Chapter 17: Kinslayer

While Bunaya writhed in agony, the rest of the Snake-kin scrambled for cover, trying to muster some kind of defense while searching frantically for the source of the shots. Kren wasn’t about to let that opening slip past him. He picked another target and squeezed the trigger.

The musket barked into the air, and this shot took the man square in the middle of his forehead. His head snapped back, his body following a half-second later as he crashed to the ground, dead before he landed. That second shot was enough for the rest of them to finally pinpoint the direction of the attack — but knowing and reacting were two very different things. The gun cracked a third time, and another Snake-kin dropped, a wet gurgle escaping his throat where the Aura round had taken him.

Kren swept his gaze across what remained of the group and counted. Two dead. One injured. Nine others scattering in every direction, scrambling for cover. The gun barked again, and a Snake-kin sprinting for the river went down hard, a bullet hole punched clean through his back.

"Get behind the slaves! They won’t shoot through the sla—"

*CRACK!*

The Snake-kin who’d come up with that brilliant idea crashed to the ground, one side of his skull blown open. Kren grunted in annoyance as the rest of the group quickly caught on, herding the felines between themselves and Kren’s line of fire. It wouldn’t stop him — it just meant he’d have to bring the fight to them directly. But not before one more shot.

[Spirit of the East Wind]

The tattoo along his right hand blazed to life, spiraling down the barrel of the musket in a brief flare of neon green. Kren drew a slow breath, steadied himself, picked his target, and fired.

One of the Snake-kin had been crouching behind a jaguar-tribesman — a teenager, from the look of him, barely younger than Kren himself. The shot took the man’s head clean off, blood spraying into the air and across the huddled prisoners around him. Someone screamed, a raw sound of rage and grief, but it didn’t touch him. Kren’s attention had already snapped back to Bunaya and Toa — the real threats here.

His eyes widened. Bunaya had already closed most of the distance, fury blazing in his one remaining eye as he ripped his hooked greatsword free and leapt — easily clearing twenty feet, his arc carrying him straight toward the tree where Kren still crouched.

The soon-to-be Lion King let out a hiss, and his wind spirit answered with fury. He’d already burned through the last round in the musket, and reloading would cost seconds he didn’t have — not with Bunaya already at the peak of his leap. Kren spun, reversing his grip on the weapon and pouring every scrap of Aura he could spare into the spirit bound to his wrist.

The musket flared green, its glossy stock drinking in the Aura as Kren swung it like a club. A blade of compressed wind tore loose from the weapon’s base, invisible to the naked eye, and slammed into Bunaya mid-descent, hooked greatsword glowing an eerie purple as he fell toward it.

The impact hit like a charging bull, arresting Bunaya’s momentum entirely and sending him crashing to the ground. Kren dropped from the tree a heartbeat later, closing the distance in a single leap. Bunaya barely had time to lift his ruined, bloodied face before the musket came down on him.

The stock caught him on the opposite side of his skull, shattering half his jaw and scattering teeth across the grass. Bunaya screamed. He and Toa were the strongest of the Snake-kin here, both sitting at Aura Awakening — but none of that mattered if you never got the chance to use it. Kren had no intention of giving him one. He raised the musket again, and Bunaya looked up just in time to watch it come down square on the crown of his head with a sickening crack. The weapon shattered into pieces on impact. Bunaya collapsed backward, bleeding now from his ruined eye, the side of his skull, and the crown of his head — his remaining eye drifting, unfocused, the clear mark of a concussion.

Kren stepped back and drew his longsword. That was when Toa slid across the slick grass, snatching up his half-brother’s fallen hooked blade and swinging it at Kren without hesitation. Kren had barely a second to summon [Spirit of the North Wind], layering its shield across his front just as the hooked edge crashed into his longsword. The North Wind’s shield absorbed the worst of the blow, but the force behind it still sent Kren skidding backward, his boots carving furrows through the dirt.

Toa planted himself in front of his brother’s body, glaring at Kren with every ounce of malice a man could summon while trying to protect someone who’d just threatened to violate the woman he loved. Kren grinned.

"How touching. Look at you, so fierce, so ready to save the brother who was about to rape your woman right in front of you. I wonder how the two of you will settle that little disagreement, once this is all over?" Kren’s grin widened as something flickered behind Toa’s eyes.

"Don’t listen to him, Toa! Kill that bastard cat! Kill him! KILL HIM! Look what he did to my face! KILL HIM, YOU FUCKING HALF-BREED, OR I’LL RIP OUT YOUR SPI—"

Bunaya’s tirade ended mid-word as Toa turned in one fluid motion and took his half-brother’s head clean off his shoulders. It sailed through the air, Bunaya’s expression still frozen somewhere between fury and disbelief, before it thudded to the ground in the space between Kren and Toa.

The Lion King raised an eyebrow. "Well. Can’t say I didn’t see that coming." He let out a low chuckle, some dark thread of satisfaction curling in his chest at the sight of one more enemy dead. He turned his attention fully onto Toa.

The Snake-kin still held the hooked greatsword leveled at him, but his hands trembled visibly now — proof enough of what taking his brother’s life had cost him.

"Well, Toa?" Kren called, drawing the man’s eyes back to him and the amused grin still fixed on his face. "Now that you’ve killed your own brother — with every one of your allies here to witness it — what exactly are you planning to do? Hmm? What now, Toa? What does a man do, once he’s made himself a kinslayer?"