Kellehendros
Eternal Wanderer
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The phrase “a needle in a haystack” had come to mind more than once during his search. It amounted to the same thing frankly. Finding a specific tree in a forest was a veritable nightmare, even knowing that the particular tree in question was on a ridge providing a good view of Bren, one that was perfect for watching the sun rise over the city. That much at least, the courier had been able to tell Teras regarding his quarry’s long defunct camp. He was probably lucky that the messenger remembered that much. It had been years after all.
Nonetheless, he had wasted three days trudging up and down the forested hills around Bren in search of that accursed tree. Swearing and sweating, he chopped through underbrush and ducked low branches until he had finally found it. The marks were there to be read: faint gouges all but healed with the passage of time that nonetheless showed where someone had worked with claw and dagger to ascend the thick bole in search of a perch below the arboreal canopy.
So here the bounty hunter was, watching the sun climb over the city. The Iron Mantis stood high above the ground, balanced on a thick limb that extended from the trunk perhaps thirty feet up. Dark, wide-set eyes squinted against the growing illumination, and for perhaps the fiftieth time that week the Basilli Phas wondered what his target had been thinking.
Something drove her, that much was certain. No doubt it was something dark and terrible, to her mind at least. Teras had been a bounty hunter for more long cycles than he cared to contemplate, and in his experience the ones who ran the furthest and the fastest were fleeing some horrible action or consequence that they held themselves responsible for.
Lord Telan had not deigned to tell the Iron Mantis the details. He rarely did. Teras could still remember the meeting. The clan lord of the Kotka Bu had summoned him in the dead of the night, and Teras had arrived to find the normally unflappable man pacing before the banked blaze in the study’s fireplace, wings twitching open and closed in agitation. The Basilli Phas had only a moment to catch sight of the open missive on Telan’s desk before the lord glanced up and pinioned the mercenary with an intense gaze. “A matter has arisen that requires your attention.”
“In the middle of the night?” Teras was careful to keep his tone respectful. He may have been the Iron Mantis, but Telan was lord of the Kotka Bu, one of the masters of the Flights, and a man with a fearsome reputation in his own right. He also had very little in the way of humor. The Basilli Phas was well aware of this, but had never been able to resist needling the man... within reason. “It couldn’t wait until morning?”
Telan’s golden eyes narrowed. “If you are finding the terms of your contract to be burdensome, I can release you from my service.”
Which was the Kotka Bu’s normal rejoinder when he deigned to answer one of Teras’ barbs, and as ever, the Basilli Phas had no response to it. The subject of the Iron Mantis’ contract was an old and sore subject. As always, the implied threat of losing the protection afforded by his station with House Telan made Teras blanch, and he steered the conversation back to the matter at hand. “What matter, my lord?”
After a long, appraising silence, the Kotka Bu motioned the bounty hunter to the desk, and the short missive atop it. “Polemaetus’ compound was destroyed. Arson.”
The Iron Mantis frowned, digesting this. Polemaetus had been working on something, several somethings, that Telan had been keeping well under wraps. Lifting the scroll, Teras read through it slowly once, and then again. He recognized the signature at the bottom of the missive: Kennek Telan, the lord’s son. That all but clinched it then. Telan’s son was... exacting. There was a reason he was called the Red Butcher outside of the lands controlled by the Flights. If he said the compound was destroyed, then it was destroyed. “Surely not the Basilli For? Polemaetus’ compound should have been more than safe from a raiding party from the Colonies.”
“No,” the Kotka Bu shook his head, “it was someone from inside. One of Polemaetus’... servants.”
Teras arched a brow at that. “A servant? Polemaetus had, what, thirty guards in that miniature fortress of his? Forty? You’re telling me that a servant dispatched two score guards and burned down the madman’s laboratory? Even if the entire staff had been in on it, that’s pretty unlikely.”
“I tell you nothing regarding what transpired,” Telan replied stolidly. “But Polemaetus’ reports have been… erratic of late. He was hiding something since his acquisition of a number of new servants. There was one in particular that Kennek mentioned, an Enkeli. I suspect that she had a hand in this. I dispatched a rider to ensure my son detains all of the manse’s staff. You are to bring the Enkeli here.”
“You really think she knows something?” Teras asked, setting the brief note back on the desk.
“Yes. Polemaetus’ final report mentioned her only in passing, but I have known him long enough. He told her something, something he was hiding from the Flights, something he was hiding from me. It has to do with the Enekli, and I will know this thing.”
The Basilli Phas shrugged. “Fine, fine, have it your way.” You always do. Teras rolled his neck slowly and rubbed at his right shoulder. “I don’t suppose you have a name for her, so I know who to ask your son for when I arrive?”
Telan folded his wings at his back, staring into the fire. “Wiedii, Micha Wiedii.”
Such a small thing, a name. Two words that had devoured years of the Iron Mantis’ life. He arrived at the burnt ruin of Polemaetus’ manor to find the Enkeli fled. He had never quite been able to settle for himself whether or not Wiedii knew that he was searching for her. It hardly seemed to matter though. Whatever horror, and Teras had no doubt there were horrors given the mad inventor’s reputation, she had experienced in Polemaetus’ dungeon had been enough to send the Kissa Mar fleeing as though every demon of the pit had been on her heels.
Still, if demons dogged her heels, it certainly seemed as though the gods gave wings to her flight. The Iron Mantis pursued her across the territory claimed by the Flights, across the packlands of the Koira, and deep into the great Kaarme swamp. That was a terror of itself. The whole chase had been at that, a slow slog like one of those nightmares where you ran and ran but the monster from which you fled only gained on you step by implacable step. Only this was the reverse. No matter what he did, she only pulled further and further ahead.
But Teras had kept hunting. Whatever threat the woman might have posed to Lord Telan’s plans, what she might know of Polemaetus’ schemes, the Basilli Phas had no idea. By now, surely there was nothing she could have done to upset matters. Telan’s designs had likely played out to their ends during the lengthy chase. Mayhap the Kotka Bu thought his bounty hunter had failed or deserted. All Teras’ knew for certain was that he had given his word, upon his contract, to find the Enkeli, and he would find her, though the search brought him to the end of the earth itself. Even a mercenary had his honor.
The Iron Mantis mused on that thought as he clambered down from his arboreal perch. To be certain, this ridiculous hunt had carried him far beyond the shores of home, to new and strange places he had never dreamed existed. Wonders and horrors, bound together inextricably. Perhaps he would thank the Enkeli, once he finally tracked her down. Then maybe he would kill her for all of the hassle she had caused him.
The sun was well above the horizon by the time the Basilli Phas reached the outskirts of Bren. Teras hesitated a brief moment, squaring his shoulders and taking a deep breath before he marched into the town. He was greeted by the expected tingling discomfort, like claws scraping ever so lightly along his chitinous skin, as the static field generated by his body whispered back faint responses every time it brushed up against an intelligent lifeform. The Iron Mantis suppressed a shudder with an effort of will and kept going, falling into a steady march as he shouldered through the growing crowds. Cities were uncomfortable places for him, but he had long cycles of experience with discomfort. The initial shock would wear off soon enough, and he had business to attend to.
Regulen was tired. Tournament registration was in full swing, and he had been up dusk ‘till dawn running errands and handling tournament applications, and he could not have been happier with it.
The pageantry, the anticipation, the strange and unique entrants… He had missed it terribly last year. Still, he was tired, and taking a break at one of Bren’s taverns was just what he needed to be ready to return to work later that evening. Though even here he could not quite escape work.
A scroll sat on the table before him, a favor for a friend. Geoff had been approached by a man asking questions about one of the former entrants. It was not an unusual happening. The Elemental Championships was known far and wide, and attracted a massive audience. Fans and admirers wanted trophies, and from time to time certain relics disappeared from the complex’s vaults.
It was not a practice the registrar was comfortable with, but Geoff was a friend, and the request had been benign really: a copy of the documentation signed by entrants when registering for the tournament. The scroll in question was sitting next to Regulen’s hand, and the registrar stifled a yawn before lifting his pint and taking a long, slow sip of his drink as he watched the other patrons come and go.
The tournament always brought a crop of exotic specimens to Bren, Regulen mused as he waited. His eyes settled on one such: a creature with a definite insectoid air about it. Seven feet all told, unless the rather shorter human man missed his guess. Interesting coloration too, beneath his dark tunic and shorts, a sort of green-blue that wasn’t quite teal, though he could not find a better word for it, so perhaps it was teal. As the man - Regulen thought there was something masculine about the figure’s carriage - moved further into the tavern and ducked gracefully around a low-hanging chandelier, the registrar noted there was a faint patterning impressed upon that colored carapace. He wondered if it was natural or had been painstakingly incised. If it was the latter, the process must have taken a veritable age.
Regulen felt the first hint of unease as the tall, wiry fellow glanced around the bar with slow deliberation. That unease deepened as the stranger’s dark gaze fell upon him and the insectoid-human began walking in the direction of his table. Regulen’s eyes flicked around the bar swiftly before settling on the approaching man, and he had the sudden realization that what he liked best about the exotic and dangerous folks the Championship brought into town was that he got to observe them from the sidelines.
And this one looked dangerous, by the Lords. He had four arms, loomed over the seated registrar, and was kitted out with a wicked assortment of weapons hung on his back and at his hips. Regulen found himself sliding his chair backwards reflexively, clearing his legs from under the table to prepare for a hasty exit. He could not have been more surprised when the stranger spoke.
“Regulen, then. Your friend Geoff gave a passing fair description of you. The ability to accurately describe people is a useful trait for a courier,” the man grinned, “or a spy.” His voice was surprisingly light, though there was a faint accent to it that stirred a distant memory.
“You… You’re Teras?” Regulen winced as his voice cracked slightly on the question, feeling a flush cascade across his nervous visage.
“The one, the only.” The man replied theatrically as he sat. One teal hand reached out and drew Regulen’s drink across the table, lifting it for a sample. The shocked human hardly had a chance to protest before the tall man smacked his lips. “Not bad. Geoff says you have the item I’ve asked for.”
Frowning, Regulen pushed the scroll over the table to the man, eyeing his misappropriated drink darkly. “Standard disclosure. You could get it from any of the registrars.”
“Aye, but I wanted it from you.” The man opened the scroll, his dark eyes moving back and forth over the parchment. “Is it true what they say? That the winner is granted whatever he or she wishes for?”
Regulen shrugged. “So far as I know, yes.”
“Geoff says you handled registration for Champion Tharala.”
The comment was offhand, almost sublimely disinterested. Even so, it made the registrar bristle slightly. “So I did. What of it?”
“Nothing, just interesting to know.” Teras replied, eyes on the document. “She sounds like someone I met once, that’s all.” There was a long silence as he continued his perusal of the document. “How many people actually read this?”
“Um… maybe a quarter of the entrants in my experience, less probably.”
“Champion Tharala?”
Regulen blinked, peering at the man closely. “As I recall, yes. We discussed several of the provisions.”
“Mm, and Paragon Wiedii?”
“Para- Excuse me, but what is this about?”
Teras did not deign reply to that, continuing his review of the document for several moments. “I met her once.”
The registrar frowned. “Paragon Wiedii?”
“Aye, we come from the same land, after a fashion.”
Regulen sat up a bit straighter as something clicked into place inside his head. “I knew I recognized that accent.”
The black-garbed man favored him with an approving glance. “A good ear. Tell me, do you know where she went after the Decision?”
“I believe that she-” Regulen stopped himself abruptly, squinting at the dark-eyed man. “I’m afraid I can’t tell you that.”
“No?” Teras seemed unperturbed, scanning the document slowly and carefully. “It’s been two years.”
“I don’t see as that matters, really,” the registrar retorted, surprising himself with the vehemence in his tone. “Paragon Wiedii was a very private woman, and I’m not convinced you do know her after all.”
The odd man continued reading, though a half-smile crossed his face as he unrolled the scroll to its end. “Truly, I don’t, but I am looking for her.”
“Well you’ll get nothing from me,” Regulen asserted. “And no one else will help you either, not after I tell them to be on the lookout for you.”
There was something predatory in the smile the stranger gave Regulen, something that chilled the blood. “Oh…” he replied, turning the scroll towards the registrar and revealing his name scrawled along the signature line, “I wouldn’t be so certain of that.”
Inspecting the notification that the messenger had dropped off that morning, Teras was still not certain this was the right decision.
Oh, it had certainly made an impression on Regulen. The registrar had been apoplectic, and had looked as though he had swallowed his own tongue. For a moment the Basilli Phas allowed himself to recollect that image, and his own lips twitched into a half-smile as he strolled the busy streets on his way to the Championships’ complex.
The memory brought some levity to the fact he was engaged in an extremely risky proposition with, at best, a minimal prospect of return. The mercenary peered at the scroll again. Forge... Not an Arena he had heard anything about during his reconnaissance of Bren and its local environs. Well, if it was new, that certainly meant none of the other entrants would know anything about it either. So at least his ignorance was shared by those he was being set against.
Which might have been reassuring, Teras thought, as he began the sloping ascent in the direction to which the crier had indicated the Forge. But it did nothing at all to allay his disquiet about taking this risk. There was a certain logic behind the Basilli’s entrance into the competition. If he won, he could use the much vaunted Boon to put an end to this ridiculous chase. Or perhaps, more beguilingly, to put an end to his hastily made and regrettable contract with Lord Telan.
That was the rub, of course. He had to win. Merely surviving had its own benefits, one of which, naturally, was continued existence. The other was a powerful shared experience with his prey. Wiedii had undergone this trial, and if it was half so transformative as the bards trumpeted, then she had left it a changed woman. The Iron Mantis was a firm believer in the efficacy of putting himself in the shoes of his targets. It helped him to think like they did, or at least approximate their mindset more accurately.
He had once spent two months picking pockets and shaking down thugs in Yarosburg while on a contract to break up a ring of cutpurses and petty thieves. Such side jobs had been necessary to make ends meet on his drawn-out hunt for the Enkeli. He had long ago burned through the purse his Kotka benefactor had provided him to fund the search, and his word would not permit him to simply limp home and declare failure.
So even should he lose, no small possibility given the far-famed caliber of the entrants the tournament attracted, if he lived he would have a better idea of how and what Wiedii had been thinking as she left Bren. It was a slender hope, but the Basilli Phas was willing to take it. The other other option was to start spiralling out from Bren and hope he stumbled across someone who remembered seeing the Kissa leaving the area almost two years ago.
Such thoughts occupied the Iron Mantis as he moved towards the gates designated for the competitors, flashing his scroll to an official who pointed him towards one of the gates and down a sloping stone passage. Intricate carvings in some script whose meaning was lost on Teras scrolled their way down the hall, glowing with faint ember-orange luminescence. The sigils played out slowly, becoming less frequent towards the end of the hall and creating a sort of semi-twilight space at its terminus, where Teras found a gate of iron.
It was not a particularly grand piece of artifice, for all that it effectively sealed the tunnel, and the bounty hunter elected not to touch the metal portal blocking what was presumably his entrance into the Arena proper. This was the Forge after all, and handling metal that has sat in a furnace for any length of time was generally unwise. Instead, the Iron Mantis took a moment to stretch and check his gear, sliding his arms into the harnesses for his shields and drawing his swords. The blades each received a slow, testing swing before they were turned and gripped in the reverse hold, wider edge along the length of his forearm with their slightly curved tips pointed at his elbows, that had earned him his moniker in the first place.
“Last chance to back out, idiot.”
The gate yawned open, admitting a wall of hot air and a profusion of dense black smoke. Within was a large cavern, its walls of dark stone cracked and veined. Pillars stood at regular intervals, also marbled with what must be magma, as bizarre as that was to contemplate. And in the center was a column that seemed to be made of magma itself, flowing up until it was lost in the smoky recesses of the ceiling above. Teras took in the strange place for a moment and then shrugged. “To the Swarm with it. Came this far.”
So he stepped into the Arena and immediately stuttered to a halt.
They were gone. Benu’s grace, they were gone! The Basilli Phas looked up, dark-eyed gaze darting swiftly around the Arena, floor to ceiling, wall to wall. It must have been the Arena, some manner of magical seal. Teras could feel faint prickles moving along his skin, distinct awarenesses of the nearby competitors, but nothing more. No crowds, no mobs, no endless horde like there had been outside. He almost laughed in relief. Living with the constant presence of those around him tingling over his skin day in and day out was numbing, like listening to a constant, non-stop waterfall. But here, it was silent. There was nothing but the feel of the other hopefuls, such a minor input to what he usually experienced.
Grinning, the Iron Mantis glanced around as a deep voice thundered through the Arena, welcoming them to the Forge. “Fight and live, if it’s all the same to you, Lyth,” he muttered to himself, about as close to a prayer to the Lady of War as the Basilli ever got. Which was all Teras had time for before a singularly loud individual in some manner of cobbled together armor entered and started blaring what could only charitably be termed music and shouting. Whatever the beast was, it certainly had a set of lungs on it.
The cacophony almost drowned out the bit of wit lobbed his way by what appeared to be a little girl. In truth, Teras was well used to looking down at his opponents, though this one required rather more visual redirection than usual. Still, if the brat wanted to pick a fight, he was hardly like to deny her. “Verbal thrust, nice opening.”
The Iron Mantis settled into a defensive posture, shield bearing secondaries held at angles across his hips and torso, sword-wielding primaries spread high and to either side. “Allow me to riposte: If you fight as well as you taunt, this should be a short duel.”
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