Airlean Tales

The sky beyond Mythaven was mottled and grey, blurring across the horizon in a sea of thick fog. Karis had spoken true; the Storm was clearly building, and another surge would be imminent.

Azalea springstepped alongside Halcyon, watching his every move carefully. He took an easier pace than Karis, his bounds large and loping. He didn’t seem to be in a rush. In fact, he seemed quite content and at ease, out in the fresh air next to the salty spray of the sea.

She wondered what it was like, going to meet monsters without fearing death.

It wasn’t long before they arrived at Fletcher’s Fry. The proudly hoisted Airlean flag announced it as one of many coastal towns that had once bustled with trade, and had since then fallen into some quiet. Those who could not fish had left to try their luck in Mythaven, leaving a rim of empty, ghostlike houses at the edge of the town.

Halcyon pulled into a small but cozy cottage inn, and rented a room for the night. Azalea didn’t dare refute him in public, but the moment they’d passed through the doorway, she blurted out the first question that came to mind.

“We’re staying the night?”

Halcyon laid his glaive on a table and kicked back in a chair by the fireplace. “Yes.”

“What for?”

“The Four is too far out right now. We have to wait for it to approach the coast, which should be tonight.”

Azalea blinked. “You can…sense it? When it’s all the way out there?”

“Well…” Halcyon looked lost for a moment, then nodded towards his resting glaive. “Water.”

Water mana was the specialty of the First Hunter, but did that mean he could sense everything in the ocean? What a horrifying thought—all that noise and color, constantly bombarding one’s senses, like a knot of instability that could not be unraveled. No, it probably wasn’t that bad; a Class Four was very large, and they were close to it. Maybe Halcyon could only sense big things within a certain radius. Azalea hoped so. She wouldn’t wish the chaos of the entire ocean upon anyone.

“Until then, we have some time to kill,” said Halcyon. He considered for a moment. “Karis wants me to train you.”

“Yes, I’m very grateful.”

He folded his arms and regarded Azalea for an impossibly long moment, until she started to squirm beneath his sea-blue gaze.

“What will you be teaching me?” she tried.

“I don’t know.” The words were blunt, but apologetic. “We’re very different.”

Azalea flushed. He was a master Former, and she could barely stitch together a stiff breeze.

Halcyon rose from his chair and started to circle her. His stride was surprisingly elegant, rhythmic, a tide washing up to shore. “You like to shoot?” he said, gesturing to her starshooter.

Not really, but it was necessary. “It’s my best weapon.”

“How do you go without?”

“My short sword.”

“Any good?”

“At the sword? Passable.” Barely passable, for a Hunter. She’d won her fair share of rounds at the Academy, but Halcyon wouldn’t care about that kind of low-hanging fruit. A scrawny rich kid couldn’t hold a candle to a Class Four.

Halcyon nodded, still circling. At first, Azalea thought that he’d been examining her—but now she realized that he was doing it to think. The rhythm probably helped him focus.

“Karis says you’re an ace at windsoles,” he said.

Azalea flushed deeper. “I’m—I’d like to get there. I’m okay.”

He stopped, the echo of his last step thrumming against the wall. “You need to believe in your strengths,” he said. “I’m sure the Academy taught you humility, but you’ll only falter against the larger beasts. Get confident in your own skills.”

Azalea thought of the Whisperer, how confident he had been, the unhurried nature of his movements, the brutal focus.

She swallowed. “I’ll do my best.”

Halcyon nodded. There was a new light in his eyes.

“Tell me what you’re good at,” he said with a gesture. He started circling again.

“I, um.” Azalea licked her lips, which had started running dry. “I—I’m pretty fast, I think. But I’m small. I’m a decent shot. I’m getting comfortable with windsoles, but—”

He gave her a dry look. “Confidence, Fairwen.”

She squared her shoulders and tried again. “I can shoot while springstepping. I…I can gauge an environment and use it to my advantage.”

“Good. Which means?”

“I excel at…ranged support. Keeping distance. I’m a skirmisher.”

He smiled. “Good.”

Just that one simple word made her heart glow with warmth. The First Hunter of Airlea had said that something about her was good.

“Alright,” said Halcyon with a firm nod. “I know what I’m going to teach you.”

“What will it be?”

“You’ll find out soon. For now, get some rest.”

He turned his head to the window and became very still for a moment. His gaze was far away, and Azalea felt for one moment that he was part of the ocean, a spirit from among the coral reefs and deep blue depths. Then he turned back and nodded.

“Two hours past midnight,” he said. “That’s when the location will favor us. Rest until then.”

And they did. Dinner was procured from the pier—hearty fish stew with fresh radish and a burning spice, golden-brown shrimp pancakes, and light seaweed soup with a savor that tingled on the tongue. The flavors were colorful and roiling like the ocean waves outside the window. As Azalea retired to bed, she dozed off to the jaunty tune of a fiddle and the bright laughter of the locals, and thought to herself that there was an endless amount of beauty in Airlea worth protecting.

It was the middle of the night when Azalea was shaken awake.

“It’s here, Fairwen,” Halcyon said. “Come.” He pulled his glaive from the wall and unceremoniously lobbed Bluebell into her arms.

Azalea threw on her cloak and followed him onto the pier. The moon was high, a bright silver blob that dripped light onto the calm expanse of the ocean. Fletcher’s Fry was still, every house quiet and every window dark, leaving not even a mouse to disturb the slow-churning surface of the water.

“The houses,” Azalea realized. “Lord Halcyon, the townspeople—they’re still here.”

Halcyon rolled his shoulders. “That they are.”

“Shouldn’t we evacuate them?”

“What for?” said Halcyon, looking genuinely puzzled. “It’s a single Class Four.”

Azalea thought about how she’d evacuated a village for a pack of Class One wolves and shut her mouth, cheeks burning. “Yes, of course.”

She followed Halcyon as he springstepped down the shoreline. Thankfully, he led them a fair distance away, putting Fletcher’s Fry well out of the line of fire. Pale sand crunched underfoot as they drew up to the dark line where the water ebbed.

“It’s out there,” said Halcyon, gesturing to some indistinct spot in the sea. “I’m going to bait it to the surface. Provide support with your starshooter.”

Azalea balked. “With, with you in the line of fire?”

He nodded. “You’ve shot around allies before, no?

“No, I haven’t.”

“Oh.” He paused, then shrugged. “Well, good time as any to learn.”

No, no, it was not a good time as any to learn. The Academy instructors had made one thing exceptionally clear: never aim a starshooter in the direction of something unless she wanted it dead. Firing into the field with allies in immediate range was unthinkable.

“I’m not supposed to aim my starshooter where there are allies,” Azalea said pleadingly. “I couldn’t bear it if I hit you.”

Halcyon was still for a long moment, and she cringed, waiting for a wave of cold wrath.

Instead, when he spoke, his voice was even, patient. “The Academy told you that?”

Azalea nodded hesitantly.

“They’d be right to do so. If you were in the Marksman’s Core, or the Garrison—an organized, landlocked company that has to rely on discipline and control.” He set the end of his glaive in the sand, letting the blade glimmer softly. “But you’re not, Fairwen. You’re a Royal Hunter.”

A Hunter, like Halcyon. Halcyon, who looked like the marble statue of a master craftsman come to life, bold and beautiful and invincible.

“Most Hunters work with projectiles and deadly elements,” Halcyon said, his eyes piercing her with water-blue. “Fighting with another Hunter usually means fighting with another force of nature. We’ve had to learn how to battle around each other’s vines and sugar thread and sunfire blades. A firebolt isn’t much different. Shoot consistently, and your Hunter partners will adapt.”

Azalea swallowed. Every safety precaution drilled into her at the Academy was screaming against Halcyon’s words, but he had seen much more of the battlefield than her. If she valued his judgment at all, she would have to listen.

“Alright,” she managed, gripping Bluebell a little tighter.

“Are you ready?” said Halcyon.

Just like that? No preparations, no strategy? Azalea fumbled. “Um, yes.”

“Confidence.”

“Yes, I’m ready.”

Halcyon nodded, and he was off, gliding through the sky like a raindrop. Azalea switched the toggle on her regulator, pulling out the lazy coil of instability that wafted from the mana quartz.

She was as ready as she’d ever be.

In the distance, Halcyon’s figure hung in the air like a doll. Then his body arced, cleaving his glaive downward. A bolt of water, swift and sharp as a harpoon, lanced down and tore through the surface in a lovely silver line.

The beach shook under Azalea’s feet. A low moan throttled up her bones and into her skull.

And the corruption emerged with a wild churn of the waves.

It was a dreadful, immense molluscan creature with a multitude of porous tentacles that thrashed against the waves, but a sheen of scales rippled over its soft flesh, and rings of teeth gleamed beneath three squirming heads. If the Northelm serpent had been sleek and polished, this mollusk was nightmarish, revolting in its bulbous form. It roared in a layered, grating voice, and Azalea shuddered deep in her bones.

And Echo thought I could fight this, she thought furiously. Now I know for certain that he’s trying to get me killed.

She watched Halcyon carefully as he plummeted from the sky. Even in the distance, she could see the rich blue glow of his glaive as it thrummed with water mana. When the monster surged up to meet him, he was ready.

A crescent wave bashed the mollusk clean across the first head and whisked Halcyon under a thrashing tentacle. He twisted with the momentum, cutting his glaive upward. The blade sliced up the creature’s neck, supported with a powerful flare of water. Its head severed cleanly in a spurt of purple blood and fell into the waters below.

Graceful, brutal, flawless. Azalea’s jaw slackened, as did her grip on Bluebell.

This battle would be over in a matter of seconds.

The mollusk’s headless segment squirmed, the raw flesh pulsing, and the ring-mouths peeked above the water, rattling in an awful scream. Tentacles lanced towards Halcyon in a deadly web. He wove expertly between them, pivoting among gentle crests of water.

While Karis had been all about swift, light touches and hairpin precision, Halcyon used large sweeping motions that flowed in arcs, following his water mana like rolling waves. His motions were so smooth and refined that Azalea had trouble telling where wind ended and water began—a voracious current that swallowed everything in its path.

Yes, wind. He was using his windsoles, she realized, but so flawlessly woven into his fighting style that she hadn’t noticed.

Halcyon sliced, and another head was felled, flopping into the ocean and swallowed up by the water. But the victory was short-lived. Right as the second head crumbled, the first began to close up, tissue swallowing the fleshy stub of the neck, globbing into a mass of molluscan organs. The mass thickened with meat and scales, and before Azalea could blink again—

—the mollusk’s fresh new head reared as if it had never been severed.

Cold dread speared through Azalea’s veins. She raised Bluebell and fired, watching the blazing round cut through the frigid air. But the firebolt did little more than splinter the mollusk’s outer scales—a blow that it easily shook away.

Azalea’s eyes were not deceiving her. The mollusk had regenerated its own head.

Halcyon drew back artfully, spiraling among the waves to soar over lashing fangs and tentacles. He shot back to the beach like a star, and the mollusk did not follow.

“Its heads are regrowing,” Azalea said quickly as he landed.

“Yes.” His expression was not grim, but thoughtful. “Seems like it’s drawing power from the water. For now, it has limitless regeneration.”

Azalea paled. Limitless regeneration from the water!

“Then we should beach it,” she said. “Right?”

“It won’t come onto the beach willingly, and it’s too large to forcibly move.” He glanced at her. “Could have been a problem if this had grown into a Five. You did well, securing this tip.”

Did well in securing the tip. Echo’s tip. Azalea’s cheeks simmered with a low heat. She hated that the Wolf was so often correct. If only he were wrong; then she could just ignore everything he said. Instead, she had to listen to that irritating, ingratiating voice.

“If we can’t beach it, what should we do?” she managed.

Halcyon rolled a shoulder, as if merely loosening a crick in his neck. “Everything has a weakness, no matter how powerful. It’s only a matter of finding it.”

“Even though it can regenerate infinitely?”

“If it can regen, then we just have to kill it in one shot,” Halcyon said matter-of-factly.

He spoke as if they were hunting a squirrel, or at the most, disposing of an unruly mountain cougar. Azalea looked up at the towering, writhing mass of scales and tentacles and felt rather faint.

“Just kill it,” she echoed. “In one shot.”

Halcyon nodded. “I’m going to reengage. Focus on severing the tentacles. It’ll regen, but disorienting it will buy me space.”

She nodded numbly. “Understood.”

Power welled in his glaive, and he lunged back out to the ocean. The mollusk was waiting for him; tentacles shot forth like blades, soaring right in his path. Azalea exhaled and fired once, twice, thrice, yanking the instability from her barrel. Three firebolts found their marks, searing away three tentacles that tumbled into the ocean. At least she was shooting well.

Halcyon’s glaive carved in beautiful arcs, crests of water following his every strike. A lunge straight across, severing all three heads at once. A plunge down the center, splitting the creature in two. A sharp turn, pummeling down the stumps of flesh. Sequentially, dispassionately, brutally executing it.

Like the Whisperer.

Azalea swallowed, her stomach churning even as she fired rapidly at the creature’s regenerating appendages. Had the Whisperer done nothing out of the ordinary? Was it simply necessary to brutalize Class Fours to death? The poor, miserable things. To know nothing but agony in their final moments. She hated it.

Please, in the name of all that is good, let it perish quickly.

But the creature was fighting hard to live. It appeared to redouble its efforts into regeneration, wounds sealing and limbs growing the moment Halcyon’s blade passed through.

Still, on her safe perch from afar, Azalea was able to see a pattern. When Halcyon struck at multiple places, certain areas were always the first to heal, sealing scales over vulnerable innards. Could those be the creature’s weak points? Something vital that it was desperate to protect?

I have to tell Lord Halcyon.

Azalea debated how to flag his attention, then decided on the simplest solution. She fired her starshooter straight up, watching the explosive round blitz the night like a flare.

It worked. Halcyon disengaged smoothly and retreated to shore, weaving through fangs and tentacles on his way. The mollusk screamed in rage, but did not follow, biding its time in the waters.

“What is it?” Halcyon asked as he landed in a spray of sand.

“I think—I can sense some weak points,” Azalea said, fumbling. “The creature, it always heals its injuries in a certain order. There’s three or four parts that it always prioritizes.”

Halcyon raised a brow, but he only nodded. “Where are they?”

She told him, sometimes marking the points with a few careful shots. The firebolts were stopped by the mollusk’s thick plate of scales, but they proved to be effective markers.

“Understood,” said Halcyon. He hefted his glaive. “I’ll open up the hide, and you shoot through. Burst fire them. Just like target practice.”

Azalea nodded, trying to inject the motion with confidence. She could do this. She could, she could.

“Ready to take your shot?” said Halcyon.

She saluted. “Yes, my lord.”

“Halcyon is fine.” His brow twitched. “Though I’d appreciate it if you didn’t call me Hal.”

“Of course not,” Azalea promised. “That’s a title Lady Karis has reserved. I wouldn’t dare.”

“That’s not…” Halcyon sighed and shook his head. “Never mind. Let’s go.”

He shot back out to the sea. Azalea pushed as far forward as she could, until the water was lapping around her knees. She raised Bluebell and primed it at the first weak point, waiting.

Halcyon’s movement was different. Gone were his leisurely twists and turns, the ebb and flow of his blows. Now he moved with purpose, a primal ferocity that sliced through the night like an arrow. The tentacles that lashed at him fell away, shredded by the lightning-quick edge of his blade. A head snapped at him, only to explode from a pressurized burst of water. Short fangs that raked up the surface were snapped apart with a violent twist of a current.

Apparently, the First Hunter had been holding back.

Azalea didn’t have time to consider this new information. Halcyon was already swinging for his target. With a cleave of his blade, the mollusk’s hide split clean open, rows of scales breaking apart to reveal a pulsing mass of tissue.

Instinctively, she fired.

Halcyon twisted and swung for the second point. Azalea ripped the instability away from her starshooter, turned her barrel, and fired again.

He lunged for the third, then the fourth, tearing apart the mollusk’s once-impervious armor. Azalea fired and fired again.

And the four rounds streaked over the ocean in a comet rain.

One after the other, they found their marks, piercing cleanly through.

The organs burst, wet and raw, with a punch of power that curdled Azalea’s manawell. The mollusk convulsed silently, veins glittering beneath its skin, swelling like a pox, jerking about like a broken marionette—

—then its whole body shriveled up and collapsed.

The mess of a corpse sank beneath the waves, desiccated and contorted, as if every drop of blood and mana had been sucked dry from its flesh.

Azalea swallowed the bile in her throat as the ocean closed over the remains and claimed it. I’m sorry, she thought, the words spinning over and over in her head, making her dizzy. I’m sorry, I didn’t know, I didn’t think, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.

She nearly jumped, nerves frayed, as Halcyon landed beside her.

“Well,” he said, dusting off his hands, “that was efficient.”

His even-keeled tone brought back a little lucidity, clearing that black fog from Azalea’s mind. She swallowed down her nausea and turned to address him. Her hands were shaking, but blessedly, her knees were still stable.

“Efficient,” she echoed. “It was…it was brutal.”

Halcyon frowned slightly. “It might’ve looked brutal, but the death was nearly instantaneous. I’d consider that a merciful end.”

Azalea didn’t expect to feel comforted, but she did. Significantly, at that. The end may have looked gruesome, but she supposed it was a kinder one than being burned alive or systematically dismembered or split apart.

At least the creature had been too dead to feel anything.

“You did well,” Halcyon said. “Got it all on the first try. I didn’t know you could fire so fast.”

Azalea tried to glow at the praise, but she couldn’t. She remembered the power behind Halcyon’s every stroke and felt dirty somehow, undeserving.

“You didn’t need me to shoot at all,” she said accusingly. “You could have killed it by yourself.”

He blinked. “This fight wasn’t about killing the Class Four.”

Azalea stared. “It wasn’t?”

“If I’d just gone up and killed the corruption, what would you have learned?” Halcyon said. “This is your victory, Fairwen. You analyzed your enemy, formed a strategy, and killed it yourself. I just gave you space.”

“Hardly,” Azalea said haltingly.

“You did,” Halcyon said. “Not every Hunter is an ace fighter alone. Some are powerful supporters. Maybe that’s what you are.”

Azalea fell silent, stunned.

“How do you feel?” Halcyon asked presently, like an afterthought.

“Um.” A long silence stretched out as she scrambled for words. She felt disturbed. Foreign to herself. Oddly satisfied. But above all else: “My success doesn’t feel very repeatable.”

He chuckled, a surprisingly warm sound. “Success rarely does. That’s what practice is for.”

“Do you think…”

Azalea paused. She shouldn’t be bothering somebody as important as the First Hunter with her personal worries and insecurities. But at the same time, he was conveniently here, and seemed willing enough to guide her.

“After practicing, will I be able to kill a Class Four?” she asked quietly. “On my own?”

Halcyon took her question seriously. She could see it in how he leaned back, his eyes watching the wavering line of the ocean, unblinking.

“People once thought that killing Fours was impossible,” he finally said. “Then a Four was killed. So they thought up something stronger than a Four, something almost too terrible to imagine: a Class Five. Then the world’s first Five rose.”

“The Battle of Havenport,” Azalea whispered.

He nodded. “I heard that you were there. Dispatched with the junior company from the Knight’s Academy.”

She nodded back. In a dire turn of events, that Storm had struck just off the coast of Mythaven itself. It promptly flooded the port sector of the capital, colloquially referred to as Havenport, with ravenous corruptions. And amidst the chaos, the world’s first Class Five had come out of the water, looming in the horizon like a world-ending juggernaut.

Most believed that the Airlean kingdom would fall on that day. But still, the people rose to fight.

The Hunters and the National Garrison battled and slept in shifts. The noble houses dispatched their privately trained companies. Even the Knight’s Academy sent out a junior unit of their top students to the heart of the battlefield. The ensuing conflict was long, bloody, and cruel—but it marked the union of the entire country.

That night, Wes was named the captain of the Academy company, and Azalea was selected as one of his soldiers. Halcyon and Karis were also there as Hunters, although they hadn’t been as well-known. The Battle of Havenport was the very encounter that had shot them up to legendary fame.

For they had been the two Hunters who killed the unkillable, and felled a Class Five beast.

“I’m not sure what is or isn’t possible,” Halcyon said, shaking her out of her thoughts. “But it seems to change every few months, so there’s no point in worrying about it.”

Azalea studied the undisturbed calm of his face and the steady set of his feet and the even line of his shoulders. She straightened and tried to mirror him, because she finally understood.

Halcyon wasn’t confident for confidence’s sake. He was confident because if he failed, there was no one more powerful he could turn to.

“Well,” said Halcyon, “are you ready for the fun part?”

Azalea’s newfound confidence wilted. “The fun part?” she echoed apprehensively.

He nodded. “Submitting the paperwork to Nicolina.”

Oh, it was a joke. “Um, yes. Of course.”

“Good,” said Halcyon. He turned to look down the beach. “Let me take care of the pest on our trail first, and we’ll be on our way.”

“Pest?” Azalea said confusedly. She focused, but she couldn’t sense the Wolf’s trail.

“Maybe not a pest,” said Halcyon. He wasn’t smiling, but his eyes gleamed with that familiar light of faint madness, so prevalent in the Hunter’s Guild. “Maybe a challenge.”

Azalea turned to follow his gaze. In the distance, far down the beach, she saw a swirl of dark fire rising to an inferno. It beaded into a fireball, hovering like a ghostly wisp in the night.

And then, in a streak of brilliance, it seared right towards Halcyon.