I’m never flirting again.
Such were Jaris’s thoughts as he struggled for footing on the hot, steely scrag that piled itself along Mt. Musphel’s sheer slopes. He winced and cringed, not for the first time that afternoon, as he applied pressure to his blistered feet, feeling the scorching rocks scald his bare skin where his armor had given way. The flat paths and easy footholds of the mountain’s roots had long given way to the broken rocks that littered the volcano’s upper slopes, and more and more often the dishevelled Daeva found himself falling to his knees and dragging himself up the rocks by his claws. His Brigade General Bix had permitted the use of climbing tools to aid in his punishment, but Centurion Gheist had other ideas. All that was left of those ropes and grappling hooks were now chunks of cindered steel floating in a gluttonous river of lava.
Tyrinore attacks a fellow legionnaire of the forty-second and get’s two nights in the brig. I flirt with that same girl and have to scale a live volcano!
As if things weren’t bad enough already, his Centurion had also seen to it that he’d never be able to stand straight again. He struggled to carry his own weight in ingots on his back; three-hundred pounds of crushing weight sending him staggering until his knees were sore from the impact on the ground. He gasped for breathe, struggling to breathe in the thick, sulphurous acid that swilled sluggishly in his tired lungs. To make matters worse, his thick chain mail had not been crafted with hot, deserted regions in mind. The leather lining and daru-wool stuffing that prevented him from freezing when carrying out his duties in the chillier regions of Morheim and Beluslan had become a furnace, and he felt his armor clinging to his body with the sweat and grime of this arduous climb.
Flinging a strand of sleek, wet hair out of his eyes in irritation, Jaris cast a furtive glance at the Centurion trudging alongside him. Gheist was built like a wall, his gleaming plate armor doing little to hide the excessive muscles that bulged under his skin as he hoisted himself higher and higher up the mountainside. Four-hundred years in service to Asmodae had done wonders for his strength, but little for his temper, and Jaris quickly averted his gaze again, more peeved than ever. The Centurion may not be a ‘squishy’ noble like himself, unaccustomed to holding his own in battle, but he should at least be breaking out in a sweat...
Finally Jaris’s legs gave way and he collapsed onto the scree, loose chinks of brimstone and sharp rocks splintering under his knees and tumbling down the slopes. A quick glance the way they had come sent his head reeling with vertigo, and he quickly rolled onto his back to lean against his weighted pack, taking the load off his shoulders for a blissful moment. Beside him the Centurion paused mid-step, still staring—no, glaring—ahead of him, eyes tilted upwards towards the mouth of the volcano and their final destination. He didn’t even seem to see the gasping, sweaty, and very broken Vanahal Daeva lying in the dirt at his feet.
Jaris was just glad he was permitting this small break at all, though they had no food or water to parch his thirst by. His chest heaved with every struggling breath in the now almost suffocating heat, and each time he had to feel the leather slide against his skin slick with sweat Jaris cringed a little more. Bix was going to murder him for the amount of damage caused to his armor on this little venture. Even Elyos didn’t cause him this much grief, and they always seemed to mistake him for a weapons stand instead of a human being.
He felt as if he was going deaf from the constant roar of the volcano that grew louder the higher they ascended, until even the tremors in the earth seemed to have a rumble of their own. The sluggish gloop and dull wet sounds of the lava as bubbles formed and burst echoed eerily around them. They were so high up now that even the mutated keratons and slimes, whose veins seemed to pulse with the very lava and heat around them, were scarcely to be seen. He was completely alone, somewhere between hell and the top of a very violent volcano, with the most intimidating Daeva to ever grace Aion’s skies.
A few minutes passed and neither of them said a word, a heavy silence brooding between them that was broken only by Jaris’s haggard breathing and the thrum of the volcano’s heart. Wetting his cracked lips with his tongue in a futile effort to forget the thirst clawing at his throat, Jaris glanced up at the Centurion looming over him. He could swear he hadn’t moved a muscle since they stopped.
“Centurion Gheist...” Jaris’s voice sounded as dry as the rocks that scorched his mail, but at the very least he got the man to move a muscle; something in Gheist’s neck twitched.
“You know,” the Vanahal continued, his tone completely devoid of the sarcasm it usually harbored, “Despite all the trouble I’ve been put through since you got here, I’m sort of glad you’re back. I never wanted the position of Centurion; it’s difficult work and I didn’t know how to do it.”
Peering up at that red-eyed mass of sinew and concentrated anger through his messy curtain of bangs, Jaris was sure he would be met with that same grisly, stoic silence Gheist had held the entire day. Truth be told, he wasn’t expecting a reply at all, but he still felt it was something he had to say. One always had to be careful picking their words with the Centurion—one wrong slip of the tongue and you’d find yourself respawning at an Obelisk just to have your teeth back. But throughout the otherwise quiet trek it had been gnawing at his guts. It’s not as if his day could get any worse than it already was, anyway.
Suddenly the air was filled with a chilling sound. It started as a quiet rumble, barely audible, and at first the noble thought he was hearing things, maybe the echo of the volcano within its own canyon walls. But then the sound grew louder, a deep huffing sound, as if the one making it wasn’t entirely accustomed to doing such a thing, and Jaris realized with a twinge of horror that the Centurion was chuckling—no , laughing now.
If his mane wasn’t plastered flat to his back with sweat, grit, and grime, Jaris was sure every hackle would have been standing on edge.
Nevertheless, there his Centurion stood, casting his intimidating shadow over the legionnaire sprawled in the dirt and laughing. It didn’t sound false, either, and Jaris wondered whether he was in more or less trouble now. Some deep, primal urge to survive tingled inside him and suggested he run for what was left of his life, but Gheist’s grisly mirth eventually quieted and he turned to stare down at the man on the ground.
“Did I ... say something funny?”
"No, Legionnaire Jaris,” Gheist growled, though his voice still had a hint of humor that sent a chill down Jaris’s spine, “I thought yhou whould have ahdmitted zhat being a Centurihon iz difficult earliah in zhe climb as an attempt to eschape from zhe punishmehnt. It iz good to see zhat yhou have become strongehr."
With that a huge, clawed hand loomed out and grabbed the pack, dragging Jaris bodily to his feet by the straps. This time the noble couldn’t stop a groan of anguish as his wounded feet flared up again, and his legs shook under his own weight, almost buckling when Gheist released the pack and sent its weight crashing down onto his spine again. He was even sure he heard an audible crunch this time.
“Well I never expected it to be easy,” Jaris somehow managed to say between gasping for breath and biting his teeth to hold back the pain shooting through his body.
Though his back was turned towards him now, he was fairly sure the Centurion even smiled then, and procured something from his cube. Jaris’s heart sank when he realized they were additional weights, and was sure he was hallucinating when he saw Gheist fling it into the river of lava oozing its way through the crags to their right. Yet sure enough, there it was, an additional pack of ingots slowly sinking into the molten furnace.
“What was that—”
"Zhose were foar in case yhou ghot an idhea to complhain. I think yhou have progressed enough to be allohwed a reprieve," the Centurion growled.
Gheist continued the trek, Jaris holding back a moment. He watched with morbid fascination as the last of the pack got sucked below the lava with a squelch, then glanced back at the Centurion, and pointed at the three-hundred pounds he still carried.
“So what about...”
"Legionnaire Jaris, continue zhe climb with zhe pack, or else you will have to go and retrhieve zhe weights. Now mohve."
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