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He found it remarkable, how quickly one could lose everything to their name. Oh, it certainly wasn't beautiful, but the swiftness of it, the totality- Vivek imagined it was similar to watching a black hole devour a star, although this felt infinitely more personal. Vivek had known loss from a young age, yet not to this same degree, and he hadn't lost his sister to the chaos of a power struggle they had evidently been destined to lose. She wasn't dead, however; he refused to credit the possibility with any serious thought, roughly shoving it away whenever the threads began assembling in his mind again. Vivek sent his crows as far as he dared, and then farther, hoping for any trace, no matter how small it may be. He was desperate, he knew that, and it settled uncomfortably in his stomach, unbefitting, and yet his pride could not compare to his sister, his queen. Sincere doubts overtook him, questioning his stability, his reliability, and he disregarded them to the best of his ability. He would find her; no other option existed. Failure would not mark the end of this search, even if it meant he had to comb every speck of dirt for hundreds of miles to find a single hint that she had been there.
That increasingly became a genuine resort with each day that passed. His odds of locating her fell with every sunset following, and he received nothing but what he already knew from his loyal observers. It seemed this would be no different, as the small toes landed upon his shoulder, the owner lackluster and, for the most part, silent. "There's a group not far from here," the crow murmured, directly into one perked ear; in response, the canine frowned, deeply.
"And what could I possibly want from them?" Disdain shadowed his voice, and he made no effort to conceal it. The groups -clans, as most of them called their assembly, were never favored by Vivek. If asked why, he would have no specific answer to give, other than how flimsy their relationships sounded in what information Vivek commissioned his crows to gather. They had no particular worth to him, or his endeavor; in all honesty, he'd gone deliberately out of his way to avoid clans.
"Who, not what." Who. Could they know where his sister resided? Had they seen her? Hers was a difficult face to forget- if they had, Vivek was confident they would remember. The tricky part, however, was in the approach. In the past, he'd proven a...disagreeable conversationalist. That hadn't changed at all; if anything, it worsened with the lack of grounding force she had always, without fail, exuded. She had been his purpose. Every ounce of will contained in his body had been dedicated to her, and without his sister he became a directionless slip of paper caught in harsh winds.
He sent away his crow, off to search for more information; he didn't need directions to this place. The scent of occupation and people was obvious to even the most oblivious, and that Vivek most certainly was not. Was he nonetheless capable of making terrible decisions? Of course. This was the riskiest idea he'd undertaken in some time, and he couldn't be certain of the outcome, or even the initial response. A heavy gust of air left his mouth, and Vivek called upon the resolve he'd clung to earlier, reminding himself he could not ostracize himself if he wished to find her. "I'm looking for someone, if any of you have an attention span beyond the range of a goldfish."
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