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The sun beats down on the desert landscape, high in the afternoon sky. It's hot, too hot. A lone Wayfarer faces down a sandwraith in the Osian desert, a few hours out from Karth.
Kiien's been tracking this thing for hours, and the heat is starting to get to him. He's exhausted. Under any other circumstance, it would be a relatively straightforward kill, but its cries leave him disoriented, with ringing ears and a killer headache.
Shit, he thinks, narrowly avoiding the creature's jaws, I'm out of practice.
The sun is no help either. Turn the wrong way and he's blinded. Though the tinted goggles keep him from being blinded by the sand, something that he is thankful for, they do little against the full force of the sun. As someone used to dancing around his opponents, this limitation on his mobility grates at his nerves.
He wipes his sweat-slicked hair off of his goggles as he steels himself, searching for a gap in its armor. The sandwraith lets out another shrill cry as it lunges. Kiien hisses as the sound reverberates through his skull, instinctively reaching to cover his ears before barely managing to throw himself to the side as the pain flaring in his temple forces him to his knees.
An arrow flies past him with a familiar glint of steel, piercing the sandwraith between its armor. Alassar steel. And in that moment, it feels as though time has stopped. He freezes, eyes wide, trained on the arrow's fletching. He's too afraid to turn around, too afraid to see. Too afraid, to crush the faint tendrils of hope that creep through his heart. It couldn't be, could it?
His head turns on instinct, eyes squinting against the sun. The figure, dressed in a cloak, is difficult to identify with the hood up. But the bow he swears he would recognize anywhere. Taraniel.
The sandwraith releases a shrieking cry of pain as it rears back, and Kiien scrambles to his feet, shaken from his thoughts, sword clutched tightly in his hand as he rounds on it once more. Fighting the ringing in his ears and the pain behind his eyes, he lunges at the space in it's armor that Aeran's the archer's arrow has lodged itself, and pulls. His sword tears through the creature, carving a large wound across its body.
Another arrow. Another swing. The adrenaline rushes in his veins as the two of them quickly dispatch the sandwraith. The routine is familiar, comforting, even.
And as the sandwraith finally falls onto the sandy terrain, he turns. Fully facing the cloaked figure behind him.
They drop the hood on their cloak, and it feels like he's drowning.
His sword slips from his hand, and he runs. His eyes burn. And the distance between them feels like miles as he chases after a ghost.
Kiien crashes into him with so much force that he nearly topples over, as he pulls Kiien into a hug.
He collapses into Aeran's arms, flooded with emotions that he never thought he'd feel again. He feels hands, familiar hands, pull his goggles up and wipe at his tears as he wraps his arms around Aeran's waist as tightly as his exhaustion allows.
"I thought you died," Kiien whispers, fighting a voice crack. "I thought I'd never see you again."
Aeran runs his fingers through Kiien's hair. "I'm here now, Kii. I'm here now."