by Noah Ward
What in the name of all the shogens was going on? Had she mistakenly bought that other type of tobacco again? Life would be easier if she regained her senses and realised this had all been a rather bad trip.
The blossoming lights, swaying between the trees in the distance, convinced her that the worst part was yet to come.
Kaz ran.
5
Stalkers
Kaz was breathless by the time she spilled out of the forest into the glade. As she gulped in air, the lights of shogens knew how many people were encroaching on the camp, and the reek of charred flesh infiltrated her nostrils. Holding back the bile rising in her throat, she absorbed the scene before her.
One of the hired thugs had half of his face burnt to a crisp while another lay sprawled across a log. Goro’s doing. He’d reaped his rewards for that. Now it was time to see if Kaz could salvage something from this mess. And with Goro’s new friends staring up her arse, she’d have to be damn quick about it.
She drew her blade and checked the cave for signs of life and, more importantly, krystallis but found neither. The fresh corpse eating dirt had swapped with the girl they had found. Kaz raised an eyebrow. Good for her.
An anguished scream cut the air outside the cave. Kaz turned on her heel and headed outside. Beyond the ridge, a couple of kevals were tethered--weren’t there more of them before? Another wail. She crept to the ridge, mindful of those lights accreting with every second.
It was one of Goro’s men, the oremancer, looking a little less whole than the last time time they had met. The stump that was now his left arm had dirty rags wrapped around it along with a tourniquet cobbled together from a torn bridle. He held his severed forearm in one hand. It was as if he was wondering how easily he could pop it back into place.
Kaz leaped from the ridge and into a roll, coming up with her blade pointed at the oremancer.
“The krystallis?” Kaz demanded while her eyes roved his body. The pouch where he had kept it had disappeared.
The oremancer muttered something. The lights were closer than ever. They would be here in moments.
Kaz kicked his stump. The man cried out.
“The. Krystallis,” she said again.
“She...she took it.”
“Who” was on the tip of Kaz’s tongue, but then the pieces fell into place. The missing kevals and the girl. She turned and followed multiple kaval hoofprints as they led into the forest.
“Ah, shit…” spat Kaz. She headed toward a keval, intent on giving chase and taking back what was hers, not by right, but by virtue of stabbing more people than was necessary.
A hand wrapped around her ankle.
The oremancer.
She kicked him off, despite his weepy protests and, for good measure, booted his severed forearm into the near distance. With that piece of justice dispensed, Kaz swung into the saddle of the nearest keval. Digging her heels into the flanks of the beast, she caught sight of her pursuers as they broke through the veil of forest.
Stalkers. Bipedal machines, fuelled by krystallis. A driver sat atop each contraption, their own limbs helping to work its two mechanical legs with the aid of a series of levers. Their hinges squealed each time their talon-like feet ate up the ground before them. No way Kaz was outrunning them on flat earth. Good job she didn’t have a penchant for a fair fight.
Kaz and the keval bolted towards the blanket of woodland, following the tracks that the girl and her own stalker had left for her.
By the time the sun had risen, she’d have that krystallis. It was just a little more complicated than it ought to be.
◆◆◆
Shay had ridden a keval before. Though a rarity in Kaizen--they were beasts built for the snowy climes of the north--she believed herself to be a competent rider. However, she quickly became aware that riding around your village and having the odd race did not quite translate to fleeing for your life. In the dark. With a pursuer nipping at your hooves. In a forest. A point painfully driven home everytime a branch slapped her in the face or whacked her on the arm.
Her breath came in chastened gasps as the keval bucked her around in the saddle. Thank the shogens she were not a man because there would be nothing left of her nethers after this flight than a smashed pile of broken manhood. It was a luxury her pursuer was, thankfully, not given. She had dared a few glances over her shoulder--mindful of any potential branches waiting to catch her unawares. He was getting closer with each gallop. He was a bandit, trained to navigate this terrain while she was nothing more than a lost, weak little girl.
No. She was more than that. Shay would not have escaped and severed a man’s arm if she were weak.
You are still lost, though.
Escape. That was the plan. To where and in which direction, she couldn’t say. Sora’s Tear, the brightest star in all the sky, was her sole guide. Keep heading north. That was the new plan.
Shay pulled on the reins to edge the keval to the left, ducking under a thick, snow-covered arm of a tree. Her eyes had adjusted enough to not crash head first into a trunk, but she had sacrificed speed in doing so.
The forest appeared to be an unending series of dark towers, all scattered in her path, conspiring to bar her escape. Even the canopy had chosen to side with her hunters, the particular patch she was now galloping through stingily obfuscating the stars.
Shogens have mercy…
If she could just--
A tug on her sleeve. A branch? It had only lasted a second. Wait. Another one? This damn forest was out to get her--
Oh. Not a grasping branch--a grasping hand.
Shay peered over her shoulder.
A bandit!
She yelped and whacked his hand away, nearly unseating herself in the saddle. Not to mention she’d been forced to take her eyes off the path ahead, which could be--
You’re flying, Shay. How did that happen?
She had temporarily grown wings because the keval had been wise enough to stop when it encountered a massive tree trunk. It had not informed Shay of this, however. Selfish beast. It had dug its hooves in the snow and allowed Shay to be catapulted.
The girl ate snow and dirt as she tumbled. Whacked her lower back on a root. Tried to curse but found she had no breath for it. Wiped snow from her eyes. Focused on a set of booted feet and a naked blade that winked moonlight.
Shay tried to back up but hit the tree. Her kaval nibbled at some grass untouched by ice, not a care in the world after its betrayal.
“Shogens you’re a pain the arse, fated,” said the bandit. He took a step towards her. “Come back without a fuss and all you’ll catch is a beating. You try anythin’ like what you did and I’ll kill ya.”
If that was what it took for her to escape, then she would fight to her dying breath. But she was exhausted. Her spirit may be willing; her body required some convincing. Shay rose shakily on her feet, was unable to knock away the hand that grasped her shoulder.
“Now--”
Warmth on her face. She opened her eyes. A blade protruded from the bandit’s open mouth, having managed to spear a few teeth on its journey. Shay knew she should close her gaping mouth. Instead, she just stood there, slack jawed, as the blade squelched and receded. The pressure on her arm disappeared as the bandit crumpled.
“I’ll be taking that,” said the figure on the keval before her.
Shay did not know what she had to give. Evidently, the figure was quick to remedy the confusion by pointing the tip of their bloody blade at the pouch around her waist containing the krystallis.
“Err…” Shay sputtered, instinctively backing away.
“Less talk, more giving me krystallis before…”
Lights off to her left, bobbing in the dark. The hiss and crunch of mechanical limbs. The figure cursed and glanced towards the new batch of people who wanted her dead.
And there was Shay’s chance. She bolted, swung up onto the keval, and was off following Sora’s Tear once again.
6
Nature Always Wins
>
You turn your head for a second and they scarper away like cockroaches.
The girl with Kaz’s krystallis had not hidden under any rock but jumped on a keval and fled farther into the forest. If she were intent on heading in that direction then she would soon have to dismount to cross the frozen river. That would be Kaz’s chance. But something told her that these people in the stalkers chomping at her heels had no intention of letting either of them make it that far.
Kaz whipped the blood off her blade, sheathed it, then kicked her keval off in pursuit. Her assumption that the girl was no native to the south was further validated by how poor a job she did navigating the treacherous forest. It was not long before the treeline began to thin and the river revealed itself.
Over her shoulder, the stalkers annoyingly kept pace--no: they were gaining ground. Kaz cursed and broke from the forest and on to the banks of the river. The thick ice that had frozen the water had transformed it into a twisting diamond pathway. Cracks had already appeared on its surface; in the near distance, the river dropped several feet, forming a watery reprieve from the ice.
Kaz rolled her eyes and leapt from her keval.
“Don’t take it on the ice!” she yelled at the girl, who believed it was a stroke of genius to gingerly guide the beast across the frozen river. The fresh cracks should have yelled at her “I’m unstable”. The fact the keval had started to shun her commands meant even its tiny brain knew she was fixing to go for an icy bath.
The girl still ignored Kaz’s warnings as she stepped on the ice to join her. Instead of putting one foot in front of the other, Kaz elected to gently skate, proving more adept at the task than the keval whose legs began to flail like a drunk dancer suffering a fit.
“Get. Off. The. Fucking. Keval!” she screamed. Damn the stalkers breaking through the treeline, the girl was liable to kill her before they got the chance.
Kaz’s remonstrations finally wrestled the girl’s attention away from staring at the keval’s inebriated path. It was only when the animal took too precarious a slip did she free herself from the saddle, to subsequently slip on the ice.
Kaz readied herself to slide towards the girl and retrieve her krystallis, when the icy ground unleashed a great creak.
Creaks like that were never good. Surely they had not…
Oh Shogens they were that stupid, more so than the girl.
Three of the stalkers had stepped onto the ice. The ribbed talons at the end of their bipedal joints afforded them purchase mistaken for safety. The machines fanned out so as not to put greater strain on the ice than was needed before creeping towards Kaz like tiptoeing vultures.
Cursing, she ignored them and made for the girl, who was just about done finding her feet to stand. However, Kaz’s hurry only spurred the stalkers to follow suit and she didn’t fancy seeing who would win out of a frozen river, stalkers, and herself. No one, probably. Nature always wins.
Seen as though everyone else had chosen to act like fools, she might as well join them.
Kaz drew her blade and plunged it into the ice, piercing it as easy as snow. After gripping the sword behind her, she dragged it towards the girl and her comical, flailing attempts to reach the other side of the river. Her keval was stuck whinnying, frozen in place.
Ice moaned and rumbled in the wake of her katana and she yanked it free several feet away from her prize. With the girl going nowhere fast, Kaz dared to stop and survey her work. The stalkers strode closer; one broke ahead of the other. Its footing seemed sure, unhindered.
For just a moment.
Crack.
Water bubbled up by the stalkers outstretched talon. It slipped, thick metal knee crunching into the frozen river. The driver pitched to the side, nearly falling out of its seat. A white slab tilted out of the water as more water pooled.
The stalker began to sink.
The other two observing stopped their advance, stuck between fight or flight.
For some idiotic reason, they abandoned their senses and chose the former. It cost all three their lives: massive striations rent the ice; gouts of water vomited into the air; the river began devouring the stalkers, drivers and all. They silently clawed at the edges of ice to free themselves; moments later they vanished.
Kaz let go of the breath she was holding and then turned to the girl. She gained little ground. The keval had now, surprisingly, shuffled to the edge of the river, absently nibbling grass.
“Don’t move!” Kaz yelled, but she knew it was pointless. Not like she’d stopped before.
Readying herself to skate over, she suddenly stopped. Water splashed under her feet. A large crack ran towards the girl as she shuffled for safety.
She dropped. Gone. Like a trick in a parlour.
Lovely.
Kaz picked up her feet, clearing the distance in a few well-placed skids. Her knees buckled and she cleared the remaining distance on her right thigh. Sliding to a stop, her free hand lanced out to latch onto the girl’s flailing arm. Grip secured, Kaz hauled her out of the water, gasping and spluttering.
“This is why I told you stop,” Kaz spat. “But did you listen? Of course not.” A string of muttering curses accompanied her as she hauled the girl the remainder of the way to the opposite bank.
Finally free from the threat of an icy tomb, Kaz searched the girl.
It was gone.
Her hands grabbed the girl’s drenched collar. “The pouch--the krystallis. Where is it?” she demanded, adding a shake or two for good measure.
“...Gone,” the girl spluttered.
“What do you mean--” Kaz began, but then her eyes wandered to the hole the girl had fallen through. She loosed a howl of frustration and shoved the girl to the ground. “If you’d just listened to me.”
Close. She had been so damn close. Shogens! Her frozen hands curled into shaking fists. She felt like chucking the idiot right back in.
She’s just a stupid girl, Kaz.
“Isumi take you, girl,” she spat. The girl on the snow shuddered and coughed. Kaz wasn’t even that angry about the loss of the krystallis. There were others--had to be...
You honestly think it would have been the right one, Kaz? None of them have been so far.
“FUCK!” Kaz howled into the trees.
It seemed she wasn’t quite over it.
She was gone. She was going. Now. Forget this mess. Chalk it up to massive pain in the arse and pray the drink would numb it.
Leaving the girl to mumble on the ground, Kaz took the keval by its bridle. As she turned for the forest, movement caught her eye, beyond the churning slurry of ice the lake had now become.
It seemed there were more than just three stalkers. One more had appeared at the bank of the river, its driver sitting motionless atop the machine.
Kaz rolled her eyes and disappeared into the forest. “Shogens take me,” she muttered.
7
Bandits
The fires from the bandit encampment twinkled like grounded stars in the distance. The gale up here, across the Gashul mountains, wended through outcroppings of jagged rock like a thousand cracking whips, causing Saito to pull his balaclava tight across his face lest it be snatched away by the gale.
He pushed himself off from where he had been leaning against a tree and dipped back into the grove. Myriad similar patches of deep green dusted in snow covered the mountain range and its labyrinthine passages, making it easy to become lost unless one did not know its treacherous pathways intimately. Luckily for Saito, he had help. Or so she had promised him.
As he shifted through the trees, snow crunching under foot, cold drops splashed against his silver hair, which he had preemptively tied into a tight knot so as not to obscure his vision. Keeping his arms by his side, the white wrappings around his hands staving off the biting chill, he observed the tree branch high off to his right.
“So?” he asked the silhouetted figure above him. Then he shook his head and folded his arms before they could answer. “I’m going to guess
that Asami was correct.”
An utterance that might have been a scoff reached his ears, but it could well have been the rustling of branches as the figure’s arm elongated to unnatural lengths to lower them quietly to the earth.
Mei shook the snow off herself and sauntered towards him. She wore her shozoku, a form-fitting, indigo set of robes inlaid with small, strong plates of armour. He could see nothing of her flesh apart from the eyes, which she was all too happy to roll for him. Saito couldn’t help chuckling, deepening the lines around his eyes, which had seen some fifty winters.
Mei glanced over her shoulder. “Is it a camp? Yes. Is it full of bandits? Well, they do not look like they are kabuki dancers that took a stroll into the mountains…”
“And…”
She huffed. “Is it there? I could not say. I did not fancy finding out by myself.”
“So Asami has two out of three correct…”
“Not the one that actually matters.”
Saito conceded the point with a slight nod of his head. “But that...thing hasn’t been wrong so far.”
“Who knows what it’s been whispering in her ear,” she grumbled under her breath. “Assuming it can under that...gear.”
Saito waved her to follow him and she fell in step by his side. A little farther into the grove, he found the rest of them waiting. Asami stood off to one side in a small clearing, eyes fixated on the stars above where a falcon encircled. Her heavy, blood-red robes obscured her slight frame; the veil across her head, obscuring her eyes, ruffled as she turned to regard him. Beside her was whatever current “helper” she’d ensorceled. He was thin, nearly emaciated. His head was shaved and dotted with scars. Rags adorned his body and he affected a perpetual hunch, as if having spent a lifetime bent-backed in a rice paddy. Funnily enough, the one she called Kuma, was not the odder of the people in her company.
Sat in the snow was their “guide”. Saito did not know what it was. He assumed it was an old man, judging by the frail, liver-spotted hands that often acted as their sworn-powered compass. Thick robes the colour of mud covered his flesh; there was a metal box on his head that he surely could not see out of. Whether it was his doing or Asami’s, Saito could not guess. He had not asked. Maybe it was for their own good. He assured himself that was also the reason she ran a thick chain from his headgear to her hand. Maybe he’d run off like a dog and piss up a tree.
