Credit needs to be given where it is due:
Characters from Borderlands and Brent Weeks' The Night Angel Trilogy
Partial sequence of events from Borderlands as well
Chapter 4: A Big Surprise is in Order
After that first night of being late for the extravagant dinner that had been planned, Kylar and Vi spent the next month trying to win back the cook's favor. Though they tried to help cook the meals, clean up afterwards, and even get fresh supplies and meat for the kitchen, the cook would have none of it. She still refused to acknowledge them when they entered, be it early or on time. They finally decided to confront Logan on the situation. The two of them made their way to his room. They found Logan sitting at his wife's side, who was lying down and seemed to be in some pain.
"Why is this happening Logan? We were only late once! And it happened to be our first meal too!" Kylar tended to get worked up about things when they didn't go his way.
"It's harsh but I have to say it. I told you so. Cook really despises anyone who shows up late, and because
it was your first meal it made an even bigger impact. She's big on first impressions." There was not anything he could do for them. It was up to Cook how long it was before she accepted them again.
"And there's nothing you can do for us? You can't possibly convince her that we actually are people of kind heart?" Kylar was starting to get desperate. He couldn't stand it when people didn't like him.
Logan just had to chuckle at how exasperated Kylar was getting. "It's all up to her, there's nothing I can do to help you. She can be quite frisky when she wants to be." Logan knew that Kylar was going to try and push for help, but he had to let Kylar fight his own battles.
"Alright, I'll just wait until she decides that the time is right. By the way Jenine, aren't you getting close with the twins?" Her belly had swollen to be equivalent in size to a small watermelon.
"It's getting close Kylar. There should be only a few days left before the two decide it's time to be introduced to everyone." She happened to glance at Vi when she said this and saw that Vi looked troubled. Jenine started to say something but thought better of it and decided to consult Vi about it later.
"Well if that is all you needed, I am going to have to ask both of you to leave. I don't mean to be rude, but Jenine needs her rest in preparation for the birth." He glanced at his wife and noticed her studying Vi, which then prompted him to look at Vi. He too saw that Vi had seemed to be elsewhere since the discussion of the children came up.
"That's understandable, say why don't you come out to the courtyard when you have time. It's about time we get up off our lazy asses and start training again. You never know when trouble could arise."
Logan smiled at the thought. It seemed as though Kylar had finally gotten settled in and was ready to do something besides spend all his time trying to please the cook. "You've got yourself a deal. It's been awhile since we last fought; it would be good to get moving again."
"Alright, I will see you then. Come on Vi let's leave them in peace." When it became apparent that Vi either didn't hear Kylar or just chose not to leave, Jenine stepped in to prevent any conflict that may arise between the two.
"That's alright Kylar, I wanted to have a word with Vi anyways." She was really starting to worry about Vi. She hadn't moved in the past 5 minutes.
He just shrugged. "That's fine, I will catch you later." With that he left leaving Vi, Logan, and Jenine in an almost painful silence.
"Vi you seemed troubled, is everything alright? Vi?" After she hadn't responded to Logan's first question he lifted himself off the bed and took a few steps towards Vi. He went to place a hand on Vi's shoulder, when he suddenly found himself on the ground. As he looked up towards Vi she had this look of vengeance in her eyes before it melted away into shock.
"Shit Logan, I am so terribly sorry. I zoned out for a minute and when you reached for me it reminded me how Hu and my mother's boyfriend and his friends used to reach for me. I didn't mean any harm. Are you alright?" Vi had started to become weak and leaned against the bed post for support.
"I'm fine, don't worry I have taken harder hits than that. The real question is are you ok?" He looked to his wife for help on this one. It seemed to be more female related and he didn't want to accidentally cause anything else.
"Well I, uh had something I needed to tell you but I can see that I've already caused enough trouble so ill just be on my way." With that she turned on her heel and was almost out the door before she heard Jenine quietly speak to her.
"Vi, I can tell that this 'something' is very important. Please come back so we can talk about it." Vi couldn't help but obey, so she turned around once again sat down on the edge of the bed. "Good, now what was it that you needed to talk to us about?"
"Well it's about your children." She stopped at this point and looked up. Jenine nodded her head, urging her to continue. "I have a strong feeling that one of them may actually be Kylar and Elene's." She heard a gasp in surprise and quickly looked up to see that Jenine's eyes had widened.
"What makes you say that?" Jenine was curious how she had come to this odd conclusion.
"Well at the funeral, I had laid my hand on Elene's stomach only to find no evidence that there she had ever carried a child in the first place. I believe that Dorian may have removed Elene's child and placed it inside of you." Vi once again looked down at the covers. She was embarrassed to be telling this couple that one of their children my not actually be their child.
"Is that even possible? How could he have been able to do such a thing?" Both Logan and Jenine were shocked at this sudden prospect.
"Well Dorian was the best healer in the entire world, plus he was holding two of the most powerful magical artifacts. I'd imagine that moving a barely developed child from one
person to another, especially since we were all connected at that point, would have been easier than a cook chopping vegetables." Vi did feel somewhat better after she had released the information she had kept bottled up for so long.
"Have you told Kylar about this yet?" Logan was worried what Kylar's reaction would be to these new details.
"I have not. I wanted to be certain before he knew anything. I don't want him to be crushed about anything else related to Elene, 'specially since it took him quite a while to recover from her death." It was at this point that Logan realized that Vi cared immensely for Kylar's well being.
"That was extreme considerate of you Vi, and thank you for telling us about the problem that we were oblivious to. We will most certainly get a maja to come and check on the babies to be certain. You are welcome to be present during their visit, after all it was you who told us." Jenine was glad that Vi had finally opened up to them and she noticed an improvement in Vi's overall attitude.
"That would be wonderful thank you. Now if you don't mind, I think I'm going to head back to my room. I've had a stressful day and I just want to relax."
"We don't mind at all. I am getting a little sleepy myself. See you later Vi." Jenine smiled
sweetly. Logan walked Vi to the door and made sure that she made it down the hall before he shut the door. His head was spinning from the newest revelation. Kylar's kid may still be alive! Who know it was even possible. The last thing that went through his head before he fell asleep next to his wife was what Kylar's take on the whole situation would be.
He had been waiting in the court yard for hours. In all respects he had expected Logan not to come. Though he had thought that maybe the prospect of getting outside and being able to freely move around would lure Logan out into the city. 'Oh well guess I'll have to do some of my own training. Just me and the world, nothing could be better. It's back to the good old days. The days where the hitting was hard and well to be honest Durzo was even tougher.' 'You are not alone Kylar. You've still got little me. Isn't that the greatest, even when you don't have friends I'm still here to give your conscious a little extra push throughout the day.' 'Oh great now I can't enjoy my peace and quiet, I'm stuck with you all night. Logan would have at least sparred with me. All you do is talk and it's extremely rare for anything you say to be actually helpful to me.' 'I help you plenty. Remember that one time I told you to duck because that arrow was to was to kill you, and what do you do? You go ahead and don't do as I told you and you get yourself killed! Even when I do give you
advice, you blatantly ignore my literally life saving advice and get yourself killed! This cost you another one of your precious loved ones.' 'Hey! You know what that's enough. I don't want to hear anything else from you alright?' Kylar had taken enough of the ka'kari's sarcastic nature and decided that he needed to clear his head. He sighed and started out of the court-yard to run through the rest of the castle. Even though he now lived in this humble abode, he had to laugh at the mere 'defenses' of this castle. It was of course better than the one in his previous one, it being the high castle and all, but even a wetboy who was just starting out would be able to penetrate theses defenses. Maybe he was being a little harsh, a wetboy who had just started the business would not have the experience needed to scale these rather slick walls. Now that he thought about it, probably only him, Vi and Durzo (if he wasn't too old to climb the wall) would actually be able to infiltrate the castle. To anyone that may have been watching, it seemed as though Kylar had scaled the wall purely by magic. He had started out by appearing to run up the wall and when he lost his momentum, he put his hands on the wall and climbed as though he were a spider. In reality Kylar was using the ka'kari to form little talons all over his hands, which slipped into the wall as though it were made of butter and his hands were the hot knife. The 'talons' enabled Kylar to crawl up to wall on all fours. He dusted his hands off on his trousers, to make it look as though he were ridding his hands of grim when in reality he was using it as a cover up to withdraw the ka'kari back into his skin, and looked back at the wall. 'Maybe these walls are slicker than I believed. And perhaps these defenses themselves are quite efficient.' He had just noticed that guards had started to continue their patrol towards him. 'Well here comes the fun.' He started running towards the guards as though it would be suicide. Instead he climbed atop of the guard-house seemingly unnoticed. As he surveyed the surrounding landscape, he realized how large the castle actually was. There seemed to be a vast amount of passages that one could explore and no one would know exactly where they were. He turned towards the city and spied a hay cart that was being pulled through the city. Leaving no time to even think about breathing, he leapt from the roof of the guard tower. He dove as though he were diving from a great height into water, not a risky possibly deadly hay cart. About midway through his decent, he flipped himself onto his back so he wouldn't smash face first into the bottom of the cart. He couldn't have timed his jump more perfectly and landed safely in the cart without an injury to his body. He waited for nearly a minute to be certain that no one suspected anything at all had happened to the hay cart. He swiftly flung himself from the cart and rolled to a stop underneath the awning of a shop. 'Whoo, I can never forget that feeling. It's great to have the wind rushing by your ears, so fast that at some point you simply seem to lose it. Well or that may be you landing in the cart but who cares about the details.' Kylar had always found a way to started off his training runs with a way to get his adrenaline pumping. 'I care about the details. They can be very important, sometimes very the difference between life and death.' The ka'kari normally wasn't one for small chat, but he seemed to be in the talking mood tonight. Kylar thought that its sarcastic nature came from spending nearly seven hundred years with Durzo. After awhile something had to rub off it just so happened to be the way he spoke. Kylar normally did his best to ignore the ka'kari, but nights like this where it seemed to go on and on about the weirdest thing could get to be too much to handle. He looked out from under the awning and up to the top of the building. It was of decent size, but would not require him to use the ka'kari. The windows and natural cracks in the mortar were all the handholds he needed. What he didn't know was that what he considered to be his natural skills as a wetboy would be known as 'free-running' or 'parkour' in nearly two centuries to come. Checking to make sure that no one was around, he run up the side of the building, going as far as his momentum would allow. While still maintaining some of that said momentum, he grabbed onto a nearby window ledge. From there he launched himself up to the bottom of the next window and shimmed over until he found a break in the mortar of the bricks. He leapt from the window sill to the hole and grabbed it with extreme agility. He looked up to realize that he had already made it half way. Pushing off with a burst of strength and some Talent, he grabbed onto the top ledge of the building. "This thing has been so helpful. I can't believe I managed to train without having all of this untapped magic." Kylar loved being able to use his magic to its full extent. 'Excuse me, but I am not a simple thing. I am a one of a kind, original mind you, sentinel being. Being referred to as a 'thing' is an insult to my mental capacity.' 'You act more like a thing that a sentinel being half of the time anyway, so what difference does it make if I express you as much.' This had seemed to shut the ka'kari up and Kylar smiled in his victory. He pulled himself up so he was now standing on top of the building that he had previously been looking up at. He hadn't gotten to do some roof top running in a while and he was going to enjoy this. He started to build up the speed needed to leap to the next roof top and quickly realized that it wouldn't require too much since he could use some of his Talent and the space between the two houses was much to speak of. With one final push off the ledge of the house he was sailing through the air. He honestly had put too much power into his leap and misjudged the distance that separated the two houses. He had sailed completely over the intended house was coming closer and closer to the side of the next house. With some quick thinking he was able to push himself up onto the roof of the house, by using the edge of the gutter. He tucked himself into a roll to control his forward momentum, and then calmly stood to his full height. 'These buildings must be closer than they were in Cenaria. I will have to give closer thought to them before I judge a gap again. He started off running across the connected roof tops, jumping a gap only when completely necessary. What Kylar didn't realize while he was doing his training routine was that he was being watched very closely. The onlookers watch and spoke in only shushed tones, as not to disturb Kylar and attract his attention.
"Is that really him? He's really the Night Angel, the Nameless One, the Shadow Strider, the Kagé?" The speaker sounded as if he held him in so kind of awe. Their voice was of a higher pitch and their body show that they routinely exercised. The shadow they cast was one of a person nearly 1.6 meters tall (five feet, three inches) and of a slim build. An onlooker could
figure that the shadow was of the female gender because of the higher voice, slim build, and what may have been a slight swell of breasts. "That's him alright. Don't you see how comfortable he seems to be in the shadows? That's because the ka'kari allows him to see in the dark." This speaker had a deeper tone of voice. The shadow that was being projected by this obviously male figure was nearly 2 meters tall (six feet, six and three-fourths inches) and showed that he had a heavy build, with muscles definitive in the shadow itself. "Not only that but it unlocked his hidden potential. Before he couldn't use any of his plethora of magic that was available to him but when he bonded to it, it removed the barrier that stopped him from accessing that magic. He can literally go through the entire night, without having to restore his magic with the sun. He wouldn't even be half empty! Do you know what the difference is between a normal mage and him when regenerating magic? While a mage absorbs sunlight through their skin, he can absorb enormous amounts of all kinds of energy through not only his skin, but also his eyes. Could you imagine if we were able to do that with our health? We would be near invincible, well that is if the sun had a fair exposure to our skin." The two had lost sight of Kylar nearly ten minutes ago, but they had been so focused their discussion that they had not noticed. "Come on, it's time for us to get back to our world. We need to make sure that Brick didn't destroy anything that didn't need to be destroyed or can't be fixed." The female had spoken to the bigger one and laid a hand on his arm to turn his around. Facing them was what one could describe as a telephone pole in our time, but with an extra almost tablet like thing attached to it. The male stepped forward to interact with the tablet and seemed to be preoccupied for a moment. When it seemed that he was finished, he turned towards his female companion. She gave him a nod and he lifted a finger to touch the tablet. There was a sound that emerged and broke the silence that had fallen upon them. A blue light then consumed the two and rings seemed to be flowing down their body as one may compare to the water running down a person in the shower. The rings flowed down more rapidly the long they stood there. A sudden burst of white light surrounded the small alcove where the two had been watching Kylar. As the light faded, all that was left was in the alcove was the mysterious pole.
Kylar had continued his roof top running all the while the hidden people had been conversing about him. When the sound had broken the silence, Kylar had skidded to a stop just after he had jumped what could be considered impossible for a normal human.
"What the…" He immediately turned around and jumped back across the space again, without a second thought. Without having the built up momentum from previous running, he almost didn't make it. All that manage to keep him from falling was his hands. He had barely grabbed the slick edge of the roof. Sending out phantom hands, he reinforced his grip on the roof and pulled himself up. As he would find out in a minute, not fully making the leap actually saved his life. He frantically ran and leapt from the roof tops he had recently covered. Following the sound, he leapt from a roof top, rolled to conserve his momentum and was instantly back up running again. He arrived at the alcove just as the blinding flash of light went off. The ka'kari quickly moved in front of his eyes to absorb some of the energy released and save Kylar from becoming blind. As the light faded the ka'kari moved back into his skin. 'Thanks bud, really saved me right there.' 'I try to help when I can, even if you don't always accept it.'
Kylar approached the mysterious pole and wondered how it could have gotten there. 'Logan must be informed of this immediately. Though I will let him get his sleep first it's much-needed, since it is about 3 in the morning.' He started his trek back to the castle pondering what the mysterious object was and what it could possibly be used for.