The Outlanders

The Makings of Greatness

MARS

Mahkra has asked me top stay within the Elders' base of operations, even after both Orz and Lillia left to seek shelter farther beneath the obelisk with the rest of the Unwanted. Jackie, Lane, and everyone else followed not long after, leaving just me and this guy. I'm not sure what he wants, but he's smiling through his graying beard, with both his aged eyes wrinkling to a near close. Meanwhile, I'm standing in front of him like a complete idiot. Eventually though, he extends a hand to me, and then guides that same hand towards the chair where Orz had sat, which was directly in front of him, across from the well, which I only know noticed is dry.

"Sit, Melidrax, please." He insists in his most elderly tone. I can tell he's being nice, but I don't know if it's by instinct or a steady patience being cast upon the room itself. However, I do as I am asked, slowly taking purchase upon the seat of his comrade. My eyes shoot over to the well between the two of us, and remains fixated upon it for a long while. "I built it myself." He tells me, and I can hear him shifting in his seat as he does. Suffice it to say, even as I try my absolute best to exude the notion that whatever this surprise meeting is, it doesn't faze me, but it sort of does. Maybe it's the way that he picked me out personally from the rest of the group, but at the same time, i can't help but feel the pounding against my chest grow stronger out of nothing but sheer excitement. It might be too narcissistic and selfish for me to think that I'm some sort of chosen one, but I suppose that in this instance, I am.

"It's nice."

"I built it for the Unwanted." He chuckles through his nose. "When we arrived in the Underhell years ago, the people needed a leader." His fingers run through the scraggly beard hanging by his chin. Mahkra cocks his head. "Well, leaders."

"I don't follow." I tell him as a response, but not at all shying away from the conversation in its entirety.

He flashes me a smile, it's calm yet it's given with what seems to be an overabundance of knowing. As though I'm supposed to understand why he's smiling the way that he is. "I know a leader when I see one, Melidrax." A bony finger is raised and then pointed in my direction. "And you, my boy, have the opportunity to be above and beyond that." Needless to say, I'm all at once enthralled and bewildered by this conversation, causing my lips to contort into a smile of my own, although a little bashful in comparison to his own. He catches me smiling, and he nods. "But as any sensible individual might be able to predict, potential is something that needs to be taken care of."

I clear my throat. "Sorry, but why are you telling me this?"

Without so much as saying anything, I seem to have clarity by the mere act of staring into his eyes. I don't consider myself as a person who's empathetic, or someone who could easily grasp an emotion of another, but at the same time, I'm not completely apathetic.