Kiromir 10

There I was, elbow deep in gore. I’d accidentally caught someone in the gut as they ran. I hated it when targets ran; it was so messy. It always had a smell to it that I couldn’t shake. I tried to go for the neck as much as possible. It killed quicker, cleaner, and quieter all around.

I’d heard the shouts of men down the halls. Girls screamed and ran, all indications that they were done. We avoided touching the girls unless they were active participants in the event.

Krell and Niala ran to me, eyes full of unease. She was exhausted, confused, and then Krell announced to me in our tongue that she’d had her first fire! Joy erupted in my chest. She was so unlike us in so many ways that I worried that she may never have a fire. Unfortunately, the joy didn’t last, and the way Krell had announced it told me I shouldn’t celebrate so fast. Had she hurt someone that wasn’t in the contract? One of us? I didn’t know.

When the door opened, on the floor lay the spilled remains of William. The pit in my stomach fell loose. Fires didn’t do that. Fires didn’t raze the flesh, rend skin from bone, wind like snakes and razors. Whatever happened to him had been death by a thousand cuts. I turned my head. Niala pleaded like I acted angry with her. At worst, I would be mad that she played with her victim, but at worst she’d be grounded from a few missions. Nobody could call this play, though. The scene before me represented the raw surge of a new kind of fire.

She spoke her old tongue, the one like gilded Anil. She talked fast, like she did as a child, chattering in shaken high-pitched notes. The music and discord in her words grew stronger when she got more emotional. My hair stood on end as she said keywords: caged, girls, Russians, hurt, scared. She so rarely spoke of it, and the fewer details I let loose about her around the flock, the better. A sensation tugged at my wing bases, and I tried not to lose focus on her.

“Black fire, Sir,” Krell aid as he interrupted her frantic words. I didn’t have time to think, only act. We had to move. We had to get her to the elders. If I didn’t know what she was before, I think I did now.

We flashed away with a singular goal in mind. The elders knew more about the fires of our kind than I ever did. I’d only once heard of black fire, but I didn’t know it that well. Every fairy tale and children’s story bore elements of this fire. But we interpreted a lot of old stories as allegory. Though, Niala showed the truth in them.

We were one step closer to finding her flock; I knew it. I told her as much as I roused the elders. They kept to themselves most of the time. Our vigor, youth, and flight upset them now that they couldn’t fly any longer. They were waiting for death and doing the last they could before the cycle took them once more.

Touk came out first. She stood stooped and had steel-grey hair and watery blue eyes full of knowledge. Her aged flesh bore thick tattoos of battles long gone and the stories of our age. Her tattoos had the meaning of her life. I could tell that Thanus had refreshed them not too long ago.

“Why do you have to wake us for that? So, a fledgling got their fire?” she muttered, opening the door for us all the same.

“It’s not a normal fire.” Her eyes averted. She held her hands away from herself, shaking as she glanced from them to me, terrified.

“What do you mean, a normal fire? Did she get a hybrid fire or something strange?” Touk glanced to my eyes a moment as she led us back to a communal area, like a small cafeteria with stone walls and wire shelves. She gestured at us to sit before she put on a pot of coffee and groused angrily down a hall to wake the others.

“If I have to be up, so do you,” she spat, and a few choice swears came in response, but all of them started getting ready.

“Now, what is it?” she asked, and Niala held her hand out, trembling as a single flame lit up her arm for a fraction of a second and slipped away just as fast. Black flared, and she couldn’t entirely control it yet. Reaching out, her hands shook. Touk saw the black and she went silent, waiting to speak. “That’s black fire, isn’t it?”

“Looks like it.” I kept emotion out of my voice, flat and quiet. I didn’t want to alarm her.

“Acir,” Touk quietly muttered. I nodded.

“Is it bad?” Niala shuddered as she waited for her response.

“Not really. None of us have seen it before, but we’ve read about it. Our old books tell of other races before us, as you know. We’re the left-behind, the wild ones. Because we didn’t conform, we were abandoned here. We refused to give up our Ikris. Our dark-headed brethren were one of the flocks that followed the black seraph. We all thought them long gone, but you know you’re from another race as well as we do,” Touk reminded her. She withdrew to herself. She so desperately wanted to belong to us.

The other elders came in turn, all demanding that she show them her fire. We tested it, made her put her flame to stone and wood. The flames flickered, wending blades and wrenching. It moved soundless save for the flicker of mana in the air, a silent twitch. Whispering, it flicked back and forth in a hypnotic reverie. It guttered, there in a moment and gone with nothing but damage left behind.

“That’s vicious.” It impressed me far more than it scared me. Niala just felt terrorized by it. She stared at her hands like they’d betrayed her. I couldn’t blame her.

“I mean, Ni, we’ve all known you weren’t wildling since you were first brought here,” I tried to placate her. She looked so small and helpless. It was one thing to think but another to absolutely know.

“I can’t use it like the others. They had a hard time controlling theirs at first. What if I accidentally hurt someone. What if I hurt Gaff!?” She said as she balled her hands up and buried them in her lap.

“Then be very careful, and until you’ve got it under control, don’t go unleash them on him. If he’s trying to get a lookie again, go ahead and blind the bastard. Don’t even think of chasing his fires.” The thought made me laugh a little. It felt good to have her with me. She filled the void in my life. I thought I’d be sadder to see her grow up, but there I stood, excited for her.

“Yes, sir.” Niala went quiet and looked at her feet.

“If it’s about the target, Watson or whatever, the guy was a creep and deserved it.” My words failed to comfort her.

“It’s not a useful fire!” She drew tighter to herself once more.

“Useful? The Acir fire, the blackness that cuts?” One of the elders asked, Touk or Ranna. They’d been together so long that they had started looking alike in old age. Bondmates always looked like one another the longer they were together. It creased something about the eyes and the same smiles.

“It’s different but absolutely useless. We all have knives,” Niala wept.

“Then maybe you should read your storybook a bit better, remember the old tales of our kind,” the old woman said as she wound her long white hair up into a bun on her head. Yeah, definitely Ranna. Touk never put her hair up.

She wandered off towards another room and came back with an old leather-bound book with illustrations in it. The children’s tome, written in Anil and English had all of our old stories in it. Ranna tossed it onto the table with a heavy thud.

“I know the story!” Niala said, exasperation in her tone.

“Then tell me,” Ranna said. Her eyes were steely silver and glimmering. Ranna knew how to pull Niala out of a moment.

She twisted her lips before she spoke the old tongue, our Anil, recanting the story. Niala had beautiful diction, if not a little lispy from her teeth. When they translated it into English, it Rhymed as well as it did in Anil. We regarded it as a wildling work of art.

“The creator has a job to do, to create, to make to break to move. He wrote us all in pen and ink to suffer till the sun’s last wink. For when he wrote the first to life, they sang his song and knew not strife.

The creator gives, and creator takes, and so he left them all to ache. In loneliness, they all did plot to read the book he wrote and wrought. And on his desk, a book aspired; a plan between them all conspired.

Cadence and Melody, the Seraphims cried; one said go, the other said hide. Despite the warning, they all felt shame, and in the book, each wrote their name. The creator saw what they’d done and mourned not all but only one.

The willing Melody, who begged to stay, went into the book and into the fray. She took the lead and set the path to bring her people from the creator’s wrath. Cadence warred and squirreled away, hoarding his power for revenge one day.

From the Cadence, the beat arose the warring song that everyone knows. From the Melody came a song to lead the people all along. One hundred years, they had to live to die to learn and then forgive.

The Cadence lived black in wretched spirit, and the flock of Melody learned to fear it. The children three stood and cleaved friend from foe from neighbor—grieved. From the Three, the children left and were cast the wildlings, the undecided bereft.

The four corners were split north and west. Us, the Wildlings, were given the rest. Acir went East to hide and plot. The Anae went west, and war was fought. With not to do but suppress their fire with the Wildlings, who nature did acquire.

Between them, all the wildlings roam, and now they’ll never know a home. Cursed are they who do not wander, found and break, and sent to slaughter. When the flocks will come together, hand in hand in wing in feather.

“I know it! I’ve memorized it!” Her voice growing higher in pitch as she fretted.

A blocky illustration of two creatures like us, but different sketched out into the book, stood face to face. A white-skinned female with delicate form, white fire, and hair to her feet laid at the left. Four wings balanced her skyward, face to face with a dark creature, her opposite. His fire was black and held aloft to hers behind each of them flitted a long dexterous tail tufted with crudely illustrated feathers. Every time a seraph was mentioned, they were four-winged and had that same tail. The same tail she had, that none of the wildlings did. The spear in her Ikris held the secrets of it.

“Then look at yourself. You’ve got eastern features, dark ones, the hair, the pale skin. Your bloodline is shaped from generations of those lands, just as ours has changed. We used to all be much darker; we match the people that surround us, though their blood never taints our lines,” Ranna said.

Niala reached behind herself subconsciously and rubbed at her lower back. The elders looked at her with unsaid understanding. They knew.

Touk looked at her aged leathery hands. Shee had darker skin than the rest of the flock—rich walnut tones. They were all tanned from the sun, but Touk looked like she could pass for Native American. Our people changed that way. What surrounded us dictated our appearance. You could look at my own hands and see the difference. They were sun-weathered and bronzed, compared to Niala’s pale ghostly form.

Certain features about her were somewhat Asian, but she looked more like a porcelain doll than she did human of any race. The camouflage allowed us to blend in at a distance.

“We had our thoughts, and as time’s gone on, we knew you might be Acir.” Unfortunately, my admission didn’t bring her any relief.

“I know I probably am, but they’re not good,” Niala whined.

“One bad king does not a bad race make. We make bad decisions all the time for bad people,” I said to her, trying to soothe.

“Thanks, ada,” She said as the elders muttered to themselves.

“Stick around with the older flockmates to help you control those fires,” Ranna said, and she gave her a thankful smile. Niala waved them off and shoved her hands in her pockets. I didn’t notice it before, but she still had blood on her, as did I.

“Go wash up before you come to celebrate with us. The men will be thrilled to see those flames.” I beamed at her as wide as I could. She needed to know that this didn’t change anything.

Niala looked at her own hands and wriggled her fingers. Most of the men didn’t even know what an Acir was. Though, they didn’t know to fear her either. I barely knew what an Acir was, and that only came from gilded fairy tales. But, we didn’t speak of the tales of the black seraph, who bore her tail and fire. We spoke of his people alone.

“You should probably take your own advice,” Touk said to me before shooing me out the door.

I wasn’t going to be able to sleep tonight.