Doren POV

Hours passed. The sky was now hazed by the dust and tinted a nauseous green. The heated air was heavy around them, Doren's ears tightening and popping as they kept moving. The horizon was blurred, light from the dying day fading in the west. The whine had grown to a howl, so loud it made Doren's ears feel empty. The only real marker he had for the rising noise was that as Valla still sang, at first her voice rising as she kept pace with the encroaching storm. Soon, though, it outmatched her, and she fell silent, the sound of the storm suddenly overwhelming in the absence of the song. The wind stole their breath from them as they walked, claustrophobic and unforgiving.

"We should set up now," Doren said, Sight once again fixed on the storm behind them, and Valla acquiesced, her affectation affable and unconcerned. They were stopping later than he really thought they should have. It seemed that Valla was really committing to the act that he was the master of the situation, and he had caught himself waiting for her cue despite himself. That she would risk their lives to needle him or play this game was infuriating, and his rage built again as the stormfront washed over them.

They set up in the Paving in the center of the runes' reaches, their protection easing the intensity of the storm's barrage slightly, though it would not work for long. They laid flat, packs filled with all loose items and all strapped together with leather thongs. They kept the packs facing the wind just behind their heads, gripping them and holding them down. Once they were laid side to side, flush against each other but only just near enough to hear each other by shouting, Valla spoke.

"We should not look at the storm for long." Doren raised his eyebrows behind his eyeguard, knowing she could not see him do so. Neither of them could see anything, in fact. "I mean we shouldn't Look. It can drive you mad. We can take turns Seeing it to guess how long it will take but we can't really Look. It could break us enough to take our focus on breathing and staying under cover hear."

Suddenly glad she could not see his face, Doren realized he had been doing the Sight equivalent of staring into the sun. Perhaps she had been right to treat him as a child before. "It is not a normal storm, Doren. We will be lucky to survive. Almost noone who Sees one does." Meaning, he had no reason to know or to have been taught as much, even in the Order's training. Her assurance soothed his pride lightly but was also humiliating to need. How he could feel so green next to an amnesiac like her, with him a five-year veteran of the Promised, fully trained even if he were Shamed now?

Nodding, again acting despite knowing she could not see him, Doren focused the air around them instead, weaving a half-dome barrier around them, with the dome's peak facing the oncoming wind. The barrier was a web of Influence, designed to push the wind away slightly and further ease the torrent of air and debris around them. It was almost impossible, with the wind ripping and tearing, the aether of it too raw and pure for him to do much more than nudge it slightly with his own power. Just as he began to let go of it, the drain on his own aether too much to safely continue with so much longer left on the storm, he felt it behind to take hold, the protection solidifying around him. Valla had lent her own power, the strange red aether dim against the lightning-bright storm but nevertheless steady. The coils of her power followed the patterns of Influence Doren had woven, supporting his construction. It looked like raw power, seeping into the lines of his intent rather than matching a parallel Influence to help him. No human aether-user he knew was capable of pulling or pushing so much raw power. The burst of power she had released to knock back the villagers flashed in his mind. He wondered for an instant if the storm was truly the more dangerous of the two, and just as quickly threw the thought away. He had decided to trust her and their situation, and he had thrown his lot fully into the madness. The mystery of what she was would wait, and he would learn as he followed her. For now, it most likely did not to matter.

Valla POV

Valla

It had taken all of Valla’s self-control to hide the grief raging once she first perceived the storm that approached them, to sing and joke and tease Doren as though all was well. She had known as soon as she sensed it that the storm was not ordinary, but rather an almost sentient thing, filled with anguish and pain and too much power. Its presence and the absence of the elemental that had been following her left her with a sinking feeling of despair. She had no proof, but she knew in her bones that the elemental had broken its chains and with them itself, and that the impending cyclone in the desert was the fallout of its death. Elementals did not die easily, and when they did, disasters followed. This storm was like the world was mourning the loss of its guardian, rage and grief palpable in its center. That was why Looking at it would lead to madness; the power waws monumental, yes, but there was a lingering sentience to the power that could drain a person’s soul of life itself.

She did not tell Doren her theory. He would not have believed her, not immediately anyway, and they needed to survive first. She would reflect on what the elemental’s death meant later, what it meant that she had sensed a collar on it, and that it had sought her out in its panic. That she had been unable to help it.

The barrier Doren had designed worked for the most part as the first hour crept by, preventing the debris and flung rocks from killing them outright, and the wind from lifting them entirely. Valla was frankly impressed at the integrity of the construction.  As she had suggested, they took turns using their Sight to gauge the breadth of the cyclone. She could still see Doren's aura flash and roil whenever he Looked, but he was steadier since she'd warned him. Perhaps it would have been better to confront the problem outright sooner, but pricking at the pride of someone powerful, disoriented, and infinity-dazed was usually a bad idea. At least, she thought so, though she still had no idea why she knew as much. She ruminated on this familiar mystery to distract herself from the darker thoughts that roiled beneath the surface as she waited. The outer rim of the storm was trying its utmost to destroy them, and her thoughts continued to wander under the strain. It was possible, really, that she ought to be a bit more direct and generally respectful with Doren after this passed. Not that there was a guarantee they would be alive when it did, but there was no use considering how unlikely they were to survive the cyclone.

As time wore on, the pressure began to overtake her. Her aura was ragged, raging against the collar, the constriction an agony. The vines of power that she tried to sear into their protection flickered as she struggled to balance control against the pain. It was almost impossible to keep a steady flow of aether moving as the collar writhed around the core of her power, trying and failing to seal it all but succeeding in disrupting the force of the flow. How she could last long enough to protect them both was beyond her and she tried to hide her struggle from Doren as best she could. She had seen him falter before and knew he could not maintain a barrier of simple Influence in the face of Nature's numinous rage. If he drained his own aether, he could end up too weak to heal himself when he was inevitably injured by the storm, or worse, he could struggle until his aura lost form completely and his own sentience faded. Even if they did manage to survive after that happened, she did not think she could bear to put him down as she would have to if he did, to kill him like he was a daemon in its last moments on the Earthen plane, mad and powerful and drunk on bloodlust. If he knew how precarious her control was, he might try and lend more of his own power, and the possibility that he would go aura-mad was all too likely.