A Legacy of Blades - An Epic Tower Fantasy

"On your left!"

Anilith responded to Orion's cry almost without thought, pivoting and parrying two incoming attacks. An arrow took one of the creatures through the eye, while Anilith bisected the other.

They were deep in the Plains, far beyond the area for relaxed, easy-going quests, and far beyond safety. Anilith was loath to think she'd ever considered this place 'safe' to begin with, seeing the more frightful creatures that lurked near the edges. To a casual eye, their opponents were trifling, but the casual eye could often be mistaken.

Prairie Hares, as Orion had informed her this type of rabbit was known, were nothing like their cute and cuddly kin. These were savage little beasties: wiry of body and hair, sharp of tooth, and vicious of mind. Each stood on its hind legs, its forequarters evolved for slashing and tearing as the beast jumped about. Their fur might be good for wire brushes, if anything. Perhaps, as some type of coarse armor to protect against unwanted hugs. Not even the meat was worth saving from these varmints.

Anilith couldn't stand the little things, an insult to their soft-furred brethren. "Some days, I don't know if I can even stand to visit the little guys in the pens anymore. These bastards have ruined that bit of peace for me."

"Eyes up, kid. We may have taken out a dozen already, but that don't mean they're done with us."

Almost as if waiting for that very moment, for dramatic effect, of course, Razhik leaped from the distant grass, which grew tall enough to mask his movements, with a squeal. Several Prairie Hares scattered from his ambush, but two were too slow for the beast. One caught a talon, dragging it along for the ride, while the other found an audience with his kingly jaws. The pests had proved no threat to Razhik, and he had turned it into a game, making them scatter.

Orion, with his longbow, couldn't ask for a much better hunting companion. His arrows quickly found purchase in another two of the beasts, and Anilith moved away from the group to draw the ire of the remaining creatures.

Weeks spent in the interior of the Plains had given the group a passing understanding of each other's abilities and an acceptable level of teamwork. Months spent exploring the outer Plains had refined those skills almost into the realm of instinct.

While they generally strove to conceal Razhik's presence, not wanting to answer the questions it would raise, he was an integral part of their squad. He could ferret out hiding creatures better than anyone, and his venom was powerful enough to let him fight toe-to-toe with creatures even larger than himself, not that the group came across those often, here. He always stayed near enough to Orion to protect him in a pinch, but mainly acted as an ambush predator, taking out targets quickly and with abandon.

Orion served as their eyes and protection from afar, calling out threats and taking out stragglers. He wasn't helpless in a fight but preferred a supportive role in the action. He hadn't been forward with any magic of his own, and Anilith had begun to wonder if he even had any. Still, his prowess with his bow more than made up for his outward lack of magic.

Anilith filled an…odd…role in the party. She was not a heavily armored warrior, but her agility let her dodge most attacks, if she was aware of them. Orion helped her there, and her burgeoning skill in Blade Weaving filled in gaps at times. She didn't dispatch nearly the number of enemies as the other two, but still proved to be quite…distracting.

She squared off against the three Hares that rushed her, staggered enough that she could almost see the footsteps she would need to eliminate them. Her skill called to her, showing her the motions that she would need and, almost before she realized it, the three lay dead at her feet. The last had an arrow sticking out of its back.

"Oh, come on. I had that one! You just wasted an arrow, is all." The complaint was insincere, a running joke between the pair, especially as Orion seemed to have no shortage of arrows he pulled from his cloak.

"Confirming a kill is never a waste, kid. Leaving an enemy at your back, now, that's just damned unwise." The Wanderer's eyes scanned the scene, never resting until they were safe behind walls. He wasn't much fun when they had to camp out, never fully relaxing.

Razhik loudly proclaimed…something, but his mouth was too full of Hare to understand what he was saying.

"Spit it out, Lord, nobody can understand you when you speak with your mouth full," Anilith teased the creature, "I don't even know how you eat the stuff. It looks gamey as anything I've ever seen, and trust me, my culinary skills have come a long way since the travesties I inflicted upon myself in my early days, back home. War crimes, really."

Taking her advice literally, he retched the uneaten remains of two Hares. "I said…Blech, Hare ball, hate when that happens. I said, your cooking still…you know what, never mind." He dove back into his meal.

"Stop your bickering, you two. We haven't found what we came out here for yet, an' I'll be damned if it ain't about time a Rare spawned. It's been over a week since we saw one last!"

Anilith made to offer a retort when her senses screamed at her. She closed her eyes, relying on the Wind as she had begun practicing any chance she got. From a distance, about twenty yards out, behind and to the right of her, she could feel the wind being twisted. The song she had become familiar with felt tortured, contained. Something about this made her feel uncontrollable anger. The Wind was not something to contain.

"Second quadrant, 2!" Anilith yelled as she turned to face the threat, communicating the source of the disturbance to her comrades. "Something is messing with the wind!"

"Still gonna have to explain how you know that, one of these days," Orion declared as he drew a bead on the call out, arrow knocked and ready to be drawn at the slightest motion.

Palpable tension settled over the area. Razhik settled low in the grass in wait. Anilith, listening to her mysterious ally, moved close to her friends, and Orion stood vigilant, ready to make the call.

Without preamble, a row of grass far to their left fell limp, cut off low to the ground.

"Scyther! Be ready, you two! It's gonna swarm the field with blades 'til it finds us!" The Wanderer's hoarse whisper carried just far enough to reach them.

"Finally," Anilith muttered to herself, "We've been out here weeks looking for something like this. Rare doesn't begin to cover it."

She felt the disturbance more fervently than before and knew something big was coming.

"It's getting ready to make its move," she projected so her allies might hear, "Time to see if any of our training paid off."

Anilith stood tall, eyes still closed. Opening them, she saw the blue strands of the Wind cut and pulled into a working against its nature. The breeze blanketing the plains showed a bare point, a dead zone at the source of the disturbance. It was, to her eyes, as if the Wind couldn't touch the sphere, and any contact met with a violent, green-tinged assault that sucked the blue tendrils away. Near the center of the sphere, her eyes saw a faint pulsing green.

It wasn't the pleasant green of the grass or things that grow, nor was it the virulent, sick green of decay, so prevalent in the swamps she knew. This was something other, with a strange glowing aspect to it. It felt unnatural, like the creature strove to overcome the wind rather than ask for its assistance.

All at once, the void around the creature shrank rapidly, three, four, six scything blades forming in quick succession.

"Behind me, this is it!"

Already moving, Orion quipped back, "What is? We can't see anything. That's what makes Scythers so dangerous!"

The blades launched two at a time, arrayed like a fan to maximize coverage. The final two overlapped in the middle, almost directly on their position. Knowing her allies stood behind her and that these blades, apparently invisible to everyone else, wouldn't leave any of them unscathed, although Razhik's scales might weather the assault well enough, Anilith searched for her dormant power. At the same time, she asked the Wind for guidance.

"Wind, aid me. Clear a path, show me your captor."

The grass fell, drifting away on a soft breeze as if held by a forgotten friend, uncaring where their embrace took them. Time seemed to move at a crawl, and Anilith saw three Prairie Hares, pseudo-bipedal freaks, the hair of their arms streaked with that strange, glowing green light. The Wind Blades, for she saw nothing else they could be, raced towards her, even as Blade Weaving and her Sight, aided by the Wind, slowed the apparent passage of time.

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An arrow, loosed by her ally on sight of the creatures, flew over her shoulder, zeroing in on the rightmost Scyther. It had nearly covered half the distance when its flight was cut short by the incoming, scything wind.

The creatures grinned maliciously, something Anilith didn't know Hares capable of. Her arms moved, each knowing the path, the timing, necessary to intercept the incoming, invisible death. Her blades, in the moment before contact, gave off a silvery sheen she might have missed, if not for the touch of the Wind.

That silver repelled the glowing, green scythes, reversing the course of both. The Scythers died with a grin, as their heads rolled from their shoulders. The green streaks on their arms faded to white as the grass fell in the newly made clearing. The bodies of their fallen enemies, forgotten beneath the swaying weeds, stood out like mounds of verdant green, the bases tinged with red.

Anilith turned with a half-cocked grin, the shock on her comrades' faces evident. "Huh, well that worked well enough, eh?"

"You're either the luckiest sonuvabitch I've ever met, or beaten with a touch of genius. Either way, I think that makes you the luckiest sonuvabitch I've ever met." Orion shook his head as they sat around the fire at their camp in the inner Plains. "Can't say I was hopin' that we'd run across a Scyther, of any Rare spawn, but a Rare's a Rare." Orion's eyes panned the darkness bordering the camp as he spoke.

Anilith screwed up her face. "I get that you don't see them that often, but isn't calling the variants 'Rares' a bit on the nose?"

"An' whats wrong with bein' on the nose, kid?" He tapped his nose twice for emphasis. "Gets the message across easy enough, no?"

"Yeah, sure," Anilith replied, "but it doesn't exactly convey the danger they represent. By your own account, they aren't all created equal, or you'd have been just as happy coming across a Scyther as any other variant in the Plains. How many of the ones our Lord, Razhik, has chased off would be as dangerous? That's not even getting into the fact that the name doesn't remotely touch on the fact that they all have magic." Anilith wiggled her fingers at the word 'magic.'

"Kid, if someone ain't learned that Rares have magic, well, they don't belong in this world long, anyhow. An' a Scyther's one of the deadliest things you can run across in the Plains." He paused, stroking his chin as he considered her words. "Can't say we would have even known those three were there, if not for your wibbly wind talk, or whatever it is you do. Most folks wind up lookin' at the wrong side of a shovel before they know what hit 'em, when they come across a Scyther. Silent killers, those things. Most of the others ain't near as bad."

Razhik ignored the two and picked his teeth with a bone, which he held between two uncomfortably dexterous talons.

When Anilith managed to pull her eyes from the sight, she replied, "Fair enough, I guess. I think we'd do just fine, running into them again, though. We could probably make a pretty penny if other people would rather not tangle with them, too. Makes me wonder, though, if not all variants are as dangerous as one another, are they all just rare?"

Orion stared blankly at Anilith for a moment, mouth ajar. "Huh, I dunno why, but I'd never considered it from that angle. I guess maybe my namin' system needs a little work. What's better than Rare, though? Super? Ultra? Uber?" His distant gaze let on that his list didn't end there. "Gonna have to give that one a good think before I make any hasty decisions. Don't wanna go ruinin' a good thing."

Anilith blinked a few times before returning Orion's stare. "Well, anyway. Lord, you still hungry? I can pull another out for you, if you like."

"I don't know if there are enough of these things in the world to fill me up. When you get to be large and majestic, like me, you're always on a certain edge of hungry, but I think I've had just about enough Hare in my teeth. I could maybe force myself to stomach some Scyther, though…"

"Yeah, that's not gonna happen, bud. Worth more to us than a simple meal for curiosity's sake, those ones." Orion scratched at the creature's scales.

"I mean, we could probably spare one, right? If I heard you guys right, nobody ever brings them in, so two would still be a great haul." The scratches stopped abruptly.

"Oh yeah, definitely. An' you know what's better than two? Three, now can it, you over-long noodle." The Wanderer withdrew his hand and returned his full attention to his vigil, even if his eyes had never stopped scanning for threats during the conversation.

Anilith dropped one last Hare carcass in front of Razhik. "Gods know, we have plenty of these, so just eat up. Nobody wants to hear your grumbling and rumbling all night."

Without a word of thanks, Razhik dug in. Anilith busied herself, moving about the camp and making the necessary preparations for sleep. She looked at the sky, appreciating the fullness of the rising moon. It went through phases, just like the outside world, but it felt much grander, much closer. The full moon also reminded her of a small blessing the Tower had given her, one she hadn't appreciated right away.

Outside, around the time the moon hung so shining and bright, her sanguine rains came upon her. In the Tower, she had yet to have such an experience. It was unnerving, at times, for something so innately part of her life to simply vanish without trace, but, after the initial unease, its passing made easier by her lack of personal contact, she found the change suited the world. All in all, it gave her more time to focus on training and took away some level of regularly scheduled distraction.

"'Bout time we turn in, kid. I'll keep watch a while, get some shut eye." The man jolted her from her inner thoughts, even as her body mechanically finished the task at hand. A fresh pile of logs sat before her, in easy reach of the fire. "We've got a big day ahead of us. Once we stop at the outpost and turn in our haul, we'll be off to see how well the Forest remembers you."

Anilith, unsure if she'd misheard him, sat there, dumbfounded. For months, they'd moved all over the plains, completing quests and working on their teamwork. They'd hardly spent a full day in town in the past seven months! It had seemed like they'd never leave the Plains.

They'd come across a few variant creatures during their travels in the inner Plains, but none of them held much threat, even to her. Sometimes, she was able to get her ability to work, while other times it just failed outright. Orion had laughed a whole afternoon after she tried to reflect a ball of water and gotten properly soaked in the effort, her ability failing spectacularly, as her sword cut into the sphere. She wasn't sure what she had expected, in all honesty. Those encounters lacked a certain…thrill. There was no real danger in them, merely serving as an introduction to magical creatures. How anyone would be defeated by one, she couldn't have hazarded a guess.

They'd been hunting the outer plains for a while, but Razhik had a bad habit of scaring off the variants. The creature was just so damned excitable, he kept jumping at them the moment he noticed one, and with Anilith and Orion occupied with the average creatures, the beasts just fled from the foolish King. She could have sworn she'd heard one laughing at him, once. She knew today, their first successful encounter with a variant in the outer Plains, was important, but she hadn't imagined it would be the final test.

If she had learned anything from her time with Orion, there was always another test. The man, for all his carefree attitude suggested, was cautious to his core, and he was always watching to make sure nothing snuck up on his friends.

"Friends," Anilith muttered under her breath. "I guess we are, now. Huh."

"What was that?" Orion's gaze refocused from the dark beyond the firelight, and he looked to Anilith.

"I said, you sure? We've been out here forever! What makes tomorrow so special?"

"Well," Orion scratched at the back of his head, "truth be told, I've felt it's probably time for a while now, but I had to know if you could get your stickball trick to work."

Thinking back to a day they'd seen men playing a game in a park in Spokane, where one man smacked a tossed ball with a stick, she rose to her feet in retort. "It's not stickball, that stupid game. Grown men standing around, playing a game like they're in the glory days of childhood, when there's perfectly good training to get to. Ugh, it's…it's…" She found herself unable to think of a more fitting analogy, which only frustrated her further.

"Relax, kid, I didn't mean…" Orion couldn't even finish the statement, standing there with his hands up as he was interrupted.

"Don't tell me to relax!" Anilith's expression became pinched.

"Alright, don't get your britches twisted! I was tryina say, 'when you figure out a better comparison, let me know.' Stickball's just how I see it, for now. Best game of stickball I've ever seen, too, the way you knocked the faces right off those Hare's smiles." The man shook his head and laughed.

"…Alright, I'll let you know." Anilith's expression relaxed a little. "It was pretty funny, turning the tables on them like that. If only it didn't take such real danger for me to use the ability reliably."

"You'll figure it out, kid. Don't worry about that. You got me beat in the combat magic department any day, but don't tell anyone I said that," Orion finished with a wink.

Deciding it was as good an opening as any, Anilith asked, "You really don't have any magic? I haven't been able to see…well, anything. I even caught a glimpse of my own, before."

A curious look crossed his face, but quickly vanished. "I wouldn't say any, but let's just say it ain't all that useful in a fight. Still, serves me well enough in other ways, eh, Razh?"

"Yeah, yeah," Razhik spat out between bites, "You're all mystical and shit."

"See? When has Razhik ever lied to you before?" The sincerity on the Wanderer's face was almost alarming.

Anilith could think of a few times she'd count, even if Razhik swore he was just mistaken at the time, but she let that retort die—no use kicking dead fish.

"On that note, I'm gonna turn in. Gotta get my beauty rest if we're gonna head into civilization for the first time in who knows how long." She turned and listened to the calming sounds of the wind, interspersed with Orion's quiet movements as he shuffled around the camp.

She saw the field around their camp through the eyes of the Wind, and in the moments before the blackness of sleep took her, she dreamed of a time she might experience the sight's beauty, such awareness, even in her dreams.