Chapter Three
The Dark Path to Enlightenment
The night passed uneventfully, aside from an utterance from a dream of Yura's that Clare found somewhat disturbing. There were a lot of odd sound and phrases coming from his mouth over the course of that hour in which they occurred, but the one that stood out was something about a "damn drunken monkey."
That incident aside, there was nothing for Clare to concern herself with overnight. Raki woke not long after Dawn, Yura about an hour later, all prerequisite appendages and organs in tact, as promised.
"Good morning," he said groggily, sniffing the air. "Something smells absolutely divine."
"I'm making breakfast." Raki had gotten a fire started, and was cooking happily by it. He had gotten his hands on some fish, which was staying hot on a rock by the fire, and was currently in the process of cooking up some of the left over pork from the night before.
"Ah. I'd been hoping to sample your cooking from the moment you said you were a chef. You seemed to have a good instinct for cooking. Let's see what you've got." Yura approached Raki with rather swift steps, but not aggressive, but rather just efficient.
Raki flinched back for just a moment. Precepts of the Yoma still affected his opinion of Yura, but he was generally accepting of him. He wasn't sure why. He knew he should still be terrified of Yura, but except for a reflexive reaction to sudden movements, he was very trusting of him.
Clare thought she knew why, though. His Yoki. It had initially seemed to be fully concealed, but only the power inherent in it had been hidden, and that is what she had sensed when she had walked in on Yura in the first place.
What she sensed now was of the same origin as the sense of malice and hatred that guided her in Yoma hunts, and was incredibly difficult to locate a Yoma by, but impossible for them to hide. It gave her a general sense that a Yoma was in the area.
This however was not malice. It wasn't so powerful, and easy to overlook, but what she sensed was peace. Either Yura was an excellent trickster, or everything he said was true.
It also explained why she and Raki suddenly felt so at ease in his presence. Around other disguised Yoma, even normal humans felt a sense of unease, though they didn't understand its source. The aura Yura exuded had a similar level of effect, but it caused a sense of comfort. She would have to be careful to avoid being drawn in, just in case.
She looked up from her inner musings to find that breakfast was ready. Raki and Yura each had a fillet of fish and a sizable side of bacon, with Raki also having a sizable chunk of bread. He offered a piece to Yura, who replied "No thank you. You don't have much for yourself, and though I do enjoy the flavour from time to time, I get no digestive value from it."
"Suit yourself." Raki handed Clare a very small piece of each bread, fish and bacon. Not much at all. At this point, Raki knew how much Clare ate in a day.
"Not bad," Yura said, chewing thoroughly, savouring the taste of the fish. "Not bad at all. Took me three decades to get this good. A little more practice, maybe some training, and you could easily make a career as a king's chef."
"You really think so? I thought this one fell a little flat." Raki seemed disappointed in his latest dish. Clare agreed that it was quite good.
"My boy, I worked as the chef to a lesser king a couple centuries ago. He was a picky, crotchety old man, but a good one, and I thought of him as a friend. You could get there eventually, if you wanted it." Yura pointed at Raki to accentuate his next point. "But if you go that route, be sure to find a good king. When my employer's age finally caught up with him, and his son took over, my job became very unpleasant, very quickly."
"What did he do?"
"For starters, while he dined in luxury, the workers got to eat the kitchen scraps. Next he took out his problems on us with his boot, not that it hurt me, mind you, but it was somewhat humiliating. And that was while he was in a good mood."
"If breakfast is over," Clare interjected, "I would like you to finish your explanation of yourself."
"Alright then, I will. As I said last night, there was a time when I wanted to be just like the other Yoma…"
Yura's life continued as much as it always had until he was roughly ten years old. He and his brother fought and stole for their meals, even as their appetites grew.
By this point in his life, the young Yoma were all about the size of the average human man, and much stronger, almost a match for any of the mothers in the nest.
Yura's memories became much more distinct as they became fresher. All he remembered about his early years were generalities and a few exceptionally powerful events. After age ten, many more of the details remained in his mind. One of the first of these was when he first left the nest.
Though he felt none of this for himself, the other youngsters were getting restless. They felt the need to hunt. Yura experienced this vicariously. He was as exited for his first kill as the rest of them.
One day in mid winter, for no apparent reason, the young Yoma left the nest. Dozens of them burst forth from the cavern entrances littering the mountainside, scattering throughout the hundreds of small towns spread around the outside the mountain range.
Yura went a separate way from his brother. He had wanted to do this on his own, rather than under his brother's shadow. He and one other Yoma, a month younger than Yura was, made their way to a tiny village on the east side. They arrived at sunset.
They centered on a small farmhouse, a short ways outside the town. All it had was an old wooden barn, a couple of grazing fields, and a small vegetable garden next to a rundown old house. As relatively small as they were, they were unlikely to survive if they met a concerted defence by the townspeople. In a farmhouse, however, no one could hear the little humans scream.
The two young Yoma stopped at the peak of a hill near the farmhouse. "Ironic how the cattle raise cattle of their own." The other Yoma simply grunted. They had never gotten Yura's sense of humour. Their jokes were always so crude, and every one of his more sophisticated ones were met with blank stares. "Never mind."
With that, they leapt from the hilltop, covering half of the cattle's pasture in a single bound. Another two leaps, and they crashed in through the thatched roof.
They caught a mother and two children in the kitchen, preparing the evening meal. Yura had seen a man in the fields from a distance. No one was around who could challenge them.
In her fright, the mother knocked over an oil lamp, and soon, the entire kitchen was ablaze. The human family retreated back into the living room, and the younger Yoma pursued, savouring the chase. Yura followed.
The humans walked backwards, eventually running out of room to retreat. The children pressed themselves against the stone of the fireplace, and the mother stood before them, pulling a metal poker form the ashes of the morning's fire.
The Yoma pressed forward even as the flames from the kitchen spread outwards. Yura watched with a degree of pleasure as his companion backhanded the woman, sending her flying against the left wall. "You can have her," said the Yoma. "I want the tender meat."
It was at that moment that Yura's life shifted course. His eyes had locked with those of the children. He saw in them something of himself. The younger brother was clutched in the arms of the older, who protected him fiercely. His brother had done this for him in these early years.
He thought for the first time that maybe humans weren't the mere cattle that he had been led to believe. Their eyes held so much emotion, like the other Yoma, he had never seen that kind of depth in them before. He couldn't bring himself to let die these beings who reminded him so much of himself and his kin.
The other Yoma extended his claws, fixing them into lethal blades. He raised his hand, preparing to strike, teeth glimmering with saliva as he anticipated the meal. He struck, faster than the eye could follow, intending to stab the older one in the gut, slice upwards, and spill the innards for a glorious feast.
But faster was Yura's hand, seizing the wrist mere inches before the claws pierced the child's skin.
In the tongue of the Yoma, as neither knew the human language yet, the other Yoma said to Yura "Oh. So you want the tender meat too? Fine. You can have the little one. He looks stringy."
"Does this seem right to you? Killing the little ones like this?"
"Why not? They are like cattle, existing only to be eaten by us!" This made Yura furious. How could he not see it? There before them was the proof that there was more to humans than they were told. It wasn't right to kill them.
The fire was licking at their heels. The other Yoma was growing impatient. "If you won't eat then get out of my way!"
The Yoma shoved Yura aside, smashing him through the table. The Yoma's attention was once more on the family. Rage boiled over inside Yura, clouding his vision. With a shriek that cracked the windows, Yura leapt at the other Yoma, his still extending claws slammed the young Yoma's back, pushing him through the stone wall, just to the right of where the two children huddled.
By now, the father had returned to the house. Heedless of the two beasts glaring at each other only feet away from the hole in the wall, he crawled into the inferno. The children left the house as their father went in, and he soon exited as well, dragging the unconscious but breathing body of his wife behind him.
Yura let himself experience a moment of gratitude. He had saved them, these creatures that he wanted to understand. Given away by a shift of the eyes, that moment's distraction was all the other Yoma needed.
He struck, claws spayed wide, ignoring the shallow wounds on his back, hoping to quickly eviscerate the one that challenged him. Rage gone, Yura could think clearly. Rather than dodge or deflect the attack, Yura caught it on his arm. Claw pierced flesh, and Yura winced against the pain, but he had his enemy right were he wanted him.
Yura twisted his arm hard, snapping all of the claws off of the hand. "I don't want to hurt you!"
"No? But I want to kill YOU!" He charged again. Yura twisted his arm hard, jabbing the protruding claws imbedded in his arm into the stomach of his foe. He pushed hard on the broken ends, forcing the claws out of his arm, and further into the young Yoma's belly, a damaging but not lethal wound.
Snarling and slobbering, all reason forgotten, the younger Yoma attacked. Yura parried his strikes, blocking high and low, deflecting the full claws and letting the broken ones glance off his skin.
He returned blows too. He struck for the joints. A blow to the knee that felled many an infant in previous years didn't even slow his blood-crazed adversary. Yura struck the knee again, collapsing if for just a moment before it recovered.
The blows continued to rain down on him. Yura blocked, parried and dodged to the best of his ability, but he was getting hurt, and slowing down. A blow to the face left four gashes through his skin, and sent him reeling back into the hot stone wall of the farmhouse. The flames licked at his shoulder through the hole in the wall.
Sensing victory, the enraged Yoma charged, in-tact claws ready for the death blow. It was in this moment that Yura learned the natural law of kill or be killed. For the first time in his life, he fully unleashed his claws. He leapt forward hard and fast, and swept his hand across the other Yoma's face.
Yura landed far behind his opponent. The younger Yoma turned, snarling to face Yura and cried "Damn you bast-" his condemnation was cut short, his face draining of color, and taking on a blank expression.
Yura's claws, unused in his years within the nest, were so sharp that they sliced straight through the younger Yoma's skull without disturbing anything within, so sharp that the brain continued to function for just a moment. A drop of violet blood dripped from Yura's fingertip, and the other Yoma's head fell apart, a piece for each claw on Yura's right hand. The body dropped to the ground shortly after.
Yura stood over the body of his fellow Yoma for a moment, contemplating what he had just done. He felt sick, and not just because he would never be allowed back into the nest after this.
He knew then that even if he were allowed to return, he could never go back to the lifestyle that he had grown up with. He turned and walked away, leaving a full decade before any Yoma is meant to.
He looked back only once, and saw the family of humans he had saved from death, and his young heart lifted. They stared back at him, not understanding what they had just witnessed.
"What did you do after that?" Raki asked as he absent mindedly stuffed his pack, and rolled up his sleeping mat.
"That is another long story in its entirety. I'll summarize it for you. I walked for several days, passing several human towns, giving them a wide berth despite my starvation. One day, out of desperation, I caught and ate a rabbit, and found it quite palatable. I lived like that for a few months, and then out of curiosity, started watching humans in their towns at night.
"A common misconception about Yoma is that they need to kill a human to take human form. I have observed that it is far easier to do that way, but not truly necessary. In my studies of humans, I learned how to speak like them, and how to disguise myself as one of them, without the need to kill them, mind you. I picked the image of a ten year old, mixing traits that I observed in several different children to create a unique image."
"Is that when you chose the name Yura?"
"Yes, Raki. And I have used that name ever since. As for the rest of my life until now, it was rather uneventful in general. In self defence, I had to kill two of Clare's people over the past few centuries. She can guess how those fights went. One event that I still have trouble believing was that, a long time ago, I fell in love."
Clare and Raki both gaped in disbelief "With a human?!" Raki said, dumbstruck.
"You seem surprised." Yura simply laughed into his hand, staring at the expressions on their faces.