Created Thursday 10 November 2022
Eŕe has been mentoring Khazhek, Ishamel, and Naya for a few years at this point. They are being trained in his very particular style and mindset of maligned hunting, of which Khazhek is the best student because of his half maligned nature, and thus he has the natural abilities most of the training focuses on building. Normally Maligned don’t show any notable signs of their powers until either a traumatic event or after resurrection. Ishamel quickly gets jealous of his talent and thus pushes himself as hard as he can, to where he can nearly match Khazhek but not quite in a fight, but nearly equally in emotional reading and control and like, way better in emotional masking. He mostly uses this to manipulate people, while Khazhek uses it to help people, understand them better, and flirt. Naya matches her brothers nearly equally in combat but seems to have a lot of trouble with even the basics of emotional control and reading.1
The unorthodox style intrigues the clade of hunters that trained Eŕe and Kherin, and they are interested in studying the results. Kherin officially invites the clade to visit and observe. For this observation, Kherin and Eŕe have the kids do a series of tasks. The first is Kherin has Khazhek join him in a trial of a half maligned peasant kid only a year or two younger than Khazhek who’s alcoholic father was abusive. He ended up blamed for murdering his father, so now he’s being judged. As the kid tells his story about how he killed his father because he was hurting his little kid sister badly, Khazhek immediately clocks the kid as terrified, desperate, but also as telling the truth. This impresses the hunters, though one of them, a murderous monster of a person named Khar, believes they should kill the kid anyway. Kherin pardons the kid, but warns him to behave.
Ishamel’s test is longer. He is to keep a secret from the elder hunters, all of whom are maligned-blood infused, until he breaks or until the sun sets. It starts at sunrise, and he doesn’t give them an inch for nine full hours, which impresses them since it’s a teen who’s impressively skilled at not only keeping a secret from but also actively lying to professional maligned hunters, people who are literally specialists in this exact type of thing. Since Naya isn’t good at any of the special abilities, they don’t do a specific thing for her.
Next is sparring! Naya v. Khazhek, Khazhek wins but she puts up a better fight than the hunters were expecting because they are misogynists, and Khazhek only wins because of tricksy improvised moves rather than skill. Khar, the shitty one, makes a ‘joke’ that she’s almost as good as Eŕe was at the same age, because they taught Khar in the same group and he knows Eŕe’s trans and is a shithead about it. Eŕe snaps back with “And much better than you ever were.” Kherin threatens Khar, casually. 2 Kherin is a normal person, so Khar weighs up the king, but Khar knows Kherin could probably still beat his ass even without Ere, so he shuts his mouth. Next is Khazhek v. Ishamel.
Khazhek, like always, is friendly to Ishamel, and happy to spar. He’s probably doing some light-hearted ribbing. Ishamel, despite having lost every physical fight they’ve had so far, seems strangely excited, and he’s barely able to hide it. This immediately sets off Khazhek’s built-in red flag detector, but it’s too late because the spar has started and Ishamel is already going weirdly hard. So hard that it shocks Khazhek to the point he doesn’t want to do it anymore, so he’s having trouble keeping up. He even tries to yield, but Ishamel keeps pushing.
This goes on for a bit and Eŕe and Naya are getting tense. They know this isn’t normal. Eŕe gives Kherin (who wasn’t sure if this was fine or not) a ‘this is bad’ look, so Kherin tries to call out to Ishamel to stop. He doesn’t. Khazhek’s dulled blade slips from his hands after being knocked down and he has to catch Ishamel’s sword with his hands, but he doesn’t get the hold right and it hits his palms. Ishamel pulls the blade back, slicing across Khazhek’s palms. And he bleeds. He’s able to get away, but he’s got two gashes on both palms and they’re bleeding badly. Ishamel is using a freshly sharpened blade, not the practice blade they use for every other spar. Kherin jumps to his feet and bellows for Ishamel to stop. Khazhek tries to get away, scared as hell, but he can only get so far. Naya and Eŕe immediately go rushing down the stands they’re in, Naya using the stairs and rushing while Eŕe wastes no time and is just vaulting his way down.
As the blade comes towards him, unable to move out of the way in time, as Eŕe is dropping the final drop to ground level, as Naya is desperate to get there without landing on her face, and his father and brother are only just now moving after the shock of seeing this, Khazhek’s world slows to a stop. He feels and hears his heart racing. Fully aware, but he can’t move. He’s frozen like everyone else, fully aware of it, but entirely numb and immobile. A burning heat blooms deep in his chest and flows up through his veins, and he feels like he’s moving again, the numbness fading away. As time slowly starts again, his bloody palms bursts into flame and a shockwave of energy shoves Ishamel back nearly twenty feet, sliding to a stop as Khazhek jumps back up. A low flame wreathes his hands, a low flame that drips off his freshly manifested claws like a liquid. His blood that already stained things is also on fire. Eŕe gets shoved backwards into the wall as he falls. He lands on his hands and knees, shocked. The hunters have all leapt up to their feet, hands on weapons. Before anyone can recover or respond, Ishamel rushes Khazhek a bit too fast. Khazhek fully instinctively responds and nearly claws Ishamel’s face open faster than anyone knew he could move, but Ishamel barely moves out of the way in time. This explodes into the two swinging back and forth, both with weapons fully capable of killing, dodging and blocking, lasting less than a minute. Khazhek knocks the sword out of Ishamel’s hand and punches him in the gut hard enough to knock him to his feet. They stop then, breathing hard with exertion, and then both pass out. The fire dies away, leaving behind dried blood.
Afterword for Chapters 1 and 2: I haven’t developed these chapters as much as other bits, and you can tell because I’m not remembering the details as readily. Honestly, I haven’t really thought through chapters 1 and 2 haven’t in a while. This is a much more organized version, which is good.
I built chapter 1 to introduce the characters and their relationships and the world around them. This was to give me a base to build upon.