Fell Champions

The idea that Il-Su, Silence, the Bringer of the Long Quiet, could turn invisible at will was terrifying. It was an ability he didn’t need, but supplemented his skillset perfectly. 

Juala’s shield flashed again as it was struck by an unseen attack, and she let out a long string of swear words as she swung her spear like a club. She connected with nothing. The spear blade itself gave off a low hum of energy, as if waiting to discharge another blast of lightning.

“Quiet,” Vex hissed.

“You be quiet. Tale-telling Crio trying to–”

There was another flash from Juala’s shield, followed by another ineffective swing and more cursing. 

Vex tried to listen, tried to hear some betrayal of noise from Il-Su. He was naturally pretty sneaky, but he also depended a lot on in-game mechanics and stealth skills to muffle his footsteps. While he obviously had some kind of Pact ability helping him, it might only be covering sight. 

Vex closed her eyes and listened. She was rewarded immediately with something stabbing into her, but with her pain turned off, it was just a weird sensation in her side. She paid it no mind. 

She thought she heard something to her side and swung out a fist, but connected with nothing. 

“That only works on television,” came Il-Su’s taunting voice. She swung for him again and missed. He continued, “Humans can’t hear well enough for echolocation. Not well enough to hit me anyway.”

There was another flash from Juala’s shield, but this time she managed to keep from swearing, focusing on her counterattack that ultimately came up fruitless once more.

“Too bad we don’t have a lisuna,” Juala growled.

“That’s it,” Vex said, an idea coming to her.

She slashed at the palm of her hand with the knife she had, and flicked the blood outwards. It took a couple tries in some wide sprays, having to open the wound further between attempts, but she got some to land on Il-Su.

It was just a few specks, nothing that would let them see exactly what he was doing. Just enough to give them a general location. But that would have to do.

Il-Su made a dramatic sigh. “And I was having fun, too. Well, back to work, I guess.”

Those little hovering blood drops hurled themselves across the room, landing low on the floor. Right next to the pile of knives Vex had pulled out of herself and discarded.

“Keep him distracted!” Vex yelled, but Juala was already moving. 

Vex closed her eyes, tried to tune out the sounds of fighting. Every part of her wanted to shrink and hide, to stop pretending she was brave and just run away and wait for Rua and Otter to find her and pat her on the head and tell her everything was okay. 

Instead, she focused on memories. Specifically, Rua’s. 

When Rua had been young and recently abandoned by her father, she’d been alone. Alone in a big house with only servants to keep her company, and the odd visit from Aunt Sureya. 

Those visits had been cold, detached things, done more out of a sense of duty than anything else. Sureya hadn’t approved of Rua, had barely seen her as a person, but was ultimately the reason why Seat Hyleah and her house continued to exist despite some calling for it to be abolished and wiped from the Islands. 

Rua had no one, until Kirhaela arrived. 

It was a small thing, their first meeting. Likely meant to be a political overture, and nothing more. But when Kirhaela had first arrived to meet Rua, she’d brought two gifts. A Mikovian practice sword, and a lisuna. 

A lisuna was a small, cat-like animal that was nearly impossible to tame. The kitten was more than a handful, gnawing on Kir’s hand hard enough to break skin when the two girls, in that awkward stage between childhood and their teenage years, first met. 

Rua had been shy and afraid, and Kir fierce and domineering, a force of personality and someone used to getting her way. She’d had an expectation of what she would get when she met the heir to Seat Hyleah. A proud warrior, an admiral in the making. Instead, she’d been met with a lonely child in need of a friend.

And for whatever reason, Kir had risen to that challenge. 

Rua had been firmly in her shell at first. But between the lisuna kitten and Kir’s absolute need to get her way, that barrier had begun to crack by the end of the day.

Vex focused on the memories of that kitten. The claws, the teeth. Sharp, and readily able to draw blood. A lisuna was lanky, twice as large as a house cat and all of it ropey muscle, built for long pounces and powerful sprints. But most of all, they were characterized by their large, sensitive ears, and their golden eyes that seemed to perceive everything.

The two traits were what made them such successful hunters, able to see in both bright light and complete darkness, perceiving what others could not, but more, they truly were capable of echolocation with their hearing. How efficient, to be able to both see and hear perfectly. Lisuna weren’t the deadliest predator in the Islands, but they were the most respected. Both excellent at taking prey, and avoiding larger enemies. 

She needed to be that. 

The memory itself wasn’t enough. She knew she wouldn’t be able to replicate it just by stolen childhood moments, playing with a cat that wasn’t entirely convinced you weren’t food. She needed to get her hands on one in order to properly imitate it.

But there was an echo. A call in her mind, as if from a great distance. Something beckoning to her. She reached for it.

Somewhere in the back of her mind, she could feel a sense of triumph. 

The information flooded into her. It was like suddenly she knew what a lisuna was like, inside and out. As if she’d had one herself, and not just from borrowed memories. 

She knew how hard and sharp those claws were, how the keratin that formed hair could also produce nails, and exactly how to change herself to mimic that. She knew about the lenses of eyes, and how to tweak both the composition of her own, and alter the optic nerve itself to better allow for more efficient information transfer directly into her brain. It was as if she’d done it herself a thousand times before. No, a million. 

There was a sense of how practiced she was. How many things had she torn apart, just to put them back together. Not always the same. Not always living either. Not by any definition a normal person would use. It was necessary. How else would you learn? 

What she needed were the ears. Normal ears would never suffice. She couldn’t just rework the inner material, and just expect to be able to hear at the same level as a lisuna. 

No, better to just scrap what she had entirely, and start fresh. Her flesh shifted, her bones very gently realigning. She had to be careful. She didn’t have a lot of spare material to work with. The Empire had forced her to dump the majority of her reserve when they’d captured her. She only had maybe fifty pounds worth of stock, stored away and compacted into a small, condensed ball in her gut. 

First thing she’d do, once she solidified the connection, would be to pick up a few bodies, get a good starter kit back together before going into hiding. Four, maybe five adults would do, then–

Vex recoiled, realizing she wasn’t thinking her thoughts. This was someone else, something else, in her mind. Something cold and analytical.

Vex tried to force it away, tried to sever whatever connection she’d made, even as it reshaped her eyes and created a new pair of ears on top of her head, removing the old ones entirely while doing so.

She knew without seeing that her eyes weren’t just golden in colour, but also in brightness. They’d emit a very soft shine, allowing her to see things no other person could, except maybe a Nguarian. 

The ears were large and pointed, much like a fox’s, and just as sensitive as a bat’s. They were both a good start. She’d need to make other alterations. Alter her legs’ structure, perhaps, to allow for better leaping, hollow out some of the bones, but make the outer layer as dense–

Again Vex tried to force the outside presence from her mind. The mercenary woman, the person she’d once been, was somehow trying to force her way back into her body, even without the presence of the shard of metal from the Vexurian being present. 

Vex wasn’t certain how, but she knew it was partly because she’d invited it in. Just as she was connected to Otter and Rua, she was also connected to the woman she’d once been, and by letting her guard down, that woman was now trying to force her way back into control.

And now, after feeling how that woman thought, how she viewed people as just parts to be used, she realized with horror how much Otter had been right. 

This person fucking sucked.

The connection was tenuous, and once Vex’s fury was directed at it, it snapped without much effort. She knew that if the shard of the Vexurian were closer, or if she were touching it, it’d be much more difficult. Maybe impossible. 

But right now, in this moment, that woman she had been was trying to force her way into a fortress with only a toothpick as a siege weapon. She’d only gotten a foothold at all because Vex had invited her in. Without that invitation, there was nothing allowing her presence to continue. 

Vex’s eyes snapped open. She nearly fell over as soon as she did.

Colours were different, and seemed to endlessly shift from one to another. Everything was sharper, more detailed. Shadows had a faint purple glow to their edges. And in the middle of the room, Juala fought against a distortion in the air, a figure of shifting waves and ripples, as if the air itself were alive and filled with ever changing colours.

Il-Su.

Vex took a step, and had to steady herself as everything seemed to rock. Her depth perception was different, as was the way her brain processed the information she was seeing. Almost, she reversed the changes she’d done, and then realized she had no idea how. The information given to her by her Other had left with her. 

She checked her Will. She had a little more than quarter left. It’d have to do. Il-Su had no more Tenacity left. Juala had wiped it out with that lightning blast she’d done from her spear. All Vex had to do was get a single hand on him, a single finger, and the fight would be done. 

She didn’t even need skin-to-skin contact, not with him wearing leathers and natural fibers. She didn’t need to close off his veins or shut down his nervous system to kill him. Having his own cloak strangle him to death would be enough.

But could she kill him? Was she really like her ‘parents?’ They were strong. They were willing to push themselves to that decision. And after seeing a small piece of her Other’s mind, she wasn’t so sure she could do that.

There was a short exchange between Il-Su and Juala, and suddenly Juala’s shield gave out, shattering around her and leaving her exposed. 

Vex discarded her doubts and tried to summon up her courage and charged in.

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