On the Hills of Eden

Seeing as the shophouse the argument hid behind seemed to be open for business, Qingxi led Rumi through its swinging doors and sat her down on a chair by the wall adjacent to the arguing Hashashiyyin.

Though it looked to have been built with the purpose of serving food in mind, the dimly lit interior and dusty wooden walls made any prospect of eating anything within its walls wholly unappealing. A fact reflected by the complete lack of patrons, or even workers. It was just the two of them, sitting on gloomy little chairs by the wall, eavesdropping as best they could on the ongoings across its wooden threshold. And though Rumi struggled slightly to catch the words, Qingxi and her twitching feline ears made much better ground.

“-Just because you’re too lazy to run to the Estate,” the familiar voice taunted.

“You’re not listening, you imbecile, it’s not that I don’t want to, it’s because he’s dying!”

“What does that matter? We get sad sops like him every other day!”

“Every other day?” the other voice responded, almost flabbergasted in their outrage. “Do you even know what it's like to have to deal with the plight? To have it in your face, its smells, its sights, its sickness?”

The familiar voice groaned.

“I’ve had enough, I’m not arguing anymore,” he said resolutely. “You two are coming with me, and you, Turay,” he sneered, “You will deal with the wretch yourself,”

“You dog!”

“Come! We don’t have much time before Abbas and Malik make it to the Estate!” the familiar voice continued, ignoring Turay's plight.

Even as Turay continued to curse at his comrades, demanding they remain with him, the sound of footsteps trodding against the dirt vanished nevertheless. Leaving the lone Hashashin to wallow in the sobs of whomever it was that had been afflicted by the so-called plight.

“Flame, grant me strength,” he sighed. The sound of his footsteps too soon faded past the wall, leaving Qingxi and Rumi to stew in the unnerving lamentous cries of the diseased man. His sobs like those of a child’s- begging for the attention and care of its mother, though with the timbre and depth of a fully grown man. There was something wholly repulsive about it, and somehow or rather the two of them felt as though there was more to the crying than just sadness or fear.

They exchanged worried glances briefly, the both of them well aware now of what lay beyond the wall.

Eventually, the footsteps returned, followed by the creaking of an axle and the rumbling of wheels on dirt.

“Sir, get up.”

The sobbing paused slightly, the person whining softly as their voice wavered.

“But… it’s cold…”

“Get up. Before I torch you.”

The whining grew more frantic, and the two of them could hear as the man struggled to get to his feet, his body thumping against the wall several times as he tried to stand upright.

“Get in the cart, and I’ll get you to the nearest almshouse,” Turay continued.

The man paused in confusion, whimpering now. “Alms…house?”

“Yeah. Quickly, before you get any worse.”

Then came the sound of wood creaking as the man climbed into the wooden cart, its frame barely large enough to accommodate him judging by how loudly and how much it cried out in protest as he did so.

“Augh!” the man suddenly cried, his shriek of pain paired with the sound of something knocking, hard, against the cart.

Qingxi flinched slightly, covering the fluffier of her two pairs of ears reflexively.

The Hashashin sighed, the man’s wails now rising to a fever pitch as he yelled his lungs out, his infantile moaning annoying even Qingxi and Rumi to no end. Something about it was just so incessant, so skin-crawlingly irritating, making them want to gouge their own eyes out in indignant frustration.

“Shut up!”

The wailing died down a little bit.

“Here. Use this as a blanket. It’ll keep you warm,” Turay said, though without even so much as a hint of compassion in his voice.

The wailing then faded to near complete silence, only faintly audible as a muffled vestige of its former self.

They then heard as the cart rolled away, fading into the distance.

Rumi and Qingxi waited around for a while, giving Turay and the man ample time to head to the almshouse. They kept their bodies low to the table, hiding behind their bags and what pillars there were in the diner to obscure their bodies from the outside.

After some time, Qingxi eventually rose from her hidden position, slinking up to the windows to peer out into the grass-covered street.

And as far as she could tell, it was empty. Nothing but the occasional passerby and the rolling of the verdant waves as the sea’s breeze blew inland against blades of grass.

She turned back to signal to Rumi, before leading her back out into the open.

There, they looked about themselves one last time, before making a subtle beeline for the gate.

When they got there, the two of them faced down a menacing portcullis, its bars about as thick as their arms and interlocking with each other to form a lattice of pure steel. Spotting a winch to their left, Qingxi went ahead to raise the gate, though she struggled to wind up the winch as she felt her abdomen roar out in agony whenever she put her weight against it.

Without so much as a second wasted, Rumi moved to help Qingxi, though even the addition of her strength only made the winch inch along by a tiny bit, the gate barely moving even as they heaved themselves against it.

Qingxi looked around briefly, the street behind them still clear.

“Rumi, I think you’ll have to jump,” she said, backing away from the winch and heading over to a thinner section of wall away from the gate and its mechanism.

“Huh? But how?”

“Just give it your all, and make sure to grab onto the ledge there.”

Entrusting Qingxi’s judgement, Rumi followed her to the thinner section of wall Qingxi had positioned herself by, her stature paling in comparison to the wall’s tallness- easily standing at about 3 or 4 times her height. She got herself into a half-squat, admittedly a little unsure of what a proper jump looked like.

“I’ll be boosting you up with my winds, so don’t panic, okay?” Qingxi said, watching as Rumi readied herself.

“Alright,” Rumi replied, feeling as the winds about her began to pick up, swirling in tiny eddies around her legs.

“3… 2… 1…”

Rumi awkwardly sunk into her squat while her arms, not knowing where to go, remained outstretched before her.

“Jump!”

Rumi leapt upwards, the air beneath her billowing upwards and sending her careening towards the wall’s ledge.

She slammed into the wall’s cold stone, her hands reaching out for purchase along the wall’s lip to no avail. She faltered slightly, gravity pulling her back down before the winds roared back to life, pressing her against the stone momentarily.

“Again!”

Planting her boots against the rough stone, she kicked herself upwards and away from the wall, her hands rising over the wall’s edge and finally finding purchase.

Still assisted by Qingxi’s winds, Rumi slowly clamoured her way up the wall, pulling herself as best she could with her arms as the sharp stone forced itself against her chest, the burns on her abdomen, and her legs. A button even ended up being torn off, falling into and disappearing amongst the greens of the grass and the browns of soil.

Qingxi then hurried over to the wall, reaching her hands up to Rumi.

“Are you okay?”

“N-no, I’m… fine,” Rumi replied, checking herself and noticing the missing button. Her laterals burned, their fibres having just experienced far and beyond the greatest amount of exertion in their lives.

“Alright, I’m coming up now!”

Rumi leaned back over the wall’s edge, reaching her arms out in preparation to grab Qingxi’s.

The Chitite sank into a squat, planting her feet solidly against the soil. She took in a deep breath, the air around her coming to a standstill as she drew in magic from the environment.

“Hmph!”

A piercing pain shot through her, stopping her before she could even get her feet off the ground, the winds she’d sent billowing upwards disappointedly carrying on into the sky and blowing right on past Rumi. She fell to her knees, leaning against the wall as she clutched her abdomen in pain- feeling as the sting of the wound radiated out throughout her body, snaking its way up her spine and into her chest.

“Qingxi!”

Qingxi steadied herself, calming her breath as she returned to her position.

“Hm-”

But the pain struck again, this time even earlier- and her legs did naught to lift her off the ground.

“Don’t hurt yourself!” Rumi called out, her head whipping around in search of any onlookers as she did so.

The Chitite breathed heavily, bent over in a hunch as she felt as her warm sweat began to return to her skin. She couldn’t do it.

Her mind trundled on for a bit, pilfering through any ideas bold enough to surface from the depths of her consciousness.

Would a rope help?

Considering the proposition for a moment, Qingxi eventually decided it was the best course of action. She dropped to her knees, taking her bag off of herself and fishing out a hempen cord made from coconut fibres she’d been given before being sent off to Minerva.

“Hold onto this!” she said, tossing one end of the rope up to Rumi. “Then slowly use it to slide down the other side!”

“O-okay!”

Rising back up to her feet, Qingxi gingerly laid a hand upon her belly, feeling the throb of the wound against her palm. She steeled herself and her heart, holding on tightly to the length of coiled rope as Rumi slowly prepared to descend the other way.

Rumi slowly let a leg dangle out onto the other side, and then another. Hesitantly, she wiggled her body, trying best to keep her burnt skin from rubbing against the wall’s sharp edge, pushing her centre of mass further and further back until finally, it went beyond the threshold.

Rumi slipped off the wall, holding tightly onto the rope.

On the other side, Qingxi felt as the rope’s coils ensnared her arm before pulling her upwards. She gently pushed against the stone wall with her feet, using her wind as best as she could to slowly nudge herself further and further up- Rumi sinking further and further down as she did so.

As she rose closer and closer to the wall’s ledge, she reached her free arm out, grasping for it.

But then she fell.

From the other side of the wall, she heard as Rumi yelped, followed by the sound of her thumping against the ground.

At once, Qingxi slammed herself into the stone with her winds, feeling its roughness against her face and the sparks of pain from her abdomen radiating out across her.

“Rumi!”

“Halt!” She could hear, the voice she recognised as Turay.

“Qingxi!”

The pain within her tore its way around her torso several times over as she heaved herself up, making it feel as though Avar’s blades were being sunk into her again and again. She felt as the pain surged outwards to her very extremities as she reached out for the ledge, gripping it with the very tips of her fingers and using it to haul herself over the threshold as the pain turned to a throbbing numbness that reverberated through her entire being, bringing tears to her eyes.

Now over the wall, she grit her teeth as she saw fully the scene unfolding before her. Not far from the city stood the Minervan forest, the gap in between civilisation and nature split only by a thin strip of grass and poorly trimmed underbrush a handful of metres wide. To their right, heading out from the gate was a cleared path that cut its way through the jungle, and from that jungle she could see as flashes of amber periodically appeared to hover in the air. Growing larger by the second.

She slid herself over the top of the stone wall as she brought the rope with her, hopping off of it and cushioning her fall onto the grass with little columns of wind. Her wound cried out in protest nevertheless, and with each successive movement she felt as though it tore more and more open. Like a foul beast, slowly widening its maw.

“What do we do?” Rumi asked, her voice pushed up several octaves in pitch by the rising fear that billowed out from the pit in her stomach.

Qingxi’s eyes darted around for a bit as Rumi moved to help her to her feet, supporting and allowing her to stand upright as she chucked the rope back into her bag.

“Path,” Qingxi managed, the impact of the fall and the exertion of the climb having aggravated the gash in her abdomen to the point where even so much as a breath sent pain shooting through her body. “Go!”

Painstakingly slowly, Rumi and Qingxi hobbled over towards the path, the sounds of gushing flame growing louder by the second.

As they came under the cover of the trees’ canopies, the heat of the city was gradually replaced by a more cooling, humid mist that seemed to hang in the very air of the jungle.

“Rumi, take my sword,” Qingxi panted, sinking to her knees to let the Solean take the blade off of her. “I need you to use it.”

“How?” Rumi responded, obliging as she detached the leather ensheathed blade from Qingxi’s hips.

“Undo the knots-” Qingxi said, the flames suddenly surging just metres from them before disappearing again.

“First!” she continued, gliding her hand across the grass below and arching her body as she swept it up into the air, the roaring gale brief but powerful enough to ensnare Turay’s fire as he shot out of the forest.

The Hashashin barrelled across the air above them, leaving naught but a trail of smoke before he disappeared back into the forest’s dark that flanked them.

Rumi ducked as the flames billowed above her, fading away nearly as quickly as they’d appeared. She hurriedly tried to pull apart the leather strings tied into neat bows across the sword’s hilt, though it almost felt as though she were threading a needle with how much her hands shook in fear.

“We can’t stop-” Qingxi said, spinning on the spot to face the sky.

“-here!”

The fire’s light suddenly emerged yet again, casting their shadows across the grass as it fell from above.

She dispelled the attack again, though by this point Rumi was almost sure she could see the browns of her under-armour turning ever so slightly red. Nevertheless, the Chitite rose to her feet, body quaking as she did so.

“We need more distance between us and the city,” Qingxi said.

The two began to walk, Qingxi’s feline ears twitching as they shifted from direction to direction while Rumi finally undid the several layers of leather bonds that held the Xiafan blade firmly in its place.

“I got it out!” she exclaimed, drawing the blade.

“Stop!” Qingxi said, halting the Solean just as the first of three glowing blue bands about its hilt began flaring up.

And their shadows stretched out before them.

She turned around just in time to break an oncoming wall of flame from behind them, splitting it down the middle with a gust of wind.

But she was sent careening backwards in the collision, her body ragdolling against the dirt as she rolled forward, Turay likewise sliding across the ground just ahead of her.

“Qingxi!”

The Chitite was slow to rise to her feet, clutching at her belly as she got to one knee and raising her hand before her in preparation for his next attack.

The man then rocketed forward, grappling her outstretched arm before she could even register what had happened. He sailed over Qingxi, using the momentum of the columns of fire he’d shot out from his boots to throttle her using her entire arm- lifting her up into the air in a grand arc and slamming her back into the ground. Shattering the ceramics of her armour in the process and sending spurts of blood out onto the grass nearby.

He then lept atop of her, pulling his arm back as he opened his palm, embers beginning to form within it. The embers turned to sparks and the sparks into flame, as he brought the palm down upon the Chitite’s unarmoured face.

Lighting the forest’s barks a sinister orange, even if just for a fraction of a second.

For he was suddenly sent back with a tremendous force, blood splitting from a line that stretched across his entire torso as the wind crackled with power, tearing leaves from their trees and rocking the branches just overhead.

Rumi stood in horror, Qingxi’s blade now drawn from its sheath, smoke trailing from its metal and from the leather sheath she pulled it from.

She looked down to see as the Chitite lay motionless on the ground, her face entirely unrecognisable- obscured entirely by the smoke that drifted off of it.

“Qingxi!” she called out, rushing to her fellow’s side as she shook her shoulders in desperation.

To which the Chitite’s feline ears twitched in response.

“Sword,” she croaked. “Two left. Kill.”

Rumi looked up again, Turay having disappeared from the pathway. Though, a trail of red did lead to the woods on their left.

Adopting an awkward stance, Rumi tucked the Xiafan blade back into its sheath, readying herself as she spun on the spot. Her eyes darted from shadow to shadow in the misty darkness of the trees, unable to tell stillness from movement in the vagueness of the forest.

Which was when she realised Qingxi had raised her arm. Pointing off into the woods, just behind her.

And from that very direction came a spiralling surge of fire, the face of Turay emerging from the blacks of his cloak.

She drew the blade as quickly as she could, hearing as its metal screeched against the insides of the sheath.

Then, the winds began to bellow around the blade, overcoming Rumi entirely and sending the blade out swinging with a force completely alien to her- blasting forth a great wave of pressurised air in an arc before her.

The wave pierced the fire, extinguishing it as it dragged it into its vortex, moving on to lay itself bare against the man’s face, throwing him back and causing him to collapse onto the grass path, sliding until he slammed against a tree.

Rumi stood in shock for a while again, the magic surging through her paralysingly powerful. Almost exhausting, in a sense.

So much so that she felt her eyelids begin to droop.

Before the image of Qingxi’s smouldering face surfaced in her mind.

She pulled herself from her trance, spinning about to face Turay as he rose from the ground and pounced at her.

She shuffled backwards, moving to resheath the blade before he could get close enough to burn her with his flames.

But the Hashashin managed to grapple her before she could do so, grabbing the sheath with one hand and the blade with the other as he pushed his shoulder into her chest.

Knocked back, Rumi maintained her hold over the blade, however losing her grip over the sheathe as blood from the man’s fingers flew from her blade and onto her face.

Regaining her footing, she squared herself against the man, raising the blood-stained smoking metal before her as Turay stood- bleeding and dishevelled and with the sheath in hand and held defensively in front of her.

“You,” he gasped, wiping the blood that trickled down his face. “Where,” he snarled, his voice croaking with depth. “Is the Soteira?”

Rumi lowered her guard momentarily, her shoulders relaxing as she pondered responding.

Who?

She heard as her fallen fellow groaned slightly, her prone figure struggling and twitching minutely in a vain attempt at rejoining the fight.

It wouldn’t be long before she stopped moving altogether.

The Solean saw as a small amber light shone out from the space between Turay’s palm and the leather sheath as he held it before him. A tiny kindling.

At once, she advanced, stepping forth as the Hashashin stepped back. And each step she took she felt as if she had to call forth each individual fibre across her entire being, her knees threatening to buckle and her fingers fighting to release the blade’s hilt with every breath.

But the faster she went, the faster the Hashashin retreated.

That was when she noticed something peculiar. The amber flame Turay had summoned to set the sheathe alight had grown little, seemingly topping out at the size of a candlelight.

Was it a trap? Or was that really all he could manage?

She did not know. Perhaps the man had been drained, or perhaps his wounds had weakened him. But what she did know was that, slowly but surely, the sheath was being eaten away.

“You cannot beat me, Solean,” Turay said, his breaths deep and the pauses between his words long. “Surrender yourself, and you may yet live.”

Rumi’s eyebrows furrowed, her pupils eternally locked onto his as they stared each other down, the Xiafan blade in between hers and the leather sheath in between his.

Then, she had an idea.

Suddenly shuffling back, she pulled the blade away from the man, enclosing her left hand into the shape of the sheath’s mouth.

She moved to sheath the blade into her hand, the sword’s tip poking bloody holes into her index finger and thumb as she missed the initial first attempts.

Even through the vagueness of the obscuring shadows, Rumi could see as the man’s face fell, and within moments he had thrown the leather sheath to the side as he bolted towards her.

The blade soon slipped its way into the hole in her hand, its dull edge running against her palm as it did so. Now fully sheathed, her blood coating the entirety of its cutting edge a crimson red, the Solean faced the oncoming Hashashin head on.

She pulled on the blade slightly, just enough to create a few centimetres of separation between the blade’s handguard and her bleeding fingers.

And suddenly, she felt as a tempest roared to life behind her, sending the blade rushing forward with the strength and certainty of a thousand storms. The sword sang its way through everything that stood in its path, screaming outwards with an uncontrollable power.

And in a beautiful misty red arc, splatters of blood hanging within the air, the silver of the blade cleaved its way through Turay.

The final blast, far more powerful and primordial in feeling than the other two, rolled outwards. Turay’s body was sent scattering back into the forest dark, his blood staining the rich browns of its rich barks. The unrelenting wave of air split open the trunk of a tree directly behind him, collapsing it onto the grassy path, separating her and Qingxi from the way back to Kardia.

And just as quickly as the animalistic rage of the sword’s magic had roared to life- it began to fade away. The many winds it called upon dissipating into the unfathomable volume of the atmosphere.

Rumi, though still stunned by the blade’s power, nevertheless stumbled her way back to the fallen Chitite.

The grasses below her painted red with each pulse of blood from the stumps on her left hand.