Re: An Angel's Aria
Jhans falls onto his side, and pants -- teeth bared, tongue lolling. As he watches -- the first trickle of a buried stream re-emerging bubbles out of the rock by his head. He laps at it, before spitting it out -- and with it a good deal of the hideous, stony dust that coats his mouth like a vile affliction. It is stone, and it tastes so. Carse and inedible.
Looking around him, the dust conceals all. He coughs as the substance fills his lungs, and splutters as it works its way into his eyes. As far as he can see, there is only a mute, sloped scale of shrapnel and slabs of shattered stone.
Jhans hastily assesses his situation. Downhill? Dangerous, and the way the smog will be drifting. Round? Unhelpful -- and may reveal winds, which would be worse than any blizzard or sandstorm with the air like this. Up? The only way.
And so he sets off, keeping his face out to the wide, to keep it from the drifting dust. It soon settles, and a cover of dust akin to fine sand settles over the hillside, hiding both small crevice and sharp edge. After a half day's trudge, Jhans turns to look behind him. The hillside seems grey and smooth under its veil of dust. Jhans realizes that the path he was following must have been long buried -- and Grey, separated from the bear during the landslide, is nowhere to be seen.
Jhans was working his way North to find the Maliore, whom he had heard tell of of from a miner. A group of rebel Panserbjorn, who refused to succumb to the new bear king's regime of war and growth domination and science -- hiding high in mountains crowned by snow and ice, all year. They would prove a valuable ally if Jhans is ever to liberate the bear nations.
And that's the problem with bears. They don't mind who their king is, they are loyal to him anyway. To avoid civil war, the only time they would come upon a foe as harsh and fierce as they themselves are, the bears remain loyal to their rules. And they have good reason to be. He has either fought or thought his way to kingship, rarely killing his opponents. That is a very... human thing to do.
Upon reaching higher and higher altitudes, the air thins and the rock underfoot becomes warm. Slipping on the least uncarcened of the debree, it slowly gives out to a glassy surface, almost scolding to the touch. Suddenly, the slope opens out onto a smooth plateau, melted by the heat of what seems to be an impact. What remains of the peak towers high above, craggy and raw.
And there, nestling in the rubble, something incandescent and brilliant. Jhans reaches out, but the heat makes him recoil. A wind stirs the hair on his hide, and he hears a raucous caw, and spots Grey, circling off to the east, his call carried on the wind. Jhans gives a rough, barking call in the tongue he trained Grey to obey, and the bird circles in and lands in front of him, shifting uneasily on the warm ground.
Whatever this item is, it should not fall victim to the wandering people of this land. It sparkles, as though calling to him, not striking but... constant. And who knows? It could hold value among the human kind.
And then, far sooner than Jhans had expected, people started arriving on the plateau. And they didn't stop coming.