“Baldwin?”
“Balian. In France. When I was there to kil—” He looked around, saw others watching and sat again, lowering his voice. “When I was there to kill Lucien, the last House of Fire descendant, I met Balian.”
“Really?”
“Yeah… Do you—Do you know anything about his companion, uh… what was her name? Katrina? Yeah, I think that sounds right.”
“Oh. She was the one he killed his brother for. Sō ka, so he made her a vampire.”
“Soooo, that’s a no?”
Mamoru shook his head. “I don’t know anything about her, sadly. If she were a big killer then I might have had her on my docket, but so far, she’s not.”
“I see.”
Mamoru looked at him for a moment, studying him. “You really killed the last fire user? He was the one who rampaged a few weeks ago, right?”
Tristan turned to look at him, something guarded in the other man’s eyes made him just want to smirk. “Yeah, that was him. And, yeah, I did.”
“Subarashii,” the other man whispered looking at him with a new understanding. “That is truly amazing. Do you know how hard the fire users are to kill?”
Actually, he didn’t. He still didn’t know why he couldn’t remember actually killing Lucien. He had dreams about it, but they all felt wrong, fabricated. He was starting to suspect that someone’d been in his mind and there was only one someone he knew who did that sort of shit.
“How did you do it?” Mamoru questioned and then added at the look on Tristan’s face, “If I might ask…”
Tristan frowned, debating on the best answer. “I uh, I can’t really say. But I did it on my own.” That was as close to the truth as he was willing to say right then. Seemed prudent to keep something back anyway.
“And unbitten,” the other man gasped. “That’s the real miracle of it. Maybe you really are the one all the pythia talk about. This Raven of humanity’s destiny.”
Tristan frowned hard. “I really hope I’m not. Shit, when we met, I was actually kinda hoping it was you the prophecy talked about.”
Mamoru let out a soft harrumph. “You know what… I don’t understand any of that prophecy business, but it scares me. I don’t want to be the Raven it talks about either.” He looked over to Tristan, meeting his eyes. “I don’t think any of us want that over our heads.”
“I’d drink to that.” Too bad that stinky old pythia pretty much confirmed that it was Tristan and Tristan alone that Lilith had spoken about in her haunting omen.
The other man chuckled. “I really am surprised to have met you. When the old seer said I’d meet another Uruwashi, I didn’t believe him. But I knew enough to listen to his “passing advise”, you know this seemingly meaningless advice that starts with “oh by the way” and ends with “now leave”.”
“Yeah, like how he sent Chrysanthe and Silas away so that I’d meet you.” He huffed. “And he was all about not interfering with fate. What bullshit.”
“Why were you with those two, if I may ask?”
“You know, I don’t know really. Ash and I, we were in her old home, the one she grew up in as a human when that freak, Genoveva, attacked us. They were fighting it out, earth style and I took a hit to the head. I woke up in my hotel room with those two. I’d broken my wrist and Chrysanthe only fake fixed it for me.
“When she realized I wasn’t going to help her find you, she set off this spell that almost killed me. It was that smelly old pythia that fixed it for me, saved my life. I think he knew what I was too… I wished I had more time to ask him what,” he mused softly, not really thinking about how he was saying too much again.
Mamoru flinched. “You’re Uruwashi… I thought you knew, with your tattoo...”
“No, I know that part. But I’m not just Uruwashi.”
The other man shifted, almost unperceivably next to him, putting some space between them. “What do you mean?”
He considered the man for a moment and then sighed, deciding he just didn’t care right then about being secretive. He didn’t like lying and frankly, if this guy was who Tristan thought he was, than maybe he could help. So yes, he was being risky and putting a level of trust in the stranger. “I mean that whatever I am, none of me is human. I’m something else, something… more.”
Mamoru swallowed dryly. “I suppose you would have to be if there’s a prophecy about you.”
Tristan groaned, slipping down on the bench. “I just wish I knew what. That stinking, dirty old man knew, I’m sure of it.”
“It’s not in the pythia to warp fate.”
Tristan looked to the other man. Mamoru’s tone had gone hollow and careful, lost in thought. Something about knowing Tristan wasn’t even part human seemed to bother the other man. Tristan bet it bothered him more.
“Christ, what a fucked up vacation… If I’d known Chrysanthe was a bounty hunter, I never would have teamed up with her. Hell, I didn’t really have a say in it from the start I guess.”
“No,” Mamoru grumbled and looked up at the clouds. “I really don’t think she is. It’s the last thing pythia’s are interested in. I think there was something huge at stake for her and she was blackmailed into it. That’s the only answer that makes sense to me.”
Tristan grunted an acceptance. “What were you doing there anyway, at Agamemnon’s?”
“Ultimately, looking of Genoveva. But I ended up looking for you.”
“Why does everyone want me to help—”
“Chigau,” Mamoru said quickly. “When I’m in the area of a pythia while on a hunt, I like to barter spells off them. Pythia magic can be an awesome thing. I also make it a point to glean what I can from them. Sometimes I find good information, other times… not so much. This time, I found the biggest information to be had. A living Uruwashi.” Mamoru turned to face him. “I was looking for you as a clansmen, a brother.”
“What, you want to mentor me or something? Be my Master?”
“Yes,” Mamoru answered matter-of-factly. “That was the thought. Even if you are the Raven of omen, I feel I can help you. No, especially because you must be the one the pythia all talk about, not quite Uruwashi, not human, maybe more…”
Truth? Tristan needed the help. Hated asking almost as much as he hated that others assumed he needed it. But, in this case Mamoru was right. Tristan was just a babe in a land filled with monsters. At the rate he was going, he was simply living on borrowed time. It was time to move out of the red and back into the black again. He needed to understand himself as much as his foes. And what better way to know oneself than to be mentored by another of his kind. Even if it was only half his kind.
“Well, I can use the help.”
The Japanese man smiled big, showing off his fangs again.
Tristan shifted, moving away ever so slightly. “You really shouldn’t flash those around. Can’t you hide them?”
“No. I have zero aura ability. It’s not a strong trait for the Fire line to start with.”
Tristan made a noise of understanding. It stood to reason that whatever a specific vampire lineage strong points were, would inevitably be the strong points for the bitten Uruwashi. He’d always assumed that, now he knew. “Your daughter…”
“Hmm?” Mamoru looked up, surprised.
“Don’t you mentor her?”
Mamoru slumped. “She’s not an Uruwashi.”
“Um, maybe I don’t understand even basic genetics here, but your daughter would be whatever you are...” Maybe Uruwashi blood/abilities were something only women in the clan could pass on?
“If she were really my daughter…”
Tristan paused for a minute and then frowned. “Oh. Sorry.”
“It’s the reason her mother and I split, but I was already her dad by the time I realized what her mother had done. A child doesn’t have to be of one’s blood to love them like one.”
“No, I know. Trust me, I know. I was adopted. Didn’t make me love my parents any less that they weren’t of my bl
ood.”
“Oh!” Mamoru sat up straighter, looking at him. “I see. That’s why you had no mentor. You must be from a very diluted line if you’ve lived this long and without a clan to protect you. Hmm, but you do have quite a bit of Japanese features for being very European.”
Tristan gave a little laugh. “Not really. It’s just my eyes.”
The other man nodded as he stared at Tristan, eyes roving all over his face.
“Could Baldwin control you after you were bitten, like a scion?”
That look again. Mamoru was considering Tristan awfully intently. The other man licked his lips slowly as if thinking how to word himself, brow furrowed in deep concentration.
“What?” Tristan finally asked, uncomfortable with being stared at like that. Sure, Tristan didn’t trust the guy, but he wasn’t going to waste his chance to find out what he could from him if the man really meant him no harm. Obviously. But he didn’t think he had asked some taboo thing.
“Now, don’t misunderstand me when I say I won’t be telling you anything about my abilities.”
“Excuse me? How else am I supposed to understand it?” Tristan stood, tense with anger.
“Tristan, please calm down.” Mamoru reached out and took Tristan’s wrist only to have to jerked away from him. He sighed, leaning back in his seat. “I fully intend to take you on as a student. I really want to, but we’re at a delicate point here, you and me. You don’t trust me and I shouldn’t trust you. Our relationship right this moment is symbiotic because we’re helping each other on equal terms. However, what happens when you are reunited with your lover? I have to think of my own wellbeing first.”
“Wait, you think the minute I get Ash back I’m going to kill you? Use whatever you may tell me about your abilities against you?”
Mamoru shut his eyes. “It’s a possibility I can’t risk right now. You understand?”
Tristan huffed and sat back down. “I’m doing the same thing…” Not that there was much to tell on himself other than what he’d already said. But then again, he couldn’t be sure he hadn’t already given away something key about himself… like that he wasn’t even part human. It could mean everything or nothing. Then again, the other man seemed to be slightly bothered by it. But Tristan did know one important thing about Mamoru—he didn’t like guns. Lucky for Tristan, he did.
Mamoru cracked one eye open and smiled at him. “Glad we understand one another.”
Tristan just shook his head, but then stopped, looking at him in wonderment. “You know…”
“Yes?” the other man prompted when Tristan paused too long.
He smiled big and turned on the seat to face him. “Maybe you can’t tell me about you right now, but we’ve got a shitton of time to kill before we hit land again, maybe you can tell me about our enemy… about the different shinwa?”
“Sō desu ne?” Mamoru answered with a smile and a spark of something fiery in his eyes. “Perhaps I can.”
8: Mad World
ARE you okay?” Mamoru implored as the pair shuffled off the boat. Everyone in the crowd was in a hurry to disembark after the long ride. There was a young girl, fifteen maybe, who kept bumping into Tristan. He was sure she was just copping a feel from the look on her flushed face.
“I just—” Tristan sighed, moving stiffly, in a daze, shaking his head. After the long lecture on the seven—yeah, that’s right, seven—races of shinwa over a hearty Greek meal, Tristan got in a small nap. He was drained physically and emotionally enough that he could sleep, albeit fretfully. He kept dreaming of the seven shinwa in all of their unique physiognomies, all of them haunting him—hunting him.
Until last year, he’d have said the Japanese man was completely mental for spouting all that shit. But within just a few short months Tristan went from knowing that humans were the top of the food chain to realizing that not only were they just cattle but that a group of “legendary” creatures topped the charts. And even more than that, the Uruwashi trumped them all. Tristan, and his new companion, they were unquestionably the very top of the food chain. Sebastian told him that once. And now Mamoru was telling him, but couldn’t—rather, wouldn’t tell him why. Not until they’d both found the vampires they were looking for. He should have been revved up, ready to go out and find Ash, but he was just too worn thin. Maybe Chrysanthe’s spell affected him more than she or that stinking old pythia realized. Maybe that was the plan all along.
Tristan felt he already knew all he needed to know about the faerie from his association with Sebastian. Still, Mamoru did tell him a little more of the fae and all but banished Tristan’s inherent distrust of the race as a whole. Sebastian was definitely not the model fae.
While Tristan had interacted with the kitsune in France, he knew next to nothing about them outside of very personal knowledge of their paralytic bite. As Ash had said once before, they were a sort of shapeshifter, but not much more than that. The kitsune were neither living nor dead.
The kitsune were everything and nothing, and yet, were believed to possess souls. Their natural form of a red fox is their most comfortable, but they find the form of a female Japanese human beneficial too. Driven by greed, they use any means necessary to collect things they deem worthy—mostly shiny shit. They reside in shrines and get a high from the greediness of human prayer.
Their bites are paralytic, which Tristan knew all too well. As for their tails, they represented their age by the century. And much to his relief, they were undying in that when he cut that one in half back in France, she didn’t die as in never to be known again. Rather, she was reborn—no, more like reset. Her life cycle started over again, putting her at the bottom of the power hierarchy. The older one was, the more tails they possessed, meaning they had first pick at anything and everything and so on down the line. As a whole, the kitsune were harmless to others, content to hide in their shrines.
The lycan, werewolves, were now extinct thanks to the vampire. Or more rightly, the vampire claimed the race to be extinct, because Mamoru believed that they were just extremely low in numbers. He couldn’t completely believe in the idea of any of the shinwa being extinct. Still, he had no proof for his theory.
The idea of shinigami gave Tristan a chill when Mamoru explained them. They had no body of their own, but could possess humans who were close to death. Sometimes they could permanently affix themselves in that person, other times it was only a temporary or sporadic possession. Most never knew that their loved one was no longer themselves once a shinigami moved in. All the shinigami want is to be alive, leaving them spiteful, sad spirits.
Trolls were one of the few races that couldn’t interact with humans due to their physical appearance. Gluttonous giants of great stature, leathery dark flesh, acidic blood and poor manners forced them in to reclusion from proper society. They are so enamored by the beauty of the vampires that they will seek one out just to be in their presence, making themselves a general nuisance to the poor vampire who gets saddled with the great beast.
The elves were a rather lengthy conversation since Silas’s presence demanded it. They were a stubbornly proud race that because of their betrayal to the fae during the Great War, forced them into isolation from general population. All other shinwa hate the elves for their treachery, in turn, filling the elves with a great burning hate, a raging wrath.
Natural hunters, the elves are just as one with nature as the fae, but where the fae excel with plants and fishing, the elves are stronger game hunters. Born with runes of power upon their flesh, the elves can call upon a wellspring of power from the Earth herself. To help channel this wild and erratic magic, elves always claim a familiar, some animal with high intelligence. The fact though that Silas not only didn’t seem to have his familiar with him, nor try to wield earth magic greatly worried Mamoru. Add in that the fact that the energy ball Chrysanthe tossed at them was most undoubtedly earth magic left Mamoru thoroughly bewildered.
Never in history had there been a single instance of a pythia repo
rted to have stolen or borrowed an elf’s magic. Mamoru theorized even that Silas himself served as a familiar to Chrysanthe but he couldn’t be sure. Everything he knew about race really didn’t help them in this situation.
Being very interested in the pythia currently, Tristan had to ask. Turned out they weren’t shinwa but a whole other group called heikō. The fact that Ash never mentioned the group to Tristan seemed to trouble Mamoru. He said that everyone knew that and speculated that Yukihime took that memory, but for what purpose, he couldn’t think of why. He also vowed to feed Ash as soon as they found her and give her that knowledge again. While Tristan didn’t like the idea of them swapping fluids, he appreciated the gesture. They needed every drop of help they could get.
The heikō, like the shinwa, consisted of seven races: angel, dragon, dryad, giant, mermaid, pixy and pythia. However, unlike the shinwa, the heikō originated all over the continent, not just in Japan. No one, according to Mamoru anyway, really knew why the fourteen races were separated, only that the groups had been mandated since the beginning of their existence. It was a topic, that sadly, Mamoru didn’t know much about.
From what Mamoru’d said, the pythia could potentially be the most powerful of all the shinwa and heikō… put together. Experience was the difference between making a simple spell that was strong enough to only just burn a sheet of paper, to a spell terrible enough to incinerate every living thing on the entire planet with a single spoken word. They were just that powerful and it was good for everyone that their religion, the doctrine they lived stringently by, dictated that they never disturb the flow of fate, the visions they received of the future and beyond. Tristan wasn’t so convinced that all pythia followed the same creed since it was obvious someone was messing with his fate, but appreciated the idea of it. He also understood just how dangerous that flaky Chrysanthe could be now, especially if she was having so much trouble controlling her magic, not to mention the wild magic she was drawing, presumably, from Silas.
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