The Shallows; Astus’ dumping-ground. Debris picked up along its storm route of plowing winds, and horrible flash floods; broken trees, shattered boulders, and the occasional boat-house, all of it smashed and dumped here in the muck.

This vast wasteland stretched semi around the inner forests of Cartania before ending at the Herengorn Plateau on the eastern border, her exit out of the marshes.

A yearly annoyance for the Grounds Keepers, were charting out new path markers for less hazardous travel. Not only because of its mass. Often markers get destroyed, moved, or go missing.

It hung heavy here. Fluctuating between near visibility to blindingly dense. Impossible to be sure of sounds and trekkers forever followed by eerie shadows.  

Rumors of missing travelers in the Shallows were apt warnings. They’d pop up on the other side of the rifts in different counties. Half crazed from drifting in and out of the Iliyfain. 

Emery only half-believed them. Some of her training mates had gone missing out in the Shallows. After a few weeks of the Grounds-Keepers searching, they’d turn up. Dirty, some half-starved, some different, but alive.

Her chosen route provided plenty of muck, reeds, grass, and the occasional stone to hop on. Small clusters of trees formed makeshift bridges between the miniature islands of mud. Small, twisted, unpleasant looking things. No fresh green leaves or pink and gold flowers gracing their branches. Instead, jagged thorns and spidery moss draped across the spindly branches. Every so often she’d spot fallen trees in the dark, sinking into the muck with long, broken branches reaching out to grab her.

Her trudge through mud pits, and over small hills had Emery covered in swamp in no time. Her uniform was waterproof, her under clothes dry and not soaked with swamp water.

Cresting a hill, her skin rippled as lightning danced through the rolling clouds above.  

As it built, the Scout couldn’t help but marvel over the amount of power it generated. It sent her soul into a familiar, frenzied memory. Her initiation day.

She had been born under the Watch of The Twins, her family's Patrons. Like her siblings, her first magics were of Asha, The Prime-Spirit of Ruin and Asyu, Prime-Spirit of Creation. Their stable energies; to burn, break, and mold the earth. To grow, nurture and harness anything at will.

When it came time to for the apprentice trials, they encourage initiates to select the trial under their house deities. For Emery it should have been Asyu’s; to be buried miles under the ancient Cey grove to meditate; to grow a sapling to be her staff.

Or Asha’s; a deep dive into a molten pit for the ore that was to be melded for the same reason.

When she became a Scout, Emery had chosen the Trial of Storms. A race off the coast of Somar to the island temple for Astus. Ileyota Astus, The Grand Summoner of Astus, along with other elder disciples, would hurl lightning into the water. Every bolt meant to hit and carried within their chest as they swam to shore, to be conducted into a staff on the island.

Astus was an unwilling, unloving, and petty Patron who challenged its first Summoner for its albeit minimal servitude. And lost. They controlled the skys, made storms that ravaged the coast of Cartania.

 While other Patrons had excepted hundreds that week, Emery took the trial with only ten others that day. Astus was notorious for sabotaging the trials of would-be disciples. Emery remembered only one other joining her when she reached the shore.

 

With a longing look to the sky, the Scout set off for the closest campsite to bunk down. A storm would delay her till morning. Best not to be caught in it in the dark of the Shallows.