Kellehendros
Eternal Wanderer
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It was almost peaceful, watching the sun come up over the city of Bren. Micha Wiedii was perched high in the swaying branches of a venerable oak tree on a forested ridge with a good vantage of the city unfolding below. She leaned against the bole of the tree, the claws of one foot dug into the bark securely, her other leg swinging back and forth freely as a thousand hues, amber and umber, rose and russet, magenta and mauve, spread themselves across the sky.
At times like this, she could almost be happy, even being what she was; she could set aside the weight of her past and the sins that she had committed, all the little failings and shortcomings that had led her to this place, all the sorrow that dragged at her heart. She could let it go and just… be. But that could not not last. You were not meant to be happy. The Kissa sighed, closing her feline eyes and leaning back against the tree. She was not certain if the thought was hers, or a memory-whisper from one she had once thought was her friend.
Micha’s appearance, not just her eyes, was decidedly feline. Short and slender, her body, from the tips of the triangular rounded ears perched atop her head, to the hindpaws of her digitigrade legs, was covered in soft fur. Her hide was tawny, with rosettes of black and deeper brown, and dark lines that ran down her back and limbs. The lines were most prominent on her face, where her feline aspect featured a blunt snout and two dark lines like tear tracks streaking down a face with unsettlingly large eyes. Most of the line patterns upon her body were hidden, however, covered by her outfit: A red tunic and white trousers beneath a boiled leather vest, her limbs protected by similar leather shin and forearm guards. To complete the feline look, a three-foot tail, banded in alternating colors, flicked back and forth behind her, disclosing the agitation of her thoughts.
There was too much sorrow, too much guilt, for her to put it away for long, she supposed. Micha sighed softly again, turning to the bole of the great oak and embracing it as though in thanks, pressing her furred cheek to the rough bark and finding a few moments of comfort there. But she could not afford to linger, and after a few seconds she released the embrace and began to descend with dextrous skill. She was at home in forests. Sometimes, when she let herself think about it, she could recall the forests of home. It was a long way to the home, back to the east. When she was young, in the time of her first happiness, as she thought of it to herself, she and her parents had ranged the forests of home, happy and carefree. But that was before the slowfever and the first sorrow, the death of her parents’ song.
And that first sorrow paled beside the second. But no, she would not think of that now. She had been a long time on the road to Bren, though she had not known it when she had first set out. Months and miles, years and leagues, and she had begun to hear of Bren as she traveled west. Whispers of a special place, a special time, when one could reach out her hand and claim the desire of her heart if only she had the strength of will and fortitude to do so. A boon from the gods themselves, the mercy and grace to undo a mistake born of her weakness. Micha had no idea if such a thing was true, or even possible, but the chance, that mad chance, had been too much for her to ignore. Her feet had trod the westward path, and the stories had grown along the way, names and legends that were foreign to her. Ember the Flame Dancer, Leira Light-bender, The Ronin of Dreams, Wintin the Smith, Kriege the Reaver, figures such as those out of the old stories that she had loved as a child.
It was time to see if the stories were true, and so the Kissa sought out the path down the forest ridge. At least she was feeling rested today, though sleep had been illusive. The road had been long, and Micha might have spent the night at one of Bren’s inns, but she had elected to camp out in the forest, finding a stream to wash the road dust from her body, and steel her nerve for the ordeal she would face this morning. It was not that she hated cities, per se, but she found them hard upon her senses. There was too much to see, too much to smell, too much to hear. Still, she had to make the journey to register for the tournament, and she promised herself that she would beat a hasty retreat back to the outskirts of the city once her goal was accomplished. In all likelihood Micha would leave the city entirely. Yes, perhaps that would be best... She would return to the site of her camp from last night, rest, and try to find some semblance of calm and poise before the tournament proper began.
Bren was about what she had expected, given her experiences with other cities. It was a sprawling collection of buildings laid out with, what appeared to her at least, to be no regard for propriety or order. Shops were crammed cheek-by-jowl with lodging houses, inns were butted up to guardhouses, and warehouses jostled for space with homes and hovels. What she had not expected, however, was the sheer number of people. It seemed as though every person within a hundred leagues was thronging through the streets of Bren that afternoon, for it had taken the Kissa some time to make her reluctant way down to the outskirts of town from her arboreal perch, and longer to navigate her way through the city to where entrants were to register for the tourney.
And that was when her troubles began. Micha was not simply Kissa, she was Enkeli as well. The Enkeli were, in a fashion, priests and seers to her people, though they were born and not made. In her homeland, the Kissa were often derided as god-touched dreamers. The gods had gifted them, or perhaps cursed them, with sensitivity. Their perception was sharper, more acutely attuned to the world around them, allowing them to perceive things others missed. In those Kissa known as Enkeli, that gift, that curse, was stronger yet. Micha did not know any other Enkeli, and from what she had heard her powers of perception were weak in comparison, but she could see things: spirits of those who had passed on, strong emotional marks, and even the threads of what she had come to know as magic being built into spells by mages. If regular Kissa were seen as touched in the head, Enkeli were often seen by outsiders as mad.
That was distinctly disadvantageous in the city of Bren, and more specifically upon the grounds of the tourney complex. Micha felt it the instant she stepped upon the grounds. A crackling tension was present in the air, as though a thunderstorm was building over the complex. It set her fur to stand on end and made the joints of her limbs ache. The Enkeli shivered, wondering how anyone could stand this place for long, and then halted with a gasp, earning a disgruntled glare from a man that had to detour around her. She missed the glare, for she had eyes only for the spirit before her.
It had been a Koira once, of that much Micha was certain. The jackal-headed spirit was walking down the street, as oblivious to the people passing through his ephemeral form as the rest of the passersby were oblivious to him. There was a spear through the Koira’s chest. The Kissa squeezed her eyes closed, counting to ten slowly before opening them. Her gaze landed on the Koira spirit again. She had not expected it to work. It never did anymore, not since she had become a woman and her curse had begun to strengthen. Micha could speak with him; she had learned that much from her previous experiences, though her abilities were not strong enough to hear what the Koira spirit might say in reply.
The Kissa shook her head and kept moving. She saw more spectres as she moved further into the complex, lingering spirits of the violent deaths that had taken place here over the years. Doing her best to ignore them, she moved to the registration station, tail lashing in agitation..
Regulen was tired. He had been up since the crack of dawn every day this week. The Elemental Championship may not have been known over all the world, but it was certainly known over a good portion of it, and that resulted in a rather large number of applicants. Unfortunately, not all applicants were suitable, and it fell to Regulen and the other registrars to both thin the herd and ensure that the prospective entrants knew the rules governing the contest.
Like most of the other registrars, he prided himself on the work that he did. Regulen liked to think that he was a good judge of the prospects, especially since had handled the entry paperwork for Champion Tharala two years ago. Of course, it was nothing more than luck which had led the skyfisher to him rather than another registrar, but he told himself that he was a part of it, that magical dark-horse victory that had taken no small number of gamblers by surprise.
There was something about this one that reminded him of Champion Tharala. He watched the feline woman, something tugging at his memory as she glanced up from reading the sheaf of impenetrable legal documents he had provided her. Hadn’t there been a similar competitor the year Champion Tharala had won? Yes, there had, now that he thought of it. What had been her name..? Sanja, Snar… No, Snjor. Snjor, that was it! He wondered if the two were related.
Regulen glanced back at the woman, frowning slightly. She had been reading the documents he had handed her after she expressed her desire to enter the tournament, accepting them even after he had given her the rote, and required, cautions regarding the dangers the entrants would face, but now she was just staring fixedly into the middle distance, golden eyes glazed over. Concerned, he waved a hand before her eyes, but received no discernable reaction from the woman. Regulen leaned forward, frowning. She was… talking to herself? He wasn’t certain, but she was definitely muttering something.
Well, she wouldn’t be the first less than stable entrant, and she certainly wouldn’t be the last. Still, if she was deemed unstable enough she could not give her consent to undergo the dangers of the tourney. That choice went over his head. He was just there to make sure the applicants knew the rules, not judge their fitness to wager their lives, so he motioned the senior registrar over.
“What’s the matter, Reg?”
Regulen motioned towards the feline applicant, who was still staring absently into space and murmuring quietly. “I’m not sure, sir. She was alright and then she just sort of… went funny.”
At that point, the woman surprised them both, speaking clearly, though her eyes still stared unseeingly into empty air. “Secrets only visible by starlight and flame sight…”
The senior registrar grunted. “Plenty of funny ones have entered before. We ain’t here to judge ‘em full, that comes from higher up.” He leaned across Regulen, dipping the quill in the inkwell and gently pressing it into the woman’s hand. As if in response, her fingers curled about the implement and began to write.
“But they have to understand what they are involving themselves in.” Regulen protested.
The feline woman blinked suddenly, her golden eyes refocusing on the registrar slowly, as though she was coming back from a great distance. “I am Enkeli Kissa Mar. I understand what I am involving myself in, better than anyone here.”
Micha looked down at the quill in her hand, faintly surprised by the sight of it, as well as that of her name on the papers before her. Then again, by the looks she was getting from the two men across the table from her, she had just been having an episode. Sometimes the presence of the spirits was overwhelming. There were a dozen spirits she could see, easily twice that she could only faintly perceive, shimmers in the air, faint feelings of presence. Those were older spirits, fading away as they lost their memories of their selves, their incorporeal forms fading away to aether as they dwindled with the endless passage of years. As though the spirits were not enough, there were also the emotions swirling through the air, thick enough to choke her.
This place was old, and there had been a great deal of emotion poured out here: hate, exaltation, greed, fear, joy, even love. A thousand layers of spirits and feelings, some so old they had faded to mere background whispers, had accreted year by year, and it was all pushing in on her psyche. She could perhaps be forgiven for being overwhelmed, being pulled under by the force of the maelstrom. Micha could see in the concern in their eyes, the wariness. She had no idea what she had said or done in the fugue, babbling inanities and snippets of the spirits’ stories, her subconscious desperately venting the overwhelming spiritual pressure. Somehow, despite it all, she had signed her name to the parchment. Micha looked down at her name, faintly surprised that she had put Fire down for the element she was entering under for the competition.
Fire..?
The Kissa considered that for a moment. The element of Fire had no meaning to her. She had intended to enter for Water, an element more in line with Danae, patron goddess of the Kissa. Micha, about to set the quill to the parchment and strike out the word, paused. She suddenly remembered an ancient Basilli monk she had met a long time ago, an old walking stick who had taken one look at Micha and identified her as Enekli. The monk had told her that her “flame sight” was a gift from the Lohikaarme. She was more inclined to think the Eyes of the Enkeli a curse. There was simply too much she had seen because of them. And yet… Perhaps, just perhaps, this commitment, made unconsciously while under the overwhelming influence of this place, was right.
After all, Fire was an element of renewal, and what was Micha here for if not to rekindle a spark, to reignite a candle flame that had been snuffed out far too soon? The Kissa had heard stories in her travels of the phoenix, a legendary bird that was consumed by flame, only to rise again from the ashes of its death. Gently returning quill to the inkwell nearby, Micha lifted her hand to her chest, lightly touching the form of the bag hanging on the leather thong about her neck through the fabric of her shirt.
Perhaps she was the phoenix, or perhaps she was simply deluding herself. Perhaps she was as mad as some thought her people, seeing signs from the gods where none existed. But she had seen so much in her life, too much. The gods watched, the gods judged, and from time to time, the gods would extend a hand to brush, ever so delicately, across the fabric of reality itself.
“Is there something wrong, miss?”
Micha blinked, her attention refocusing outward on the officials. The clerk who had originally provided her the documents was looking at her with concern. Smiling, the Enkeli pushed the matter to the back of her mind. Perhaps she was mad, or perhaps the gods had spoken their wishes through her, and who was she to argue with the gods? “No, thank you for your kindness, and your concern. I am merely… anxious. Is there anything further that you need?”
The man collected the parchments, shuffling through them quickly and then shaking his head. “No, Entrant Wiedii. You should receive a notification later today regarding your Arena assignment. May the Lords look kindly on you.”
The Kissa inclined her head politely, rising gracefully and turning for the door. The sooner she could get out of here, the sooner she would be able to relax.
Of course, Micha had to return to the city. There was no choice in that, and so she rose early, as the sun was just peeking over the horizon, in an effort to avoid the crush of crowds that she expected to course the streets. The Kissa made it to the outskirts of the city swiftly, though the sun was a hand-and-a-half above the horizon by that point despite the fact she travelled swiftly today upon the paths she had dallied along yesterday. She hurried on her way, slipping through the crowds spilling out into the streets from inns and boarding houses. The tournament began at noon, but for many of those who had journeyed to Bren the revelry had begun last night, or was starting already this morning.
Micha skirted a pack of celebrants heading for a tavern, glancing at the scroll that had been delivered to her camp late last night. The courier had not seemed best pleased by the need to trek so far out of Bren to deliver his missive, but he made no comment to the Enkeli on the matter, and had left in somewhat better spirits after Micha had offered him a share of the roast coney dinner she had prepared. Upon the scroll had been information regarding her assignment to an arena, and directions to guide her way there.
Twilight… It was not an arena whose name the Kissa had heard before. The storytellers spoke of desiccant Cellar, perilous Spike, lofty Sky, and ever-changing Fountain. She had heard word of a Factory as well, though the name meant little. Twilight though, Twilight was new. That presented a number of uncertainties, but Micha comforted herself with the knowledge that the other entrants she would come up against would know as little about this battleground as she did. She might speculate, but the only thing that the name of Twilight evoked was an image of a forest from home, and if the Enkeli knew anything, it was that the arena was unlikely to be anything so comforting and familiar.
Weaving through the burgeoning crowds, Micha arrived at the soaring structure denoted with the emblem for Twilight. The graceful, curving sigil combining sun and moon matched the symbol on the scroll she had been given, so this must be the place. Micha glanced around curiously, frowning as she stopped in the middle of the street, people flowing around her towards the gate ahead. So far as she could tell there was but one entryway into the complex, unless there was another at the back. Perhaps there was a secondary gate within where the entrants would be split off from the spectators and dispatched to the arena floor to await the beginning of the combat?
That must be it, the Enkeli thought, moving forward again and joining the stream of people passing through the gateway.
And then she realized that she had made a terrible mistake.
Since coming west, Micha had learned a great deal about magic, a force that was unknown in her homeland. The stories about the tournament had spoken of magic, of how the complex was maintained by magic, reinforced by magic. She had seen parts of the Championship complex, seen the haze of magic that hung about them. Compared to being inside the halls of the Twilight Arena… That was like comparing a candle-flame to a bonfire.
When she saw magic, Micha usually saw threads, silken skeins of energy teased out and shaped by a mage into a pattern of purpose. Here… here the walls seemed to undulate, magic woven over and through them in tight complex patterns that beat against her senses as she staggered along with the flow of traffic. The Kissa blinked rapidly, shaking her head and trying to dispel the doubling of sight created by her perception of the magic. Her hand reached out, touching the gently curving wall, and for a brief second feeling not stone but the texture and tension of tight-woven cloth under immense strain. Micha growled softly and forced herself forward one step at a time.
Focus, Micha. Focus on what is really there. The Enkeli wavered a moment, and then pushed away from the wall, focusing her gaze on the back of the person in front of her as she moved down the curving passage. That helped her for a bit, but then the man before her was gone, leaving the Kissa blinking in confusion. She paused, glancing around in puzzlement. The crowd continued to stream past her, somewhat thinner than it had been at the door. Strange, she had not seen any side-passages...
Micha shook her head, starting forward again and narrowing her focus on a group of spectators chatting amongst themselves, only to find that group dissipated and vanished as well. The same happened for each person that the Kissa focused upon or tried to follow, until she found herself quite alone in a hall that seemed to curve infinitely away before and behind her, and try as she might she could detect neither sound nor scent of anyone else. She was alone in this faintly pulsing magical place. The unease of that sensation was hard to describe, propelling her down the hall in the direction she had been heading because it must, surely must, come to one end or another.
And so it did, almost abruptly, as though Micha’s desire had manifested it from the disturbing magical hallway despite her lack of any magical ability of her own. The Kissa’s head tilted to one side curiously, peering at the silken mass of satiny blackness gating the way before it. It was a distillation of velvet shadow so dark that Micha had the urge to gather it into her hands and pull it around herself like a cloak woven of the night itself. It was rather lovely, she thought, though that thought was interrupted by the barrier’s disappearance. The shadow roiled momentarily and then unravelled, threads of dark magic spinning apart and dissipating.
Taking it for an invitation, the Enkeli padded through the now open portal, relieved to find that, while the air was still heavy with the presence of magic, it was not the overwhelming visual lattice that the magical hallway had been. There was a definite haze in the air, but she could handle that. After yesterday’s episode at the registration station, this was much less distracting.
Golden eyes roved slowly over the Arena, and padded feet stepped lightly on the wooden planks of the floor. She took in the play of light and shadow, interspersed shafts that seemed to move at variable paces. Some slipped across the floor swiftly, chasing one another like players in a game of catch-and-go, but others moved with the slow and steady pace of a stately pavane. It seemed to Micha like chaos, a disorderly maelstrom of light and dark, and her first thought, surprisingly, was that she may not have been so wrong in her conjectures earlier. The dappling movement of light and darkness, though severe in its vertical perfection, reminded the Enekli for a homesick moment of nothing so much as the forests of home. Still, after a few moments the Kissa had to revise her initial impression that shade and light moved randomly here. The melange of shine and shadow was not, as she had originally thought, the product of random chance. There was a pattern here, perhaps, though her mind could not quite compass it in its entirety. The idea of order teased at the edge of her consciousness. Perhaps, given some time and observation, the pattern would unfold itself to her. That could prove useful.
Those considerations would have to wait, however, for Micha was by no means alone in the Twilight.
To her left was… Well, she wasn’t precisely certain what he was, just that he looked like a very short man whose wild hair flashed sable in the spire of light that slid over him. The light winked off what appeared to be gold-chased guantlets upon his hands, giving the Kissa some idea of what he might be capable of. She had known a few of her own people who fought in such a style, letting their natural claws grow long and wicked-sharp. He was short of stature, slender, rather in the way she was, a fighter who relied on speed rather than strength, no doubt.
To her right was… Another man, and this one momentarily took the Enkeli’s breath away. He was perhaps an inch or two taller than she was, and built wide and thick, but what really drew Micha’s attention was his cloak. Spangled with a points of light that winked like stars in the sky, the light and darkness of Twilight slid over the garment, revealing and concealing it by turns, through the starpoints always seemed to remain despite the motion. The Kissa had the dizzying impression that the longer she stared at the cloak the more motes of imprisoned light she would see there, as though the sky’s great infinity had been bound up in cloth. Micha blinked and shook her head slightly, snapping herself out of the fascination and eyeing the man and his heavy cane warily.
There would be time to consider the strange man further later, and her eyes flicked over the rest of the Arena swiftly. She was somewhat startled to note a mounted woman to the right of the star-cloaked man. Briefly, the Enkeli noted a hooded figure more or less across the Arena, but her attention returned to the horsewoman and the Kissa turned, pivoting in place as a patch of shadow swirled by her, obscuring her left hand as it unhooked a bola from her belt. The bola followed the shadow, swapping into her right hand as the darkness flickered around, and a turn of the wrist set the weapon to spinning.
Micha drifted to her right and slowly forward, in the direction of the gate the star-cloaked man had abandoned as he moved toward the center of the area. She followed the path of one of the spires of shadow vaguely towards the mounted woman, keeping her right shoulder and arm in the obscuring darkness as she moved, bola whirring still. The horse was an unexpected surprise, and an advantage that the Kissa was not ready to allow her opponent. Though the horse was innocent of the matter, simply following its master’s orders, the Enkeli intended to cripple the beast and remove it from the competition. It was unfortunate, but it had to be done.
Things were going well, until a shaft of light came careening her way, faster than Micha had predicted, chasing away the cloaking darkness that had been hiding her weapon. There was no choice now but to act and hope that the mounted woman was distracted by the other entrants at the moment. The Enkeli blurred into motion, light and shadow playing over her spotted hide as she took three swift steps and leapt. A practiced twist of her limbs imparted an angular spin on her leap, twirling the graceful Kissa through a sidelong roll that was both a fanciful distraction and a method of imparting the momentum of her body to her throw.
The bola whickered into the darkness, leather-cord linked stones whirring about one another as they sailed through patches of light and shadow, aimed for the horse’s rear legs. Should the bola connect, the cords should wrap themselves around the unfortunate equine’s legs, and if the beast was truly unlucky, the impact of the stones crashing together once wound tight might be enough to cause serious damage to the delicate structures of the horse’s lower limbs and hooves.
Micha came out of the twirl in a low crouch, one leg extended but swiftly drawn back under her so she was centered and ready to move. Her hands went to her waist, pulling her sling free and drawing a stone to fit into it as well. Whether or not her gambit succeeded, the rider was unlikely to be happy about the Kissa’s actions, and Micha had no intention of being unable to reply to her opponent’s counter-attack.
< Message edited by Kellehendros -- 8/15/2015 19:03:00 >
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