And power like that corrupts.
–Haku Shikome Kido-Mi
thunderstorm
by Haku Shikome Kido-Mi
chapter one- the calm
It was raining. Not very hard, but Yuki could hear the rain drumming on the slats that made up the roof of her house. Occasionally a gust of wind would push the rain though the window, and shower whatever was under the window. Eventually, after it had rained for hours, she had moved everything beyond the rain's freezing reach, into the middle of the house. There wasn't much– blankets, a shelf with salted and dried meat and some candy, a chest with clothing in it, a few iron pots. They all cast long, flickering shadows in the firelight.
Far off in the distance, maybe over the ocean, Yuki could hear thunder. It approached and receded intermittently, and sometimes a flash of lightening whipped across the sky and lit it up so bright it was almost like the light of the sun.
But only for an instant. Sunlight was the one thing that the Beast Kingdom never had. Yuki ran her claws through her white, tangled mane and went back to her weaving.
The thunder came closer again, once or twice roaring so loudly that the walls shook. Yuki sighed. She wanted the storm to pass soon, so that she could go outside without getting soaked and see what damage the storm had dealt to her plants and to the forest. It was hard enough to stay here unnoticed by both the Beastmen and Altena's armies, without having to lose all of her herbs and vegetables to bad rain.
Her patience was wearing thin, and the patterning of the rain, the crackling of her fire in the hearth and the shuffle-clunk of her loom was beginning to grate more than soothe. After the battle of Mintos and King Kevin's assassination, the war had taken a bad turn for the Beast Kingdom, and Yuki wanted no part in it. King Lugar had pulled his soldiers back to the castle, a last defense.
Soon, things would snap, and events,
like snowfall building up on a mountain, would come to a head and fall
like an avalanche. And, like an avalanche, everything in front of
it would be swallowed and drown.
Yuki wanted no part in this war.
Someone rapped at her door, startling her out of her thoughts. She lay the shuttle of her loom down and stood, and walked over to the door, and opened it. Rain poured outside, making puddles in the dark. The wind shifted and sprayed her with it.
Standing in the door, under the scant protection of the overhang of the roof, huddled against the cold and the rain, was a man. It was impossible to tell how tall he was, because he was hunched like a beggar and wrapped in a black cloak, so wet that he might as well have swum to her house. The hood was pulled over his head, but his black hair was plastered to his face anyway.
He looked up at her, shivering from the cold. His face was pale and gaunt, with sharp cheekbones, although from hunger or if he was naturally like that Yuki couldn't tell. He might well die of the cold and the rain if she didn't do something.
She stepped away from the door and waited for him to come in. He didn't move, just stood there, breathing hard. Hff-hff-hff.
Yuki clenched her hands into fists.
People who insisted on etiquette in ridiculous conditions exasperated her.
"May I come in?" the man said, almost
inaudibly.
Yuki growled with annoyance. From this point, with him soaked and shivering and hunched, she was at least two heads taller."Yes." she said, finally.
The man moved quickly, shedding his cloak in the doorway and heading over to the fire, careful not to drip on her loom. He stretched out in front of the fire and sighed, a long shuddering sigh, like a tired soul.
Yuki shut the door and hung the cloak through one of the windows. It was wet already. More rain wouldn't harm it, and when the storm passed it would dry.
She walked back to her loom, and sat, and picked up her work where she had left off. Eventually she spoke over the rhythmic shuffle of the loom. "Who are you?"
"Ikuza." the man said. Either his voice was naturally quiet, or he was too tired to speak louder. Stretched out in front of the fire, he reminded Yuki of nothing more than a large black cat.
"Ikuza." Yuki repeated, sorting the threads of her weaving and poking them into place. She never once looked at him. "I am Yuki Kingsdotter."
Either he didn't know who she was, or he didn't care, because his breathing pattern never changed, the same hff-hff-hff but slower than before, almost like he was sleeping.
"Where do you come from?" Yuki asked, laying down the shuttle-comb of the loom and examining her work.
"Elsewhere." Ikuza said, curling up like a cat. He was still shivering.
Yuki glanced at him. "You'll never get warm in those clothes. Go change. You'll find some dry clothes in the chest, and some blankets."
Ikuza stirred, first looking up at her with a unreadable emotion in his eyes, and then, with the same silent graceful speed that he had entered her house with, darting to the back of the house. He had the look of something hunted about him.
Yuki turned her back on him and continued her weaving. She clicked her claws against the wood frame of the loom, when it the color of his eyes struck her. Deep crimson. His paleness, was, perhaps, not completely derived of the cold and the wet.
She turned around. Ikuza, already having changed his clothing, was wrapping himself in a blanket. She glared at him, and he noticed it and shrank back to the wall.
"Demonspawn. Where do you come from?" Yuki hissed.
Ikuza looked cornered, backed up into a dead end. He slid down the wall, knees up to his chest, wrapping the blanket even tighter around himself. The clothes he was wearing, her clothes, borrowed, were too loose for him. He was lost in them. They accented his thinness.
His head was lowered, and he was
staring at the floor. His dark hair shadowed his eyes.
The rain ceased to patter on the
roof, and only distant thunder broke the silence.
"The Underworld." Ikuza whispered.
Yuki exhaled. Hnff. She had thought as much. She went back to her weaving, listening to Ikuza breathing behind her. From his reactions, the way he acted, always furtive, moving quickly, she knew that he was being hunted. Probably by demons of some sort. If they followed him here, then he would have to leave. As long as they didn't, he could stay.
Yuki repeated that out loud.
Ikuza went back by the fire, stretching out in front of it again. He was still shaking, although whether from cold or nervousness now she couldn't tell. He'd taken the blanket and huddled in it like a frightened mouse.
"Why do you live here, alone?" Ikuza asked, still speaking so quietly it was hard to hear him.
"Why not?"
"Don't you get bored?"
"I find things to do." Yuki replaced one of the threads with another, another color. "Why did you come here?"
"I... I'm being hunted..."
"That's what I thought." The loom clunked and shuffled. "Why?"
Ikuza gave her a nervous glance, and sat up slowly. "I don't know if I can trust you..."
"I am worthy of your trust." Yuki said, placing the shuttlecomb down for the fourth or so time this night. She stood and walked over to Ikuza, crouching in front of him. "I have no reason to betray you."
Ikuza nodded, quickly, but he was still shivering. He reached inside the collar of his shirt and drew out a silver flute, on a chain. He was wearing it as a necklace.
Yuki sat back. She didn't know what it was, but by the way that Ikuza was treating it, with such reverence, it must be magical in some way.
Ikuza grought it up to his lips and started to play it. The music was soft, and sounded like silver bells, or wind through reeds. It was ghostly, and it filled the house quickly. It filled the night, weaving and dancing. Ikuza closed his eyes, and concentrated on his playing.
The melody twisted, sending shivers down Yuki's back. Now it sounded out a lament, a ghost ship torn by stormy sea, dead souls never at rest.
Ikuza stopped, and hid the flute
back in his shirt. Yuki sat on the loom stool, and studied Ikuza's
face intently.
There was a shadow hovering behind
him, blocking the firelight. Yuki, startled, stared at it.
It stared back her, with one yellow, unblinking, cat-slit eye. Ikuza
glanced at Yuki, and the behind himself. He saw the shadow, and grinned,
slightly. Yuki noted that he had fangs for canine teeth, marking
what type of demon he was. A vampire, like the Jagan King Kevin had
told her about so many times.
"That's Shade." Ikuza said. Shade moved his eerie gaze towards Ikuza, then bobbed in the air and dissipated, back into Ikuza's flute. "It's his flute I carry. He's the last of the Elementals. Without the Mana Goddess, without Mana, and with nothing to ground themselves in, the others vanished." Ikuza paused, thinking, and touched the chain that he carried the flute on. He finished, speaking in his usual, barely audible tone. "As far as I know."
Hnff. Yuki sighed, and then rolled the shuttlecomb in what loose thread there still was. "I'm tired. I'm going to sleep. You may sleep there, by the fire, if you wish." She stood and paced back to the piles of blankets, spreading some on the floor into a makeshift bedding. Ikuza was breathing steadily by the fire, probably already asleep. He had been running for a long time.
Yuki sat on her bed and studied her weaving from afar. She couldn't see any flaw in it. It was as perfect as the design that she had laid out in her head. Eventually she tired of looking at it and pulled the other blankets over herself.
The weaving was of Dolan.
What strange times these are, Yuki thought, before drifting into sleep. All war and blood and fire. I wish that there may be some peace.