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Now or Never	By : Samric Category: M through R > The Obsidian Trilogy Views: 1963 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I do not own The Obsidian Trilogy. I do not make any money from the writing of this story.

Chapter List
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The first thing you'll notice is how much different Kellen's account of the goings on of the world is from Cilarnen's. Well, in explanation of that, I'd like to bring the fact that everyone's way they view the world varies because of life experiences. The same is true for vocabulary and sentence structure. You could look at identical twins that spend all their time together and you'd still have two very different individuals with differing ways of self-expression because each one takes different things from their experiences.
That said, the reason that I chose to make Cilarnen's views somber and conflicted is because Cilarnen is somber and conflicted. He isn't like Kellen and able to take things as they come. As is shown by his affinity with the mechanical and routine ways of High Magic, Cilarnen likes to be able to think on things before acting. He likes to expressly understand everything around him. When things get out of control, his thoughts are thrown into chaos. As time goes in the army, with him having to make split-second decisions more and more, he's gotten better at the act before thinking routine, but that doesn't mean that he doesn't still prefer considering his options. In short (I know, I know, it's too late for that), Cilarnen's feelings for Kellen are something that he feels are spiraling out of control, but, at the same time, they just feel so incredibly right. The emotional roller coaster that they have placed him in is tearing him apart. He knows that Kellen has prior feelings for Vestakia and he's uncertain about Kellen's views on a subject that Cilarnen knows is a greatly frowned upon taboo in the city of their births (remember Cilarnen's dance teacher who was disliked by all his peers? Personally I thought he was possibly homosexual, or at least that's the vibe he gave off to me. The other Mages' reactions to him seemed to support that. It's Lord Nendimos from chapter four of “To Light a Candle” if anyone is curious. It's a few pages from the end, I think.).
As for Kellen, well he's always been a bit on the er... dim side. Is anyone else having flashbacks of his little misconception of Shalkan's reasons for disliking Idalia? Don't get me wrong, As a Knightmage, Kellen is a brilliant strategist and a genius when it comes to the art of war, but Kellen the teenage boy...dim seems to cover the issue pretty well.
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I try to call out to Cilarnen but he is gone before a sound can escape my mouth.
I don't have a clue as to what set him off. He was fine when I woke up; peacefully dreaming, a tiny smile on his lips...lips that were a few centimeters from my own at best. I try not to blush as I think on how my lips unintentionally brushed his gently as I tried to pull his arm off my chest. He had moaned quietly and ruined my attempt to just pull back and try to brush it off as a dumb accident by leaning in forcefully and pushing his own lips to mine. I withdrew quickly, stunned by his actions but continued to try and brush it off.
Then he ruined that attempt by moaning my name.
At that point I know that I to probably wore the look akin to a fish that has just received the shock of its very short life when a bear grabs it and proceeds to eat it.
I had no idea that Cilarnen felt that way about me. I thought that he still felt a measure of general dislike towards me. Or at least that's the impression I always got from how he'd sometimes try so hard to avoid me. ...Though that may be able to be attributed to the fact that Wildmagic makes him twitchy...and now that I think about it, most of the times he avoids me are when I've just had a great deal of intimacy with a working of Wildmagic. ...Okay so that blows that theory to the abyss.
So does that mean that he's just been hiding his feelings? If so, I wonder for how long.
Either way, I know that my relationship with Cilarnen has just been complicated beyond my imagination. I now have no idea of how I should act around him. Should I confront him about it and potentially embarrass both of us, or should I just try to forget it and get on with life?
I'm leaning pretty strongly towards Forget-it-and-get-on-with-life but if there's one thing I've learned from my experiences with the elves, it's that no matter how much you try to ignore a problem, it will never go away on its own.
Their experiences with the Endarkened may be a bit of an extreme example but the basic principle is there.
And that leaves me with a single, sure-to-be-painful, option. Confront him.
Gods I don't want to do this! He's going to mutilate me before I can even finish.
And to top it all off, I'm not at all upset, disgusted, or otherwise disturbed by the fact that Cilarnen was moaning my name and kissing me.
In fact...I almost felt giddy afterwards.
What does that mean??
I can't help the sigh that bursts out suddenly. I really don't want to deal with this now; couldn't I have gotten a few days of bliss after the battle before this all came up?
Consigning myself to the gallows, I walk towards my tent's exit, only to have the door swept aside by someone a moment before I can do it myself. Arlenti, one of the Wildmages from the Wild Lands as well as a skilled healer, puts her hand on my chest and gently pushes me back into the room before grabbing my wrist and pulling me back to the a small stool in the corner that I use when lacing my boots. She pushes me down so that I'm forced to either sit on the stool or annoy her by refusing. Well, seeing as I've learned that annoying a healer is never a good idea—in fact it's actually a very bad idea—I concede.
Arlenti's smile brightens and she situates herself on a small truck a few feet away. She has yet to speak and I look at her imploringly, waiting for her to take the hint. She does.
“Well Kellen, I checked up on you about half an hour before you woke up and your wounds have healed completely,” she says cheerily.
“The bad news though,” she continues, “is that I'm going to have to beat you senseless if I don't hear a very good explanation of why you ran Cilarnen out of here.”
It is said in that same overly cheerful tone, with her smile just as wide as before, and I'm briefly unable to fully grasp what she said. But after an awkward moment, filled only with my blank stare and her continued smiling, I comprehend what she said and can't help but respond with a stupid sounding “Huh?”
Her smile drops and her eyes harden, and I'm suddenly reminded of the Demons shedding their deceptively beautiful skins to reveal their true selves.
“I think it would probably be best to get to the heart of the matter; Cilarnen Volpiril is in love with you, Kellen. Very much so.”
Oh boy.
“What I want to know,” she narrows her eyes and the vision changes from a demon to a snake—a very poisonous and angry snake—“Is why you were so cruel as to scare him off.”
By the end of her sentence she has leaned forward and her voice has reached the levels of downright evil—and by that I mean the type of evil that eats babies and giggles at people's pain as it dunks them under boiling acid... I don't think I need to elaborate more.
“Uh...” And there goes that stupid sound sound again. But in all honesty, I don't think I can conjure up anything more intelligent in response to the accusations she's laying at me. When exactly did I cruelly run Cilarnen out of my tent? By the Gods, he didn't even give me a minute to do anything before he was running like a spooked rabbit from my tent! I wonder if everyone else thinks that I did something to hurt him, as well.
Arlenti clenches her jaw and looks about ready to throw some undoubtedly painful spell at me and I just blurt out the first thing that comes to my head.
“I didn't do anything to him!” I cry out frantically and then dodge back a split second later as the air sparks but then, just as suddenly, dies down.
“What do you mean you didn't do anything?” she asks, suspicious strongly coloring her voice.
I crack open one eye and spy her giving me a contemplative look, one of her eyebrows cocked up her face turned a little, as if trying to gage me from a different angle somehow. Seeing the opportunity to clear my name with her and avoid whatever nasty little cantrip she's got held in her keystone, I bring my arm down from where it was held in front of my face to protect it, and sit up fully.
“Well,” I begin, “when I woke up he was in bed with me and he was laying really close to me and I accidentally...”—I can't believe I'm telling her this—“kissed him.”
Arlenti just snorts and mutters something under her breath that sounds suspiciously like '“accidentally” yeah sure.'
I flush immediately and stutter through the next part.
“H-he kissed back—I mean he was still asleep then but he just sorta pushed back and wouldn't let me pull away, so that's what I mean by kissing back! It's not like he grabbed me or...” I trail off, sure that not only has she gotten the general idea, but I've also just made an idiot of myself.
She just nods and waves one of her hands in a 'and then?' motion.
“Er...he said my name and finally I just tried to roll him over because I had to pee and he woke up. At first he seemed really...happy, I guess you could say. He was smiling and watching me stumble around my tent naked. But once I got back,” I halt my explanation, not really sure exactly what happened next.
It was almost like he'd done a complete emotional 180. He had looked so forlorn, as if his entire world had just crashed down upon him. What did that to him? Was it really me, somehow? Was it my fault that he looked so scared and so hurt?
A gentle hand on my knee startles me out of my thoughts and my gaze whips up away from its place on the floor to see Arlenti's sympathetic face. I hadn't even realized that I was drifting away in my thoughts.
“What happened when you got back?” she asks quietly.
“He looked heartbroken. And then he got up and just left,” I say, staring off in the distance.
Yes, heartbroken. That's exactly what he was. But why?
Arlenti is quiet afterwards, apparently pondering what I've told her. Several minutes go by before she finally stands up and places a hand on my shoulder. I look up at her inquiringly and she cracks a tiny smile.
“I'm sorry I doubted you, Kellen. I should have known you wouldn't do something so cruel. I didn't wait for an explanation though, and I immediately suspected the worst. I'm sorry for that. It's just that when he came tearing out of here, with tears in his eyes and looking so panicked, I thought that you'd rejected hi—”
She stops suddenly, her face going white and her eyes wide in horror as she stares into my own. She swallows and takes a deep breath before tentatively asking me, “How exactly do you feel about him?”
The question catches me off guard and I can only blink a few times before offering an honest, “I'm not sure.”
Arlenti bites her lip and nods minutely, then she turns away from me.
“Whatever you decide in the end, Kellen, please be kind to him,” she says, and then she exits my tent, leaving me alone with probably one of the most difficult questions of my life.
What do I feel towards Cilarnen?

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I'm not sure when the next part will be posted--or even started on for that matter. I just finished working on my Kingdom Hearts fic "All I Really Want For Christmas" and am still writing a little one-shot called "I'm Not Okay". And on top of that, I've started researching for yet another KH fic. The only way you can find out what that one will be about though is by visiting my LJ. Haha. I'm not sure how it's going to work out so I only put the notice up on my LJ--which nobody ever looks at!
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Now or Never