Jonah Sdao

@jonah.nelbrea.com

82 Followers 286 Following

🌵 Los Angeles 🌵 🐍 Jrpg inspired high frontier fantasy 🐍 💀 The Relic In The Fortress coming soon! 💀 Co-creator and writer for @nelbrea.com Writing with @rob.nelbrea.com

Rallo awoke first, and tore down most of the camp, returning the supplies neatly to the catamaran as Peter slept. He was physically impressive, even for a Veskarin, and it became clear that he worked hard to be so. Just as the Lonestar began to peek over the horizon, Rallo began a routine of squats, push-ups, and even ran up and down the beach a number of times. Peter woke as Rallo was finishing his last run down the beach. He stood at the cusp of the thicket and watched Rallo from a distance. The monk was doing some kind of jumping exercise that Peter had never seen before. He watched for a moment, shook his head softly, and turned back to the camp. He began carefully rolling up the bedrolls, and breaking down the tent. Rallo had cleaned most of the camp already, and within a few minutes the rest was packed down tight.
Rallo ducked into the clearing, breathing heavily. Peter’s mind was still catching up to his body, he couldn’t imagine exerting himself that much so early in the day.
"You get an early start." Peter yawned into his fist .
"It’s my secret- I stay ready, so I don’t have to get ready." Rallo said, bouncing up and down on the balls of his feet. He threw a few punches into the air.

Bishop Eulisses Dredd stared down at his desk. The surface of the ornate wood was pocked with burn marks, scorched around the edges, and coated in a thin layer of soot. A sheaf of paperwork smoldered in a heap on the floor beside it, curling into ash. A thin trail of gray smoke rose toward the ceiling, then drifted lazily out the single open window that overlooked the training yard. Hands clasped behind his back, Dredd’s breathing was deep and measured, and he counted silently as he inhaled, held the breath, and exhaled again.
This was happening more often these days- losing control of his magery, succumbing to the cloying voice in the back of his head that demanded rage from him and nothing more. This was the third desk he’d had hauled up to his office in the past year, and it would need replacing again. Managing his own power was becoming quite a chore for Bishop Dredd.
He turned and stared towards a map, hanging from a fraying length of twine. It was a map of the whole of Nelbrea, from the Western Expanse to the Island Nations, from Frozen Collinglee to Darulia. Parze was a minuscule speck in the Bluegreen Sea, dwarfed by the Gran Sel Sals to the east and an enormous swath of nothing to the west. The map was embarrassingly out of date- Darulia hadn’t been included on a map in ten years, yet this one still showed it, far to the south. The surface of the old wayfinder was pricked with small iron tacks, noting all of the Liminal Order’s holdings across the world, but they too were out of date, over half of the Fortresses across the map now either lay destroyed or in the hands of those who would challenge the Order- the Breakers, the Feullans, or the tenacious Lancers. The Fortress on Parze was denoted by a pin twice as large as the island itself; however, it had rusted in place and bloomed out into a crimson stain on the linen.

"Well, well, well." Peter said, raising his voice. "If it isn’t the Lizard of Crimsa."
"How dare you!" Loren spat, his eyes shooting so wide, Peter thought his eyeballs would roll out of his head. Loren flicked his wrist- Peter drew, and fired. The explosive crack of the Feummic Affinity crystal in the Pioneer further unnerved Loren, and before he could even form a thought past the insult and the gunfire, Peter had nailed him. It was just a flesh wound, but enough to blow Loren’s concentration. Loren fell from his levitation, crashing through a wooden table with a crunch and a thud.

The doors to the kitchen were quite grand in comparison to the plain wooden doors found throughout the rest of the Fortress- two large paneled doors, hinged to swing freely in either direction with a push, wide enough to pass two folks abreast through each of them, and tall enough that Peter could carry Paul standing up on his shoulders, and they still would barely brush the top frame. The kitchen held a special significance throughout most of Nelbrea, in many ways considered the most important room in a dwelling. Peter, who bore the burden of an unquenchable sweet tooth, would agree with that sentiment. He pushed the carved wooden doors open and stepped into the warmth of the kitchen. The scope of the room was such that Peter marveled at it every time he visited. The room was a large dome, lit by a persistent magelight at the apex of the ceiling. Against the walls, rows of enormous affinity ovens sat, stoked by the cooks, who channeled their magework into the fires. The sweet smell of burnt sugar, caramel, and arbornuts wafted off of the ovens- the smell of Latiran and Feummic Affinity burning away. The combined Affinity of the cooks and bakers mingled together in the base of the enormous ovens, swirling into a unique type of magery, warm and comforting. It was no surprise that the kitchens were the heart of a Nelbrean home. The Affinity of the hearth soothed anyone who came close enough to it.

Ephariam and Phaia watched from nearby. Ephariam tilted her head, arms crossed over her chest.
“Where once was a Lancer, now is a…cobbler?”
Phaia did not look away from the table, the glyphs still shifting nearly imperceptibly. “No, my sister. A Chobbler.”
“A Chobbler,” Ephariam repeated.
“Indeed.”
Ephariam frowned, the corner of her lip twitching. She narrowed her eyes at her twin. “That’s not a word.”
“It’s a name, you charlette. By the cosmos, ‘Ephariam’ is no more a word itself, is it? And yet…” He smirked and gestured towards Ephariam with an open hand, as if presenting evidence of his case.
“Well, suppose it doesn’t take?” Ephariam peered over the surface of the table, “There’s but a short window for a new name to find a home.”
“Then it will be erased like the others that didn’t take.” Phaia raised a small brown notebook and scanned the open page, his eyes shifted from purple to blue, to green, the colors breathing in sequence. “Be patient, Ephariam.”
Ephariam exhaled slowly. She tucked a loose strand of blue-black hair behind her ear and rubbed her temples. “It was a Lancer.”
“And now it’s a Chobbler,” Phaia replied simply.
Ephariam waved a hand at the table, her brow furrowing. “That’s a downgrade, surely?”
Phaia scoffed out a laugh but did not answer immediately. He reached up, adjusted his spectacles with the practiced grace of someone who did not, strictly speaking, need to wear spectacles. “In what sense?”
“All of them!”
“You, of course, remember a time when it read ‘Wanderer’,” Phaia said, his voice lowering as he whispered the final word as if he’d been forbidden to say it aloud.
“Don’t remind me.” Ephariam rolled her eyes, dismissing the thought with a wave.

”Now hold a minute, tørn va tørn-” Peter shouted. He was too far away to make any kind of run at the old goblin. He thought diplomacy might defuse the situation, and as he registered the Ustaen language, the chief’s eyes snapped to Peter, and narrowed. Paul seized the distraction, and took aim with his Proclaimator, but when he squeezed the trigger, the chamber turned and clicked- empty. The sound of the dry magearm drew the brute's attention back, and he lunged towards Paul, swinging the saber in a wide, aggressive arc. Paul stumbled backwards, the tip of the blade grazing the hem of his shirt. His feet tangled up in each other, and he tumbled over falling hard onto his back, his head whipping against the ground with a loud, hollow thud. He winced, groaning in pain, and curled into a tight ball, as the Ustaen loomed over him, the saber poised for a decisive strike.

Across the training yard, a new cohort of recruits fumbled through morning drills. Peter had advanced out of the Page class three years ago, and with that, he was no longer responsible for training the recruits, but he still liked watching the progress of the younger folk. The newest batch of conscripts, however, had seen little improvement over the past few weeks, and they seemed to be trying to embarrass themselves on purpose at this point. One kid had his holster strapped on backwards. Even in ranks, they were a tangle of elbows and knees, awkward and clumsy.

With a flick of his wrist, Peter conjured a burst of flame from his palm, not hot enough to do any real damage, but enough heat to knock the Ustaen to the ground. The goblin cowered, crawling backward away from Peter as the magework faded into sparks. He looked too pathetic to hit again, and Peter spun around just in time for another fast little goblin to dart in from the side. He made a lunge at Peter and attempted to stab him with a shiv of some sort, long and jagged. Peter reacted just quick enough, deflecting the blade with the pot lid shield while backpedaling. He clenched his fist, conjuring a jet of water at the goblin’s feet. The sudden slickness underfoot made the goblin stumble, and lose his footing. He fell face-first into the stone. His front teeth popped out of his gums and clattered away.

Peter Chobbler, a tan skinned man, with blonde hair tied behind his head in a bun, stands proudly in a black uniform, with leather armor on his legs, and a leather belt with bullets on it. His arm is extended, and he holds a handgun with esoteric arcane modifications ot it. In Peter's other hand he holds a round golden shield with a long, thick blade extending from the bottom. Peter wears a white scarf around his neck and shoulders, with a gold fringe, and a white hat with arcane embellishments.