3-60. War’s First Blood

Rua sat on what remained of a tree stump. Apparently it’d been sawed down a few days ago, the wood being needed for the wall being erected around the Wayfaring station and the growing town. A wall that wasn’t going to be finished before whatever violence was going to happen happened. 

And it was coming. Rua could tell from the way Old Grey paced back and forth, from the wide smile on his face, the way he cracked his knuckles. 

Siddic and Lita were chatting with each other, Lita sipping at her flask as she always did. Rua had no idea how that woman wasn’t dead from a poisoned liver. Or how she got along with Siddic. It seemed like an indictment against her character. 

Yurgein knelt on a patch of grass, his eyes closed, his expression blank. She didn’t know if he was using his mind reading Pact, or if he was just meditating. She tried to keep her thoughts blank, tried not to think of the one thing she absolutely could not afford to have get out. 

Rua watched Old Grey. The blotchy discoloured patches of his skin normally made parts of him look dead, but now not even they could detract from the sheer life emanating from him, the energy in his steps. She wanted to reason with him. To convince him that this war wasn’t necessary. But she already knew it’d just be wasted breath.

She tried anyway.

“Do you really want to kill my people that badly?” she asked.

Old Grey didn’t look at her. He kept his eye on the treeline, where an invading force would have to come from, provided they got past his soldiers or the Stormcallers ringing the island. 

“No. I like you Silayans well enough. But I like fighting more.”

“And you didn’t think that maybe, just maybe, you could jump on your ship and just sail to the Criobani Empire, and pick a fight there?”

He waved a hand at her. “Not looking for that kind of fight. Because I know I’d win. That’s the trouble with a Dream-touched telling you how you’re gonna die. You start to realize all the other fights you get in are inconsequential. There’s no danger in ‘em, because you know you’re gonna make it.”

“Huati shit,” Rua said. “You know you’re not going to die. But you could be wounded. Lose an arm. A leg. An eye. There’s always danger, even if you live.”

“Ain’t no Crib gonna cripple me. Only one person out there can manage. And as long as I’ve got you here, she’ll be on her way. I had you pegged as the perfect bait the second she gave you that lisuna. Kir’s been a lifetime investment.”

Rua bristled, feeling the anger rising in her. “That’s all Kir is to you? An investment?”

“That’s what kids are. An investment in the future. Doesn’t mean I don’t love her.”

“Right. And that’s why you beat her. Publicly humiliated her. Enslaved her with her own Pact.”

Old Grey’s expression soured. “Character building.”

Rua felt her eyebrows shoot up. Somewhere behind her, Siddic and Lita laughed, and she wasn’t sure if they were eavesdropping and thought what Old Grey had just said was funny, or if they were just laughing at something else.

“I need her ready,” Old Grey said, explaining further. “I can’t have her hesitating when the time comes. She’s got a soft heart, and I have no idea where she got it. Because it wasn’t from me, and it certainly wasn’t from her mother.”

That was the first Rua had ever heard about Kir’s mother, beyond the fact that she was dead. 

“So, all this. Abusing your daughter, starting a war with your allies, all of it, just to get the fight that ends with your death. There’s easier ways to kill yourself.”

“There’s other reasons. Good ones. Ones you’ll find out about soon enough. Call this one just a side benefit on my end.”

“Didn’t think the great Old Grey would be the type to run towards his own death.”

He smiled wistfully at that. “I’ve always been running towards my own death. Most people run from it. Fucking cowards. I got promised that my own daughter would kill me. Well, I’m gonna make sure it happens, and I’m gonna have fun doing it.”

Rua wasn’t sure if she was saddened or disgusted. So much potential, wasted. But that had always been the way of the aging, fat warrior. 

“But the future’s changed somehow,” Rua said. “So, for all you know, Kir’s not going to kill you. And all this will be for nothing.”

“No. She’s going to. Because if she doesn’t…” Old Grey trailed off, and then he began to rumble, his chest making a deep sound that travelled up his throat. Mikovian throat singing, a unique sound that only their war leaders were allowed to perform. But Old Grey used it for a different reason.

All around him, pillars of earth began to rise, the ground rumbling just as he did. He held out a hand, and as he did, tendrils of dust lifted from the pillars, grey and red and brown, and slowly his body was encased as if he was growing a second layer of skin with a metallic sheen. The colour was uneven across all of him, looking rust-splotched in places, but wherever his skin was dead and grey, so too was the iron that covered him, as if it was synching to match.

Rua sighed to herself. Well, she’d tried. Realistically, she should’ve done this beforehand. But she’d needed to give Old Grey a chance.

She focused on Old Grey, and activated her Defamed Hero ability. 

She’d only ever used it once before, back during the fight against Ashborne when she’d first gotten it. She’d been bandying the idea about using it against Kir a time or two, but Otter had very vehemently told her not to, at least not until all other options were exhausted. She’d believed that using it against Kir was a death sentence for Rua, if not necessarily her body, most certainly her soul.

There might’ve been some truth to that. But Old Grey? This was exactly the kind of person this type of ability was used for.

All at once, Rua felt the last remnants of Kir’s Pact shatter, the last hold it had over her. It was like clearing away the rubble, the foundation finally cleared. And replaced with an overwhelming sense of hatred for Old Grey.

Nearby, Yurgein’s eyes snapped open, his body going stiff. Siddic and Lita stopped chatting, their gazes focusing on Old Grey, as if a pair of predators had just noticed a tasty fish that had entered their waters. 

Old Grey was a tested warrior. He knew what he was about. He sensed the change immediately. He might not know what the cause was, but he knew what was about to happen.

“Stand down,” he growled.

Siddic threw a knife at him. Old Grey held up an arm to block, but the knife arced around it and slammed against the side of his head. Old Grey’s Tenacity flickered into view for a moment, sparks flying. The knife bounced off, and then all on its own, tumbled through the air oddly, up above him, and clipped him again on its way down.

“Get his Tenacity down!” Lita shouted. “Old Grey or not, if we do that, I can finish him!”

Rua was already drawing both her hatchets, charging at him, the forced defiance and loathing for her opponent from her skill taking hold. She wanted nothing more in that moment to kill him, heedless of the danger to herself. She took two running steps and threw herself in the air.

His fist came out and hit her like a charging soo-meng. Even through her Tenacity, she felt the blow, the air driving from her lungs as her momentum was halted. Her shield barely held on, already blinking red in the bar in the upper corner of her vision. 

She hit the ground hard, and Old Grey moved his leg to stomp down on her, but as he did, Yurgein was there, a heavy maul in his hands. The man roared his defiance, and slammed the weapon at Old Grey’s chest. But Old Grey was too fast, faster than anyone Rua had ever seen before. He pivoted, catching the head of the maul in his bare hand, and smiled. 

“Now this is nice,” he said. “A nice pre-fight exercise. This is exactly what I needed!”

A throwing axe hit Old Grey in the chest, but did nothing, bouncing off his Tenacity harmlessly. But it wasn’t alone. Siddic, surrounded by a swirling cloud of throwing axes and knives all about him, gestured, and suddenly all the weapons hurled forward as one, pelting Old Grey every which way, curving in the air to evade his attempts to block them.

He shrugged off the attacks as if they were nothing, and then heaved, ripping the maul out of Yurgein’s hands. And then he turned, and threw it right at Lita.

She wasn’t able to get out of the way in time.

It slammed into her just below her neck and hit her with enough force that it didn’t just break her Tenacity. It hit her so hard that what was left of her was unrecognizable. Most of her torso just disappeared, and pieces of her head and arms just fell to the ground. The lower half of her followed a beat afterwards. And the hammer kept going, as if her body had offered as much resistance as the air.

Rua got her feet under her. It’d all happened in less than a second. 

Siddic laughed, as if he thought it was the funniest thing in the world. Yurgein hesitated, stunned at what just happened.

It cost him his life.

Old Grey grabbed him, one meaty hand landing on the top of his head. The other grabbed Yurgein by the thigh, and then he lifted the man up. And then pulled his arms in opposing directions.

Old Grey was showered in blood and guts as Yurgein’s Tenacity broke, and he was torn to pieces. He laughed, echoing Siddic, and then threw the pieces at him.

Siddic gestured, and the pieces of Yurgein parted around him, flowing away as if following a river no one could see. 

Rua had heard the legends. Of how dangerous Old Grey was. But this was beyond her wildest imaginings. 

“Head in the fight!” Old Grey growled, and swung at her with his fist, as if he fully intended to take hers off.

He probably could, some part of her abstractly realized as she dodged. She tried to think of some strategy to outfight him. She followed his movements, using her Pact for feints, but there were none. He was all speed and strength, and it took everything she had to keep moving and stay ahead of him. Adrenaline flowed through her as she scrambled to get away, technique abandoned. Before his fists, which slammed into the ground, throwing up rocks and pieces of earth as they did, and cut the wind itself as they swung at her, all she could do was throw herself from one direction to the next to escape. 

She tossed up a Truthshield, the black dome springing up around her, changed course, and flung herself the opposite way she’d been heading. She couldn’t see Old Grey, but the reverse was true as well. She felt him bash the ground where he must’ve thought she’d exit, and nearly fell as the earth itself beneath her feet threatened to betray her. 

This was just like fighting Ashborne all over again, but worse. Ashborne had been slow. He lacked technique, training. But most of all, Ashborne had been driven by desperation, by animosity for Silayans and Criobani. 

Old Grey did this for the love of it.

Some part of Rua was angry. Had been for a long time now, but it focused into an edge. She wasn’t going to die like this, running away from her enemy, inevitably struck in the back. If she was going to die, she was going to do it swinging her weapons. 

She dropped another Truthshield, and turned back the way she’d come. Old Grey would be circling the dome, looking for where he thought she’d be exiting. She burst out, and found him barreling right towards her, a smile on his face which flickered to surprise then went right back to a smile.

She got under his punch, a cross which nearly knocked her off course just from the force of the wind as it passed over her, and slammed both her hatchets into Old Grey’s chest. His Tenacity shattered.

“That’s the spirit!” he yelled.

Another throwing knife came flying at Old Grey, and he made a rumbling note from his throat-singing, and it sailed immediately back from the direction it had come from, the metal forced away from him with his Steelsinging. Somewhere out of sight, Siddic made a surprised sound, but Rua barely registered it, dancing around Old Grey and hammering at him with her weapons. She went for short, controlled hits, throwing her soul-empowered strength into them, but did so with precision. Each hit bounced off in a shower of sparks, the shell of steel around him protecting him, but it was costing him. It had to be. She hoped.

The only advantage she had was his girth. He was faster than her, stronger than her, and that Steelsung armored skin of his felt bitterly unfair, but he was also out of shape. He’d grown lax with his training, and now it was the only thing keeping her alive.

She just had to keep pushing. She could feel the rhythm of the fight. She normally examined every move an opponent made, watching their body language for their lies, but there was an honesty to Old Grey’s style. Every attack was exactly what it was claiming it was. There were no feints, no clever maneuvers meant to deceive. 

And Rua realized, in that moment, she didn’t need to look for the lies. She just needed to see the truth. And the truth was that Old Grey wasn’t afraid of death. Because, as he’d said… he knew this wasn’t where he died.

Rua smiled a dark smile, and Old Grey saw it. But he didn’t know what to do with the information.

He reeled back a fist, and made another rumble of throat-song. A blade erupted from his knuckles, made from his own steel skin armor. He punched forward.

Rua stepped into the blow and braced herself.

The last of her Tenacity gave way like it was paper, and his fist went right through her lower abdomen, going in one side and out the other. Old Grey’s eyes widened in horror.

Rua felt pain, but it was nothing to her. Nothing compared to the pain of having to fight Kir. Nothing compared to the pain of seeing Kir’s bloody and bruised face after she’d been beaten by this man. 

She dropped one hatchet. But somehow, she managed to keep hold of the other. Her fingers gripped it with a fury she didn’t know she had, a fury that could shake mountains.

“What did you do?” Old Grey said, panic in his voice, his arm still embedded in her guts.

She summoned all the strength she had, and swung downwards, right into his elbow joint. 

The steel skin cracked, pieces of it flying off. Old Grey’s arm bent the wrong way, and he let out a bellow of pain, and she slid off the limb that was impaling her. 

Blood fountained out of her. Her eyes rolled back, and she collapsed, her head going limp and staring upwards as she hit … not the ground.

Someone caught her.

“I got you, Mama, I’m here, I’m here, Mama.”

Something flowed through Rua, a soothing warmth, and suddenly all the pain was gone. Rua gasped as her guts were knitted back together, her body repairing itself as Sunny looked down at her, panic in her eyes.

“What?” Rua managed to gasp.

“We’re all here,” another voice said, and Rua jerked her head sideways, and saw Sami, two swords held out, and Everett standing beside her, a shield held up in a ready position, a hatchet in his other hand.

And then, Kir was there. She looked worried, but she also looked furious.

“Hello, Father.”