hours. In most other instances, her aggravation over her sleeping arrangements might be unremarkable but in this case, despite having bickered with Elsword for hours, it was the only thing bothering her as she grumbled and fussed over the placement of her pillow. After a flurry of tossing and turning, she finally managed to find a single, marginally agreeable position and drifted off to sleep beneath a sea of stars.
"uuuhhh..." Elsword blinked, his eyes unwilling to open as he rolled onto his side. The night was still in its prime with the moon hanging high overhead, casting pale shadows across the sand and bathing the mountains in a strangely tranquil glow. Rubbing his sore shoulders, Elsword climbed up to his feet as quietly as he could, surveying their campsite and finding Aisha sleeping comfortably a few feet away. On the other side of the rock, however, Rena's bedroll was thrown open and empty. Scanning the surrounding area, it didn't take long for him to spot her; atop a high outcropping, outlined in silver, Rena sat and gazed out at the desert. Rubbing the sleep from his eyes, Elsword plodded over and clumsily climbed up to meet her.
"Can't sleep?" She spoke into the chill desert breeze, keeping her eyes on the sands below. In response, Elsword only nodded, mumbling something incoherent as he moved to sit next to her.
"Are you okay? It sounded like you were having a nightmare a few minutes ago, or maybe fighting a bear." She smiled, fainter and gentler than her usual bright, ecstatic grins. Shaking his head out, Elsword looked out onto the dunes and tried to remember what he'd seen in the moments before he woke up.
"No, I was just training..."
Rena giggled faintly. "Training even in your sleep? Don't you train enough already?"
"No way..." He gathered a handful of tiny pebbles from around his legs and started tossing them down into the sand. "I used to train ten hours a day when I was-" He paused, staring off into the night.
"Hm?" Rena turned, finding Elsword's face solemn and still.
"It wasn't a dream about training, it was about my sister..." He dropped the rest of his pebbles at his side, drawing his knees up and resting his elbows on them.
"Oh?" Rena turned back toward the soft shadows on the sand. "I didn't know you had a sister. What's she like?"
For a while, Elsword was quiet, staring vacantly as a flood of memories washed over him. What could he say about about her? What could he tell Rena so that she would understand why Elsa was so important to him? That she had taught him everything about being a knight since he was a child? That she was the only family he'd known his entire life? That for the longest time, she had been somewhere else, somewhere in the world, somewhere that was not here with him... In the end, he choked up a bit and could only manage a single sentence.
"She's really strong..."
Rena closed her eyes and considered his vague, awkwardly delivered answer. It was clear to her that there was a lot more than that to his sister, but she felt that now was not the time to press him any further. After a moment, Elsword collected himself and resumed showering pebbles down on the dunes below.
"Hey, Rena... why did you two come along?" His question sounded far more accusatory than he had intended and, for just a second, Rena looked as though she had been punched in the gut. Seeing her suddenly downtrodden, Elsword quickly corrected himself. "Wait, no, not like that... I just mean... You two aren't from Ruben, and you were just passing through when the El got taken."
Relaxing, Rena smiled faintly. "You mean aside from helping out the hundred or so people who can't live in their own homes anymore?"
Elsword shook his head. "No, I get that... but weren't you already headed somewhere else when that happened?"
"Ah..." Turning back to the desert, she studied the outlines of the distant mountains as she pondered her response. "It wasn't anything important. I just decided to go off on a trip somewhere, you know?" She grinned cheerfully. "But, even though it's because the El was stolen, and even though it's been pretty rough so far, I'm glad I'm with you two instead of just wandering around alone."
Elsword nodded, glancing aside. "Yeah..."
Rena giggled lightly to herself at his awkward reply, watching him blush lightly from the corner of her eye. Over the past few weeks, she had come to realize that there was something strangely satisfying about making Elsword and Aisha blush awkwardly.
It's probably because they're both the type that hates to admit how they really feel about things. She brushed her hair behind her ear and held it steady against the whispering night wind as she mused to herself. Staring out across the desert as a chill winter breeze swept away the tops of the dunes, Rena and Elsword passed a few minutes in silence and calm before a soft, low snore floated through the air.
"Aisha must-" Rena turned to the side only to find Elsword asleep, his head resting on his arms and his face quiet and peaceful. She smiled, leaning back on her hands and gazing up at the shimmering sky above her.
"I really am glad though... doing all of this alone was hard enough when I was your age, and it hasn't gotten any easier..."
"Rrawrglgh" Elsword thrashed about, swinging his arms through a tangle of blankets as he sat up. A sudden flash of sunlight spilled over his face, forcing his eyes shut as he raised a hand to shield himself.
"It's about time you got up!" Aisha stood at his bedside and shoved a bundle of pickled meat and bread toward him. "Hurry up and eat, we're about to leave you behind."
"Mrrmghg..." He grabbed his breakfast and shoved it into his mouth, drowning out his answer as he kicked away his bedroll and pulled on his boots. Stumbling into most of his gear and nearly choking on a chunk of hard bread, he gathered his supplies and brushed the dirt and sand from his clothes.
"Alright, I'm ready!" He returned Aisha's scowl, stomping off ahead of her. "Wait..."
"What is it?" Rena tilted her head and looked at him curiously. Elsword looked up to the outcropping and clearly remembered falling asleep there last night but not how he ended up back on the ground beneath a pair of blankets. He shook his head, dismissing the mystery as he checked back over the campsite to make sure they hadn't left anything behind. With the sunlight warming the crisp winter air, they set off through the desert as Elsword and Aisha chatted and bickered about incantation formulas and their necessity every step of the way. Far sooner than they had expected, they reached the end of the sands and the start of a ragged, weather worn ridge. Rallying, they hurried up its slope and stood tall atop its crest. In the valley below lay their destination, surrounded by dusty red earth and roaring blue rivers and bustling with life: Bethma gorge.