Airlean Tales

The Storm was a curse upon humankind, nature’s retribution for man’s bygone sins. Or so it was believed among many. Yet Karis could not help but feel its driving pulse in her veins, could not help but be drawn into it, could not help but think it beautiful.

She smiled as she plummeted from the sky, a storm of sugar-threads whirling around her. She landed heavily, shards of ice splitting out from the impact and spearing through a herd of large elk. She flicked her rapier, and the ice shattered, sending deadly shards whistling across the field. The elk scattered briefly, bellowing, then turned to charge at her.

Only Ones and a Two, Karis noted with some disappointment. Sethis had wanted her and Halcyon to conserve their mana for the alpha, but she was beginning to feel rather stifled and bored. Her manawell was flourishing, begging to be freed, and yet only small fry appeared to contest her.

She gave an almost lazy swish of her rapier, and a lattice of sugar-thread carved apart the herd in the blink of an eye. Their dismembered corpses fell silently to the rocky ground.

“Begone,” she whispered. Like an incantation. Or a curse.

A shiver deep in her manawell promptly drew her attention. She sensed a surge of power near her—not the lulling sweep of Halcyon’s water, but an alien style of Forming, writhing and chaotic and utterly destructive.

Black fire whorled overhead, and Karis followed its trail until it landed at the crest of a cliff. The fire dissipated and revealed its manacrafter: a broad figure coated in dragon scales, crowned with a terribly imposing ebony mask.

Well, well, she mused with a light click of her tongue. Greater prey has come to play.

A familiar excitement quickened her blood and she leapt after the revealed Dragon Whisperer. She alighted with a sharp crackle, a portrait of icy knives and cutting currents, and smiled grimly beneath the eerie light of the Storm.

“Hello there,” she called softly. “I’ve heard much about you.”

The Whisperer turned to face her. He was silent for a moment, sizing her up, no doubt. Then he tilted his head in an oddly reptilian way.

“Positive things, I presume?” he called back.

“Rather fearful and terrible things, actually.”

“Oh, good. Thought I was losing some of my reputation.”

For a moment, Karis faltered. His voice was not the grating, demonic whisper that she’d expected. In fact, all things considered, it sounded rather normal. A bit bombastic and theatrical, even.

Still, no ordinary man could hope to match Halcyon in single combat. She would have to stay on her guard.

Mana humming eagerly, Karis whipped her rapier into a quick salute. She braced her feet, ready to strike. The Whisperer did not mirror her, but only stared, clearly puzzled.

“You wish to fight me?” he said.

“Certainly you did not expect to attack a citizen of Airlea without bearing the consequences.”

He considered this for a moment, then shrugged. “Very well. I suppose fighting is all the same, either way.” He glanced briefly over his shoulder. “Though if she appears, she might be cross.”

She? Karis smothered a frown. Was the Whisperer merely the puppet of some greater force that lurked in the shadows? The thought was concerning. She could not imagine an entity so powerful that it could hold even the famed Whisperer on a leash.

Karis had no time to consider the matter further. The Whisperer lunged right for her, swinging a blade wreathed in cursed flame. She nearly stumbled as she twisted away, and his figure blazed past her, quicker than he had any right to be without windsoles.

Myths forbid, imagine this man with access to magitech.

Karis fired her windsoles and pivoted, sending sugar-thread lashing at the Whisperer’s exposed back. She expected him to drop down or withdraw defensively, but he did neither. He turned without fear and extended his hand. The sugar-thread nicked his palm, slicing through his glove and drawing blood down his lifeline, but he did not flinch. Dark fire exploded from his hand and licked quickly up the entire length of her thread, dissipating it into vapor.

Karis held back a hiss. Ice and flower mana were both vulnerable to the touch of fire. Her typical technique would do little to challenge the Whisperer. She would have to adapt.

The Whisperer was not content to let her ponder. He bolted at her again, his blade rank with mana instability as he slashed at her in a relentless onslaught. Karis danced back from each strike, absorbing his attack patterns and searching for gaps in his guard.

“Fascinating,” said the Whisperer as he attempted to take off her head with a broad swing. “You move just like a borealis amphiptere.”

“Is that a compliment?” Karis said mildly.

“No creature compares in grace and swiftness. But many best it in strength.”

Her brow twitched. “Perhaps they simply pitied you.”

“Then they may pity me from the grave.”

Irritated, Karis sent knots of sugar-thread spearing at him. He burned them away easily, but the smoke and flame obscured his vision for a precious moment.

Got you.

Karis seized the chance to lunge past his guard for a quick stab at his exposed chest. She expected the blade to slot cleanly through the seams of his scale armor and sink into vulnerable flesh.

Then mana pulsed from him, and in a blink, a knife melted into being in the Whisperer’s hand, dark and sharp, obsidian planes gleaming like a mirror. He gripped her blade with the crossguard of his shadow knife and wrenched it to the side. It skated just past his ribs.

Formed weapons! Karis thought in disbelief. The madman! Does he not know how taxing that is upon the manawell?

She briefly considered her own weapon, Celeste: a rapier of Yuerai steel fixed with a mana quartz attuned to her very particular needs. While she was not wholly reliant upon its power, it played no small part in her manawell’s fortitude. When engagements lasted overnight or over several nights, every optimization counted—and Celeste was efficient indeed, assisting her Forming with a whisper-quiet touch, like a limb she never knew she needed.

The Whisperer did not grant Karis any further privilege of pondering. The shadow knife disappeared in his hand and he swung his bare fist forward. A lesser fighter might have laughed, but Karis immediately noted the subtle stirring of mana from the Whisperer.

In a single breath, she Formed a lattice of threads to shield herself—right as a terrifying blast of mana swept out from the Whisperer’s strike.

The lattice absorbed the brunt of the impact, swelling until it snapped at the blow, but Karis was still thrown back. She tucked her limbs until she felt in control of her body’s rampant spinning, then wove a thread between two treetops like a tightrope. She extended her legs and landed on it softly, balanced as an acrobat.

“What fine thread you weave!” the Whisperer called after her, cheery. “You’re fit to be the queen of all spiders!”

Karis’s eyes narrowed. “Spiders?” she repeated frostily.

“Why, yes, now that I look closer, there’s quite a resemblance.”

She darted at him, raining sugar-thread on him from all angles for the insult. He dispelled them with a brief tongue of fire that whirled around him like a shield.

“You appear out of humor,” he noted, puzzled.

“Perhaps do not liken a woman to an insect,” Karis said testily.

“Spiders are not insects, but arachnids.”

Karis’s brow twitched. Somehow, she had managed to find the single man on the face of the earth who was more vexing than Halcyon Yuden.

She lunged forward, Celeste snapping out like a viper. The Whisperer met her with strong, terrible blows that sizzled with unstable mana—but he was slow, slower than Yuden, no doubt accustomed to fighting creatures ten times her size but a tenth of her speed.

She maneuvered around him with quick pulses of her windsoles, seeking a vulnerable point. It was difficult to find. He constantly conjured Formed weapons to redirect her rapier and his manawell seemed bottomless.

“I don’t understand your ire, spider queen,” the Whisperer said suddenly. “There is no finer architect to be found among living creatures.”

Still with the spiders! “And no creature easier to crush under one’s boot,” Karis snapped back.

“Ah, I see you have yet to meet the arachnids of the Range.”

She paused. “Are they quite formidable?”

“They regularly dine on wild wolves and white bears, if that satisfies you.”

Despite herself, Karis smiled. “It does.”

She continued her onslaught—but this time, the Whisperer struck back with equal aggression. His tactics had been unusually defensive at first, but now, there was no restraint in his blows: fire roared past her ears like the bellows of a forge, hungry and dangerous. Karis skated just shy of a fatal burn every time, residual heat pressing at her skin. A single mistake would cost her life.

She wove sugar-thread to lace around her attacks, burning faster to bite the Whisperer several places at once. Some wormed through, nipping at his hands and legs just before he incinerated them, but most slid off his armor—which were dragon scales and dragon hide, how fair was that?

Karis seethed silently in the deadly dance. The Whisperer was slow, but not slow enough for her to capitalize; big, but not big enough for clumsiness; and he was obviously unbothered by mana costs with an advantageous matchup in affinity. Of course Halcyon would have been able to fight him, as a crafter of water, but Karis was not so fortunate.

Patience, she told herself. Consider him a Class Five. A creature of inconceivable danger and power. And what does one do with a Class Five?

She gathered mana to herself, smiling like a wraith.

Cripple it.

She could not aim for a quick death, but she could attempt to play for the long fight. The Whisperer was clearly not accustomed to defense, nor to protracted encounters; he would tire and he would slip up, and he would do so earlier than her, as she’d fought for endless hours through countless Storms. Of course, if she ever made a single mistake, she would die immediately, but Karis was used to playing such odds, and found herself looking forward to the challenge.

Karis lifted her rapier, letting her manawell hum in her ears as she gathered ice and flower mana to her, the power settling over her like a protective cloak. Opposite her, she saw the Whisperer do the same, his shoulders squaring and his stance dropping slightly as mana flocked tremulously to him.

She grinned. Their next clash was sure to be explosive.

Out of habit, she saluted with her rapier. Then her knees bent and she lunged forward, blazing with silver flowers and crystal dust, and the Whisperer leapt to meet her, black fire swirling around him—

A smear of crimson darted between them, and a girl’s voice pierced the night.

“No! Stop! Don’t fight!”

Azalea waved her arms and screamed like a child and fool.

She half-expected to be speared by sugar-thread on one side and engulfed by fire on the other. Thankfully, neither happened. Both parties stopped with surprising alacrity, mana fizzling out, and stared at her in clear bewilderment.

“Fairwen!” Karis exclaimed. “You’re alive? How—about we speak of it later?” She recovered quickly, her sword-point whipping up and her form encircling with a swarm of sugar-thread. “Out of the way, quickly now, before this brute shreds you to dust!”

Azalea shook her head furiously, eyes ablaze, and only threw out her arms for good measure. “You can’t hurt each other,” she urged. “He’s on our side. I swear it.”

“On our side!” Karis exclaimed. “He ought to have mentioned so before he attempted to burn Yuden alive!”

“No, I mean—he wasn’t then, but he is now,” Azalea said pleadingly. “You can’t waste mana against each other, Lady Karis, please. The alpha will arrive soon, surely.”

Karis opened her mouth to reply, but Azure spoke first.

“Fascinating!” he said. “Why, spider queen, it almost sounds like you can see ’Zalie.”

“Spider queen?” Azalea said confusedly.

“Of course I can see her,” Karis snapped. “Do you think me blind?”

“Well, you shouldn’t be able to,” Azure said, unruffled even in the face of the Second Hunter’s wrath. “We are beyond the maw of the Sovendyret.”

“The what?”

“The Noadic Range,” Azalea explained quickly.

“What would the Range have to do with anything?” Karis demanded.

Azure tilted his head in his usual peculiar way. “Spirits do not manifest in physical form outside the Sovendyret. Not to humans.”

Azalea gaped. Azure thought she was dead? But she had spoken to him! Scaled a wyvern carcass for him! Asters, she’d burned mana in front of him!

Karis went very still. “Fairwen is dead?”

“Why, both our surnames are Fairwen, or at least, mine was, back in those days when I was human, but sadly the cuter one of us is dead.”

“You’re—you’re Fairwen’s brother?”

“I’m not dead!” Azalea cried.

Azure looked blankly at her. “You’re not?”

“No! I’ve been alive this whole time! You must have known, you were following me! You followed me because you recognized me and you knew I was alive!”

“Well, yes and no,” said Azure. “I followed you because I recognized you, but I figured—surely, you were just the benevolent spirit of my dead sister, guiding me to great creatures that I might become stronger through conquest.”

Azalea opened her mouth, then closed it, then opened it again. “But—but I hunted with you, and carried things, and burned mana! How could a ghost do any of that?”

“Can’t every ghost?” said Azure. “Ma always cooked such delicious stew.”

“Ma’s not dead!”

“Well, isn’t that strange,” Azure said uncertainly.

Azalea was—as seemed to be the regular case with her brother—driven speechless. Ghosts? Cooking? If they had not been in the middle of a battlefield, she would have had a mind to sit him in the nearest infirmary and prise open his brain for the surreal memories that lay within. Little wonder his sense of reality seemed so skewed, if the Noadic Range was truly capable of forming such convincing mirages.

“Alright, enough,” said Karis smartly, drawing herself up. “We can debate semantics later. Frankly, at the moment, I care nothing for who you are or where you’re from or whether you’re a spirit. Are you for us or against us?”

“I care nothing for king and country,” said Azure, “but ’Zalie appears to, and she’s led me to some splendidly dangerous marks. So very well. For the remainder of this Storm, I suppose I shall not attack any humans.”

“Not for the remainder of the Storm!” Azalea said. “You shouldn’t attack humans at all!”

“But some people can be so vexing,” Azure complained. At Azalea’s shriveling glare, he sighed. “Very well. I won’t bite anybody who doesn’t bite me first. For this year.”

“Keep your claws to yourself if you can,” Karis agreed. A hint of steel entered her eye. “Your little adventure with Hal directly hurt your sister, I hope you know, because you nearly got her betrothed killed!”

“’Zalie is betrothed?” Azure exclaimed.

“Wes isn’t my betrothed!” Azalea shrieked.

“He’s—not?” Karis faltered, clearly bewildered. “But at the Guild—the way he…”

“The way he what?” said Azure, very dangerously calm, as if he was ready to separate Wesley Geppett’s head from his shoulders at the first mention of misconduct.

Karis regained her composure and turned to Azalea, fixing her with a very stern look. “Well! I shall have something to say to the both of you, in that case. If such promising youth are enamored with throwing away their lives for just any friend of theirs, then this entire country would fall to pieces in the blink of an eye!”

“But you would risk your life for Lord Halcyon,” Azalea said, puzzled, “and he’s a friend of yours, too.”

Karis began to speak, then caught herself, then spoke again. “I am in the profession of risking my life for the sake of others, Fairwen, and you are—no, wait, I suppose you are as well.” She paused for a moment. “Yuden and I are…different.”

“Are you betrothed?” said Azure, squinting. He still hadn’t moved past that point, apparently.

“Pardon?” Karis said sharply. Then she sighed, forcing her shoulders to relax. “This is neither the time nor place to entertain such wild rumors.”

Azure shrugged. “Very well. Let us face the enemy, ’Zalie, and not-betrothed-lady. I’m sure it will be a splendid time.” And with a flash of dark fire, he seared right into the front lines, sending corruptions scattering like bits of shrapnel at the force.

“Must he say it like that,” Karis muttered under her breath.

“Is it better for him to call you ‘spider queen?’” Azalea asked curiously.

“It is better for him to hold his tongue before I sew his mouth shut,” Karis said elegantly, and darted after the plumes of smoke from the Whisperer’s black fire.

Northelm was holding ground, but it would not last for long.

Wes’s eyes scoured over the fortifications, taking stock of the situation. The walls held strong. The gates were practically unscathed, by Sethis’s personal intervention. The intermingled ranks of Garrison soldiers and village militia on the walls maintained their numbers and formations, with no sign of rout.

All in all, it was good—a bit too good. Wes knew both the thrill of luck, and the vice of luck about to turn sour. Unfortunately, his instincts told him that this was not the former.

Like the answer to a cursed prayer, the shriek of a Class Three hawk pealed from the sky, and an enormous winged shadow came barreling upon them.

Wes barked a quick command, and the archers around him angled their bows up, spearing the hawk’s belly with a volley. But its deadly flight only faltered momentarily as it shrieked, agonized; then it continued with vengeance, red gaze glittering.

“Lances!” Wes called. As a knot of pikemen fell into formation around him, he burned his manawell low, ready to wreath his blade in vines and thorns.

But a firebolt tore out of the darkness like a blazing star and pierced right through the hawk’s skull, gouging out both of its eyes. The hawk staggered, lashing blindly with talons and wings, but more followed—a firebolt through the neck, a firebolt under the chin, a firebolt in the temples and a firebolt down the open beak, unrelenting as a meteor shower. The hawk’s body shuddered listlessly, then floated to the ground with a lethargic furl of feathers.

In the shadows, Wes caught only a glimpse of Azalea’s pale, frightened face before it smoothed over into controlled calm. She nodded at him, fired her windsoles, and was gone.

Next to Wes, the militia erupted into cheers.

“The Scarlet Rider,” a Northelm pikeman next to him murmured in awe.

“She fights with us,” another said, tone reverent.

Wes briefly smiled, picturing the look on her face if she ever heard that the Northelmians held her in the same regard as Halcyon Yuden and Karis Caelute. She would probably faint on the spot. Then promptly beg to be demoted. But it was well deserved; she had personally saved many of the villagers, and they would not soon forget it.

“With such allies,” said Wes with a hint of warmth, “we can hardly stand to lose.”

The words had barely left his mouth when a low groan resounded in the distance, so terribly deep that it rattled up his bones.

I just had to open my mouth, didn’t I, Wes thought ruefully.

The din of combat fell to silence as man and beast alike turned to the horizon.

Flecked lightning rimmed an enormous shadow that rose to the sky like a mountain, indiscernible in the same ominous way that one could not quite pin the shape of a shadow on the wall.

Next to Wes, the Hunters landed like alighting swans in an orderly line: Halcyon, Karis, Prince Sethis, and Azalea. Sethis and Azalea’s faces were drawn and grim, yet set in determination. Halcyon’s face lacked any emotion at all and Karis seemed to be smiling. The sight was as imposing as it was beautiful; four legendary Hunters, facing the encroaching dark.

“So it arrives,” Sethis said quietly. “No doubt many heralds with it.”

“I’ve heard the tales,” Azalea said softly. Her eyes were big and nearly luminous. “That Class Fives are the size of entire fortresses. That they can command the terrain around them and wield the power of the Storm like a manacrafter. That looking into their eyes shall turn your body to stone.”

“Oh, no, looking into the eyes of a Class Five won’t turn you to stone,” Karis said.

In the distance, the behemoth roared, rattling Wes’s bones, churning the surrounding earth, tangling threads of mana into twisted, flickering shadows.

“Unfortunately,” Karis said, her lips turning up, “everything else is true.”