Darkness Beneath the Dying Light

by R. T. Donlon

  “Whatever that was—” he began, but couldn’t seem to finish.

  Kyrah stood stiff, breathing heavily.

  The wind picked up. It cooled the abrupt heat simmering just below the surface of her skin.

  “I’ve never…never seen anything like that,” spat Curala.

  He continued to rub at his collarbone.

  “You will bow with me,” she spoke monotonously. “You have been beat. Accept it.”

  He took one step forward, almost like a lunge.

  “Never,” he muttered.

  The voice of her Teacher had disappeared behind the constant buzz of overwhelming strength, but now, as she stood staring at the Warrior that could have killed her, it returned.

  There will be a time when your skills are needed, but if you reveal them too soon, there will be consequences. They will look at you differently. No longer will they respect you. They will fear you.

  She could see it in Curala’s eyes—fear.

  If the incident had been something purposeful, she could have accepted it as fate, but it had entered her body as if it were an apparition and had vanished even quicker. It left her with the suspicion that—whatever it was—it had traveled a long way to find her.

  “Leave the Highlands,” Curala said. “Never return.”

  “The Portizu Territories are here for all Portizu. I will come and go as I please, but for now,” she declared, “I will leave. I have better things to do than watch you deflate in front of me.”

  She turned away from him quickly enough to avoid the look of disdain hidden in the corners of his mouth. It was an expression that could start a fire and keep it lit for days, perhaps weeks.

  The Great Hunt would commence at sundown and, still, forty miles separated Kyrah from the Northern Lands. If she were to make it home in time, her legs would have to carry her at a brisk jog for most of the way, so, like any Portizu Warrior in desperate need for time, she sprinted away from the Highlands palace and vowed not to stop until she reached her destination. Even the fatigue of such a morning could not stop her from joining her village for the most anticipated event of the year.

  Curala could do nothing but watch as Kyrah vanished into the jungle haze.

  TOUCHED (BEFORE)

  The silence of her home at night deafened her.

  Even the moon’s shine—something so beautiful—left streaks of eerie afterglow across her walls. The candlelight had not proved enough to wash it away. A normal four-year-old girl growing up in the Great Range could sneak from her bed and into her parents’, but not Kyrah. Something as simple as innocence could not be tolerated in Portizu culture and, because of that, Kyrah was not afforded the luxury of hiding from the shapes and shadows of the night. Instead, she was forced to face them head-on—a child forced to accept her own fear of the night.

  Her parents held the Portizu Warrior name. They also held the brunt of the Northern Territory responsibilities, keeping their people safe from the dangers that lurked elsewhere.

  “Why must I stay here?” Kyrah asked. “I am old enough to be with you!”

  A four-year-old Portizu was close to training, but not truly ready. Kyrah, however, thought she was.

  “We have been charged with keeping you safe,” her mother had always told her. “We must keep all of our people safe.”

  “It’s our responsibility. It’s our duty. Turisic guides us,” her father spoke.

  His voice blended quite nicely with the voice of his wife. Their words always blended so nicely. Perhaps it was because she was their daughter. Maybe it was as simple as the gentle glimmer in their eyes, but regardless, she always felt pleased that they were hers.

  Her father’s broad shoulders tapped against her tiny body as he spoke. They had had this conversation countless times before, but her parents knew their daughter wanted answers. She was of the Laeth bloodline, after all. For anybody else, her father’s shoulder act would have been something of an annoyance—the way he dipped his rigid frame into her as he talked—but a father’s playfulness matched with a daughter’s curiosity made her feel warm, loved even. It was a comfort that most Portizu children were never given, let alone offered.

  “You are only four years old,” said her father. “You have so much in you that is not of your age. You are beyond your years.”

  Kyrah was proud of this, but it did not sound like a compliment.

  “Be a child,” he continued, focusing his eyes on his daughter. “I beg of you. You will be a warrior soon enough.”

  Her father forced himself to smile. His daughter—the one that sat before him—had proven herself as one of the most esteemed children in all of the Portizu Tribes. Her intellect had made her the focal point of political rumors and the pride of her mother and father. She had read Turisic and the Ways almost twenty times—nearly memorizing it in the process—but her talent seemed to worry them more than anything. She was not normal. She was growing up too quickly.

  It’s easy to be calloused and in pain, her father had always told her. It’s harder to use what you are given and make it last.

  For Kyrah, there was comfort in the unknown. She badly desired to understand why her parents constantly returned home with welts the size of fists, why they returned with a smattering of bruises across ribs and thighs, but the unknown kept her from knowing the evils of the world before she could completely understand their complexities. She feared that, if she discovered those things now, they would provoke a hefty set of nightmares. Her parents knew that the aftereffects of such exposure would cost their daughter a piece of her childhood. Whether she was prepared to enter training or not, they were not ready to sacrifice that, not even a little.

  But, on this particular night, it would happen regardless.

  Kyrah kept her eyes wide, focusing on the voices projecting quietly from the room adjacent. Her parents had already tucked her deep into the blankets of her mattress and were now discussing something between themselves, raising their voices, then dropping them in an attempt to subdue emotion. Kyrah was not sleeping, but instead, listening intently. She could hear the sincerity in their voices, the intensity behind each word, yet she could only pick up bits and pieces of the words themselves. She turned her head to listen closer.

  An hour passed. The words she could hear made no sense—just illogical mashes of syllables that fit as nicely as a puzzle without its outer edges. The intrigue finally outweighed the out-of-bed-after-hours consequences, so she threw the blankets from her body and tip-toed to the cracked doorway at the opposite end of the room, pressing her ear to the wall for better sound.

  “We haven’t seen an attack like this in years,” her mother whispered.

  There was a sadness in her voice, in the way it dropped as she finished her comment.

  “We have to be strong, Taris,” spoke her father. “It’s nothing that we can’t handle. We’ve been through so much worse.”

  She heard the front door creak open, then settle as it sealed the entranceway. The conversation had paused as her parents welcomed a visitor. Another set of footsteps joined theirs. These were lighter, more succinct.

  Click-clack. Click-clack.

  “Shara has returned. She brings word of an unorganized cluster of Shadows to the East near Relu’s Wall. If we strike in the next few days, we can catch them off-guard.”

  Aunt Shara? Kyrah thought.

  She assumed that the voice she heard was that of her Uncle Jeras—a calm, quieting type of voice that perhaps projected more than it should have.

  “What do you wish to do, Jae?” asked Jeras.

  It was not uncommon for Jeras to redirect to his brother. For some time now, Jae had become the working leader of the Northern Territory, mostly due to age, but also experience. A bout of silence filled the room—an enduring one that fell into a bit of awkwardness. Everyone waited for Jae’s response.

  “Alert the others that we will be leaving tonight. We can finish them by morning if we hurry,” her father said.

 
“Will you be joining us, Jae? Taris?” the mysterious voiced asked.

  “Yes,” said Jae. “Of course. This is our Tribe.”

  Kyrah heard the air stir as her father turned to his wife. She could envision his longing eyes, his sense of justice ringing true through them.

  “Do not worry, Taris,” her father continued. “We will return before Kyrah wakes. This is the best place for her right now.”

  “But Jae—” Taris tried to speak, but nothing surfaced but empty air.

  “We must protect our home,” Jae continued. “We must protect her.”

  Taris nodded hesitantly, not without suspicion.

  “Then it is settled,” spoke Jeras. “Meet outside in ten minutes. I will gather the others and the attar swords.”

  That was a word she had never heard. It seemed to slip from Jeras’ tongue as if it were second nature—attar.

  “Ten minutes,” repeated her father. “Go.”

  Jeras’ footsteps clicked quietly as he left. The door hung open for the briefest of moments, then fluttered back into its seal.

  “We must be careful, Jae,” Taris whispered, turning to her husband with wide, worried eyes. “One day Kyrah may wake up and find that her parents have both been—”

  Jae cleared his throat, stopping her thought cold.

  “We will be home safe,” he said.

  The emphasis comforted his wife. She relaxed in its assurance.

  “As long as we have the attar metal, there is nothing to fear,” her father continued, “and we have four blades left. You and I will both carry one. Jeras and Shara will possess the others.”

  “Poor Trialyn,” Taris murmured. “He didn’t deserve to die like that. I hope Turisic spared him of the unnecessaries.”

  Jae lowered his eyes.

  “It was a shame to lose him,” he replied. “He was a good warrior, but he lost the swords—two! We can’t allow the Shadows to take away one of our only means of defense.”

  Taris bowed her head.

  “I know,” she murmured.

  Kyrah poked an unsteady eye from the darkened side of the doorway, catching a glimpse of her parents’ figures flickering in the candlelight. She had never seen them in such raw form. There were no facades, no Portizu traditions or Turisic guidelines. In this fragile moment, all Kyrah saw were two people fighting for the safety of their home.

  Her curiosity had peaked. Whatever should happen at Relu’s Wall, she needed to know. She need to see it with her own eyes. She craved it. If one day she was to grow up into the Warrior that everyone hoped she would, then it only felt appropriate to learn, to absorb.

  Then it’s settled, she thought. I will go.

  Ten minutes passed. Taris and Jae met the others at the fringe of the yard. Two others joined them—two that Kyrah recognized from village meetings and student gatherings—her teacher, Velc Tahjir, and the village doctor, Salo Geru. Both approached in silence, only bowing to the others in minjori. From a sack, Jeras revealed four stone-like swords, warped but held in her uncle’s hands as if a sacred artifact of the gods. In the darkness, however, she could not quite decipher any more of the details.

  What are they? she asked herself.

  She inched closer to the group, careful as to keep herself disguised, straining to catch a better look at the weapons. They did not appear to be swords at all, but more like rocks carved to look like swords. There were no hilts, no perfect place to grip them.

  “I do not have to reiterate, but with the recent loss of the fifth and sixth swords, I thought the safer the better. Allow me to demonstrate the proper use of the weapon,” began Jeras. “The attar are fragile. If you drop them, they will shatter. Keep them upward and firm in grip…like so.”

  The others watched in curious boredom. They had been through the ritual demonstration many times before, but for Kyrah hiding in the dark, questions fluttered through her brain like birds under a night sky, shielded by the glow of stars.

  “We cannot afford to lose any more. This is the last of what we have,” Jeras continued.

  He handed Shara the first sword. She received it with coveted power.

  Jeras handed the second to Taris, who bowed into minjori.

  The third of the attar swords went to Jae, who wielded it with elegance at his hip.

  When Jeras ushered the last of the swords toward Tahjir, Velc raised a hand in denial.

  “I will not need the sword,” said Tahjir. “My hands and feet are my only weapons.”

  Salo Geru did the same, so Jeras held the last sword close to his heart, accepting it as his own.

  “Tonight we bring honor to our fallen Warriors. We bring pride to our village. Fight as you have been taught,” spoke Kyrah’s father.

  “Be vigilant. Be aware,” said her mother. There was a slight tremble to her voice. “Now run.”

  There was a blast of movement, a gust of wind, and a vanishing into the night. Kyrah tried desperately to close the gap between, but her rail-like legs could only scissor so fast. She lost sight of them many times, but somehow, always managed to catch a glimmer of a silhouette far off, a directional dampening in the footpaths from shifting feet, or the rustling of ferns on either side of the trail. She never really lost her way.

  Kyrah had made many trips into the jungle during the last year, but she had never ventured farther than the Open Waters of the Middle Jungle. Her father had brought her there for her fourth birthday only months before, but as she passed those hidden waterfalls and open terraces of slippery rock, a pinprick of foreign doubt formed deep within her mind. The jungle suddenly seemed so big beyond that point, so dark.

  She thought about screaming out.

  Mother! Father! she would scream. Where are you?

  But she held her emotions back, shrouded them in confidence. She could not stop now! This was her chance to take part in the pleasure of the fight, the hunt.

  This is my chance! she thought. You cannot surrender now. Turisic will be proud!

  Excitement bubbled in her veins. She was doing it! She was following in the footsteps of so many before her.

  A crackle shot from the jungle to her left—a tree branch snapping.

  Just keep running, she thought, but the sound worried her.

  A growl from somewhere not so far off, a flash of shimmering eyes.

  Just. Keep. Running, she told herself.

  Her heart raked against the bones of her ribcage.

  A heated breeze—a breeze that felt more haunting than refreshing.

  Run!

  The screech of a jungle cat cut through the air. Kyrah shivered as her knees nearly buckled in fear. Her father had told her stories of the great Portizu Warriors fighting those famed jungle cats. He spared no detail in those tales, knowing one day his daughter would follow him into the Hunt, killing those same kind of beasts.

  Someday.

  Today, however, was not that day.

  Faster! she screamed inside her head. Run faster!

  And she did, forcing longer strides, pushing bare sole after bare sole into the topsoil underfoot until the jungle opened into a strange, unexpected clearing. The fears of the jungle—the darkness, the angry creatures, the venomous flyers—dissolved as she gazed outward into the flattened expanse. Everything dripped with moonlight, stretching for miles in front of her, rolling behind the dark horizon at the edge of her vision. Stubby grass poked upward into her calloused toes. No trees grew here on the other side of the world.

  The same heated breeze that chased her though the jungle squalled freely here, kicking up sand and debris with each of its gusts. She crouched behind a series of bushes about five hundred meters out from her mother and father, who stood with the others peering even farther outward into the distance. A patch of clouded fog hovered at the horizon line.

  Her father kept his company close, speaking quietly and huddled. The others listened with heads bowed. All held their given attar swords at the center of their chests, except Tahjir and Geru, who stood with posture
s exactly true to that of tansij—the standing meditative posture. Their hands curled into fists at their sides, their bodies outlined with a faint white hue.

  To Kyrah, it was nothing short of surreal.

  Even the frantic sound of her own breathing could not dissolve the whip of the attar swords. The group warmed the blades collectively, swinging them through air, making sounds vivid and delicate enough to be unchained by the physics of the world. Streaks of red blemished the air where rock met speed—invisible flags dancing in a methodical wind.

  It was the beauty of the moment that caught the breath inside Kyrah’s lungs, not the focus hidden behind the Warriors’ eyes. Her broad-shouldered father was no longer the clunky goof he pretended to be at home. There was a marked change in him here—one so fruitful she wondered how he possessed the capacity to be a father at all. She watched. He moved with the wind, unchanged by the strengthening gusts that forced the others to brace themselves. Instead, he simply stepped into it, time after time, as though stepping into a river current. The air tracked his momentum, giving him the advantage he would need in battle.

  This…This is my father, she thought. Here, he is himself.

  Her mother, like her father, moved with the wind, but hers was a different sort of exchange. It was the way she held the blade to her chest, the way she postured herself tightly against each movement, the way she agilely swung her hips outwardly to match the momentum of each cut. It mesmerized Kyrah—more like something of an art she hadn’t expected to be so resonantly beautiful, something that had the power to change the way she understood the ways of the North.

  Taris swung her attar sword without resistance, slicing the air around her into perfect slices of space. The squalls of wind bumped her gently and, in those moments, she seemed almost able to fly—so light on her feet, so elegant in the way her leg muscles flexed against each lunge.

  It was clear, however, that, unlike her father, this was not where Taris Laeth belonged. It was only a subtle distinction, but the far-off gaze in her mother’s eyes—the eyes suddenly made clear by a silver moonlit exchange—exposed all. In fact, it was as clear as a dry summer morning—Taris Laeth would follow her husband into any battle, to any grave, but it would be for him, not herself.