A Quiet Crossroads (Lake Baikal, Siberia)

[Sören]

Once the boy wore himself out with spitting venom, Sören left him to it. Elias’s childishness was tiresome, weathered only because he had no interest in feeding such a fragile ego. The covetous way he framed his destructive power twitched Sören lips with displeasure, but it was not a concern he lingered on. Instead he dedicated his thoughts to his own next plans, offering his services to the recovering village in the hours which followed. It was not entirely altruism. In the physical labour he was undisturbed, able to think.

By the time Elias found him he was back inside, by the inn’s hearth. He did not turn towards the storm’s approach, no matter how it was demanded of him. It was inconsequential. Elias accused him of claiming authority, but Sören was more vagabond than king: he answered his own whims, used those around him, but rarely lorded power like that. Elias irritated him, but he wasn’t interested in crossing swords over something so wasteful as who was in charge. When his gaze finally turned away from the flames his attention was not a reward, it was weary. He had promised answers, and meant it – to a degree. But Elias was ungracious.

“The guardian came to the call of Kemala’s power. It attacked us in the boat. Confirmation of a somewhat working theory, and the reason you were never able to find it.” It wasn’t a secret worth keeping any longer, for privately Sören no longer believed the guardian possessed the shard. Elias knew Sören had faced such creatures before, or suspected at least; it was why he had paid for “Alvis’s” services in the first place. “I intended to regroup. Decide how best to proceed, now I knew how to bring the creature to me. Then–” he made a gesture with his hand, cold expression clearly meaning Elias’s storm. “If the signal you have been chasing has disappeared, I can only assume you scared it away, since it did not return when Kemala challenged you over the storm. What little progress I made has been lost.”