Airlean Tales S2E1: Gamble

To win, or not to win; for Halcyon Yuden, it was a choice. 

He idly rolled a token between his fingers, casting his gaze on the cedar table before him. Cards gleamed in the dim candlelight: shiny finish, gilded edges—a stark contrast to the creaky rafters, uneven floorboards, and mildew-dotted moulding of the tavern around him. The building must have seen better days, and yet money still flowed freely right under its nose. 

“All in,” announced Halcyon’s squat opponent bravely from the other side of the tavern table. He pushed his tokens to the center—gleaming onyx-black coins, cool and sharp.

Halcyon’s face was still, betraying nothing. His opponent had reason for confidence. A ten-high straight flush of the Sword suit, if Halcyon had been tracking the deck correctly. It was one of the configurations of the Warlord’s Hand, and almost unbeatable. 

Almost.

The thrill, the flush of adrenaline—whatever that electric tingle in Halcyon’s veins could be called, it was unmatchable. He reached for his own tokens, ready to make his move.

“Having a little too much fun there, Swan?” said a woman’s voice from behind him.

Halcyon didn’t have to look to recognize the new arrival. The soft lilt, barely touched with the refined air of nobility, was so distinct that he’d be able to pick it out from a throng: Karis Caelute, Second Hunter of Airlea. Halcyon’s pulse jumped traitorously at the dulcet tone of her voice. Despite being a Royal Hunter himself, he hadn’t seen her in months. Hunters had little reason to speak unless the country was in imminent danger.

He barely turned his head, taking in her appearance from his periphery. An undistinguishable plain traveler’s cloak was thrown over her ordinarily striking garb, hiding her from the common eye. She kept the hood high and over, masking the flower-pink of her hair and the gleam of her plum blossom hairpiece. After all, a Royal Hunter in an illegal establishment? Tongues would surely wag.

Halcyon knew what she was here for. “Where at?” he asked brusquely.

Karis smiled beneath her hood. “Down the coast. Storm-touched gulls.” Her tone turned sweet and melodic. “Corrupted. Aggressive. Dangerous.” 

She dangled the last word like a cherry in front of his face. Halcyon idly ran a finger over the ridge of his cards, considering.

Karis shrugged. “Oh, well, never mind then. If you’re not interested...”

He spoke as soon as she trailed off. “Is it an evacuation?”

“No, no,” Karis said, waving a hand. “The reports came in early enough. No towns are in danger.”

Her smile widened.

“All that’s left,” she said with relish, the words leaving her lips in reverent song, “is the hunt.”

“Thought it was our day off.”

“It is. This one’s for fun.” She cast him a disapproving look. “I’m getting a headstart. You drag on too much, Swan.”

She turned with a silent flutter of her cloak and was gone. 

Halcyon stood and flipped a small coin at the tavern keeper with a deft flick of his thumb—payment for the sad, musty mug of ale that he’d purchased to keep any complaints at bay. On the other side of the table, his opponent stood, prickly brows furrowing down into a nasty glare.

“Don’t you go runnin’ off, kid,” he snapped. “Not before you paid your due.”

Like an afterthought, Halcyon tossed his hand face-up on the table. 

Aster of Swords. Aster of Lilies. Aster of Sun. Aster of Moon. And the Lady’s card.

His opponent stared, slack-jawed. Then his face bunched up like mashed red beets.

“I’m in a rush, so keep your coin,” Halcyon said. He pulled the hood of his ratty cloak further over his face. “Next time, stay away from false shuffles. They don’t fly here.”

He pushed out the door. He was only three steps into the rough cobbled street when he fed a drop of mana into his windsoles, and like a bird of prey, vaulted into the air.

It was raining. Hard. 

Water came down in sleets around Halcyon, dousing his tattered brown cloak into a waterlogged rag. The drops were icy on his skin, chilled by the deadening night as they fell. They plinked on the clay-tile rooftops of the surrounding houses, gathered in the cracks between cobblestones, and rolled down foggy window glass in rivulets.

Most Hunters would have cursed the weather. Rain was typically disastrous for combat. Constrained vision, slippery surfaces, and waterlogged armor did nothing to help extended fights against tireless beasts. 

Halcyon couldn’t have been more thankful. 

Water mana was thick in the air, roaring in his blood, a potent brew that made him feel buoyant and alive. He reached for his manawell and sifted through it. He was met with a violent current of raw power, begging to be freed.

Lucky him, blessed with an affinity for water mana. In a rainstorm like this, he felt nearly invincible.

Halcyon removed his cloak as he fired his windsoles and caught up to Karis within the minute. Her pace was loping and easy, hardly hurried. So she did, for some reason, prefer to fight with him. Curious; she’d always been the type to seek glory for herself instead of sharing the kill. 

She glanced at him as he landed beside her, but kept her pace, spry as a gazelle. She’d shed that ratty cloak at some point, revealing her typical pearlescent garb, a sailor-collared dress perfectly tailored to ripple around her lovely curves. A glittering silken scarf cascaded behind her like a comet tail.

“Ah, there you are,” she said mildly. “I was beginning to think that you were seeking early retirement at the card tables.”

Halcyon stepped alongside her, dead even. “It’d get stale.”

She cast him a dry look. “Because gambling is too simple for your tastes?”

“If the shuffle is false, then there’s not much to the game.”

“You…cheated?”

He shrugged. “I wasn’t the one who shuffled.”

“Your opponent cheated? But he lost.”

“Guess he wasn’t very good at cheating.”

Karis shook her head lightly, and he sensed her concentration return to the task at hand as her pace doubled. Mana in the shoes; wind out; step by step, leap by flying leap. The lush, vibrant landscape of Airlea whirled by—towering forests, verdant meadows, flourishing bushes and vines, all enriched by the leylines that ran far beneath the ground.

Halcyon followed Karis’s lead down the coast, where the water lapped at damp sand, cloudy and rippling beneath raindrops. He could already see the sharp, winged silhouettes of their targets in the distance. Gulls, which ordinarily congregated at the ports of Mythaven in fat flocks, had twisted into something unrecognizable: long, spindly bodies, razor-sharp beaks, black crystallized growths encasing their skulls and bodies.

For one moment, a cold and beautiful rush of adrenaline lanced up his spine. Then he looked closer and frowned.

“I thought you said they were dangerous,” he said.

Although certainly large by ordinary standards, the gulls were only twice Halcyon’s own height. A common enough sight in this world, where occasional quakes of chaotic mana devastated the local flora and fauna. These gulls were a far cry from the hulking behemoths that Halcyon had fought just months ago in a wild Storm.

“Did you expect more?” Karis replied. “We won’t have a surge for months.”

He didn’t remark on the obvious: Karis hardly needed help for a few lowly gulls, no larger than Class Three, by the looks of it. Karis was the Second Hunter, a harbinger of death, wild as she was winsome. Which begged the question: why would Karis have informed Halcyon of these gulls if she could have simply dispatched them herself?

Perhaps…she had simply wanted to see him. They hadn’t spoken since the last Storm, after all.

No, Halcyon waved that idea away immediately. Personal feelings aside, he wasn’t about to delude himself. Karis had her moments of whimsy and this was likely one of them.

As they approached, weapons drawn and glowing softly in the rain-fog, the gulls swooped for them. Wicked curved beaks snapped out like blades; giant wings swung forth like deadly flails. 

Halcyon fed a drop of mana into his windsoles, and a rush of wind mana pivoted him aside, dodging the blow narrowly. As he swung his glaive, he called upon the bounty of surrounding water mana. The power of its current coarsed up the glaive and slashed out of the blade in a deadly, billowing surge, slicing a gull cleanly in two. Red, pulsing flesh locked with the rain and fell to the shore, tainting the water’s edge.

Next to him, Karis moved with equal speed and ferocity. Ice and flower mana coalesced around her figure into a whirling flurry of fine, razor-sharp silver line. A flick of her rapier sent the thread shooting forth like an arrow. It pierced the breast of the nearest gull, then wrapped around its wing, then needled through its skull. 

One quick tug, and the thread squeezed.

The gull’s body exploded as the thread carved through it, avian carcass splattering onto the sand in large chunks of raw flesh. Karis landed elegantly just past the macabre display, glittering scarf wafting behind her like a river of ice.

Asters, she’s beautiful.

Halcyon buried that thought quickly. Fool that he was, he’d been nursing feelings for the better part of a decade. In all that time, the best he’d done was get Karis not to hate him. To seek anything more would simply set himself up for heartbreak.

Karis fired her windsoles to match Halcyon’s steps, a frown curling down her lips. “Were Threes always so weak?”

Halcyon chuckled. “Yes. We’ve just never met them so fresh.”

And it was true. He and Karis had never met enemies while so well-rested—not in a long time. 

The Storm racked Airlea in waves. Months upon months of slow, laborious birthing pains, where chaotic mana gathered into clouds and struck the land, twisting docile animals and woodland creatures into nightmarish, unraveled beasts. Little by little, the wild mana built, all cresting into one glorious, terrible cacophony of death and bloodthirst—

—and then, once it broke, utter silence. For months. Sometimes for years.

The most recent Storm had set a brutal pace, barely granting the Hunters of Airlea a moment of shut-eye before they were roused and dispatched again to defend the needy. But after it broke, it left nothing in its place. Few stragglers, no aftershocks. It was the most peaceful that Airlea had ever been.

And Halcyon loathed it.

He didn’t want to admit it, but his blood crooned in satisfaction as his glaive tore through another gull, water ravaging through its swollen carcass. He had missed this. Darting through the field, the rush of rain on his face, the roar of power in his veins, the feeling of mastery and victory. He had missed the exhilaration of the battlefield.

As Karis obliterated another gull with the deft work of her rapier, a sharp tug at Halcyon’s gut caught his attention. He immediately turned to the ocean, scanning its slick, black surface. In and out. Sweeping and receding. 

Something was wrong.

Halcyon turned from the gulls, leaving them to Karis, and squarely faced the building waves. He reached a hand for the water froth, closing his eyes and honing his senses. 

There. He finally sensed swift, near-silent movement, blitzing through the waters like swordfish, so subtle that even Halcyon, with his senses heightened through the water, could barely detect it.

He pulled away from the shore with a stab of panic. “Karis!” he cried, raising his head. “Karis, get back to—”

He wasn’t quick enough. The ocean burst apart as a cluster of dark human forms lunged out of the water. They arced gracefully through the air, the bright moonlight shattering over their bladed spears as they surged right for Karis.

Karis’s surprise was apparent. She fired her windsoles, attempting to break away from the combat. Halcyon fired his own windsoles to meet her, water coursing around him like a serpent, ready to surge out and shield her.

But the newcomers ignored them both. In sharp, impressive military unison, they dove for the final gull. A phalanx of thirty spears tore through the gull’s feathers and toughened hide, blood showering down with the rain. It screeched in rage, tearing its beak and claws in their direction, but they had already vanished back into the ocean. Then, again—a graceful leap out of the water in perfect formation, and a dive, and thirty lances splitting through the gull in fierce, jagged puncture wounds.

The gull fell with the unit of spearmen, until all was swallowed up by the burbling waves.

A moment of silence stretched. Halcyon leveled his glaive at the ocean line, his hands trembling. The sea rolled in his veins, waiting for his call.

Then—movement.

Gradually, like a shadow rising in the night, the waves licked apart. Orderly ranks of spearmen drifted out of the ocean, slow and somber as a funeral procession. Their scaled tunics shimmered, partially like chain mail, partially like the iridescent skin of a fish. Strange angular headpieces were set over their brows like helms. As they emerged, the seawater seemed to melt off of their bodies, leaving them utterly dry.

Halcyon swallowed past the sand that had suddenly gathered on his tongue. “Declare yourself,” he demanded coldly.

The soldiers didn’t flinch. Silently, ever disciplined, they parted for a figure breaking through their midst—a lone man dressed in long, fitted robes, vibrant crimson sash thrown over one shoulder. He bore no armor and no weapon, and yet, when he sank into a bow, Halcyon instinctively stepped back.

“Greetings,” said the man in perfect, elegant Common. He straightened, regarding them with a keen citrinne gaze. “I am Simon Kourios, Prime Consul of the Vascea Dominion. I come as an envoy from the nation of Atlantis.”

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