Eidolon Characters
Deep within Space, far from Earth lies a planet that is much smaller than Earth, though very much like the planet we know today. Still early in development, all of the strange and numerous humanoid species that live on Onerus are still in medieval times, having civil war and disunity.
It is here where a lone Eidolon has traveled, unknown to all the inhabitants till the eve of one dark and cloudy night...
The darkness provided perfect cover for something that was very hard to see, much less detect which was why Fiyero had decided to approach this new planet in the dark when people couldn't actually see her. She looked like a ghost. Fiyero giggled to herself, this could be fun if she played her cards right.
Looking up, Toko saw that he could barely see the tops of the trees that surrounded him on either side. In the strange way of the planet, he had left the desert only a half-mile back, but was already lost within the dense foliage. "Might as well start a fire," he said, having a habit of talking to himself when he was totally alone. "I can barely move without bumping into one of these damnable sticks."
Fire! Fiyero let out an audible gasp and flew around frantically for a few moments, looking for the origin of the voice and threat when she realized it was just a native down below, starting to make camp. Becoming invisible, Fiyero floated down towards the strange man and settled across from him, observing.
With grace born from much practice, Toko dug out a piece of flint and a rock from his cloth and piled up material, igniting it easily. "Easier when there aren't dust storms," he observed aloud. As the fire built up pleasantly, he sat back and began to hum a lullaby from his recently-aband
oned nomad group, a smile gracing his dark features.
Floating over to him, Fiyero noted the skin, much different than her pale gray and his blue-hued markings... not to mention the hair that was so different from her always moving sapphire. Her empathy was particularly strong right now because of her curiosity especially since this person had nothing shiny, which in itself seemed totally absurd. Unconsciously, Fiyero let herself become visible as she floated barely an inch above the native.
Totally oblivious of this new addition to his surrounding, Toko began clearing a spot in the dirt for his sleep, mildly cursing the addition of twigs and pointy leaves in his life. Garnering up a good spot, he sat in it, wished vaguely for the sands of the desert again, then lay back and looked up at the stars. And instead, got an eyeful of some strange, floating girl. He gave a startled cry, rolled over, then leaped across the fire, putting it between himself and the hovering addition to his campsite.
Fiyero eeked then curled into a ball and disappeared, leaving Toko 'alone'. Her empathy had thrown out instinctively but Fiyero stopped it just in time, she did not want these strange new people to be overwhelmed by her alien emotions. However, she reached out with her mind to present herself as non-threatening as possible and touched the Youle's mind softly.
Toko's eyes widened even further at this strange contact. He tried his best to calm himself-it did not seem threatening. "Who... who are you?" he stammered, his heart still racing as he fought the instinct to flee.
"Fiyero..." She whispered, the wind catching her words as it always did and expanded it, making it sound like it came from two directions, "-Who are you..?" Fiyero re-appeared with wide blue eyes.
"Toko," he answered, his fear growing into curiosity. "Of the Youle nomads." His gaze on her floating form seemed to voice a general question about her presence. So many questions ran through his head that he was forced to lapse into silence and try to pick one out. "I... I've never seen your type before," he confessed, finally. "I must say that it startled me."
Her eyes widened, "I have never seen one of you either, all the other races I know of are not humanoid." Fiyero's head cocked to one side as she looked up through the tree's to the stars, her attention on Toko faded as she lost herself in those stars that she can travel before looking sharply back at the Youle. "What is a Youle?" Her face though transparent took on the look of a child full of curiosity that changed to fear, "Are you warriors?" She cowered her head in fright and pulled her arms around herself, "You use... fire-" the last word came out in a whisper.
"Um, yeah! I mean, I just wander," Toko stammered. "I'm not a warrior, I do use fire-just for warmth-not for... Whatever you were thinking." Toko briefly reflected on the strangeness of explaining himself to what he was almost certain was a hallucination by this point. "If I don't light a fire, I get cold. Out in the desert, that could sometimes mean death-do you get it?"
She nodded, still grave on the subject of fire and flicked her hair out of her face, "My death, if it should come to me before age, would only be by fire or sun fire," Fiyero explained softly. Floating above the ground, Fiyero crossed her legs as if sitting in a chair and propped her head up with her arms on her knees. Her mind brushed up against his again as she let her empathy out of her mental cage and let it roam, sending still strong curiosity towards Toko. Fiyero could sense he was puzzled at her nature, which made her smile, if only a little at this humanoid Youle.
"So, Fiyero," Toko said, getting more comfortable with the idea of talking to a figment of his imagination. "You seem to come from... far away from anywhere I was. Where were you... born, if you were or anything."
"I was first formed by my parents about fifty-two Endos ago on the planet Retipuj in the system of Elepohga where we Eidolon's live," She told him, spouting a bunch of names to see how he reacted and according to her knowledge of this planet so far, years were two times as long as an Endo...
"I am twenty-six by your time standards I think." Fiyero grinned, "What about you?"
"System?" Toko asked. That word sounded vaguely familiar, like something he heard a philosopher discuss once upon a time, or an elder talk about-but he put it out of his mind for now. "Well, I would be 32 by the standards you're using, although my race tends to age more slowly than the others I've seen. We might be about the same age if measured in... I don't know. You lost me at time standards. What standards are you talking about?"
Fiyero shrugged, "I dunno," The Eidolon flipped out of her previous position and moved into what looked like a slightly more elegant arrangement, laying on her side in the air with an arm propping up her head. "So Toko-" She sent more emotions across to him while stroking some of her shiny items, "Are there... more like you? Are there some that are different?"
Toko's mind tried to shakily fend off her intrusion as he sat next to the fire, opposite Fiyero. "There are a lot of 'me'-I've grown up around my kind, the Youle. There are... quite a few variations of my kind around here. I was going to find a village after sunrise tomorrow. Hopefully, I'm not near too much fighting..." He was hesitant to invite her-that was ushering in all kinds of trouble, and if he really was going insane, it would be worse to be seen talking to himself.
"I'm sorry..." Fiyero said, meaning toward the weak resistance he had put up against her mind, "It is polite in my culture to retain mind contact while speaking." Before he had shut her out the Eidolon felt his puzzlement about who exactly she was. Fiyero grinned, "I can become whole like you… at least, it is within my abilities."
"That... would be great," Toko said. "The transparent thing is... well, uncommon, to say the least. And-about the... erm... mind contact. In my culture... life... It's just weird to be able to send... emotions like you did. I mean, we'd think it was witchcraft, an invasion of privacy at the very least." Toko stopped his faltering speech and looked away. "You know what they say. We... erm... fear what we can't understand. Not that I'm afraid!" Toko buried his face in his hands. "Just going insane."
Fiyero's face went neutral. Me? Witchcraft? "No! No you are not insane!" Fiyero stood and plucked off a shiny piece of metal from her assortment of clothing and tossed it at Toko's feet. The moment it left Fiyero's hand it became solid enough to cause a slight cloud of dirt to rise into the air from its landing. "You see? Do you understand now?" Fiyero's form shimmered in her distress, "I AM real, as real as you!"
"Okay, okay!" Toko said, picking up the piece of metal to calm her down. It was strangely light, even it this solid form. He still had some nagging doubt, but he hid it-just to keep Fiyero calm. "You're real. As real as me." At this moment, his eyes squinted as he internally stiffened a yawn.
Raising an eyebrow, "Strange," was all Fiyero said as she settled herself in the air again, her movement conveying her mood. "This planet has an interesting darkness, or night as some would call it. At my home, the sun is blue and the land is always under a dawn of one of our three suns."
"My people enjoy night because we spend most of our time out in the desert," Toko replies. "When do you sleep?"
"What is... sleep?" She flirted around in the air before settling down again, "We Eidolon's have a state in which we are between consciousnesses but still fairly aware," Fiyero tilted her head, "Is that what you mean?"
"Sort of," Toko said, yawning and not bothering to cover it up. "Here, let me show you." He lay back and closed his eyes-within seconds, his breathing was steady. After a long day of travelling, arguing with some specific members of his clan, and taking his leave of them- forever -Toko was out.
"Toko?" Fiyero asked softly and when he didn't answer, the Eidolon sat back and stared at him thoughtfully. She would remain like that for several hours until she slipped under the mediation state, her eyes being enveloped by a solid looking gray miasma.
Toko was awoken at dawn by the filtered rays coming through the trees. Yawning, he sat up. "Hey, Fiyero," he said, stretching a bit and cleaning up the burnt-out fire. "Time to... un-whatever it is you're doing."
A man appeared, walking through the forest behind the Youle on silent feet. He carried a see-through axe on one shoulder, obviously a woods worker of some kind. The ghost spotted them and turned their way, making no sound through the underbrush.
Fiyero's eyes cleared and she jumped into the air then disappeared. Her voice came from behind Toko as she gasped "Eeek!" then reappeared, her form distressed. "Toko! That looks like... me!" Her face slacked as she stared in amazement then realized suddenly, that the ghost did not nearly look as feminine as all male Eidolon's looked, "Why... he's dead, dead!" She eeked again and hid behind Toko once more.
Toko gazed off with a passive look until he got to the man. His eyes widened and he flinched away. "So we leave," Toko said, getting to his feet. "The dead are... dead." The Youle abandoned their dead without a ceremony; often, in the desert, the conditions were too unkind for any formalities. "I... don't think we should fool with the affairs of the dead. If we go quickly we might not bother him."
"Wait..." Whispered a hollow voice, obviously coming from the ghost, "My death, was gruesome, please, set my death right." The woodsmen's form waivered and his odd glow dimmed and became black, then faded back to white, "Please... the war... we were killed for the war..."
Wincing back from him as he got closer, Fiyero gasped and flew back, becoming invisible.
"Th-the war," Toko repeated weakly, stepping away. Oh yeah, there was a civil war. Nomads were rarely concerned with war, living mostly apart from civilization save occasional trading. "I... how?" If he didn't help, something bad might happen. Since Fiyero left him (at least, that's what he thought) he needed to deal with this alone, now. Or run. Running was plan B.
"Please... please... just find my body, close our eyes and let us rest..." The spirit waivered again, then collasped into itself, becoming a black sphere void of light as it shot into the sky, quickly disappearing from sight.
Fiyero reappeared, her eyes as large as marbles with fear.
"...wait, how am I-" Toko started asking, way too late. "I..." A slight frown tugged at the corner of his lips. He felt as though he had promised something. "I suppose... I should go find a nearby village?" he asked, the word barely a question. "They might know where exactly I could find the bodies." ...dead people. Toko wasn't going to like this.
"There is... bad air coming from the South," The Eidolon shivered before realizing, "This is going to be like a treasure hunt! Isn't it?" She giggled to herself as she momentarily forgot her fear.
"Then we will head to the South," Toko said, one arm going to hug his torso in nervousness before he forced it down. Toko did not feel nervousness. Or fear. He went about cleaning up his stuff, packing it into his meager possessions before quietly starring off, thoughts off elsewhere. He finally turned to Fiyero. "What has happened with the war in the last month?" he asked. Yeah, it had been about a month since his last contact outside of the desert. "Do you know?"
"War?" Fiyero asked curiously, "I just arrived to this little planet last night Toko," So, the Eidolon had no idea what he was talking about, "Why do the people here war?" Wars meant excitement. She had asked this in a childish manner, floating on her back watching him.
"I'm not sure," Toko said, his voice weary of it all. He was a little lost at the mention of planets... But he would shrug that off for now. The war was... "It's mostly civil war. Living out in the desert you tend to not be affected most of the time, except when coming in to trade. Then you find that sometimes food prices have gone up tenfold." He rolled a shoulder in a half-shrug, finishing his packing and picking it all up, starting his trek to the South. "Nobody can get along. Thus, war... and apparently restless ghosts."
"Restless?" Fiyero questioned, "Or perhaps, being used for firewood!" She eeked again and performed a stressed flip in the air, "I want to help." She stated, with more strength in her voice then before, "If I can I will."
"I will gladly accept any help at all," Toko said, hunching a little under the weight of his things... more for the hunching than the fact that anything was heavy. "Even if it's just the act of helping me to not be alone. How long do you estimate the walk is?"
"Lemme check," She meeped before disappearing, and a few moments later she was back, scared again, "The bad air is..." Fiyero actually thought for a moment before sniffing and smiling, "A mile away."
"A mile?" Toko echoed absently. "If we go by the bird flies, shouldn't take us much more than fifteen minutes." It would take them less, most likely, but Toko was used to estimating time based on travel over soft sand, with much more equipment. As it was, they were nearing the spot in little less than ten. Toko looked around, narrowing dark eyes, his tan skin mostly blending in with his surroundings, wondering what he should be looking for. His muscles were tensed, more for flight than fight. He was definitely on edge at this point.
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