57th day of Frost, 117th year of the Age of Steel
Riven felt restless. He had left his house with just a backpack filled with some food and a small notebook to take field notes in case he stumbled upon something interesting, and had taken off headed to the Astralar Mountains. The cold winds of frost had brought clouds with them, and those clouds had brought the snowstorms that had raged on for the past three days. As a result, the small peak Riven was currently sitting on was whiter than ever, and the forest and the small prairies and plateaus below him were covered in a thick sheet of clean, soft snow. Riven's trained sight even allowed him to spot a couple large footprints that seemed interesting. He wasn't too in the mood though; besides, he was unarmed, and it was hard to assess if the beast that had left those would be so kind as to not eat him, case it was still around. The weird feeling had come with the snowstorms; Riven was sleeping worse than usual, feeling some sort of excess energy that he didn't know what to spend on. The rune in his arm beated with heat; it seemed like the elements wanted something from him, but he didn't know what. Desk work had made him slow and lazy, and he hadn't used his magical abilities except for drying up after baths and lighting up the hearth. The minute he had been free and the blizzard had stopped he was there, on a solitary peak, thinking about himself and how he'd gotten there. And of course, he wasn't referring to a single, long flight over the cold landscape.
The mountains looked a bit like the edges of the valleys in the Lorien landscape that he had grown up seeing in the distance. No hovering dread or bird shadows lurking around, of course, but the soft snowflakes floating down from the clouded skies brought back memories. There was no nostalgia at all; anyone who truly knew Riven was very aware of the fact that he had never missed Nivenhain since the day he left. But at least he had a single goal in Lorien. One he had truly despised and that he didn't believe in... but at the end of the day, he trained for a reason. He knew who he was and what he was meant to be. Kalzasi offered a thousand opportunities; it opened up a million questions, but not a single answer. At days like this one, Riven felt lost, in a way. Maybe that was why his arm throbbed so hard. Maybe he hadn't been acting like himself, and his Elementalist rune and his connection to the world had ended up being an integral part of himself, and his soul. Or maybe he was just bored and needed to get up; his body reminded him that as much as he wanted to learn about what surrounded him, he had been born a warrior.
He closed his eyes, shielding his mind from the blinding whiteness that made it harder to focus. He was overthinking it; he might as well give his magic some release, see if that stopped the incessant drumming that bothered his very soul. He knelt and sunk a hand into the snow he was stepping on; when he pulled back there was a single black rock on his hand, a small chunk of hardened earth he could extend his influence to. He focused as he held it in his hands, trying to mold it into a perfect sphere. He felt the energy flow and the stone started to change; edges sunk within themselves as they changed form, and then... Riven could only describe it as a knot; something stopped the flow and the rock just broke in two pieces in his hand, now an amorphous shape. It was a really easy exercise, why was it being so hard now! The Avialae just tried again, pushing the two broken pieces together to form a welding point and start the same process. He tried to focus more, but the beating in his arm wouldn't go; he tried to ignore it and force the rock to do the same thing... but a sudden, uncontrolled discharge of aether made the rock shatter, turning it into small, rugged shards that feel in Riven's hands. Frustrated, he threw the pieces to the floor and buried his hands in his face. That was bad. Very bad. Why wasn't his magic working? He seemed to have less and less control over it. Earth was the element that made him have the hardest time usually, seeming stubborn and too solid for him, but even him could command it to form basic shapes, especially at that amount of material. What was really going on? How was his magic so blocked, so uncontrollable?
Riven led a hand behind his wings and distractedly stroked his own feathers. He tended not to do it in public, as it wasn't the most normal thing for an Avialae, but if he was stressed his arm would have ended up searching for that touch anyway, that kind of self-support that allowed him to believe things would be alright, sort of. The cold was bothering him; not exactly the freezing air, but the absence of any warmth in the middle of that icy landscape, the cold isolation of the frozen peak. If there was anything Riven could make, though, that was fire. A bonfire, basically anywhere, held together by sheer willpower. He focused, and allowed a small blue wisp to appear hovering over the ground. Although Elementalism was not necessarily a physically focused magic, adding to the movement and generating elemental sources from his body usually helped Riven shape his force of will: he added torrents of flame with both arms as he made the original wisp spin to absorb them and lay on the floor, the snow sizzling as it boiled and charring the patches of grass underneath. And suddenly... the power output increased. No control; a massive burst of fire surged from his body and blasted the ground, creating a massive blue pillar of fire that melted all snow a few yards around it and made Riven jump back, scared of his own lack of control. That had been too much power for a fucking bonfire! He instantly dispelled the raging pillar and dropped on the frozen ground, seething, unable to manage his own feelings. When had he lost control this way? Why were the elements being so wild now? Before, making that kind of display was something that had needed focus and a significant increase of power, and now he just burned things like a wildfire? His jaw clenched, tense; his fists were making the snow around them quickly melt and boil. He angrily punched the rock he had been sitting on, and it shattered instantly. Great, now he had no fucking seat. At least he hadn't injured himself. He didn't recognize his reactions; Riven did not punch walls out of frustration. Or at least... he hadn't, in a very long time. He laid on his back. Something was fundamentally wrong with him and his magic, and he had to find out now.
At least there was some sort of comfort, of numbness on lying on the white snow, wings wide open, far away from the city. For someone like Riven, Kalzasi could become overwhelming from time to time. The fact that he was not a native and half Jastai didn't help things at all, of course. He was the black-winged sheep, pointed at and rumored upon by every member of the nobility. Maybe he wouldn't be if he hadn't been taken in by Talon and House Novalys themselves, but leaving his small house and Talon's side was not worth it. Even if he continuously failed to notice what Riven truly wanted. Even so far away, that bittersweet feeing of being so close and so far to his Companion felt like a needle on his big heart. Lost in a spiral of plummeting thoughts, he didn't notice the first ice needle that hit his face. It took a second and a third one for him to open his eyes, get up and look around just to realize there wasn't much he could see other than clouds and ice. A blizzard was starting, and it seemed vicious... and that peak was no place to take shelter. He quickly gathered his backpack and jumped out of the cliff, taking off in the stormy weather, the small ice particles hitting his wings hard. He tried to go south and back to Kalzasi, but strong wind turbulence wouldn't let him. Letting out a frustration bellow, he trusted his instincts, the small air currents that pushed him north instead. The rune in his arm flared up, bright blue, as he glided with the wind, beating his wings to balance himself. He was not going to die there. He had problems to solve and things to understand still.
