Rheagn's Fairy Circle

Traveling with Kitt had turned out to be much easier than he’d expected. She didn’t talk much nor did she seem to want to stay near him. As they walked the expanse of the canyon, she kept a distance between them, as if only following him to hitch a ride to the pirate base. Li kept an eye on her, though. Those appendages of hers remained out and on the defense. They were like swords, ready to strike upon anyone, at any moment. 

Li led them down stream towards the Southern Wind, where his Shadows accented a long, deep crevice within the rock of the canyon. If they continued on following the stream, it would dump them right onto the rickety doorstep of the base wedged in between that deep crevice. And he’d been headed there long before he’d found Kitt. He’d already taken into account how many pirates Kitt had killed in that canyon clearing and tried to recall how many he’d seen run back to base. 

His attention had been solely on Jakul; on finally finishing his target.

Even if only a few pirates had run back to base, they would’ve told the rest what they’d witnessed. That they’d discovered and fought a blue xenon who’d fell from the sky. And that the Ronin was nearby. The pirates would be ready for them, no doubt. Or so they would think. 

Li had an unconventional plan which involved the blue xenon female, now on his side. 

Well, ‘on his side’ was a bit of an exaggeration. With a glance over at Kitt now, she was looking around frantically with her typical snarl. At first, he’d thought she’d sensed a threat nearby, but as the strong winds whipped through the canyon, picking up dust and ripping at her torn dress, Li finally realized Kitt was clawing back at those very winds. Li needed all of his restraint to suppress his grin. 

She must’ve been new to the wind, let alone Anemas’s mad wind. The Titan Anemas was said to have laid down to the East of these canyons, but she’d been one of the few Titans whose spirit was rumored to still roam the land, though her body had laid down and solidified into the earth they traveled upon. She was known to enjoy playing and weaving through these rocks, as well as play tricks on her fellow Titan, Rikteau, who’d laid within the very canyons they trapessed through. Her wind was said to be the Titan’s wild laughter, the result of her inherent madness. That maddening wind kept many folk from settling where the Titan laid and away from her temple entirely. But those few who did, went just as mad as Anemas herself. Those gusts were a product of her neverending wail and those folk unfortunate enough to hear Anemas’s true wail, bore her gift just as well as her madness. 

Back before the Scourge, there were only a few fae species who acclaimed Anemas as their Titan of lineage, for fear of acknowledging the madness. But the ones who did, bore that madness with pride and extensive skill. Li had no way of knowing if any of those species survived, continuing to live on as he did now, a nomad of a once thriving land. But if they’d taken any sort of hit, like his own people, Li guessed there was very little of Anemas’s descendants left.

Li began scanning the nearby canyon floor for smaller rocks and retrieved two to his liking, before approaching Kitt. At first, she didn’t notice him getting near, too distracted by Anemas’s relentless gusts. But the moment she noticed him, those sword appendages of hers were trained on him.

“I come bearing gifts,” Li conceded. He held up the two small pebbles he’d grabbed; one was smooth, round, and the hue was slightly lighter than dirt, while the other was more jagged, with rougher edges, and the color of clouds preparing to storm. 

He held the two small rocks out to her then. An offering for her to take them from him. She only stared at them, taking in one at a time. After staring at the jagged pebble long enough that Li thought she might catch the hint, Kitt only glanced up at him in perturbed confusion. Entirely unmoved. 

Losing some of his patience, Li ignored those swords tracking his every movement and took her hands in his. She jerked away at first, but Li quickly explained.

“They will help with the wind. When the gusts become too much, take these stones in your hands,” he clarified, transferring the two rocks into her hands before quickly retracting himself from her entirely. As she seemed to prefer. 

“The wind attaches itself to your desire, your will. It’s that hunger for blood I know boils within you. She enjoys the frenzy of that hunger. I need you to reign that feeling in,” Li explained. He took a closed fist and circled the center of his chest before placing both closed fists down by his side. “Gather it all here in your chest then channel that feeling into the stones. They’re small but their grounding effect will work just as well. The wind should become more bearable the deeper we get into the canyons, as well.”

Kitt took in his demonstration carefully. Then, he watched as she took on his steps for herself. Noting that hunger within her, gathering each piece of that wild desire, then finishing with her eyes closed and closing those lean, blue fingers to tightly wrap around the stones. It all happened in only a moment, before her eyes were open and held a new sort of determination. Like the wind would just be another aspect of this world for her to conquer. 

Satisfied for now, Li continued on, with Kitt following close behind; closer than she had before. They travled in this manner for some time, the only sounds being the gravel beneath their feet, the gusts of Anemas’s mad cry, and the rushing stream. Li sensed into the cacophany, let it break down his uncertainties and strengthen his resolve for their pirate base encounter.

He’d always loved sounds, music even, back when the world wasn’t so severed. But the resonance that came with water had always been his favorite. When he was an only child, long before the Scourge, when he was welcome in his homelands and with his people, he would sit in the sands before Morje’s sea and simply listen to the Titan’s lament. 

His people believed the Titan Morje to have had a ‘Lost Lover’, to which many thought to have been the Titan of fire, Kilnar. His people had built their home in the Islands of Kilnar solely around the idea that lovers of opposites could desire each other so much, they bore the Moakyn Fae as their children, to roam and play in both Morje’s mourning ocean and Kilnar’s expressive fire. When Kilnar laid down with the rest of the Titans, he left Morje and her sea to grieve alone. 

Li wasn’t sure how much of his people’s legends he believed. Sure, the story explained the Moakyn’s lineage but in his time traveling the land and listening to the varied tales of the Titans from numerous cultures, there was no plausible way every tale could be true. Every legend was solely dependant upon the people and the location of the land where the tale originated, so it was common for different legends from groups on opposite ends of the land to have tales of the Titans that contradicted each other. Nowadeys, Li took every Titan tale with a measure of scepticism; he didn’t want to put too much of himself into any such story. The only thing he believed with his whole self was that stories were not made to spread truth, but rather people needed stories to make sense of what they saw and what they felt. Everyone had a different truth, which meant every Titan had their truth too. There’s only so much speculation one could make before every legend began to feel like a complete fantasy.

Tapping back into those Shadows, Li could tell they were coming up on the end of the river, where the water surged through a small wedge of rock to then empty itself in Morje’s vastness. The pirate base would not be far from that dropoff, but with how Li planned to ambush the base, they’d have to climb. Another glance over at Kitt and he could tell she was still focusing that hunger into those two pebbles. Her brow was creased and her gaze was still alert but didn’t seem nearly as frantic as it had been. 

Li veered off from the stream and started scanning the walls of orange and bright red stone surrounding them. The closer they’d get to the sea, the richer the streaks of color were in the stone. Hues of oranges and reds ran across the canyon walls, like Morje might’ve run her streams through here at one time. Many of the walls near them were much too steep for climbing. He might not have thought so, if he was only concerning himself with his own climbing ability.

But with Kitt… If she’d been so new to the wind, how was she going to handle the rest of this world’s elements?

Finally, Li decided on the precipice he felt they could both scale with as little difficulty as he could find. Tightened his pack and weapons closer to his body, ensuring he wouldn’t lose anything in the climb, he looked over at Kitt. She seemed to have caught onto why he’d been scanning the various canyon walls around them. Coming to stand alongside him, she appeared to be taking in the precipice he’d chosen, scanning the stone all the way up to the top peak of the canyon. 

“We’ll have to climb,” Li said, pointing up towards the decent sized ledge at the top. “You can watch me first, if you prefer.”

Kitt only nodded, her gaze on the distant crest above them. Li began his ascent, keeping his eyes on his hand placement then immediately onto where he’d need to grab onto next. Once Li got into climbing, his mind locked onto the immediate task at hand. One missed hand or foot placement and Li was done. Whether it was his aeons of climbing steep cliffs or purely survival instincts rearing up, he was thankful for the certainty in his movements.

He continued up and up, with every reach and every pull bringing him closer to the crest still a ways above him. He’d gotten so engrossed into his own climbing, Li had completely forgotten about the xenon female below him, until he heard metal slamming into stone. Keeping his grip steady, Li slowly glanced over his shoulder. 

  Between those sword appendages and her extra set of arms, Kitt was scaling the canyon wall like a spider, quickly passing him and continuing on up with ease. Li could only follow behind, dodging the small stones Kitt’s swords left behind, in stunned admiration. He realized then, that he’d been underestimating her greatly, simply based on the fact she was a xenon; not from this world. But she was not entirely incapable of learning new things, nor was she having any trouble picking up this world’s intricacies. By the time Li got himself over the crest, Kitt was already searching for another – and even more steep – precipice to scale. 

“Woah woah woah, we’re staying on this level for now,” Li called out to her. “There will be plenty more climbing later, trust me.”

With a huff and a grumble of something under her breath that Li didn’t catch, Kitt fell back behind Li once again as they hiked along the canyon ledge. Li never looked down, not for fear of heights, but because he felt as though he went where he looked and he was not planning on going straight down to the canyon floor from this height. 

As they got closer to the base, Li suddenly feared he’d misread his Shadows. Thought he’d interpreted the dam up ahead as the pirate base when perhaps, it was simply another one of the Overlorde’s many large dams. Until a loud wirey sound screeched through the canyon, leaving his left ear ringing, the runic malachite rings fighting against the sound with a vicious buzz. Li only lifted a hand to cover his left ear as he ducked down behind a stalagmite; remaining concealed and getting himself a better look at the base.

The pirate’s had taken over the Overlorde’s dam entirely, building their base around it with shabby wood and sheets of metal they’d no doubt raided from one of the Overlorde’s shipments to His many domains. Fabric hung all around the base serving as multiple entrances and exits. All the fabric was dyed red to mimic the Overlorde’s flag; white stars bleeding from a crimson sky. That’s how most pirate’s got through the Overlorde’s sentinels, by pretending to be a fellow ship of sentinels. Li might not have paid the pirates any of his time if all they did was steal from the Overlorde. The problem with many pirate groups these deys wasn’t necessarily their thieving but more so their contribution to the Overlorde’s genocides. 

Very shortly after the Scourge, Li had his own affinity for thieving. Though many at that time had to become thieves purely for survival, he’d always made sure to steal only from those who had plenty and the only person who consistently had enough since the Scourge, was the Overlorde. Li could’ve easily become a pirate back in those deys; deys consumed by worry. Worrying about his next meal, about where he’d lay his head in the coming nite. Worrying about surviving to the next sunrise. 

Until he’d met the previous Ronin, a male as ancient as his wisdom and his runic staff. To this dey, even after his passing, Li did not know his true name nor his species of lineage. His ways of living were distinct to him and himself only. Until he’d passed all of it onto Li, of course.

Li had only just reached adolescence during the time of the Scourge, but the Ronin had lived hundreds of aeons before the Overlorde’s arrival and would live almost a hundred more after. So, his knowledge of the land and of the Titans who laid beneath them, was truly extensive. More extensive than anyone Li had met or probably would ever meet. When the Ronin had found him, Li was barely hanging onto this world; starved and still stealing from stalls in the small, dinky settlement of Jasha. Those who settled there were a small population of Uovien fae and Redki fae; To his knowledge, Li had been the only Moakyn fae there. The rest were either dead or taken by the Overlorde. Like Anela.

Li had sulked around Jasha’s dock, his focus solely on which boat shipment he could snag without the ship’s crew noticing, when pirates stormed the dock. In the chaos, many dock workers were killed and after attempting to protect an elderly female by pushing one of the pirates into the sea, Li had found himself detained by the head pirate, a blade at his throat. Looking back, the Ronin had to have been near all along because the pirate barely nicked Li’s throat before the pirate’s head was sliding off his body. All Li had seen were flashes of white and pirates dropping like flies.

Later in their time together, Li’s eyes would be trained to watch the Ronin fight, trained to take in his lightning fast moves. Once his eyes were trained, his body followed the same training. Li wasn’t sure he’d ever be as quick with his movements as the previous Ronin had once been, but he knew he’d be able keep up if he ever encountered that kind of speed again.

Confirming Li’s suspicions, there were many pirates milling about in front of the base, on the opposite side of the river. Waiting for their arrival. Some were sharpening their swords on large metal blocks, others counting their arrows and loading their crossbows. But the ones who really got Li’s blood boiling were the ones cleaning their crystal-arms. The handheld weapons only had a hilt for the wielder with a barrel-like shaft jutting out for the crystal to sit. The weapon activated with whatever magic the user held and the crystal acted as a conduit for a large energy blast, strong enough to blast a finger sized hole through the recipient. 

The invention was something he had come up with, channeling his fire into the crystal, using the gadget like a single-handed crossbow. Over the aeons, Li had gotten into enough run-ins with the pirates and they’d gotten their hands on enough of his inventions, which Li had not been able to retrieve, and so their weaponry had evolved to a level which rivaled even the Overlorde’s forces. All solely because of a few of his own lapses in focus.

Those lapses would be righted todey, as he would be leaving this base with those weapons back in his possession. Perhaps if Kitt seemed steady enough, he’d teach her how to use one. In which he would also have a chance to see what magic she bore, if she had any at all.

Beside him, Kitt was bobbing with her eagerness. She had ducked down to observe the pirates alongside him but he knew the look shining in those deep blue eyes. While Li was taking inventory of their weapons, Kitt was taking inventory of the blood she could spill. As much as he wanted to let her take out the wrath she bore and unleash it upon this base, he knew they needed to go in with some sort of prior strategy and restraint.

“Would you prefer to-” Li had started off in a whisper but was quickly cutoff. Because Kitt was quick to act. She sprang from their spot behind the large stalagmite with immense power. Right off the ledge. 

Taken aback, Li barely had time to get to his feet as he witnessed Kitt using her swords and her extra limbs to latch herself onto the canyon wall across from them. She slid down the stone cliff, her sword appendages leaving deep, crimson gouge marks in her tracks. The deep red stone made it look like Kitt was even drawing blood from the canyon itself.

The pirates were as surprised as Li, with multiple shouts ringing out below. Kitt only met them with her winning snarl.

With no intent of letting her confront the group alone, Li quickly unhooked the steel baton from his belt and flicked the sleek black weapon towards the same wall Kitt was tearing her way down. Triggering the release switch, the baton’s cap went flying and imbedded itself in the stone. A wire stronger than the steel formed a line from the cap to his baton but Li still tugged on the wire, ensuring the baton’s cap was secure in the stone. He lifted the dark cloth bunched up around his neck to obscure the lower half of his face and with a deep inhale, Li lept off the ledge.  

  He swung high across the chaos breaking out beneath him, the sound of Anemas’s wind whooshing past him. He brought his feet forward to brace himself against the stone wall, but the impact still sent a buzzing ache through his body and left his ear dipping in and out of the scene around him. Shaking it off, he kept a firm grasp on his baton and dashed down the canyon wall.

Head first into the havoc Kitt was wreaking upon the steady flow of pirates.

Li could hear blasts from the crystals firing off but couldn’t see where the shots landed. None of them had gotten Kitt, as her combat wasn’t being hindered by anything. Until a streak of yellow raced right past him, narrowly missing his face, and blasted into the stone a few steps away. 

They were shooting at him? When a feral, blue xenon was ravaging through them, the pirates were still so threatened by the Ronin. Li supposed he should’ve felt honored. Shine with a new sense of glory as the pirates shouted out in recognition. But all Li could feel was his rage. Deya’s sun beat down upon him and he was aflame with that rage, the heat pulsing within him to the rhythm of his heart. All he could see before him were enemies and they were streaming out of the base like fire ants. 

So when Li’s boots hit level ground, he flicked the cap back into the baton and with it’s runes glowing, snapped the baton in half to lunge at the nearest pirate wielding two steel batons. He was swifter than most in combat, wielding his hefty weapon with ease as he brought his right baton down upon the first pirate. Multiple swift strikes down upon his shoulder and the male was dropping as Li was onto the next with his left baton. 

As pirates streamed out of the base, Li went on like this for some time. Shift, strike, spin, kick, dodge, strike. There was the occasional parry by a pirate’s sword but most of the pirates weren’t trained in combat, only given a weapon and sent out with an order to protect the base. That was why Li was taking a less lethal route, striking hard enough to put them down but not in crucial places. Or simply seizing their weapon and moving on. Without a weapon, most pirates seemed to fall back, even more unfamiliar with hand-to-hand combat.

But a small, scrawny boy put a slight wrench into that routine. Li had just gotten done disarming the sandy-haired boy, kicking his makeshift dagger out of his grasp with ease, but when he’d turned to take on the next pirate, the boy was suddenly latched onto Li’s back. The boy let out a war cry as he wrapped his small arms tightly around Li’s neck.

A slight smirk springing up beneath his face covering, Li gracefully bent down onto one knee and threw his baton at the pirate sprinting towards him, taking the pirates legs out from beneath him and leaving the pirate flying overtop Li and his new back-pack. According to the multiple thuds behind them, the pirate had caught a few more of his kind on the way down. Then, in one swift movement, Li leaned forward and using his propped leg, flipped his entire body forward and landed smack on his back — crushing the boy under his weight on impact. All Li heard from the boy was an oof and some light wheezing as he withdrew his arms from around Li’s neck.

He rolled off of the boy and got to his feet with little effort, knowing good and well the boy would be done fighting. But to Li’s surprise, the boy only took a moment to catch his breath, before slowly getting to his feet. He looked exhausted and could barely contain his wheezes of pain. But the boy put his fists up, as if ready for another fight when he was still struggling to catch his breath.

“Listen, kid, you’ve fought well. Just take a second and go lay low,” Li said, gesturing towards an alcove in the rock far from the bloodshed. “When nite comes, we’ll be gone. It will be safe to come out, then.”

Still yet to fully catch his breath, the boy stood his ground. Li realized then, he wasn’t wheezing in pain, but simply wheezing. The boy was having a hard time breathing in general between the dust Anemas was picking up and the exertion. And yet, he still refused Li’s offer. If he couldn’t convince the boy to stand down, he was good as dead. All Li could do was show the boy his fate if he decided to continue on.

“You see the blue female behind you?” Li asked the boy, flitting his gaze to Kitt on her rampage. She was tearing into each pirate with pure delight, either impaling them with her sword appendages or tearing into them with her maw and her claws. With each kill, with each pirate discarded onto the stone, more and more blood began to collect in puddles in the slight divots and craters in the canyon floor. 

And her maw…

The front of her was covered in blood and every kill left her hands dripping with dark crimson. She was up to her elbows with it and Li could see, she was enjoying every minute of it. The boy glanced behind him and, as if for the first time, saw the carnage. Li watched as the young boy took in the sight of dead pirates starting to pile up. Took in the puddles of blood and the once orange canyon floor, now covered in a the same deep crimson. Took in the horrors of the blue xenon before him. Kitt was practically frantic with bloodlust and the boy was smart enough to see it.

The boy turned back to face Li in blatant shock. Or perhaps the boy was trying to conceal the terror flowing off of him.

“She is the opposite of me. She will not hesitate to rip you apart if you find yourself before her,” Li warned. He kept his tone stern, knowing the boy was close to conceding.

With one final glance back at Kitt, so frenzied by the kill she’d most likely not even realized Li had joined her, the boy faced Li and dropped his fists. He instead brought a hand to his chest, as he continued to wheeze.

“Fine,” the boy wheezed out. And with a declarative and damning finger towards Li, the boy added his last statement with more assurance than before. “But this isn’t finished, Ronin.”

The boy took off towards the alcove Li had initially gestured for him to hide, the boy’s light, sandy hair shown like Deya’s sun in a bleeding sky.

“I’ll be waiting,” Li called after the boy in challenge, a stark grin beneath his dark cloth.