Rudera Zai-Eun would wash blood from his hands on the day of his father’s passing. His bright, blind eyes, resting behind the mask of a great silver ape.

  It was no ordinary mask. It had been re-forged, touched with crag-helega, a material strong enough to withstand even the worst of a tempest's fury.

  Neo, his golden saber monkey, cooed atop his shoulder, planting a wet kiss on his neck.

  “Hungry already?” Rudera laughed.

  He untied the knot of his hemp sack, reaching in for the cold biscuits he had packed for the journey home.

  The river ran true here, its fresh nile jetting against the surface of many boulders resting along a path downstream.

  A few hundred feet from where he sat, the Sinnalo Falls were rumbling. He could feel its beating heart, dumping water into the green alcove beneath.

  A spring mist carried through the air, clashing with the heat of a geyser caldera nearby.

  As beautiful as the world seemed in that moment, with its distant bird song and daylight petrichor. An unease lingered beneath its fragile balance.

  He had not been home in seven years. He had not seen his mother’s divergent face in eight.

  “Anei,” he said, splitting a biscuit in two.

  Neo grabbed at the offering, biting into it like a child, squealing with joy.

  “Enjoying yourself, are you?” Rudera forced a smile, holding out his palm.

  Neo acknowledged him by running her little fingers along his.

  “Eat quickly, now. They won’t be long.”

  He followed his own advice, breaking two more biscuits to share.

  When he was done, he wiped the crumbs off his chaseleather, reattaching the bone-white chest plate he had placed in the grass beside him.

  Landstag hooves rode the riverbank to his east, armor much heavier than his, rattling with every advance.

  Neo hissed.

  Their pursuers had arrived.

  Half a dozen riders coming to a skidding halt behind Rudera, their last footfalls still an echo in the valley.

  “Black Saber,” called a proud voice. A sovereigner, young and delinquent. “Your legend grows in our circles. The man that is second in command to the Monkey King’s great forces.”

  Neo touched Rudera’s neck, granting him the blessing of a shared vision. Colors filled the void of his eyesight, memories of a familiar skyline coming back to him.

  He had been close on his count.

  There were five riders, not six; one sovereigner, and four storm apes. The apes wore armor shrouded in fallen-gold, their bright blue manes glistening under the new sun. The sovereigner was bedmizian, brown hair, black eyes, and a shorter build. His stocky legs hung high on the smallest steed, a testament to his place within their ranks.

  At the apex of the party, was the largest ape, his forehead mounted by a brass crown, bejeweled with the jade heart of a Janartha beast, the Dijjakan Empire’s oldest enemy.

  This was a general and his hunting party. A high ranking shotcaller who spoke nothing but violence for those who did not belong near their borders.

  “You’ve been following me since Jafaieda.”

  The sovereigner raised his chin. “We had the feeling you would catch on eventually.”

  “What do you want?” Rudera asked, his back still turned to them.

  “Wu kya pu?pe kaar vwuo itsi? , wi?i?r an rii!” The general roared with the might of a hundred tigers, his mandible fangs stained by a deep yellow and the tips of his mane crackling with blue electricity.

  “He wants your head,” the sovereigner translated. “The Monkey King has allied himself with the Tama. You are an enemy by allegiance now, Black Saber.”

  “You didn’t answer my question,” Rudera exhaled. “I asked you what you wanted… not him.”

  The sovereigner lost his smile, his eyes dropping their false confidence.

  “I can grant you your freedom, slave-boy. Just ask.”

  The general had seen enough. He huffed and dismounted his landstag, barking more orders at his man-slave, his hefty boots meeting the ground with authority.

  The sovereigner bowed his head, pretending to ignore Rudera, panicked by his master’s tirade. “He wants you to take off the mask, Black Saber. He wants you to stand and face him. Their tradition calls for a duel of honor.”

  Rudera merely smiled under his mask. “He’ll have to rip it off me.”

  Neo’s blessing faded. The world turned black once again. Surges of dim sensation battled for hierarchy amongst Rudera’s cognition. The touch of the fabric on his knees, the smell of the dewy afternoon grass, and the ever-present undulations of aya giving off from every living organism in the vicinity. From microbial to man, from man to ape.

  Rudera almost preferred this way of life. It made the violence easier. More tolerable. It made the world feel stiller, more in tune with a natural order.

  He inhaled a freshwater breeze, tapping on his shoulder to signal Neo that it was time for her to scurry off.

  He felt her absence from his shoulder and then rose from his kneel; the silky mail of his helega skull cap settling around his neck as he did.

  The general, petty and impatient, beat the metal of his armor to assert dominance. His aya waves rippled wider, pairing with the heavy thumping of meat, metal and bones.

  Storm apes were fast and deceptively agile, despite their brawny appearance.

  So it only seemed fair that Rudera got in the first blow.

  Chronos motes leaked from his hands like tiny pockets of blood. Their aya latching qualities providing one simple function; Influence.

  The hulking ape charged into his close periphery, the wind backing his powerful strides.

  Like a spear to a fish, Rudera spun around and drove an arrow of motes straight through the ape’s heart.

  The general’s eyes widened, his movements slowing as if the pocket of space around him had lost its hold of time.

  Easy there, general, Rudera whispered.

  He sidestepped the oncoming pounce and then cracked the ape straight in its jaw.

  As if time had accelerated back to its normal speed, the ape grunted off the jab, his nostrils blowing warm steam.

  Rudera prepared a second dilation. But on this go, the general did not disappoint. His natural mote shield broke through the Influence of Rudera’s motes, sending them scattering out of existence. He flailed again with his powerful fists, but Rudera backed away.

  Switching channels, Rudera conjured power motes, using their Influence to enhance his own aya.

  Dodge, sidestep, weave. And then wham!

  The general felt a powerful fist cut through his mote shield like a blade through skin and then reverberate against the metal of his armor like a clap of thunder.

  The ape went sliding backwards, his boots drawing lines in the soil, dragging rocks and grass back with him.

  But the general would prove to be a reckless beast, daring and unpredictable. He was right back into the scuffle with two lunges forward, catching Rudera slightly off guard. Through a wild flurry of blows, one true strike found his mask with the jolting power of static lightning.

  Hurdling backwards in the air, Rudera felt his body go numb, the flow of the static current raising his long hairs to their ends. His armor bounced off the rocky edges of the riverbank, skidding to a stop near the flow of water.

  The general leaped several feet to cut the space between them.

  Sensing the sudden movement, Rudera channeled a stream of hex motes, fixing them to a point in the air away from him. Hex motes easily bonded with waves of aya, their super heavy nature allowing them to act as pivots of force and motion. Rudera used the pivot point to pull himself away, sliding towards the mote mass like a ferromagnet attracting its polar force.

  The general’s fists struck rocky boulder, cracking it in half and burning the cobble, simmering the misty air with the heat of battle.

  He roared and then jumped again. But this time, Rudera was ready. He latched the hex motes onto the general’s aya, and then used the pivot to yank the ape down, pulling on his massive form, sending him crashing face first into barren ground.

  The by-standing apes began to hiss from their steeds, hurling curses at Rudera for his use of sorcery.

  A smirk formed under his mask.

  It had been a while since someone had mustered the courage to challenge him this boldly.

  The general lifted himself on two fists, but Rudera was already in his face. A knee to the ape’s nose, and then a spinning martial kick to his chin. Power motes enhanced his techniques, crushing bone and drawing blood from the heavyset beast.

  Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  The ape was out of breath, his labored puffs the sign of embarrassment and intense self-loathing.

  This would not end with any form of mercy. That had become more than obvious.

  The air around the general’s mane buzzed, radiating sapphire electricity siphoned from a tempest long gone by.

  Rudera created some space; listening, reading, anticipating.

  The general found his footing, his aya waves pulsing in conjoined and infrequent bursts.

  They met in the middle. The general with his halo of tempest filled fury, and Rudera with a flurry of hex motes ahead of him. The cascade of tiny viridian particles clashed with the ape’s blitzing aura; some, careening out of existence, others, holding their own.

  The general pushed forward headstrong, trying to overpower the density of the sorcery. He swatted away Rudera’s first efforts to swarm him and then went in for a swinging blow.

  Rudera felt the heat of charged energy graze by him as he dodged the ape’s fist.

  It clung to the nearby air, zapping and crackling as if it had an anger of its own.

  Their mote shields flickered, conjoining as they engaged in close combat.

  The general pounced again, trying to grab Rudera by his shoulders.

  Using the ape’s own forward momentum, Rudera dropped a step and got behind the beast in one quick motion.

  Kick to the inside of the left knee and then one to the right.

  The general’s mote shield shattered like glass, and he fell to his shins.

  Rudera walked up beside the roaring beast, leaped into the air and drove his boot straight into side of its head. The brass crown mounted on its forehead went flying off, settling somewhere in the dirt nearby.

  With the flick of two fingers, Rudera enveloped the ape in a hex, wrapping and compressing the stream of motes into a collar around his neck.

  The general teetered to his feet and then fell over backwards. He gasped for air, wheezing a slimy phlegm, his legs kicking back and forth in the grass.

  A quiet wind swept into the valley, whistling along to the general’s song of suffocation. His eyes withered green and the siphoned energy around him slowly faded, losing its sapphire glow.

  Rudera yanked on the body as he trudged forward, dragging it across the ground as if it was leashed, and sending it sliding towards the onlookers.

  The other apes oriented their landstags, taking slow trots backwards, in fear or disbelief.

  One of them spoke up, howling at their sovereign slave to attack.

  Rudera waved his hand away from the general’s quiet corpse.

  One, two, and then a third. Like an outrider wrangling his horses, Rudera lassoed the rest of the hunting party with his sorcery.

  The apes tumbled off their mounts, clutching their throats as the thud of their armor echoed on hard ground.

  The enemy’s steeds galloped away in confusion, their strides kicking up a storm of dirt and pebbles all around the writhing pile of bodies.

  The sovereigner, not far away, was cowered low on his saddle, or so it seemed. His aya waves were uneven, indiscernible to a degree.

  But very suddenly Rudera felt a charge, the hustling of forthcoming hooves, the unsheathing of runic blade.

  Another smile formed beneath Rudera’s mask. Eyes glowing ravenous from the surge of adrenaline.

  Ah.

  Gutsy.

  Foolish… but very much gutsy.

  Rudera waited for the blade to swing, for the steed to pivot from its head-on course.

  Everything happened as he knew it would. The motion of the sovereigner’s body, the lean of his dominant arm.

  Rudera snatched the edge of the blade with his bare hands, its runic enhanced nature battling with the strength of his natural mote shield. He yanked on the blade, and with it, came the rest of the sovereigner’s arm — pulling him clean off the saddle.

  If he’d have pulled any harder, there might not have been a body attached to the arm.

  The sovereigner bellowed out in abrupt pain, his fingers free of their grip on the blade, and his back surging from the impact of the ground.

  Rudera tossed the weapon aside and swallowed a deep silence, letting his own body heal after the rapid and successive bout of channeling.

  “Please!” The sovereigner stammered, crawling backwards. “Don’t kill me!”

  He was digging his fingers into the dirt, clawing at it, as if it would help him bare the pain.

  Rudera lowered his head at the boy, breathing silently. “If I wanted to kill you, you’d be foaming at the mouth right now like your slavers.”

  The sovereigner stopped moving, but Rudera could feel his aya waves faltering with indecision.

  “I didn’t believe them! I didn’t believe how they all spoke of you!”

  “How did they speak of me?”

  “They laughed when I told them we’d bring you to them. I was a fool! I thought I could win them over! I thought a lone scourged bounty like you would be an easy catch. I deserve this. I deserve it all. If not you, then Tiol will punish me!”

  Neo climbed up Rudera’s back and onto his shoulder.

  Rudera continued to stare down at the sovereigner, whose eyes had now bulged like a mantis.

  “Am… am I your prisoner now?” his voice cracked.

  Rudera smiled, dwelling on the idea for a moment.

  “Nye.” He shook his head. “Not prisoner.”

  “You will let me go then?”

  Rudera took a step closer.

  “I didn’t say that either.”

  “What then will you-”

  “I plan to put you to work for all the trouble you’ve caused me,” asserted Rudera. “It is about a week’s ride from here to the Blackjung, and another day to the Sapphire City. That should amount to a sufficient payment to me for granting you your freedom.”

  “You want me to ride with you to the Sapphire City?!” The sovereigner panicked. “Really all that way?”

  “YES.” Said Rudera. “All that way, and perhaps even more. You’re going to have to pay your debt somehow, slave-boy.”

  A dry and stretching creak of stiff leather gave off from the sovereigner’s armor as he straightened his back at the remark.

  “I’m not a slave,” he claimed lowly.

  “Not anymore you aren’t. All thanks to me.”

  The sovereigner heaved out a sigh. A load of frustration embedded in his breath.

  “Wh-what if I paid you in coin instead?” He offered. “I have some savings left-over at the Apostle.”

  Rudera cocked his head, the bright of his eyes burning through the slits of his mask. “I don’t have much use for coin. Got plenty of that you see. But an extra hand? Ah, that will do me wonders. So many errands along the way.”

  There was a moment of consideration from the sovereigner. A quiet one.

  It was either that, or he was planning to take his chances and run.

  “And if I did this for you…” he finally asked. “You would not turn me in to the Ministry?”

  “Now what reason would I have to do that, hmm?”

  “I broke bread with the Dijjakanese, Black Saber. I’d put to hang if the Ministry ever found out.”

  This brought a slight chuckle to Rudera’s lips. “Breaking bread is a very funny way to describe servitude.”

  “It wasn’t like that!” The sovereigner perked up, finding his confidence. “I was trying to earn their good faith!”

  Rudera bent down to the sovereigner’s level, getting in his face. “Good faith, eh? I’ll give you this, slave boy. The mere fact that you are still alive, and not branded all over in charred skin is a blessing. Although the balls on you to risk something like that in the first place... it does say something about you, I’m just not sure yet what.”

  The sovereigner let out an audible gulp. “Sorry.”

  Rudera continued to stare intently at the boy's aya, studying him with intense scrutiny.

  “On Tiol’s word,” the sovereigner promised. “I will see to washing my sins and paying my debt to you. I have no right to curse anyone. I should have gone about everything differently. My vision became too narrow.”

  “So it did,” said Rudera, backing away again.

  The sovereigner exhaled, extending his arms back in defeat. He wiped his brow, making it even more dirty with the soil that had stuck to his palms.

  This rebellion. The attitude of the boy. It was all too familiar. You spend a few years in higher education, you think you have a great idea, but it all pans out to nothing because the world doesn’t care. Then you are left laying there on your back because you’ve burned all the bridges that lead anywhere else. Eight years ago, when he was about the same age, Rudera probably would’ve sympathized with someone like him. Things were a bit different now.

  “Humbled to this degree by one single loss in battle huh? How will you ever pick yourself back up, slave-boy.”

  Rudera put forth his hand.

  “Come on. Wounds don’t heal just sitting there on your bum.”

  Neo growled menacingly from his shoulder.

  The sovereigner climbed.

  Rudera felt a soft hand grab his own and he lifted the boy to his feet.

  “Let’s start with a name then, shall we?”

  The sovereigner was shaking. “Rory.”

  “Rory.” Rudera used his hands to pat down the sovereigner’s armor. “Just, Rory?”

  “Yes, it’s just Rory.”

  Neo let off what sounded like a monkey’s equivalent of a short chuckle.

  “What is it?” Rory winced, shifting quite awkwardly.

  “She finds it funny.” Rudera smiled, finding the monkey’s hairy chin.

  “Finds what funny?”

  “A Rory from Bedmizia who says he has no noble name, finds himself enslaved by apes of the Dijjakan Empire. What’s not to laugh about in that, hmm?”

  Rory had no answer.

  Rudera turned his back to him, walking away. “Don’t worry. Take all the time you need, Rory. We don’t ask for details on the first day. Plenty of road ahead of us for all that. Besides, Neo and I have always been suckers for a good story.”

  Rory was hesitant at first but eventually did follow tail.

  “You could’ve killed me.” He said, catching up. “I mean... I am very grateful, but I swung my blade at you, honor code says that you have every right to-”

  “I don’t care what the honor code says.”

  “Oh.” Rory seemed a bit disappointed.

  “Does that bother you, Rory?”

  “No. Of course not.”

  “Good.”

  Rudera dug into his trouser pocket and pulled out an ornate bone whistle.

  “Anei.”

  Neo swung over his shoulder and swiped the whistle from his palms. For a moment, she chattered, falling into a loop of bird-like trills as she brandished the bone high, twirling it through the air in glee.

  “Enough with the theatre now Neo, let’s get to it.”

  Neo chuckled in her own unique way before deciding to finally give the whistle a blow.

  A rustic shrill gave off from it, fluttering about the valley in uneven notes.

  “Do you ever take off the mask?” asked Rory. “I mean... surely before you sleep.”

  Rudera ignored the boy, listening for the distant waves of his landstag’s gallop instead. She could not have gone too far off.

  Rhythmic beating paced towards them from the west.

  There you are girl.

  Neo hopped onto Rudera’s other shoulder to see her sister galloping towards them.

  Rudera finally turned to Rory, meeting his gaze again.

  The boy’s waves were simmering in tiny ebbs and flows. Often a sign of fear or anxiety in most men.

  “What do I call you then?” Rory inquired again, persistent. “You know… besides Black Saber.”

  Rudera kneeled himself over the edge of the riverbank, wading water over his bloody and calloused fingers.

  “I did say we’d be sharing stories, Rory, but I never said I’d share all of mine.”