Connection

[Kaden]

With a warm smile of his own in return, he looked back up to the sky, their platform rising with his gaze.

"Oh, all the time." Kaden admitted. They started to gain a bit of vertical speed until they passed the walls of the stadium and hung high in the air above. He looked around to get his bearings and take note of the direction they needed to be going. When he got it, he looked back down at her.

"There's no other way to travel for me. When you do it once, that's it. So I apologize in advance." He added, still the hint of a grin on his face. "I'm about to spoil you." Their board started slowly at first, taking time to build speed at a comfortable clip.

[Aazarah]

Her smile intensified with the sheer thrill of the ride, Aazarah could feel the rush of wind streaming past her ears carrying the wizards words in distortion around her, as she barely made out his last words... something about spoiling her?. Then they were off.

Working to keep her hair out of her eyes, she leaned over to catch a glimpse of the ground. Slowly it became a constant blur and she decided to pull back and focus on the one solid thing before her. "Kaden", she looked to the wizard and raised her voice to cross the wind barrier, "How did you discover your Ice talent? I have not come across many of you before.. and of those I have met ...they were quite an age, and only discovered it as a byproduct of their Earthwork".

[Kaden]

Kaden's smile faded a bit when he heard her question. With an inaudible sigh, he sat on the basalt-ed ice slab, near enough to her that she would be able to hear him. Their flight slowed noticeably as his focus shifted. "I'm not entirely sure, but I have a theory. When I was born, it seemed as if I wasn't even a wizard. Both of my parents were, but there were no traces of magic in me. I seemed like...I dunno, just a more fragile human. This greatly disappointed my father."

Kaden's voice went low at the memory of his father. "It turned out that I just needed the right emotional conduit to release it. I met someone here a long time ago. The best friend I've ever had in my life...a fire witch. Ironic, right? She's the one who showed me. Anyway, when I was younger, I found myself in a...situation. My brother had gotten badly injured trying to save my life. A sort of numbness overtook me. I felt cold, emotionally distant; it seems when I get too distraught, I remove myself and coldness takes over. That was the first time it happened. That's when my ice first showed itself."

[Aazarah]

She followed the story with growing interest. The sadness in his voice urged her to reach out and console him in some way but experience had taught her it was best to allow ones emotions to flow - Kaden needed to connect with his memory and honor any of the unrest that still lay within his heart about it. Especially if coldness was the way he normally dealt with it.

"How did it show itself?" she enquired softly.

[Kaden]

The platform slowed to a halt. He thought hard about how much he wanted to tell her about this episode. It wasn't long before he decided. She was allowing him into her story; something dearly personal to her. It was only fair that she know at least this much about his.

"It exploded out of me. Twelve years of magical repression exploded out of me in one vicious instant. There were attackers. I killed all of them." His voice was solemn; only a hint of a waver on the last sentence. He looked at her, in her eyes. He wanted to see what she was thinking. "If that unsettles you and you don't want me doing this with you, I understand."

[Aazarah]

"That would have been a lot for a young boy to cope with..", she met his gaze calmly, "It seems to me you`ve had a lot of practice in the time since then. You have very good control of your magic, Kaden, and I`m actually more than comfortable having someone with that level of skill around me. Especially at a time like this."

[Kaden]

He nodded. "Okay." He said, breathing a small sigh of relief. The platform started to move again, slowly at first like before, but speeding up more quickly this time. "Thank you. I do promise that I have much better control of myself. You're perfectly safe around me."

[Aazarah]

She nodded to show she understood, "Are we going to be ok to simply fly into this place? Or is there some things I should be on the look out for?"

[Kaden]

He shook his head. "No, should be nothing. At least, nothing above ground that we can look out for. It's supposed to just be a ghost town now. You'll know when we're close though. You'll feel it in the pit of your stomach. A disturbance, magical in nature."

[Aazarah]

She let the conversation go quiet for a while as they flew over the landscape below. She watched the small mountains and even tinier trees move beneath them and felt herself, as usual, completely at peace with nature and the strength it seemed to emit. This landscape had stood beneath them for longer than even her ancestors would recall.

It was easy to forget where and why they were travelling when she was witness to such beauty around her. Closing her eyes, Aazarah took a moment to recharge her batteries. After a few moments a slight agitation in the waves around them began to bend around the ice platform, she looked to Kaden, sure he would have felt it too.

[Kaden]

Kaden was standing now, a pair of footholds keeping his feet bolted to the platform of ice and stone. The shift in the air was immediately felt, if not seen. He looked around in temporary confusion before looking to Aazarah to see if she felt it. He saw her with her eyes closed. "Is this you?" He asked her.

[Aazarah]

"Definitely not me", she visibly swallowed her apprehension and met his gaze firmly, "I`d say we've found our town"

[Kaden]

A breath escaped Kaden's lips. One he didn't even know he'd been holding. "Outstanding." There was no trace of excitement in the word as their transport slowed once again, high above the town. It was an eyesore in every definition of the word. Buildings left untended in the elements; brown, dusty, dishevelled and dilapidated monuments to lives vanished. They could see a fountain in the center of the town, covered with a brownish-white paint. It hadn't spewed water in years it seemed.

The platform slowly lowered until it was just off the ground. The footholds around the wizard's feet disappeared and he hopped off. "Here we are." The unsettling feeling was very close to making him nauseous but he fought it down. "Let's start looking."

[Aazarah]

Aazarah found herself taking a deep breath. This was where Nyk had come looking? She couldn`t help but berate herself over not coming with him. After all they had been through in the past, she should have at least listened to him.

Her first contact with the ground sent nausea through her entire body like she had never felt before. Many people had been killed here, she just knew it. The Earth sang of blood and death all around her, and she hadnt even begun to consciously connect to it. In a way, she wasnt sure she even wanted to.

"Maybe we should look for physical clues first, if that works for you?", she reached up to help him off the ice platform.

[Kaden]

"That works. Anything to take my immediate attention off of all this." Kaden admitted. "This is horrible. The water in the air is almost nonexistent. That unnerves me even more. This weapon your brother was looking for...You have any idea what it is? How it looks?"