Michellin

Wanderers

A sorcerer? Kire raised a scarred eyebrow at him. He is full of surprises. Magic didn’t seem to be in short supply in this world, but even more surprising was him volunteering himself to the task. “Someone proficient in tracking spells. Or scrying, if you have that sort of thing here. And I don’t know how—inconvenient it would be to walk around with my own face at the moment. Also, I know an alchemist back home who’s been tinkering around with more, uh, explosive stuff. Seems like a good idea. For when I find where the rat’s been hiding.” She stood, wincing, her body sore, and stretched for a bit. She could still go back to Amria, ask for Daryll’s help. He had been reluctant, like Jan, to aid her in her quest to put herself in more danger, but they’re still family. Still, there were things that worked perfectly in Amria that didn’t work completely in another world. She was lucky the armor protections were in place.

“We can try your way, then find this sorcerer friend of yours. Who are they? Did they also live in the city before?” She paused, then smirked at him. “You might as well give me something to call you by. I can live with just ‘Hey, you’, but that might get confusing later.”

Wanderers

Kire wondered what was going on in his mind. What kind of woman was the one who wore her face, and what horrors did she commit? Clearly, he had seen this double of hers take part in the carnage. A different kind of guilt welled up inside her. It was easy to picture what she would look like, killing and pillaging. She had done it before. She regretted it every day, and reaped its consequences when her own beloved Capital had been overrun. Really, if he did try to kill her tonight, she couldn’t entirely blame him.

“I feel like I’m walking into a trap. But that might be paranoia talking,” she said, frowning at the sky as if asking it to just strike down her enemy with fire from the heavens. “This can’t be the only place he’s sullied. Him and his copy of me. My next step is to find their hiding place. They can’t be too far from the city, if you’re worried about them spotting fires, and even if they sensed my presence, if the city had been too far from his current location he wouldn’t have known. But now that I know a little more about his allies, I’m thinking of preparing for that. Unless you can point me to the direction of some sorcerers or alchemists, I might go back home first.” She chewed her lip. “I run the risk of losing the trail again though, if I do.”

She looked at him; he was avoiding her gaze, she could tell as much. “What will you do?”

Wanderers

The bastard. He finally did it. Kire had suspected as much, but to hear the confirmation still weighed heavily on her chest. She sunk her head back against the tree, face twisted in a silent snarl. She had felt that, had the two of them never met, Ikegai would have found some other obsession. Besides, if there was one thing the past half year had finally hammered into her skull, it was that the universe didn’t revolve around her, that there was no such thing as destiny. But still. How could Kire not feel that it had been all her responsibility? The one failure that had defined the rest of her failures since?

She let out a rueful laugh. “Of course he tried to change the color. Different hair. Different eyes. Right? Attitude adjustment too, if his power’s become that much more sophisticated.” Kire frowned again. “He wants control. He’ll have it, down to the last detail, I suppose.” She rubbed her face, frowning. “He’d probably have put a lot of glamour onto her, too. That’s another specialty of his. I don’t think it would’ve been powerful enough for large groups, like these Kartaians, but he’s good at conjuring that seductive allure. Bastard. Only consolation is that it takes up a lot of resources, a lot of energy, to make the kind of magic he does. Probably another reason why he’d find a perfect alliance with indiscriminate killers.”

Wanderers

Kire glanced as he worked at building a fire. At his question, she let out a long breath and stared out at the desert. Her scarred eye twitched, and she brushed away a phantom pain. “He had been looking for the one who would inherit this power that I have. It’s—hard to explain, I hardly understand it myself.” She crossed her legs, lacing her fingers together, moved them absently to watch the Ring glint dully in the dim light. “He offered help. Guidance. But he had been working at his own schemes behind my back. Using me, my influence, my connections. And, finally, he sprung his trap and tried to violate me with his blood magic. He became—fixated.” She hadn’t realized she had clenched both fists.

“He’s gone mad. He’s always wanted to remake the world to bend to his whims. Me included. Like I’m both the thing he loves and hates the most, because I have the power he’s been wanting to have, and I don’t answer to him. I tried going after him, but—” I lost my home. My family had been driven out. And now my country is overrun by monsters. “—I was…distracted. Rather, turns out chasing him had been a distraction for an even greater problem. Half a year ago. So, let’s just say I owe him for the deaths he had inflicted and the battles I’ve lost these last six months.”

She found a pebble and threw it across the oasis as far as she could, landing on the opposite side. “He’s been trying to mold my face onto his sick creations. His little…passion project. He’d never been successful—he nearly was.” She remembered her abdomen, spilling blood, even as she tried to fight her way through the dolls, all bearing a misshapen version of her reflection. “I’m trying to tie up the loose ends of my failure, is all.”

He probably didn’t care for her sob story, but Kire didn’t mind. It was almost refreshing, having to tell the story to somebody who had no inkling what in the seven hells she was talking about.

Wanderers

“Hm.” She ignored the fact that he hadn’t given his name yet, not having volunteered her own, anyway. “Sunlight as weakness.” Already the wheels were turning in her mind. “Until six months ago. It fits.” She brought out the carnelian gem she had taken from the Kartaian corpse, peered at it as if it would reveal its secrets. “He might have found a workaround for that, offered his services to them. But I don’t think it’s all for free.” She grunted. “Blood magic in itself isn’t evil or forbidden, but his use of it is completely inhuman. He takes bodies and twists them into becoming his dolls. When I saw the Kartaian body back in the city, it moved and attacked me. Not in the conscious, deliberate way that its living counterparts did earlier, puppets are still just puppets, but it’s still powerful magic. His earlier attempts were much more crude than the display I had seen earlier. I highly doubt these monsters knew what they were agreeing to when they cast their lot with him.”

She paused, absently fixing her hair. It really was a shame, the circumstances they had found themselves in: the night sky was lovely, otherwise. “Thanks,” she said after a long while. “Even if you didn’t really want to. Thanks for helping.”

Wanderers

“Kartaian,” she repeated, the word clumsy on her tongue. She lapsed back into silence, letting him rest his throat a little longer as she thought about what had just happened. A formidable enemy, these Kartaians. A million questions. Any other time she would have enjoyed a reprieve like this, basked in the silence and lay down to sleep, but her curiosity wouldn’t let her sit still for too long. “Besides stealth, is there any reason they only attack at night? Why can you do what they do? Are there others who can do that, too? And if it’s so dangerous to stay in the ruins, why haven’t you left like the others?”

She could only stay silent for so long. If he wasn’t going to answer her, she’d keep throwing questions at him, anyway. She stood and paced, arms crossed. “And if my quarry had taken up with these—Kartaians—why would they let him in their confidence? They seem to be more than capable without him already, and I doubt they entertain promises of friendship. What could he have offered them that they’d be willing to work with him, to find me?”

Kire huffed. Times like this she wished her cousins were with her to throw ideas back at her. Daryll, especially. They didn’t want her pursuing him anymore: she could hear Jan’s voice, weary from having lost so much, and Daryll, too, who now, more than ever, had to be a big brother to his little sister. If Ed were still with us he’d be mad at me, too. She stamped down the well of guilt before it could take over.

“And what do I call you?” she asked, turning to the stranger.

Wanderers

Kire hadn’t expected an oasis, but then she’d already learned to let go of expectations by now. Still shivering a little from walking through that darkness again. She watched him, making sure he was alright, and also a little bit relieved at the reprieve from hearing him berate her. Kire sighed; for now, it seemed she could rest easy. She unclasped her helmet, ran her fingers through her short, cropped hair, a bit conscious of it now after seeing the uneven blonde mess on top of his head.

She left him to his silence for a while, drinking from her wateskin and refilling it afterward, then likewise washing her face, both to clean it and to refresh her from the dizziness of her portal use. Afterwards, she cleaned her helmet, then sat down to rest under a palm tree, eyes closed. Gods, fresh air. None of the reek of blood magic, or rot and carnage, or the killing aura of the hunters’ magic. Only her own, and her testy companion’s. She rubbed her left eye gingerly, wondering if—no, when—the hunters would send more of their own to look for them.

“You’re free to try to kill me now,” she said after a long silence, leaning back against the tree, glancing at him. She had some hope that this ordeal would get him to loosen his tongue, though she didn’t particularly optimistic. “What are they? What do you call them?”

Wanderers

It wasn’t looking good for her companion. Pushing through her dizziness, Kire lunged just as the man had collapsed onto the ground, the brute pulling out the sword at his side as if plucking a little thorn from his skin. Kire thrust her sword up just as the monster was about to turn to face her, piercing his torso diagonally. The monster snarled, bending to make a grab for her, swinging his sword arm to slash her but with a cry she twisted downward, sword held firm, narrowly missing its swing. Her blade slashed all the way through the monster’s middle. The moment her blade went out the other side of his torso, Kire leapt back, not trusting that even getting his chest cleaved in two would remove the threat completely.

The moment the body fell, she raised her sword again and hacked the head off, then looked the whole body over, trying to see if it had the same rune and gem she had seen in the corpse of its fellow earlier today. Nothing. At least nothing she could see on the surface at the moment. That would have to wait, unless this new corpse shambled back to life. Kire turned her attention to her companion. She sprinted over to where he lay and knelt, an ear to his chest. “Hey. You alive?” He was. But his neck looked badly bruised. She would need to rest up before she could use the portal again, but they needed to get to safety in case these monsters were followed by more of their kin. “Where’s the safest hiding place here?” she asked, thinking aloud, picking up the head covering the monster had torn off him, wrapping it around her hand, and picking him up carefully, ready to carry him to safety.

Wanderers

“Tss.” Kire bit back her retort about her being mad. To her, his idea of risking himself to lure the other one away was equally foolhardy, given what little protection he had, himself. But she considered the idea anyway, nodding at his last point. With the other one’s wound, they could go after the female together and pick off the weakened one. If he had indeed weakened.

When he interrupted himself and held up a hand, she understood; she could hear them, even without their magic signaling their presence nearby. Kire shifted her position into a crouch, ready to spring, her eyes closed. She concentrated on the sounds they made as they taunted their prey, concentrated on the aura they emanated. “Her. Keep him distracted.” Without waiting for a signal, she disappeared in a blue flash.

She reappeared, right in front of the female monster, only inches from her face. Kire threw her whole body into the elf and within the blink of an eye pushed the both of them through another portal, high above the city. The heavier body fell ahead of her, but Kire didn’t wait to see her handiwork, opening another portal, her last for the night, and falling through it.

Kire landed, rolling, onto the chapel hill again, panting heavily, bracing herself against the waves of nausea from having exerted herself so much with her portals. But the mad gleam was back as she sprung back onto her feet, already back in a fighting stance, facing the wounded male. No more portals for now, but she had enough power for this bastard.

Wanderers

“Hm. Lovely. Duly noted.” She glanced at him again. He seemed to share the same disappearing ability as the other two hunters. Does he share their trick with touch as well? A question for later. “My—power isn’t the stealthiest anyway,” she muttered. “Take on the male it is. Gash that big, he should have lost a lot of blood by now.” That little fact about them being female-led piqued her interest, but for now they needed to exploit it.

“Your way of ‘travel’ is harder to anticipate,” she said, thinking it over. “And mine takes up too much energy for prolonged use.” A pause, then a mad gleam in her eye as she grinned. “Can you—do that thing again, transport the two of us? And ‘throw’ me right at the male? Right at his face? Close enough for me to grab him?”