The Legends of Kaizor
Life of the Silver Tear:

Protect Me

His first conscious awareness is hearing a woman’s beautiful voice, singing a cheery, wordless tune. The wind is still and he doesn’t smell any fires, nothing burning. In fact, all he smells are field flowers and common grasses. The air is comfortably warm, not raging around him. Obviously I’m not in hell. Could this possibly be heaven? Giniro cautiously wonders, as if afraid that allowing such a lofty possibility might send him hurdling straight into the pits of hell.

Slowly, more sensations creep into his awareness. He can feel his nulan undertunic, the hole in the wool cloth where a sword cut him in his fight against the bandits. He’s lying down, and while his head is propped up on something soft, a few twigs poke his back. Not heaven.

Giniro opens his eyes and slowly sits up. He was lying on top of a patch of long yet mostly comfortable grass, a folded spare tunic was what padded his head. As he props himself up, he notices a thin strip of cloth lying on the ground next to him. Giniro realizes that his veil is missing and ties the cloth in its place. A little wider than he’s used to, but he can deal with that later.

He looks down at his nulan, noting that his outer tunic is missing. A gentle breeze blows and he again feels the hole made by the sword, and he slowly moves his hands over the cloth, feeling holes from the arrows—

The smell of blood overpowers him, the sound of hearts beating roars in his ears. The cry of a mighty, frenzied predator bellows from deep within his throat, and he swings his claws through a man paralyzed with fear.

Bile shoots up in his throat and he rolls onto all fours before vomiting.

The singing instantly stops and footsteps hurry close as a familiar, worried voice exclaims, “Giniro!”

The teen sits back on his ankles, wiping the last trace of bile from his mouth with the back of his hand and looks at the distressed maiden who called his name. It’s Kokeyera, the young woman he ran into and saved from some trouble a couple times in Falor.

But now what? More petty hunting jobs? Using the tracking skills his ranger mother taught him to find lost children? These can't be the things I'm destined for, they won't help me gain vengeance on my patriarch. Giniro's chin falls to his chest and he twists his face in angry frustration. I don't even know how to start. What kind of rayku slayer am I?

“Giniro?”

He feels a hand on his shoulder and is startled to look up and see Kokeyera kneeling down next to him, a concerned look on her face. Was I so lost in thought that I didn’t notice her getting so close? He shakes his head lightly, and is thankful when no sudden dizzy spells overcome him. Her fingers tighten on his shoulder and he resists the initial temptation to shrug away from her hand, knowing that she’s just trying to be helpful. Right now a million questions are reeling in his head, and he’s glad the first one he blurts out isn’t something completely stupid.

“What . . . where am I?”

“We’re just outside of Salen’s Hovel. There’s another village a long day’s walk from here, but I wanted to wait until you were conscious again to start.” She sets up on her knees and feels his forehead with the back of her hand, then takes his hand and feels his wrist for a pulse. “How are you feeling?”

Giniro brushes her hand away, trying not to seem as brusque as he usually acts when somebody invades his wide personal space. Kokeyera bites her lip, looking hurt, and the half-breed turns away, tensing his shoulders, one hand resting on the ground as he turns away. The touch of dirt and grass directly on his palm makes his eyes shoot open and he looks back and forth from his clawed hands to Kokeyera. The claws are as closely retracted as he could manage before, but that takes concentration and in his nervousness his claws start to extend.

Starting with just a point right at the tip of his fingers at the nail, they push out, a faint line running along the top of his finger as the tip starts to extend. The point spreads, and the claw’s other edge shoots out along the inside edge of his finger, drawing down the middle of the finger to the knuckle on the palm. Now complete, it could look like a thin knife blade extended from his fingers. He curls his hand, the blade-claws still follow along the centerline of his fingers.

Kokeyera, still recovering from her embarrassment, only now starts to look at Giniro, and as soon as he notices her eyes moving towards his hands, the digits betraying his curse, and he thrusts his hands into his lap. “Where are my gloves?”

She looks a little surprised at him for a moment, then shrugs. “I know you usually wear gloves, but when I found you, you weren’t wearing any. Your veil was gone too, but I remembered you telling me how important that was, something symbolic, so I left a strip of spare cloth for you.” She smiles meagerly, yet in her eyes he can see the gesture is insincere, there’s some sadness behind it. “Your hands...” She trails off and the frown grows. “How are you feeling?”

Giniro is mildly surprised, he expected her to ask what happened to him and the village – it’s the foremost question buzzing around his head. Wait, the sword hole, the residual traces of smoke and blood in his nostrils. The elfling clutches his stomach to try vainly to keep down the feeling of nausea down.

The village . . . the entire village and every living thing in it . . . not just the barbaric bandits, but everyone . . . were he capable, Giniro feels like crying. His voice cracks as he breathes out, “Oh God, they’re all dead. I couldn’t stop . . .”

“Shh, shhh, what is it, Giniro?” She brushes back a bang of his hair and coos comfortingly. Somehow, the half-human settles down and she drapes an arm around his shoulders to help support him, if just a gesture. It still works, surprisingly.

“I was in Salen’s Hovel, there was an attack of bandits. I tried to stop them, and they shot me,” Giniro brushes a carefully-fisted hand over the arrow holes. It was strange how little they hurt when they pierced, but then they started leaking a burning feeling into his chest. Soon, pain was all he knew, and he could feel death rushing up on him, at the same time a comfortingly welcome release from this shameful existence, and yet so terrifying that the fear gripped his whole being, and something rose inside of him.

The snarl like a creature not of this world comes unbidden to his memory and he shudders, its name terrifying him even now. “A Balor . . .”

He meant to say that a Balor came out of him, the Balor was him, when Kokeyera interrupted with a gasp. “A Balor came and destroyed the village?”

The lump forms in his throat again and the only nods. It’s the truth, in a sense, isn’t it? But not the whole truth. A rising, twisting feeling in his gut—

Suddenly, Kokeyera throws her arms around him. “Oh, Giniro, you survived a Balor! I . . . you came so close to . . . I can’t believe you’re still alive!” Tears overflow her eyes and she blurts, “I can't believe I was so stuck on bounty hunters when you're facing enemies like Balor rayku!”

Keeping his clawed hands carefully hidden in the less-than-generous folds of his undertunic, he tries to shift slightly to loosen Kokeyera's embrace without looking too overt. The move doesn't work, and a feeling of panic is starting to make his throat feel like it's closing. “Um . . . Kokeyera? Bounty hunters?”

Now the human girl draws back, looking away bashfully. She swallows, and Giniro can hear her heart pounding in her chest with his super-human hearing. She sits back on her feet and stares at the folds of her skirt beneath her knees, playing with them without seeming to realize it. “I . . . well . . . remember when you rescued me from those five?” she finishes, her voice cracking from what almost happened to her.

The pointy-eared-boy nods and she takes another moment to compose herself before she goes on. “Well, they weren't just thugs. Nor were they the first, they were one of many groups of bounty hunters hired by Grand Magus Nil to kidnap me and bring me back.” Her eyes squeeze closed, tears trailing down her face. “He'll do anything to . . . I don't want to go back.”

His senses heightening of their own accord, the smell of her tears, her fear assails his nose. He can practically feel her tremoring, the tremulation in her voice. I'm not a body guard, but . . . “Kokeyera, can you tell me who he is? What Nil does?”

“Grand . . .” she begins, sniffling once, swallowing hard, and then taking a deep breath to calm herself. “He's a very smart magus who owns the largest research complex in east Naskwiz. Wizards, alchemists, doctors of all sorts work for him. Lots of people know him for research he does on treating magic addiction . . .”

Her wavering voice peters out and she starts shaking again. Over his own nausea and now intensely curious about her tale, he sits on one knee and leans closer to her, tentatively reaching out one hand to steady her shoulder. “Kokeyera?”

She swallows and leans a little more towards him, seeming to draw strength from his firm yet gentle grip on her arm, the scent of new tears dying. “But behind closed doors he wants to probe the depth of magic power. He sends talent scouts throughout the continent for those with 'the gift', the younger the better,” she spits bitterly. “Some he buys,” the girl manages to speak before the tremulations in her voice threaten to rob her of speech, “and some he kidnaps.”

Giniro carefully tightens his grip and the girl places a hand over his, as if desperate for the reassurance that he is indeed real and not a phantasm about to disappear. “I wasn't even four when he took me from my family. He had the gall to say they were glad to be rid of me!” She states with rising ire, her fear now giving way to anger. The boy notes a conveniently sympathetic, angry wind whip through the clearing.

The girl's trembling turns to an angry shake. “He had me use magic and I was awash in the power before I ever knew how addicting it was, but that still wasn't enough. A half dozen magi . . . he took their . . . virtually their very souls, and infused that into me.” Her heart starts to slow and her gaze drops as her fury melts into depression. “Now I can't even watch a fire without needing to reach into its reesh.”

Kokeyera withdraws her hand and adjusts her position to sit a little straighter, taking a breath to calm herself. Giniro notes the strange wind also dissipates. She sucks in a lungful of air and clenches a fist before continuing. “It was somewhere before my fourteenth birthday when I realized I couldn't take any more. I didn't know what was happening to me or what I might become, but I wouldn't sit around to wait. I had to get away from him – so I ran away.”

She lets out a harsh, self-deprecatory laugh. “I didn't even get out of the perimeter that time before they found me, the sellsword thought I just got lost. I ran away the very next day, but this time I found out how to get outside.” Another sardonic smirk crosses her face and Giniro could clearly tell the sense of self-loathing even if he was looking away and couldn't smell. “I was so inept I ended up coming back because I was hungry and cold in the snows.”

The girl draws in her knees and wraps her arms around her legs, letting out a sigh. “It was the most humiliating moment in my life. Weeks passed before I could escape again. He sent a couple of his magi-students to bring me back. I kept running, but the hunters he sent after me always were careful never to hurt me. I guess my tenacity must have gotten him mad, because they started getting rough and . . .” She trails off, lifting her head to look into Giniro's eyes. “I'm afraid now. I'll probably always be addicted, but I don't even think I can . . .” She pauses to swallow, her scent tinging with anxiety. “Would you protect me? At least help me get away from Magus Nil?”

Kokeyera's hold on her emotions starts to crack when her hope for salvation draws away and stands, looking at the road. She can feel the tears about to well up in her glistening eyes when she hears his answer.

“Yes.”