Fell Champions

Rua was feeling a lot more in control. It was a familiar sensation, from her early days in the cabin on Ashborne’s Island. Weird how she thought of those as ‘the good days.’ When she’d slowly been awakening herself to possibilities, of a life without expectation. Of having to prove her use. The feeling wasn’t as intense, but it still felt good.

Kir might have control over Rua, but Rua was certain that she had the power.

Kir was too afraid to use her Pact. Too afraid of hurting Rua, or worsening their relationship. She wouldn’t use her ability except under dire circumstances.

And Rua now knew Kir’s own weakness. That despite how much she clad herself in the armor and bearing of a Mikovian, she had the passions of a true Silayan. And like any typical Mikovian, she was terrified of being seen as outside of the rank and file, recognized as different. Mikovian women weren’t supposed to lust over other women. It was abnormal. Fine if a Silayan did it, but a Mikovian?

It was a weakness. But how could Rua exploit it?

Rua needed her freedom, but she also needed to not destroy her relationship with Kir. She couldn’t use her. She couldn’t do to Kir what Kir had done to her.

Love was the answer. She had to make Kir love her enough to let her go. Let her go, and maybe come with her.

But how to do that? Rua didn’t have much experience with this kind of thing until recently. And even then, it’d taken a woman falling out of the sky and practically into her lap for her to end up in her first relationship. And Otter wasn’t exactly difficult to seduce.

Rua thought about it. Otter’s initial plan was good, but it needed some reworking. She could no longer wait for Kir to come to her. But she also couldn’t be too obvious about her pursuit. She had to force Kir to come to her without making it look like she had an ulterior motive.

And then an idea came to her.

Later that day, Rua found herself at the training grounds. An assortment of soldiers, most Mikovian save a few, practiced with wooden swords and shields. The hits were hard, hard enough to break bones. Only those with soul power were allowed to spar here. There was nothing gentle about this training. 

Kir was nowhere in sight, but that was expected. She wasn’t looking for her yet anyway. 

She wondered who exactly she should pick a fight with first. There was a group of three standing off to one side, mostly chatting between friendlier bouts. She knew of them. They’d be likely the most dangerous here. 

Lita, a Silayan mercenary who got into one too many tavern brawls where her opponent ended up dead. Yurgen, a Mikovian soldier who tried to desert, and when the first group had been sent to bring him in, he’d killed them all. Siddic, a Criobani assassin who’d tried to kill Kir. 

All their stories ended the same. They’d fought Kir. They’d lost. 

Kir had a habit of hunting down the worst criminals. She usually killed them, but there was the odd one who’d end up victims of her Pact. These three were the only ones other than Rua currently under her control. 

Between the three of them, Kir didn’t really need anyone else.

They weren’t Rua’s problem. Not yet, anyway. She was going to introduce herself eventually. But not just yet. To them, she’d just be the new girl. And while none of them were friendly with one another, she didn’t want them uniting ranks against her. 

This wasn’t her strong suit. She wasn’t exactly a charismatic person. She couldn’t make anyone who met her love her, like her father. 

But she could command respect.

So, Rua went with part of Otter’s plan. What she called, ‘first day in prison.’ She needed to find the biggest, burliest Mikovian she could. And then beat the tales right out of them.

She found her target pretty easily. He was a big man. Tall, even by Mikovian standards. Taller even than Old Grey, though not nearly as wide. He was nearly half again as tall as Rua, and his practice sword was easily as big as her. He smirked at her as she approached and drove the wooden blade into the sand and leaned on the hilt. He knew what she wanted.

“Perhaps someone more your size?” he asked, his smile a little too wide, a little too condescending.

She wasn’t even certain she could reach his jaw to punch that smile clean off his face. She had to jump to do it.

Normally, she would’ve just broken his knee with a sharp kick to bring him down to her, but better to climb this mountain and let these brutes know they weren’t safe with their heads up in the clouds to protect them. 

With the sheer amount of soul power augmenting her strength, she shattered his Tenacity in one hit. It actually felt kind of disappointing, and not even remotely satisfying. 

Breaking his jaw with the followup punch did feel kind of good, though.

That didn’t put him down. He was a Mikovian. They only got stronger as they got angrier. More focused. It was like they came alive during a fight.  It was difficult to actually beat them without killing them. Difficult, but not impossible.

He ripped his sword free from the sand, his jaw hanging at an awkward angle, and swung the blade in a wide arc. His attack was off-balance, and definitely too high. Rua ducked under it, stepped into the attack, and punched him as hard as she could where his kneecap connected to the rest of his leg.

There was a wet pop. The Mikovian ignored the pain. He couldn’t ignore the demands of his own body. The leg wouldn’t support weight anymore, and down he went. As he hit the ground face-first, she came up behind him and struck both his shoulders, dislocating both arms.

She looked to a few other Mikovians nearby, shrugged, and walked away. They dropped what they were doing and immediately ran to their fellow. She didn’t know why they looked so concerned. She’d only dislocated a few joints. Really. He should’ve been wearing armor. Or not picking fights with Silayans half his size.

Rua headed to Kir’s three enforcers. The Crib, a wiry man with a stripe of crimson hair shaped into a braid that covered only the middle portion of his skull, leaving the rest bald, was howling with laughter. Lita, a scar-faced woman, was busy taking a heavy pull from a flask, while Yurgen, the Mikovian, was sitting on the ground cross-legged, his eyes closed. Unlike most Mikovian men, he was clean-shaven, his scalp and face both shorn smooth.

“You Il-Su’s replacement?” Lita grunted as Rua approached.

“Yes and no,” Rua said. “I’m newly… recruited to your ranks.”

Yurgen made a sound low in his gut, a rumble of sound that reminded her of distant thunder. 

“We heard you’d fought the Mistress,” Siddic said. “Word is you bled her.”

Rua shrugged. “Rumours are funny things.”

He leaned into her, coming into her personal space a little more than she felt comfortable with. “Is it just rumour? Heard it from someone who was in Old Grey’s hall and heard Kir herself tell the tale.”

“If I had a way to hurt her, do you think I’d be here?”

“Good point, good point. So, is Il-Su dead?”

“Not from my lack of trying,” she said. 

Lita chuckled, and Siddic frowned. And somehow got even closer to Rua without touching her. She was tempted to slap the man, to set a pecking order, but something warned her that was a bad idea. He was baiting her.

“If Il-Su lives,” Siddic said. “He’s mine to kill.”

“Any particular reason?” she said, staring at him levelly. 

He spat to the side and stalked off, heading towards the sparring sands. He picked out a pair of short-bladed practice swords and began yelling for someone to fight him. A group of four men exchanged glances, and then began to circle around him all at once.

“He’s not all there, is he?” Rua asked.

“None of us are,” Lita said. She drank from her flask again, belched, and then screwed the top back in place. “If we were, we wouldn’t have attracted the bitch’s ire. She only reserves a place for the worst amongst the Ice Watch.”

“She has a name for this little club?”

“Of course she has a name for us. Or rather, Siddic named us that, and it stuck.

“But… Ice Watch?”

“Because we watch after the ice queen,” she said. “I never said it was a clever name.”

“What did Il-Su do to annoy Siddic?”

“Been here a day, and already getting nosey?” 

“I could ask after your story, if you’d prefer.”

That flask cap came unscrewed again, followed by another small pull. “Killed some of those Crib beggars you see around Ri Oa. He was harvesting soul crystals, and was working himself through the locals. No idea why a Salassian would be dumb enough to show their face here and begin doing something like that. Wasn’t hard to track down a man with eyes like his from witness accounts.

“Original orders were just to kill him, but then he went and killed a kid when we went to take him. It was an accident. He threw a knife at Siddic, and, well, things have a habit of just kind of missing him. Next thing you knew, Kir was turning Siddic’s face into fresh mash, and Il-Su was blubbering like a babe, saying he didn’t mean it, that he never missed, that he’d never hurt a kid.

“When Kir was done with Siddic – and don’t feel bad for him, he thought that kid dying was hilarious – she then threw her sword at Il-Su and demanded she fight him. It went about as good for Il-Su as, well, that.”

She pointed to Siddic. The four Mikovians had all flanked him and were swinging swords at him from every direction at once. But every time one did, their sword would turn in mid-swing and head directly for one of their allies. Siddic giggled to himself the entire time. He didn’t bother to fight back. His opponents were fighting each other for him.

“So, Seat Hyleah,” Lita said. “Didn’t expect to see Kir try recruiting her own tale-telling sister. What’d you do to make her hate you so?”

“Hate’s not the problem I’m having with her,” Rua said. “If it were, things would be so much simpler.”

“That’s the way of the world,” Yurgen rumbled.

She expected him to say more, but nothing more was forthcoming. His eyes remained closed, and if she hadn’t heard him speak, she would’ve suspected him to be asleep. 

“And what do you do as Kir’s… Ice Watch?”

“Guard the ice queen,” Lita said. “Sometimes she has us hunt someone guilty of telling stories. Or people like Il-Su. Mostly we just sit around, waiting for the next order. It wouldn’t be bad, if we were getting paid.”

“She doesn’t treat you like slaves?”

“She kind of does. And I’d gash open the woman’s gash if I could.”

“She’s lenient,” Yurgen said. “More lenient than I, if our positions were reversed.”

“What do you mean?” Rua asked.

“Here we go,” Lita said with an eyeroll.

“She could forge armies,” Yurgan said. “Legions, devoted to her, forced to obey her every whim. And she wants to. We know she does. She hides it well, but she is Pact-crazed. Whenever she takes one of us, it is like bliss for her. Pure happiness. We’ve all seen it, that moment when she took us, one by one.”

Rua remembered. Kir’s eyes glazed over, her face locked in a grin that seemed a parody of joy. Drool falling from the corner of her mouth. At the time, Rua had been more focused on what the Pact had done to her. A feeling of filth and defilement as it had slid over her. She hadn’t thought of how odd Kir’s reaction had been at the time.

“Her Pact rewards her well for using it,” Yurgen said. “It wants to be used. But she holds back. I have seen men rub norsiddin into their skin until their minds were faded to nothingness, Silayans drink themselves under the table with their vareesu, and Criobani nomads chew their blue grass until they fell off their birds, and none have managed to capture the pure bliss that Kir rides whenever she uses her Pact.

“If a lesser woman than her had that Pact, they would rule their own country by now. She is my queen, until my dying day, and not because of what she has done to me.”

“Don’t mind him,” Lita said. “He’s fucking weird.”

Off to the side, two of the Mikovian warriors were down, and Siddic had picked up a third short-bladed practice sword. He was juggling them while singing a bawdy song. His remaining two opponents seemed unsure of how to react. 

“You’re all weird,” Rua said.

Siddic didn’t seem to move, or change how he was juggling, but suddenly one blade after another leapt from his hands in his act and launched at the two remaining Mikovians. He almost seemed surprised when they did, as if it’d been completely unexpected. Each struck a Mikovian in the face, and the third managed to hit one in the side of the head before bouncing off to hit the second man, then bouncing off him to then hit each of the down two Mikovians in turn as well.

Siddic looked genuinely perplexed and gave them a helpless expression before shrugging widely. 

“No,” Lita said with a smile on her face. “We are all weird.”

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