Ni'Srilan: The Desert: No, actually, I'm thinking, "This I gotta see."

Dancing in the desert, blowing up the sunshine

Damn, Baraqel loves the Desert.

After being in pestilence-ridden, wet, leafy, cold (by comparison, anyway), woodland-animal-infested Andarin, the Viper Commander is happier than you can imagine to be home.

Baraqel happy is, perhaps, exponentially worse than Baraqel apathetic.

He has just completed his Fire Element; it now contests with his Lightning, so that while sparks leap from his golden form, his crimson mane ignites in a wild bonfire against his crest, lashing against the cerulean heavens and smoldering in the inexorable heat. His hooves are wreathed in flame, charring the desert sands underhoof. He is a walking dynamite – an explosive pandemonium of barely-restrained power, contained haphazardly within those careless amber eyes.

And that is when he notices something – a cloud in his consciousness, a chilly sense pervading the air that makes him pause.

Rain? It had better not be rain. Things die when it rains.

But it’s not – it’s the New Kid, who feels in Baraqel’s hyper-charged mind like a great walking horse-shaped cloud of noxious water.

And even better, he looks like he thinks he can fight. Which puts him clearly under the Firestarter’s jurisdiction.

Baraqel was once just like this colt. A Lightning-child of two Legends, Kurai the Nightmare and Saphira the Siren, he left his mother’s side in Solira to come to the then-infant land of Ni’Srilan. He, too, was caught up in the throes of arrogance, although he was more dedicated to causing trouble and destroying things than proving himself on the battlefield. But one thing led to another, and it turned out that blowing up actual horses was more fun than blowing up cacti, and he stayed on the Battlefield, and now look what happened – his arrogance has not only grown, but become justified.

Instantly his Fire hisses and recedes into him; as he approaches, his equally formidable Lightning leaps from him, quivering from his limbs and shuddering in the air as the sky crackles with the rumbles of approaching thunder.

“You either lost your way, or you lost a bet. Right now I’m trying to guess which it is.” He inclines his handsome golden head to one side, a quiver of lightning leaping between his loosely pricked ears. Dramatically, he feigns rumination for a long moment before declaring, “I’m leaning slightly towards ‘lost a bet’.”

And so he waits with his weight on three legs and the fourth cocked against the desert sands, a lackadaisical conundrum of angry Fire and frenetic, destructive Lightning, and he looks for all the world like the rogue with the leather jacket, matches and motorbike –

Baraqel – whatever he is – just goes to show that the Desert prides itself in being unorthodox.

GLD. B A R A Q E L;
THE FIRESTARTER;
LIGHTNING III || FIRE III || IGNITION