No more villainry -- Luna
Master of the Shadow Arts, Bai Niyurufanthur, had joined many other citizens of Wolklippenstadt in the circus' audience. It was a rather excellent show. Bai lingered for the sideshows and games, seeking some games to reveal as fraudulent or rigged.
A Master of the Martialist Art of Shadows could not fail at a carnival game unless it was truly rigged.
He never got to try them, since he found a scene that distracted him entirely. One very small Halfbred Elven girl was facing five of the young local louts. Bai recognised the bullies as sons of Wolklippenstadt's important people, and therefore immune to the usual consequences.
They were not immune to having their asses handed to them by a shockingly adept fighter for her age and size.
She couldn't be older than five, yet she had perfected the correct way to breathe. The child had a near perfect defensive stance and could perform most of the movements of the first Kata, redirecting her foes' energies against them and away from her.
The bully boys went crying to their father, leaving the girl watching Bai with understandable wariness. She knew Bai had seen it all and done nothing, which counted against him.
"I am curious," he said, "Who has taught you that breath, and that way to move?"
The child eased out of her defensive stance, but kept herself ready to adopt it once more. "Ma taught both. Keeps our skins on in cities."
A wandering Master of the Martialist Arts in this traveling show? Bai was itching to trade notes. "May I meet her? I would love to talk with her, since I recognise my own art in your fighting style."
"It's not fighting, it's self-defence," recited the child. "I never threw a punch or hit a single soul. You were witness."
"Indeed I was," soothed Bai. "I would testify to such were it to come to court. Upon my oath as a Master of Shadows." He might as well have said, Upon my oath as an untrustworthy Faekindred, but somehow, the words and his manner convinced her.
"You can follow," she allowed, and led Bai into the 'backstage' zone of the circus, where an assortment of wagons and cages made their own little village. People not on display were working on various things. Feeding the beasts, mending various items, doing laundry and so on.
The prodigy child raced up to a closed caravan and rapped on the door. "Mama, Mama, Mama, there's an Elf who wants to talk to you." She sat on the steps and announced, "She's feeding my baby brother."
"I have the time to spare," said Bai. Elves always had time to spare. He expected to meet a Halfbred Elf at the door, given the stumpiness of the child's pointed ears.
What greeted him instead was the amber face of a Hellkin woman. He knew those features too well. From his estranged daughter, who had run off with one of the devilborn. He knew that skin tone, too, from the man who had stolen her away.
She evidently knew him, too. "Hello, Grandad," she said in tones colder than Archimemnis' heart. "Mam said that you can take a long hike through all the hells." The child over her shoulder had a tail, and was a slightly different shade of amber to their mother.
"I was wondering how a child of five could know the Way of Shadows," iced Bai in a similar temperature. "Now I know."
"Mam never taught me the breathing," said the beast before him. "That was all on Da. Those who care for Hellkin teach it early, when we're too young and frightened to control the leaking magic."
"Mama calls it sweet dreams breathing," said the little girl. "It keeps the nightmares away and helps me be brave."
Bai took in a centering breath, knowing that the shadows around him waxed and waned with the flex of his lungs.
"Exactly like that," crowed the girl.
"Hellkin have taught it to Hellkin since the first ones figured it out," said the devilborn. "You dare start making claims against me and mine, you'll get a curse on you that you'll never fight off."
Since the first ones figured it out... Bai's own grandfather had been a king and a conquerer. The first Master of the Art of Shadows. The story went that he had won it off a demon.
Had the legacy of the Niyurufanthur clan been... stolen? Was the legend of his ancestors entirely horseshit? Bai had a lot to find out, and he knew he couldn't get the truth from a Hellkin. He did say, "I shall not intrude on your time any further. I sincerely wish you well."
The Hellkin woman said, "Go stick your head in a pig, old man."
Bai took his leave to the sound of the girl asking, "Mama? What was that?"
He had research to do. Starting with his grandfather's journals, kept preserved in Bai's private library. Bai employed the Turnslip Step to walk into one shadow and out of another. In this case, the convenient shadows of his personal space in Hidden Cloud's gigantic house-tree. A place so familiar to him that he could find anything there whilst blind and deaf.
There, the patriarch's journals had been untouched sacred relics since Bai had moved them there. Unopened. Unread. Reverentially dusted, but otherwise unbothered by anyone.
Bai found the book of the century that his grandfather's fate had changed from fugitive to fortunate in less than a decade. There, in his grandfather's own words, he found and read...
Havyng obsurv'd thee hyooman devyls att theyre fport, I hav dyvyn'd theyre breth ys thee key unto theyre fearfom proweff.
There were further observations, doodles, and notations on experiments, but it was clear. His glorious ancestor had stolen the secrets of the Hellkin in order to defeat them.
Bai Niyurufanthur had a lot more to think about.
[Photo by Taylor Flowe on Unsplash]
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