Riding at the rear of the procession under the heavy rain, Orvin struggled to keep his eyes on the road with each subsequent flash of lightning that lit up the sky above.
It was hard to make out anything other than the round edges of the dark clouds, and yet he couldn't help but tighten his grip on his reigns with each time thunder struck.
No matter how distant the sound was, Orvin could always feel his mount flinch lightly each time it struck.
"Everything alright," He tried to sooth her, but his voice failed to carry his intent in the shower.
Yet despite his words, he couldn't help himself from glancing up at the sky in search for any thunderstalkers that may be hidden within the storm.
Given the vast distance, sensing them proved futile so he could only rely on his eyes if he wanted to spot anything moving about in the clouds.
Orvin had pulled up his visor for a better view, but there was still nothing other than storm clouds and lighting filling the sky.
A deep sigh fell from his lips, the tired breath swallowed by the falling rain.
Lea's words came back to him in that moment, "Maybe I'm just worrying over nothing…"
"Sorry, couldn't quite catch that?"
A smooth voice suddenly reached his ears, the speaker close enough that the rain couldn't muffle their voice.
'Huh?!' Orvin bit back a yelp, leaning as far left as his saddle would allow before his mind caught up with the present.
He had been so consumed in that moment that he failed to notice the person now riding less than a meter next to him, the horns of their mounts nearly touching with each step they took.
Noticing the look in his eyes, the sharp eyes man pulled right on his mount as they said an apology, "Oh, sorry about that."
"Ah—No, it's fine. I should have been paying more attention to my surroundings." Ovin said that last sentence with his head lowered, almost as if he was expecting a scolding.
"So…" But instead, the man steered his mount so that it was closer to his before speaking. "I take it that you're not a rain person?"
Orvin blinked, wiping away the rain from his eyes as he searched for an answer.
What came to mind first was the cramped training hall of his old sword school.
The sounds of rain pelting against the ancient structure were muffled by the cacophony of grunts filling the enclosed space. The humid air, fetid with the scent of rain and sweat; the uncomfortable sensation of his uniform clung to his skin and then the sticky feeling of the eyes of his fellow students that seemed to follow him wherever he went.
Even now, Orvin could vividly recall how their judgement laden eyes felt on him whenever they were allowed any rest—boring into him with the same derision and contempt one might reserve for a criminal.
The rain meant being trapped in that room with the very people whose gazes he had spent so much effort trying to avoid.
And try as he might, the malignant whispers would always wriggle their way into his mind, following him long after training had ended and eventually delivering themselves in his dreams.
Their words had eaten away at him, little by little, like earthworms feeding on the fallen autumn leaves.
"Yeah, can't really say that I am."
Orvin finally met the man's eyes, a distant look lingering in his eyes.
"Are you, Senior?"
"I guess that we have that in common." His eyes left Orvin's and carefully swept over their surroundings, scowling at the thin, light haze of mist in the distance.
Orvin mirrored his actions, his gaze trailing the edge where the hills ended and the mist's haze became a curtain.
Whether or not he enhanced his sight with mana, he failed to peer any further into the space within the mists brumous grasp.
A sharp boom sounded, pulling Orvin's eyes back up to the clouds.
"Looks like it's going to get worse," a thoughtful voice commented besides him.
"Looks that way."
Neither said anything more as they rode in silence.
—————
In the corner of his eye, Orvin noticed that the distance between them had just about halved from what it just was.
"Is something wrong?"
The man didn't immediately answer, the sound of rain filling his ears before a soft, hesitant voice reached his ears.
"No… It's probably nothing," was the only reply he could muster as he steered his mount closer to the roadside.
Orvin frowned.
His senior may have dismissed it, but his mana was telling a different story. Its distribution had become taut, almost imperceptibly so, as though every part of him had suddenly become alert.
It was mostly focused on his head; the intermittent flares of mana around his eyes and ears told him exactly what the man was doing—but not why.
'Is something there?'
Orvin tried to follow along his line of sight, his grip tightening around the reins of his mount as enhanced his vision to peer deeper into the mist.
The seconds passed by slowly; his mount's even gate a steady rhythm beneath him that helped to steady his increasing nerves.
And yet, even with his eyes coated with enough mana to stain the corner of his vision, Orvin was still unable to see any further through the haze of the ever present-mist in the distance.
—Huff.
A resigned breath condensed near his face, the cool air dissipating in the space where his head had just been.
"Did you notice it, too, Rookie?"
Orvin wasn't nearly as startled as the first time he had been snuck up on, and having spread out his sense, had noticed the man before he could approach despite not facing him.
This was also the reason why he understood what the man was talking about, or at least he thought that he did.
Because even while he had spread his senses out to be aware of the man's presence, he felt a sort on interreference that muddied his perception even when they were only a few metres apart.
"I think so…" Orvin started, letting his eyes comb over the space around them before he eventually turned his sight to the clouds above, "It's the rain, something is off about it."
It was an odd feeling he struggled to put into words, but as he held out his arm and let the droplets hit his open palm, what he was sensing slowly started to form an image in his mind.
There was a strange resonance following each droplets impact. A density about them that went beyond what would be expected of normal rain, even if their volume remained the same.
But before he could express it as words, the sharp-eyed man seemed to already be a step ahead of him, "It's not just the rain, but this entire area—feels more like we're being pelted with mana instead of just water."
It was an apt observation; one not many would be sensitive enough to notice in the same situation. Especially in a case such as this one, where the mana had been so seamlessly diffused into the storm around them that it laced each individual drop of rain that fell, charged every streak of lightning, accompanied each boom of thunder and drifted along in the currents of chilling wind that ferried the storm clouds forwards.
Now that they had noticed this, the abnormally dense mana woven into the storm became increasingly more distinguishable by the second as they tuned their senses on the faint edges where the violent mana failed to cover entirely.
And while Orvin was uncertain of what this was, his experienced senior could not keep his expression from becoming grim as the realisation dawned on him: "What are the chances—to have a mana storm rolling in just as we're nearing the end of our trip?"
The sharp-eyed man's voice lacked the earlier levity it had, the concern bleeding through his mock exasperation.
"Just in case, I'll go report this to the captain," He looked gave Orvin a smile that didn't quite reach his eyes. "I'll throw your name in there, see if I can earn you some merits—Hya!"
"Sir." Orvin watched the man navigate his way forward, disappearing as he masterfully wove himself through the procession.
'A mana storm…'
The phenomenon wasn't entirely foreign to him, but in terms of having any real-world experiences with one, this was his first time.
Maybe that was why he had not been able to grasp it as easily—both the storm and his senior's reaction after realising this fact. In that moment, Orvin came to realise how many new experiences he was having while in the field. And how large the world was, and unpredictable nature could be.
Primarily because this was the first he'd ever heard of such a phenomenon occurring in this part of the empire, especially given how ill-suited it was considering the region's relatively low average mana density.
And yet, with this being his first time seeing—and being caught within one—Orvin couldn't help himself from feeling underwhelmed. The words, "Is this all there is to it?" briefly flashing across his mind as he took it all in, his palm still out to receive the falling rain.
From the stories he had read and the tales he had heard, a mana storm was not merely another weather phenomenon that brought with it heavy rain and slightly faster winds. No, it was, in the most violent sense, a true natural disaster.
A meteorological event once described by scholars as a perversion of every law of nature; splitting the sky to rain down fire, flipping entire mountains and rerouting century old rivers. And in some ancient texts, it was recorded that entire maps had to be redrawn in the aftermath of the carnage they wrought upon the earth.
A popular muse amongst historians and scholars alike, is that many of the tales about ancient kingdoms now spoken of to children as cautionary tales against hubris and greed were once bastions of humanity's development and technological advancement. Entire civilisations that had been wiped from the face of the world, consumed by mana storms of incomprehensible magnitude that had swallowed their entire kingdoms and set humanity back centuries—possibly even millennia—in terms of the breadth of knowledge and expertise those nations were fabled to have possessed.
Yet despite all of that, the only physical effect the increased mana in this storm Orvin had noticed was that the individual droplets had more mass to them despite their size. This resulted in them feeling slightly more uncomfortable on his body, but nothing else.
It was negligible given his physical conditioning, and the beasts of burden with them would surely find more discomfort with being wet than the rain that was heavier than normal.
'Maybe it's still growing?'
It was the only explanation Orvin could think of that reconciled what he knew about mana storms with what he was experiencing. But even that explanation was beginning to feel inadequate.
That single thought was the last truss in his mind supporting the image he had of mana storms, but even that was slowly starting to lose beneath the weight of the reality of what he was experiencing.
Although the interference it had on his senses was still nagging at him. This, at least, kept him from dismissing this mana storm as a non-threat despite how unassuming it was.
Even now, Orvin was still making attempts to see through the interference caused by the turbulent mana permeating the storm—making it as if he was trying to see through a thick fog.
The maximum distance he could still clearly make out a mana signature was only a few metres, barely enough to cover the width of the road. Anything further than that was virtually static; a heavy, thick veil of mana that could not be lifted, at least, not while they were still within the storm.
It was a deeply unsettling feeling for Orvin to be without the sense he had trained for over a decade, to the point that being without it felt as though he had lost a part of himself. The fact that he could still even 'see' that short distance around him was a testament to the time and effort that went into this.
Jarring as it was, he was starting to grow accustomed to it, or rather, his body had started to adapt—his other five senses had heightened to fill the void of his mana detection. Despite this, there was still a sense of unease simmering in his gut due to the dissonance it caused. This was further exacerbated with how the sound of each raindrop that fell was now loud enough to disturb his thoughts.
Like a loud, discordant concert of steels pans were being beaten haphazardly next to his head.
It was a feeling that never left, even when he deliberately muffled his hearing with a thin coating of mana over his eardrums…
—Kra-Koom!
… Something he was glad to have done, with it muffling the noise as a deafening boom blared out, the force it carried briefly shifting the angle of the surrounding rainfall.
"It's getting louder…" He muttered, glancing up at the sky to see a red bolt tearing through the clouds.
Immediately, his eyes narrowed at the odd sight; the way it slithered through the clouds as if it were a serpent was strangely captivating, so much so that he couldn't look away. To the point that he hadn't noticed that his senior had returned and was back to riding alongside him.
"—Anything interesting happen while I was gone?"
Orvin could barely make out the statement, thinning the film of mana as he asked the man to repeat himself.
"I can't say…" Orvin said, meeting the man's gaze before glancing up to see the same purple lightning, "Did the captain say anything in regard to the storm?"
"Nothing major; just told me to pass down the message to stay sharp. After all, you never know what to expect with a mana storm."
The sharp-eyed man paused as he caught sight of a red bolt in the corner of his eye. "Especially with a case as unique as this one."
Orvin nodded stiffly, he had already been on high alert when they had made the discovery, so he just continued as he already had. Although hearing it from his superiors made him somewhat nervous despite his best efforts to stay calm.
"Huh?"
A confused hum reached his ears, causing Orvin to turn his head in the direction of the noise. What he saw was his senior starring into the distant sky with a puzzled look on his face.
He followed his line of sight, his eyes landing on a familiar streak of red lighting in the sky, 'Is something wrong?' But before Orvin could get the words out, he noticed that the bolt had yet to fizzle out like the others around it.
At first, he attributed its strange behaviour to the mana storm. Yet none of the surrounding purple lighting moved quite like it. The fluid, serpentine like, movements were unique to only this singular bolt.
Orvin immediately recalled having noticed something like it, earlier, just before his senior had pulled his attention from the clouds.
He hadn't noticed it then, but with his gaze focused on it, the cause for his seniors' puzzlement had become apparent—the bolt was getting closer. Frighteningly so. And it was doing so with such deliberate movements, that it could not be mistaken for another weather anomaly from the storm.
Orvin directed his mana to his eyes, enhancing his vision. The necessary quantity causing the meridians in his face to bulge underneath his skin, and he had to clench his teeth to push through the strain.
But it worked, and then he saw them; rings of light, as well as small motes of darkness surrounding the red lighting.
It became clear to him then, that this wasn't discharge from a storm but a result of magic.
"By the Divines Light…"
An exasperated vocalization of his thoughts came from beside him, almost as if both men had made the same realisation.
—Shiruuk!
Orvin turned his head at the sound of something being quickly unfastened, just in time to see his senior retrieving a red, marble sized bead from his belt pouch. And in the next breath, the bead was shattered, its colourless fragments scattering in the air like stardust.
Then their eyes met, and within them was a dread that shone through any hindrance the rain may have had on his face. Any signs of his usual, laid-back countenance, was replaced by furrowed brows and a tightly clenched jaw.
'He saw it too,' after it dawned on him, Orvin turned back towards the sky to track how far the spell was…
But by the time the bolt came into focus, it had already begun its descent from the sea of clouds. A malevolent viper lunging down, fangs first, to strike at the carriage bearing the crest of the Brutein family.
By the time his eyes had found its position it had already escaped the sea of clouds, descending like a gavel onto the carriage bearing the crest of the Brutein family.
—BOOM!!
Even through the rain and mist, the image of the carriage being swallowed by the crimson lightning was still seared into his eyes; inescapable even as his vision went white.