by Hugo Damas
“We know,” he said, sadly.
“And you send me away?” Ayane asked, hurt.
“You are no warrior. Why would they need you here?”
Ayane scowled, angry and suspicious. She should take her orders and leave. Yet, she sensed the truth of it, and wanted to hear it. “There is more to it.”
“Shadow…”
“Tell me,” Ayane demanded. She pointed at her home, “tell me or I will go and ask them. You are not my master.”
“They banished you,” the Darkness flat-out revealed, cutting at her heart. “But then, they discovered the pillar.”
The Shadow flinched in confusion. “…wait, what?”
“There is no…automatic way to know when that magic is used, it is lent by Magni. What you transferred was sent to them. Your master went of his own volition to check with the House of Magni, and found the items you have stolen. That revealed the error in judgement.”
The Shadow nearly stuttered. “But…but then--”
“Ordinarily, they would issue me to kill you and retrieve the lenses. Because of this discovery, however, they have decided to be lenient. Shadow, the most Occult does not make mistakes.”
“…” Ayane couldn’t believe it. They had had a knee-jerk reaction to reports of her helping Yana and the others, because of the agents of Mist. Now, they wouldn’t rectify that edict out of pride. They wanted to look infallible, and for that, they would keep her banished.
“They cannot do this. I did my duty,” the Shadow said.
“Not…completely. You prioritized the lives of random individuals over returning to our masters as soon as possible.”
“I am not a dog,” she protested, shaking her head. “I delayed mere hours!”
“Half a day,” the voice from inside the cowl corrected, sadly. “If not more.”
Ayane would not let up, though. “If my home is to fall…I will not let it happen without me.”
“The Shadow lives on.” That spooky ethereal cloak waved in a shrug, “the saying will prove literal. Rest assured that not all of Kagekawa will perish -- we will flee and survive. And so will you.”
She slumped. “Alone,” Ayane said, to make it clear.
The Darkness nodded in confirmation. “You do get used to it,” he told her, compassionately. “Trust me.”
She considered forcing her way to Kagekawa. Reputation be damned, she could take him. Ayane could see his arms, she could see his whole body.
Darkness must’ve sensed the aggressiveness in her because he stepped closer.
“You can still do a lot for this world, Shadow. For your home. Do not let your heart command you,” he said, in the way of suggestion.
The Shadow flinched, insulted, but he finished his thought. “Instead, allow the Clan.”
Ayane was floored. Or humbled, she was not humble enough to know the difference.
They had spoken. The most occult, her master, her tutor, Darkness, they had all spoken and decided they wanted her gone. So it was.
The realization she would not be forcing her way past Darkness sprang a chain reaction within her.
The exhaustion, all the tension she felt, and the many tears that had been leaking from the waterfall she was holding back somewhere in the recesses of her eyes. All of it collapsed on her with a heavy breath. Everything went black, and she fell.
Ayane felt her hands hitting the floor before her insides flared with a convulsion. In a quick movement, she pulled open her mask.
She retched, coughed, and then vomited.
“Augh…hu hu…”
Ayane knew what was happening, she recognized it. She breathed in and out, trying to make it go slower. Trying to get the panic attack under control. The fact Darkness was watching her only made it worse, of course. People watching only made it worse.
The Shadow gasped in an unsightly desperate manner, but it didn’t help. She tried to calm down but couldn’t, she felt wet sweat pouring from her skin as her nervous system tried to figure out what was attacking it by experimenting with all aspects of her body intermittently and chaotically.
“AHH!”
The Shadow punched the floor and yelled in an effort to assume control. That finally helped. Her lungs decided to be the first to gain their senses. She took deep breaths while hoping the circulatory system would be cooperative in providing the other organs their due fuel.
Ayane looked up from her involuntary full bow, filled with self-contempt. “This is the Shadow you hold in such high regard,” she spat.
Ayane shook her head. She was still sweating, her heart was still racing, but her motor functions were back. She wiped her mouth clean.
She tried to stand up but couldn’t summon the strength to. It seemed only her arms were recovered, so she fell even flower.
Laying on the ground, it was all she could do not to sob.
“Haa…ha… Kagekawa is my home…I have done nothing but my best. How can they not…correct their mistake?”
The Darkness didn’t answer. Ayane didn’t know whether that was because he was too ashamed to or because it was so obvious.
“I know nothing else. No one else,” Ayane said, managing not to stutter.
Ayane wasn’t crying anymore. One wouldn’t be able to tell, looking at her face, but she stopped.
Long minutes passed by, revealing to her that the emotional outburst had simply caused her body to assume it was suffering physical exhaustion. And odds were it was actually accurate in that assumption.
Ayane preferred to think that’s what happened. She neutralized her expression so that she could be who she liked to be. Serious. Confident. Emotionless. The Shadow.
“I am too weak to move. I will rest. I will watch the fall of my home, and once I can, I will move to find the Conclave.”
Ayane grunted in a push to sit up half-straight. Her arms were still working after all, and the legs could at least cross. “I will do my duty.”
The Darkness found no immediate reply.
Ayane didn’t expect him to speak. Despite her present show of self-respect, he had seen her. He had seen her lose it, he would be very ashamed of her. There was nothing she could do about that. Why should she care about what he thought of her? He had let them banish her.
“I would not have done better,” his voice came, serious but a bit awkward, as if he had been thinking about what to say for a long time and had not decided on what that should be, but had said something anyway.
Ayane looked up at him, surprised but still ungrateful. Pity was worse than shame, it only revealed how low the expectations were in the first place.
“Would you ever be in the same situation?” She asked.
“No,” Darkness responded, and quite quickly. She looked down from him and on at Kagekawa.
Didn’t think so.
He still wouldn’t leave, for some reason. It upset her. Ayane felt under a heavy shroud of judgment with him there watching her.
“You can go. You have delivered your message,” Ayane told him.
“I would not have saved those people, but you did. Many would consider you favorably for it,” the Darkness tried.
Ayane frowned, grabbing hold of her mask. She put it on with a disgruntled gesture.
“Not anybody I care about. Go, you do me no kindness by showing me pity, Darkness.”
She distanced herself, emotionally speaking.
Ayane didn’t look at him, she didn’t want to feel the underlying attraction, didn’t want to be influenced by any positive emotion. She had made a mistake, and now she was going to suffer for it. As she should.
The Darkness finally moved to depart. “Until we meet again, Shadow. I am sorry this had to happen.”
“I regret nothing,” Ayane found herself saying.
Her eyes opened and circled in thought -- what had she said? Why was she so belligerent towards him when he was trying to be kind?
It was because she was banished. What did it matter what Ayane said? “I regret nothing but o
ur masters’s inability have to admit themselves human and capable of error. And us, as well,” she added.
The Darkness stirred inside his cloak, bothered, of course, by her vicious words. Rebellious words.
It took an awkward amount of time, but after that, he finally shut up and left, which was a mild relief to her.
Part of her wanted him to have tried to kill her. The fight would have been better, and death would be more appreciated than what she was about to experience.
* * *
That day, under beautiful rays of sun falling unimpeded by any clouds, hundreds of beasts crashed their way into the mighty, ancient grounds of Kagekawa.
Like a screen of fumes made out of parasites, they went around the mountainside and threw themselves down at the buildings. Bridges collapsed, and people died. Fires began and, at some point, the palace erupted in a huge abrupt explosion, most likely a suicide strategy to take down some beasts and the secrets of the clan with them.
Not for a second, not even a moment during all of it, did she stir. Did she shiver or wince. Ayane, the Shadow, watched it all with eyes that had not slept for over two days. Aching arms hugging raised knees that were completely numb. With her back hurting because of the bad posture and her feet falling asleep, she watched it all happen, awash in a stiff somberness that did not budge a hair.
Ayane thought back to her childhood. Ayane remembered the plays, the games, the challenges. The competitions between her and her fellows, the tasks and quests they were given by the masters. She recalled the cave where she had first entered a shadow stream, pursuing the silhouette of an animal entering it. To bloody it.
Ayane recalled the baths, now being crushed. The waterways where she had trained balance and poise, now being broken apart. The original shadow-spring, blown up with the palace.
Ayane watched the fortress, the castle, tearing itself apart as it crumbled off the cliff side. It tumbled, breaking into separate pieces, with people among the debris.
Her people.
The tragedy unfolding before her was of unimaginable proportions. Ayane could never ever have expected to see something like it, and she never had. Not in a million years.
However, with her being ostracized and banished, it was also cathartic.
It was her home, it was her past, it was what made her, and it crumbled utterly and completely right before her eyes. In less than a day.
A hundred centuries had the Kagekawa dynasty thrived, and a century of Shadows had seen to its success and powerful standing in the world. A millennium-old personality dissipated right there, not even an hour away from her, and there was nothing that she or anyone could do.
The train of thought Ayane found herself riding took her in an unexpected direction. It took her to another concern.
It was now real.
It was now very real. Maybe somebody else was better for her role, as she suspected. Maybe someone else would do a better job of fighting the Beasts, but that was a risk Ayane couldn’t take. Not anymore. Those things, they really were unstoppable
They truly were poised to annihilate every single person in the world.
Up until that day, while she had recognized the danger, Ayane had never truly believed it could materialize and live up to all the prophesied promises. Now, every part of her was certain that it did.
Everything and everyone would die just like everything and everyone Ayane had grown up with.
Ayane stood up because she had to.
The Shadow moved with purpose because she had to.
The One and Only
Not having an arm sucked.
It took the Circus Freak all of thirty minutes to figure out how to cartwheel without his left arm, it really put him in a mood.
He tried to feel better by scaring a group of thieves, and it worked! Thanks to not having the arm, he had gotten them really good! That was exactly what he needed to feel better about it.
It still sucked, though.
The Circus Freak was still getting used to running without it. He still bore bruises, which were hidden by clothes and make-up, from all the hard encounters with concrete that had happened due to his instincts being deceived by muscle memory. That was what his mind was mostly made of, muscle memory and instincts. Not a lot of thought went into his movements. For example, he would need the left arm to push off a wall. Instead, he would hit it. Or he would need his arm to vault over a rail and instead, hit it with his leg. On and on.
The Circus Freak was getting better with it, though. His muscle memory was adapting which was enabling him to gradually recover his usual prowess.
More importantly, his potential to freak people out had gone way up!
Hugo liked to focus on the positives.
“Slappity slapped slap!” He leaped towards someone, his right side leading so the woman couldn’t see his left. “Here’s the slap!” He swung his body as if to violently slap the person, who flinched in sudden fright, but was left untouched as his left arm never connected. She instead fell back on her butt.
“Ow!”
Laughing, Hugo ran off. There were a monstrously larger number of ways he could freak people out now, it made life very exciting.
Norwayaka was a country that pleased the Circus Freak.
Hugo wasn’t a fan of the cold and snow, or of the vast landscapes of nothing between any city in the nation, or the mountains separating them from the southern countries. One thing that was amazing, however, was that everything was snow and dark buildings. Sunlight was around for only four hours a day, give or take, and people were so generally brave and used to danger that it made it really rewarding to scare and terrify them.
Fedrerikstd was the city he was now on. The Circus Freak had been given the task to steal something from the king of the country, and it seemed to him a straight-forward plan was to make his way into one of the royal balls as a jester. It was, after all, his profession. He was a clown, he had been born and raised to be a clown until he grew curious about other things.
The Circus Freak slowed down to a trot, crossing a marketplace that spanned a radius of several feet and half-a-dozen stands which were busy selling trinkets, collectibles, gems, jewels and other such boring assortment of items.
Hugo was looking for a recruiter. Marketplaces were usually a good place to find them. He observed the transactions that were happening, trying to identify one such recruiter.
Changing coins for things was a process he remembered learning about two weeks into his self-exile. He had learned many things since then, not one of which was what the Shadow Conclave was. Even after attending the meeting, all he knew was that there were a few people trying to save the world from these Beast things.
Hugo didn’t like the Beasts. They didn’t laugh at all, they didn’t flinch or freak out in any way. All they wanted to do was destroy. They were boring, and he wanted them to go away, and if he could help, he would. Plus, if there was a constant to his decision process, it was that he did what he liked, and scaring royalty? That, he liked.
That really was his main motivation.
“Hey, clownie! How ‘bout a new hat, that one looks like it was patched up one too many times.”
The Circus Freak stopped and leaned like his legs had halted without letting his torso know, something a drunk would often experience. He leered back at the stout merchant, though that wasn’t saying much since everybody was stout in that country. And everybody carried a blade, big blades usually, like axes and swords. Were Circus Freak capable of feeling fear, that would be somewhat relevant.
The Circus Freak turned his torso and showed the lack of an arm. Of course, he was still dressed in the same suit, he hadn’t changed. The sleeve was ripped open, hanging down in tatters and following his body movement like a forgotten puppy tied up to a horse. That had been run over by a car.
“You don’t like my hat?” Hugo asked, grinning with a mix of anger and hunger.
The man opened his eyes in surprise.
“Never m
ind,” he simply said, turning towards another person. “My lady, fair lady, if you please, look through my wares, you’ll like what you see!”
Hugo walked closer, stalking in his approach.
“I said never mind,” the merchant warned, placing his hand over the ax.
“Oooh, I see, you want the other one?” The Circus Freak asked, holding out his right arm.
“What? I don’t want anything, I won’t do anything you don’t force me to, son.”
“DAD?!” Hugo yelled immediately, in excited realization. “WOW! DAD!!!”
The merchant flinched, utterly confused. “What? No, I’m not–”
“Oh dad, the things I have to tell you!” Hugo slammed his right hand on the table, excited about getting his first flinch. “Did you know I bought new socks the other day! Look,” he brought a foot up, near confusing the man right out of his own stand.
“Uhh, uhhm, what? No that’s quite alrigh--”
“Wait. Is this the right foot?” The Circus Freak turned the foot around, past cracking point, so much so that it actually cracked. He took the pain easily, like it didn’t exist, but the man did not.
“AH!” He lifted his hands not knowing what to do. “What the! WHAT!?”
The Circus Freak spun the foot back into place, allowing the crack to sound amid the shocked silence.
“No yeah, this is the right foot, but you’re not my dad, you liar!” In protest, Hugo stomped the foot he had broken on the ground, and a final crack snapped all the bones back into their proper place.
The merchant grimaced in horror, his face going even paler. “Fallen icy depth!”
Circus Freak laughed and walked away.
“Thank you, papa!” He laughed some more and decided to go look at the food market.
If there was a royal ball taking place, and there was, two days hence, someone would be there looking for talent.
True, the Circus Freak could always just run into the castle and try and steal it by himself, but in all honesty, freaking out an entire court sounded like a lot of fun to Hugo. Nobles and kings were always such a zealous lot when it came to their attitude and posture, thinking they’re beyond being scared or made uncomfortable.
