Brandon knew his tone of voice was loud, his emotions on the edge of his control once more even as he tried to express himself without letting his mind and soul become more unhinged.

His and Ann’s augment seemed to echo off into the night, making him deeply aware of just how isolated they were and how heated they were becoming in that moment.

After a pause of glancing around and seemingly also reminding herself not to fly too far off the handle herself Ann shouted back at him, her voice melding with the crackle of the flames and the sudden whoosh of air over the trees.

“I do know what your going through and I know why your choosing to do it! know more about your situation then you may realize Druid! In fact, know more than I can even tell you because its not my place to say more than this!”

“More then you can tell me? What the hell? What can’t you tell me?” Brandon cut her off looking in her eyes and starting to get the weird feeling like they were talking around a subject that he wasn’t really allowed to know.

“Ughhh, you don’t understand and I need you to listen to me when I tell you that you being out here chasing after Ishtar is going to do more then get you killed...you are chasing shadows and leaving behind your future!”

My future....What does she mean?

Brandons mind turned over her words as a soft cold worry stirred inside of him. The Druid didn’t like the feeling or the sense that the woman was dancing around an important issue, but he refrained from digging into she was alluding to hiding mostly because suddenly he was ducking his head in quick alar as the stick that Ann had been holding to tent the fire was lifted and hurled at him like a club.

Brandon snatched up after the stick sailed over his left shoulder and barked at Ann in surprise. “Hey! HEY! Watch it!”

“You act like your life is so inconsequential and like you can just ignore me when I speak!” Ann sneered at him, her eyes vacant of anything remotely kind as she said. “You know nothing of my life and the things I have suffered! I offer my words because no matter what you say, in the end you will regret this choice if it ends in your misery! You say you’re willing to die and face all manner of things before you but what of the ones behind you who have to see this happen...Don’t you regret the pain you will bring to them all in the name of your LOVE and dutiful SACRIFICE!?”

Ann’s voice and the inflection as she spoke made Brandon aware that the woman wasn’t just feigning anger and distress out of fear, but from a genuine place of concern....but Brandon got the distinct feeling that her emotions were being stirred up by something that had very little to actually do with him and more with her own inner issues.

You know nothing of my life and the things I have suffered!

Brandon flinched and went silent. He twisted his lip as her cold reprimand left a bad taste in his mouth, but he realized that she was speaking truth and he couldn’t exactly just blow that of. Brandon needed Ann and he respected her power as a fellow Mana User, but he only had the smallest hint as to who the woman truly was or what she may have gone through in her lifetime.

Everyone’s got a story...Mantilo...Glen...and Walter taught me that in the grand scheme of things you cant measure the pain or struggles of others against your own perceptions or beliefs. I know she just wants me to seriously consider what Im doing....and how my actions will affect Ezekiel as well as me. I...don’t...really understand why she cares, but maybe this is more of her trying to uphold her oath to me as her Novice...

Taking a breath Brandon relaxed his jaw, and hands that he had balled into fists on his knee and he softly spoke. “I didn’t mean to be cruel before...look...” Brandon touched his temple, sighed and he started again. “Fine...I get what your saying, but if your saying all this to convince me to turn back I wont Ann...I refuse.”

Ann looked askance then for a brief moment she looked very sad. “I know you wont...you are determined to do this despite the toll it will take.” She told him.

Brandon averted his eyes, he didn’t like when the other Mana User beheld him with too much emotion in her expression, he didn’t know what to say to her when she treated him so close and humane.

Brandon gripped his left hand into a fist and stared across at her after a while. “Ann you’ve been so intent and uneasy ever since we left. And even now I can sense your unease growing these last few days and just how much you really don’t want me to be out here...” Brandon cleared his throat as he cast around with a benign gesture of confusion.

“You agreed with me before when I told you that despite the danger I had to leave and follow my memories if I felt that was the right thing to do, and yet your hesitating now....I know you don’t like seeing me in pain and having the danger of death hanging over us is FAR from enjoyable, but there is something else bothering you, isn’t there?”

Brandon squinted at the woman as he caught her hands twitch into fists and her chin drop almost as if to hid her expression in shadow.

As his teachers dark eyes fell into stark shadows Brandon sat back, dressed his arms over his chest and he called out. ” Ann I understand you wanting to be private, but if you want to get this off your chest I will listen. You keep speaking of regrets so I’m guessing this is about your past? Can you tell me about it now? Tell about your life in the Brotherhood and...why your upset at me now?”

Ann’s frosty glare rose and cut into him as she quietly said. “No. It wont do any good. Your mind is made up...and so we can drop the matter.”

Brandon dropped his head to the side and captured her gaze. He tried to convey his sincerity with both a look and a soft gesture. “Ann pleaseeeessss?” He begged her gently, he softened his voice more and sat forwards. “I’m sorry for being so dismissive. I haven’t got a single idea of what life was like for you before we met. I want to talk more about this, so tell me...”

“N...No! STOP....UGGHHH! For the love of all Mana how do you get eyes that freaking green and big...” Ann mumbled her eyes darting away then back to him slightly flustered. “Brandon quit it...”

She gave him a hard look and glanced away fast. “You know what? Right about now I’m regretting teaching you anything about Alchemy. You think you can just flash me with cute puppy dog eyes and get your way!?”

“Oh I sure do....Aw...does that mean you think I’m cute Ann?” Brandon said back teasingly. “What, you do don’t you?”

Brandon made an effort to bat his eyes and pout slightly. “Come on admit it...you love me...”

For a second his teacher’s expression flickered with mild amusement, then went cold again.

Ann scoffed in frustration and flapped a hand at him as if he were an annoying bug she wanted to swat aside. “Love you!? Nope. I hate everything...including you and your stubborn nature.”

“Ohhh...and there goes my heart! Ladies and gentlemen she just crushed it to dust!” Brandon touched his heart as if in pain, and then he smiled as unlocked his legs, turned around and reached over to the far side of his bedroll, where his black pack sat.

Brandon pulled the top strings and knocked back the thick black material so he could reach into his pack and began to litter his blanket with the last of the crackers and elk meat jerky that he had managed to pack nearly a week ago.

The jerky was thin and salty and tasted more like smoked wood then nurising food, while the crackers were thick and dry and stale after nights in his bag wrapped in a thin tissue, but compared to traveling without food something Brandon had done many times in the past, the druid couldn’t pretend like he didn’t appreciate the small scraps he had now.

Besides Brandon knew that because of the Acris and his ability to feast on Ether to sustain the stone and heal from the Stone, he could potentially not eat for a much longer period of time in reference to Ann and not truly suffer death because of it. But for all Brandon knew Ann was much more fragile and unlike him fully mortal. She had to eat or she would become weaker and more fatigued then he would as they prepared to scale more of the mountains to the peaks and eventually pass into the untamed and unnamed valleys of the eastern side of the continent.

Surprisingly after the Druids teasing reply Ann had fallen silent, and sensing that she preferred not to continue the talk just yet Brandon divided up the slices of hard meat and cracker evenly, then he passed her a portion of food, before he laid back on the right side of the blanket and he looked up to the night sky. Brandon made his breathing deep and rhythmic. His labored lungs and heart under constant stress soon relaxed into a deeper rhythm and he stopped tightening his core for a moment and just let the lashes of deep pain in his body roll over him like waves. Each crash and ebb was a different kind of intensity but never enough to break him down.

Everything from his head to his fingertips all the way down to the soles of his feet, thrummed, throbbed and gently screamed at him in growing levels of discomfort. Living in the hellish environment of his own ferocious body the Druid had come to a state of conscious numbness where he was able to actively push the pain into a corner and blanket the agony as long as he remained active and focused but Brandon was by no means able to ignore it at all times. No anymore at least.

Frighteningly the fact that Brandon was increasingly aware of the growth of his need as a Druid to feed on Ether and the vortex like pull of the greedy Acris stone logged deep inside of his heart gave him extreme unrest.

It was nothing new to Brandon on a base instinctive level, but he was seriously consciously aware that the Druid Hunger and the Acris were getting stronger, and he couldn’t ignore that every week that passed the need to just feed and feed both his starving body and the bottomless parasitic stone was growing by leaps and bounds.

The Druid forced his tight pain laced muscles to unwind ignoring the thundering aches all over his chest and belly, before Brandon bit and tore and ripped at the jerky, clamping with his jaw and shaking violently to get the dry meat to pull apart in his mouth. Chewing hurt his jaw as it did every time he ate the tough elks meat, but Brandon just worked his teeth until his saliva began to bring the desiccated meat back to life. Juicy smoked spices and salted flavor soon danced on his tongue.

Ann remained silent. Her food left untouched was gripped in her hands as she clasped then in her crossed legs.

Her eyes lifted to the night sky and she touched her heart gently as she openly contemplated something. Her movements full of graceful sorrow, as her gaze lifted to the sky, and caressed the stars far off in the heavens.

The gentle cricket call of bugs in the grasses around them and the sway of the tresses and sparse clumps of white flowers on the rocks leading up into the shadows of the mountain tops seemed to bleed into the hesitation as she held her voice and thoughts to herself.

Brandon left her to her brooding as he fell into his own darker personal thoughts. Thoughts about his own regrets...his own fears that at every turn he was making another terrible mistake. Mistakes he couldn’t bear to live with already seemed to choke and poison his soul and Brandon was secretly terrified that at any second he would step into another mess of his own making.

More mistakes that could end in the death of one more person he loved. Like Nora. Like Jacob.

He knew that Jacob had been a Clan Head . King of the Lion Pride’s.

His power was paramount to Mantilo’s when he was on his own land.

Brandon worried as he often did about what both Jacob and the Bane had told him. Their threats and the sickening idea that the Brotherhood had very powerful allies in the Elders and people that would want to kill him. Brandon knew that the retaliation for Jacobs death would be coming from the Lion Prides as well. Someone would notice that the King of the Lions was missing soon enough even if Hovel didn’t tell the Clan himself and why would the Grand Master withhold the information when the Lion Prides had apparently been working with the Brotherhood in exchange for blood for decades now.

And it was all Brandons fault somehow. He was the one that made the Lions since, the one that cursed them with Blood Fever...but why and how?

Honestly He regretted killing Jacob even after all his evil....once upon a time Jacob had been his one and only friend. He wished he could have released the lion from the circumstances that seemed to grip him.

It hurt to see someone who had once been his only protector become a dog driven by the blood and the power of the Acris. Used up by his father and the Bane and suffering with a disease slowly eating away at him and his people.

Brandon clenched his teeth as his eyes sung slightly. Refusing to let himself morn or feel sadder then he already did Brandon shifted his head and glanced over at Ann. “Can you please talk to me? I hate how silent it is.”

The excuse for distraction made Ann look at him, sigh and she shrugged. “Ok...You want me to tell you a story?”

Brandon turned over onto his side, and propped his chin in his hand. He analyzsed the dark eyes of his compnaion.

The crackle of the flames to the left of him glared in his periphery as he focused on her. “Yes...Tell me a story about the Brotherhood...about growing up in the Base.”