Arian really didn't know what to think when he saw the space outside of the mayor's building completely empty. Sand blew gently through the area, but there were no guards to be found. He wanted to believe that it was a good thing, a sign that they were destined to succeed, but he had the sneaking suspicion that this was far from being true. Somehow, this was going to be a trap, and he, along with Lana and Ronan, were going to be sucked in with no chance of escape. They didn't even know where Jay was, so how were they supposed to pull this off? It wasn't as if this was going to stop Arian given how important rescuing the brown-haired girl was, but he still knew that this was going to be far from easy, and he was simply going to have to put up with it.
Ronan walked forward and pushed open the door, gesturing for the rest of the trio to follow after him as he entered the building. Arian gave the outside of the office one last examination before sighing and trailing after Ronan. Lana took up the rear, and she shut the door behind them. Everything about her posture was tense and on edge, a clear contrast from Ronan, who while nervous, still seemed to be managing to keep his composure at least slightly. Arian felt like his nerves were going to drive him crazier and crazier the longer he was around the two because of how anxious they were.
Ronan led the others through the rest of the building, and he occasionally gave glances over his shoulder to ensure that he didn't lose anybody along the way. When he was sure that he still had the whole team there, he nodded to himself, murmuring that this was a good thing, before continuing to walk towards their destination. Arian felt as if there was an itch just beneath his skin that he wouldn't be able to scratch no matter how hard he tried. He was positive that it was caused by his own fear, and he prayed with everything that he had that this wasn't a trap. He knew better than to believe it though, so he simply stuck to being brazenly optimistic despite being sure that it wasn't going to pay off in the long run.
The tour of the office seemed agonizingly slowly. Ronan wasn't even taking them through all of the smaller areas, instead concentrating only on taking the group towards the area where he suspected Jay would be. Arian was more than thankful for this, deciding pretty early that he detested the atmosphere of the office and would never return there of his own volition. As soon as they rescued Jay, he was going to have them teleport away and never go back. In fact, maybe it would be a good idea for them to destroy the building outright before retreating just to make sure that Cryai would never be able to use it for his nefarious deeds ever again.
As soon as the door came into view, Arian knew that it was the one. He stopped walking a few feet in front of it, casting Ronan a nervous glance when the other boy halted in his motions as well. Ronan gave both Arian and Lana a sympathetic gaze before turning his attention back to the door. Ronan was confused and didn't understand why Cryai had betrayed him, but that didn't mean that he was going to be stopping the others from powering through to rescue Jay. Ronan knew that Cryai was in the wrong for abducting her, and even if he had his own reservations out of anxiety, he was going to do his best to save her.
It didn't take long for all of them to agree that they had come to the right conclusion, and Ronan reached one hand out to curl it around the knob of the door before them. He twisted it slowly, and Arian tried to ignore the way that his heart was speeding its pounding in his chest. He failed, and as soon as he started thinking about it, he simply couldn't stop. Lana seemed far more composed, but there was still something determined and shadowed about her gaze that unsettled him. Damn it, he wasn't cut out for this.
All of his worries seemed to melt away as soon as he saw the inside of the room though. He let out a gasp, and his hands clapped over his chest when he realized who was waiting for them. Just as Ronan had suspected, Jay was inside, and she seemed to be relatively unharmed. She was tied to a chair, and she looked just as exhausted and droopy as she had when she was dragged away from her team. When the door opened, she managed to pry her head away from her chin, but panic soon filled her eyes, and the anxiety came rushing back into Arian's body all over again.
"What are you--" Lana suddenly questioned, and Arian realized that she was turning around because Jay was looking at something behind them. Arian didn't know if he wanted to see what had appeared in the doorway of the room, but he knew that he didn't have much of a choice in the matter. Slowly but surely, he forced himself to swivel on the spot to investigate.
Cryai was standing in the entryway, and one of his hands held at his sunglasses. There were empty voids where his eyes should have been, and Arian had to actively resist the urge to scream as soon as he saw them. He didn't understand how anyone could have been so terrifying, but then again, he had seen a lot of ridiculous things since first crossing paths with Jay. A voice in the back of his head whispered that he shouldn't have been as shocked as he was, but he couldn't manage to follow its advice no matter how hard he tried.
"You've made a mistake by coming here," Cryai suddenly drawled. He folded his sunglasses and nonchalantly shoved them into the pocket of his suit trousers. He took an ambling step towards Arian, Lana, and Ronan, and Arian could have sworn that the the temperature in the room took a sudden nosedive for the freezing. A chill sprinted up his spine, but he couldn't escape it no matter how hard he tried. He wished that he had Fire magic to fight it off, but since that was outside of the realm of possibility, all he could do was stare.
"What do you want from Jay?" Lana asked sharply, clearly far more experienced in dealing with these situations than Arian could ever hope to be. The Skylian Mage had sunk into a combative stance and thrown out one hand out to the side to ensure that Cryai didn't take any cheap shots at Ronan or Arian. The blonde boy most certainly appreciated her defensive gesture, knowing that he wouldn't last a minute the instant Cryai decided it would be fitting to turn his magic against the intruders.
Cryai laughed, but the sound was hollow and lacked anything that even came close to resembling emotion. Arian shivered, but this time, it had nothing to do with the cold that hung in the air like a suffocating curtain. "I think you should ask her that yourself," Cryai replied with a small shrug. "After all, she's fully aware of why I brought her here; she simply didn't want to explain it to you."
Arian wanted to ask them what he was talking about, but he couldn't force his lips to move. Besides, he was positive that Cryai wasn't going to answer his inquiries no matter how many times he pressed the issue, so all he could do was bite his tongue and talk to Jay about it after the fact. Until that time came, they were going to have to fight, and Arian could only hope against the odds of the world that he, along with the rest of the group, was able to get out of this mess intact.
Lana was the first one to act, and she snapped her other arm, the one that wasn't loosely guarding Arian and Ronan, through the air. The sky around Cryai seemed to ripple, and he was pushed backwards a few feet. Lana slashed both of her arms inwards, prompting currents of wind to appear from nowhere and press the door shut. Lana smirked to herself, but it was clear that the action was stilted and forced.
Lana was whirling around towards Jay in the blink of an eye, and she started to dash over to the other girl with intentions of untying the ropes that held her down. Arian followed suit, but he knew that it wasn't going to be that easy. The closing of a door wasn't going to stop Cryai, someone who gave the image of being demonic after merely one glance. Cryai was going to find a way back inside, and when he did, the fight that ensued was going to be a ridiculously close one.
Arian liked to believe that he was a powerful mage and fighter, but he had enough intelligence to be fully aware that he was nowhere near as strong as Lana or Jay. With the latter out of commission, that meant Arian was going to have to try and carry the battle alongside Lana. There was no guarantee that Ronan was going to be able to help in the slightest, so Arian and Lana would just have to hope that Cryai was going to be a weak opponent.
Unfortunately for them, Arian knew fully well that such was never going to be the case.
He and Lana were only able to get through about a quarter of the work that it was going to take to untie Jay's arms when the door snapped open again. Arian let out a shriek that he knew sounded pathetic, but he couldn't bring himself to bite his tongue in his moment of terror. Instead, he simply glanced over to Lana and prayed that the Skylian Mage had any ideas as to what they were supposed to be doing.
Lana responded by launching herself away from where Jay was sitting, leaving Ronan to help Arian with untying the ropes. Ronan glanced around the room in concern for a moment before sighing and closing his eyes with something that appeared to be resignation. Arian wanted to ask what the hell he was doing when there were important things to be done, but he was cut off as soon as the ground began to shift beneath them. Arian almost stumbled, but he didn't wind up falling completely.
A column of rock came up from the ground, and Arian was able to throw out an arm to grab onto it before he fully fell over. He gave a thankful glance over to Ronan, realizing that the other boy had been responsible for his salvation. Ronan didn't offer a blatant reply, instead focusing on reaching into the column of rock that had risen through both the sand and the floor of the building. There was something inside, and Ronan fiddled for it mindlessly before a gasp left his lips and his fingers closed around the object in question.
It was a gemstone, sharpened to perfection and perfect for cutting something. Arian let out a gasp of surprise before his expression broke out into a grin. He watched as Ronan began to slash away at the ropes with a surprising amount of ease, and it only took a few seconds before Jay's left arm had been freed completely. Her ankle was halfway through being cut loose only a moment later.
A blast of ice managed to make its way past Lana, cutting the air apart as it flew in the space between Jay's head and Arian's torso. He had to resist the urge to scream, instead concentrating his attention on seeing where the ice made contact with the nearby wall. As soon as the energy hit the building, it began to spread, crawling along the boundaries of the room rapidly. Somehow, the temperature dropped even further, and Arian shivered once again. This time around, his shudder had everything to do with how cold it was.
Lana jumped towards Cryai, her fist crackling with turquoise electricity. She landed a powerful punch on Cryai's side, but it didn't have anywhere near the intended effect. Cryai stumbled backwards, but he didn't react otherwise, and he somehow seemed even more angry than before. It was harder to read his emotions given there were empty sockets on his face instead of eyes, but the rage on his face was still clear despite this boundary, and Arian forced himself to look away to keep from being petrified out of terror.
Another slash from Ronan allowed Jay's left leg to be moved around once again, and the brown-haired girl let out a sigh of relief. She rubbed at her ankle with her free hand, but it was clear that she was still in pain. Adrenaline was doing some of the work to keep her upright, but she was still distracted, and it wasn't as if Arian could blame her in the slightest. He would have been anxious in her situation as well. Hell, he was nervous enough as it was, and his heart felt like it was going to explode forth from his chest if he wasn't careful about controlling himself. He wasn't sure how he was supposed to go about that, so he instead concentrated on the battle at hand.
Cryai tried to send out another blast of ice, but this time, Lana was more than able to block it. She threw up one arm to create a shield out of swirling wind, and the blockade transitioned into becoming a twister. It sent the ice power flying back towards Cryai with increased force. She glared at Cryai with everything that she had, seemingly praying silently that she was going to be able to do some damage to him this time.
Cryai was naturally immune to the damage done by Ice attacks because of his element, but that didn't stop him from feeling the pain of the force caused by the strike. He smirked at first, not seeming to care, but as soon as he was hit by the blow, his face was wiped clean of that damn smile. Cryai didn't give any of them the dignity of hearing him scream, instead simply flying backwards until his back slammed into the hallway outside the door. Arian couldn't help but cringe at the loud sound Cryai's body made as soon as it made contact with the wall, and he thought his rapid heart almost skipped a beat out of terror. Once again, he thought about how he wasn't cut out for this in the slightest, and his nerves seemed ready to murder him from the inside out.
Arian let out a gasp as soon as he felt a hand on his arm, and he had to resist the urge to lash out with a magical strike. When he looked over, he could see that the culprit was Jay though, and she was using his arm to steady herself as she rose to her feet. She somehow looked even more exhausted than before, but there was something in her eyes that told Arian she had to talk to him as soon as possible.
Arian looked down and saw that Ronan had finished cutting Jay loose with the gemstone, and the boy was now furiously glancing back and forth between Cryai and Jay nervously. He didn't seem to be able to sit still all of a sudden, and Arian had the sneaking suspicion that it had everything to do with Cryai. The Ice mage was slowly starting to rise to his feet, shuffling towards Lana with pure hatred in his eyes.
"We have to talk," Jay suddenly said, but Arian couldn't tell who she was talking to. When he glanced over at her, he saw that her eyes were glossy and facing towards the ground below. She looked so strange and so unlike her regular self that it was almost terrifying to see. Arian suppressed the urge to shiver in response, knowing that it wouldn't accomplish anything but wanting to do it anyways.
"It's going to have to wait," Lana declared. She unleashed yet another blast of wind towards Cryai, effectively pinning him against the wall. "I'm usually against this, but I don't think that we're going to be getting out of here unless we can kill him."
Arian practically froze on the spot. As much as he understood the situation, knowing that there was no other way out, he hated the idea with everything he was. Cryai wasn't a real person and he was fully aware of such, but that didn't mean that he didn't feel terrible about it. Arian hated the idea of ending another life regardless of the situation. He couldn't go back to that.
You aren't there. You're here. Everything is okay. You aren't going to have to do it. Let Lana handle it. You and Ronan need to look after Jay in the first place.
The thoughts repeated in Arian's mind like they were part of a mantra, the only anchor keeping him tethered to the regular world without completely bursting. He could feel a panic attack coming on between the stress of the situation and Lana's suggestion, but he tried to keep himself relatively calm by shoving it to the side and focusing on something else.
Arian hooked one arm around Jay's torso, and he was almost surprised when she leaned against the contact rather than pulling away from it. As far as he could tell, Jay was the independent type, always knowing how to take care of herself and not needing to rely on the assistance of others to get work done. If Arian hadn't appeared, she never would have asked another person for help in finding the rest of the Skylian Mages. It simply wasn't in her nature, and Arian was fully aware of such.
She was silent as Ronan wrapped one of his arms around Jay's shoulders, and the three started to move away from the doorway where Lana was taking care of Cryai. Arian glanced around furiously to try and find a way for them to escape, but his heart dropped as soon as he realized that there wasn't a place for them to go through. They were stuck. This had been part of Cryai's plan all along.
Ronan appeared to have come to the same conclusion, and he bit down on his lip as he glanced around the area in fear. "We can't get out!" he cried out in panic. "Mayor Cryai is blocking the entrance, and there's no other way for us to escape without going through that door!"
Arian was left to try and fumble with the pieces they had been given, knowing that he was in a less panicked state than Ronan. This was all up to him, but he hated that. He was no good with stress like this. He never had been. How was he supposed to help everybody out of this situation?
Suddenly, he let out a gasp, and he fully took Jay away from Ronan. The other boy looked at him in bewildered confusion, but he never had the chance to ask Arian what was happening. "You have Earth magic, right?" Arian questioned.
Ronan nodded. "Y-Yeah... I've always had it," he commented. Arian realized that this implied there was magic he didn't always have, but he figured that he would have time to ask about that later. There simply wasn't time, and the last thing he needed was to be put under even greater pressure because of how terribly this was all going.
"In that case, tunnel a hole through the floor for us to go through!" Arian declared. He was still holding Jay tightly to make sure that she didn't fall over, so he couldn't point at the ground, but he got the impression that Ronan understood what he was implying even without the gesture.
Ronan's eyes lit up, and he nodded in response before closing his eyes and concentrating all of his energy on the place where his feet met the ground. His body began to glow, and the earth started to shake under his influence. A hole opened up, and a tunnel slowly but surely started to create itself. Arian felt as if he was riding the edge of a blade as he waited for Ronan to finish. He understood that creating an escape route like this was going to take some time, but he wasn't sure how much longer Lana would be able to keep Cryai at bay. If he managed to find a way to reach Arian, Ronan, and Jay while they were distracted, there was no telling what would happen.
Lana rushed toward Cryai as soon as he managed to escape her grasp this time, and she created a blade of electricity before taking hold of it in her left hand. She slashed it towards Cryai, but he managed to deflect the attack by throwing up his right arm. A shield of ice formed between the sword and his body, but Lana didn't stop there. She continued to slash wildly at him, taking advantage of every weakness that showed itself in his posture. Cryai moved quickly, but Lana was just as fast, if not somehow even faster, and she was showing herself to have the upper hand.
Cryai ducked below one of Lana's strikes, and he lashed out with a kick. Even as Lana's feet were swept from beneath her, she didn't allow herself to be deterred. She used the sword to push herself back up, jumping above another kick before slashing forward with the lightning blade to slice open an injury on Cryai's side.
Arian stole a glance over his shoulder at the fight, and he let out a yelp when he saw the injury. However, no blood leaked forth from the cut. Instead, pale blue magic began to drip downwards, and Arian knew that this was more than sufficient proof that Cryai wasn't a human. He was made from Ice magic, so there was no way for him to have blood unless his creator actually put that much effort into his creation. It appeared that was not the case though, so there wasn't as much for Arian to feel sorry for when the time came for Cryai to be struck down.
He was going to feel sorry no matter what, but this was a small consolation that he knew he was going to need.
Lana followed up with yet another stabbing attack in the direction of Cryai, but he managed to dodge it this time. Lana punched at the air, and a sudden torrent of wind was sent flying from her fist. Cryai was sent backwards by the impact, and Lana took advantage of this to stab towards him once again.
This time, the lightning sword did hit its intended target, and Cryai was left to scream in pain when he couldn't hold himself back anymore. The blade had pierced his shoulder, and there was even more pale blue fluid leaking everywhere now. Arian tried not to be sick. He had never been good with blood, and even if this wasn't actually blood, he still felt terrible about it all.
Suddenly, Arian's head whirled around when he heard a gasp mixed with a laugh come from Ronan's direction. He glanced over to see that Ronan had pressed his hands against his chest before looking down into the tunnel below. A smile burst out across his features, and he let out a heavy sigh. "There it is! We can get out of here now!" he exclaimed. Ronan gestured for Arian to follow him as he jumped into the tunnel. Ronan landed in a crouch at the bottom of the rocky shaft. It was only about a ten foot drop, but Arian didn't think he would be able to go down there without risking getting hurt. He was still holding tightly to Jay, and letting her go was sure to be a recipe for disaster.
Ronan suddenly let out a gasp, seeming to have come to the same conclusion, and he snapped his fingers. The ground began to tremble once again, but this time, it was beneath Arian's feet rather than Ronan's, and when Arian glanced down, he saw that there was a slide below him.
A small incline had been created to funnel Arian and Jay into the tunnel, and Arian was falling before he realized what was happening. He glided on his back down into the shaft, still holding onto Jay's torso to make sure that she didn't get hurt along the way. He let out a strangled cry of surprise before landing. When Arian looked down, he realized that he was somehow still on his feet. He didn't even want to ask how that had happened, but he suspected that Ronan had something to do with it.
Ronan took up his place on the other side of Jay soon afterwards, and both boys continued to help her move. There was something glassy about her eyes, and she didn't seem to be able to keep herself from staring at Ronan. Somehow, Arian was able to guess that whatever Jay wanted to talk to him about had something to do with Ronan. He didn't understand what about Ronan could have merited so much attention all of a sudden, but he had the sneaking suspicion that he was going to find out soon enough.
Arian barely noticed it as he continued to walk through the tunnel, and he didn't realize that they had reached the end until after light had already come down to splash on his face. There was yet another shaft at the other side, and it was about teen feet beneath the surface of the desert sands.
Ronan began to manipulate the area to create yet another incline, though this one was far more subtle and took longer to craft since it was intended to help them get up rather than the other way around. Arian watched him impatiently, glancing down at Jay in curiosity. Her head was hanging low, and she was staring at the ground since Ronan had left her immediate range of vision.
Arian's heart felt like it skipped a beat out of panic. He didn't understand why this had to be happening. What about him had caused Lyloc to choose him to gather the Skylian Mages? He wasn't cut out for this. Jay was the one hurt, but somehow, Arian was feeling it too, and he wasn't sure if he would ever be able to escape the pressing sensation. He wasn't meant to be a fighter.
No. That wasn't true. He was meant to be a fighter; he simply chose not to be.
Once Ronan was finished working on their escape tunnel, he gestured for Arian to follow him. They were up on ground level again in no time, and Arian practically collapsed as soon as they were back in the warm sunshine. It was nowhere near as hot as he thought it should have been, and he knew that was because Cryai was so close. He was able to drop the temperature no matter where he was, and the middle of the desert was no exception.
Suddenly, Arian heard a scream, but it sounded faraway and detached. He glanced around to find its origin point, but he was never able to. He was cut off before Lana suddenly burst through the ceiling of the building. Her hands were curved together above her head to make her look like a torpedo, and the wind around her was churning rapidly to ensure that she was able to break through the roof.
Lana was alone. Cryai wasn't there.
When Lana next lashed out, it was with a fierce blast of electricity, and the building began to crumble into nothingness. It didn't catch fire as one would have expected, instead simply rupturing from the inside out. Arian watched with morbid fascination, not sure of how this could have been happening but not caring enough to find the answer regarding it all. His heart skipped a beat in his chest, and he wondered when he would finally get the chance to rest.
Lana finished destroying the building soon afterwards, leaving behind only a husk of wood and splinters atop the sand. She levitated towards where the rest of the group was waiting, and she touched down delicately onto the ground. "I'm glad to see that you're all fine," she said, sounding oddly conversational even though Arian knew what she had just done.
She killed Cryai. She must have.
"We should get out of here," Arian suggested, not wanting to look at the remnants of the building any longer. Jay, who was still weakly limp in his arms, nodded her slow agreement. Arian didn't even bother looking over to Ronan, knowing that he was going to answer the exact same way. They were going to escape from Cloudpeak, and Ronan was going to be coming with them. Arian didn't know where the thought came from, but he was somehow positive that this wasn't going to be the last they saw of the other boy.
Arian was only able to get a few steps away from the building before the ground began to shake once again. He looked over at Ronan and realized that this had nothing to do with the other boy. No, there was something far greater involved with the trembling of the sand, and Arian wasn't sure if he wanted to know what it was.
Somehow though, he was fully aware that the volcano was responsible before he even looked up.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
I worked on this update early since I've got a watch party planned later today oh boy
-Digital