By Christopher Keene
Kessler breathed in the bitter air and imagined the symbol for enhanced sight. His vision changed so he could see every detail of the city of Tyria spread out below him, allowing him to survey the dark, mortared towers looming over thatched slums. Squat buildings were crammed between towers tall enough that the splash from an emptied chamber pot could still hit the bottom windows. It was a fly-ridden corpse of a city, dead but not yet buried.
Perched on a high roof, Kessler watched as one of his target’s guards, who would have appeared as a mere speck to any normal human eye, entered his enhanced view. He was a man in white armor who was swiftly making his way down the stone path toward the whoring district.
Not the best place for a cleric to be found dead.
He knew that the guards in the Loincloth brothel would be trouble even having wift, the symbol for speed, planted in his mind. Despite this knowledge, he did not hesitate before stepping over the roof’s edge. Falling, he watched through enhanced eyes, blurred from the rushing wind, as the guard beneath him walked under the veiled archway of the brothel. Kessler envisioned the symbol to decrease his weight, ari, lowering his speed to that of a drifting feather. Just as the white-clad man vanished inside, Kessler slowed in his fall, the tail of his black cloak billowing out behind him as he landed.
Looking up, he saw the Loincloth’s two bouncers staring at him, their mouths agape. Kessler envisioned the wift symbol and drew out his two Sai-Blades. He bounded between them as the blades landed in the bouncers’ necks and they fell limply on either side of the archway. Piercing skin with a Sai-Blade killed in an instant.
Kessler hadn’t seen the bouncers fall. Dashing forward, he leaped and landed in a crouch on the long wooden table in the middle of the brothel’s bar. Men of all classes and creeds looked up as silence came over the room, some at the table wearing the same white regalia as his target. He flung his arms back and envisioned the symbol which manipulated the Sai-Blades, a crossed arrow known as zex. The daggers dislodged from the bouncers’ necks and flew toward him, spinning onto his index fingers as he brought them up. He heard seats fly back and tip over from men’s backsides as the cleric’s guards stood and drew steel.
Kessler spread his arms, his Sai-Blades stabbing directly into the white cloth between two of the guards’ armored plates. The blades of the other two guards’ swords slashed down in his direction, but they only bit the wood of the table. The bewildered fighters looked up to see Kessler above them, his body spinning in the air as his cloak trailed behind his every movement like a flag. As the symbol for ari faded from his mind it was quickly replaced with the crossed arrow before he changed the arrowhead’s direction. The daggers flew up into his waiting hands before shooting out again to seek new victims. He flipped back onto the floor behind the table, his Sai-Blades once again returning to him. He counted six dead already, four spread across the floor in front of him and the two bouncers behind, a hefty load for the corpse-cutter to collect.
Kessler rose slowly and envisioned uon, the symbol for strength. At the mere flick of his hand, the heavy table flew from his path before smashing into the sidewall of the bar. People ran screaming from its path. He began to walk, his black cloak stained with the ale he had crouched in. Having been hidden in a corner of the room, the guard in white he had first seen entering the brothel ran screaming out from behind him with his sword raised. Kessler envisioned the symbol for uon again and kicked out. His foot crushed the man’s breastplate like a tin can. He assumed the kick would kill the guard but had not predicted the man’s corpse would fly through the plastered wall of the brothel and into the street. Kessler smirked and strode toward the stairs that led up to the private rooms. No one was rushing at him now that they could see the almost perfect circle of dead guards spread around where the table had once been. As he arrived at the staircase, the single remaining white-clad guard seemed to weigh his odds for a moment and then fled through the archway.
A better option than through a wall.
Feeling he would no longer need them, Kessler sheathed the Sai-Blades under his cloak. Climbing the stairs that led up to two separate balconies, he envisioned the symbol for hearing. He was suddenly blitzed with a myriad of sounds which, when he had been new to this ability, had been overwhelming and confusing for him. Over time he had trained himself to focus on only what he wanted to hear.
The familiar voice of the cleric was blurred with every other sound at first but soon became clear to him. “Did what to my men? Here?”
From the same upward direction he had heard the voice, Kessler noted heavy footsteps approaching. He looked up as the white-robed man came into view on the landing above and looked down on him. Ptolemy was even fatter than Kessler remembered, his second chin alone showing the wealth he had gained from his betrayal. This thought quickly made way for the symbol of ari. A single symbol needed complete and utter concentration. He leaped up onto the staircase’s banister, jumping off it and landing with a flip onto the second floor. The fat cleric cursed and retreated back into his room, his flowing robes no longer belted to hold in his fat, wobbling body. Kessler followed him through the sliding doors, seeing the young, frightened boy lying on the room’s sleeping pallet. As he entered he saw, not Ptolemy in the darkness, but the flash of steel in the light of a flickering candle.
If Kessler hadn’t kept his ears enhanced the ambush would have undoubtedly finished him. However, his knowledge of the trap wasn’t going to make it any easier to avoid. As quickly as his mind could work, he used wift to dive away from the strikes. Rolling up onto his feet, he turned to face the two remaining guards in the darkness. It appeared Ptolemy was paranoid enough to keep them even in his bedding chamber. Replacing the symbol with uon Kessler ran forward, throwing the men through the sliding doors and off the balcony with a single push.
On instinct, he leaped up as he heard the broken doors hit the bar floor below. His instincts served him well, for as soon as he jumped, Ptolemy stumbled under him with a thrust from his own Sai-Blade. The symbol of ari that looked so much like the letter ‘i’ was replaced by the crossed arrow once again. The look of horror that came over Ptolemy’s chubby face when his Sai-Blade flew from his hand was highly satisfying for Kessler. His expression didn’t change until he turned to see Kessler landing behind him with the very rare and sought-after weapon now within his grip. Even then, it only changed into a look of bewilderment.
“Now give that back. You may be a killer but you’re not a petty thief, are you, Kessler?”
Kessler was surprised by the effect a few dozen pounds could have on a man’s voice. He turned to the young boy still in the room with them, unmoving, as though frozen in fear.
Sliding the extra Sai-Blade under his belt, he murmured in his gravelly voice, “Get out.”
As though taking any opportunity he could find, Ptolemy turned to leave.
“Not you!”
The boy awoke from his trance, jumped to his feet, and ran out of the room. Ptolemy stopped and shrugged, giving him a whimsical grin that reminded Kessler of older days.
“You can’t really blame me for trying.”
“I can!” Kessler snapped. “And I do blame you… for everything that has happened to this country. You must’ve been relieved that they kept their promises. After all, you’re a cleric and can get all the young boys you can lay your sticky fingers on.”
Ptolemy poked out his bottom lip and raised a fat finger. “And a lordship, but I assume that promotion is still being decided upon considering how long it has taken the earl to summon me.”
“The earl…” Kessler’s already heavy voice rumbled with hatred when hearing that title.
“We couldn’t have won, Kessler. This land would have been the Avaani’s within a year anyway, even if I hadn’t—”
“If you hadn’t betrayed us?” Kessler’s interruption cut through Ptolemy’s words like an ax through wood. “Have you seen what he has done to the land? What you allowed him to do?” He walked over and pulled aside the thin drapes of an open window, pointing to the barren wasteland that was visible over the city walls. “Look! Do you see any trees out there? No, because they cut them all down to make Sai-Blades! You sold them this land and they have destroyed it! How can you be proud of that?”
Ptolemy was unaffected by Kessler’s words, his face turning solemn. “My pride was never as strong as yours, I’m afraid. If Lord Ganarak had won his duel maybe we could have kept fighting, but—”
Kessler held up a hand to stop him. “But he didn’t and so you sold us out?”
As though still content with his decision, Ptolemy nodded. “This is a different world we live in now, Kessler. I was simply the only one with the vision to see it coming, and yes, I took advantage of that. I saw the changes for what they were and acted upon them for my own benefit. What’s really so wrong with that?”
Kessler turned on him, jaw clenched. “Not a thing. Though I wonder if you’ll have the foresight to see this coming also.”
He stalked forward and Ptolemy raised his hands.
“Wait, what are you doing?!”
Kessler envisioned the uon symbol and grabbed Ptolemy by his shoulder.
“Kessler, come on, no, don’t!” the fat man cried, struggling against Kessler’s rock-like grip as he carried him to the window. “Kessler, no!”
Catching Ptolemy’s ankle up in his other hand, Kessler threw the fat cleric through the opening. He watched the man’s quick fall end with a sudden stop as he hit the rock pathway in front of the brothel. It was a clean defenestration and didn’t make as much of a mess as he had expected. Despite this, he was surprised at how quickly the guards posted in the area rushed to see the cleric’s dead body. They had obviously been warned by the one guard he had let go and were now being ordered to storm the place and find him. Kessler had no intention of waiting around for them. He had done what he needed to do here.
Taking a few steps back into the room for a run-up, he envisioned wift again, the symbol for speed. He sprinted toward the open window, launching into the air as he swapped it for ari. He soared over the open street, between two of the high towers, and landed softly on a tiled roof before he began running again. No one could catch him now that he was in free-flight unless they were on horseback. Even if they were, he could always take them out in a similar fashion to the guards he had killed.
Although being chased was always more interesting to him no one seemed to be following. It didn’t matter. His mind was calming again, wandering to other issues and goals ahead. Revenge on the betrayer was only step one. Step two was the drawing together of those who still remained true to Tyria, those who would fight like him if given the power. He hadn’t been collecting these Sai-blades for nothing, after all.
From up on top of one of the high towers Kessler could see the hills. Their green was always a bitter reminder for him of what used to surround the Tyrian city during his youth. Now the green and tall trees were gone, replaced with the cracked and dead hardpan of the wasteland. With it the animals had gone, the shade had gone and the minor storms that used to gently caress the trees now ripped at the city and the desert sand in cyclones, unperturbed.
Despite all this Kessler was grinning, because even though he could see the reminders of the green hills in the distance, he could also see the events that were happening in the street below him. They showed him yet another occurrence of a tipping in the balance of power. Those he had given the Sai-Blades to were taking back the city, kill all those that stood in their way. The knights could no longer stop them, after all, they no longer had their weapons.
Everyone’s death belonged to someone his master had taught him, so said the gods. To him, of all things his master had taught him, the idea of the gods was the least convincing aspect of the Lunari beliefs. But when the exiled Minaaya had taught him of it, he had never let his skepticism show. If he was to believe all that how could he suppose to do what needed to be done in this city?
He stood up on the edge of the high pointed roof, like standing on the edge of a spear jutting into the sky. He cleared his mind and envisioned the symbol similar to the shape of spectacles for sight and watched as those under him began advancing on the castle.
Kessler would give them no more assistance. He had taught them the crossed-arrow symbol first because it was the least overwhelming on the senses, making it easier to learn. However, zex would only work on those with Sai-blades. The next group he would teach the strength symbol, they would need to keep the castle when the Avaani tried to take it back. Either way, it should still be enough to keep them alive.
His dark cloak-tail lifted as he sprinted around the edge of the roof for a run-up. He then envisioned ari, jumped off the roof and began to soar through the air, so high up that anyone from below could have easily mistaken him for a crow flying in the sunlight. As always he was pleased with the sense of freedom given to him by his powers, but he knew he had to apply the correct focus or he was more likely to get himself killed.
The next step in his plan was already in motion which meant he could move onto his other schemes in the governing system for what was to come. Like in the Imperial Capital of Nasaia he had already set up his noblemen’s identity in the court. It wasn’t hard with his pale complexion making him look like an Avaani northerner. It wouldn’t be long before he was invited to their formal gatherings.
Things were falling into place far too easily.